Picked Daughter up from work. Beautiful sunset.

Cropped the shot to take out the boarded up stores and restaurants.

Took the lake drive home. As perfect a summer night in Minneapolis as you’ll ever get.

From this angle and location you don't see the tents. We drove by the tent city at Lake Harriet, which is confined to one area. They had chairs and picnic tables out, and the residents were enjoyiong the evening. There were signs asking for donations in case you wanted to pull over and put some money in the buckets.

Absolutely normal, except for the pervasive feeling that we’re six months into the Revolution and hey it’s not that bad, things feel okay, there’s food in the stores, the secret police aren’t hauling out as many as we thought, the new commissar has a cheerful smile. The curfew’s been lifted - well, we can stay outside an extra half-hour - and I hear the chocorations are going up next week. Look at the sunset. It’s the same it always was.

I’m not as gloomy as I sound; far from it. Generally cheerful but occasionally, suddenly, I'm just pissed, to be honest. Every time I go downtown to the empty building - no coffee shops; closed for The Duration; new restaurant that was going to open on the skyway level is still closed; the vast atrium deserted - I get angry, and there’s no place to put it.

So stop going downtown! Yeah, no. I’m not in a mood for doing less of the old things. I’m not in the mood to have things redefined by a set of circumstances that seem to evolve but always stay the same.

The other day, standing in line at the door of the hardware store - can’t go in, might get sick - the fellow behind me in line said “you know, I kinda like this,” and I’m sure he was referring to the ease of the new way of doing things: you ask for something, and they bring it out. Doesn’t work well with screws and nails, because the hardware store clerk has to go back and forth and back and forth from the bins in the rear to the front of the store.

“I don’t like it at all,” I said, as genially as I could. “I liked going inside. I liked the popcorn. I liked to pet the dog. I liked to look at all the impulse purchase stuff they have by the register, the stuff you don’t know you need. I don’t know what I don’t need.”

He seemed to agree and we got to talking about neighborhood hardware store dogs of note.

That’s why you live in a place, and stay there. You can talk to strangers about dogs you know.

But it’s not a compensation for not being able to go inside the store. When will that change? Don’t know. No one knows. We’d all be better if we had a date. A precise day. October 14, 11:23 AM, everything is back to normal. I could take that. You could take that. We all could take that, but I think around the third reset of the "two weeks to stop it for good, this time" we let that go.

Tales from daughter's job today: a man stole a bottle of mouth wash and went into the bathroom and drank himself sick.

OKAY OKAY. Cheerful stuff tomorrow, I promise.

 
 

 

 

 

 
 

Over 14 thousand souls. Motto: “A Colorado Treasure.” The entirety of its Wikipedia history entry: “A post office called Sterling has been in operation since 1874.[9] The community was named for Sterling, Illinois, the native home of a railroad official.”

So . . . form follows function, you say?

I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a religious structure; for a while, they loved this sort of abstraction, severed completely from traditional expressions.

The thin-window phase made for some truly awful OUMBs:

Did the architects really think “eh, no one likes sunlight and views much anymore.”

Doesn’t appear to be a bank now, but it has OUMB mojo in its soul

If indeed it has one. It’s not bad bad; it’s preferable to the previous one, if only because it has some remnant 60s style.

 

So I’m guessing this is the banking center for the area

 

Compare the others with this utterly ordinary example of early 20th commercial architecture, and ask yourself which has more innate dignity and quiet appeal.

“Not sure what was there. Might’ve been the Big and Tall shop.”

Now restored. What was over the main door? What was removed?

A sign is the most obvious answer, but why did removal take the bricks with it?

While we’re at it: were the storefronts originally angled like that? Interesting.

 

Unusual window configuration. Based on my very limited knowledge, Id say that was for ventilation purposes, but the style of the building is younger than the older ones that relied on thin windows.

“Sure, I can do a logo! I have this cool program that does gradients AND embosses and bevels and chrome effects!”

“All at once?”

“You bet!”

The All-Purpose Crest of the Family Generica

 

"Our family traces its line back to a noble family of carrot farmers"

Can you design something a bit Georgian that nevertheless has sexual fantasies about the Dutch?”

"On it."

 

I am a sucker for a white-brick turquoise metal panel rehab, I’m afraid to say.

 

The late 70s and early 80s had an abundance of bad designs, but this was the one that seemed nationwide, ubiquitous, and persistent.

 

Nice, but it looks as if they ran short on funds and had to settle for an off-the-shelf cupola of diminished proportions.

The Statue of Liberty! Every town should have one.

“Why yes, we do worship the Sphinx here. How’d you guess?”

 

“Why yes, we do worship Jove here. How’d you guess?”

 

 

The tidy public library.

 

 

That was a big service station. If I’m reading it correctly, the left part was original, the middle part . . . was the bathroom? New office / merchandise room on the right.

 

 

I must have missed The Stubby Avengers.

Opened in 1938. Cinematreasures has a picture of the “Bodiform seating.”

Did you know that type of chair had a name? I didn’t.

That'll do. Motels await.

 

 

 

 

 
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