Knight errant of the skyways means well, bats 0

These damsels in mild distress implored a jump for the dead Honda battery.  I did the guy thing and zapped the miscreant volter for quite a while with no results.  Oh well, a quick phone call and the driver's husband is on the way.  I might need to study Good Samaritan 101 at Capella U?

Rainy day study

I really need a GPS-enabled camera so I can figure out where I took some of these shots.

Life is a comedy for those who think...

...life is a comedy.  This commedia adorns the ... wait, why should I give it away.  You tell me.  If someone figures out the location of this plaster mask I might go to the trouble of making this photo into a t-shirt as a prize.  I think I have an old ink-jet stencil pack around somewhere.  Here is a clue:  You are on a skyway and are about to be transported to a state of excitement.

Shortest Skyway?

This hop from Fifth Street Towers to Old Republic Title Building spans the alley, and I believe is the shortest skyway in the system.  Any other candidates?

The girls of your dreams are sightless, so they can't see how empty the dream is.

Several department stores provide tableaux de mode to entertain and enveigle the sky pedestrian.

From Bauhaus to our student housing

The North Star Center skyway in the glowering light of an afternoon storm. The bright band of western sky is reflected off the canted facade of the Thrivent building, and in the far distance you can see the crown of Rapson's Cedar Square West housing on the West Bank...a fading monument to the last wave of urban hubris in that area. Rapson studied under Mies van der Rohe in Chicago, after Mies fled Germany. The daffy colored panels pasted onto the mausoleum-evoking concrete housing hive have faded, the building is almost past repair. I rented a bay in Rapson's studio on Seven Corners in the late 70s, and did some of my best comix there. Ralph watched me draw for a while one day, then said "all comix are self portraits" and went back to his drafting table.

Much of downtown modernism owes its impassive glitter plane geometry to principles of Bauhaus architectural theory. You will never see an American City influenced by Gaudi, for example. How did the coy reflective austerity of surface seize hold of the American urban imagination so thoroughly, in such a short time?

The skyway is a horizontal skyscraper in miniature. A sky tickler, laid down between sessions of hilarity.

Heir to the Skyway Philosopher

My son Sam comes downtown between classes at the U to immerse himself in the existential umwelt of the skyways with me. It only takes a quadruple espresso at the Dunn Bros for him to feel the skyway dasein, to find Kierkegaard's Knight of Faith lurking behind the cappucino machine, to inhale Simone Weil's Grace in the burnt coffee bean aroma...

Greetings from the planet of beer models

Leinies model in the North Star center. Leinenkugel is taking over the downtown skyways while no one is looking. There are giant decals everywhere, and pods of models passing out 5 buck coupons to unwary skywalkers. What a strange siege. I don't recall anything like this before.

Modern Art is just a peek from the 50th floor

View of the roof of some building in Minneapolis, as seen from the IDS observation deck.

Write your city councilperson.

Place setting for the Mother's Day Brunch at the IDS Center observation deck...50 floors up. Write your city councilperson and insist we reopen an observation deck in Minneapolis.

Way Way up above the skyways

View of the Hennepin Energy Center, with a skyway that wraps the Northwest corner and continues on to the Campbell Mithun tower -- the blue foreground building with the great reflections.

Aerial View of 8th Street and 3rd Ave. So.

Click to see the skyway from the Accenture Building across 8th Street to the Energy Center. It wraps around and continues East to the Campbell Mithun Tower.

Looking down on the sky way.

Four skyways around the intersection of Nicollet Mall and 6th Street, seen from the 50th floor of the IDS.

mapformation Portfolio: Map of Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota Skyway System

mapformation Portfolio: Map of Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota Skyway System

The only map I have seen that gives an accurate depiction of the passages through the buildings that connect the skyways. Artful.

A little way up in a lot of sky

Fifty floors above the streets of Minneapolis, a rare view of the horizon from the old IDS observation deck. It's not open to the public anymore, but you can catch an event there now and then. This is Mother's Day Brunch catered by the Marquette Inn crew. Good job.

Heavenly view of Target Field

Fans filing in to the Mother's Day home game at Target Field. View from the IDS 50th floor.

Mottled May Mother's Day Light

Skyway out of the Baker Block, headed west to the IDS.

Wear and tear

This is the second skyway built in Mpls. You can see a little wear and tear from its 48 years of weathering the extremes here. The floor is terrazo, like a high school hallway from the era. The heat is piped into steam or hot water lines. I feel a certain affection for the old guy. He was built just as I was discovering downtown on my own, riding the Hennepin Bus line down from the Crystal Shopping Center on Saturdays to spend my allowance on Sci Fi books and magazines from Shinders.

Steep grace.

Sandy welcomes a tea connoiseur to the Northern Lights Tea Company, just inside LaSalle Plaza skyway. The tea is excellent, the atmosphere friendly. Try something you have never tried before. I have two ounces of Houjicha, a Japanese green that evokes mown grass and dried citrus rind in the scent.

The displacement of the body into public signage.

This sign is within a few inches of the skyway glass. You can walk up to it, and look down 20 feet to the sidewalk. It forces a different perspective on you, a perspective you could only get in a gantry crane or cherry picker otherwise. Here you are safe, enclosed by glass and steel, yet still pulled up and away from the human scale of the sidewalk into the architectural space where only birds and dreaming people live.

Unposed repose.

Just outside the Target store on 9th and Nicollet, on the skyway, there is a table in the corner, where a weary man can find repose.

The mystery continues

What are these birds? Heron sandpiper loon...? Tell me and get a free shout out on Twitter.

Where have you seen this before?

See next entry for answer.

Look for the new in the old in the new.

Reflection of the City Hall Clock Tower in the Cappella Tower 6th Street windows. Just when I think I am getting bored with the project, I notice something. And the engine revs up again.

Mother and Daughter

On the skyway level of the Government Center.