Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Where's Capella?
These images all have the reflection of the Capella tower in them.
You have to look closely to find it, sometimes.
Other times its less subtle.
Taken from below the crown.
Chihuly glass in Capella atrium
The security guard asked me to stop taking pictures after this one. He was the nicest so far.
Erik the Bookman
Erik at the bookstore.
Read a book. Go discuss a book with someone. Anyone. Any book.
James and Mary Laurie Booksellers.
Nicollet Mall.
120,000 to choose from, on prime downtown real estate.
You might note the colors are different in this image. It was taken with the film camera and scanned in. I thought about boosting it to a digital vivacity, but decided I like this kind of faded, old kodachrome look.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
My skyway mentor!
Wally Swan is an old friend. He planted the seeds of skyway appreciation many years ago, when I was too busy, too sedentary to nurture them properly. Running into him today was a kind of wonderful synchronicity. I hope he checks in and sees himself lighting up the blog with his grin.
The Ace of Clubs
Larry Millet describes the Minneapolis Club as exactly the way new money thinks old money looks.
Old and future ghosts
This corner of the skyway system is one of the most anonymous of all. I know I am looking at the Gateway Ramp skyway running north of a survivor of the sixties urban renewal.
The psalimpsest of the wall is written, erased, rewritten, as the scribe of time tries to spell out its message of death and rebirth in the city bosom. I have come to have a special fondness for these rudest of brick patches. They glow, on the oldest of exteriors that still hold their own, unnamed, against the slick squatters of a more recent civic urge.
When the glass walls are 130 years old, who will want to run a sentimental hand along their wizened shards?
Making random space intimate by attention alone
As I walk by this guy, I hear him trying to work out a billing snafu on his phone account. He is blinded to my presence by the closed loop of urgency, response from the account rep, his own voice, and he is leaking data into the skyway at an alarming rate. He gives out name, address, bank, phone acct#, etc. I consider moving around in front of him and pantomiming some kind of warning, or alert. But I pass. The moment passes. The skyway passes for privacy for those in the thrall of their own voice.
Levity strains at gravity
In the Fifth Street Towers, a passle of balloons surges up against their thin ribbon hitches.
North of nowhere
Somewhere in the far northeast corner of the skyway system, this radically simple door sits in an achingly simple niche. Is this a failure of the builder's imaginations? A resignation to the banal: the utilitarian nature of walkways to mere parking? Or is it a door to other worlds cleverly disguised as a mop closet "for authorized personnel only"?
Denka Lift
This enormous crane is cowering in the low arcade space. Something is up, but it isn' t this cherry picker bucket here.
At a busy intersection in the sky
Just outside the Target entrance, on the skyway level,
I took a seat and waited for phone callers to stand silhouetted against the window.
This young caller stood directly in front of the column for 20 minutes.
She had a companion in her voice-tethered isolation, for a few of those.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Ibaraki Japan sends greetings
These schoolgirls performed skillful baton and gymnastic routines for an appreciative crowd at the Government Center skyway level today. They are from Ibaraki Japan, the sister city of Minneapolis.
Is it art? Is it a fixture?
These animated looking lights are jazzing up the sandwich shop in the Fifth Street Towers.
Mr. Moses
Mr. Moses has a couple of shoe shine stands downtown. He started in 1956, when there was still a Gateway Park and a Metropolitan building downtown. He has had stands in a dozen buildings and is a walking history of downtown. Look for a stand at the entrance to the Fifth Street Towers coming across 2nd Ave skyway, and when you leave the Fifth Street Towers crossing Fifth Street skyway going south. Watch this blog for an interview.
Skyway Tennis at the US Bank summer court
They play their hearts out in the middle of town
And the best view is from the skyway.
The linesman can't work from the skyway, of course.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
