Public Character #4: Update on the Parking Lot Tree

Dogged readers of this site might remember Judith, the woman who pruned the tree in the surface parking lot in Lowertown just because she liked it.

Here's what she told me last August, as the trimmed the branches:

I'm just trying to make sure the parking lot is happy, otherwise they'll cut down this tree. This is one of the the last two trees we have. When they re-built the Union Depot we lost about eight trees. Now there are only these two.

Well, a little over a year later, the tree has been chopped down. The parking lot is being developed, at long last, though I can't find an article about the proposal. And while I'm happy to see the death of another Saint Paul surface lot, it's worth pausing and remembering the plants that somehow survived in the asphalt landscape.

R.I.P., parking lot tree.

[The tree today.]

Public Character #4: Judith, who trims the tree in the parking lot in the hopes that it won't bother anyone

The social structure of sidewalk life hangs partly on what can be called self-appointed public characters. A public character is anyone who is in frequent contact with a wide circle of people and who is sufficiently interested to make himself a public character. A public character need have no special talents or wisdom to full his function --although he often does. He just needs to be present, and there need to be enough of his counterparts. his main qualification is that he is public, that he talks to lots of different people.

-Jane Jacobs, "The Uses of Sidewalks: Contact."

[Judith trimming the mystery tree.]

If I hadn't gotten a flat tire, I wouldn't have noticed Judith working in the parking lot. But my rear tube was flat and sat down on the low concrete wall to change my tire, and as I pumped I watched her work.

She was alone, snipping away at the branches of a tree that had somehow grown to middling size on the edge of the lot.

"I'm just trying to make sure the parking lot is happy, otherwise they'll cut down this tree," Judith told me.

"This is one of the the last two trees we have," she said. "When they re-built the Union Depot we lost about eight trees. Now there are only these two," she said, referring to the two trees somehow growing out of cracks in the fence. Each was about 30' tall, and we didn't know what species either of them were.

"Is that an elm?" I asked.

"Yeah maybe but it has this weeping quality with the branches," Judith replied. "I don't know, a Chinese elm?"

Judith lives in one of the  buildings nearby, and is a neighborhood cultivator of the volunteer'd trees and shrubs that somehow grow between the alleyway cracks.

[The lot owner.]

While were were chatting I noticed that a guy in a white car had driven up, and was removing the money from the parking kiosk. This particular surface lot is notoriously unkempt, its sidewalks getting icy in the wintertime. The guy didn't seem interested in what we were doing, and I was struck by the contrast between his uncare and Judith's volunteered fervor.

"Do you want a hand with that?" I asked, after fixing my flat, referring to the giant pile of limbs that Judith had gathered on the asphalt.

"No, I think I can drag it pretty easily," she said.

And she did.

[The limbs dragged pretty easily. "Now what do I do with them," she asked herself.]

In Praise of Street Trees

Extreme heat brings out a new side to the city. In the heat, you are alive to the dynamics of inside and outside, movement and rest, invisible or irrelevant most of the time. Walks become longer. Clothes become shorter, their lifespans also abbreviated.

For some, the city seals up. Our bodies acclimatize to cool interiors, windows seal, shades are drawn. Cars are air bubbles traveling through space.

Mostly we squint at the outside world, peering through venetian blinds at the harsh glare.

But to step out into the hot city and run or walk or ride through the air seems alien. Why would you go out there? Like stepping foot on Mars.

And it is. Walking the hot summer city can be arduous. The variables are relatively simple: most movement produces sweat; a breeze evaporates your skin and cools your body; and most of all, a small patch of shade can make all the difference in the world. Walking the hot city is seeking the right mix, the perfect spot out of the sun and in the right wind.

And that's where trees come in. A well treelined street is a balm on a hot summer day. A treeless street is brutal.

Riding a bicycle along the roadway, I find myself stopping in the small patches of shade. I wait for the light to change while clinging to the tree shadow like a life preserver.

When else do you notice the precise line where shade begins?  In the heat, trees are alive in a new way. You feel them soaking up the sun, the shadow on your skin. They are tall green parasols that we all can share.

Let us all praise famous trees.