City Lights

With a shout-out to Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

My Art thing

Here is my nod to serious modern art. The chair is in focus, which is an ironic commentary on the empty place set for the urban denizen who, victimized by false urgencies and threats, stays moving. But the moving subject is never in focus. Meanwhile, the clear focus and fine finish of the furniture inspires an admiration for clearly delineated surfaces and finishes among those who cannot bear to think, in ironic or other terms. Huge prints of this photo can be bought for thousands of dollars, if you pursue me, and insist. Ironically, I can't sit still long enough to hear your offer. In the meantime, isn't that a marvelous green paint job on that chair? And the dyed fake maple veneer wall treatment kills.

The last thing you'll see if you...

Ignore all the warning signs on Fifth Street downtown. Actually this train was stopped for a red light. But don't count on trains stopping. Be safe.

Self Portrait with Skyway Map

This is the "before" picture in the "before and after" set.

Get out of your office during breaks. Get. Out!

Go to YouTube and watch full frame.

Take a mile hike on the skyways! It takes fifteen minutes or less at a healthy pace.  The YouTube video above gives a visual impression of the trek (lo-fi alright!).  You can get a map of skyway hikes from the Commuter Connection.  The map shows the exact itinerary of this particular hike, and I will be adding more to this paleo-video effort as I grasp the tools.

But here is the message: Get out of your office during your lunch break!   You are going to be around this planet for a few more decades...stay limber, stay alert, keep moving.  The skyways offer a year-round hiking option, with carpeting, live music whether you like it or not, climate control, and a world snack-o-rama to indulge or deny, depending upon your diet cycle.

You know this, right?

Most skyway intersections have these backlit, big blue maps showing you where you are and where you can go. It is up to you to figure out which way is north, but you can do it, and this whole universe of second floor amenities opens up to you.

Sunset, Bell Tower, Skyway.

So its that time of year when the sun is setting as I head for my car in the parking lot. Looking south on 4th Ave., I see the street lights come on, the tail lights trail toward the freeway on-ramp, and the bell tower of the Methodist Church ablaze like a special birthday candle. It somehow offsets the melancholy of the season, a free iconic glimpse into a highly touted world.

Mayor sighting on Nicollet Mall

Surely not in response to my satirical post of several days ago, Mayor R.T. Rybak stopped at the Dandelion Kitchen food wagon on Nicollet and scored a lunch. Usually I avoid taking pictures of celebrities I happen across on my walks, such as a Jason DeRusha, any Mondale, or Denny Hecker. My blog is not a star vehicle. Obviously. But given my recent "poetic licensed" appropriation of this innocent yellow mobile enterprise, I felt there was some kind of karmic payback going on. So here is a celebrity picture AND a link to a set of nice reviews of the Dandelion Kitchen. Which isn't really leading an assault on skyways ... in case you took my post seriously.  Jeez.

P.S. to any civic authorities who might read this: There are locations on the skyways that would make good winter homes for the various enterprises serving fresh hot stuff out of polychrome trailers. I am mentioning the Fifth Avenue Towers dead-end skyway as one in a forthcoming column. I know, the logistics are mind-boggling. But so was getting John Philip Sousa to write a special march for the opening of the Foshay tower in 1929.

History is not for the fainting heart.

Nachos surprise of the skyways

The Taco Johns nachos with chicken were a pleasant surprise. I was hungry and out of time, so I didn't expect much from a fast food solution. I was in for a surprise: the chips were crisp and fresh, and the cook had taken the trouble to layer the beans, cheese and chicken among the chips. (Rather than just dump a soggy mass of mono-TexMex filling on a layer of bagged corn shingles --I have only found one place in the skyways that was that bad, and I will reserve judgment until I have tried them again.)

So this brings up the problem of trying to provide useful "food guide" info without hurting small businesses that mean well.

While I ponder that, I am thinking of doing a review of the nachos on the skyways. But I would prefer to have some audience input here, to spread the pain and joy around. Contact me with your favorite/worst nachos story, pix if you have them.

Large curious art in the Crystal Court

A comic art show called Know More Funny Business  is currently evoking aesthetic ha-ha's in the the Crystal Court of the IDS Center.  It is part of the Minnesota Benefit Art Association exhibit, and the artist Peter Geyen provided the several metaphors.  This is a pie with blue filling tossed at a wall of Buffalo head trophies.  I am working it out.

reach for the sky

This beast seemed to be peeking into the skyway.  Watching the human ants in their antfarm?

Urban Archeology

This looks like an archeologists dig somewhere in Egypt, but it is just the walkway from the parking ramp to the elevators caught in the celestial alignment of rising sunlight on an early November day.

From the chronicles of product placement

I'm not talking about the "American Idol" judge placement of Coke product here. I am talking about the owner of The Simple Sandwich sitting under his restaurant sign in the Fifth Street Towers. Jay Axelrod, middle, joined David, left, and Mike and me, the skygeeks, pre-Halloween to chat about the rewards and challenges of small business on the skyways.

Quintessential skyway photo

This photo just shouts "skyway!" to me.

Street life seeks revenge on skyways

After years of oppressive subordination to the insolent skyways, the Minneapolis streets banded together and appointed the Nicollet Mall as their team lead in taking back the downtown. Starting with colorful little huts on wheels, the campaign to "Make it Real, Make it Street" kicked off this Autumn to the surprise and delight of ones of bystanders.

Minneapolis

A Minneapolis moment on the Stone Arch Bridge, Oct. 2010. Click for the mystery, click for the wonder.

Transition

From the Energy Center Parking Lot, looking toward the Accenture Plaza. Our Autumn is fabled, a chromatic performance denied to our Southern friends and family, and we try to share with snapshots or leaves pressed between wax paper sheets. This year the shift was disjointed, and punctuated by sudden pressure drops that set new historic lows for the region, bringing devastating winds and unseasonal rain. It sent some people scurrying to the comfort of prophets, others to Home Depot to stock up on generators and plastic tarps in anticipation of blowdowns, or blackouts, or Mayan prophecies coming true.

Campbell Mithun building

Looking across the mezzanine toward D. Brian's Sandwich shop in the Campbell Mithun building. This space swirls with color and life, a bright nexus of commerce and business in the skyway system.

Halo sighting at Campbell Mithun

Someone else's happiness

I snared these women in a moment of happiness. It was not mine, but I took it as a souvenir. You don't see other people really showing much emotion in the skyways and on the promenades, not at lunch time, not here. So when you do, memorize it. But don't use it as a measure of other demeanors you will see, or you will reach the false conclusion that skyway people are not, on the whole, a happy lot. Their happiness is disguised as purpose. They are threads in a tapestry that depicts happiness, but you must step back and squint to see the larger picture made up of thousands of little pixel-people moving through the skyways.

The ethics of public hospitality

I was looking for a place to drink my latte outside of the Caribou in USBank, and this table was available. It came with the relics of an earlier lunch. I thought about many things as I sat, but I mainly thought about the people who would walk off and leave their dirty trays for someone else to bus for them. Some passers-by would stare at me and my two big dirty trays, as though I was a Falstaff and here was the evidence of my wanton excess and indifference. At one point I considered busing the trays myself, just to fix the nick in the veneer of social order. Naw, maybe another day. Today, I feel superior to the jerks who made me look like I was the jerk, finally, leaving my dirty trays when I finally got up and left.

Oh, the ethics of public hospitality.

UrbanMan

He blends into the urban setting, dressed casual upstyle, disguised in digital artifacts, ready to evangelize an analog world.

Skyway silhouette

Walking the skies in Minneapolis.

Foshay sits for a close-up

Ah the blogger has a new 300 mm lens for his film Canon, and has to try it out on the landmark. Click on the picture to see the detail.

Baker Building Facade

Ornate terracotta, 1920s Minneapolis style.

Portrait of a skyway

Warm October in Minneapolis. Dry streets, dudes in shorts. Second Ave. South between 6th and 7th Street.