Day Off in Minneapolis

Hi everyone,
We arrived in Minneapolis around 9:00 this morning. I went up to my room, took a shower and much-needed shave, and made some coffee. I found a nearby CVS that could fill a couple prescriptions for me, and ended up on a three-hour walking tour "on my way back to the hotel." Now it's almost 4:00pm here, my feet are blistered, and my camera's batteries are dead. So you'll have to wait for pics.

My errand to CVS took me to the edge of Minneapolis' theater district. Usually when I hear the words "theater district," I expect to find a run-down section of town, where the once-opulent theaters that aren't boarded up show porn flicks. New York is the only place I've seen with a vibrant, busy theater district. And if you ask anyone in the NYC theater scene, they'll tell you it's been in decline for decades. So I was surprised to find a legitimate section of surviving theaters in Minneapolis. The whole area has a cool, artsy feel to it. All of the electrical boxes along the streets are custom painted by various artists. There are nice restaurants around, too.

Minneapolis is also a very interesting architectural city. So far, in terms of intriguing architecture, I'd say Minneapolis is second only to San Francisco.

After walking for maybe a half hour, I ran into guitarist Jimmy Vivino. While we chatted a bit about the neighborhood, he mentioned that the river (Mississippi) was only a few blocks away. Thus began my walk to the riverfront. I had read that there's an historic old stone arch bridge nearby that served as a railroad bridge at one time. When I reached the riverfront, I saw many bridges. The old stone arch bridge was in the distance a bit. There was a modern bridge right in front of me, so I decided to take it across the Mississippi. I thought I'd get a few shots of the old bridge from the middle of the newer bridge, then head back to the hotel. But everything I saw made me want to walk a little further, then a little further, then just a little bit further. It turns out that this little section of the Mississippi River, with it's falls (the only falls on the entire river), is the reason we have Minneapolis in the first place. So the city has clearly invested some real money into preserving the riverfront as an historic place. There's trails and viewing areas and benches and picnic tables all along the river. Now this isn't really the Mississippi you think of when reading Mark Twain: it isn't that big here, and it isn't exactly clean. But I still had to touch it, so I took a little trail down and dipped my hand. That water sure was a'powerful slimy, I reckon. Sorry.

I ended up crossing the river on the new bridge, while walking and taking pictures for an hour or so on the way to the old stone arch bridge. I crossed back over the old stone arch bridge, and made my way back to the hotel via the Skyway. Oh- the Skyway! Minneapolis has this cool Skyway feature: many of the downtown area's most prominent building are connected at the second-floor level. So you walk from building to building, over the city traffic. It's very cool. It kind of makes all of the area's prominent business building lobbies open for public use. Pretty cool.

Another cool town on tour. Tomorrow night, we play the Orpheum here in Minneapolis, then head to Chicago for two nights. Room service pork chop and pinot noir awaits- goodnight!