I was on 6th Street, carefully navigating three lanes of traffic and construction. I signaled my turn as I eased into the left lane, aware of drivers moving urgently around me. Suddenly I bounced, failed to reestablish grip, and tumbled. I rolled off my bike and onto concrete. Something hit my knee bad enough to […]
Public art was a larger part of what I photographed this day compared with my first day walking the Lowry Hill East (Wedge) neighborhood. That was just a coincidental result of the route, which was planned with the mundane purpose of filling in the blocks I had previously omitted, aside from a couple that were closed […]
Last night, I attended a listening session for Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis, focused on the serious safety issues between Lake Street and Franklin Avenue. The event was organized by the county commissioner for the area, Marion Greene. Dozens of neighbors spoke about their experiences walking, driving, and biking on Lyndale. The neighbors covered a lot […]
Only the northern tip of the Lowry Hill East neighborhood is east of Lowry Hill, which may explain why “The Wedge” is the more common name. Certainly it is more descriptive: the neighborhood occupies the wedge-shaped area between Hennepin and Lyndale Avenues north of Lake Street. I began and ultimately ended at the point marked […]
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 […]
Last weekend, a car driver ran over a man trying to do what should have been the simplest of tasks: crossing the street. On Wednesday, the victim, Theodore J. Ferrara, died from his injuries. Ferrara is far from the first pedestrian seriously injured on Lyndale. The street is designed to accommodate cars to the detriment […]
“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 […]
If you’ve ridden the Midtown Greenway through Uptown in the past month, you’ve probably noticed that it’s closed for reconstruction of the Fremont Ave Bridge. The closure began August 28th and is predicted to last 10 or 11 weeks, which if you’re counting, takes it through the end of the fair-weather biking season. The Fremont […]