Posts Tagged ‘Chicago Avenue’
Three Days of Respite at Chicago and Lake
Something I Said Three Days of Respite at Chicago and Lake By DWIGHT HOBBES Minnesota’s third annual Black Entrepreneur State Fair thankfully accomplished what the Minneapolis Police Department increasingly fails to do, safeguard the public from rampant drug dealing along with related violence and prostitution. To be sure, there’s no telling whether this was the aim. It may have simply been that the South Minneapolis locale, Chicago Ave and Lake Street, is about the most heavily trafficked intersection in town. Easily accessible by both mass transit and a main drag that amounts to a super highway with connecting streets instead of off rampants. A perfect place for the upwards of 50 vendors to make a killing, especially in this dead economy nobody wants to come right out and call another depression. For the sake of argument let’s say it killed the proverbial two birds with one stone. For three days, the Chicago-Lake hub was fenced off to buses, pedestrians and a [...]
METRO TRANSIT
Safer and Smaller Trains? By JOHN CHARLES WILSON Metro Transit is in the midst of an experiment with running two-car, instead of three-car, trains on both the Blue and Green Lines. This experiment continues through 20 August. The purpose of the test is to see if two-car trains reduce the amount of cleaning necessary and increase the amount of “interaction” between the Metro Transit police and train riders. Three-car trains will still run on busy days, such as Twins game days. Personally, though it may not do much for the cleaning issue, I believe the best way to make train travel safer is to order “open gangway” light rail vehicles, as are used in Toronto. Instead of separate cars with no inside connection between them, open gangway trains fit together with an open corridor between cars, creating an effect similar to articulated buses. This means people in back don’t have the full separation from the front which seems to embolden troublemakers, and it also means [...]
Touchstone Plaza at Peavey Park “Bridges” Generations
By Robert Albee Imagine a public art project that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and is promptly neglected””no, make that abandoned””by the very community that commissioned the work in the first place!. That”'s the legacy of Touchstone Plaza, located on the southwest corner of Chicago Avenue and East Franklin Avenue in Peavey Park. I never knew there was a plaque with a fabulous poem and community challenge called “Thrones” by Louis Alemayahu. Over the years, I”'ve heard friends declare the mosaics to be hideous and a blight to the neighborhood. Some even wanting it moved or bulldozed into oblivion””all 88,000 pounds of concrete that makes up the mosaic-tiled “Thrones.” A group of Ventura Village volunteers led by residents Jim Cook, Dee Henry Williams and me showed up recently with a public address system and a hand-held microphone and offered it to anybody who”'d speak or sing. No advertising or public notice, [...]
