Community Corner

Fridley: 'A Continent Away from Cool'?

In City Pages, Chris Strouth recalls going downtown from Fridley to buy LPs at Northern Lights.

In an essay posted Thursday at CityPages.com, Chris Strouth refers to his hometown of Fridley as a "vacuum" he left to shop for record albums in Minneapolis in 1980s.

An excerpt:

Being from Fridley is about a continent away from cool. In the 8th grade, my only option for purchasing music at first was the Musicland at Northtown Mall, which was better than nothing and on a bus route. Still, there were only so many Police and Oingo Boingo records you could buy.

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OK, "a continent away from cool" is kind of a cool phrase. But how is it then that Fridley continuously produces paragons of cool such as Eric Foss and Cory Wong of Secret Stash records, Chuck Olsen of Vidtiger, and well ... Chris Strouth himself, described at City Pages as "a Twin Cities-bred master of music, film, and everything else"?

Not to mention Fridley natives Luke "Mippey5" Thompson of Minnesota Gurls YouTube fame and MTV host Lenay Dunn—or people like Miss Jaime, who teaches hip hop at 'nMotion Dance Studio in Fridley, and dances in an upcoming Prince video.

Who is cool from Fridley? What is cool about Fridley? Leave a comment below.


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