Classic Sidewalks of the Silver Screen #6

Here's your Classic Sidewalks of the Silver Screen Scene of the Week...




It's the opening sidewalk sequence from West Side Story (1961).

Unconjoined Twin Cities: A Catalogue of Difference II (Juvinalia)

[This is content recycled from my now mothballed website, www.excitablemedia.com. Please enjoy!]

This episode of Unjoined Twin Cities will explore another crack in the Twin Cities' crystalline facade: the age-old dichotomy between the individual and society. Though the manifestations of this opposition are plentiful, three things come immediately to mind: economic history, museums, and landscape.


Economic History

The early economic development of the Twin Cities reveal radically different approaches to growth. By the time the boom came around, Saint Paul, historically older, had established itself as Minnesota's commerical trading center. The primary reason for this was that Saint Paul's lower landing was the end of the line for most Mississippi river traffic, and the town consequently focused its civic attention on inter- and intra-state commerce. Wholesale establishments, merchants, import/export businesses... they swarmed the banks of the river like Asian Lady Beetles on a white wooden house, and Saint Paulites were acutely aware of the happenings in larger Eastern towns like Chicago and Milwaukee. Commerce was the word on the street, and Saint Paul's richest man, James J. Hill epitomized this focus, having accumulated his vast wealth by lacing the country with railroads such as the Empire Builder.

[Minneapolis's Washburn mill got so big that it exploded in 1878]

On the other hand the upstart burg of Minneapolis emphasized industrial power, specializing particularly in the ancient art of flour milling. It was mostly a matter of happy conicidence, as the hydroelectric power provded by Saint Anthony Falls allowed Minneapolitans to effeciently mill the vast amounts of wheat that grew across the upper reaches of the Great Plains. Minneapolis's industrial barons thus had an enviable feeling of empowerment, and families like the Pillsburys could imagine themselves determining their own destiny.

Whether or not the commercial specialization of the Saint Paulitan made him or her more cosmopolitan is a matter of heated debate, but at the very least the outward focus of the TC's Eastern people meant that they found themselves more dependant on others for their daily bread. In Minneapolis, on the other hand, they had developed a lucrative market for their flour milling, and have ever since habitually viewed themselves as an enclave of economic self-sufficiency.


Museums

We can all be proud of the fact that Minnesota's Twin Cities are such a powerhouse of museum-ness, offering sightseers no shortage of collected antiquity. But at the same time visitors should know that the two towns are not equals, museum-wise, and that each town reveals an individual curiosity personality. The difference runs through their main museums, which in Saint Paul are the Science Museum, the Children's Museum, and the Historical Society. Across the river, Minneapolis contains the larger, more traditional museums: the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (or MIA: a classical repository of art history a la New York's Metropolitan Museum) and the Walker Art Center (one of the leading contemporary arts museums in the country…if not the world).

[Kids are greeted to the Science Museum by a quite climbable iguana.]

This museum disparity stems from each city's pedagogical philosophy, mindsets which correlate roughly with social and individual modes of learning. What I mean is, attending the various Saint Paul museums you'll find yourself literally immersed in their exhibits, most of which are filled with "hands-on" activites oriented primarily toward children. In fact, most every day finds yellow schoolbuses lining up outside each of the three downtown buildings while their museum halls echo with the non-stop chirp of high-pitched glee. In the Saint Paul museums even adults often wind up resurrecting some of their long-lost youth.

In contrast, the major Minneapolis museums offer more sobering and serious fare. The majestic marble pillars of the MIA instill the art with a quiet dignity, and museum-goers usually respond with a quiet respect. Even the frequent elementary school tours are almost somber, the children seeming to leapfrog into adulthood while learning about sculptural abstraction and canonical tradition. And this adult feeling is amplified over at the Walker, where the earnestness of contemporary art bounces acutely off its whitewashed walls, and if you stay long enough you'll probably glimpse a tour group of the Minnesotan wealthy lending the museum a country club atmosphere, a timbre that somewhat belies much of modern art's playful nature.

[The MIA's daunting facade]

All in all, the museum difference between the two cities is one of distance, a shift in the relationship between spectator and spectacle. Minneapolis promotes the accomplishments of the individual, and while each artwork is placed delicately within its relevant social context, the experience inevitably remains subjective and personal. Saint Paul on the other hand accentuates the accomplishments of society as a whole, that general, gradual accumulation of scientific and cultural progress that we all know and love. Visiting any of these "educational" museums thus makes one feel part of a larger whole, a comfort to say the least. Neither approach necessarily rises heirarchically above the other, and though I personally find a certain liberation in the distance offered by the Minneapolitan duo, suffice to say that two city's museums blend in a beautiful harmony.


Landscape

Though to say as much is trite, humanity sets itself apart from the rest of the animal kingdowm in its ability to shape its environment to meet its needs. Less acknowledged, however, is the fact that our environment shapes our civic worldview in a great variety of subtle ways. For example, there's no telling exactly how many of the differences between the Twin Cities are rooted in their contrasting topographical landscapes.

The distinction: Over on the West Coast, the land underneath Minneapolis is largely flat. There's a way in which Minneapolis marks the beginning of the great plains, that vast expanse of tabletop soil extending from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Saint Paul on the other hand, is a veritable encyclopedia of topographical oddity, (albeit a tremendously expurgated encyclopedia, lacking as it does mountains, buttes, steppes, isthmuses, &c.). Still, when placed next to its twin, Saint Paul offers no small degree of landscape turbulence.

[Minneapolis on top, Saint Paul on bottom.]

This pair of contrasting foundations informs the perspectives of their respective denziens, the way in which they look at the world. The vast flatitude of the Minneapolis means that when one of its citizens looks at the world s/he sees emptiness, a tabula rasa, a vast archetectural opportunity. Perhaps its a space for visionary ideas, some grand plan, or an intricate and totalitarian street-grid scheme. However, when a St Paulite looks at the world s/he sees myriad obstacles, and the bluffs, hills and/or ravines become an almost-stultifying framework with which s/he must blend and cohere.

Furthermore, this difference isn't limited to the topographical limitations of social planning. The literal perspective of each city is similarly disparate, as the flatness of Minneapolis means that the only way to get a "birds eye" view is to ascend to the top of one of its many skyscrapers. It's either all or nothing for a Minneapolis vista-viewer, while on the other hand Saint Paul offers a plethora of promotoriies, bluffs, and scenic overlooks from which to survey the scenery. In fact, to walk about Saint Paul without coming across a natural vista is noteworthy ocurrence; they're just that common! Perhaps this is why, generally speaking, Minneapolis imbues its citizens with a feeling of limitless individual opportunity, and over the river in Saint Paul people feel constrained by the naturally-defined world around them, and thus take a more objective outlook when it comes to questions of personal expression or individual identity. It's literally the fact that the ground beneath each city's feet grants the Twin Cities two unique ways of understanding.

Twin City Neon Signs #1

Wings & Ribs

[Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis]





[Lobster]

[Clinton Hill, Brooklyn]





Cappucino

[Dinkytown, Minneapolis]





Applause ... Now

[Snelling Avenue, Saint Paul]





Chow Mein

[Maryland Avenue, Saint Paul]





Shirts Drapes

[Saint Clair Avenue, Saint Paul]





Pastries
Coffee

[Selby Avenue, Saint Paul]

Also:

A sidewalk lagniappe...




"Lightwriting" artists, Lichtfaktor performing time lapse sidewalk art with lights.

Light Rail and the University Decoder

The good folks at the Pioneer Press's City Hall Scoop blog recently posted some interesting legal documents about the political battle over the LRT route through the U of MN.

I wrote about this a while back, and each time I walk past the student union and around the mall area I become more convinced that the LRT/ transit / pedestrian option down Washington Avenue is a very good thing.

That's why these documents strike me as so wrong-headed. And that's why I'm going to present them to you, Decoder-style.

So, enjoy a decoding of the University's recent letter to Peter Bell, chairman of the Met Council. As you can see from their response, they probably think these arguments are as stupid as I do...



Hi! I'm the University of Minnesota, and I'm important. Remember how I said I wanted a tunnel through my campus, so that those nice little college kids wouldn't have to step outside as they shuttle from East to West banks through their nice little tunnels like nice little gophers trapped in a lab experiment?

Yep. That was a good idea. Did you know we already have tunnels tunneling all over the damn place. Why can't your new train do that too?

Instead, you're thinking of doing what? A transit and pedestrian mall?

You know, that would displace our four lanes of traffic cutting through the heart of what was meant to be public space. Does that sound like a nice thing to do?

That should be "evaluated carefully." I have a feeling it might have "potentially adverse effects." It may result in "unsafe and dysfunctional traffic patterns"! Yes, that's right, I said dysfunctional.

(No, no, no. I'm not talking about the current state of the U of MN's streetlife, the way in which people shuttle from building to building in little tunnels, never seeing the light of day, or are forced to hold rallies, play frisbee, and be barraged with corporate giveaways in this little tiny square of grass next to a four lane road...)

I'm talking about damage to our "integrated transportation system." You know, all the cars that stream into and out of our many, many parking lots, and will soon, very soon, be heading to and from the new giant taxpayer-funded TCF Bank football stadium. Yes, yes! Go Gophers!



Oh did I say that a pedestrian and transit mall MAY have adverse effects. I had that wrong. It WILL have "significant adverse effects"! (Did you see what I did there? I make it more significant.)

Yes, "many tens of thousands of students, visitors, and patients" will be distressed by not having to dodge a constant stream of cars. You know, all the people going to and from the hospital because they were just run over by SUV's streaming off the Washington Avenue bridge? What will they do?

"In essence," it will mess up the very lives and souls of "hundreds of thousands of individuals who come to use the University's resources!" That includes all the people in Duluth, and Crookston, who will feel the pain of Gopher solidarity as our fellow rodents are forced onto the sidewalks, lawns, and streets to suffer the cruelty of the sun's rays.

OK, so the study to which I'm about to refer doesn't really apply to this situation, but trust me when I say there will be "serious adverse effects!"

In fact, the study was done ten years ago by an undergraduate, but it was for a senior paper and they used a computer and everything, and it clearly showed that there will be "adverse impact", especially to our "sensitive research equipment" which doesn't respond well to trains.

Did I mention that we're a university? And that we have scientists and stuff, with "sensitive research equipment"? Trust me, you wouldn't understand what that means.




OK. Now I'll explain in my scientific way about the "unsafe and dysfunctional traffic patterns" I mentioned earlier.

You see, a while back we used our sensitive scientific equipment and made a model. You know, like a toy train? Only it was on a computer. It's a very, very big computer, too. In fact, it's about the size of an SUV.

It turns out, when you have four lanes of traffic streaming across the Washington Avenue Bridge, AND you put a big train in the middle of all the traffic, "it will not work".

That's scientist speak for 'it'll be really bad.'

In other words, it'll have "potentially serious adverse effects!"

Got that?

What?

You want to know what the effects are? Dammit, I told you a I'm a University, with scientists and stuff... I have "sensitive research equipment"!

OK. OK. OK. Here are the terrible, terrible effects. Prepare for total "dysfunction"!!!



Yes, yes. There will be gridlock! Even more gridlock than we already have!

You won't be able to drive to the clinic because of the gridlock!

All the roads will have gridlock! Other roads, too, will be filled with cars. Even more filled with cars then they already are!

(Yes, I know the roads are already filled with cars... I drive to work every day, you know. God! It takes frikkin' forever to get to my sweet parking spot. All these goddam students keep crossing the street in front of me! There's like thousands of them! They keep coming, and crossing, and crossing and coming, and crossing, They're like little rats... like little gopherrats... And they keep giving me funny looks. Like, "Dude, What's your problem?" or "I'm trying to cross the street." Well, I'm just trying to drive! What is their problem? Maybe Randy Moss was right! I gotta get outta here. Where's my damn Valium? ........ Oh. Excuse me. Where was I?)

And these cars, when they're not stopped still for hours, will be running over pedestrians because we're going to take all the sidewalks away. Yes, that's right. We're going to remove all the sidewalks! And then these cars will have no choice but to drive directly on college students. They deserve it. Did you know they like to lie down in the street. Cars everywhere, driving on those bastards! What do think of your Hockey Riot now, you little drunken peon. I went to Yale!

"Electromagnetic fluctuations!" "Sensitive Scientific Equipment and Research!"

Decreased bus ridership! There will be fewer buses with riders because the buses won't be able to move because of the gridlock and all the people will have been run over by gridlocked cars anyway! (Oh yeah, buses. Thanks for paying for those by the way, Met Council.)

Oh, what the hell.





OK. You got me.

Though our scientific study was in fact performed on sensitive research equipment, yes, I admit that, as I briefly mentioned, it was not at all a study of a pedestrian mall and is therefore completely irrelevant.

Aren't you smart, you little transportation engineer dweeb. Does MN-DOT have a football team? I don't think so.

Go Gophers!




God this sucks.

All right, Met Council. Here's the deal.

If you go over my head, and ignore all the serious findings of our sensitive research equipment, we're going to have to ask -- nay, DEMAND -- some "mitigation costs".

Yes, that's right.

All these "potentially serous averse impacts" and "unsafe and dysfunctional" disruptions of our "integrated transportation system" do not come cheaply.

We're going to have to demand One Million Dollars (!) in "mitigation costs". Yes! That's right.

[...]

Oh. My advisors have just told me that that's not very much money.

Well, I'll look into that. But let's just say I'm gonna be asking for a lot. You see, there are "potentially serious adverse impacts". It will mean...

[dramatic pause]

It might mean the "relocation of the University Medical Center Loading Dock from its location on East River Road"!!!

(What? That's the best you guys can come up with? I'm trying to sound dire, here. I'm in a letter to the Met Council, and we're trying to shake down some money! This is the best you can do? One lousy loading dock? Come on! What do I pay you for?)


Oh, yeah. That's right! Before I forget!

Our Northrop Mall is a historical district! One of the top ten most historical districts in the Big Ten!

And it has "historical attributes." A history professor just told me that! Yeah, this book says it has "possessing integrity of location, design, setting, materials and blah blah blah" God this is boring. What the hell does that mean?

Anyway, it's old. And it has "historical attributes," and let me tell you that having a goddamn train running through the middle of it does not, I repeat, NOT "comport with the District's historical attributes."

Did you know it was designed by Cass Gilbert? It's true! I just looked it up. It says here he designed it to be impressive and classical and, here I'm quoting, "proved that the University was coming into its own as a world-class institution of higher learning."! (That's me! A world-class institution of higher learning? Did you know I'm going to be the top three research university in the world?)

And I'm telling you, buster, a top three research institute in the world isn't going to like having Cass Gilbert's magnificent design ruined by a train running through the middle, especially a stupid little yellow one with a stupid little horn that will "create visible and auditory interferences", and that "does not comport with the District's historical attributes!"

What's that?

Cass Gilbert didn't design his glorious Northrup Mall to have a four lane freeway going through the middle of it, especially one with a giant trench filled with cars separated by a concrete wall adorned with a pointy black fence bearing a sign showing a person crossed out by a red line?

You think you know everything, don't you...





Did I mention that we have sensitive research equipment?

Maybe I should add that our equipment is "highly sensitive". Will that convince you?

We're dealing with "unknown costs" here!

Dear Met Council.

Suck it.

Haha. J/K BFF!

Sincerely Yours,

University of Minnesota


Also:

Bill here again. I'm not the University any more.

I just wanted to mention that today the University of Minnesota is having a "forum" on the current plan for the Light Rail and whether or not a possible pedestrian mall running through campus is a good thing. Hooray! (Don't be swayed by what you've just read.)

The current plan for the Central Corridor light rail line would create a
pedestrian mall along Washington Avenue on the University of Minnesota. What
might this mean for the campus?

Come hear a panel of experts, including Transit for Livable Communities
co-founder John DeWitt, speak at this upcoming forum:

Campus 2014: What will U of M campus transportation look like?
EcoWatch presents a multimedia forum on how the Central Corridor Light
Rail Line Will Transform Campus Transportation

Tuesday, April 29th: 6:30 PMWest Bank Auditorium (basement of Willey Hall)

On Tuesday April 29th the student organization EcoWatch will be hosting a Light Rail Forum in the West Bank Auditorium at 6:30PM. University transportation engineers, city planners, and other experts will be on hand to discuss how the Central Corridor light rail plan will change the campus layout and how it will affect students' daily lives. Could the U really turn into a campus without cars? Come find out!

Speakers include:

John Dewitt-co-founder of Transit for Livable Communities
Nancy Homans-City of St. Paul
David Levinson-U of M Civil Engineering Professor
Jan Morlock-Liaison with University and surrounding neighborhoods
Bill Stahlmann-U of M Parking and Transportation Services-Transit Manager
Peter Wagenius-Senior Policy Aid, City of Minneapolis

Sidewalk of the Week: 14th Street S

The corner of 14th Street and 10th Street shouldn't exist. In a perfect world, parallel lines do not cross, and street grids carry on in endless right angles, stretching from sea to sea in infinite speculation. But somehow, this Sidewalk of the Week is where the Downtown Minneapolis grid goes a wild and gets a little screwy, as the sidewalks drift off into weird angles trying correct for the Mississippi's crooked ways. Here, somehow parallel lines meet and create a the tiniest of whorls, a little backwards eddy where the smudged sterility of Downtown rubs up against the dirty grit of Minneapolis's mostly-forgotten past.

The neighborhood is called Elliot Park, and it forms a liminal space wedged between two freeways, the HHH, and parking lot moats surrounding skyscrapers. It's where strange bedfellows bump elbows. For example, two friends of mine used to live here in a giant old house with beautiful woodwork and plenty of space, but their driveway was often full of strange strangers and they were a block from the constant din of cars on Interstate 94.

Once I had a picnic in the Elliot Park after work, and it was all very pleasant until an intoxicated and rather grubby individual wandered over and started lurking nearby, orbiting in smaller and smaller concentric circles until he finally converged, informing us that we were at "his spot" and could we please vacate the premises so that he could continue his commercial activities (not his exact words).

And there's a institution of higher education called North Central University where all the students are quite religious and have political views perhaps to the right of my own, and the school's two guards form a strange sight as they circle the infinitesimal campus through the night, walking in tandem with their white shirts and ties and leather bandoliers.

[This building, called “Troy”, houses the white bars of the Elliot Park Market]

Here there are giant old mansions with faded Victorian wallpaper all boarded up and abandoned, subsidized housing, new mixed-use developments across the street from strange and empty shops, old apartment houses with fancy names surrounded by vacant lots next to brand new twenty-story condominiums. It's the border zone surrounding a patch of pleasant parkland, where Minneapolis mixes itself up like a schitzophrenic, all a tumble with people and pasts and ideas for what's to come.

[The way these streets all come together forms a very cozy corner of sidewalkspace, slowing cars and letting the people go their wary way.]

In the middle of this jumble, though, the two streets form a little triangle of old buildings, and at the very center like an oyster pearl sits the Band Box Diner, a forgotten remnant of Minneapolis past, somehow still serving burgers to the whole neighborhood. This little red diner is the last of a long line of like joints that once dotted old Minneapolis like measles, serving tiny White Castle-size burgers to working men under the memorable slogan "Three for a Dime, All the Time."

Now, the Band Box is the only one left, their slogan has changed to "grease for peace", and you can still walk in and sit on the red stools at the counter to watch the short order cook mix up an omelet, or plunk down at the windowside table where you can enjoy your meal and gaze at the mostly empty 14th Street sidewalks (while some jerk takes your picture and puts it on the internets).

[The buildings in the distance ... they are so high, they scrape the sky.]

The diner itself is designed to encourage this kind of people watching, with a bumped out bit of sidewalk space forming the triangular bit where the two parallel streets come together... a lovely piece of pavement with little red concrete bits and little thin trees. The streets narrow enough so that the cars can only crawl, and this little spot in the shadow of skyscrapers feels like a cozy nook, an oases in the midst of surface parking and Metrodomes and medical centers and interstate highway systems.

[In front of the Band Box there lies a little sidewalk bump, the vanishing point for the Minneapolis street grid. ]

The sidewalks around here too have a wonderful walkability, running along old buildings whose windows once boasted unimagineable contents. The old brick buildings all have names, like "Troy" or "Cooper" or "Elliot East Condominiums", and bear their delicate brickwork with a faded dignity that would make Faulkner proud. And the sidewalks are almost always eerily empty, quiet and still yet faintly breathing, like in a fairy tale with a princess. These sidewalks are laying in wait, locked and trapped by a magic spell.

[As far as I know, these streets have no name.]

Somehow, 14th Street is the kind of space that every city needs, places where the kinds of people that aren't welcome are welcome. If cities didn't have places like Elliot Park, places where you walk on the edge of your seat, where your heart beats a bit faster, places of magic and mystery, then cities would be insufferably boring and all-to-perfect.

Instead, 14th Street is the kind of place where you never know what you'll find peeking around a corner ... it might be nothing, or it might be an ancient factory smokestack, or it might be a ghost in an alley bedecked with porches. It may be a forgotten building covered in vines, or it may be the Band Box Diner dressed all in red from foot to head, beckoning you over inside its radiant light with a perfect burger and magical bottomless coffeecup.

[The alley lies in the midst of it all, home to an abandoned factory that used to make horseshoes, ice skate blades, and pocketwatch chains .]