Editor's note: Because of incorrect information provided by the author to the Star Tribune, this commentary was originally published under a pseudonym. It is the policy of the opinion pages to attribute commentaries and letters to the editor to authors' real names, with exceptions possible in rare cases — when preapproved by editors — to provide anonymity in extremely sensitive situations. The article has been amended with the author's correct identity.
The Loring Pasta Bar and Varsity Theater — just like the old Loring Bar and Cafe and Kitty Cat Klub — are bigger than Jason McLean. Whatever you may think of the man (who, let's not forget, is still only accused in lawsuits stemming from the Children's Theatre Company sex abuse scandal of the 1980s), let's not undervalue the profound impact he's had on Minneapolis art and design culture and "throw the baby out with the bath water" by boycotting his venues.
McLean, through his artistic vision, has provided a home for artists, seekers and romantics for nearly three decades. Without his vision, the Loring Park and Dinkytown neighborhoods would look and feel much different than they do today. And we, the good people of Minneapolis, would be poorer for it.
Loring Park:
Where others saw a dark, perilous park abutting an underused row of rundown, turn-of-the-20th-century buildings, McLean saw an artist's work space. With the creation of the Loring Bar, a Minneapolis art movement grew — organically, enthusiastically, brilliantly. This was no theme bar; it was a bona fide scene, populated by painters, writers, musicians, masons, actors, thinkers, tramps and misanthropes. It was an idea and a neighborhood, our very own little SoHo or North Beach that, ultimately, jump-started the Loring Park renaissance.
It was the Loring, collaborating with next-door neighbor Four Seasons Dance Studio, that spawned a vibrant Minneapolis tango scene. Students could cross the alley after class and tango the night away to the exotic milonga rhythms of Mandrágora Tango Orchestra. It was first-person theater, full of big, colorful attitude.
Cafe and Bar Lurcat (the D'Amico restaurant that now occupies the Loring space) is a lovely and successful restaurant, but it sits alone, at the end of the block, aloof and mostly divorced from the goings-ons of the neighborhood. One of its first orders of business when it moved in was to tell the Four Seasons folks to take down the dance-studio sign that had, for years, hung on the alley side of their building, pointing the way to the student dance floor.
It is often the case: Artists come in and dust off a raw space; then, deep-pocketed entrepreneurs say, 'Hey, I like what you've done with the place,' and the gentrification begins. As a 25-year-plus Loring neighborhood denizen, I can tell you that the Loring artists and bohemians have been almost completely replaced by the suburban day-trippers and condo dwellers.
