“I LIVED on 26th and Garfield,” Peter Jesperson explains, mapping The Replacements’ South Minneapolis. “Chris Mars lived 11 blocks up on 37th and Garfield, Paul Westerberg on 47th and Garfield. Tommy and Bob lived with their mom on 24th and Bryant. It was all within about a mile radius. Down where Chris and Paul lived was residential. Tommy and Bob lived right behind a Super America gas station/convenience store, right around the corner from Hubs Liquors, a place we frequented a little too often.”
Westerberg’s early lyrics depict a teenage wasteland of suburban boredom. But the band were actually city boys, as Jesperson explains, who lived at the heart of Twin Cities bohemia. “The Stinsons lived a couple of blocks from the Walker Arts Center and the Guthrie –a Shakespearean rep theatre which on Sundays hosted bills like Neil Young and The Mothers Of Invention. It was a huge arts enclave. Also two blocks from the Stinsons was the Oar Folk record store on the intersection of 26th and Lindale, which was jokingly called our Haight-Ashbury.”