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The Historian

Dan Prozinski feels history creaking through the old floorboards of his storefront-turned-home. In fact, a few years back, a renovation project sent him and his wife, Sue Park, wriggling through a crawl space they had previously been avoiding, for fear of it being a gross-out. But that dust cell ended up being a time capsule. From it, Park unearthed two portraits belonging to Charles and Annie, the Swedish immigrants who opened a cigar and candy store there in 1887. She also found the couple’s wedding certificate, a gorgeous, pastel-colored document dated 1889, which is now prominently displayed on the stairway alongside Prozinski’s and Park’s own relics.

Also in their possession: a 1918 receipt for the original soda fountain, which cost $1,800 and remains in place today. “You have to sell a lot of five-cent soda pops to pay for that,” said Prozinski, who speculates that the soda fountain set the family back a ways, as the old photos indicate they didn’t fork over for barstools for several years to come.

Charles and Annie’s daughters, Mabel and Hilda, later inherited the business; and they managed to keep the soda flowing until 1969, with the help of sales of Swedish-language magazines, newspapers, and greeting cards, as well as snuff. (These days the greeting-card rack, replete with a nifty, lighted display, holds Prozinski’s record collection.) Mabel died in 1979, Hilda in 1991. Prozinski bought the building from Hilda’s estate in 1995 and has since taken great pains to dig up newspaper clippings and Minnesota Historical Society archives about the sisters and their business. “We feel it’s so sweet that the two sisters were raised here and now we’ve got two girls of our own living here,” he said. —Christy DeSmith

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The Watchman

Guy Savage isn’t hiding from anyone. It would be hard, in fact, for someone to live any more exposed. The living room of Savage’s apartment, in a duplex along a busy Minneapolis thoroughfare, is the front of a former paint store, and its display windows offer an almost panoramic view of the world rushing past outside. And, because he has no curtains or drapes, passersby—many of whom find themselves idling at the stoplight out front—are afforded a glimpse into Savage’s domestic life, such as it is.

At night Savage’s living room, where his dog usually keeps a vigil at the window, is lit up like a restaurant aquarium. Some people gawk; some wave (“I usually just wave back,” Savage said), and still others pause to consider Savage’s eccentric décor. The walls are hung with old music posters (Gang of Four, the Cramps, the Melvins, Hendrix) and maps (the Grand Canyon and the Mississippi). Arranged around the worn leather couch are random plants and curiosities: a parking meter, a cobbler’s bench, the head of a mannequin, a globe, and other assorted knickknacks.

Just through the kitchen is what was once the mixing room of the old shop, its wood floors splattered with thick layers of multi-colored paint. It looks like someone spent years trying to knock off a Jackson Pollock canvas and then tried to obliterate it with his or her feet.

From the outside, Savage’s home—which he has rented for four years—looks like it could be an artist’s studio or a second-hand store. There’s the giant “Irony” mural painted on the north side of the house, for starters, and there’s the street address rendered in vivid graffiti next to the door.

“I once had a guy walk right in the door and ask me what I sold here,” Savage said, standing in his living room and gazing out at the traffic whizzing by on the avenue. “I love the view, love seeing the looks on people’s faces. I call this my TV room.” He paused and gestured at the windows. “That’s my big screen right there, and I see a little bit ofeverything.” —Brad Zellar 

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The Aesthete

“It was really ugly.” That was Mike Bethke’s first impression of the South Minneapolis storefront in which he lives. “It still is really ugly.”

It used to be a corner store called Johnson’s, with living quarters out back. But after the store closed in 1983, the building became a cramped, seedy tenement for a series of dubious characters. After nearly a decade, it fell into abandonment—a place the neighbors campaigned to have condemned.

Then Bethke and his wife Monica stepped in. They bought the building in 1995 with the intention of remodeling. The radiators and pipes had burst. Three inches of mud covered the basement’s dirt floor. But Bethke tackled the project with gusto, filling six dumpsters in the process. The work even inspired him to start a construction business.

The building was “crying out for personality,” said Bethke, referring to its indistinct design. He started with the exterior, which rather unintentionally evolved into something of an homage to New Orleans; it even has a French Quarter-style balcony and vines. To make the place look more inviting, he added windows along the backyard privacy wall.

He then turned his attention to the interior, where double doors salvaged from an old speakeasy lead into the living room (Bethke likes the idea that Dillinger or Capone might have passed through them). The sunken reading room is a dramatic innovation inspired by the hip apartment The Beatles shared in the 1965 movie Help!—something Bethke always admired. Even more nostalgic is the glowing, Spider-Man-themed hideout beneath the front stairwell.

After more than a decade, the house remains very much a work in progress, albeit a charming one. The stairway is still just raw lumber, with bungee cords holding a rudimentary banister in place. But tacked on the wall is a vision of things to come: a magazine photo of a grand staircase whose dark glossy wood is accented by an elegant runner. It looks like something out of Tara. And eventually Bethke plans to replace all the house’s warped floorboards—including a huge dent in what was once the storefront, where a crushingly large industrial refrigerator used to stand. —Molly Butterfoss


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