Cadillac Kolstad at Palmer’s Bar
BY CRAIG WOOD
Palmer’s had what it took to be a successful dive bar: A pool table, banged-up furniture and enough soft lighting to see initials carved into the bar, but not bloodshot eyes in the morning. Take-no-crap bartenders served stiff drinks along with pizzas and salty snacks, and when customers got married or died, they helped organize potluck suppers along with the owners and customers. There were photos of deceased patrons to remember on the back wall, and a long list of 86’d names to forget on the front one.
Since it opened in 1906, the bar now called Palmer’s has weathered the Prohibition era, world wars, hookers on the second floor, recessions, 1,300 newly constructed Riverside Plaza apartments, University of Minnesota encroachment, a smoking ban and Covid. Suffice to say, this West Bank bar has gone through a lot of changes.
During the ‘60s and ‘70s, simple-lifers preferring to live on the cheap and play with street drugs basically took over the neighborhood that had about a dozen bars within walking distance. Eventually, many wandered into watering holes like The Joint, Triangle Bar, Caesar’s, 400 Bar, Viking, Cabooze and Palmer’s. Years ago, a barfly told me the biggest decision he had to make after leaving the house “was whether to go left or right.” Apart from Palmer’s, only The Joint and Cabooze remain open.
In 1975, Roger Folta made a deal with his dad to buy Palmer’s and co-owned it until 1996. There was much talk then about counterculture — Craig Palmer of Mayday Bookstore (no relation to Palmer’s) recalled that he enjoyed drinking beer and discussing progressive politics there. The chatter of barstool revolutionaries, boisterous hippies and coffeehouse intellectuals eventually overwhelmed the voices of neighborhood regulars, but didn’t drown them out.
When Folta retired, old-timers still trickled in after 8 a.m. to nurse beers, play cribbage and burn a cigarette next to those who started the day with the hard stuff. I recall one retiree going-off periodically with – “And the moonlight lit on the nipple of her tit — oh Jesus Christ Almighty” exclamation. Nevertheless, customers remained lost in thought or didn’t look up from their crossword puzzles — basking in ethereal cigarette smoke, warm sunlight steaming through the front door window and the scent of slow-cooking brats. “Walkin’ After Midnight” was a jukebox favorite.
Cornbread Harris at Palmer’s
(photo/Craig Wood)
Later on, the second shift of West Bank denizens and stray misfits took over the barstools to trade gossip, discuss alternative lifestyles or yak for hours, but it was the characters who made the bar unique. You never knew if you’d meet a train-jumping Native American who made ceremonial hats out of thrift store fur coats or a carpenter/farmer with a lifelong dream of hooking his pigs up to a sleigh and going to town for a beer. One day, the latter punched in “Me and Bobby McGee” on the jukebox and sucked up all the drinks on the bar with a shop vac while singing along. As drunk as he might have been, he bought everyone a drink when the song was over. The joint deserved its reputation as “The last Star Wars bar.”
Palmer’s was also an egalitarian mixing-ground or as someone once said “A community center with a kick” where everybody could tell their stories and sometimes rub shoulders with bar-slumming luminaries or catch a glimpse of Bonnie Raitt having a drink with the star of Palmer’s, Spider John Koerner. Eritreans in full length leather coats played pool next to grizzled down-and-outers throwing darts.
Named one of the best bars in the U.S. by Esquire, Palmer’s served_work-a-day folk, creatives, granola-mamas, idlers and a police lineup of miscreants. On any given day, you might hear about a new communal garden by the Cabooze or run into a whispering stranger who says he can get you a bazooka for twenty-five hundred bucks that’s “good for banks” but there was a catch — you had to buy two.
Folta who sometimes referred to Palmer’s as “Play-land” told me long ago that his business plan was to sell as many cheap drinks as he could. However, he might not have been able to foresee how late stage alcoholism or the rising popularity of cocaine, prescription drugs, cheap brown heroin and speed concoctions might affect him or his customers. After many of them died from alcoholism or OD’d on drugs, the emotional fallout from their substance abuse got to him and he wanted out — there were hypodermic needles in the women’s room waste paper basket.
Keith Berg met his wife Lisa Hammer while tending bar at Palmer’s. After they were married, they bought the place from Folta when there were still big jars of pickled eggs and turkey gizzards for sale behind the bar, and the Minneapolis phone book shared a shelf with the Physicians Desk Reference that was sometimes used to identify pills and study counter-indications. Lisa baked hams and turkeys during the holidays for customers who didn’t have anywhere else to go, and used her lawyer skills to get a permit for a smoking-deck behind the bar.
After Keith died, the traditions of potluck meals and showcasing local musicians continued while “the usual suspects” went about their business and the good-hearted kept bringing in free vegetables and bread. Over the phone, Lisa mentioned with a laugh that she told her life-partner, “I can sell the bar now because I don’t have to pick-up any more men there.”
Vintage record shop owner and notable punk-musician Dave Foley spent about a year bartending when Lisa owned Palmer’s. He recalled it as a “box that sold alcohol” and “a place to hide for those who didn’t want to be found.” He told me about two hard-guys who showed him their guns and was told they had his back if there was any trouble. He mentioned another customer who sat on a barstool knitting sweaters for dogs and said he was sad the bar was closing because there are so few dive bars left. When I asked him what his favorite memory of Palmer’s was he said “The day I quit and went to Ireland to live.”
Bass player and social media butterfly Tony Zaccardi along with Pat and Sarah Dwyers bought Palmers from Lisa Hammer in 2018. By then most of the day-drinkers were dead and younger crowds were cutting back on alcohol. The neighborhood was changing again. Management tried raising prices, cutting hours and adding cover charges, but apparently it wasn’t enough.
Then came a public comment from the Dwyers about a broken trust with Zaccardi followed by a July 2025 article in Minnesota Monthy titled “Missing $379,000: The Real Reason Palmer’s Bar Is Closing.” The magazine found divorce court records stating that Zaccardi “withdrew more than $379,364 from [Palmer’s] business accounts and has not accounted to the petitioner concerning his use of said funds.” An editor added a disclaimer that Minnesota Monthly is not alleging any wrongdoing.
Palmer’s will close its doors for good Sept. 14 of this year, and if there is a final irony to the Palmer’s story — it might be about a notorious and iconic dive bar that built itself up on nickel and dime beers, that was taken down by unquenchable appetites for booze and dope — and finally sold to people who follow the Qur’an and shun alcohol and illicit drugs altogether.
