I don't know if I'm "a fan", but this is a nice annual event. It's very family friendly, and there…read moreare tons of arts & crafts for sale. They had a kids area with free balloons, activities, and critters to pet. The best part, for me, was the Saturday evening street dance, with local bands playing at either end of the main drag, and plenty of bars in between. Nice community event!

Go every year, well organized festival with plenty of activities for all ages.read more

Some art fairs can be hit or miss, but the quality and variety of artists at the Bayfront is spot…read moreon. I've been going to this fair for years and never leave empty handed. This past August, I even pre-registered and participated in a watercolor class taught by one of the vendors. The art fair is free, but there is usually a charge ($5) for local parking. Amazing artists & view of Lake Superior and lift bridge make for a great experience.

Truly the best art fair in Northern Minnesota. Awesome Artists galore, Art Classes, art…read moredemonstrations, free yoga, entertainment, kids corner with interactive art activities and supporting the homeless children from Duluth with Plates of Promise. Couldn't get any better!

We loved this venue. The food was surprisingly tasty with friendly folks serving and directing the…read morecrowds. This was the perfect night spent to see such a great show out on by comedian, Mary Mack. The Northstar Comedy Hour rivals Prairie Home Companion but way funnier! This is our new summer tradition.

A seating-only venue that's definitely geared towards an older generation. Maybe fine for some, but…read morenot how I want to spend $90 for a ticket to engage with live music.

Beautiful art and home in Duluth. The Tweed mansion has a lot of history in Duluth and was…read morestuffed with art when UMD owned the home.

The Tweed Museum of Art is ensconced within nondescript student center buildings on the UMD campus…read more Keep your expectations in check because the two floors that it occupies -- with its linoleum floors and carpeting -- feel more like a registrar's office. If there were no paintings on the walls, you would not think this a gallery space. There is not a lot on display so spending longer than an hour here would be unlikely. One painting floored me. On the second floor near some bookshelves and a few desk chairs sits Gilbert Davis Munger's large-scale painting, 'Niagara Falls Showing the Canadian and American Views', from 1903. There is an almost endless stream of landscape paintings featuring Niagara Falls scattered in museums across the country and this is one of the best that I've seen. The grand size of the painting made me feel like I was standing at the base of the Falls. If I saw nothing else here, I would have still left happy. There are old master paintings from Mr. Tweed's collection on display in addition to various prints and lithographs. There are also some contemporary items, including Naomi Bebo's 'Beaded Mask', a 2010 work featuring beads and deer hide on an Iraqi gas mask. The most elegant item on display is a high heel shoe covered in birch bark by Cynthia Holmes. Titled 'Primal Donna', it's a modern day advancement on old wooden clogs.

I've never waited a full six years between experiencing what a business has to offer and writing a…read morereview before but Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe breaks the mold in more ways than one. I'm not sure what else they do besides putting on the Run, Smelt, Run! parade on the shore of Lake Superior in May but that's more than enough. I've been meaning to go back but it's a ways off from Detroit and finances are always a challenge so who knows if that will happen especially since ... gasp! This year might have been the final smelt parade. Jim Ouray, the founder of the smelt parade is stepping down as head honcho, citing the headaches of securing funding and doing all the clerical work which he's pretty tired of at his age. Hell, it sounds exhausting to me and I'm a good deal younger than him. He still wants to do the fun stuff, like play King Neptune, but unless someone steps up and takes the reins, which nobody has yet, it's curtains for the smelt parade. As grandpa would say "Well, that's too damn bad!" The smelt parade is a riot! It's kind of a northern bastardization of Mardi Gras. We have something similar in Detroit called the Marche du Nain Rouge. Ours is bigger and we wear red and dress like demons sometimes while in Duluth they wear silver and usually rock some sort of smelt themed costume. Theirs is more fun and soulful and flipped out if you ask me though. There's all manner of wacky smelt themed costumes- Smelt Lumberjack, Smelt Pope, Smeltbot 3000, Smelt Mayor and the fabulous Smelt Queen among dozens of others. There's a second line jazz band playing as the merrymakers dance down the Duluth boardwalk. There's a smelt fry and more music at the parade's conclusion at the Zeitgeist Theater. There's stilt walkers and a whole Rite of Spring type ceremony. Bye bye winter, let's party! Of course they're farther north than the Motor City so it's in May and not March. That's also the height of smelting time here - the reason for the season. Sorry it took me so long to write this. Hell, I had to create the listing, too. None of the normies here on Yelp are messing with this bizarre wonderfulness. Lots of details have slipped through my memory banks in the over half a decade that's elapsed, even if I have lots of photos and even created a travel comic about my pilgrimage here. Suffice it say I give the weirdos at Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe the highest possible recommendation and hope the Smelt Parade somehow endures.