The Minnesota Department of Transportation is planning the first major reconstruction since I-94 opened. This got us thinking about what Union Park was like before the highway was built.
In case you missed it, last Saturday was a hot and humid one, but under the shade of our pavilion at Boom Island Park, it was perfectly cool for the sixth annual streets.mn Summer Picnic! Despite the sweltering heat, we had a great turnout – it was wonderful to see so many familiar faces, and a […]
8am. I just finished walking an hour and a half from the Grand Forks Amtrak station. It’s a Saturday morning at the end of September in 2017, and the night before, I spent 6 hours on the Empire Builder traveling from the Twin Cities. After crossing the bridge to briefly visit East Grand Forks, and […]
Sometimes the fun is the journey, not the destination, and thus my series of phototours of scenic, notable, or historic highways and the sights found on or nearby. After a few much shorter ones for my former North Star Highways site, I did a full one on US 14 across southern Minnesota. Next up is […]
Eric Fisher created the Geotagger’s World Atlas. An interactive map showing geographic data collected from Flickr’s geotagged photos. The lines and their density show the parts of areas where people took a sequence of images. Eric also analyzed the geotagging data to try and determine which images were tourists and which were from locals. He […]
June 26, 2015 19.96 miles (but I’m saying 20 miles) Macalester-Groveland, Summit-University, St. Anthony Park, Hamline-Midway When you mention Summit Avenue, most people think of the eastern part of the Avenue, home to the mansions built for industrialists like the Hills, Weyerhaeusers, and Ordways. Summit became the place favored to live by Saint Paul’s most […]
For a year, I was a bike delivery driver for a popular sandwich restaurant. The terms “courier” and “messenger” didn’t really apply because they imply a greater variety of work and a higher status in bicycling subculture than I actually had. I just delivered sandwiches. It turns out that it’s a lot of fun to get paid to ride […]
Macalester-Groveland, West End, Downtown 13.4 Miles September 20, 2014 There are sales galore in Mac-Groveland on this beautiful Saturday. I made two stops on the same block of Palace Avenue in Mac-Groveland today, both for ornamentation so unusual they could (and may still) be recognized on the “Quirky Saint Paul” page of this blog. First, […]
Rondo, Downtown, West Side (West Side Flats) July 19, 2014 29 Miles Traces of history are all around us. Finding them can be a matter of unintentionally stumbling upon something or by consciously searching out plaques or markers. One can also be in the right place when a significant event occurs. The most deliberate and […]
If you hang around the Downtown East/ex-Metrodome Station for a few minutes while waiting for the train, you might begin to notice the advertising saturating the platform . It’s hard to miss, in part because it’s literally on every flat thing, and in part because it’s so incongruous, because it’s all about cars and suburban life. It […]