A tale of two cities

I often refer to this place as the twin cities because less than 10 miles from Minneapolis is another city, St. Paul. We don’t have this phenomenon at home in Ireland. Minneapolis and St. Paul are two distinctly different places. They each have their own mayor, one is a non smoking city, one is not, and both are on the same side of the Mississippi River so the comparison to somewhere like Budapest can’t be made. If you were blindfolded, tossed in the back of a van, driven around in circles for a few hours to mess up your bearings, perhaps given a few digs to guarantee disorientation, and then unblindfolded inside a pub you’ve never been in I wager you’d know what city you were in. There are unmistakable differences in the people and their behaviors. It is refreshing to experience such diversity over the distance of only a few miles in a vast country that too often looks the same, in terms of the identical retailers, chain restaurants and suburban homes that border every highway and encircle every town.

I live in Minneapolis and seldom have any reason to visit St. Paul. We pass by but not through it on our way to Wisconsin and we visit the science museum about once a year but that’s it. St. Paul is not an action packed place; in fact it is dead, always dead. Minnesota writer Garrison Keillor says that St. Paul at its busiest and wildest is like New York at 06:00 on a Sunday morning, in winter. I added the winter bit myself because although his analogy is apt and authority as a writer infallible it just doesn’t paint the picture clear enough for me. Maybe an Irish version of the comparison would be a cold, grey and wet Athlone at 06:00 on Christmas Day.

An opportunity presented itself to make a trip to downtown St. Paul today. The Minnesota chapter of the American Woodturners Association rented some gallery space and put on a show for the public. Woodturning was a vice of mine for a few years and one that will be indulged in again once a house, with shed, is bought. Incidentally, the shed will have tea making facilities. I didn’t come all the way to Minnesota to have to make tea inside the house then transport it, by hand, to the shed. To hell with that!

I drove to St. Paul giving myself an extra hour to go and check out one of the busiest freight train yards in the state. The plan was to ditch the car and explore on foot. The problem with that idea was that I possessed no small currency to plug into a parking meter. Not a big issue I thought, I’ll just go to one of the many off street car parks. The benefits of a city that people don’t visit are an abundance of good parking spots. I saw loads of places where I could park the car for the whole day in exchange for only $1.50. The problem with this city though is that there are no humans working at the car parks. I need a human being to break my $20 into smaller money which I can then put into the honesty based payment system, a huge box with loads of coin size slits each numbered to correspond to the space you parked in. You park, take note of the number of the parking space, go to the box, and lash a few quarters into the slit with your number on it. During the day I assume that somebody, maybe even a robot, does a spot check and those stupid enough to scam the place for the $1.50 fee get towed away and their car is held to ransom for nearly $200.

So, cheap car parks were off the menu. I’ll try my luck at a slightly more expensive multi-story car park or “ramp” as the Americans call them. My sense of direction is pretty shabby so this deviation from the plan of parking close to the gallery and learning the lay of the land during my hour of exploration was now in tatters. I’m not lost yet but apprehension is kicking in. I find a ramp and pull into it. I press the ticket button and nothing happens. I notice a sign that says “RAMP CLOSED SATURDAYS.” I reverse out onto the street and make a few lefts and a few rights in search of another ramp. I’m totally lost by the way. Another ramp appears on my right, I pull into it but a sign says “RESIDENTS ONLY.” Again, I fling the car into reverse and squeal off on my seemingly futile quest. I’m cursing at this point and pondering a high speed escape to Minneapolis. No, show resolve I tell myself, you’re here to see some woodturning and won’t be defeated by this crap. Ultimately I find an open ramp and ditch the car. These foreign streets hold no clues as to where I am relative to the gallery. I walk the empty streets. All restaurants and shops are closed. Time is 10:00. Day is Saturday. The occasional car drives by. Busses with no passengers glide eerily past. I’m lost and I’m lonely! Where the hell is everyone? This would be the perfect city to film a movie whose plot is the evaporation of the human race due to a pandemic disease or radiological disaster.

The gallery appears on a corner opposite a tidy park complete with a bunch of alcoholics sharing a giant bottle of vodka. I was the only person at the show. I talked tools and lathes with the demonstrator for a half hour then left. Nice guy but it was starting to get awkward when nobody else was showing up.

The sky was blue. The air was cold and dry. My hands were cracked and sore from the lack of humidity. Conditions ripe for photos (LINK) of excellent clarity.

Time to find the car. I spent about 30 minutes wandering a two block radius searching in vain. Ugly and identical 1970’s built office buildings loomed over me, blocking all warmth from the sun on an already freezing day. I called Martha, gave her the street intersection from where I was making the distress call and the address of the ramp as it was typed on the ticket. Nice touch that. She punched the start and finish coordinates into Mapquest. Mapquest displayed a map with two dots directly on top of each other. I looked across the street and noticed the parking ramp that had eluded me so well. God bless computers.

I got to the car and drove down to the ground floor via a tight helix that mimicked a water slide. I got to the pay kiosk but didn’t see any attendant. He must be on lunch I thought. Wrong, this was an automated deal. I smugly slid my $20 into the pay machine. $17 in quarters, 68 coins total pumped slot machine style into my hands. At that point I decided to get the fuck out of St. Paul before things got worse.

I drove down by the river. The urban environment had failed to motivate me. The gold was there but I didn’t know what time of day the light would fall on the buildings that took my fancy, unlike in Minneapolis. I drove to where I knew there was industrial infrastructure and spotted a nice collection (LINK) of rusty storage tanks. These were private roads so I took off toward Minneapolis to avoid confrontation with any law enforcement agencies. Less than a mile into the trip I pulled over to look at a row of painted concrete pillars that supported an overhead railroad bridge. The cracked up surface (LINK) was long overdue a new coat of yellow gloss.

20 minutes later I was back on familiar turf, Minneapolis. The magnificent weather persisted so I frequented some of my favorite photography places (LINK) in an attempt to salvage the day that St. Paul had robbed me of.

Moral of the story: St. Paul is not for those easily aggravated.