Much has changed since initiating Stepping Up MN, a virtual cleanup launched at the end of April to mobilize eager volunteers for community betterment. COVID-19 had us cloistered and adhering pretty religiously to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines against viral transmission. Litter accumulated in the streets, with city workers reassigned or […]
How has Coronavirus affected your neighborhood? There are several components to the way neighborhoods react: people, business, transportation, etc. Some reactions are common, some unique to each neighborhood. So yesterday I decided to document the most public & specific of these reactions: businesses. Everyone needs to shop & run errands, so how does the pandemic […]
Adjoining areas are similar, but each view is unique—even viewing the same site from a different angle. In broad terms, this fourth visit to Lynnhurst was similar to the first, which I described as “Some parkland, a school, a church, a restaurant, and a whole bunch of single-family homes.” (Indeed, the second and third days were also close to that […]
September 2, 2019 Downtown, Payne-Phalen, Railroad Island, Dayton’s Bluff 20.5 Miles In all my rides around Saint Paul, I’d never seen a dinosaur, nor had I ever expected to. That’s why the tyrannosaurus gazing out from a building on Pine Street on the edge of Payne-Phalen caused me to lock up the brakes on my […]
The intersection of Lake Street and Excelsior Boulevard at the western edge of Minneapolis, one of the busiest in the entire metro area, is an access point for both city commuters and residents of the West Calhoun and Cedar-Isles-Dean neighborhood, of whom I am one. According to Hennepin County data, over 36,000 vehicles pass through […]
Whole Foods announced recently that they were planning on reducing prices store-wide as part of Amazon’s campaign to combat the image of a “Whole paycheck” grocery store. The Whole Foods media release gloated, “Starting Wednesday, customers will find new lower prices on hundreds of items throughout the store with an emphasis on high quality, peak-of-season […]
One of the things you get to see when you walk instead of drive is tile entryways to commercial (and sometimes residential) buildings. I’ve been collecting photos of tile for a while, mostly from somewhere other than the Twin Cities. Some of the designs are decorative only, as in the first row of images. Semi-floral, […]
A cartographer living in Madison, Wisconsin, Daniel Huffman makes maps as an art form. He has created typewriter maps, a chart of islands called “Round Island,” a wine country map in the style of the Oregon Trail, an unfurled map of Lake Michigan’s shoreline and an entire series of River Transit Maps. It’s fascinating to see our waterways […]
At the corner of Portland Avenue and Third Street in Minneapolis, I stood in a large sneckdown corner, no tire tracks in the area since the snow had started falling only a few hours previous. (For the uninitiated, a sneckdown “is effectively a curb extension caused by snowfall,” according to Wikipedia, which calls this charmingly […]
Here’s another photo contest for another Open Streets. If you’re walking around Nicollet Avenue this Sunday, stop by our table and say “hi.” Feel free to chat about sidewalks, urbanism, the nice weather, the future of Minneapolis, or anything else that’s on your mind! Rules for contest: While you’re at Open Streets, walk around, grab […]