You’ve probably been offered parking validation, as I have, at restaurants, grocery stores — even the county Human Services office where I receive benefits (while working three jobs and freelancing on the side). But what if, like me, you don’t have a car? Which of these places will validate your visiting them by riding transit, […]
A glance at the map shows larger spaces between the streets in the northern part of Lowry Hill than in the grid-like southern portion I previously walked. This difference relates to the topography but also to the land uses: large institutions and mansions fit large spaces. I began at the intersection of Lyndale and Groveland Avenues […]
“I think it’s brave, you living this social experiment with your family,” an acquaintance once told me. It wasn’t the first time someone from the outside had woven a conclusion about our life in North Minneapolis, and it wouldn’t be our last. “I see what you’re doing,” another well-meaning soul said. “Raising your girls on […]
The Lowry Hill neighborhood is named for the “devil’s backbone” ridge that runs through it, approximately on the dividing line between my two walks. Thomas Lowry and his 19th-century peers lived on the north side of the hill, whereas this first walk concentrated on the more grid-like area to the south, largely developed in the […]
The day after exploring the western part of the Loring Park neighborhood, I was back for the eastern part, which is to say, everything east of LaSalle Avenue. However, as the route map reveals, I also included some streets in the northwest that I had skipped the previous day. (The two days’ routes repeatedly cross in […]
When you door-knock for your favorite City Council member, you recognize what it’s like to be a pedestrian on our residential streets. I’ve done it a couple of times on a weekend day in the past month or so. As a gardener, I notice the plants in people’s yards and find they tell me quite […]
People who have spent their entire lives living a suburban, car-centric life cannot necessarily understand what an urban, car-light lifestyle is like. It’s not a hellscape of driving in circles forever trying to park. It’s the opposite of that. A car-light life is different for every person. For me, it means walking to my friends’ […]
Big houses, bigger apartment buildings, really big churches. Even though there is no direct cause-and-effect linkage, it makes sense that a neighborhood with some dense housing also has a cathedral, a basilica, and four other churches that are of similar grandeur. I saw half those churches on my first of two days walking the Loring […]
July 2, 2019 Merriam Park, Hamline-Midway, Como Park Living in the southwestern part of St. Paul means I almost always have to ride east, north or both, and so it was with this ride to the Como Park neighborhood. From the pause at Charles, I moved almost due north along Fry Street until Taylor Avenue, […]
One eats first with one’s eyes. So I ate first (before walking even a single block) and did it with (but not only with) my eyes. And then I proceeded to keep on using my eyes as I wound my way through the remaining corner of the Longfellow neighborhood, everything south of my first walk and east […]