Before “Remember the Main” arrived in bookstores, its subject, Bob Jansen, knew who should play him in a movie version: George Clooney.

“I do wish they’d make a movie,” said Meg Gorzycki, who wrote “Remember,” subtitled “The Gay Bar That Started a Movement in the Northland.” The wide-ranging book touches on many forms of activism but its north star is Jansen. In the early 1980s, he was fired from his job teaching theater at Duluth’s College of St. Scholastica after administrators learned he was gay. He sued and, partially funded by his settlement, opened Main Club in Superior, Wisconsin, in 1983.

Much more than a bar, the Main became a hub of social activism in the Twin Ports. The bar became a place where Jansen invited worried parents of young people who had just come out, as well as officials working on legislation and new arrivals to Duluth/Superior who were seeking a community. It’s all chronicled in “Remember the Main.”

“I’ve always referred to Bob Jansen as a social worker with a liquor license,” joked Gorzycki, 67, who helped paint the original bar, which burned down and was replaced by the current location on Tower Avenue in Superior.

Gorzycki, who retired as a faculty consultant at San Francisco State a few years ago and returned to her home state, has known Jansen since she was asked to consult on a Scholastica production of “And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little” more than 40 years ago. When she returned to Minnesota in 2022, Jansen [who closed the bar in 2017 and later sold it] was on her list of people to re-connect with.

When they met, Gorzycki told Jansen she’d like to write a book about his work as a leader. He replied, in typical fashion, “OK. How can I help?”

“He has a gift for bringing people together,” said Gorzycki. “He still works with a support group called the Elders, up in Duluth/Superior. He’s still on lots of boards. He has the gift of organizing. He knows how to create networks and coalitions. He knows how to talk to all different kinds of professionals. He knows how to get a fundraiser going.”

As “Remember the Main” indicates, Jansen was quick to credit activists who came before him, including Ellen Pence, who co-founded the Duluth Domestic Abuse Intervention Project, and Tina Welsh, who worked with the Building for Women in Duluth.

Gorzycki knew Minnesota as not just the first place in the world where a same-sex couple obtained a marriage license but also: where Lois Jenson won a landmark sexual harassment suit against Eveleth Taconite Co. and where St. Cloud’s Karen Thompson won the right to care for partner Sharon Kowalski after the latter was in a catastrophic auto accident. Gorzycki needed to find a way to connect all of those stories and others, many of which led back to the Main and Jansen.

“I wanted to tell the story of something that happened in the Northland during the 1980s that was unique. I wanted to put that story in the context of the bigger Minnesota picture and then put the Minnesota story inside what was happening across the United States,” said Gorzycki. “A lot of people don’t understand that we were on the cutting edge with regard to rights for sexual minorities and rights for women.”

Gorzyki was not surprised to find that there are connections between much of the remarkable activism of the 1980s.

“The thing I kept hearing from elders I interviewed was a great deal of concern about tribalism today: ‘OK, I’m going to focus on gay rights,’ or ‘I’m a crusader for African American rights or for immigrants.’ All worthy causes, but the hazard of becoming entrenched in a single tribe is that we lose sight of the universal,” said Gorzycki.

Her book also is informed by her own spirituality, a mix of beliefs that comes down to this: “We were created for a sacred reason by a benevolent being for one purpose, and what is that purpose? To love and be loved. From that, you have the whole tradition of social justice, of hospitality and so forth.”

“Remember the Main” shows that Jansen is part of that tradition but that he’s also a humble, funny person who does much of his work behind the scenes. Even the title of the book was Jansen’s. It was his immediate reply when Gorzycki said she needed a title.

When it’s remarked that it seems fitting that Jansen’s suggested title doesn’t mention him, Gorzycki agrees.

“He has always been about other people, about allowing others to take the lead, step into the spotlight, join the party,” said Gorzycki. “That’s Bob.”

Remember the Main

By: Meg Gorzycki.

Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 302 pages.

©2026 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.