Brainerd Boyfriends

Brainerd, Minnesota, population 13,000, is  on the Mississippi River about 2 hours north of Minneapolis and 2 1/2 hours east of Fargo.  It's in a lake-abundant resort area, as you can probably tell from the sights:

Paul Bunyan Land, featuring a 26-foot tall talking animatronic Paul.

Pirate's Cove Adventure Golf

Three Bears Water Park (what do bears have to do with sliding into water?)

Trip Advisor also suggests the Crow Wing County Historical Museum and the National Pacific Railroad Shops Historic District, a series of railroad repair buildings.

Brainerd High School, enrollment 500, has a gay-straight alliance.  There's an article in the Brainerd Dispatch on Valedictorian Bri Storlie, who is gay.  She states that when you put up 50 posters, all but two are torn downthe next day, and when they scheduled a Day of Silence to draw attention to homophobic bullying, some students showed up with anti-gay slurs on their t-shirts.

In addition to the homophobia, Brainerd beefcake is hard to find.  I found a few photos online, but most were from the Brainerd Dispatch, which prohibits downloading them.

So we're going to make do with "dreamy boys," fully clothed objects of romantic fantasies for the tween crowd, for whom faces are more important than physiques, and holding hands is the ultimate in physical contact.

Some bored-looking wrestlers.

The captain of the swim team, and his buddy.  If only I were 30 years younger.

A football player.  Is he benching only 90 pounds?  Oh, well, it's all about the face, not the physique.

The high school's best all-around athlete.  I like the little striped bow tie.

Physique Watching at the World's Biggest Candy Store

As you're driving south from Minneapolis toward the Plains, you hit the town of Belle Plain. Not much is visible from the highway, but there are two heavily-advertised tourist draws:

1. Edna Krumbee's Restaurant, not very good, but advertised as heavily as Burma Shave to make you think it's a celestial experience.

2. The World's Largest Candy Store, previously known as Jim's Apple Farm, is visible for miles around as a gigant yellow silo.  It's usually packed with people buying mass quantities of their favorite childhood brands that they thought long gone.   I like the international aisles, with chocolate bars from Sweden, toffee from Belgium, snack sticks from Japan, and who knows what else?  They also have pies, apples, pancake mix, hundreds of local sodas, and sundries.

  You wouldn't think that a candy store would be a good place for physique watching, but many of the droves of people are hot guys, and the staff seems entirely composed of extremely photogenic local boys.  One wonders about the application process.

If you get off the highway, you'll find a standard Minnesota small town, with a dead, decrepit downtown, some Lutheran churches, and some modern suburban districts where people who commute into Minneapolis live.

Nothing of historic interest except the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration, built in "Prairie Gothic" style in 1868, no longer in use (you can't go inside).

Not a lot going on.  There's a high school with the usual wrestling, swimming, and cross country (for some reason photographed shirtless).

And in the swimming pool.  I guess they needed to cool off after a long race on the prairie.

There are two famous hometown boys:
1. Professional wrestler Mitch Paradise.

2. Professional motorcross racer Ryan Dungey (racing nude in the top photo)

But there's really no need to get off the highway.  The World's Biggest Candy Store provides ample physique watching.  And they have Toblerones.

Beefcake and Mysticism in the Most Catholic Town in America

When my twink friend Matt invited me to visit his hometown of Mankato, Minnesota, about 3 hours away, I was expecting to be bored stiff, except for the sexy time.  Surely it was just another of those dreary Upper Midwest havens of barbecue, "you betcha," and Lutherans.  Maybe with a small Muslim minority.  If I was lucky, an Ethiopian restaurant.

But it turned out to be the most Catholic town I've ever seen in the U.S.  You could almost smell the incense.  There were processionals of the saints right out on the street.

I love Catholic churches, rituals, liturgy, art, and guys.  When I was growing up in the austere, no-frills Nazarene Church, they were strictly forbidden, so they had an aura of mystery.  I still get a little frisson of wrongdoing while touring one of the great cathedrals of Europe, or looking at Medieval art in a museum.

So a small town in Minnesota devoted to ancient, long-obsolete Catholic traditions was quite a find.

Four Catholic Churches.  The biggest, Sts. Peter and Paul, is old school, none of these streamlined minimalist Presbyterian-style stuff.  There are life-sized statues of saints over the altar.

You can hear a Latin Mass every Sunday afternoon.  We're going.

There are confessions, novenas, stations of the cross, and even an Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament every day from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm.

 I don't know what that is, but it sounds contemplative.

Across the street is the Blessed José Sanchez del Rio High School Seminary.   He was a 14 year old boy executed in 1928 Mexico for refusing to renounce his Catholic faith, made a saint in 2016.

The seminary enrolls about  20 boys in 9th-12th grade who want become priests.  Although they will still have to study theology in adult seminary, they do a lot of religious devotion in addition to their secular classes:  daily Mass, Angeles, Rosary, and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, plus an hour of sports and two hours of recreation.

Most of the students are Hispanic, which makes sense, given that their patron saint is from Mexico,but this seminarian is Asian.  He is named after a previous Pope.  His parents apparently wanted to get him started early.

There's also the Institute of the Incarnate Word Minor Seminary, for "young boys."  I don't know how much younger, but they have daily Mass, Angeles, and Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, too.  Plus indoor rock climbing on the Monday within the Octave of Easter.

An octave consists of the 8 days after a festival.  Who would ever know that?  Why would they want to measure time that way?  Wouldn't "the Monday after Easter" make more sense?

I guess in order to sound more Latin, and therefore spirtual/

For the ladies, the Our Lady of Good Counsel School Sisters of Notre Dame on top of a steep hill is a convent with a huge Gothic chapel.  The sisters used to run a school.  Now they host a golf tournament, a Red Barn festival, a German festival, and some workshops on women's empowerment

After all that, a regular Catholic school seems almost mundane.  Loyola has an enrollment of 700 and two campuses, one k-8, and the other high school.  The high school offers all-school Mass, sports team-only Mass, retreats, rosaries, and, of course, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

There are also a lot of sports, including wrestling, swimming, powerlifting, and cross-country.  But after all of that spiritual contemplation, I feel kind of funny looking for beefcake. So here are three swimmers from another town nowhere near Mankato.

Nice bulges.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's time to watch some seminarians in an outdoor processional.

Alexandria, Minnesota: Not the Home of the Vikings

Every year Dad got a two-week vacation.  We spent the first week visiting relatives in Indiana, and the second...ugh... camping.  Five days and six nights in a horrible camper or drafty cabin with no tv, with nothing to do but go fishing (ugh!), splash around in the muddy, gross water with the fish (ugh!), and paddle around in boats (how deep is this lake, again?).

Sometimes it took two days to get there, but we camped on the way.  Ugh.

The highlight of each trip was driving into town for supplies (and hopefully comic books) and driving to the nearest Nazarene church on Sunday morning.  Anything to overcome the boredom and discomfort.

But once, during the ten or so camping trips I remember, my parents came through.  Accidentally or on purpose, they signed on for a cabin in a lake near Alexandria, Minnesota, home of the Kensington Runestone.

Discovered in 1898 by Swedish immigrant Olof Ohlman, the runestone purports to tell the story of Vikings who made it all the way to Minnesota in the year 1362.

Later studies have determined the stone to be a hoax, but who cares?  Vikings, pre-Columbian voyages to America, ancient runes!   It sure beat paddling around in boats!

I bought a replica of the Kensington Runestone, which I still have.  It's paste, so very fragile.  My most treasured possession, a memory of how my parents tried, that one time, to find a campsite that would appeal to their bookworm son.

Alexandria pushes its runestone to the hilt.  There's a runestone museum in town now, and a gigantic statue of a Viking named Big Ole.  There are a dozen businesses named Viking, including a bank, a pawn shop, an office supply company, and a bookstore.

Strangely, the local high school sports team is the Cardinals, not the Vikings.













Even more strangely, they don't wear red.












Even more strangely, they seem a little young for high school.

See also: The Kensington Runestone

Norwood Young America: Homophobia in the Heart of Minnesota

Minnesota tends to be a liberal state, sort of. It only repealed its sodomy law in 2001, and an attempt to do the same for fornication (sex outside of marriage) resulted in strengthening the law. 

Outside of Minneapolis, Rochester, and Duluth, you find a lot of "boys are boys and girls are girls, don't you know?" 

"Young America" is a very distinctive town name, and almost impossible to research online.  A search for photos reveals girls in swimsuits, Andy Hardy, a "God is my pilot" meme, and 19th century boys' adventure magazines.

Its history is difficult to research,also.  It was apparently founded as Farmington in 1856, shortly after Minnesota became a state, by 24-year old New Yorker James Slocum Jr. and his partner R. M. Kennedy (I assume that they were a gay couple).   This is not them, of course.

 Later Slocum wanted the name changed to Florence, but the German immigrants in town pushed for Teutenberg.  Finally, in 1863, they settled on Young America, apparently a common expression of the era. 

In order to get railroad rights. Slocum plotted a new town, Young America Station, in 1872.  Later the town elders changed it to Norwood, after one of Slocum's friends.

He had a lot of male friends, didn't he?  too bad it didn't last.

The towns merged in 1995.

Now it's "Norwood Young America" or NYA, "a growing community rooted in small town values."

Uh-oh, small town values are usually gender-polarized, heteronormative, and homophobic. "No gay people exist, but if they do, they  aren't welcome." 

In 2014, Minnesota House candidate Bob Frey ran on an "anti-sodomy" platform.

The main source of jobs is the Dile Corporation, which moved to Young America in 1973, and renamed itself the Young America Corporation in 1995 (not the NYA Corp?). It processes coupons, rebates, and other marketing discounts for companies all over the country.  For that reason, the town has over 20 zip codes.

There's also a dollhouse manufacturer, the Lazy Loon Lanes, a Harbor that's nowhere near a harbor, a quilting store, and a Hot Stuff Pizza.

One high school, Central High, for the combined towns (Future Farmers of America, but no Gay-Straight Alliance, naturally). 

Some beefcake with the wrestling and swim teams, but wouldn't you rather drive the 43 miles into Minneapolis?

The Beefcake of Albert Lay or Lee, Minnesota

Another city name that no one can pronounce is Albert Lea, in the southeastern part of the state near the Iowa border.  Is it "lee" or "lay"?

I thought it was named after some Scottish ballad -- "And draw my bed twae furrows long, and drop me three bonnie brae, for I'll nae more be seen on Earth, 'tis the last of Albert Lea."

Ok, I just made that up.  But a "lea" is a field, as Wordsworth, "upon this pleasant lea.

Surely the name came from something literary.

Turns out that it is named after Albert Miller Lea (1808-1891),  who surveyed southern Minnesota in 1835.  He didn't name it, nor did he ever live there; he grew up in Tennessee, and spent his retirement in Texas.  I checked; he probably wasn't gay. 

Albert Lea's main claim to fame today is the SPAM museum in nearby Austin.

And the Big Island Rendezvous, held every October, which involves dressing in historic costumes.

There is only one high school in town, Albert Lea High, which offers cross-country.

And swimming.  Believe it or not, these are high school-aged swimmers.

I could only find beefcake photos of the wrestlers.

But there are a lot of them.

The Albert Lea wrestler is in back.

And by the way, it's pronounced "Lee."

The Kensington Runestone

Every summer from kindergarten to college (when I decided to stay home), my parents dragged me on a week's camping trip somewhere up north, to Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Canada.  Other than the roadside beefcake, it was usually pretty dismal, with no tv, no museums, no historic sites, nothing to do but hunt, fish, swim, and mess around in boats.

But during the summer after eighth grade, we went camping in Alexandria, Minnesota, site of the Kensington Runestone.

Young Swedish immigrant Olof Ohlman discovered the 200-pound slab of sandstone covered with Medieval runes in 1898.  It tells about a group of 30 Vikings who left Vinland "on an exploration journy" in 1362, and somehow made it to Minnesota.  One day some of them went fishing, and returned to find the men they left behind "red with blood and death," probably attacked by Skraelings (Indians).

My junior high history textbook stated categorically that no Europeans made it to the New World before Columbus, so this was a startling discovery, and immediately controversial.  The academic establishment decreed the runestone to be a fake, carved by Ohlman for financial gain.

In 1907, a young historian named Hjalmar Holand bought the runestone, and spent the rest of his life trying to prove it genuine, describing how Vikings could well have made it to Minnesota in books like Westward from Vinland (1940) and A Pre-Columbian Crusade to America (1962). 

The jury is still out on whether the runestone is authentic, but Alexandria loves its claim to fame.  There's a runestone museum and gift shop, and a 28-foot statue of a Viking, Big Ole.

Today, regardless of whether they believe that the Vikings got as far as Minnesota, all historians recognize that they reached the New World before Columbus, and established a permanent settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

What's the gay connection?

1. The Vikings who explored Minnesota were all male.

2. Olof Ohlmann was rather cute.

3. My junior high history textbook was wrong.  The adults either didn't know about the Viking exploration of America, or they were lying about it.  What else were they hiding? Maybe the upcoming "discovery of girls" that everyone at Washington Junior HIgh was always evoking was a lie, too.

See also: The Top 12 Public Penises of Minnesota

Searching for Beefcake in the 10 Worst Suburbs of Minneapolis

Minneapolis is my second-least favorite city in the United States (my first is Houston, for obvious reasons).  It's cold, cramped, surprisingly run-down, and everything is frightfully expensive.  $23 for a breakfast in a diner with a drugged-out guy snoring in the next booth?

Plus the traffic is awful.  Whoever heard of driving all the way through downtown to get to the airport?

Plus it goes on forever.  70% of Minnesota's 5.7 million residents live the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington Metropolitan Statistical Area, which extends from St. Cloud to Redwing, a distance of 120 miles, crammed with tiny towns and suburbs that locals expect you to be intimately familiar with.

"Are you from Minneapolis?"

"No, I'm from Arden Hills.  And you know what they say about Ardens Hills boys!"

Here are my least favorite Minneapolis suburbs.

1. Shakopee, site of the Valleyfair Amusement Park, the annual Minnesota Renaissance Fair, and the Shakopee Women's Prison  (in a residential neighborhood a few blocks from downtown).

The high school offers swimming, wrestling, track, and powerlifting (the Shakopee player is the one on the ground).

2. Edina, which sounds like the name of a sea urchin.  A ritzy suburb full of $300,000 houses, near that stupid Mall of America (it's just a shopping mall with its own exit ramp).  An old sundown town (it was illegal for black people to live there, or to be on the streets after sundown). 
Now the population is 3% black.

It does have a Crossfit.

3. Orono.  Minneapolis has the habit of naming its suburbs after existing places, in this case Orono, Maine.  It's even ritzier than Edina, with a mean family income of $100,000 (twice the national average), but since it's right on Lake Minnetonka, there's a rustic feel.

4. Wayzata

Next door to Orono, more mansions, more country clubs per capita than any other town in the U.S.  Its unusual name makes it popular with Hollywood writers who want "standard Midwest," not realizing that it's the Beverly Hills of Minneapolis.

Here's the Wayzata High cross-country team.

More after the break.