Sidewalk Games #24: Hide-and-Seek Piece

[A Fluxus work.]

Minneapolis in 1986 Revisited

[See also, Saint Paul in 1989 Revisited.]

Straight from the University of Minnesota's Urban Studies office, here's a poster put together by the late City Council member Brian Coyle.

Like the Saint Paul small business example, the poster fascinates. For one thing, there's all the old logos! So many old 70s and 80s graphic design greatest hits appear here. The other thing, of course, is how certain narratives about economic subsidy, government priorities, and economic development strategies never disappear. For his day, Coyle was clearly a more radical voice in Minneapolis City Hall, a former member of SDS and someone who worked to oppose the urban growth coalition that was influencing many of the city decisions during the boom-times of the 1980s. (By contrast, during this time R.T. Rybak was a Star Tribune reporter, then a PR guy for the Downtown Council.)

Check out the "Oligopoly" game in all its glory, and then compare with the headlines and debates in Minneapolis today.

[Clockwise from the top left.]

The Metrodome was built in 1982 and was torn down two years ago in favor of the Vikings stadium. All things considered, the Metrodome was one of the most efficient and taxpayer-friendly stadium projects in the American history. The current occupant of that space, on the other hand... I am confident that that "deal" will go down as one of the worst ever agreed to by American state and local governments.

I don't know what "Cockroach Corners" refers to, but I'd like to find out someday. City Venture refers to a successful fight against a proposed industrial/commercial park that would have been tied to the Metrodome construction.

Control Data, of course, no longer exists. And to this day, Elliot Park is one the city's remaining affordable neighborhoods in a central location.

Coyle was really into tenant organizing, an issue that, in today's tight market, is probably far more important than it was in the 1980s. The building on 18th and Elliot, right next to the I-94 freeway, seems to still be there.

I am not sure what the Cedar-Riverside issue might have been, but many of those buildings were recently remodeled and will serve at least one more generation of Minneapolis' lower-income citizens.

I don't know what the "Stevens Square" tile refers to, or who Jim Larson might be.

Maryland House?

Certainly, however, there is still displacement occurring in this area. See this nearby example.

Update: See the comment from Ethan, a reader who used to live in Stevens Square:

A lot of the apartment buildings in Stevens Square were remodeled in the early '80s through a partnership by Jim Larson and General Mills, which was testing if it could make money through urban renewal. (Turns out they couldn't, and they lost a ton of money.) That venture eventually became Stevens Community Associates, one of the biggest landlords in the neighborhood.

Boisclair is an urban development corporation that put together Riverplace, the quick-failing downtown mall that occupies the oldest street in Minneapolis, a key part of old St. Anthony Main Street. All things considered, the project wasn't a total bust, and managed to help stabilize a bunch of historic buildings. The movie theater is even somehow still in business!

Calhoun Square is an urban mall that dates to 1983. It still exists though whether or not it is "thriving" seems a more difficult question to answer.

City Center was a 1983 downtown mall and office complex that has likely had more of a negative than a positive economic effect on downtown Minneapolis, though that is certainly debatable. Today the buidling is being remodeled again -- a process that has taken years -- but it still has one of the least inviting street facades in all of Minneapolis, and that is saying something!

Donaldson's was a department store that burned down in Thanksgiving 1982.

The Hennepin Hyatt is still in business and still one of the key hotels and convention complexes in downtown Minneapolis. The next-door "Loring Greenway" project dates to this era too. Together these projects had a huge impact on Hennepin Avenue.

Here's a rough diagram of the city that includes many of the corporate logos from the mid-80s. For me, one useful lesson of a document like this is that mergers and consolidation are one inevitable trend of the modern corporate economic structure. These kinds of Wall Street induced deals mean that business subsidization takes place on a "winner-take-all" landscape. As companies merge, they will inevitably concentrate in fewer and fewer cities. In the end, that will leave mid-size metros like the Twin Cities more likely to lose out.

What are the policy lessons we might draw from that? I would love to do additional research to figure out exactly how many of these projects received tax subsidy, and how large those subsidies were. I suspect that, given that they made Coyle's black list here, all of them were taxpayer funded.

Read more about Brian Coyle here. Today a rec center behind the Cedar-Riverside towers bears his name. It offers a great view of the Vikings stadium.

Sidewalk Games #23: Street Cleaning Event

Performers are dressed in white coats like laboratory technicians. They go to a
selected location in the city. An area of a sidewalk is designated for the event. This
area of sidewalk is cleaned very thoroughly with various devices not usually used in
street cleaning, such as: dental tools, toothbrushes, steel wool, cotton balls with
alcohol, cotton swabs, surgeon's sponges, tooth picks, linen napkins, etc.

[Unknown Fluxus.]

[Street cleaners. John Houghton Hague, 1870s]

Sidewalk Games #22: Wind Water

Outdoors, toss the water into any wind at hand.
Trace a ripple in the page’s grit.
Smear each eyelid with a pinch of silt.

[from Aaron Anstett's Spell, published in Revolver.]

[Chicago's famous fountain.]

Sidewalk Games #21: Pinball

The city is a pinball machine. You are the ball.

How many points can you score?

Sidewalk Games #20: Infinite Loop

Instructions: Find a set of buildings that are attached through a tunnel or skyway, but also have a crosswalk stretching between them.

Step 1: Gather enough people.

Step 2: Begin crossing the street.

Step 3: Never stop crossing the street.

Sidewalk Games #19: Solo ‘Splorin’ Exercises

You are Cupid. Match people in the streets.

You are a diver. Explore the city as if it were underwater.

You are a mist. Drift through the city.

You are a fox in human skin.

You are dead and gone to heaven/hell.

[fm. Mythogeography.]

Sidewalk Game #18: Precipce Bouldering

Attempt to traverse an impassable ice puddle without getting your shoes wet.

Fail.

Try again by bouldering along the freeway sound wall.

[It can't be done.]

Sidewalk Games #17: Iceshelf Calving

Crack and calve ice shelves that form along edges of snowbanks in early Spring. With each calving incident, a chunk will break off while making a dark hollow crack.

Points are given for size of the ice piece, and for depth of tone.

[An impending calving incident.]

Sidewalk Games #16: Mortal Plummet

Pretend you are an old person, who can barely keep their balance. As you walk through your city on the icy winter sidewalks, imagine yourself falling.

1 point for every time you fall.
2 points for every time you acquire an imaginary black and purple bruise that takes three weeks to heal.
5 points for every time you break your hip.
10 points for every time you die from your icy plummet.

[An ice covered sidewalk in St Paul's West Side.]

Sidewalk Games #15: Moving Pictures

In your head re-shoot movie scenes using your own city as location. Let your memory of movie landscapes bathe the places you pass through. Hum a soundtrack.

[fm Mythogeography.]

[Cindy Sherman. Untitled film stills.]

 

Sidewalk Game #14: Marathon Tag

Play tag. One player is "it" until he or she tags someone else in the game. 

Continue for 23 years.

 

Sidewalk Game #13: The Address Book

Find someone's address book on the ground. (Today, it would probably be a cell phone.) Instead of returning it, get all the contact information and arrange to meet the people listed one by one, to interrogate them about the owner of the book.

Just like this:

“Thus, I will get to know this man through his friends and acquaintances,” she wrote in her first column for the paper. “I will try to discover who he is without ever meeting him, and I will try to produce a portrait of him over an undetermined length of time that will depend on the willingness of his friends to talk about him—and on the turns taken by the events.”

Keep a detailed account of your encounters. Wait until the owner of the book (or phone) dies, and then publish your account.

Sidewalk Game #12: Invasion!

The city is under occupation by intelligent microbes, Martian bodysnatchers, mind control rays – you can’t tell the resisters from the wholly invaded. Do not attract attention to yourself. Choose routes where the least number of people will see you. Use alleys and back paths. Walk calmly through crowds. Show no emotion. Ignore commodities. Hide your hunger.

[fm. Mythogeography.] 

Sidewalk Game #11: Gum Galaxy

Where the pavements are covered, like a rash, in chewing gum, use chalk to draw lines to connect the pieces of gum in stellar constellations. Name then in Latin (if you don’t know any Latin make it up).

[fm. Mythogeography.]

[Ben Wilson's sidewalk gum art.]

Sidewalk Game #10: Gravestone Collaboration

Walk through a graveyard, meting the people beneath the stones. I did a project with a photographer in which I wrote alternative stories, two apiece, for every suggestive gravestone he had photographed. Collaborate.

[Rosellen Brown, from Writers on Writing.]

 

Sidewalk Game #9: Write on Wall

Find or create a chalk graffito and curate it for 10 years, re-chalking it from memory after rainfall. Photograph it regularly.

[from Mythogeography.]

Sidewalk Game #8

Draw a straight line and follow it.

[La Monte Young, Fluxus Composition #10 to Bob Morris.]

[Composition 1961.]

Sidewalk Game #7: Stalking

Action: Identify a person to be followed. Follow them; but do not in any way menace them. rather, give up your initiative to them. Never make yourself known or allow yourself to be noticed by them. If you sense that they have become aware of you, cease the stalking immediately.

If your first target disappears, then find a second and follow them.

Spend at least half a day on this, preferably longer. Commit yourself to take buses, trains, etc. whatever is necessary in order to follow your ‘target.’

Real, oppressive stalking is fueled by an intense obsession; here there is no obsession, there is only submission to the other. This should dissipate any intensity. This liberation is what you should aim to express.

[fm. Mythogeography.]

Sidewalk Game #6: 300 Things

Step out onto the Planet
Draw a Circle 100 feet round

Inside the circle are 300 things
nobody understands and,
maybe, nobody’s ever seen.

How many can you find?

[fm. Lew Welch – in The Windhorse Review]