-living in the northwest has made me semi-feral and cagey. why are you being nice? what do you want? people not only make eye contact here, but they say hello, and then they inquire about your well-being! an older man and I were both perusing the cheese section of a store and he abruptly turned to me and said "HOW ARE YOU?" I probably sounded like I'd just emerged from a cave. "oh, fine" I said hastily, and I left because his kindness was so discombobulating.
-well drinks are "rail drinks" here. I had to google it. apparently this is a common parlance in Minnesota as well as Washington DC. it refers to the "rail" behind the bar where the shit-alcohol is kept. I want to go somewhere just so I can order a "rail whiskey and, uh, pop" and sound all local.
-there are pro-vaccination ads on all the bus shelters.
-guys carry shoe polish with them, and polish their manly boots whilst on the light rail.
-they will give you free samples of pecan pie-flavored whiskey at the liquor store, and it tastes embarrassingly delicious in a windowless-van kinda way.
-the sidewalks are nearly entirely free of ice. this city actually seems to accept the fact that it's oftentimes ass-cold, and makes the necessary accommodations.
-there are numbered avenues, and numbered streets, and north and south versions of all of these, and they sometimes intersect each other, and it takes a long fucking time walking in the brutal wind to correct your errors when you're lost.
-iPhones hate the cold, and they'll just die- leaving you without, say, a map or camera for a good portion of your first day here.
-there are very few pedestrians. for a while I felt smug about this, being the only one strolling about, until I realized they're all either using the skybridge infrastructure I haven't yet been able to locate, or they're just aware that it's colder than fuck and decided "I'm not fucking walking anyplace."
-you'll hear "London Calling" play at least once.
*
Riverside Plaza. this is what I'm gonna explore in the daylight tomorrow. I saw it looming from the train into the city. the property was built in 1973 as multi-income housing but devolved into, what did Wikipedia refer to them as...? ah yes, "crack stacks" by the 90s. they are considered a sociological model of low-income transitional housing "done right" because most residents don't stay there long (~4 years on average) before they move somewhere else. the buildings were modeled after Le Corbusier with color blocks to, I guess, soften the Brutalist blow. they were added to the National Register in 2010. so yeah. this is the shit that makes my pupils dilate.
near Cedar Street.
Minneapolis at night requires a seedy, lurid filter.
with tasteful lenses offered to the twee.
I like being cold. I love the visceral feeling of being assaulted by the elements. there's something incredibly humbling and grounding about it. but I had to cut my night-jaunt short once my face was simultaneously numb and throbbing and my neck started to cramp. it's currently 10F with 17mph NW winds and a -8F windchill. refreshing! the breeze is what'll fuck you up, man. I have heinous windburn now. and hat-hair. can you tell?
probably because I was standing around taking pictures of shit like this.
it's the Twin Cities from the sky! the guy next to me looked out and said "looks cold." "flat, too!" I replied. he was also from Seattle, visiting his daughter and son-in-law. "he's gonna take me ice-fishing" he said.
but this is where my love lives. I mean, fuck.
the architecture of housing projects is so dramatically different from one coast to the other. I wonder why that is.
*
I realized I never uploaded a buncha other shite from the last week or so. *
furry optimism-nuggets. 'tis an early spring in Seattle. I didn't even wear a jacket to work for the last few days. I shall think about that now as I hide from the pitch-black ass-cold of beautiful Minneapolis.
vertical jet trail. I gave it a sinister filter so it can be a faux-still from the Twilight Zone. the episode could be called "Don't Look Up" or something.
Mensuration: (n) 1. the theory of measurement 2. the act of measuring geometric lengths, areas, volumes or masses.
yeah, I did a double take also.
the reflection series! oh what's happening in Belltown? what isn't happening in Belltown! it's an exuberant hive of activity!
oh Pike Street, you make me feel, if not necessarily old, at least indulgently bemused. and indulgent bemusement is kinda the precursor to being old if yer not careful.
and with all the construction it's also annoying as fuck to try to be a pedestrian in.
but they're building pretty cool and happily glassy shit, at least- no blocky beige soul-sucks. you can at least check your grim reflection as you shuffle away to your less-expensive defaults.
I think I like these various buildings better when they're under construction and there's still an air of anarchy and dissonance.
I didn't filter this at all. the sky was that fucking blue. when I first saw these two I thought "it looks like they're about to hug each other."
the angle of the streetlight almost matches the angle of the building. stood in the middle of the damn street to take this one.
this crazy ampersand. it's been painted like this ever since I can remember, and undoubtedly much longer; Market House Corned Beef has been in Seattle since 1948. this row of businesses is probably not much longer for this world; it's only a few blocks away from the above photographs. so every time I go by it I'm uneasily relieved.
have I ever been in this establishment? no. but I love knowing it's there. so if it does ever get torn down, i accept vague proxy responsibility.
this was on one of the buses in Seattle. take those horrible classist condescending Yelp ads and black out their teeth and eyes. I glanced up, noticed this glorious vandalism, and laughed aloud. sorry it's blurry.
"as in life, chill for best results." this actually made me angry. I suppose I'm not their target market.
from my hotel window I can see smokestacks, a rooftop water tower, and flatness.
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