A Minnesota bar featured in the movie “Fargo” was set on fire, allegedly by two 15-year-old girls.
The Lakeside Club in Mahtomedi suffered extensive smoke damage Wednesday, fire officials said.
It was vacant, having been closed for two years and slated for demolition.
Two girls suspected of intentionally setting the fire were taken into custody and later released to their parents, Mahtomedi Fire Chief Terry Fischer said.
“A guy on his bike saw the two girls running out of the smoking building and took a picture of them,” Fisher said.
Washington County sheriff’s deputies found the suspects “just up the road from there,” Fischer said. “They took off running, but the deputies were able to apprehend them.”
The girls said they started the fire by lighting some papers underneath one of the upper-level restaurant booths, Fischer said.
The exterior of the club was used for a scene in the 1996 movie “Fargo” in which police chief Marge Gunderson, investigating a roadside killing spree, interviews two women (“Hooker No. 1” and “Hooker No. 2”) in an empty strip club.
The family-run Lakeside Club, established by four brothers in 1946, had a supper club and a basement cocktail lounge but no stripper poles. It was shuttered in 2020.
In June, the Mahtomedi City Council approved plans for a three-story apartment complex on the site, on the northeastern outskirts of the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area.
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