Winter City Skyway

The bridges between buildings shelter everyone equally. That is the point. You don't have to buy a skypass, and there aren't dryer, warmer lanes for wealthier users. They fulfill a vision of egalitarian access and utility in cities. In Minnesota they work, and are not neglected, nor do they become eddy pools in the urban stream that collect debris.
What would you do if there were no skyways? Would it matter to you?

50% off everything in the world

Here is a corner of McLuhan's Global Village.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

The glory of the world fades, and the light and dark alternate with a persistant rhythm.

Winter reflections, sunset

From the roof of the Government Center Parking Ramp at 5th Street and 5th Avenue, the winter sun's acetylene flame burns into the old brick Sexton building at 4:40 pm, in January. Kids are barely home from school. Dinner isn't even started. Commuters hitting the freeway replay the slights and mischances of a day at the office. Those driving west shield their eyes from the incandesence of a sustained nuclear fusion 93 million miles away in space...hydrogen atoms becoming helium in an alchemy that made men believe in gods, and made gods out of stars at the dawn of time.

Work defines banality for most of us. A few of us escape the routine often enough to feel some satisfaction or achievement. Increasingly I hear that people in their fourties and late thirties have lost their vision of work as fulfillment completely. I stand on the top of the parking ramp, my nerves resonant with the spectral majesty of refracted sunlight reflected in a banal building. The distance between the ordinary and the breath of gods contains all human imagination, and it seems to be collapsing into itself today.

In Tuscon, Arizona, the president prepares to eulogize a 9 year old girl born on Sept. 11 2001, and died on the knife edge of a rage that the word "madness" cannot contain. It is as though the old gods are bursting through the tv screens, the reflections of humanity framed in our rec rooms.

In the kitchen, a woman stands in front of the stove and stares through the window, out over the pond, west past Minnetonka, and sees an illusion of gold for a moment, which then fades. She bursts into tears, and turns the flame on under her frying pan full of hamburger helper. The voices of the gods are silent, now. Their breath hangs in the frozen air. The light dies, and the earnest cadences of a president strokes the frayed grief of a nation, a voice of resolve but a voice of tin and candle wax, a voice spilling the past from the demented flatness of her high definition tv.

Who have we become, and when we turn inward, is there anyone left there to answer the cries of the parents, or the prayers of the wives, or the questions of the children? How do we explain the distance between the banality of our days and the inconceivable power of the sun's inhuman heart? How do we help our children find their own arc across a sky we abandon, we fall from, we darken with our fear?

The days are actually growing longer in January, but the emotional depth of winter is just beginning to swallow us up. We grasp the flare of sunset briefly, then drive.

Winter color, sunset

The sun is down at 5 pm on January 12. This is the view from the roof of the parking ramp at 4:40.

Name that retro logo

What was the name of the oil company that had this logo? Retro tow truck seen on Mpls. winter street.

Abstraction with tire marks

Vehicle expressionism in recent snow.

A winter medly of street repair photos

Some people work in the midst of the world and the weather. This medly of street work photos is dedicated to those who brave the wind chill and flurries, sleet or wild pedestrians to keep our city doable.

The snow way

On the street, beneath the skyway, in Minneapolis. 1.11.11

Composition with snow and tracks

This "concrete abstraction" was created by one of the many snow brooms at work after a minor snowfall last night. The little vehicles look like riding mowers, and they push a big rotating bristle roller in front, whisking snow away from the pedestrian walks. You can see why I am standing in the warm carpeted skyway, looking out.

Island in the stream

A friendly guard discussed the new skyway consicousness of security. Things have changed a lot, even in the year since I began taking pictures. I do notice that the single lens reflex attracts attention, while the pocket digital seems more "touristy" and doesn't catch anyone's eye. There are still stories waiting to be told here.

Jon is a good sport. I will report more fully on what he and the city police encounter in the course of their duties when I begin doing actual interviews later this month. Stay tuned.

The skyways from afar

This was the view of downtown from Main Street last Thursday, when I was last well enough to leave the house. Went down to the Aster Cafe to meet my son and his friend for conversation. Ended up in the middle of a Hootenanny, that included a folk song about lynchings in elementary school yards in Duluth. I think standing in the snow to take this shot contributed to my getting the flu, but it might have been guilt induced by the entertainment, or the loudness, that weakened my immune system.

So, this isn't particulalry charming, is it? Kind of dumpy, foggy looking view of a beautiful city on a legendary river. Sorry about that. I will be feeling better soon. Remind me to tell you about the rain in San Diego. Historic. Floods. The word "ark" was trending in the local twitter stream...

Ah, welcome back

I haven't actually been downtown going on three weeks now. I was in rainy, cold California for a while, then holed up with the flu here in Bloomington. Rummaging through some recent stuff I came across this shot of the Energy Center from the Government Center skyway. It seemed to be a good icon of winter downtown. Seems to be something kind of Exodusy about it...you know, the pillar of smoke by day, the pillar of fire by night, leading the Israelites around for 40 years in the wilderness. This has been my smoke/fire pillar for 30 years, and it hasn't moved, and it's still a wilderness.

Merry Christmas, with kitties and symbols

My non-skyway related Christmas card to you. Be back in January with more coolness from the way above the grade.

French blood

More of Prozzi, the maestro of Voyageur and explorer stories and portraits at the Government Center.

A simple, normal skyway photo

There is nothing worth remarking on in this photo. It is what it is, in the Minneapolis skyways.

The ghosts of Christmas present

There are some payphones in the US Bancorp Center. Payphones. In wooden carrels. Just like the old days. There was a group of very down-and-out guys in threadbare winter rags surrounding one of their number who was shouting into a payphone. Not all of us are wirelessly connected. Some of us are barely connected at all. I shot this from the hip in dim light with slow film, letting the trails of a long exposure transform the image of a human dilemma into a ghostly water color, an abstraction of social inquity. It's about all I can handle this year.

Later, by the Target store, a dilapidated guy in army fatigues sat at a cafe table in the midst of the skyway furiously "writing" dense bales of black ball-point scribbles in a wire bound notebook. He stopped and occaisionally "explained" to an invisible comrade at his table. I wanted to sit with him and ask him his name, and give him a non-judgemental human contact. But I didn't have it in me. Not this year.

Let me come to terms with these conundrums and get back to you, ok?

In the spirit of giant Christmas trees downtown,

The Crystal Court 30 foot confection is a contender for the "Most Victorian" of giant trees. The diffuse ambient lighting in the courtyard doesn't do justice to the tree as a focal point of Holiday sentiment. Fortunately, whomever is programming the music has secured some outstanding vocal talent of all ages, kids choirs and old hippie electronica-folkies who cut through the guilt and shopping fog with the archaic power of the human voice. If you don't see what I see, do you hear what I hear?

Dramatic downtown vista from the skyway

This looks like something out of a sci-fi interpretation of a Bram Stoker novel, but it is just looking south down Second Avenue on a midwinter day in Minneapolis. The Edwardian decoration of the Minneapolis club contrasts with the looming Metropolis-inspired Campbell Mithun building, while the neurotic tensions that gave rise to both styles is soothed and sublimated by the spire of St. Olaf church.

Giant Christmas Ornaments Dept: Inflatable Chrysler Logos at Capella

I love these, and my snarky description is more out of habit that from a true conviction of snarkitude.

In the spirit of giant Christmas trees...

Capella Towers wins with their East Atrium showpiece. It reminds me of the ads you see for the Nutcracker Suite, and the whole lobby looks like an ornament designed by an origami-obsessed Californian.

There is life beneath the skyways! Uh, within the skyways....

My friend Mike Bleakmore at skywaymyway.com captured this proof of life beneath (but within) the skyways recently. Although scientists wince at the suggestion this species be called "homo skypians", we are looking forward to capturing one and having them entertain us at the office holiday party with their tales of the "sky underground" and other oxymorons.

Holiday Auschwitz among the skyways?

The legend over the gates to the Auschwitz extermination camp was "Arbeit Macht Frei" -- Work Makes Freedom. The sponsor of this exhibition window in the NorthStar building has gone to considerable expense and trouble to bring a reminder of something that seems horribly out of place in the skyway/downtown work environment. Doesn't it? Is there any parallel in modern American experience with the emergence in 1930s Germany of a monstrous disorder of the human spirit, a hatred so great that it tried to eradicate a whole people from the face of the Earth? Is there anything in Minneapolis that would inspire this commitment to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive at a physical and symbolic level for the hordes of workers who race through the skyways daily?

As a pseudo-intellectual and recovering liberal, I am deeply moved by the sight.  We cannot forget that the 20th Century happened. We cannot forget what the lessons learned in blood were meant to teach us.  And we are so close to forgetting.  Putting this image in the path of struggling wage earners during the holiday season is a shocking and provocative gesture.  On the whole, it will be lost on many who do not recognize the story behind the stage set, and it will be ignored by many who find the sketchy minimalism of the gates and photos to be simply unattractive.

But for a few, it is profound hook into that part of the subconscious that needs to be dealt with on a regular basis: the  human capacity for blood-lust and dehumanization that can lie buried in the self-involvement of an entire nation, waiting to rise up and overwhelm the spirit without notice.  It is a reminder of the checks and balances our appetites and desires must submit to in the interest of civil order, and the monstrosity that is unleashed when reason, and memory, sleeps.

We cannot leave that maintenance of civil order, and of national conscience, to a few people.  We remember the heroic few who risked their fates in the face of mass psychoses in Germany. Some escaped, many didn't.  But we don't know how to emulate them.  We trust the will and direction of the crowd.  We celebrate it, and empower it with technology now in social media, without a backward glance at the horror represented by the tainted homily. Work makes freedom.  It really meant Might makes Right.  And we haven't learned to question that effectively yet. Have we?

What really makes freedom?
If you can think about that seriously for a few minutes today, the investment in this grisly tableau will have paid off a bit.  In the meantime, Happy Holidays.  Really. You have a lot to be grateful for.  So do I. We also have  to be courageous in the face of crowd-sourced stupidity and evil.

On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet troops, a day commemorated around the world as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Rockin it A Capella

Capella Towers west atrium is having live music every noon hour during the holidays.