Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Seen and not taken

Things I saw, but did not photograph, on the skyway today: (all incidents verified by MyOwnEyes reality verification)
1. A live red rooster in the North Star Building.  The design studio on the skyway level hosts animal awareness lunch hour demonstrations occaisionally.  If you look through this blog you will see evidence of the live chicken event from a few months back.  I simply watched the chicken strut around on the terrazo floor for a few minutes, and was enthralled by how beautifully designed this guy was. Imagine if you woke up every day looking this well put together.  You can see his cousin at raising-chickens.org, thanks!
2. A human powered taxi on 3rd Ave. South.  It was an American version of the venerable rickshaw.  I have taken these in San Diego but it was the first time I have seen one in Minneapolis. The taxi was stopped at a red light and the driver suddenly jumped from his seat and walked back to secure the folding roof of the passenger seat.  A policeman was parked on Seventh and looked as surprised as I was by the incongruous mix of foot and vehicle in a traffic lane.  Our instincts tell us that drivers can't jump from their vehicles to zip things up in the middle of traffic, but our brains tell us "Hey, its a bike, get over it."
3. A small trailer taking bikes from rental bike rack to another.  Why did they need to carry the bikes on a trailer?  Couldn't they have ridden the bikes? Or waited until the Brownian Motion of the bike rentals redistributed them all evenly?
4. Some ladies lunching under the Au Bon Pain umbrellas in the Capella Tower northeast lobby.  There is no longer an Au Bon Pain restaurant on the ground floor -- its moved up to the skyway level, thank you, but the umbrellas add a kind of continental class to the empty lobby. (Hope they weren't waiting for service.)
5. Park Benches in the Baker Building promenade between the North Star Building and One Financial Plaza.  They face a high row of windows which open out onto a utility courtyard with lots of old brick and Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning sheet metal on display.  I sat for a few minutes and watched the silhouetted skyway foot soldiers amble, stroll, hike, strut, march, shuffle, sashay, stalk, pace and skitter past me.  No one swooned,sprinted or staggered.  It was a good day.
6. A guy in spiked dreadlocks,  battered combat boots, and a Hells Angels jeans vest over a black leather jacket talking softly and animatedly to a pal in a silky-looking shirt and razor-creased pants, whose haircut cost $60 if it cost a dime.  They were the duo of the day for sheer visual contrast.  It would have made a great photo.

An image fast.

They say you need a fast lens to get images in low light.  I am performing an "image fast" that requires no lens.  Starting May 1st in the morning, I have left my cameras on the desk and confronted the world with my bare eyes, barely open.  It is an eye-opener to see without lenses for a while, to see without frames and without film, even though I wear glasses.  Many intriguing and lovely images have slipped my reflexive twitching shutter finger these last couple of days.

Without anything to take pictures with, I look inward.  There are many miles of skyways inside, an accumulation of many months of peripatetic meditation.  I close my eyes now, and step off into the memory grid.

Sunday, May 1, 2011

TCF atrium


Flag in the skylight, sculpture against the brick wall.
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The end


If you want to go to the furthest outpost of the skyways south, you walk through the Convention Center, go back up to the skyway level from the northwest corner, and follow the last little leg of skyway out as far as you can parallel to 13th St across Nicollet. The system deposits you at the Hyatt Regency. This piano greets you from the balcony. The painting of a piano above it is pretty edgy stuff for the skyways. Keep going along the balcony back north, and you exit on the access ramp, which you can follow down to Nicollet for a nice walk downtown, or to Loring Park.
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Four roofs

Four signature roofs of the Downtown skyline seen from the Orchestra Hall skyway.  Can you name them, left to right?