Duluth strip club manager commits suicide

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Written by: 195 on Mar 18, 2010

Jim Gradishar, the 47-year-old operator of the NorShor Experience strip club, died Wednesday afternoon from a self-inflicted gunshot wound within two miles of his home, his friend and business partner Eric Ringsred told the News Tribune.

The St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office said that deputies at 2:02 p.m. responded to a call of a possible suicide at the Island Lake boat landing. An investigator was called to the scene but there was no confirmation as of 4 p.m. that the victim was Gradishar.

Ringsred blamed the News Tribune and the media’s coverage of Gradishar’s legal problems and running of the NorShor as part of the reason for his suicide.

“It was a lynching by proxy,” Ringsred said. “He was a perfectly healthy guy for two [expletive] years. Then he started slowly going down hill.”

He also blamed harassment by the city of Duluth’s attorneys' office and police department for the suicide.

“It was more than just the newspaper,” he said. “They’ve all got blood on their hands as far as I’m concerned. He was a decent man. He was as decent a man as you could find.”

Gradishar’s problems with the city date back to running the Wabasha Book store. The city ordered him to temporarily close it in 2006 due to city code violations.

The move to turn Ringsred’s NorShor Theater into a strip club was greeted with dismay and controversy. Gradishar also fought with the city administration and council on attempts to revoke the club’s liquor license, which the council approved last August but a judge overturned in October.

He also had other legal problems. He was charged in Cass County with possession of marijuana in a motor vehicle, possession of drug paraphernalia, having an open bottle in a motor vehicle, transporting a firearm in a motor vehicle and disorderly conduct during a July incident. He pleaded guilty in St. Louis County District Court last year to carrying a firearm in a public place — his club — while under the influence of alcohol and received a probationary sentence.

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