Minnesota State Fair T-shirt Bingo, 2017 edition
It’s a new year, and that means new T-shirts.
The Stroll
The Stroll, penned and drawn by Andy Sturdevant, is a weekly look at the art, architecture, history, and visual culture of the Twin Cities — with each article focused on one geographic area, shown in a hand-drawn map. The Stroll draws readers’ attention not only to traditional works of visual art but also to architecture, street art, historic sites, public art, advertising, artists’ projects, and events on the streets and sidewalks around town.
From graffiti and handmade signs to the weird and unclassifiable, it’s been all about looking at what’s in plain sight
This week’s column will be the final Stroll I write for MinnPost. For the last five years, nearly anything I’d look at would prompt a light bulb, an idle thought of “What’s interesting here?”
Out of the basement: north Minneapolis bands of the ’70s
By the mid-1970s, the north side was home to a burgeoning, homegrown music scene that most famously produced Prince, but also turned out numerous other luminaries, including Jimmy Jam.
100 Washington Square: the consummate modernist dream of an office tower
I wonder if it’s not one of the most underappreciated buildings in downtown Minneapolis, particularly in light of so many mediocre high rises that followed.
The lowly newspaper box: a color-coded holder of memories and guide to the urban scene
Newspaper boxes, lined up in a row with others on a street corner or by a bus stop, have formed an establishing shot for scenes of urban life for 70 years.
Exploring the ghostly route of Minneapolis’ underground Bassett Creek
This ghostly water feature is marked “Bassett Creek” on Google Maps. Switch to satellite mode, though — or better yet, visit in person — and you’ll see it’s not there.
On the Mississippi’s Islands of Peace, ‘peace is a way of life every hour of every day’
On a winter afternoon, of course, buried under inches of snow, it all looks as still and ancient and ageless as a Bruegel painting.
Temple of Aaron’s ’50s aesthetic: optimistic, cosmopolitan and forward-looking
“In design and structure, the work must be of our time,” architect Percival Goodman wrote in 1949.
A friend in the phone: From dial-an-atheist to Prince’s New-Funk to the Zzzzyzzerrific Funline
To walk through the vanished landscape of the Twin Cities telephone hotline of the ’80s and ’90s is to get a sense of the sorts of relationships people had with current technology.
Hillcrest Knoll Park: a reminder of a neighborhood lost to flooding
A chunk of limestone marks the height of the flood’s water with a wavy line, about waist-deep on a full-grown adult.
Exploring St. Paul’s Merle Harris Bridge and remembering ‘The Mayor of Selby’
The Merle Harris Bridge, named after a 20th-century business and neighborhood leader, lifts Selby Avenue over the bizarre pseudo-highway that is Ayd Mill Road.
On the trail to Lock and Dam No. 1
The Lock and Dam No. 1 is the best place in the Twin Cities to see, up close, how commerce and industry has shaped the river physically.
Visiting the missile sites designed to protect the Twin Cities from a Soviet attack
In the event of Soviet bombers flying over the North Pole to destroy the United States, these missiles were meant to serve as a last defense of American cities.
What if Canada had acted on its 1921 Defense Scheme No. 1 and invaded the U.S.?
Had the middle prong’s flying columns reached Minneapolis, some targets would have been obvious.
Chick tracts: Lurid cartoons belong to a 20th-century chapter of the culture wars
Jack T. Chick’s message wasn’t a particularly peaceful, redemptive brand of Christianity. The tracts are sensational, and pretty grisly.
Car-dealer decals: planting a seed of name recognition
They’re little advertisements that have to accomplish the task of not looking too tacky or flashy, but also being visible enough to register with the viewer.
Willie Mays’ south Minneapolis neighborhood — for just two months in 1951
In Mays’ very brief time in Minneapolis, he lived in a rented room on Fourth Avenue South, right behind the Hosmer Library. It was just over a mile from Nicollet Park.
My pilgrimage to Cologne (Minnesota) — during the Ryder Cup
Last year, I decided I like taking long walks in the country. I have some bad associations with the term “hiking,” I think, but that’s essentially what we’re talking about.
Midcentury Opus 2 office park offers technocratic orderliness and a treasure trove of typefaces
There’s a sweet spot in finding a site that’s overlooked or ignored enough to have evaded remodeling, but is just old enough to register as somewhat alien to contemporary sensibilities.
The one-block streets of Minneapolis: Little edits to our geographical manuscript
Two of the most interesting one-block streets – or as interesting as a street can manage to be in 600 feet – are closely tied to the fortunes of Augsburg College.
