Twin Cities 2023, Part Two: Minneapolis

[Travelogue for Part One, Saint Paul / Co+nvergence 2023, here.]

[Adapted from email travelogue, sent Tuesday, August 8 at 7:38 pm.] Saturday, August 5 It's our downtown Minneapolis Hotel! Pretty nondescript, honestly (and obviously), being only 14 stories tall (built 1969), albeit only five of those floors—the ground floor and the top four floors—dedicated to the hotel. You can see in this shot that the building, otherwise known as 811 LaSalle, is connected to the Minneapolis Skyway System on two sides. Unfortunately, as with nearly all skyways, they are connected to the second level, which is one of the nine levels of this building just dedicated to parking—we found many such buildings in Minneapolis. The annoying thing about this was that it meant you had to take an elevator from the Skyway level down to the ground floor to catch separate elevators up to the hotel rooms on floors 10-14. (This was only four floors, as it skips floor 13. But, it doesn't start counting until one floor up from the ground, so it's still 14 floors.) Even with rooms on only four of the floors, the building stretches a good portion of the block and thus each floor has long hallways stretching around three sides, with maybe 30 rooms on each floor, which would make it a 120-room hotel.

This building is clearly not nearly as tall as the 22-story tower that was the InterContinental where I stayed four nights in Saint Paul on the 19th floor. But! I was very happy to be booked on the floor second from the top, which was nearly as high as I could have hoped for here. The photo above is the view from one of our windows on floor 12, looking down at the skyway bridge crossing LaSalle Avenue to LaSalle Plaza (1991, 387 ft, 30 floors) across the street. Our Minneapolis hotel, by the way, was the Residence Inn by Marriott Minneapolis Downtown/City Center, which is way too long a name for a hotel if you ask me. The room did have a full kitchen, though, so I guess that makes up for it.

Shobhit had taken the red eye from Seattle to meet me on Saturday, and he landed at 5:09 a.m. local time, thus 3:09 a.m. Pacific Time, having only flown between three and four hours. He slept while I got ready that morning; we toured the Minnesota State Capitol and then took light rail from downtown Saint Paul to downtown Minneapolis (a roughly 50-minute trip); and after we checked in at the Residence Inn, still pretty sleep deprived, Shobhit did some napping, largely because he was interested in going out on the town late that night. So, while he did some more sleeping, I went down to enter the Minneapolis Skyway System via one of the skyway connections to our hotel. Bearing in mind we were now in the weekend, though, a lot of the skyway connections were closed, being connected to commercial buildings only open during typical business hours. There were still some skways actually open, though, so I was able to wander around a little bit. I did get approached by a kid with a skateboard and quite long black hair at one point, who asked me, "Do they open the skyway on the weekends?" I was like, "Partly. This the first time in my life I've ever been here, though," so I didn't have any more specific information than that. The photo above is of the Skyway corridor through the Dayton's building across the street from the Residence Inn to the northeast, completely empty of any commercial tenants at all, let alone not having any such places open on a weekend. It wasn't like this everywhere in the Skyway System, but it was like this in quite a lot of it.

Later in the afternoon, after Shobhit woke from his nap, we went for a walk—some of it via the skyways that were open, and some of it on the streets (which had far more activity than anything in the Skyway, incidentally—including a lot of restaurants still doing outdoor seating). Shobhit actually lived in downtown Minneapolis for about a year and a half once, a few years before he met me—he was living here, working in Minneapolis's tallest building, when he first heard about the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Pictured above is the apartment complex he lived in first, now called Bolero Flats (1983, 26 floors). In fact, we did eventually make our way to this building via the Skyway, albeit only to the building's secure entry we could not get through. Shobhit remembered walking to work at what was then called US Bancorp Place, six blocks away, via the Skyway System.

While we were out walking that first time, we did a bit of grocery shopping at a nearby Target (which is headquartered in Minneapolis, incidentally). We picked up rice, beans, onions, bell peppers, salsa, cheese, taco seasoning and tortillas so we could go back to the hotel, make use of that aforementioned kitchen, and make what turned out to be a delicious dinner for ourselves.(Side note / protip: I have learned from Shobhit that sliced fresh cucumber with just a bit of salt and just a bit more pepper sprinkled all over it makes for a surprisingly delicious and refreshing side snack.)

And then, as of about 10:30 Saturday night . . . we went clubbing! A 47-year-old and a 49-year-old, re-living the glory days that never were. Shobhit actually got hit on and I did not, and I have no idea what's up with that shit. We went to two places. Our first stop was The Saloon, where we got stamped on our inner wrists for re-entry, went inside to find the early-ish crowd not quite in full swing, and shortly thereafter we left again to head for the second stop. That was Gay 90's, which opened in 1957 as a straight bar connected to a gay bar next door called The Happy Hour. The whole space is huge now, and I had a genuinely great time in there, especially at the drag show upstairs, with lip sync performers largely keeping the drag tradition of classic camp alive. One of then did a Kesha number that was spectacular. My only quasi-complaint about Gay 90s is its crowd was so mixed it was largely straight, including multiple of the bachelorette parties that are increasingly infamous at queer bars—although to be fair to these women, they were not particularly disruptive or displacing. (Also it was here that Shobhit got hit on.) We watched several drag numbers before we finally moved on again, having also spent some time on the dance floor downstairs, to make our way back to The Saloon and the dance floor in there—now much more full, of a crowd almost pointedly more gay. (This included a gogo boy who danced completely nude in a shower stall under falling water, swiping dollar bills input through a slot and up the wet clear plastic wall with his member. Alas, there was a sign that said no photography or recording.) The music was marginally better to dance to, and we danced until roughly 1:00 a.m. I"ve kept a log of all the times Shobhit and I have gone out dancing—because of course I have—and this was our first time doing so since September 2018, five years ago! This was our 55th time overall.

Sunday, August 6 On our walk back to The Saloon from Gay 90's, we took a detour just to get a look at the exterior of First Avenue, the club famous for Prince's early-eighties era, including scenes shot there for the 1984 film Purple Rain. Then, all of one block further down First Avenue from the club, we saw this great wall mural of him from three different eras of his fabled career. (I have long been a huge Prince fan, so I can tell by sight: starting from the bottom up: Prince in the late 70s; Purple Rain-era Prince ca.. 1984; and then notorious mid-nineties "The Artist" Prince refusing to use his name in a bid to get out of his contract with Warner Brothers Records.)

Our first point of interest on Sunday was the Foshay Observation Deck—because this is what I do: I research the cities I visit to see if they have any observation decks affording panoramic city views. The one example of this in Minneapolis is the Foshay Tower, built in 1929 at a height of 448 feet and 32 floors, its architectural design a deliberate echo of the Washington Monument. It was converted to the W Minneapolis - The Foshay Hotel (owned by Marriott) in 2008, the hotel still operating the museum and observation deck at the top; we bought our tickets at the front desk of the hotel on the ground floor.

The top of the building features a pretty small, old-school observatory with a narrow path around its perimeter—basically, the Smith Tower (1914, 484 ft, 38 floors) is to Seattle as The Foshay is to Minneapolis, right down to the meal bars curving overhead to keep people from falling.

We basically designated Sunday our All Day Pass Public Transit Day: for $4, we got a ticket that would get us anywhere we wanted to go on buses or one of the two light rail lines. The Green Line runs between downtown Saint Paul downtown Minneapolis—a ten-mile difference—as it overlaps five stops at the north end of the Blue Line, which runs between Target Field in downtown Minneapolis and the Mall of America in the suburb of Bloomington, MN south of the city. Day passes can be purchased at a kiosk at any light rail station, and we did so at the station four blocks from our hotel. The first destination was, indeed, the Mall of America. We went outside to get this shot in front of the main entrance to the mall once we had covered about three quarters of the way around the first level, having come up from the lower level at the light rail station.

Somehow, Mall of America seemed smaller by total volume than I expected—somewhat similar to the efficiency of the world-famous San Diego Zoo, which packs a stunning number of exhibits into an unexpectedly limited amount of space (don't get me wrong, in both cases they are very big; just not quite as big as I expected). This effect is achieved by creating a mall with 5.6 million square feet of gross building area but with a ground-floor footprint of maybe a third of that, spread over three and a half levels. Only one side of the fourth level has retail and restaurant space; also that one-third number is a wild estimate, as I cannot find any web page anywhere that specifically states the square footage of the building's footprint. Also, only the ground floor has square footage matching the entirety of the footprint: the center of the mall is occupied by a theme park, Nickelodeon Universe (prior to 2008, Camp Snoopy), which alone sits on 7 acres of floor space, stretched all the way up to the mall ceiling with its second through fourth levels wrapped around it. It impressively packs in more than thirty rides and attractions, including five roller coasters and a water ride. Shobhit and I did not bother going on any rides—we preferred to save the money—but we still walked around to see it in its entirety; I took 12 shots of it, including two video clips of roller coasters that actually did look like a lot of fun to me, but which Shobhit would never have gone on.

Mall of America selfie with Shobhit, the central atrium going down four levels behind us. Mall of America has been the largest mall in the United States, the largest mall in North America, and the largest mall in the Western Hemisphere for most of its existence since opening in 1992. At the time, it opened as one of the largest in the world, likely in the top 5, and certainly ranked higher than where it is now, as the 11th-largest in the world. It features 520 stores, including six anchor tenant spaces, one of which is currently vacant. Much has been made of the decline of shopping malls in recent years, but you certainly wouldn't know it by spending time at the Mall of America. That place was so hopping on Sunday, it made me wonder how much more nuts it must have been shortly before the pandemic. A guy I know who grew up in Minneapolis recently commented on how "It's a fully functional mall," and he's right about that: it feels just like any mall, really—just with a theme park in the center of it, and a hell of a lot more stores. Okay, and touristy spots like the m&m's Store or the LEGO Store, making the whole place feel like the Las Vegas Strip and an international airport terminal had a baby. Shobhit and I walked every hall on every level and went into a bunch of the stores, many of them clothing stores Shobhit was interested in: he managed to find a shirt, a pair of pants and a pair of shorts he really liked at good prices at Urban Planet. I actually found a pair of shorts I really love at Hollister on sale for only $24. Once we finished walkling from one end of the mall to every other, we had spent five hours there. I did over 26,000 steps that day, which is equivalent to about 12 miles.

EDIT: I totally forgot in the original draft of this travelogue that there was an entire lower level—the same level as the train station, in fact—occupied by the SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium, the manta rays at which we could see from the top of the escalators down there. I took this video clip right before we left the mall, after walking around it for a solid five hours. This would further skew the floor space numbers I had very roughly estimated.

From the second level: looking down at a play area with tables right outside the LEGO Store, only from this vantage point realizing it's in the shape of a giant LEGO block.

The same guy who grew up in Minneapolis told me I had to eat at this restaurant, Owamni, featuring Native American cuisine by The Sioux Chef, a team who were, incidentally, also keynote speakers at the Co+nvergence conference in Saint Paul last year (this year the conference got a keynote panel from their nonprofit organization NATIFS, or North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems). Anyway, Ben, this native Minneapolitan in the biweekly Action Movie Night I attend, immediately declared Owamni "the best restaurant in the country," making me immediately skeptical that he was just being a hyperbolic local who was proud of his hometown. But, then I spoke to several people at the conference who confirmed the perception that the restaurant is amazing. So, Shobhit and I took light rail back from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis, and then walked several blocks to Owamni, which has a nice view overlooking the Mississippi River. They only had space to seat us at the bar, but we got seated immediately, so that worked for us. As for our experience with the food and drink, it was . . . mixed, but for two unfortunately uncontrollable reasons: we're both vegetarian and the menu options were limited; and Shobhit has a real distaste for smoky flavor. For drinks, Shobhit ordered an iced tea and I got a hot tea, both of which we respectively found to be very good. A whole lot of the starters are vegetarian, and we ordered the wild mushroom chowder and the corn taco, both of which I liked a lot. But, the mushroom chowder had a very strong smoky flavor to it, which Shobhit couldn't stomach; we were told there was no smoke added to it and this was just the natural flavoring of the mushrooms used. Only one of the entrees was vegetarian, the stuffed poblano, but when we were told that some of the same mushrooms were used in that as were used in the chowder, we didn't want to run the risk of spending $32 on a dish Shobhit might not want to eat. So, we settled on the starters and the tea, finished those up and moved on. As for the photo, above: the gray haired woman smiling at my camera is Sharon, one of the PCC HBC Coordinators who had been at the conference in Saint Paul; she happened to be there the same time I was, and was visiting her friend there sitting next to her—who is employed at Owamni, doing their books if I remember right. She had a stack of invoices there with her at the table. Anyway, I certainly did not expect to find anyone I knew there (or, as in this case, anyone I had just met the previous week at Co+nvergence), so it took me several beats to register the woman saying over and over, "Matthew. Matthew. Matthew," when Shobhit and I got up from our seats at the bar. They had been at the table right behind us.

Still wanting to make use of our day pass on Metro Transit and not wanting to buy another one the next day, the very next thing we did was a quick walk across the Stone Arch Bridge, a converted 19th-century railroad bridge that's now a pedestrian pathway that crosses diagnonally across the Mississippi River. As you can see, it offers very nice views of the city and the river, here taken looking back from the direction we came. Once across the bridge, instead of walking all the way back, we caught a bus back to our hotel, giving us time to drop off our Mall of America shopping bags before moving on to our next destination.

Next: Foshay Observation Deck . . . again! When we bought the tickets earlier in the afternoon, we were given a hotel key card to use in the one elevator that goes up to floor 30. We were told the card would continue to work until the observation deck closed at 9:00 p.m., so we decided we would come back just before that time and take in the view at dusk. Totally worth it! In this shot is a view of all three of the three tallest buildings in Minneapolis (and also Minnesota): IDS Center (1973, 792 ft, 57 floors, far left); Capella Tower (1992, 776 ft, 56 floors, formerly US Bancorp Tower, the building Shobhit once worked in, far right); and Wells Fargo Center (1988, 775 ft, 57 floors, center).

Alex Hudson, one of the seven people Shobhit had run against for Seattle City Council, had asked him to send her a photo of the Walker Art Center, which was really the only reason we went out there—again catching a bus to it and back, well after dark, as what is clearly its most famous element, the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, is surprisingly open until midnight. I suspect the Sculpturee Garden is also what Alex meant, and of course I took many photos there. But, I texted Shobhit this shot to send to Alex. It's probably generally preferable to see this place in the daytime, but visiting after dark still made for a pretty cool experience.

I bet you never thought I'd show you a picture of a blue cock, did you?

Monday, August 7 So, we didn't take transit anywhere on Monday—we saved exploring the Minneapolis Skyway System for that day, so we could do it midday on a weekday when most of the skyway bridges would actually be open. Much as we had done at Mall of America, we tried to see as much of it as we could, visiting the extreme ends of it in all four directions, then circling our way back toward its most concentrated clusters in the city center. The Minneapolis Skyway is "argest contiguous system of enclosed, second-level bridges in the world"—a list of caveats that kind of cracks me up, as it thus excludes other cities' pedestrian tunnel networks that are actually larger—composed of 9.5 miles of pathways connecting 80 city blocks. We didn't cover every block or every skyway bridge, but we covered a hell of a lot of them: my steps on Monday were just under 23,000, which meant we walked the equivalent of about ten miles in the skyway system alone. A couple of skyway bridges I sought out specifically, as in the one pictured above, stretching across 7th Street from Northstar Center, as it's the oldest standing skyway bridge in the Twin Cities and the second one ever made, having been built in 1963. The very first one had been built in 1962, but was demolished to make way for the construction of Wells Fargo Center in 1988.

Last point of interest after walking for five hours all over the Minneapolis Skyway System: the fabled Mary Tyler Moore statue—which, to my surprise, was not actually erected here on Nicolet Mall right outside IDS Center until 2001, 24 years after The Mary Tyler Moore Show's seventh and final season. It's now 22 years after that, and I find myself wondering how many people under the age of, say, 30 even know who this is they're walking by on the street. For those of you who may not know, this was her iconic pose throwing her hat into the air in the middle of downtown Minneapolis in the show's opening credits. Shobhit and I actually binged all seven seasons nearly three years ago and absolutely loved it. As I noted at the time, it was stunningly ahead of its time and shockingly devoid of cynicism. It's streaming on Hulu and if you have that service I really recommend a watch (or rewatch, as the case may be). We were far too tired after all that walking, and did not want to use transit on Monday, which meant two places I really wanted to see, we didn't get to: George Floyd Square, and Minnehaha Falls. There's always next year! As for today, because Shobhit took other flights that left earlier than mine and then mine was delayed nearly two hours, I spent a lot of time in airports today. The time was extended after I discovered my suitcase got mislabeled and sent to Las Vegas. There are four bottles of liquor in it so I guess that's fitting. They better still be full when the suitcase finally gets delivered!