Category: Uptown

1

Lake and Hennepin

A quiet, snowy Thursday night in Uptown, Minneapolis, on the edge of the Great Northern Plains. Backstory on this series: On February 26th, Minneapolis had seven inches of snow drop in a couple of hours. I ventured out in the evening with one lens: a 50mm f1/1.4 — ISO 320, wide open at f1/1.4 between 1/20 & 1/80 sec. With all the variables removed, I was free to explore all the compositional opportunities of shooting hand-held in the dark during a snowstorm.

5

Persistent Smokers & Hangers-on

Snow and wind whipping all around and like fellow travelers around the campfire, the smokers huddle under the heatlamps outside Calhoun Square. Like pack animals on the fringes, the postal boxes and newspaper machines keep close. Backstory on this series: On February 26th, Minneapolis had seven inches of snow drop in a couple of hours. I ventured out in the evening with one lens: a 50mm f1/1.4 — ISO 320, wide open at f1/1.4 between 1/20 & 1/80 sec. With all the variables removed, I was free to explore all the compositional opportunities of shooting hand-held in the dark during a snowstorm.

3

Bryant Lake Bowl Street Scene

This Uptown/Lyn-Lake institution is being subjected to change. There's a new apartment building being assembled just East of it (you can see the scaffolding center). It's new and exciting, but I'll miss the previous building, a creepy gas station that sold milk by the "Galon", I guess the extra "L" got in the way... for years. Let that be a lesson to you young-uns — learn to spell or they'll knock you down and build luxury full-amenity apartments in your place.

4

Library Park

The Walker Library on the corner of Hennepin and Lagoon, across from the Uptown theater is oddly underground. I haven't figured out if it's a fallout shelter or just nuclear-war chic. It reminds me of the UW Parkside campus in Kenosha, designed in the 70s with student riot control in mind. It's an unusual look which draws the eye, but a kin to casting an imaginative glance toward the big crash barriers around overpasses on the highway. Impressive design, but disturbing to imagine it doing it's intended job. The Walker's big shinny "Library" letters hearken it's namesake, The Walker Art Center in their brutal post-industrial socialist overstatement of the obvious. Keeping in line with the whole socialist dreamscape, it has at least one bum sleeping on a bench at all times.

5

June Theme Day - Corner Store

Welcome to Uptown, now keep moving.

1

Fake Snow Pile

Space Management - the art of arranging snow piles in a manner that allows for more snow. Sometimes so much snow falls here that it becomes an issue. The piles on the boulevards fall into the street, pushing the parked cars so far from the curb that the streets become narrow cow-paths. In the past, the city has declared one-sided parking for the season because the fire trucks can't get down the street. This pile of snow is actually fake. It was made with snow machines down by the lake, hauled in by dump trucks, laid down on the streets, and then a few days later scraped up and stacked here near the bike trail. OK, some nutter stacked the small pieces on top, but the whole pile of snow is a Minneapolis Parks Department creation. Why? This is the long-term effect of the City of Lakes Loppet. That cross-county ski race that went through my neighborhood. They made a perfectly-groomed four-block-long trail right through uptown out of fake snow. Yep, imported man-made snow in Minneapolis. As we Minneapolitains would say in the local dialect, "huh, that's different."

4

City of Lakes Loppet Kids Race

OK, time to brighten things up. I've been posting a lot of night pictures lately and though I like the colors and the mystical effects, it gets heavy with all that black. So today I bring you the 'content' of the Loppet: one of the races. This was the beginning of the kids race. If you have been to Uptown for the art fair, you know this place. That gray roof above the flag is the bus terminal on Hennepin. The skiers are on the boulevard by the Greenway (for the locals, it's called The Mall). They actually haul in snow and cover the streets all the way to the lake. This is the start and finish line for the kids race, they go out to the lake, circle around and come back.