Knotted Pine Bar

Knotted Pine Bar

Isabella, MN

Reviewed May 28th, 2005

The bathroom here looks like it was knitted together with left over materials like a monkey sock puppet, yet it has plenty of character. Harvey Keitel, ala Pulp Fiction reminds us that, "just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character," but the Knotted Pine Bar and Inn is a character and has plenty. Like the Border Bar in Taylor's Falls, one finds dollar bills written on and taped up all over the ceiling and walls of the place. Unlike the Border Bar, this place is truly up north, a one stop shop for gas, groceries, beer, and ice on the frontier between Ely and Isabella, on Minnesota's most bendy highway. The northwoods plaid clad lumberjackers in their baseball hats and boots gave this chubby, hip pack wearing restroom clown the quiet stares he rightfully deserved as he made his awkward way to the toilet with his camera hanging around his neck and loose wet wipes falling out of his pocket. There, I found a toilet and a baby trough urinal, not quite big enough to fend for itself in the wild. Highway 1 in northern Minnesota is known for having the greatest concentration of baby trough urinal sightings anywhere in the state, perhaps even the upper midwest. Chased by moose, their only natural predator, the baby trough has a hard life and a 50% mortality rate from being hit by cars and eaten by the bad moose and its close cousin the gemsbok. Indeed, I consider it a wonderful thing that the Knotted Pine captured this unfortunate little thing and rehabilitated it, however ugly and unlikely to survive it may be. As for the rest of the restroom, it was more small then tall and I and my entire 5 foot 8 inch frame was forced to stoop a little to get in there. It wasn't filthy in there but I would have eaten off of other toilets before this one. I could only get in to the men's room because everybody was watching me and my girlfriend was sitting in the car. Awfully sorry, ladies. God bless.

- Justin Teerlinck

RESTROOM RATING: 5
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