Is it me or are there a lot of balloon deliveries around Capella Tower?

It is my son's birthday but he is in Japan for the summer. I hope whomever receives this birthday delivery has a happy birthday too.

Capella Tower glazed earthenware. Properly attributed.

Detail, traffic light

A sign obeys itself.

Study with bike and arrows

The light on Seventh Street as seen from the Ameriprise skyway in the afternoon. It is reflected once or twice in the mirror labyrinth of downtown exteriors, and becomes aquatic, softened around the edges. A bicycle swims east, a school of traffic arrows dart west.

Looking North East past the new Baker Building, 1926

There is a Chevrolet dealer close to the Rent-a-Ford establishment on Second Ave, and no skyscrapers to be seen. There is a Marquette New England Annex, and beyond that Second Hand Home Furnishings. There was no Foshay Tower. Minneapolis had an ordinance banning tall buildings, in fact. This photo in the Baker Building, along with some other classy historical photos.

A skyway is a machine for meandering

Correspondances between my book purchase and the place I stopped for a banana and bottled water lunch.

subway art matisse jazz

Interesting juxtaposition on the Barnes and Noble bookshelf. Possibly on purpose, maybe by happenstance.

Similarities, contrasts and primaries, in search of the Harmonies

A group of people spin a wheel of fortune and try for a hole in one at a small street fair.  How can we have a street fair in the skyways?  Or are the bustling arcade moments on the skyway level a form of street fair?  Naw.

Across the street workmen are putting up tents for a summer music festival.

All of this activity buzzing around the impeturbable Play-Skool architecture of our own Orchestra Hall.
( I like the unnaturalness of primary colors.)

Cafe table, light and stone

There is a tiny sort of stone porch outside the 3rd Avenue entrance to Capella Towers, on which several of these sidewalk tables sit, mostly unused during the day. They look inviting, but don't give a sense of the fabric of human activity in a city...it is more as though they were stored here against some future time when people would suddenly relax, and find some shared frivolity on the stone stage, spilling crumbs and drinks in their escalating joy. In the meantime, these sit as armatures, awaiting life.

Figure Ground relationship on sidewalk outside Capella tower

He seemed about to collapse. I had just photographed the cafe tables on this plaza and took his picture by reflex, not so much intent. When I moved toward him to ask if he needed help, he straighted up and moved to the bus bench, where he looked up and down the street with some sense of privacy and dignity intact. I didn't want to disrupt that sense any further. But I thought about it for hours afterwards.
Being in a visual mode to capture images divorces you, however slightly, form the moral continuum of perception, response, and action. This experience made me question what dimension of the city experience I was missing completely by walking through the skyways as a visual predator, and not so much a citizen, a man, a companion to those around me. I know there is a strong message about this man, his circumstances, and the dynamics of the city excluded by the skyways logistics. But that message only exists in this image for now. I will work on giving it some context as I continue this project.

Progressions and reflections, soft and hard

Study of lights and planes in the Capella Tower

Figure Ground relationship in Capella Tower

Another in my series of small figures swallowed up by the enveloping built environment.

Still Life with Bicycle

My sensibility was formed during the heyday of minimalism, when Modernism was unquestioned. I have an ironic and sentimental attachment to the spare beauty of geometries barely touched by objects and grounds -- tableaux with suppressed texture and stark contrast, in which light and the essentials of form move into the foreground and declare themselves simply.

What drives wives crazy -- not in a good way

See the guy? See the ladder? See the person holding the ladder? My point.
I don't want to pick on this guy, because I like to take pictures of people doing work around the skyway. It's just part of my interest. But I am getting to the age when ladders and longevity don't mix very well any more, and reviewing this stretch made me wince. Maybe an argument for Metro Transit to send out two-man crews for jobs that are more than 6' off the ground.

Melty curtainwall

Ah, it's not that hot downtown. But the long lens helps make this glass curtainwall on the Ameriprise tower look like wilting goo.

Still Life with Skyway

The only kinked skyway zigs between the Hennepin Gov. Center and the US Bank building. Original specs for skyways required straight runs and no ramps or steps within the skyways. Like most ideals, age and necessity have compromised the specs purity without dimming the luster of their intent.

Optical illusion

It is a trick of distance and perspective that these men seem to be walking on air in front of the Thrivent glass curtain wall, and have opened a window pane to walk inside...or is it?