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I facilitated an event called Networking Recess last night. It...

Wed, 01 May 2013 21:39:04 -0500

I facilitated an event called Networking Recess last night. It was basically Give & Take without prepared presentations or chairs, and BYOB. Organized by the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, held in Public Functionary. And it was a great time. Wonderful group of people, totally game for anything.

The highlight: a new game called Artist Statement. I asked for volunteers to present a work of art in the gallery as if it were their own, but they actually had to tell their own story through it. Amazing.

Photos by @jjmillard

Reused gas station in Amsterdam by Sophia Valla Architects h/t...

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:36:59 -0500

Reused gas station in Amsterdam by Sophia Valla Architects

h/t Jake Voit

Downtown Project: Part Five Killing time at the most attractive...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:32:04 -0500

Downtown Project: Part Five

Killing time at the most attractive restaurant I saw within a few blocks, Park on Fremont. Weathered wood exterior. Complete dissonance from the surrounding buildings, which are mainly 70 year old casinos.

Me: “When did you open?”

Her: “Oh, we’re not open yet! We open Friday.”

Me: “Do the owners any connection to the Downtown Project?”

Her: “I don’t know what that is!”

Me: “None of those birds live around here, do they?”

Them: “Haha. No. It’s a joke.”

Downtown Project: Part Four From their website: “CREATE...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:16:42 -0500

Downtown Project: Part Four

From their website:

“CREATE THE SHIPPING CONTAINER CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.

Most urban revitalization efforts are centered in cities with vacant, crumbling buildings. Our Downtown doesn’t have those. To quickly create spaces for new businesses here requires innovative thinking, so we’re using repurposed shipping containers as places for entrepreneurs to follow their passions.”

Container Park

Downtown Project: Part Three Work in Progress, the co-working...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:12:23 -0500

Downtown Project: Part Three

Work in Progress, the co-working space affiliated with the project, which is seeking to create, “The Coworking Capital of the World.”

These were the only bike racks I saw in Las Vegas.

As I walked up, I passed two homeless people and one twenty-something guy on a mechanized skateboard.

Me: “How long have you been open?”

Her: “A month. We’re getting full!”

Downtown Project: Part Two This is The Ogden in Downtown Las...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 16:03:00 -0500

Downtown Project: Part Two

This is The Ogden in Downtown Las Vegas. Tony Hsieh from Zappos lives up top. The graphics. The graphics! They are promoting Emergency Arts to sell condos, and there’s a sexy blonde in a sarong in front of it! Is this the most Vegas thing ever?

Many city dwellers avoid the suburbs, and vice versa....

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:51:00 -0500

Many city dwellers avoid the suburbs, and vice versa. Consequently, small changes in a city neighborhood - a new apartment building, a new business, etc - get a huge amount of attention from city folks while larger projects in the suburbs - new subdivisions, corporate headquarters - do not. The Twin Cities region has 3.3M people in it, and 700k live in the core cities. We care about our specific community, we’re most sensitive to changes we can see, and we’re accustomed to big investments happening elsewhere that are not our concern. If you can about sustainability, this is not a great idea.

So, what happens when there’s a mutation in how and where investments are made? What happens if all of that capital that normally flows to the suburbs flows to a city neighborhood? Is that good?

Tony Hsieh sold Zappos to Amazon in 2009, then he read Triumph of the City by Ed Glaeser in 2011. He took the message about cities being dynamic places to heart and was inspired to relocate their headquarters from suburban Las Vegas into the city’s largely moribund downtown. They bought the old City Hall. They decided to invest $350,000,000 in the neighborhood - knowing that they would be unable to attract and retain employees if the new location wasn’t safe, interesting, and fun. The result is the Downtown Project.

I took a day off from a climbing trip to check out the neighborhood, and it’s insane. These photos show Emergency Arts, a creative cooperative in a former hospital that opened in 2010. A representative from the Downtown Project told me that the coffee shop / record store inside, The Beat, is their informal headquarters. It was the first independent coffeeshop in downtown Las Vegas when it opened in 2010. I didn’t see a single customer shopping for records. During the afternoon I worked there, I heard snippets of conversation like, “Well, it turns out we’re opening another bar across the street from the other bar we’re opening,” and, “Yeahh, I guess we’re buying a building? In the Arts District? It’s pretty big. How big? Like… this one. Similar to this one,” and lots and lots of pitches.

So, clearly the Downtown Project didn’t make Emergency Arts, but they opened a coworking space upstairs, and the building was humming with related activity. Most of the former hospital rooms are individual studios, and there was virtually no one in any of those spaces while I was there, but they were all unique and interesting. More interesting than normal - not slapdash, clearly there are more resources available than normal. There is a lot of stuff in the hallways: art, billboards, a zine library (!). It’s how you’d imagine an art studio building in close proximity to a huge benefactor that wants the neighborhood to be interesting to look and feel.

"There was even a failed experiment in buffalo husbandry. By 1600, huge herds of bison had migrated..."

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 22:29:53 -0600

“There was even a failed experiment in buffalo husbandry. By 1600, huge herds of bison had migrated to the Lower Mississippi Valley due to the overgrazing of the Great Plans. The French thought they could domesticate these powerful beasts and harvest their pelts. Besides interbreeding poorly, buffalo are impossible to keep penned. up. The splinter wooden enclosures. The Mobile colony tried confining small herds on Dauphin Island, only to discover that bison are strong swimmers as well.”

- This tidbit about the French trying to figure out how to get Louisiana to turn a profit, in The Accidental City by Lawrence Powell, is my new favorite historical footnote. Visiting New Orleans for the first time tomorrow.

The Wake Magazine: SAVE DINKYTOWN!

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 08:59:54 -0600

The Wake Magazine: SAVE DINKYTOWN!:

wake-mag:

If you’re like us Wakers, then you’re sick of seeing all of these luxury condos popping up all over campus and its surrounding areas. It seems as though there’s no end in sight- they’ve already taken over some of Dinkytown (our beloved UTech building) and now there’s new plans to tear down …

I understand fondness for the low-slung, low-rent, fairly dingy Dinkytown we’ve all known - I feel it, too (RIP, Purple Onion). I prefer interesting local businesses to chains. But our region is going to grow by ~900k over the next three decades, and I don’t want sprawl. Single story buildings and surface parking lots near major transit lines are exactly what should be replaced. The connection between cheap buildings, low-rent tenants, and attractive redevelopment sites is obvious. The prevailing system in which students live in single family homes that have been chopped into smaller units and neglected is not a good outcome for the students or those neighborhoods (ask families in Marcy Holmes and Como).

weworkhere: Join us for our Give & Take event this Thursday...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:30:31 -0600

weworkhere:

Join us for our Give & Take event this Thursday February 21st @ 7:00 PM at the University Enterprise Laboratories in Saint Paul! Free and open to the public!

Here is the link to the event on Facebook

Link to Give & Take event

What does how you decide to get around say about you? Our house...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:13:00 -0600

What does how you decide to get around say about you?

Our house is in a terrible location for transit. And I’m used to free parking at work, but it’s even worse now - my current gig is in such a fancy building that free valet parking is available. And it’s the coldest winter in four years. Still, for some reason (those reasons?), I’m taking the bus multiple times a week for the first time as an adult. Trying to be more thoughtful about transportation.

And it’s been fine. Only one weird incident last week. I went to a transit meeting in Philips, and took the 21 across the river. When I got out, I saw that a young, large, black man had gotten out, too. And there really aren’t that many young black men in our neighborhood. And I’m carrying some valuable things. And he seemed to be discreetly waiting to see which way I was going to walk.

We cross the street. He really is walking too slowly. I decide to turn and face his general direction. He walks past me and says, “You seem lost!” And I lie a bit and say, “Just in thought!” And he walks past. He’s actually a pretty fast walker, and we walk past the golf course separately.

I confess, I expected him to walk farther than I. Past the mix of fancy houses and less-fancy houses and our house to the apartments. That probably sounds terrible, but there are only ~40 houses, and we’ve lived there for a year, and I’ve never seen him. But he turned and walked up to the house pictured above. And I walked home, and parsed my reaction to the whole thing.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I have had Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance on my bedside table for maybe four months. It was a gift, and I have friends who love it. But I don’t love it.

Today, I learned that Robert Pirsig lived in that house while he wrote Zen. This isn’t my photo, it’s from some motorcyclist’s pilgrimage.

What does it all mean?

littlebrownmushroom: This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:49:21 -0600

littlebrownmushroom:

This Sunday’s New York Times Magazine features Alec Soth’s photographs of the oil boom in North Dakota.

See a 25 image slideshow HERE

Best shot from a roll of film left undeveloped since 2005....

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:01:26 -0600

Best shot from a roll of film left undeveloped since 2005. Harper as a pup, in my apartment behind Arise! in Whittier.

My irreligious liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest was...

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 18:51:51 -0600

My irreligious liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest was named after a missionary. We found that very funny. The Whitmans seemed hapless. They set up a mission, got few converts, infected the Indians with measles, and got themselves killed. That’s it. That’s all they did, and they got a college out of it. Marcus’ famous quote is, “My plans require time and distance”, and I remember thinking, “How could that possibly not be true for anyone?” There was a plaque on campus for his wife Narcissa that honored her being one of the first two white women to cross the Rockies, which is a funny formulation (first two white women), and her name is funny. It was a popular frisbee golf target. The sports teams are called the Fighting Missionaries. The most popular chant at games was, “Missionaries Missionaries We’re On Top!” And so on.

I spotted this book at a very good bookstore in Fargo this fall, and I just finished it. Another reminder of how easy it is for 20-year-olds to be colossal shitheads. I forgive us for being colossal shitheads on this particular point, but it’s striking. It’s pretty clear that a bunch of liberal students uncomfortable with Imperialism, Colonialism, etc. aren’t going to be comfortable with being identified with missionaries. Too keen on establishing our own identities to empathize with that kind of a figure.

I’m much more prone to being affected by stories now. Marcus was my age when he applied for missionary service. He believed it was God’s work, and she was inspired to join him in it at a time when the consensus was that women couldn’t physically handle the trip out west. They were the experiment to see if families could settle the West. They were prim and proper and pious, and their only company for most of the trip is wild men - fur traders and crazy mountain coots. They fall in love on the way, and conceive a child somewhere in the Rockies. They can’t stand the other couple that’s sent with them, so much so that they establish two missions 100 miles apart to avoid each other. Their daughter drowns at the age of two. Mail takes months, so they receive a package of dresses for their daughter from Narcissa’s family months after she dies. How can that not just break your heart? Their homestead becomes a station on the Oregon Trail. The Cayuse Indians aren’t very interested in Christianity, so Marcus focuses on teaching them agriculture. They don’t really care about that either. The church orders them to consolidate, and Marcus rides over the Rockies in winter, all the way to Boston - by way of New Mexico - to change their minds. He almost starves crossing the mountains and has to eat his daughter’s dog. She adopts orphans who are abandoned in the area. He acts as the physician for the entire region, including caring for the Indians during the measles outbreak that takes half the tribe.

He sees the endgame. The trickle of settlers becomes a flood, and the idea of converting people in a foreign land becomes outdated when the US claims the territory. Marcus starts talking about leaving - starting their own homestead where they can have some privacy and peace. His medicine works for the white patients and not the Cayuse, and no one knows about antibodies, so the Indians accuse him of poisoning them. He comes home the last night, knowing that they are about to be slaughtered, but he doesn’t try to escape. He’s in charge of 70 people - most of them children, many of them on bedrest - and the nearest settlement is over 20 miles away. He figures that the best way for most of them to survive is to stay put, though it meant jeopardizing his family. And he was right. 53 women and children survived.

Ten years after attending Whitman College, that all strikes me as a very human story. I actually feel inspired.

kaeti: Had a ton of fun shooting this week’s Give & Take at...

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 12:05:36 -0500

kaeti:

Had a ton of fun shooting this week’s Give & Take at the old Minnesota Mattress Factory in St. Paul. Can’t wait to see what develops in that space.

Want to host your own G & T event? Works Progress is offering starter kits.

7 Fun Facts About My Complex Relationship with the Building That...

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 10:43:57 -0500

7 Fun Facts About My Complex Relationship with the Building That is Now Target Plaza Commons at 10th & Nicollet

1. I spent five years working on redeveloping that site into a skyscraper. Much of that time was spent in the posh sales center across 10th Street, but since I was the only representative from the development team “on site”, it was my job to take care of problems in this building.

2. In the beginning, when pre-sales were rolling towards the $100M mark, we hung out on the roof at night. Kind of a lot.

3. We were selling that location as the best in the city, but the old building was still there, and not aging well. We tried a lot of things to make it look more appealing. We put colorful seasonal graphics in the windows. We put an awning on the corner of the building (awnings are so expensive) and sent an intern to sit out there are chat up passers-by. I worked with some local artists to do a Holiday Peepshow with a bunch of tiny dioramas.

4. It was permeable. The skylights were broken, so the top floor was normally sopping wet from rain, and full of pigeons - alive and dead. The entire building was dank. It felt like it was being reclaimed by nature within months. People found their way in, too. I tried to turn a blind eye, but whenever someone (normally me) had to go inside for some reason, it was terrifying. No electricity, no light, most windows covered, detritus everywhere, the constant sound of water dripping, and pigeons flying out of nowhere. Some squatters lit a fire in the basement. I lost patience. Boarded up more doors and windows to the outside. The hold-outs got more militant. Barricaded the second floor with detritus and duct tape, and peed on the barriers. I took to carrying a hammer, out of fear, and a bullhorn, out of hope I could persuade them to leave.

5. Before it got that bad (it was still fairly bad), I got clearance to host part of a bachelor party in there. We played paintball. I rarely tell that story, because it sounds really adolescent, but the truth is that it was one of the best times I’ll ever have.

6. Towards the end of my involvement, I led a tour of real estate developers who were interested in rehabbing the building. There were probably 10 people there, all with over 20 years of experience. No one, not a one, thought it was feasible. And they couldn’t wait to get out of there.

7. I understand objections to the new space, but given that it used to be my personal Heart of Darkness, I think it’s just about the sexiest transformation I’ve ever seen.

I’ve started trying to convince people that there should...

Sat, 29 Sep 2012 13:04:38 -0500

I’ve started trying to convince people that there should be a seasonal restaurant on Northern Pacific Bridge #9 on the University of Minnesota campus. Maybe just some tables and chairs to start, then a coffee kiosk - develop it iteratively.

People tend to respond that it’s not wide enough, there isn’t enough parking, or it might sometimes be windy. Or that they like the idea.

It’s 1,000 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 88 feet above the water. Views of the skyline, the lock and dam, campus, Bohemian Flats, and the river gorge. And I typically see no one else on the bridge, never more than five. 5’ for bike lanes both directions, 6’ for a two-way walkway, 6’ to play with.

Thoughts?

Someone talk me out of this. Rent Target Field on a beautiful...

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 10:08:39 -0500

Someone talk me out of this.

Rent Target Field on a beautiful fall afternoon. Maybe a weekday lunch hour. Free admission.

The event is all the entertainment that surrounds a modern professional sports event, but no sports.

T-shirt cannons, sing-a-longs, Kiss Cams, Hormel Row of Fame, Jock Jams, aggressively priced food and drink, audience contests, maybe foul balls?

image credit

Birch Ball: A Camping Game of Greatness Camping can be tedious....

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 13:38:21 -0500

Birch Ball: A Camping Game of Greatness

Camping can be tedious. It helps to have some games to pass the time, all the better if you can use materials close at hand. Seven years after my friends and I invented it in the Boundary Waters, I give you the rules to Birch Ball.

Find two intact rings of birch bark, the wider the better. Roughly 2-3” in height. Easiest to find them on decomposing logs.
Collect five stones about the size and shape of a golf ball. Oblong stones are fine. A range of shapes and sizes is fine.
Define a throwing line and set the two rings roughly 10-15 feet in front of you, one about a foot farther away from the throwing line than the other.
Take turns tossing the five stones. You should define the scoring system for yourself, but here’s what we do, in descending order by point value: Landing a stone in the far ring (10 pts - we call this the Ace Hole), landing a stone in the near ring (5 pts - the Bill Hole, named for the friend who skipped this trip - you can and probably should rename this), landing a stone in contact with a ring (3 pts - a Jodie Foster, for Contact), getting a ring to flip and/or dance in the air in a pleasing way (2 pts - a Jamboree), and hitting a ring (1 pt - a Plinko). The first three scoring methods listed depend on position at the end of a player’s turn.
Reset the course after each player tosses their stones, play five rounds in total. The player with the most cumulative points wins.

Customize all of these rules to taste. Make new rules. Name things that happen after people you know. Enjoy.

What do we want?? More planning! When do we want it?? Now! Are...

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 09:29:00 -0500

What do we want??

More planning!

When do we want it??

Now!

Are you willing to pay for it??

To a lesser extent than my previous answers may imply!

Are you willing to work on it?

I’ve been super busy! Good to see you, though!