Culture
Brainerd claims lumberjack Paul Bunyan as its native; the world's largest animated statue of him, once located at Paul Bunyan Amusement Center in nearby Baxter, was moved a few miles east of the town to This Old Farm after the amusement center closed in 2003.
Much of the Coen brothers' 1996 movie Fargo takes place in a fictional version of Brainerd. The critically acclaimed film, produced by MGM, was ranked #84 on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Movies" list in 1998, although it was removed from the 2007 version, and #93 on its "100 Years...100 Laughs" list. The landmarks pictured in the film (the Blue Ox Bar, the Paul Bunyan statue) are not, however, those actually located in Brainerd. The scenes set on the highway near Brainerd, most likely highway 210, in the movie were filmed in Bathgate, North Dakota.
On June 30, 1999, then-21-year-old Farrah Slad of Brainerd won what was Minnesota's largest lottery prize, $150 million in the multi-state Powerball game. (The state record was broken on May 3, 2008, by a ticket purchased in Faribault).
Brainerd is mentioned in the title and lyrics of the song "ToolMaster of Brainerd" by Trip Shakespeare.
In sports, Brainerd has been the home to a number of small baseball clubs, most recently the Brainerd Lakes Area Lunkers of the Northwoods League, a collegiate summer baseball league. The Lunkers played at Mills Field in Brainerd for three years until closing down after the 2011 season.
Brainerd is home to a landfill gas collection system that reduces methane gas that would otherwise go into the atmosphere. The collected gas is used in a boiler, replacing natural gas as the source of heat. This project has received carbon credits from TerraPass as its sole source of revenue.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.”
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