My Study on Public Space in the Rondo Neighborhood is Now Available

By now, you might have heard of the Rondo land bridge project, the efforts by people in Saint Paul's historic Rondo community to build political momentum, and raise funds, for a one-mile-long "freeway cap" over I-94 in the central part of Saint Paul.

Thanks to a grant from the Knight Foundation, I was able to put together a study of how the I-94 freeway has affected public space in the Rondo Community, and how a land bridge might change the neighborhood. It took me quite a long time to gather historical information, present-day quantitative data about things like noise and air pollution, and to write up the report, but I finally am able to share it with you. I'm happy with how it turned out.

The report has dozens of historic and present-day photos of public space in the Rondo community, some analysis of what public space is and why it's important, lots of historic info about the neighborhood, and some thoughts and data points about how public space might be impacted with any future changes to the freeway.

I'm excerpting the introduction, and you can download the entire thing at the link below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qXnJM-7I76y1SwHqVIPQ6MQty7-CpMky/view?usp=sharing

[Introduction follows.]

Chapter 1: Introduction 

Who’s street?  

On the evening of Friday June 17th, 2017, a group of people gathered at the edge of Saint Paul’s historic Rondo Avenue neighborhood made a collective decision that challenged social assumptions about public space in Saint Paul. Protesting the police shooting of Saint Paul resident and school worker Philando Castile, a group of demonstrators marched down the Dale Street onramp and onto the Interstate 94 right-of-way, “blocking” the movement of cars traveling through Saint Paul’s Rondo neighborhood for a few hours.  

In a bit of tragic irony, the controversial demonstration on the freeway that evening took place on precisely the land that was once old Rondo Avenue, the diverse heart of Saint Paul’s African-American neighborhood. Decades prior to that night, the contested ground for the demonstration was literally seized for “public purposes” during the freeway construction era of the 1950s and 1960s, when thousands of people were forcibly removed from their homes and businesses in the heart of Saint Paul.  

Apart from raising awareness about systemic police brutality, the demonstration, which led to a police stand-off and criminal charges that were later dismissed, illuminated key questions about the relationship between free- ways and public space:  

What exactly is the difference between a public sidewalk, a public street and a public freeway? Do governments and public institutions have responsibility to redress the wrongs of the past?  

These questions lie at the heart of the issue of public space in the United States. Everywhere in American cities, freeways have blended into the background of everyday life. These infrastructures allow thousands of cars to speed past the homes, businesses, walls, and trees of historic urban communities. The effects of the freeway blur into a vague urban landscape. For many people, these massive pieces of public infrastructure become almost invisible, the sounds of the cars almost inaudible, the speeding traffic to and from the freeway ramps almost insensible. And yet the presence of freeways, frontage roads, noise walls, pedestrian bridges, on- and off-ramps, and tens of thousands of cars that rely on them, continue to make a material difference in the lives of people who live near them every day.  

As always in urban life, individual and collective well-being rely on quality public spaces for sociality, mobility, and recreation. In an era when governments are beginning to examine freeway infrastructure more closely, look- ing at impacts on public space should be an important step in the process of reconsidering and rethinking the historical and present-day relationship between freeways and nearby communities.  

This study uses public space as a lens to think about the past, present, and possible future relationship between freeway infrastructure and public space. As government and institutions weigh the costs and benefits of potential changes to freeways for future generations of city dwellers, it is important to consider how changes might impact the parks, playgrounds, streets, and sidewalks on which communities rely. The focus here is on describing the importance of public space for a community, examining narrowly the 1.25 square mile historic Rondo community surrounding the Interstate 94 corridor in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The goal of the study is to look at the size and quality of public space within the study area, both before and after the construction of the freeway that dramatically and irrevocably transformed the neighborhood over 50 years ago.  

Chapter 2 describes the overall purpose and methodological approach. This part of the study focuses on key reasons why public space is important for neighborhoods, outlining the connection between quality public space and physical, mental, and social health. Secondly, this chapter describes the mixed qualitative and quantitative methods that are used in this study to examine public space, both in the past and in the present-day.  

Chapter 3 describes in general terms how this study defines public space. Here it describes the typology of categories, the difference between formal and informal public spaces, and the fundamental role that streets and sidewalks play in the landscape of public space for an urban neighborhood like Rondo.  

Chapter 4 looks specifically at the historic landscape of the Rondo Community Study Area (RCSA), how public space might have existed before the freeway construction period radically transformed the neighborhood. Drawing on historic documents and accounts, this part of the report describes the different types of public space that might have existed in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Much of this public space landscape was informal in nature and, in many cases, relied on bottom-up institutions such as social clubs, businesses, or individuals to fill important roles in the community. Meanwhile, streets and sidewalks were largely oriented towards local uses, as opposed to regional users and traffic patterns that emerged after the freeway was built.  

Chapter 5 examines the neighborhood’s public spaces in the present day, specifically focusing on size, type, and some specific measurable qualities. These include noise pollution, air pollution, and a basic proxy for safety and comfort along the street and sidewalks within the area.  

Finally, Chapter 6 offers a few conclusions based on potential changes to the freeway infrastructure. Here, the study attempts to think about how changes to the 94 freeway corridor might affect public spaces in the future, largely in positive ways.  

The goal of this report is to focus closely on the role that public space plays for the health and well-being of a community. Specifically, this study tries to look at the how construction of the I-94 freeway system and related changes that occurred during the construction years impacted everyday public spaces. Using public space as lens, it is compelling to think about the past, present, and future of public space, and the history of stability and change in the historic Rondo Community. Hopefully this report is the beginning of a larger conversation around the relationship between urban communities, historical inequity, and publicly-owned freeway infrastructure. No matter what happens next, no matter the future of the historic Rondo community and the freeway that divides it, public space will play a critical role. 

I hope you enjoy the full report.

Is It OK to Protest on a Freeway?

The I-94 Demonstration.

The last weeks have seen two high-profile freeway protests, the first on Saturday night on I-94 and the second Wednesday morning on I-35W.

This article is not about whether these are smart political tactics, or about the violence that took place during the I-94 demonstration. To me, debates about what happened, who is at fault, and the nature of the charges are a separate issue from the question I want to focus on here.

Rather, here's the rub of this article: Is there a difference between a civil disobedience demonstration on a city street (e.g., Summit Avenue, Plymouth Avenue, or downtown), a light rail station (e.g., the Green Line at Snelling and University), and a freeway like I-94? Are they the same thing or are they different?

"Taking it To the Street"

Protests on Minneapolis' Washington Avenue in 1972

First off, all these examples are equal in one sense because, technically, all roads are public space. (Exceptions for gated communities such as North Oaks, with private roads, prove the rule.) So the right of the public to use these taxpayer-funded government-owned spaces should be relatively equal.

And in another sense, all these cases are equal because they're all equally prohibited. Technically speaking, any gathering or demonstration that blocks a road is illegal. This is true for sidewalks, streets, light rail tracks, and freeways, all of which have ordinances or laws protecting their mobility function. For example, the Minneapolis city code says this (385.65) [emphasis mine]:

No person, in any public or private place, shall use offensive, obscene or abusive language, or grab, follow or engage in conduct which reasonably tends to arouse alarm or anger in others, or walk, stand, sit, lie, or place an object in such a manner as to block passage by another person or a vehicle.

Light rail tracks and city streets in general have the same rules prohibiting people from blocking traffic flow. So a demonstration is illegal in all these situations.

(For more on public space and protest, check out the streets.mn podcast conversation with Dr. Nathan Clough.)

The I-94 demonstration.

Is a Freeway Different?

The press conference after the late-night demonstrations on I-94 featured the Mayor of Saint Paul, the Police Chief, and Colonel Matt Langer of the Minnesota State Patrol describing what happened. Here's the quote:

There are many places people can gather to exercise their first amendment rights, but the freeway is not one of those places. Closing freeways endangers the people that are on the freeway, endangers the motoring public, prevents emergency services from occurring and prevents people from doing their jobs and taking care of business in the state of Minnesota by those freeways being closed. Being on the freeway is illegal. It’s illegal always to be there on foot including these protest events. We do our best to prevent these protests from being on the freeway and most of the time we are successful in working with these groups and preventing and keeping that from occurring.

As you can see, Colonel Langer focuses on two things in his argument against freeway demonstrations: safety and economics.

Let's take safety first. Technically speaking, the main difference between a freeway and other types of roads revolves around speed and access. Freeways have much higher speeds and far more limited access than other roads, or even light rail tracks.

But what if you could make freeway protests safe for both the drivers and demonstrators?

While stopping at the Governor’s mansion demonstration the other day, I spoke with one person who was working with the Black Lives Matter demonstrators at the beginning of the protest. Her job was to drive a car at a specific time down I-94, and to slow down in tandem with other demonstrators in other lanes. The plan was to reduce speeds slowly over time on the freeway while not allowing cars to pass. The goal was to make space for demonstrators to safely get onto the road.

To me, it sounded difficult. And according to the woman I spoke with, her Westbound contingent of volunteers had difficulty keeping their line in tact. (Eastbound volunteers managed to pull it off.)  But what was interesting was that the demonstrators had planned ahead, thinking about the safety concerns about demonstrating on a freeway.

If you take the safety issue out of the picture, the argument against protesting on a freeway rests on economic impact. At that level, it seems little different than the argument against protesting in any of the other contested sites that we have seen over the past year or two. The arguments used by Colonel Langer seem a lot like the ones used by the Bloomington prosecutor at the Mall of America: demonstrations are illegal and the disrupt the economy. (You could say the same thing about the demonstrations at the State Fair or the airport.)

And in both cases, it seems the prosecutors are trying to discourage demonstrations in these spaces by throwing the book at activists.

Who is the Audience for a Demonstration?

Demonstrators on Summit Avenue in Saint Paul, the Governor's Mansion in the background.

Last week, I found myself with a flat tire on my bicycle, needing to get back to Saint Paul from downtown Minneapolis. Glancing at Twitter, I saw that the Green Line had been shut down by a demonstration march in Saint Paul in support of Philando Castile, and decided to take the #3 bus (my old friend) instead.

While riding the bus, there were two young black men sitting up at the front, talking with the bus driver. It turned out that they were trying to get to the demonstration, but because the Green Line was shut down, they couldn’t get there. The bus driver gave them directions to get to the #16, but I don’t think they ever made it in time. (The bus is slow, after all!) Still, it seemed to me to be a tragic irony.

To me, the main difference between demonstrating on a freeway and demonstrating on a street like Summit Avenue is a matter of degree, not of kind. By moving on to a freeway, the scale and stakes of a demonstration are raised. Instead of primarily affecting people in the central cities, you’re primarily affecting people in the suburbs.

Civil disobedience is always breaking a rule, whether it’s “whites only” or “no stopping on the street.” I-94 between the downtowns carries 200,000 cars a day and is the most heavily used part of our road system. If the goal is to raise awareness of an issue, by changing the geography of the demonstration from a local street to a freeway, you’re turning up the volume so that everyone in the entire Twin Cities has to pay attention, for better or worse.

The violence, tear gas, and concrete-throwing are one thing. What happened on I-94 was unfortunate and I wish it could have been prevented. (The 35W demonstration seemed entirely peaceful by contrast.) But the point I want to make here is that whether or not people have a right to demonstrate on the road has little do with what kind of road it is. A freeway is not a special place where, as Colonel Langer seems to suggest, your "civil rights disappear." It's just a road with higher speeds, wider lanes, reduced access, and a special state-wide police force. And just as much as any other street, it’s still a public space.

Union Depot, Public Space Petri Dish, Still Waiting on Actual Trains

[Obama speaking at the SPUD in 2014.]

At this very moment, Vice-President Joe Biden is in downtown Saint Paul to tout the long-term effects of President Obama’s 2009 stimulus and infrastructure spending.

Fittingly, he’s appearing at the Saint Paul Union Depot, the 1920s train station that was remodeled as part of the stimulus package, receiving over $200M of Federal money for a thorough and gorgeous remodeling. The Union Depot, or SPUD, has been the site of a bunch of similar political events, from Obama’s 2014 appearance to the Saint Paul Riverfront Corporation dinner that same year. Like a lot of downtown Saint Paul, it makes for a picturesque, if misleading, urban backdrop.

Because there’s only one problem: the Saint Paul Union Depot is a train station without any trains.

To this day there’s one train in each direction that actually stops at the depot, and there’s little hope of that changing any time soon. When Obama came into office, he introduced an ambitions plan for national network of “high-speed rail” that would, it was hoped, finally start bringing the US passenger rail network into the 19th century.

Because trains make such easy scapegoats, building inter-city rail is one of the most difficult of the political Herculean feats. The election of Scott Walker in neighboring Wisconsin almost single-handedly derailed plans to bring more trains to Saint Paul, and he's still thriving despite falling flat on his face in the presidential race.

Other transit or rail projects that might connect to the SPUD aren't faring much better. Not much is gonna be changing anytime soon.

So despite all appearances, the SPUD isn’t much of a train station. In fact, I'd make you a bet that one of the most frequently used transit vehicles there is the Mystic Lake Casino bus, which is free, by the way, though I am told that visiting casinos might impose hidden costs. (I am half-kidding; Jefferson Lines’ buses actually make good use of the station, though they are also not trains.)

So if the SPUD isn’t a train station, what is it?

Here are a few answers, and a few ideas.

[Most of the time the $250M SPUD is really, really empty.]

1. A Public Space / Refuge from the Cold

[One of the few places Downtown open at to the public at 5am.]

It turns out, that the massive polished marble spaces of the SPUD have become something of a public space experiment lab, filled with art, a variety of kiosks, and a whole bunch of moveable furniture that are constantly moving around the massive rooms like Tetris blocks, arranging and re-arranging themselves into constellations that open up and close down the surrounding spaces like blooming flowers.

Here’s an example. The other night, just this week, I stopped by SPUD to use the bathroom. For some reason, there was as new spatial arrangement. Half the waiting room furniture had been moved into the “hallway” area between the entry way and the main waiting room. And just about every bench was occupied.

Meanwhile, the rest of the movable furniture, instead of being clustered together (as per usual) had been separated almost equidistantly through the cavernous space. And just like the hallway benches, almost every seat in the room was occupied. And almost every occupant was a person of color.

Apart from the fact that it's literally someone's job to re-arrange the deckchairs in this massive room, it was interesting to see the relationship between space, furniture, and social relationships play out before you. It offered quite a change from the usual empty room.

(It’s also worth noting that SPUD is one of those places that the “mallwalkers” seem to like. During the workday you get all kinds of office types emerging from the skyways to do laps around the massive marble floors of the waiting room.)

[Hallway benches occupied on a February night.]

[Furniture spread to maximize distance.]

2. A Public Art Gallery

[A lot of lite brite.]

The SPUD is full of public art, including the largest lite-brite display in the world, a cool “radio” step kiosk in the far corner, some awesome ceiling installations, and a kiosk tribute to the Avidors (who live upstairs).

There’s also a healthy dose of place-making in the SPUD, including the ever-popular acoustic ping pong table.

I think there’s room for more, most especially in the still-vacant outdoor “driveway” space between the SPUD steps and the light rail station. It’s sort of fascinating to watch these pieces attract or be ignored by different audiences at different times. This is what public art is supposed to look like.

[Ray King's "twin waves" sculpture.]

[Daily tous les jours' AIR installation.]

3. An Event Space
 
Lots of events happen here, and for the most part it works out just fine, though when the once-a-day Amtrak train actually does arrive (often belatedly) it can be amusing to watch the actual (sleepy, smelly) train passengers bewilderingly interact with a wedding or corporate shindig or what-have-you.

But anyway, it's a nice place for a banquet or a massive all-night art festival.

[Set up for a banquet.]

[Northern Spark festival.]

So that's OK, but it still seems like you're not getting all your "bang for the buck" with a quarter-billion. So what else could it be?

1. A River Connection

For one thing, it could be a connection to the riverfront. The city has ambitious plans to build a “river balcony” that would connect Lowertown and downtown to the river along an elevated walkway path that would enter seamlessly into the depot. Saint Paul has huge problems connecting to the river, which offers so much potential, thanks mostly to the (largely unnecessary) half-assed freeway running alongside the waterfront.

The Depot is the only building that bridges the train tracks, and if done carefully, could connect downtown to the river and activate the SPUD space at the same time. Optimistically, this could happen quite soon, if some funding is put together.

[Plans have changed since this model was built; the balcony would likely enter the side of the SPUD.]

2. A bike shop

Well over five years after it was supposed to happen, this is actually happening. See the recent article in the PiPress:

The Lowertown Bike Shop has signed a 10-year lease for both the Depot’s large basement space, as well a retail space on the Depot’s main floor. The shop likely will open at the new location in late April.

The Depot’s space is three times larger than the bike shop’s current space in the Jax Building across the street at 253 Fourth Street East.

“Being part of a transportation hub allows people to find us a lot easier,” said Crystal Sursely, operations manager for the non-profit shop. “We are beyond capacity with storage. It will let us carry a lot more and branch out into apparel, which is big.”

[Bike mechanics forced to pretend they're excited.]

3. An Actual Train Station

Maybe someday if we get the second daily Amtrak train, Scott Walker retires, funding for commuter rail plans materialize, or some other act of political divine intervention, this will be a real train station with more than one train a day.

At any rate, VP Biden, himself a big fan of Amtrak, might be stretching the truth a bit today when he talks about the successful transformation of the depot into a train station. I’m sure there were better ways to spend $240M on Twin Cities' transportation than fixing up this building.

But an earmark is an earmark, and it’s an amazing building, a priceless legacy that will anchor Saint Paul’s "railroad future" (whatever that means) for generations. The hard work is still ahead of us, but fixing up and rehabbing the SPUD was never going to get any cheaper, and these days it’s interesting to watch it evolve into a vital downtown public space.

In the mean time, the juxtaposition of refuge for the city's poorest people, transit station, restaurant, exercise room for office workers, and stage for political events makes for some fascinating public space people watching.  Don't forget to try the ping pong.

[I don't follow instructions well.]

[Empty benches, polished floor.]

[Train station, shmainstation. This is a great ping-pong table.]

Freeways Are Public Space Too

[Freeway in LA.]

It’s not every day you see hundreds of people walking down Interstate 35W. But last week it happened, and the recent nationwide trend toward protesting on our roads is a sign that we’re beginning to rethink the politics of roads. We’re beginning to see them as public space.


Cities + Politics = Public Space

There’s been a lot of ink spewed over the years about urban design and civil society. A lot of it is semi-naive idealism about New England town hall meetings, or often problematic notions about what is and is not “social capitol.” Talking about the public sphere remains a delicate subject that can sometimes contain problematic notions about what constitutes proper citizenship.

That said, there are certainly lots of ways we can designs cities that improve our political discussions. In lots of ways, protests and public space are the foundation of politics. They can bring people together in ways that are often problematic for profit-driven media. That’s why we need our streets to be places where society comes together.

[Saint Paul's streets during the 2008 RNC.]

But it’s very hard to do well. For example, earlier on this site I’ve written about three of my favorite moments in Twin Cities’ protest history, times when the dynamics of public space were thrown into sharp relief. The first was the University of Minnesota student protests in 1972, where students shut down busy Washington Avenue for over a day in order to protest the Vietnam War and the draft.

The second was during Saint Paul's Republic National Convention in 2008, where the police and the national security apparatus took over the public spaces downtown and completely re-made them with fences and checkpoints in order to ward off protest and free speech. To me, these two examples show extreme lengths to which the state can go to foreclose expression in advance in the 21st century.



Occupy What?

[The OccupyMN camp in 2011.]

The most interesting Minneapolis public space moment in my memory, though, has to be the OccupyMN encampment back in 2011. People created a fascinating public space in a spot in downtown Minneapolis, right between the county government center and city hall, that I had thought to be lacking possibilities.

At the time, I wrote that the occupy encampment was easily marginalized simply because of the architecture and urban design of downtown Minneapolis:

Once the workers are gone, there’s no actual “public.” You’re surrounded by terrible architecture, each 80s and 90s office tower blander than the last. The parts of the city that actually have people in them are all at least a half a mile away, over by the stadia and restaurants and clubs and theaters and neighborhoods. The occupiers are easily ignored by almost everyone, which is probably one of the reasons why they’re tolerated (so far) by those in power.

In other words, we’re dealing with the age-old question: if a protest falls in a forest, but nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

As my friend Nathan has argued, protests invariably push the boundaries of what our public spaces can become, activating the edges of social convention and power. During a protest, police power becomes terribly visible. But it's easy to forget that these kinds of power are at work the rest of the time, too. Moments of exception, where a park or a street or a sidewalk becomes contested, demonstrate the always social nature of the city. What a park can become, or how a street behaves, are always open questions rarely asked outside or extreme circumstances.


Freeways as Public Space

That’s why it’s fascinating that the recent protests around police brutality have taken to the nation’s freeway system. It reminds me of the protest movement in Bolivia (that I read about years ago), where indigenous activists shut down all the freeways into and out of the city and effectively blockaded La Paz until their demands were met (starting a movement that elected Leftist president Evo Morales).

Unlike the OccupyMN encampment, a protest on a freeway is impossible to ignore, and reveals in an instant how central these massive segregating technologies have become to our cities and society. While these protests weren’t explicitly about automobility or urban design per se, there has been a lot written about the way that structural racism and urban form shape each other.

In short, freeways are not a neutral technology. They empower particular people in particular ways, allowing those with access to cars and suburban privilege the ability to quickly move through the city. Freeways allow us to separate ourselves from the social obligations that come with propinquity. A road like Interstate 35W might seem "natural," but history has shown that they are not, that freeway construction was a massively destructive force aimed at a particular way of urban life that many people of color relied on. Today and every day, freeways remain barriers dividing our cities poorest neighborhoods, and making streets unsafe by privileging the inherently violent technology of the automobile.


Alien Encounter


That’s why I’m glad that protest movements around race and justice have found the interstate onramp. Outside of airports, prisons, or military bases, there’s no more tightly controlled space in our cities today. Freeways are designed, regulated, and policed in order to allow only one kind of behavior (speeding cars) and to make all other kinds of social interaction impossible.

I can only imagine how alien it must feel to walk down Interstate 35W in the middle of the day. Once you get on the inhuman thing, you must walk a mile and half before you can return to the city streets. It’s no wonder that these kinds of moments are so rare.

But should these moments be exceptional? Should freeways be part of the discussions about public space and cities, and what kind of social environment we want to inhabit?

No matter how you feel about shutting down the freeway (and some people objected), the fact that last week’s protests began raising the question of freeways as public space is a watershed that reminds me of the Vietnam War contestations before I was born. I’ll be following the movement closely. The next time hundreds of people end up walking down a freeway to prove a point, I hope I can be there with them.

Twin City Public Character #2: Arjo Adams, a farm boy who likes welding and custodian of the late East Side People's Park

ACT ONE SCENE ONE

[A sunny day on the East Side of Saint Paul, at the end of a bunch of dead end streets. Young men wit out on a porch along the avenue, watching as TWIN CITY SIDEWALKS (TCS) walks up to a house plastered in “condemned” signs. TCS walks into the yard and finds an open door, knocks a few times. The door inside is slightly ajar. 

ARJO ADAMS (AA), a man with short cropped grey hair and a moustache comes to the screen door, cigarette dangling from his fingers. Exchanging greetings and introductions, AA leads TCS inside to a cozy living room, a television is flickering light onto some worn furniture.]  

TCS: Will you just tell me about your park?

AA: Truthfully it’s not mine. I started building it I guess thirteen fourteen fifteen years ago. I started because there used to be a lot of houses here on the East Side, down in this part of the hollow. They stretched all the way from Payne to Arcade, just three feet apart.

And then a few years back around 2000 or so the city decided, actually the School Board, they’re gonna rehab this Johnson Elementary school up here, a very progressive school… And for some reason the School Board and city got together and they wanted to tear all these houses down they got down here. They tore em down in just thirty days, really quick, and left all the rubble. And I just started bringing all the rubble over here and stacking rocks, and I dunno you stack a few rocks every day and before long you get a cliff ninety feet high and a couple blocks long.

TCS: So that’s how it started?

AA: That’s how it started.

TCS: Then what?

AA: Well, not too much. We started to have a situation here because of this house being kind of on the side of a cliff here, we started…

TCS: [Noticing that AA’s cigarette ash was dangling perilously above his his pants] You might want to move your ash tray…

[TCS reaches over and brings the ashtray closer to AA, still sitting in his weathered armchair]

You got that?

AA: [trimming his cigarette] I was saying that this house started to slide down the hill a little bit, so I wrote a letter to the city saying, “we gotta do something about your hill.” And we got into a little about retaining walls, and they send me a letter that said that if I want to build a retaining wall I could, but that would be the only way they’d agree to anything. And if they built it they’re gonna charge me like seventeen hundred dollars.

And I said, “it’s your fault!”

And they said, “we don’t care.”  [laughs] Basically.

And then so I did. I built this retaining all a few things and for a better part of thirteen fourteen fifteen years here nobody said a damn thing. And then one day it caught fire here, it just kinda roared through me before I knew what was happening they said I was bad and evil and they boarded up my house. They said this was a condemned house. You’re sitting here right now buddy. Do you think it’s condemned?

TCS: This reminds me of where I used to live over in the North End by Rice Street.

AA: Was it condemned?

TCS: No. I didn’t piss anyone off, I guess.

AA: That’s basically what happened. People look at the list of things that was on there, it was crazy by the city. They said, “who’d you piss off?”

Truth of the matter is they went to extremes beyond absolute imagination, they wrote down things for this house that were just unbelievable. They said I had to change out my waste and overflows for my bathtub because uh, they didn’t tell me a reason why. I finally got an independent guy to come in here… it cost three hundred fifty bucks… DSI [Department of Safety and Inspections] wouldn’t do it, but this independent guy comes in and says you don’t need to have your waste and overflows put in, you just need to buy a cork. [laughs] A cork, just a cork for the damn plug, because they didn’t have corks any more.

That’s all they needed to do is tell me the damn truth, so instead of a five hundred dollar bill, and a private thing and a license, all I needed was a dollar thirty-nine plug for each of my bathtubs. That’s how disgusting and despicable the city was. I’d never, I’ve never been treated like this in my life, the fact that government should do this, its just amazing to me. They took my cats out of here and killed them. They tried to pull me out of this house and lock me up. It’s just beyond a shadow of a doubt…

If this had happened any place else in the world they’d think this was crazy communism or something, and around here you have all these alleged democrats… And don’t get me wrong I’m a democrat, voted down most of my life too, but I’ve never seen anything like it.

But they won’t come and inspect, they refuse to come and inspect unless I give them five thousand dollars. And then they’ll come out and inspect and then I get my house back one hundred percent. What a bunch of… Why would citizens even approve this? From the mayor on down, all these people should be thrown out of office.

TCS: Tell me about the park though and how that kinda started, how people use it, what kinda stuff you got back there?

AA: I guess I didn’t really think it was an art park. For myself, I never thought of myself … People keep telling me that long enough, I’ll start to believe them. [laughs] I’m just an old farm boy likes to weld things up that are fun, other things… And what’s happening now is that other people are bringing their stuff and leaving it, the big stuff that’s huge and interesting and stuff like that.

Big stones and big metals and stuff like that.

But you start looking around and you see a beautiful sun face, just a few weeks ago that you put in the thing. And just the other day the gentleman who owns Borderline Antiques on Payne Avenue, the guy’s name is Ralph. He’s about eighty years old now, and he had me into the shop the other day, and said fifty years ago he built a statue and he wanted to know if he could transfer it over to this park. And I said, “I think so, sure.”

And he took me into the back and showed it to me, and it’s beautiful. About six or eight feet tall made out of old farm implements, stuff, both of them welded together. Well here’s a guy who’s been on Payne Avenue and the Payne Avenue Business Association most of his life, years and years since everyone can remember, and now he wants this piece to come over here and he’s gonna install it into this park. I don’t know if the city’s gonna let him, but I think they might, I don’t know how they could stop him…

They don’t want the park any more. For a while they put fences around it, and it all disappeared. I don’t know what the hell happened to those, people are using it again. I’m just amazed. Everyday day twenty, thirty, ten, fifteen people stop here. Every day they stop me and find me in the house, in the yard, and they want to know about it.

The other day… Almost like it’s become a tourist attraction to get to Ward 6 [a new local restaurant a block away]. You know, “go to Ward 6 and you can stop and take a look at the park.” You can walk right to it. That’s what it’s meant to be, a short cut to get over to Bruce Vento trail.

You know I can’t believe Bruce Vento would ever approve of what ‘s been done here. He was a nice guy. I met him a couple of times. But what’s been done is just crazy.

But now they broke the law. Apparently they said they broke Federal law. They used community investment dollars to buy this land originally, and apparently you can’t donate that land, according to the Federal law, to Parks and Rec. It has to be a development company. So now they have to figure out a way to take this out of Parks and Rec and give it to either a development company or another development. It can’t go to parks and rec, according to Federal law.

[sits up in his chair.] Listen to me feds: Go arrest all those seven city council members and the mayor! Take them to jail, that’s where they belong.

TCS: [pauses] Would you be willing to give me a tour of the park real quick?

AA: You heard it right here. Yeah. Turn this thing off and I’ll get my shoes.

ACT ONE SCENE TWO

[TCS and AA walk through the old small house and head out the door, into the yard and down along a path between two small rock walls. The walls are lined with statues of different sizes, plastic doll heads, small messages.]

TCS: You know, just point out stuff you think is interesting.

AA: All right, here we go. We start the walk of religions here. See goin’ around the other side… Wait a second. Somebody stole some statues here.

TCS: Oh yeah?

AA: Yeah. Mary’s missing. Jesus... Wow we been robbed.

TCS: [sheepish] That’s too bad

AA: Robbed big time. Looks like they got in here, four statues missing in here, Buddah. Let’s find out what’s happening here. Usually they don’t steal as much as destroy.

TCS: Huh

AA: That’s terrible.

TCS: Yeah especially cause it’s Jesus we’re talking about.

AA: This amount of farm implements and things like that. Now I’m kinda curious to see what’s goin’ on here. Things got moved around here, people done a whole bunch of stuff down here overnight. I see… Things got kicked over… Oh my goodness. Well… [walks around the park, up along the path and into the side yard looking around.]

TCS: [pointing to a metal sculpture] Should we put this windmill back up?

AA: Yeah we can. Hm. I’ll have to do some repairs, see what else is going on… [gestures to a round  piece of metal.] This… Stand back. [AA reaches down and spins the metal. It spins around a few times and then stops.]

TCS: What’s that?

AA: It’s a merry go round from an old one room school house. We haven’t gotten it back yet, but I imagine we’ll get it up here soon.

Let’s see what happened to all of this things. [sighs] Oh my goodness.

TCS: [trying to find a silver lining in an increasingly grey cloud] Well at least it’s a nice day, you know, except for all that crap.

AA: [walks around the top of the park.] Well this is a little bit distressful. I wonder why they only took statues referring to Christianity.

TCS: [points to a doll mounted on the wall.] The Barbie over there? That’s still there

AA: Yeah, that’s still there. [gestures to another statue] The pig’s still here. Those are sort of folklorish people. [gestures to statues embedded in the wall] Actually these weren’t done by me. These were done by other people. They came in and did this. They said, ah, I, the city of Saint Paul doesn’t’ measure up to what they consider to be community art or a thing like that, but this is about as true a community art as you can get, because people come and put the art here.

TCS: Or take it away, it seems like…

AA: Well they take it away now. But most don’t have so much confidence. Most people… Those are pretty big statues to haul away. I usually think of people just taking things and breaking them or throwing them. [looks around for rubble]

[AA and TCS sit down on a picnic table and survey the scene.]

TCS: So, describe what we’re seeing right here.

AA: [laughs] This, is a series of levels of animals and just little knickknacks and trinkets. And the reason this we’re sitting right here is that lot of times people come here and for good luck they put things here in the rock walls.

This is a traditional switch back that you might find off a mountain.

The thing about this is that they leave stuff here. [points to sculpture] Like this got left by someone for good luck. I’ve seen people put slips of paper here with their names of them ,they get lost or they haven’t seen, or I’ve seen people put… I saw someone put an engagement ring in the walls here. 

That was her good luck, her good fortune to get rid of her engagement. Another guy, he put a bullet from a 9 em em that he got hit in the neck… He got shot, and he put it here for good luck. So people do that, they leave things here for good luck

I’m really quite distressed they’d take the statues of Jesus and Mary. They were about 3 feet high. I’m glad they left the statues of Siddhartha and the others, but that’s… I think you can go to hell for that, I’m not sure

TCS: [laughs] That’s probably right!

AA: I’m almost positive. I’m almost positive that you can. So I’m lookin’ around to see what else they’ve done for destruction. I’m sure it was here yesterday. [gestures to the path leading toward Swede Hollow]

So it’s just a little park. They mowed all this down. They wanted to get a bike trail in the back here so that it hooks up there, they got one hundred and fifty-nine thousand dollars from the federal government to do it. So, but just off hand I thought maybe since we’re not getting to it damn quick, I thought I’d just finish it off myself down here. As you can see, connecting to the trail.

You know government’s just a bizarre thing some times. I’ve never seen such a group of people with so much hatred for such a thing. They didn’t want this cliff here, they didn’t know what to do with it.

Yet when somebody gets this thing here, and I’ve kept it clean, I mowed it, I empty the garbage…

You wanna go look at a city lot, go down the street here and see what they left for ten years. It’s plied high with garbage and junk that the city doesn’t clear away. They can’t take care of their own business but they can take care of everybody else’s, you know that’s crazy to me, crazy. [laughs] So I don’t know else to say other than, “Hi!” [AA leans into the microphone and waves.]

TCS: [interrupting] Do you think that you’re an artist?

AA: [quickly] No. Everybody’s an artist, I guess… I just think that I like to weld pieces together and put em up. [laughs]

People been telling me that. I saw a letter in the paper. Something for the Walker. Compared me to other places…  

I’m just a 60 year old guy who grew up on a farm in north Dakota and learned how to weld. I just, you know, its fun.

TCS: What’s gonna happen next to this?

AA: Well, I sure wish I knew. I got to go to the city council on Tuesday morning again. Some place down there. I guess I show them my five thousand bucks.

Thing about it was they threatened to take all this down push it away and get it all out of the way and do such big things with it. But they couldn’t push it down because of the cost. Just to push it down they’d have to put sixty thousand dollars worth of pylons against the side of my house just to brace it on the hill.

Sixty thousand dollars! Jeez you could open a battered woman’s shelter, you could open a place for orphans, you could do so much to help so many people rather than worry about makin’ a hill here.

You know, I ain’t so damn smart, but looks to me like it already is a hill. For the city to spend sixty thousand dollars and approximately another eighty to ninety thousand dollars just for earth moving, just to make a hill here… It’s already a god dang hill. Are ya that nuts? I mean… I’ve never seen anything so bizarre in my life, but that must be Minnesota politics I guess…

TCS: OK, well thanks Arjo. I appreciate your time.

[AA wanders back down into the park valley, TCS wanders up the hill and away from the east side.]


Update:

Here's what the site of Adams' park and house look like today (3/28/16):