Creature dwarfs self, captures grandeur anyway

Humans dwarf themselves with their creation, then try to capture the grandeur in a digital thimble. Squint to see the couple on the plaza. He is photographing the IDS and skyline. I see him see the buildings, and tuck a few pixels worth of his world into my thimble, too.
View from 2nd Ave. Skyway between US Bank and One Financial Plaza, looking Southeast.

A look round

Guess where I am.
(Thanks to Mike from Skyway Myway for the link)

The better to see you with

Barbara Solomon of Solomon Optical is encouraging me to find my eyewear bliss in a pair of owlish round tortiseshell specs. She is one of the small business people in the skyway who define the local and human flavor of the labyrinth. Her family has provided the vision of the upper midwest with distinctive frames for what, 60 years? A landmark, a local treasure. Go see her. If you don't buy glasses from her, thank her for providing the human touch to the built landscape of the skyways.

D'ya think? Really?!

Yeah, I am in Solomon Optical, and I am selling myself on these tortoise-shell goggles.

You need your eyes examined

Here is the location of Solomon Optical. The eight sided oculus is interesting, and a nice allusion to an old architectural tradition. Unfortunately, it puts the small facade of the optician in a traffic eddy that doesn't allow for much drop in business.

Street scene not heard

Sometimes there are no words for the street life in Minneapolis. Somewhere someone can explain this.

Victorian icing on an enameled steel torte

The gingerbread roof of the YMCA peeks over the Highland Bank skyway over 9th St. South.

Moderne jumps the snark

Overcast creates perfect lighting/sky combo for showing AT&T tower as desk ornament. Salt cellar? Ionic Breeze machine? Perfume bottle? Anyway, the shiny skin and artichoking of the top floors achieves a trivializing effect on a monumental scale. As I have spent time looking at downtown I have become increasingly impatient with this impassive moderne treatment. The bland stone of the Young Quinlan building in the foreground starts to look inspired in contrast. The skyway strains audibly as it tries to integrate the shallow sass of ornamentism and the stolid stone.

Yeah, baby.

There are fashionista mannikens behind this cage door. For some reason it reminds me of Austin Powers. If not literally, then in the chromed zest of stereotypes convincing you they are having fun.

Old Glorious

I always like this flag in daily vigilance at the Thrivent Center.

Time eats man.

A man disappears into his own blurred motion in front of two oddly asymmetric windows. Promenade, Baker Building.

Light eats woman

Glaring reflections of sunlight off the IDS curtain wall flare off the metallic blinds behind the woman on Marquette. The light swallows her up. I look away and look back, and she is gone, a torch of photons in her place.

The fountain, the gesture, the light

Far across the crystal court two young women wave back to someone on this side. A bridal veil of water separates us. It is a fountain the architects provide to shimmer space, aerating distance, humidifying light.

Cloud shows the true sky way

A cloud bridges two buildings at roof level while a skyway hugs the ground between them.

Colorful sanctuary for a play date

Outside the skyway exit of the Barnes and Noble bookshop, a gaily painted bench beckons among the ferns and beneath an exotic mandala. A perfect place to plan an escape from office humdrum, or connive a good-natured tryst.

Coffee Ala Carte

You wonder at the people's stories. She waits by the elevator outside the IDS skyway level espresso franchise, meditating on something, while behind her the stenciled cup is plummeting forever into an empty utility cart. Another tableaux about promises suspended, if not broken.

Illusion leaves for the day

A casually dressed office worker is tripled in the glass banisters of the escalator as he heads for the street at day's end.

Beyond the glass curtain

The Ameriprise Financial Center on 7th and Second Ave. So. fits gridded window panes into a stone matrix, evolving away from the cheerless, insistant reflection of a pure glass curtain wall. Interestingly, this building replaces the first Lutheran Brotherhood Building erected here in 1955 and torn down in 1997 -- interesting, because the LB was the first fully glass-walled building downtown.

In Electricity we Truss

LRT power cable standoffs above 5th Street. One of what I call "priveleged views" afforded by the skyway.  You are walking along, and suddenly reminded you are seeing things from the perspective of a low-flying cloud, not a mammal on the ground. This overhead (cantenary) power system was engineered by LTK systems, who have a history of transit design dating back to the 1930's.  They use or have developed simulation software that is state of the art.  And you know what simulation software is for transit engineers?  That's right.  Toy trains.  Tooooot.  Toooooot.  This view from the 5th Street skyway from US Bank to the Qwest building.

Kikugawa interlude

Back for my weekly sushi fix. Lily reads while HongSan patiently puts up with my photo antics.

The society of spectacles

In the NorthStar Center, the latest trend in eyeware is peering up from a modest kiosk in front of the optical shop.

Overexposure creates Giacometti skywalkers

A flood of light, like an atomic fireball, burns away the field of vision, leaving eroded bodies in the aftermath. These remnants, tissue thin flags of colored cloth, presage an overexposed future, when we must squint to grasp the real, and close our eyes completely to see what we can stand to see.

In the skyway, headed east from the IDS center.

Lunch time tableaux vivant

Outdoor diners on Nicollet Mall from the skyway between Target and Young-Quinlan.

Serendipity and the muse

In one of those amazing coincidences you could not script, this lady asked me to take her picture on her cell phone to send back home to her family. I took her picture on her phone, then asked if I could take her picture on my camera, also.