Brooks: Cards on the table, longtime Minneapolis bar Otter's Saloon could use some support

At Otter's Saloon, rail drinks are $3, happy hour starts at 8 a.m., and every night is karaoke night.

But every second Saturday at the bar, it's time to push the tables together, lay out the cribbage boards and hope Aunt Tiny brings her homemade caramels to the tournament this week.

If dive bar cribbage is your thing, there is no better place to be than a 126-year-old saloon in southeast Minneapolis.

"It's a lot of fun," said 92-year-old Kathy Ratican, also known as Aunt Tiny. She did, in fact, bring both caramels and pecan brittle to the bar her niece, Lynn Vashro, owns.

But Otter's Saloon is struggling after a challenging year of road construction that choked off access to the neighborhood and the constellation of small businesses that make this Minneapolis neighborhood distinct.

The saloon's walls are covered in photos. Regulars belting out karaoke and skunking their opponents at cribbage. Aunt Tiny, dressed like an elf and tending bar. Everyone who shows up for a small business in a town that doesn't always make it easy to stay in business.

Ratican's photo hangs on the wall behind her, beaming and holding up a hand of cards — a 29 hand, the highest possible cribbage hand. Another photo of her hangs behind the bar, where she did a volunteer shift as a bartender last Christmas Eve so other workers could spend time with their families.

That shift, she said, earned her $205 in tips and a marriage proposal. She plans to be back for Christmas and Christmas Eve this year, welcoming those who may have no place else to go on a holiday — or nowhere else they'd rather be.

Just as the cribbage tournament was about to start, one more player burst through the door, shivering and apologizing. There are new parking meters on the newly rebuilt streets around the bar, and he'd had trouble getting the machine to read his credit card. Vashro stepped away from the bar and volunteered to play so there would be an even number of players in the tournament and he wouldn't miss out.

"We're trying so hard to keep going," she said. It was her husband, Bobby Vashro, who bought Otter's almost 15 years ago. Bobby died in 2022. In 2024, Minneapolis launched a massive public works project that tore the street down to the sewer lines and slowly rebuilt it with new utilities, new sidewalks, new bike lanes and new bus stops.

The project was supposed to make the neighborhood more accessible, but it left businesses nearly inaccessible for months, lost behind orange cones and detour signs and construction debris.

Sometimes, when a small business goes out of business, you hear people wishing they'd known it was in trouble before it was too late. Maybe they could have helped.

This is me, letting you know that Otter's Saloon is struggling.

There has been a saloon here, at this sharp corner of Minneapolis, since 1898.

Different owners, different names, but always a dive bar at this tiny wedge of an intersection, welcoming thirsty travelers inside its angled walls. Even during Prohibition. Especially during Prohibition.

This year came the Hennepin and First roadway improvement project. The saloon draped a banner over the door, reassuring visitors that, yes, behind the closed streets, ripped-out sidewalks and clouds of construction dust, Otter's was still open for business.

The orange cones are gone now; the streets are open, and the new bike lanes beckon. But it's hard for Vashro not to look around and see what she's lost. Little bits of Otter's Saloon, carved away for the greater good.

When officials asked her for an easement for the new bike path, "I said yes, of course, people are welcome to come and bike. I gave them part of my sidewalk," Vashro said. When they announced plans for a new bus line, she attended the meetings and found out those plans called for plopping the new F Line bus shelter directly in front of her door. All as she watched the saloon lose money, month after month. Revenue was down almost $5,000 in July, compared with the year before. Down another $5,400 in August. Down $7,800 by September.

"It felt like they just kept hitting me," Vashro said. And then they put in parking meters in places that had never been metered — even in front of her dumpsters, so some weeks the garbage trucks can't get in and the trash piles up.

Parking meters and parking spaces sound like small things. But these are small businesses. Vashro has been looking at those $3 drink prices and wondering how long she can hold out against an increase. There's a jar behind the bar to cover the cost of the new meters for her bartenders and regulars, but she worries about how far her staff might sometimes have to walk to their cars at 2 a.m.

"It's so frustrating because we assured all our customers that [the parking meters] weren't going in, because that's what we were told for so long," she said.

Vashro wants to keep Otter's going. She wants us to have cribbage and karaoke and comfort.

"It's all just getting to be too much," she said. "I can't take much more."

If you're in the neighborhood and want to show your support, you'll find Otter's where it's always been, at 617 Central Ave SE.