August 19, 2009

Tornado

Click to enlarge

A tornado hit some parts of Minneapolis this afternoon. I was able to take a few pics of the aftermath. Take a look.

UPDATE: Added a few more pics to the set. These are closer to home... a few blocks around Franklin and 5th.

Posted by tomk at 06:30 PM | Comments (1)

August 10, 2009

Big Funny: Opening Night

Friday night saw the opening of the Big Funny exhibition at the Altered Esthetics gallery. The exhibition features the art from the titular Big Funny: a big (48 newspaper sized pages) collection of comic-strips by an assortment of Minneapolis cartoonists. More info on the collection here. I brought a camera and acted like an annoying paparazzo. The results are here.

Posted by tomk at 12:34 AM | Comments (1)

February 06, 2009

Minneapolis Street Car Golden Age

I recently started researching the historical Twin City Street Car system for a future project. Having moved back to the Twin Cities from New York fairly recently, it's hard to prevent tears from flowing, when you see the following article from the July 1954 issue of the Mass Transportation Magazine posted in a short by informative article at Eyeteeth:

Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

Needless to say, the local public transportation system hasn't really recovered since the death of the Street Car. Still there are glimmers of hope. The Hiawatha light-rail line is a great start, and I hope they hurry up and build the Minneapolis-St. Paul link already! Then there is the tantalizing 2007 Street Car Feasibility Report. It took some 70 years for the Twin Cities to build a world class Street Car system. It took less than 3 years to dismantle it. How many years (if ever) before we can have a system as extensive as this again:

Map by Brett McKean. Click to enlarge

Posted by tomk at 01:13 AM | Comments (2)