Here are today’s entries:

My experiences of the city are taken in mostly while walking to and from work each morning and afternoon. At 5:30 AM, the city of Minneapolis is absolutely silent. Only crazy people like me who work nonsensical hours are out and about, plugging our way through a city that looks like it has survived a zombie attack. Because I do this meditation twice daily, minute details of the cityscape creep into my consciousness. If the world around me is too hectic, or if I have just finished up a long day at the office, I can walk home… look at my feet and just… come into focus.

This week however, I have been introduced to an obnoxious intrusion into my bit of mental space. Apparently, Boost! Mobile has started to use the sidewalks of my neighborhood as advertising spaces. Large black squares with orange type and images of cell phones have been stuck to the sidewalks.

Is it possible that the only bit of reprieve from advertisements has been sold off? Is this legal? I am curious if the city has actually sold rights for the space of the sidewalk… and if Boost is just one of many advertisers that will be claiming the very ground I walk on as space to sell me something.

A Concrete Modern Gem in Whittier

It has been a magical day, I won’t lie about it. However, here is a lesson everyone should learn: DO NOT eat protein salad from Kowalski’s deli before going to bed. You will sleep for about 2 hours and then… POOF! Awake! Here I am at 2:00 AM sitting around writing blog posts and reflecting on my day.

Asahi Shimbun

I managed to score some pretty amazing items today from a garage sale in North MPLS. My most prized find: an unused 70′s Swedish mountain-scape mural. You know… those paste-on wall paper things that had terrible color balance… chances are one of your grandparents had one in their dining room. Or, if you were lucky like I was, your 8th grad science teacher had one in the lab. I think ours was of the surface of the moon.

More Furniture... We're All Becoming Nomads These Days

Speaking of the surface of the moon, the milky light that settled over Minneapolis today was like being on another planet. I wandered around town with Curtis today. Whittier has finally started to hit it’s tipping point with object saturation… all of the things that are going to be covered by the first snowfall are being pushed to the streets in anticipation. Treasures waiting to be made treasures.

New Urban Neighborhood in MSP - Snoooooooze

I am a fan of the urban ideals pushed forward the New Urbanism movement. How could I not be? Any movement that encourages walkable, friendly, dense developments in our city centers is something I should appreciate if not support. But… however much I like the ideas, when they are implemented the resulting landscape is almost always less than desirable. For some reason we now equate urban living to be a viable lifestyle for only wealthy young people. If America’s cities are indeed experiencing a renaissance or re-inhabitation, let’s hope that someone comes up with a way to make New Urbanist practices and spaces that are available to those of us who do not have a trust fund. If this doesn’t happen… I imagine our city cores going from ghetto for the socially marginalized to ghetto for the socially marginalizing.

How boring.

One Tiny Shred of Human Presence

Beef, Tater, Meow!

Gas Station... Being Cleared Away

Long Live LynLake... in whatever form it ends up as...

My life is exceptionally simple. I think most people that are saddled with a lack of creativity and enormous student loans have similar arrangements with the world around them? While other people go to movies, go shopping, party, or enjoy being part of the social sphere, I wander.

During my wanderings I find amazing things. Tidbits of life that may or may not prove that other human beings exist, do things, ruin other people’s lives and so and and so forth… It is refreshing.

When I saw this on the ground it was just too good to pass up. I do not know what could possibly indicate that this young man, who cannot control his nearly forked tongue could be responsible for all those things scrawled in Crayola marker around his likeness.

Wow. That is an incredibly pompous way of saying I decided to go for a crazy long walk with Curtis yesterday to look at various buildings in the public sphere. We took off on foot… and proceeded to become tourists in our own city. If you have the means (feet) and the time (2hrs +) to do this… I can’t encourage it enough. I feel refreshed and interested… again.

This little adventure is starting to spark some actual art-based experimentation… finally.I find myself going to movies, sitting in the theatre and, at times wishing I could make photographs that are (simply) cinematic. I don’t mean to say that the images I’d like to make are loaded with meaning or symbolic filters. I am much more interested in the… hidden neutral moments that occur when watching a film. There are always those times when you are presented with a beautiful, glowing image on a giant screen… but it is an image that is not really that consequential to the movie.

Back in grad school, I was fascinated by films such as “Our Daily Bread”, “The Passenger” and also certain parts of “Y Tú Mama Tambien” which employ the long shot shaped by static/neutral camera movements. These little bits sparked my interest in the relationship of moving images to my photographs. There is a certain cinematic quality in the empty spaces that I am always drawn to… and… may or may not be able to capture in the perfectly encapsulated form of the photographic print.

Any way… this is somehow work related also… as I have been testing out a JVC HD camcorder for my job. I have to say it is a pretty mean little tool for people who are interested in using video as part of their work/research but don’t want to invest in a professional level camera. This occasion seemed like the perfect chance to try out the camera and also to try to capture more of the presence of certain spaces throughout the city I live in.