The man born Prince Rogers Nelson 66 years ago this month entered the year 1984 as a mysterious, budding star and wrapped it as a worldwide phenomenon whose influence remains evident across genres and generations to this very day.

“Purple Rain,” both the film and the soundtrack, served as Prince’s vehicle to achieve such great heights and, as such, the Twin Cities are celebrating the 40th anniversary of “Purple Rain” in numerous ways, from free dance parties to live performances to an impressive new book stuffed with rare photos and new interviews that shed further light on the Purple One’s once-in-a-lifetime creativity.

After famously signing a record deal at 19 that gave him creative control over his music, Prince spent the early years of his career establishing himself as both a musical genius and a provocative, androgynous weirdo who wrote sexually explicit songs and performed them in a style that was part Little Richard, part James Brown, part Jimi Hendrix.

By 1983, the mainstream was starting to catch up with Prince, thanks in large part to his double album “1999” and its hat trick of hits including the title track, “Little Red Corvette” and “Delirious.” But Prince wasn’t one to take the easy route from there. He insisted his then-manager Robert Cavallo land him a starring role in a studio film.

What eventually emerged was “Purple Rain,” a loosely autobiographical film set in and around his hometown of Minneapolis. Filming took place mostly in Minnesota at the end of 1983, including the 25 days Prince’s team took over First Avenue, home to the movie’s many memorable concert scenes, which showcase the Purple One’s otherworldly talents as a musician and entertainer. (Watching it today, it’s tough not to flinch — at least a little — at the physical demands Prince imposed on himself that ultimately led to the damage to his body and his life-ending addiction to painkillers.)

The stark, bass-free single “When Doves Cry” set the stage for the arrival of “Purple Rain” in the summer of 1984. The film grossed 10 times its $7.2 million budget, while the soundtrack spent 24 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, sold 25 million copies worldwide and won two Grammys and an Oscar. It helped cement the concept of the Minneapolis Sound, a groove chased by everyone from Janet Jackson to Fine Young Cannibals.

Prince wrapped 1984 with a victory lap tour that included five shows at the late St. Paul Civic Center at the end of December. While he easily could have ridden the success of “Purple Rain” for another year or two, Prince defied expectations and forged new paths from there.

Prince may have been allergic to nostalgia, but his fans most certainly are not. With that in mind, here are some of the ways to celebrate the man and his singular achievements from that fateful dozen months some 40 years ago.

Watch ‘Purple Rain’

Somewhat surprisingly, “Purple Rain” is currently not streaming on any of the major services. Those who don’t mind ads can watch it for free on Pluto TV. Major sites like Amazon Prime and Apple TV offer rentals for around $4 and purchases around $8.

For those who want to relive 1984 in pristine quality, Warner Bros. is releasing the film in 4K Blu-ray on June 25.

Celebrate Prince on the streets

The free Prince Celebration Block Party runs from noon to 5 p.m. June 22 outside the Prince Mural at 101 N. Ninth St. in downtown Minneapolis. The event will feature music, an art installation, food vendors and plenty of dancing. Revelers are invited to wear their favorite Prince gear and celebrate all things purple.

Attend Celebration

As always, the annual Celebration at Paisley Park and at sites in downtown Minneapolis offers live music (Morris Day, the Revolution, New Power Generation), celebrity panels, access to exclusive concert footage and custom tours of Prince’s famed home and studio. It’s a great chance to delve deep into all things Prince and meet fellow fans from around the country and even the world. Events run from June 20 through 24, but it all comes at a steep price.

Fans arrive for day two of Celebration 2018 at Paisley Park in Chanhassen, Minn. on Friday, April 20, 2018. (Courtesy of Steve Parke / Paisley Park Studios)

General admission is $750, while VIP tickets are a cool $1,350. See paisleypark.com for details.

That said, there are a number of events and spin-offs are available at more reasonable prices, including:

Prince’s most famous band, the Revolution, headlines First Avenue, the world-famous club where much of “Purple Rain” was filmed; 7 p.m. June 22; $199-$99; first-avenue.com.
Prince Celebration 2024: Single Day Pass, includes a panel discussion, exclusive concert footage and a high-definition screening of “Purple Rain”; 10:30 a.m. June 21, 10 a.m. June 22; State Theatre; $130 (or $210 for both days); ticketmaster.com.
Prince Celebration 2024: Morris Day and New Power Generation live with special guests; 8 p.m. June 22; State Theatre; $180; ticketmaster.com.

Catch Dr. Mambo’s Combo

Dr. Mambo’s Combo has been performing weekly at Bunkers Music Bar and Grill since 1987 and was a favorite of Prince’s, who enjoyed the group’s nimble performances of soul, rock and R&B. The current band lineup features some names familiar to Prince fans: Julius Collins and Margaret Cox on lead vocals, Sonny Thompson on bass, Brian Ziemniak on keys, Geoff LeCrone on guitar and Peter Suttman on drums.

This special concert, dubbed Forever In My Life: A Birthday Tribute to Prince, features a collection of songs across the many eras and styles of Prince as well as songs he wrote for other artists. 6:30 p.m. June 19; Parkway Theater; $40 (in advance), $45 (at the door); theparkwaytheater.com.

Enjoy ‘Prince and Purple Rain’

Local music journalist Andrea Swensson has spent much of the time since Prince’s death immersing herself in all aspects of his life, writing liner notes for reissues, hosting the official Prince podcast and working on the newly released coffee table book “Prince and Purple Rain.”

Actually, calling this handsome tome a coffee table book is a bit of a disservice, as it goes into far more depth than most such books, which tend to favor flash over substance.

In her introduction, she aptly dubs it “a love letter to Prince and Purple Rain.” She covers Prince’s early days, his career leading up to “Purple Rain” and its cultural impact through a series of candid interviews, sharp insights and endless photos. It’s the perfect memento for anyone who lived through 1984 as well as anyone interested in learning what they missed.

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Amy Lindgren

Are you a non-traditional student in the process of graduating? “Non-trads” (in the parlance of academia) are usually older, having perhaps stopped out after high school to begin jobs or raise kids.

They may have started a college or technical program but left before completing. Or they may be returning for a second degree later in life.

If you’re a non-trad, you know it even if you didn’t know the term. As an older graduate, you have similar concerns as your younger cohort, but you also have unique issues that come from being farther along in your life journey.

One thing you might not have is a slew of well-meaning aunties and uncles offering you unsolicited advice. If so, allow me!

Two weeks ago, I provided guidance for traditional-age graduates. Now it’s your turn: If you’re a newly-graduated non-trad from a college or training program, I have some tips for you as well.

Each category begins with steps that are universal for all ages, with the addition of ideas for older graduates.

Putzy logistical stuff

Universal steps, for all students: Review your diploma for accuracy. Confirm which online resources can still be used at your alma mater, such as email. Ask about available career resources. Figure out your student loan repayment, if applicable. Check on health insurance, if you were covered at school.

Additional steps especially for non-traditional students:

• Connect with the school’s finance department. Were you being sponsored by your employer or perhaps a workforce development program for tuition? If so, it’s smart to verify that all records are clear at the school. Ideally, you’d receive a paid-in-full receipt.

• Confirm payment with your sponsor. Likewise, it’s important to verify with your employer or case manager that the training has been or will be paid by them. Another receipt or in-writing confirmation is the ideal.

• Look into graduation ceremonies. OK, maybe you don’t want to walk in a ceremony — are you sure? It won’t hurt to find out when they’re being held. In many cases, online and/or non-trad students are given multiple options, so you may still have opportunities to consider.

Career stuff

Universal steps, for all students: Update or create your LinkedIn profile. Update your résumé. Think about what you want to do next.

Additional steps especially for non-traditional students:

• If you’re working, tell your boss you’ve graduated. In some systems, the new certificate or degree will make you eligible for an automatic pay increase or a higher title. Even if that’s not the case, it’s appropriate to go over your goals with your supervisor, and to identify how you want to put your training to use.

• Join a professional association or trade group. You’ve just achieved a new level of skills and knowledge — now is the time when you could use guidance from others in your field. If your program was a general studies degree, choose a group that is also general, or one that matches interests you want to explore.

• Move on, if needed. If your boss doesn’t or can’t provide a higher level of work for you, or if you’re currently unemployed, it’s time to find a job that fits your new skill level. Do this relatively soon, while your knowledge and credibility are the freshest.

• Consider the next degree. Crazy? Maybe not — now that you know what a return to school feels like, you’re in good position to consider more training or degrees. It might be easier to do now, while you’re already in gear, so to speak.

Life stuff

Universal steps, for all students: Decide where to live, especially if you’ve been co-housing during school. Guard your mental health, since achieving goals sometimes leads to feeling let-down. Guard your finances, even if you do get a raise.

Additional steps especially for non-traditional students:

• Buy a cake! Or hold a brunch, or go out to dinner with friends. As an older student, you may think you’ve outgrown the garage party with the “Graduate 2024!” banner, but you can still celebrate. This is a big deal, my friend, and you deserve the accolades (even if you have to arrange them yourself).

And a final word: Don’t sweat the whole career thing, but — if you’re not feeling on track within a few months of completing your program, ask for help. Sometimes all it takes is new information or fresh ideas for things to line up.

Congratulations, graduate. You’re amazing!

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

Yard signs opposing a new 5,500-seat hockey/basketball arena at the University of St. Thomas are everywhere in the neighborhoods around the school, including a couple of signs far enough away to assume the occupants just don’t like hockey or basketball.

Where people are going to park is the principal concern of the opponents, who have twice asked the St. Paul City Council to forbid the development of the building. Between council rejections, opponents also appealed to the city’s Planning Commission to save them, but the commission voted 11-0 to approve the project.

As a graduate of the institution back in the days of its sleepy ambitions, charming folksiness and modest footprint, I suppose I should have a horse in the race. I do not, but I am as astonished as the next person that the opponents couldn’t have produced an endangered moth native to the grounds, or a couple of glyphs suggesting the land was home to the first female librarian to have championed the Dewey Decimal System.

Look! We found the remnants of her little log cabin! And her diary!

Not that they didn’t try. At the most recent council hearing on the matter, an opponent preposterously likened the arrival of the arena to a 19th-century taking of land from the Dakota. He should have thrown in a white buffalo, marking it as sacred land. The same opponent dug deeper with the imaginative stretch of trying to make the arena analogous to the interstate construction that uprooted Black families in the Rondo neighborhood.

Have you ever driven around down there? It’s a long way from Rondo.

Even the wisdom of Solomon cannot solve this conundrum. On the one hand, you have a successful school on its site since 1885. Its ambitions are no longer sleepy. It’s now a university, not the college of yesteryear. And they have been scrambling for athletics facilities since they went Division I, the big time. Opponents of the new arena might argue that they should have thought of that before they went Division I.

Ah, but they weren’t necessarily thinking D-1 when it happened in 2021. As a charter member of the MIAC, they had come to be regarded as, well, too proficient. They were kicked out, remember?

On the other hand, the neighborhoods around the school are some of the nicest in the city and terribly expensive to live in given the city’s irresponsible spending and its insatiable demand for unsustainable property-tax increases. It must feel like a punch in the gut to pay all that dough and now be wondering, “I hope I can park in front of my own house.”

It’s hard to pick a winner in a first-world problem. It’s either afflict the comfortable or comfort the afflicted.

We just don’t know who’s who.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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Andrea Felsted | (TNS) Bloomberg Opinion

Revenge travel is losing its appeal.

After three years of rushing to book trips in the wake of pandemic-era restrictions, sharply higher fares, protests against tourism, fatigue from endless hours spent in airports and incomes squeezed by inflation are all taking their toll on travelers.

Travel demand is far from falling off a cliff. But there are signs that our wanderlust is downshifting from never-ending to a more normal pattern.

For airlines and tour operators, the next few months will be crucial in filling remaining seats and hotel rooms. If demand is strong, they will be able to sell leftover capacity at higher prices. But if consumers hold off, they’ll be forced to discount, something that hasn’t happened in the past three years.

In Europe, many people who were passionate about their vacations booked in January, in order to secure their preferred destination, hotel and even room. But in recent months, some consumers, particularly more budget-constrained families, have been holding off to see how their own finances, and holiday prices, developed. TUI AG, the world’s biggest tour operator, has sold about 60% of the vacations available this summer. That’s broadly in line with last year, but it’s still a lot of sunny breaks to shift in an uncertain environment.

European travelers are also shopping around. At Thomas Cook, now reborn as an online tour operator, bookings to Spain’s Balearic and Canary Islands are flat year-over-year. This reflects cost — you can get more for your money in Turkey, mainland Spain and Egypt — where sales are up. But anti-tourism protests in the Canary and Balearic islands may also be playing a part.

European consumers are still prepared to pay as much for their package holiday – well almost. TUI’s summer pricing is up 4%, close to the 5% increase reported a year earlier. But budget airlines Ryanair Holdings Plc and EasyJet Plc show that when it comes to air fares, consumers are reaching their limit.

Michael O’Leary, chief executive officer of Ryanair, forecast that fares across its network this summer would be flat to 5% ahead, down from his previous prediction of a 5% to 10% increase, surprising given that capacity is constrained by delays to Boeing deliveries. Europe’s largest low-cost carrier has begun to cut ticket prices to fill its fleet.

There are signs that the U.S. travel recovery, now in its third year, is maturing too. For example, Marriott International Inc. said U.S. leisure revenue per available room, a key measure of hotel performance, was flat in its first quarter. Airbnb Inc. forecast that revenue would expand by 8% to 10% in the second quarter, the lowest level for three years. It’s possible this is a blip — Easter was earlier this year — and Airbnb expects a bounce in the summer months.

Indeed, the picture is complex. Some of the U.S. domestic weakness may reflect Americans traveling to Europe, emboldened by the strength of the dollar. This will likely have been boosted by one-offs, such as Taylor Swift’s concerts.

And this isn’t the only factor that makes the travel temperature so difficult to take. After wildfires in Greece last year, climate concerns are at the forefront of consumers’ minds. Yet this is spurring some unusual behaviors, such as some European customers booking long-haul flights to destinations such as Mauritius, where summer temperatures are more predictable, and, after price increases at some traditional Mediterranean resorts, the cost differential has narrowed.

As in other parts of the consumer economy, it may be that travel is polarizing, with the wealthy still splashing on trips further afield and top-notch accommodation, while those pressured by inflation and higher mortgage costs stick to a budget.

After the West’s travel boom — and potentially a return to more pedestrian levels – the industry is now looking East, to the return of Chinese visitors, particularly to Europe.

But for the coming weeks, short-term factors, such as elections in the U.K. and weather patterns – TUI said the winter season ended particularly strongly, likely boosted by cold and wet conditions – will matter most.

Being unable to spread our wings during the pandemic has reinforced our love of getting away, and we may never return to a situation where we are prepared to stay home. That doesn’t mean we won’t alter our behavior, like skipping a week away in spring or autumn, or, for example, forgoing a city break to preserve our main vacation.

There is much riding on this year’s peak summer season. Not only will it determine the level of profits at tour operators, hotels and airlines, but it will give the first glimpse of what a more settled post-pandemic travel market looks like.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andrea Felsted is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering consumer goods and the retail industry. Previously, she was a reporter for the Financial Times.

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