Not sure if anyone noticed, but the Midwest is still here. Yup, still here! Right between you guys! Guys! ...Guys? So I found it entertaining to observe the Coasters as they flocked to the heart of it all here in Minneapolis renting rooftops for tens of thousands of dollars, parking in the middle of our most frequented streets, and asking about earthquakes. Seriously, earthquakes? Look at a map, Jack. Not everybody decided to build on a fault line like you did.
In a large city, it is interesting to observe that residents are allowed to be completely anonymous, moving from task to task unnoticed, yet those who do not belong still stick out like sore thumbs. You can't help but notice that a guy just isn't from around here when he flies in on Marine 1, shutting down traffic and surrounding himself with suit-and-ties in the "greenest neighborhood in America."
And the President wasn't the only one who stopped to gawk at the park a block from my house... though I think he was the only person to land a helicopter on it... the Gov was here (he landed a metro bus on it), the Piston's (Yes, Detroit) head coach, and about 243, 859 of their pastey faced buds: I could have easily poked Matt Lauer in the eye with a stick on my way to work. Apparently Katie Couric was chillin' on my friend's roof. They weren't the only ones to blame, though... the outstaters and suburbanites were incredibly obnoxious and prevalent, too.
All of these people came to see what happened that was not supposed to happen. The unbelievable made believable at 6pm on a Wednesday: An
8 lane federal road dropped into the Mississippi 3 blocks from my apartment.
The Mississippi river is well known around the world and holds a special place in the history of the United States. It defined French, Spanish, English, and American frontiers and serves vital shipping interests. Ft. Snelling was built along it to protect against the English from the North and soon drew settlers' attention. Federal law prohibited the settling of the area surrounding the fort, but was amended to allow people to build on the East Bank upstream of the complex. Soon the village of St. Anthony (named after the only substantial waterfall on the entire river nearby) swelled. Later, the West Bank restriction was lifted and Brooklyn was born... and hastily renamed to Minneapolis, which eventually swallowed St. Anthony. The powerful waterfalls picked up from there and drove growth and expansion through shipping and water-powered mills and electricity. The resulting city, just upstream from the state capitol, St. Paul, is cut neatly in half by the Mississippi River, joined, primarily by I-35W. We really miss the bridge.
I took the above pictures a half hr after the bridge fell as I walked home from work... you can see the road to nowhere and smoke billowing from a semi. Below is a rendering of the 10 lane replacement bridge which started construction on the first of this month.
By the way, the street directions here are based on the river banks, not on the cardinal directions... it is scary how many people don't know that...
