Nearly 2 hours late leaving today but “that’s the trains for you” according to the lovely retired teacher we met this morning. He was off to New York for his grandson’s 6th birthday via Chicago and Boston where he has more family. He said he wouldn’t travel any other way and nor would we if we had the time. This trip to Chicago is part of the Empire Builder route as per the aforementioned album by Billy Bragg and Joe Henry and it will take 9 hours.
We had another paradoxical day in Minneapolis yesterday. A combination of urban survival instincts and appreciation of fine art and parklands! After breakfast, we took a couple of buses to Minehaha Park and Falls which is a stunning and expansive park complete with its own glorious waterfall and river that exits into the Mississippi a few kms away. You can gather by the name that this is traditional lands of the Native Americans. I enquired what our names meant in Native Blackfoot language given we had spent so much time in Glacier and Minneapolis. Lynda Harris translates to “Muuneehaha” which means, “Love and Laughter”. Ian Wilson translates to “Tutunkatum” which means, “Buffalo Stomach”.
From there we planned to visit a multi-cultural market in midtown Minneapolis called the Global Market. As soon as we got off the light rail I saw a sign saying the market on Tuesdays open from 2-7pm and it was midday. We decided to grab a bite and head to the next spot on the agenda, the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA). Before taking two steps up the street we stepped over a semi-conscious homeless man and then were confronted by another semi-conscious man, only this one was staggering towards us carrying a coffee. There was a black woman screaming at him to sit down somewhere but to no avail. We then ordered a regular pizza which came out the diameter of a truck’s wheel. Suddenly we were surrounded by two women and a man asking for money. We quickly ate what we could of the pizza and gave the rest to the threesome which provided a much-needed distraction.
The ensuing walk up the next four blocks of midtown was akin to parts of Brooklyn and Harlem except there were no cops around anywhere. The only uniformed person we saw believe it or not was a security man on a Segway! He turned up because of a complaint from a shopkeeper who wanted the two prostitutes removed from his shop front. We saw it unfold and sadly the vision may remain for some time in the annals of my memory marked “traumatic”. Both girls had very short skirts but the white girl with the homemade tatts on her thighs had an exceptionally short one which was pleated. She bent over in full view of us and Bamm! Not a thread of anything to be seen. Not good.
I’m sure the market would have been great but it wasn’t worth returning and risking your life for. We would have been lambs to the slaughter in an environment where almost everyone was black or Hispanic. This was a desperate environment and two pasty white tourists would have looked pretty tasty wandering around looking at trinkets! In those 4 blocks we saw drug deals openly taking place and at one stage a guy exchanged a deal from a car that pulled up and scurried into an alleyway which we were steadily approaching. We looked into the alley and saw the guy dealing to another guy while an older man screamed “I’m gonna pop a cap in your ass!” It was quite surreal.
The next bus couldn’t come quick enough, and this is where the paradox happens. Within 5 minutes it was like we had been transported into another dimension. The MIA is a world-class museum surrounded by stunning parks and houses, a far cry from the barely contained anarchy of midtown. I suppose crossing 110th street at the top of Central Park is a bit similar but it was an extraordinary 5-minute drive nonetheless.
The MIA was built in 1915 by the rich of Minneapolis. They felt the city needed something posh to offset the all-powerful working-class reputation it had. They certainly didn’t go in half-arsed because it’s very nice indeed and free entry to boot. The art was excellent and as a bonus for me, there was a section dedicated to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Like George Costanza, I too wanted to be an architect and I once saw a documentary on FLW that truly blew me away. What makes his work so special is its simplicity in design. It’s warm, never over the top and built to last whether its buildings or furniture. He had a tragic life which he was able to overcome and become incredibly prolific. The section we saw yesterday is from a prairie house and is part of a bigger section which is at The Met in NYC. Then there was another beautiful Van Gough which took our breath away as well as plenty of interesting artists we hadn’t seen before.
We grabbed some very tasty Chinese on the way home and had a quiet night watching the Twins get beaten by the Yankees in game two. I also flogged Lynda in a Rock n Roll board game that was in the house just for good measure! Now it’s off to the Windy City for 5 days so we’re pretty excited. Only ever heard good things about Chicago and we have another new place to set up in and explore. Some photos from yesterday.
