Twin City Street Musicians #7

[Guitar player. Como Avenue, St Paul.]

[Sax player. Stone Arch Bridge, Minneapolis.]

[Guitar player. Midtown Greenway, Minneapolis.]

[Lil' fiddler. Riverfront, Minneapolis.]

[Guitar player and "banjo player." Riverfront, Minneapolis.]

[Trumpeter. Stone Arch Bridge, Minneapolis.]

[Guitar player. Grand Avenue, Minneapolis.]

[Guitar players. Stone Arch Bridge, Minneapolis.]

[Irish piper. Lowertown, St Paul.]

[Sax drums and guitar. Loring Park, Minneapolis.]

Signs of the Times #36

Our hostess

is a dog

so we ask that you please

do not bring another dog

into the store.      Thanks!

[Door. Marshall Avenue, St Paul.]

Bike Aid

FREE For Bikes

[Table sign. 40th Street South, Minneapolis.]

MURAL 

Here

[and]

ARTIST

Wanted

[Side of sidewalk near pedestrian bridge. Kingfield, Minneapolis.]

NOTICE

Lock Your Car

Remove All Valuables

This Ramp is Police Patrolled

Not Responsible for Damage

To Cars or Loss of Property

From Cars

City of St Paul

[and]

AUTOMOBILE

TRAFFIC ONLY

No Pedestrian

Traffic On

Entrance / Exit

Ramps

[and]

SPEED

LIMIT

5 MPH

[Parking garage fence. Downtown, St Paul.]

Opportunity Knocks 

Folding Screen--

Needs to be re-glued/attached

in two places -- dowels fit in

top & bottom of each frame -- 

curtains go on dowels... Presto

Instant Folding Screen.

[on side] Yours free with some TLC

[Metal leaning on tree. Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis.]

Drink local.

Minneapolis tap is less than

half a penny per gallon.

[Hydrant water fountain thingie. Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis.]

Private

Property

[Yard. Stillwater.]

$50 or Make Occer

Knock on Door

1550

[down arrow]

[Bicycle. Lyndale Avenue, Minneapolis.]

Open Daily

7AM - 2PM

MONDAY

THRU

SATURDAY

Turn 

Knob

[Door. Location Forgotten.]

The Barber Sharp's

New Location Is Right Next

to the Ritz! 349 13th Ave NE

Mention You've Read This & get

$2 Off your Haircut!

[Window. NE Minneapolis.]

An Attempt to Capitalize on the Fact that I was Living in Brooklyn 10 Years Ago

[The East Williamsburg Industrial Park.]

I graduated from college in 2001, and when September rolled around I moved from a small town in Massachusetts to a loft apartment in the East Williamsburg Industrial Park on the border of Bushwick, Brooklyn, six stops in on the L train in New York, New York. I was unemployed and looking for work and asleep when 9/11 happened. My roommate woke me up and we watched the tower smoke for a little while, but never figured out that it was a really big deal until much later.

In fact, because we'd just moved in and only had a crappy antenna-less TV, combined with the fact that the top of the WTC was where a lot of TV antennas had been, meant that I wasn't hypnotized by the gruesome slow-motion mezmer of the disaster footage. Instead I listened constantly to Rudy's fairly confusing pressers on 1010WINS (or whatever that station was) and sat around my apartment confusedly, while talking a lot on the phone with friends and family.

The thing that I remember though was going into the city a few days after the disaster, and hanging out in the city around Bryant Park, and how different it felt. The city really shut down for a few days and weeks after 9/11. It really felt different, quieter, slower, more still, as if something had changed. I had many conversations with strangers about different helicopters or motorcades that were traveling the streets. I remember coming out of a movie theater to find everyone gathered onto the sidewalk in long lines as a bunch of speeding SUVs went by, and to hear the man next to me say "there goes the president." At this point an older gay man started yelling, "He's not MY president!" He was the only one at the time to register a voice of protest, but in retrospect, his dissent was brave and precise.

Anyway, its hard to believe 9/11 was 10 years ago. Today, looking back, it doesn't seem like that big a deal. More people die every month in car crashes, and both of those disastrous facts are partially caused by our fossil-fuel automobile lifestyle.

Mostly, it seems like a huge media event, a huge emotional political touchstone. (For example, see this awesome 9/11 media archive of all the footage from a whole bunch of TV stations.) 9/11 illustrates the power of cultural focus. It presents a limit case of our world's ability to be captured by a single moment, the most extreme form of “the event” that we've had in my lifetime. I only wish we could garner the same kind of unity and energy around issues that are more important, like climate change or war or famine.

Anyway, I was living in Brooklyn during 9/11, and it was 10 years ago.

Sidewalk Poem #13

The Lamps Unlit

It is difficult to write an aubade,
a song about noon, or a few crepuscular lines
without stopping to realize
just where you are on the dial of a certain day
 
which is at least a beginning
and better than the usual blind rush
into the future, believed to reside
over the next in an infinite series of hills.

I'm all for noting that the light
in the tops of the trees,
is different now with the grass cold
and moist, the heads of flowers yet unfolded,

all for occupying a chair by a window
or a wayside bench for an hour—
time enough to look here and there
as the caravan of time crosses the sand,

time to think of the dead and lost friends,
their faces hidden in the foliage,
and to consider the ruination of love,
a wisp of smoke rising from a chimney.

And who cares if it takes me all day
to write a poem about the dawn
and I finish in the dark with the night—
some love it best—draped across my shoulders.

-Billy Collins 

[Madison Square Park at sunset.]

Talk tomorrow by David Levinson, a.k.a. the Transportationist, at the U of MN

I'm helping to organize a talk tomorrow featuring the interesting and out of the box transportation engineer and friend of TC Sidewalks, David Levinson, talking about networks, complexity, and transportation.

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GEOGRAPHY COFFEE HOUR FRI. 9 SEPTEMBER 2011:
Blegen 445, Coffee & Cookies 3:15 pm, Talk 3:30 pm

"Network Structure and Travel Behaviour" – David Levinson

[Associate Professor of Civil Engineering, University of Minnesota; Director of NEXUS (Networks, Economics, and Urban Systems Research Group)]

If you find yourself on or near the U of MN campus on a Friday afternoon, stop by and join us. The talk will be about 45 minutes long in Blegen Hall 445, on the West Bank of the U. And there will be free cookies and coffee. So there.