TheWright Stuff

by Christa Lawler

Adeline Wright led her first public protest when she was in seventh grade. The reason: the Gulf War; The inspiration: her friend Sheila’s father had just been deployed. Wright spread the details via word-of-mouth. And then, on the designated day and at the designated time, the students walked out of the school en masse.

Well, everyone but Wright.

“I had to sit in the principal’s office and explain why it was so important,” she recalled during a fall visit to Adeline, Inc., the stylist-small business owner’s salon in Duluth’s East Hillside — a space that clearly indicates that organizing a walk-out wasn’t the passing fancy of a preteen. There are signs in the window: Black Lives Matter. All Are Welcome Here.

The local candidates Wright favored in the past election. Inside there is a photograph of U. S. senator Bernie Sanders and a painting of a vulva. Wright has had at least one person walk through the front door, settle into the waiting area, consider the spread of magazines fanned on the coffee table — on this day it’s Staid, Mother Earth Living, Naturally, Bust, Yes, Thrive and the New Yorker — and leave.

“They keep the wrong riff raff out and the right riff raff in,” Wright said.

The right riff-raff: “People who are loving and kind and have a mutual respect,” she said.

This is Wright: She champions the leaders she wants in office and she protests the things that she sees as injustices. She’s organized salon-style community conversations and was behind Jefferson People’s House — a place billed as a cafe, toast emporium, incubator.

These days, she’s leading Gag Me With a Spoon, a monthly storytelling event.

“People either think I’m doing good things or I’m a self-righteous ass,” Wright said.

When asked which is the truth, she responded: “I think I’m a little of both.”

Adeline, Inc., is also filled with local art by Patricia Canelake, Alison Aune, and Liz Pawlik. The soundtrack is the B52s, Queen, The Cure, Depeche Mode. There are vintage hair dryers that double as furniture and a dollhouse in the corner — a draw to neighborhood kids.

Old dressers, glamour mirrors, mismatched chairs.

First Wright worked out of a space at Greysolon Plaza and later at the Building for Women. She has also rented chairs at other salons and still, sometimes during social gatherings, one might find her cutting the hair of various party-goers.

For a while she was splitting time between the Twin Cities and Duluth — which was no biggie for her regulars.

“I followed her to the cities and I followed her back,” said Claire Rafferty of Bemidji, who heard Wright did creative and unusual things with hair.

Now Wright is here-here. She just signed a 5-year lease and has big plans for a mural on the back wall of the shop.

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