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.

Yay!

The Thursday farmer's market has returned downtown. That is something that will never be in the skyways. But from the second floor, the shapes and colors of the farm bounty create a delirious cloisonne of primary and tertiary color. I am as hungry for the riot of visual texture as for the fresh tang of the citrus itself.

Plasma, the instant nostalgia of the 20th century

The first neon signs were probably used in a Packard car dealership in Las Angeles in 1923. Within a few years neon calligraphy wrote the history of American cities on the blackboard night. Now you have to look hard to find this retro neon ghetto in downtown.

Riveting view

Rivet patterns in the Fifth Avenue Towers skyway from the Qwest building catch the high sun angle.

Real and fake people....er, Art.

On the south plaza of the Fifth Street Towers, from the skyway, a bronze family greets hope while real people greet...reality.

Red on red

Block E to Target Center skyway from inside the Starbucks.

Blue on blue

Skyway to City Center from Block E, facing East. Study in blue, with auburn accents. These were among the last skyways built, and you can see they have major industrial brawn. The sibling to this skyway runs from the west side of Block E to the Target Center, and is bright red, same exposed girder construct.
Fact: every skyway is a bridge on the State's roster, and is inspected accordingly.

Heroic skyway engineering laid bare

This massive piece of bridge engineering looms just at eyelevel on the skyway from Block E to the Target Center.

Hieroglyphs for the aliens

Stephen Hawking has advised us to leave well enough alone when it comes to signalling extraterrestrial life. That is kind of a let-down for a boomer kid who expected the Martians would provide our individual antigravity transports and mind-meld communications. In the meantime, I saw these fresh marks on the roadway beneath the skyway, and imagined the ETs thumbing (pseudopodding?) through their traveller phrase books, wondering WTF the humans were trying to tell them.

Electric Carillon

A bell tower down the street from the American Express skyway. A theme of the day. This belongs to the St. Olaf Catholic Church.  As far as I know, it is the only church proper on the skyway system.

The existential scale of urban life. Smoke em if you got em.

Solitary smoker framed by the Baker facade in strong April sunshine, seen from the skyway.

Faced stone

These faces adorn the Baker Building facade. They are not individuals. But they aren't blank glass panes, either.

Living on the edge of shadows.

My answer to modernist architecture is this minimalist photo of two people at the edge of shadow. I left the junk in the left side of the frame to liven up the composition a bit. I can't suppress all my humanist tendencies.

Shapes. Shadows. Walking the dog.

Shadows of the old Methodist Church seen from the end of the line skyway.

The end of the skyway, the end of design.

This photo of the IDS tower is taken from the furthest point you can go south on the skyways. It is a bridge to the parking ramp from the Convention Center, around 13th and Marquette. I like the contrast between brick/ivy and mirrored curtain wall. But I have to say, this modernist architecture is not really memorable, is it? Fortunately the fashion has swung away from such severe surfaces as the IDS represents. Not that we will see 50 story brick buildings any time soon.