19th Bloggaversary Post

[Dumb coffee delivery robot on an East Bank sidewalk.]

I started this blog 19 years ago yesterday, and I'm still plugging away about once a week. Writing regularly about the city on my own platform is still the best career move I've made. Even though the blog itself hasn't rewarded me with direct income, pretty much everything I do professionally these days stemmed from it. I'm pretty grateful to have this legacy and trove of information available at my fingertips.

Of course, things online are different in 2024 than they were in 2005. Nobody blogs any more (or do they?), the Highland Villager is online now (or is it?), and there are lots of local news sources on the internet in ways that just weren't true back then.  

One of the best things about having been doing this so long is that you start to really get a sense for long-term trends and storylines. Take for example the CVS store on the corner of Snelling and University. I wrote about it during the construction, criticizing the design of the building and the use of land. Little did I know than that 19 years later I would still be writing about it, now an abandoned post-apocalyptic chain retail carcass draining the life from the Hamline-Midway commercial corridor. It's this kind of perspective that forms the root of wisdom. 

Anyway, thanks for reading. I've slowed down a lot here since acquiring a full-time job and a real-life child, but it's still something I dearly enjoy.

Noteworthy Parking Lots of Minneapolis Bike Tour Postponed Until Further Notice

Alas. It looks like it's going to rain tomorrow, and also be below 40º. That's about my least favorite weather for bicycling, right up there with single-degree or triple-digit temperatures.

So yeah. I am postponing the Noteworthy Parking Lots of Minneapolis bike ride until another date TBD. Maybe this fall may yet present an opportunity. Maybe it won't. Stay tuned to this blog, or Twitter, or Facebook for more info.

14th Bloggaversary Post!

I started this blog on October 10th, 2005, which is 14 years ago today. So congrats to me for being really old at this point, especially for the internet!

This site started as a local urbanism news aggregator and commentary, but evolved through the years the online media landscape has changed.  Twitter, in particular, has filled a lot of the news aggregation role, but that still leaves this blog as a great platform for sharing other things like photos, commentary, and Highland Villager recaps. 

And, there's always occasional actual reporting-type-stuff. Why just the other day I was going past the University Avenue Target store in Saint Paul and recalling that, "oh yeah", that was one of my first stories where I actually attended a community meeting and "reported" on it. As the story went: in exchange for their new larger store set far back from the street, Target promised to build retail buildings along University Avenue in their giant parking lot. The quote from the piece was:

The new SuperTarget will be set back along I-94, and they're going to build actual streetfront, human-scale buildings along University Avenue. Like, with windows and everything. 

Ha! That was almost 14 years ago and has not happened.  But it is a good example of the passage of time, alas. I have learned much about the pace of change since those early days, and very little of that knowledge is encouraging.

This is all to say that this blog is still going, 14 years later. Soon it will be old enough to get a learners' permit, borrow its parents' car, and start speeding past elementary schools and buzzing bicyclists.

Once a year, on my bloggaversary, I pass the hat around. If you appreciate this largely thankless marginal website, please support my marginal existence and throw some dollars my way.

Become a Patreon supporter
Paypal to blindeke@gmail.com
Venmo to @bill-lindeke
Buy something in my online store

Even $5 or $10 would be a lovely gesture. Thanks in advance, and thanks for reading this blog!

Join Me for a Book Talk at the Hennepin History Museum on Thursday 12/13

I'm excited to announce that I'll be giving a book reading of my Minneapolis-Saint Paul: Then and Now book -- a quality coffee table book, by the way -- at one of my favorite smaller museums, the Hennepin History Museum, on Thursday December 13th at 2:00 pm in the afternoon, coming up in three weeks.

I really like my book, which is for sale on my website. The talk will be a brief story about how I put the book together, and then an extended discussion of some of my favorite side-by-side photo comparisons, and what I think they tell us about the Twin Cities urban landscape.

I hope you can make it! I will have books to purchase and will stick around to sign them.

• What: Brief book talk about Minneapolis-Saint Paul: Then and Now
• When: December 13th, 2:00 pm 6:00 pm (NEW TIME PLEASE CORRECT!)
• Why: Because it's not there any more, or sometimes it is
• Where: Hennepin History Museum
• Who: Anyone with $5! (although sadly the museum is not yet ADA accessible)

If you missed the talk in Roseville, it'll be pretty much the same as that one, only with more Minneapolis stuff this time.

[Plus you can wander around in the great small museum.]

13th Bloggaversary Post!

[Props to CHCH for having a 13th floor.]

Happy birthday to this blog, a.k.a. it's my blogg-aversary.

Yes, somehow it's been 13 years since I started posting things on this site, and I appreciate everyone who reads and supports this venue.

As always, this is the writing project closest to my heart. Even as over tHe last year I've become ever more busy with other projects, posting urban sidewalk-centric photos, poems, stories, and the occasional diatribe on this site is the thing that I look forward to the most.

So thanks for staying with it and reading the stuff on here. I want to especially thank everyone who's supported my work here on Patreon.

A few years ago a friend of mine suggested adding a Patreon support network to my unpaid work, and initially I rolled my eyes.

Than she said "Wouldn't you like to have $500 a month to help with the rent?"

Yes. Yes, I would.

I haven't reached that goal, of course, but I've gotten part of the way there and -- especially psychologically -- it makes a huge difference. While not a lot of money, knowing that people value what I've been doing for thirteen years (!) enough to toss me $5 or $10 is a huge comfort.

So thanks! If you would like to support the blog, you can become a regular Patreon supporter. It comes with a few benefits, such as vintage postcards announcing upcoming tours or events, and other perks.

Or you could throw a few bucks in the tip jar:

Or you could buy my new book. I'll even autograph it for you and ship it right to your door.

In other words, thanks for reading this blog. Stay tuned, as always, for more pictures of lampposts, polemics about blank walls or City Council candidates, weird maps, re-caps of the Highland Villager, and whatever else I can think of...

PS. You can also sign up for the mailing list if you like: https://tinyletter.com/blindeke

Coney Quest V: The Downstream Journey Rain Delayed for Two Weeks

Sad weather we're having in Saint Paul these days. Coney Quest V will have to wait.

Let's hope the fall time improves in a fortnight!

Mark your calendars for Wednesday October 24th.

[See original post here.]

You Can Now Pre-Order my New Coffee Table Book on Amazon!

[The Milwaukee Road depot pre-cupola circumcision.]

I'm pretty excited to announce that you can now pre-order my new book on Amazon.com. It's called Minneapolis/Saint Paul: Then and Now and it's a coffee table book filled with photographs. The book is from Pavilion Books, is 144 pages long, and is chock full of great photographs and historic info.

Technically, it's an update on the previous 1999 edition of the title, authored by Hanje Richards, but I have swapped out at least half the old photographs and put in a bunch of new and improved historic images of the old city.

All the "now" photographs have been updated to the present day by the talented photographer Karl Mondon, who has a great eye for lining up horizons and building facades. For example, when the previous edition was printed, the Saint Paul Cathedral was being restored and its copper dome resurfaced, changing its color from "liberty green" to its present day 1904 brown. There are so many other examples of fascinating then and now images in the book, and I tried to pick the most interesting and high contrast examples. I've also added images from places outside Minneapolis and Saint Paul, including Southdale and South Saint Paul.

And of course, all the surrounding text and the medium-length introduction were written by me and feature an ever-so-slightly-sardonic take on Twin Cities development.

I think you'll enjoy it, and when the book comes out in July, I'll have an official "launch" event somewhere in the Twin Cities (possibly at Hamline University, which is also featured in the book, of course).

Here's the link! It's about $15 on Amazon, which is a super deal.

[Two samples below. There are 144 pages of this in the book!]

12th Bloggaversary Post!

Happy blog-aversary to this very blog! It’s been a dozen actual calendar years since I’ve been writing on here and putting up musings. It’s a bit numbing after so long, but still seems important to me somehow.

I’m working on a few larger projects these days, both of which should wrap up in a month or so. I’d intended to put the blog on the back burner, but there are so many issues that keep popping up.

For example, think about the relentless “bikes vs. cars” battle that continues to rage and fester, the intersection of generational shifts with big demographic changes around race and inequality, the “frog in a pot of water” issue that is our lack of affordable housing and super-tight rental market, the regional politics of transit, or a dozen other things. They are all thorny but important issues. I’m hoping to do some writing / thinking about all these topics here and elsewhere, so stay tuned.

If you’d like to support my work on the blog, please consider becoming a Patreon member. It’s a big help to me emotionally and financially, and I really do appreciate it. There are even a few perks.

[Click it to go to the Patreon page.]

You can also simply throw a few dollars into my Paypal account if you have an inkling.

Thanks for reading the blog for so many years!

PS. For fans of rabbit holes enjoy:

11th Bloggaversary Post
10th Bloggaversary Post
9th Bloggaversary Post
8th Bloggaversary Post
7 Year Blogaversary Post
6 Year Blogaversary Post!
5 Year Blog-aversary!

and the original Twin City Sidewalks post, all the way back in 2005: Yet Another Blog

11th Bloggaversary Post

[The 11th floor of the Saint Paul City Hall.]

The blog turned 11 years old last week, one of my favorite numbers. I want to thank everyone for continuing to read and support the blog!


Where to Find my Work

I put most of the content closest to my heart here on the site, including photos of my sidewalk meandering, links to things I've been reading, occasional essays, lists, maps, or urban miscellany.  (This is not to mention fortnightly re-capulets of a certain print-only local newspaper.)

Over the last year, it's been about 190 separate posts, about 3.5 per week. That's a pretty high average for for this blog, though still off the record-setting pace from a few years ago.

Part of the reason is that I've been writing elsewhere. It's been over a year since I finished my PhD, and I've been spending more time on writing both here and in various other publications These days you can find my work in the following places:

• At Minnpost, the weekly Cityscape column, aimed at reporting on various slices through the often-unconsidered urban landscape

• At streets.mn, semi-weekly policy-focused essays, plus more regular maps and charts that catch my eye

• Also at streets.mn, a rebooted podcast, almost weekly conversations with interesting people working on urban policy

• In the Park Bugle, occasional community news reporting, about one story a month

• In actually corporeal paper, six (6) self-published Guide Books available for purchase online, covering semi-historical "tours" of places of local interest in Minneapolis and Saint Paul

So I guess that's a lot of ways to keep up with my Twin Cities urban geography work. I'm hoping to focus this winter on publishing my bicycle planning research before it becomes too out-of-date. So, fair warning, the pace of my other writing might fall off for a few months.

Walking and Biking Tours

[A Saint Paul tour with the Minnesota History Center.]

In addition to the writing, I've offered a lot of walking and biking tours over the last year, including ten (10) free-to-the-public tours of everything from Coney Dogs to parking lots to secret lakes to dive bars of every stripe. That's almost one per month, and I aim to continue that pace, beginning this Thursday on the East Side.

(A great way to stay in the loop with these events is to "like" my Facebook page.)

Plus I've landed a few real tour guide gigs, including a series of "river history history and high bridge power plant" tours with the Minnesota History Center, a downtown Minneapolis skyway tour with the Hennepin History Museum, a history tour of the West Side Flats with the West Side Community Organization, a couple bus tours for the local chapter of the Road Scholar program, and a Northfield sidewalk tour with Carleton College. If anyone would be interested in connecting for future walking or bicycling tours, let me know! I really enjoy it.

(I also gave a talk at the TEDxMinneapolis event earlier this year, which was a lot of work. The video should be available online any day now.)

Stay tuned for more walking and exploring opportunities. Once winter comes, I'm planning a Saint Paul skyway tour, dive bar walking tours of the West Side and Frogtown, and maybe some surprises.

[My other Ted talk was held here.]

Support my Work

[The Patreon Page.]

Out of necessity, I've been spending some time this year figuring out how to translate my interests and passions into an actual career. That kind of alchemy involves asking for money, or coming up with other ways to transform sidewalks into gold.

For example, I've sold over fifty Saint Paul flags, which is a great way to support my work, connect with history, and celebrate the capital city at the same time. You can order a small 2' x 3' flag today at a new low price, and I'll bike it over to your mailbox later this week.

At the urging of some smart friends, I also launched a "Patreon page" back in July. Patreon is a system where you can sign up to be a "patron" of people (often artists) who are trying to do creative work. Amazingly, over the last few months (with far-too-minimal prompting) twenty people (20) have signed up to be a patron! Believe it or not, the monthly financial and moral support really means a lot to me. If you are comfortable with this kind of thing and have the means, please consider it.

Or you can also simply drop a few bucks into the Paypal tip jar. Thank you kindly.

Also, a big thank you for eleven years of attention. To my mind, the blog is better than ever, though some of the writing could use a bit more work.

Yrs,
Bill

New and Improved Twin City Sidewalks Store

[Button in the sidebar.]

I have upgraded the “store” using Big Cartel, which seems like a pretty slick way to sell stuff online without many fees. Now you can actually click on a button and buy the different guide booklets and (eventually) flags, maps, and photo books.

Right now, though, only booklets. I have five different guides for sale currently: #2, Noteworthy Dive Bars of South Minneapolis, #3 Noteworthy Dive Bars of the Midway, #4 Noteworthy Dive Bars of Old Fort Road; #5, Noteworthy Parking Lots of Minneapolis; and #6, Noteworthy Dive Bars of Outer Northeast.


(#1, Noteworthy Bowling Alleys of Minneapolis and Saint Paul is currently out of print.)

Check it out. Feel free to buy one or seventeen of these fine products.

[Store link is here.]

Introducing a New Way to Support this Blog

That's right. For every order of mozzarella sticks at a Twin Cities Applebee's location, I will be receiving .5 cents of the profit!

So do your part and get down to your local Applebee's today.

Just kidding...

Actually I'm launching a Patreon page for Twin City Sidewalks to help support my work doing writing, blogging, and tours of our urban landscape.

As you might have noticed, I've been writing this blog for a long time. Over 10 years actually, for a grand total of 1,625 posts of varying quality. For example, here are some of "The Best Blog Posts of 2015", or you can check out my "10 Year Bloggaversary Post" for some background on how this blog got started and where I'm at now with it.

The point is, though, that barring that one time I found $100 while walking along Lyndale Avenue, I haven't made any money off of it. And that's fine.A lot of great things have come my way via friends and colleagues that I've met through the blog. Absolutely!

But it's still a challenge to pay the bills, and I could use support from people who enjoy or appreciate what I do here.

Thus...

Become a Patreon "Patron"

[The page looks like this.]

Following the suggestion of a few of my most trusted friends, I've spent some time setting up a  Patreon account. By becoming one of my "patrons", you make sure that I can keep making this blog.

Here's what I'm promising:

• To keep producing 4-5 posts per week of new content
• To offer a new biking or walking tour every month or two
• To write a new Tour Guide Booklet at the rate of one every month or so

The little bit of money you can spare will make a big difference in my everyday life. And as is the Patreon way, I have added a few little perks for people who become patrons at different levels

at least $5 / month ... Advance notice of every bicycling or walking tour by postcard.

at least $10 / month ... Free copy of every new Tour Guide booklet delivered via postal mail directly after they are written.

at least $20 / month ... One private tour per year of your choosing, for a group of up to 12. These can be custom designed or a repeat of one of the previous tours I have done in the past.

Those are nice, but the real reason to be a Patreon patron is to keep supporting my writing and blogging work here on the site. I'd love to keep doing this forever, and I keep having tons of ideas. You'd think after ten years of blogging about sidewalks, I'd start to run out of sidewalk-related stuff to say.

But no. Such is the beauty of sidewalks.

Thanks for reading this!

The Top 15 Twin City Sidewalks Posts of 2015

["SUV of Progress" looks like this.]

The time has come once again for a reflection, to pause and look back at the year-gone-by, for 2015 lies behind us like roadkill in the rear-view mirror of the SUV of progress.

Here's what you may have missed or forgotten about on this august sidewalk blog since the last solstice. There's kind of a negative parking/bike lanes theme emerging here, which I suppose I should find troublesome.

Anyway, these are my favorite ones, listed in order of narcissistic delight. Apologies in advance.

#15. Saint Paul's Big Day Shows Fundamental Problem with Cars in Cities -- I really like this. I was inspired by a particularly wonderful urban day in Saint Paul, the kind of magical day where cool interesting things just keep on happening. I was struck, though, by how miserable I might have been if I'd had a car the whole time. Plus I made a "graphic", which for me is pretty amazing, though it failed to go "viral."

#14. Vehicular Violence and the War on Buildings -- Read the post that spawned a movement, launched a website, and finally ended once and for all the horrifying habit that drivers have of driving their cars into buildings. Plus this is the post that compares Red's Savoy Pizza to Gibraltar, so...

#13. GOP War on Cities Begins and Ends with Hypocrisy -- A anti-right-wing political rant like I used to put up on here during the reign of Pothole Pawlenty. The only thing I miss about those days was how easy it was to write vitriolic blog posts. Plus I got to make fun of Rogers, which is always pure pleasure.

#12. Motivational Poster #1 -- I just really really really really really like this. Plus I made it myself. I'm a huge fan of Lucian Freud's painting, so... Best non-viral meme ever.

#11. Crap Public Process Irresponsibly Inciting Bikelash -- This was the summer of the bike wars, an election year where parking barking rose to deafening levels (before every candidate I liked got elected after all). The second- or third-worst moment (it's hard to be sure) was the attempt to scuttle the "no-brainer" Front Avenue bike lanes in my old neighborhood. I actually walked in on a campaign organizer spreading fear and misinformation about bikes in one of my favorite bars. It, and Commissioner Janice Rettman's last-minute public meeting, made me mad. I usually don't blog when I'm mad, but I did this time.

#10. Saint Paul Needs More Women in Office -- Another post I'd been meaning to write for a few years, about the huge gap in elected gender ratio between Minneapolis and Saint Paul. We don't want Saint Paul to be seen as the "old boys" city, do we? (No offense, gentlemen.) Article includes fabulous home-made chart!

#9. Little Free Library Neighborhood Quiz -- A post years in the making, a collection of pictures of "little free libraries" from around the Twin Cities, in half-assed quiz form. Can you tell your Edina from your Longfellow just by looking at the books?

#8. Six Outdoor Pop Machines -- Just what it says. Can't beat that. (Stay tuned for "Eleven World-Weary Lampposts".)

#7. The Best of the Mayor's Forum on Parking Meters -- A literal transcript of the lynch-mob Grand Avenue parking meter meeting, so that people who weren't there could get a sense of what was actually said beyond the less helpful reports in other media. If you actually read what people said -- i.e. the Mayor pleading with people to take seriously the connection between climate change and driving -- the whole protest movement looks terrifyingly selfish.

#6. Sidewalk Mailbox #6: High-speed one-ways are like watering your garden with a firehose -- It's actually surprising that I don't get more emails from readers, at least until you think about how few people read sidewalk blogs. Anyway, I got one thought-provoking question about Minneapolis' recent changes adding bike lanes to 26th and 28th Streets (which have long been a pet peeve streets for me). The gardening metaphor just came to me, and it works. (Also, the second-most-widely-read post of 2015.)

#5. In Saint Paul, Bike Lanes are the new Smoking Ban -- Actually, this is my favorite. This is an argument connecting public health to street design, and I'm going to keep saying this over and over and over again until people pull their heads out of their tailpipes and design more walkable streets. Plus I made another "graphic."

#4. The "Signs of the Times" (best of edition) -- For the 100th slapdash collection of sidewalk-oriented signage, a noteworthy occasion, I curated my all-time favorite handwritten-or-otherwise-noticable signage and added a few comments and some semblance of categorization. This makes for excellent, undemanding skimmage, and there are some funny ones.

#3. Bicycling Debate is Rooted in a Generation Gap -- The most personal blogpost I've ever put on here, including my father and my nephew and the true story of the traffic circle at the end of the block where I grew up. This basically sums up the root causes of bicycle vs. automobile tension, which to me is very much about historical epochs and generational change. Not to make too big a deal of one's age, but it's a big deal.

#2. Please Stop for Me, a Children's Book Mash-Up -- This is my favorite thing, TBH, two of my favorite kids books turned into a driver/pedestrian civility lesson. I couldn't get this out of my head for days. The graphics from Go Dog Go work so well with the words from Green Eggs and Ham.

#1. Fascinating Political Moment in Minneapolis Might Actually Change Things -- The most-read TC Sidewalks article of all time! I woke up one morning, after the shootings by the white supremacist thugs who came down to Plymouth Avenue in their masks,  with a head full of thoughts and a spleen full of ventables. I don't know enough about what's happening over North these days, but this was my attempt to tell a compelling story about it. (Article should have made it more clear that, then again, things might not change.)

[There you go 2015.]

[See also: Top 12 TCSidewalks posts of 2014, The Top 23 Twin City Sidewalks Posts of 2013, The 19 Best Twin City Sidewalks Posts of 2012, The Year in Twin City Sidewalks: My 2011 "Heavy Eleven" Report, Best of Twin City Sidewalks 2010.]

10th Bloggaversary Post

Saying you've been blogging for 10 years is like bragging about how much money you spend grooming your dog. Apart from narcissism, why would anyone do something so thankless for so long?

So, yeah. Congratulations.

But there it is. I started this blog 10 years ago while I was working a pair of part-time jobs and starting to get interested in urban design and local politics. At the time, it looked different, more of a collection of links with quick commentary than anything else. Much like Twitter today, it was a place to catalog and collect information, as well as a middling exchange of ideas.

The blog tapered off in the early years as I lost and gained interest, especially once I got involved with other things (e.g. graduate school, staring at the cat). But then, when the I-35E I-35W bridge fell into the river, I rebooted the blog and it’s been fairly steady sailing since.


Multiple venues

If this blog is worse than it used to be, it’s a victim of its own success.  I’m writing now for so many places that it can be difficult to keep track of tone. At Minnpost, I’m trying to write straight-up journalism where I call sources and explore a question about our cities. At streets.mn, I’m trying to write data-supported essays that make arguments about policy. On Twitter, I’m trying to forward interesting articles and points of information, gently troll and/or converse, and amuse myself.

That leaves this blog as a place to curate my mostly crappy street photography, re-blog the Highland Villager, make announcements, and post my most personal and/or opinionated writing. That’s how I try to sort it out in my head, anyway. Each of these venues has a distinct audience and format, and I hope both of us can keep it all straight.

[An early picture from 10 years ago. I still find joy in this.]

The key challenges for this blog, as I’ve tried to position it over the years, has been to balance positivity and negativity. I want to avoid being a writer who only rails against the status quo, tells everyone how horrible, misguided, or immoral our cities have become due to this or that infrastructure or policy decision. There’s a lot of that kind of thing out there, but it doesn’t really accomplish much other than galvanizing the already agreeable.

Experiencing our city’s sidewalks aren’t just about getting mad at cars out of control. If it were, there’s be no point, no life left in it.

Rather, city sidewalks are most often alive with joy if you're able to notice it. Walking and biking through Saint Paul and Minneapolis brings discovery, adventure, comfort, solitude, serendipity. Sidewalks are beautiful, one of the few reliable things that bring us closer as strangers.

That’s a message that risks getting lost in the details of any given struggle for equity, but it’s important to remember the joy of sidewalks. I promise to try.


Hopes for the Future

I’m hoping to rekindle this site as a place for sharing positive stories, things like the cast of public characters, unusual everyday doorways, psychogeograhic patterns, and wonder. I’m hoping also to share some of my completed PhD research on the different kinds of urban bicycling and why they matter. And finally, I’m hoping to publish and distribute more Saint Paul flags and other curiosities that I create or come across. Stay tuned.

This is all to say, thanks for reading this bit of internet flotsam. If you can support this decidedly un-lucrative effort with a donation, I’d really appreciate it and will send you a small token of gratitude.

Who knows what the next ten years will bring?

[My favorite of my sidewalk photos.]

Top 12 TCSidewalks Posts of 2014

Welcome to a personal list of blog highlights from the following year, a bit shorter than in years past because I took some time off from blogging to finish my dissertation, which I did.

That said, I'm proud of much of the work that's come out of this site over the past year. One of the guilty pleasures of blogging is the feeling you get when you re-read past posts. Sometimes I am completely surprised by them.

"Who wrote that?" I'll wonder. "My, that's a fine choice of words!" I'll think.

Then I'll realize that reading my own writing as if for the first time is the ultimate form of masturbatory narcissism.

Anyway, some good stuff in here. These are my dozen favorite ones...

 #12. Of Lakes and Politics

This one didn't get any traffic, but I liked it. Once in a while, I dwell on symbolism. This is kind of like the amazing McSweeney's Convergences series (which is one of my favorite things by one of my favorite writers), only with Mike Gravel and Jeffrey Wagner, so it's awesome.

#11. 3 Reasons why I Re-Blog the Highland Villager

An attempt to explain myself viz. the whole Highland Villager thing. I tread carefully around actually critiquing the Villager for two reasons. First, Saint Paul is a small town and everyone knows each other. Second, I do like the fact that the Villager is there covering meetings; I just wish they'd go online, and try harder to reflect a greater diversity of perspectives.

Anyway, this is the best I can do for media analysis. It feels weird to pick on the little guy, instead of the Star Tribune or something [see #3].

#10. The Silent Sanity of Freeway Pockets

Sound in the city is something that I've been thinking about for a long time. I believe that cars are so omnipresent in our lives that they become almost invisible, their engines fading into silence. But that doesn't mean they're not always there, eroding our sense of safety and pushing silence away into the wilderness. If I had better map skills and more nuanced data, I'd love to be able to make a proper sound map of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and to try and figure out where the actual sound pockets might be.

Until then, when it comes to freeway-free pockets, much like obscenity, I know it when I see it. These spots just feel different somehow.

#9. Freeways are Public Space Too

Speaking of freeways, one of most interesting political events of the last year was the Ferguson-inspired protests taking to the freeways (and malls) all over the country. I did a little impromptu analysis of why I think this is important, and how intriguing it is to link police violence, race, and our built environment.

#8. Jefferson Bike Boulevard Illustrates Frustrating Pace of Change 

When you blog for this long, you come up with a lot of ideas that get delayed time and again. The "half-ass" award is one of these; I think I asked Andy Signer to draw me a logo illustration years ago, which he did promptly.

Well, I finally followed through with the first ever awarding of the half-ass prize for bike infrastructure. Look for more of these in the future, as there are no shortage of suitable candidates.

#7. The Case for the Saint Paul Flag 

One of the coolest things to come out of 2014 is the renaissance of the Saint Paul flag. After buying one fo my own from my friend Andrew, who himself was inspired by my friend Andy, I wrote up a post about the history and magnificence of our fine flag.

Since then, I've ordered and sold two dozen flags. In a little while I'll be trying to round up some new orders and have another batch made. Let me know if you want one! Maybe someday these will be commonplace in Shelbyville.

#6. Return of the Repressed Uptown Loft 

 Another thing I've been mulling about for years is the intersection of new condos and sexual repression. Walking around Uptown these days is kind of a trip; for example, the Lyndale VFW is surrounded on all sides by the most odiously branded building!

... not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm really glad that we are starting to get density in Minneapolis. It's just kinda weird when so many of the ads look like soft-core porn. So that's what I'm trying to get to the bottom of here.

#5. No Bike Parking along the Green Line is Absurd 

This is one of my favorites; short, sweet, and well illustrated. The Green Line is the best new thing of 2014 for sure, but I sure with they'd installed a few bike racks when they were completely remaking the street for a billion+ dollars. How hard would that have been? Installing bike parking should be automatic, just like striping bike lanes should be automatic.

Plus Spinoza.

#4. Three Things You Should Know about the Suburban Equity Cry

This is the one that's the most important. The suburbs trying to get more than their fair share of transit money really pisses me off. I did my best to make the case against the 5-county manifesto. I think this is a great example of a crucial issue that is often too complicated for most people to understand, what you might call bureaucratic mystification. One of the most important things that journalists and bloggers can do is translate these complicated structural problems into plain English. That's what I tried to do here.

#3. Renegade Editors give Strib a Bad Name 

Though I took a bunch of time off from the blog this year, sometimes you just get forced into action by a truly crappy news article. This is one of those times; thanks Star Trbune. You gave me a reason to get out of bed that morning, and I had fun poking holes in their piece about the tired "renegade biker" trope. It's time to put this one to bed.

#2. Ranking Green Line Stops from Least to Most Exciting 

This is pure science. I know that because I'm a doctor now.

Also, this was the most fun to write. I like ranking things, and I like Saint Paul, so ranking Saint Paul things is pretty much my idea of a good time. Also only 2.6% of the posts on this blog involve making up fake statistics, so that's fun too.

#1. The Vikings Stadium/Star Wars Metaphor

This was the best thing on the blog last year. Plus Rybak as Lando? It's just so perfect. Making this was great fun. I don't know why this post didn't go mega-viral and sweep the nation and do to the Vikings' institutional self esteem what Admiral Tarkin did to Alderaan.

I guess all the years of losing took care of that already?


[See also: The Top 23 Twin City Sidewalks Posts of 2013, The 19 Best Twin City Sidewalks Posts of 2012, The Year in Twin City Sidewalks: My 2011 "Heavy Eleven" Report, Best of Twin City Sidewalks 2010.]

TC SIdewalks Live!: PhD Defense of my Dissertation: "In Search of New Riders"

[I printed it onto paper.]

As some of you probably know, I've been in graduate school for almost as long as this blog has been operational. It's been a long haul, certainly, but I'm finally nearing the end of the road and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

I finished the draft of my dissertation this week, and it's a 250-page document called "In Search of New Riders: Affective Exclusions and Bicycle Planning in Minneapolis/Saint Paul."

It's all about how new riders learn to ride through the cities of  Minneapolis and Saint Paul in really different ways, depending on individual differences like age, gender, race, or class.

There were really two parts to the research. The first was a series of 'ridealong interviews' that I did with new riders, where I chatted with them about what they liked and disliked about riding a bike around the Twin Cities. Then I followed them (in a hopefully non-creepy way) with a video camera on my head. It was interesting, and I ended up with a bunch of cool video data showing how people ride in different ways.

[Pictures of a ride-along interview with Bethany.]

[Pictures of a ride-along interview with Pete.]

The second part of the project was about attempts by planners in Minneapolis and Saint Paul to design spaces for new riders. As you may know, Minneapolis received a big pot of money a few years ago that they've used to build interesting bike infrastructure in Minneapolis and adjoining cities like Saint Paul. One of the goals of the NTP project was to appeal to new riders, so I compared my interview data with some of the project results.

[Pictures of the 2011 Lyndale Avenue Open Streets.]

That's it! My big conclusion was that advocates and planners need to be very thoughtful about how differently people ride bicycles. I outlined for types of "bicycling affects", a rough breakdown of the how different people are looking for different things when they ride bikes.

Anyway, I'll be presenting my research to the public as part of my defense. The presentation will likely take only about a half-hour, so if you want to come down and see it, you're invited! After that, my committee and I will meet in private.

What: William Lindeke's PhD Defense Public Presentation
When: Wednesday December 17th at 1:00pm
Where: 445 Blegen Hall, West Bank Campus of the University of Minnesota
Why: To learn about bicycling, urban geography, and to support me!

PS. There will be a less formal celebration party at Mancini's on Friday the 19th.

[Good D fences make good deneighbors.]

9th Bloggaversary Post

[Happy Nineaversary!]

This last Friday was marks 9 years of blogging here at the Twin City Sidewalks blogger blogsite. This last year has also marked the proliferation of my so-called sidewalks writing into other more respectable and lucrative venues, such as my new Cityscape column over at Minnpost. (Check out all of them here.)

(For a real mindf**k and to track one man's evolution of idealism, check out the previous years' bloggaversary posts: 8th, 7th, 6th, 5th... Yikes!)

One of the strange things about writing for multiple venues is trying to maintain distinct voices. Compared to Minnpost or streets.mn, this blogspot is meant to be a more poetic, personal, and snarkastic approach to thinking about sidewalks and cities. It's also meant to be a place that offers a more positive purchase about why urban life can be so rewarding. I'm hopeful I can keep that part of my life (and my voice) alive through the blog.

[Spare a copper for an old sailor?]

Finally, I took a few months "off" this year to finish my dissertation. (Please note: Even when "off"," I must keep Reading the Highland Villager.)

As the draft is pretty much complete, I'm hopeful that I can get back to focusing my writing efforts on a long list of things I've been wanting to do, including the crafting of a number of TC Sidewalks "field guides" that collect the information from various tours over the years (dive bars, bowling alleys, chinese restaurants, coney dog joints, etc.), a renewal of the Sidewalk of the Week feature (my favorite) and other various psychogeographic endeavors.

Please consider making a donation and purchasing a postcard if you appreciate this blogsite. Any donation of $5 or more receives an artisanal sidewalk postcard complete with site-specific koan delivered to your door. All proceeds go directly into the cat füd fund, and DJUNA BARNES (the cat) always seems to enjoy food.

And thank you so much for reading this nonsense! Here's to a lifetime of pedestrian driftlessness.

[Djuna helping with teh blogging.]

TCSIdewalks Live!: Bowling Alley Bike Tour Rain Check

Sad but true, the rain will not depart this land.

How about next week?

Bike trip to five (5) bowling alleys in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. We won't be bowling at any of them, just looking at them all and learning about their history.

• Thursday, June 26 at 6:30pm Next Week

• meet at Midway Lanes, Snelling and University

When: starts at 6:30.
Total distance: less than twenty (20) miles.
Cost: free, donation optional.
Ending: Leave at any time, but the final alley is in Northeast Minneapolis.

PS: If you live in Minneapolis, you can take the GREEN LINE to Snelling and University!

The Top 23 Twin City Sidewalks Posts of 2013

A personal list of highlights from the following calendar year, presented in chronological order, include the following.

November 2013 set a new all-time monthly record for Twin City Sidewalks readership, with a confluence of popular stories that surpassed even my Kottke moment. It's a record not likely to be broken anytime soon...

[see last year's list: The 19 Best Twin City Sidewalks Posts of 2012 here.]

1. On Windchimes

An ode to windchimes, and how they make you feel when listened to late in the night or through a window, especially in winter, especially in the dark, but other times too. After I wrote this, someone left a windchime under my porch staircase. (No lie! Thanks Mom.)


2. All I Really Needed to Know about Dinkytown, I Learned at Al's Breakfast

The Dinkytown density debate was one of the top stories of 2013, and this was a commentary on the situation (the change of which, in retrospect, seems to be only accelerating into 2014). That said, I'm obsessed with Al's Breakfast, not because of their food (which is good), but because of the social and spatial dynamics of the place. This was an attempt to use Al's as a metaphor for urban spaces in general. Probably not the last time I'll try to use Al's Breakfast as a Minneapolis synechdoche.


3. Using Psychobabble to Justify Anti-Bicycle Rage is Dangerous

A diatribe reaction to one of those Malcolm Gladwell-esque pseudoscience columns (this one from the BBC, called "neurohacks") that attempted to defend anti-bike road rage (good example of this here). Article includes history of jaywalking, vented spleen.


4. If Cars Are the New Tobacco...

This is the trend piece to watch in coming years. Cars are just as bad for individual and public health as smoking used to be, and have some of the same structural and economic social defense mechanisms. Here's an attempt to make that connection more explicit. Maybe someday we'll have non-car sections of our cities, and people will feel silently guilty for driving because they realize they're ruining the health of those around them...


5. In Defense of the Pedal Pub

The title speaks for itself. Sometimes one has to jump on the grenade and take one for the team. In spite of everything, I like the pedal pub, albeit in an admittedly condescending way.

6. Notes from the Empire Builder II

The train makes me want to write. Gamers, graffiti, long list of objects seen from windows... My ride to and from Boston last Spring was eventful, and feels like only yesterday.


7. Rough Sketch of a Solution to Downtown Saint Paul's Parking Problem

An attempt at wonkery, this time in reaction to the parking barking in Lowertown following a few development proposals. Four easy steps to a Shoupian solution... The neat thing is that Saint Paul policymakers almost kidna tried to implement this 'parking benefit district'-style plan in the Snelby area, but failed to adequately follow through with the details or incentives.


8. Sidewalk of the Week: 27th Avenue South

One of the my two favorite SOTW features from the past year. Confronting the abyss. A mysterious part of the city indeed!


9. Details Uncovered from 1906 Minneapolis

Someone tweeted this amazing photo this year, taken from the top of the newly completed City Hall in 1906. Sometimes you can get lost in a single photograph, and I did.


10. Minneapolis/St Paul Taprooms As If They Were Characters from a High School Movie

Fun followup to the Streets.mn taproom bike tour last Spring. It's always fun to anthropomorphize beer.

11. Four Suggested Skyway Improvements

Fun with photoshop, displaying some mad skillz here. I still want to follow through with Improvement #3, guerrilla style. Any artists out there?


12. Palmer's PROTIPS for Wall Street Journal Readers

Um, the WSJ recommending Palmer's has to be one of the best moments from last year. Many of my ideas come from my highly snide friends, and this is no exception.


13. TCS Interviews Avidor on the Block E Free Speech Mall

In retrospect, this will be the one that got away. Imagine what coulda been! Avidor is great, and here's another piece of evidence that proves it.


14. The Best and Worst Saint Paul Intersection Neologisms

Sometimes you're stuck in a three-hour long meeting with MNDOT where they pretend to care about (slash fund) pedestrian and bicycle safety programs. What else are you going to do but jot down all possible combinations of Saint Paul street names?


15. Sidewalk of the Week: Lauderdale

This is my favorite SOTW column from last year. Lauderdale is a special place.

16. Nine Thoughts You Have While Doing a Bike/Walk Traffic Count in a Vacant Lot for Two Hours

This is the single post that took the most out of me. I was depressed for days after writing this down. But it's probably my favorite post of the year.

Incidentally, a follow-up to this situation: I never actually submitted my traffic count results for some reason. (Nobody told me how or when?) Instead, in a panic, I emailed them to the city bike/ped guy just as the report was being collated, at the very last minute.


17. Minneapolis Voters Reject Disturbing Hair Trend

I'm starting to get more interested in making graphs and charts. This is one of the best so far... Side note: I'm really sorry for what happened to Mark Andrew at the mall!


18. Together We Can Re-Name Lake Calhoun

I am serious about this, people! 121 votes so far. Voting is still open for the re-Calhouning of Minneapolis for another 22 days.


19. Four Things Everyone Should Know About Block E

This is probably the best post I wrote all year, in terms of research, original content, and writing quality. It also was very timely! This was the #4 most popular post of the year.


20. Seven Reasons Conservatives Should Embrace Bikes

Actually, following even more discussions with my conservative cousins over the holiday season, I may have to write a few more like this very popular post (went viral) on bikes and libertarian values. This was the #1 most widely read post of the year.


21. The Gentrification Paradox

A follow-up to a conference on art and gentrification I attended in October. Turned out to be very popular with a national audience (#2 most read post of 2013), which came as a complete surprise. I intended to write a few more posts on the same topic. Here's hoping!


22. Q: Why Don't Bikers Stop at Stop Signs?

This just came out of trying to answer a question that I am routinely asked. It turned out to be the #2 post of the year. Maybe I'll try to answer a few more questions about bicycling... Does anyone have any? The more blunt and honest, the better. (E.g. Why are bicyclists so smug? Do bicyclists realize that they literally stink? Etc.)


23. The Last Holidazzle

I dunno. I have a soft spot in my heart for the snowman + C.D. Friedrich image. It's so sad and beautiful.

[Despite everything, still shoveling sidewalks...]