Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist - Milwaukee
I saw some of those scalpers as I made my way over to Bradley Center. The sidewalks were much busier this evening, though still not exactly packed. No one seemed to be taking advantage of the ticket-hawkers, but most politely accepted coupons from a woman who was touting a new restaurant.
There had been no security at the hockey game last night. Tonight, though, each fan who went through the turnstile had to stop to be wanded by a security guard. I don’t know if they felt the basketball fans were more likely to have weapons or if the highly paid NBA stars merited more protection than the up and coming hockey players. Fortunately they were quite efficient, so there wasn’t much of a delay at the entrance.
While several times as many people attended this game as had last night, the arena was still more than half empty. About a third of the lower-level seats were unoccupied, as well as most of the upper deck. I mentioned before that the nice seat I had for the hockey game would have been completely unaffordable for basketball. In fact I was spending less tonight than I had last night—just $10 for a ticket. That got me a seat in Row T (4 rows from the top) of Section 431, in the corner clear at the far end from where I’d entered. Though undeniably high up, the seat had a reasonably good view. It also had the advantage of being on an aisle. An additional bonus was that no one else sat down anywhere in Row T—or in Rows R, S, or U for that matter. I had lots of room to spread out without disturbing anyone.
Before the Bucks game started I saw something I’ve seen before at dozens of high school games. They had two teams of little kids (probably about fourth grade) playing each other, with two of the interns (who spent the actual game sweeping the floor with a dustop during time-outs) refereeing. It’s got to be cool for those kids to be playing on the same floor where the pros play—even though they scored maybe three baskets in the ten minutes or so I saw them playing. At this game (unlike when “pee-wees” play at high school games) they even had the P.A. announcer call the game, so the kids (and their families and friends) could hear their names on the loudspeaker.
A platinum blonde member of the Bucks dance team, Enn-er-gee, sang the national anthem. While she looked like a bimbo, she actually did quite a nice job with the song. It intrigued me that they had played the exact same clips of patriotic scenery on the scoreboard that they had at the hockey game last night. This time the singer was able to get all the notes out correctly, and she earned well-deserved sustained applause.
I’d be interested to see what the configuration of the basement is at Bradley Center. Last night the hockey teams had entered through tunnels at the middle of the stands (going either way from half court or center ice). There were seats blocking that tunnel tonight, rendering it unusable. Tonight both teams came in beneath the far basket, an entrance that was not used at all during the hockey game. Enn-er-gee, the pee-wee players, and various bits of entertainment entered from beneath the near basket, which is where the zambonis entered for hockey.
Something that made this game stand out was that the Milwaukee Bucks were celebrating the fortieth anniversary of their franchise. There were several special events and promotions over the course of the evening, the most memorable of which was a halftime game resembling dodgeball between various mascots that are known in the Milwaukee area. Bernie Brewer was there, as were the sausages, stars of the Brewers’ famous sausage race. A host of others (including Ronald McDonald and an enormous cookie that supposedly represented Midwest Airlines) paraded in and attempted to play the game amid all the foam rubber.
Then there was the game itself, which I must say was far from the highlight of the evening. This was the third NBA game I’d been to in my life (the others were at Target Center in Minneapolis and United Center in Chicago), and I’ve only watched a handful of pro basketball games on TV in my life. There’s a good reason for that. Pro basketball really strikes me as fake, particularly when compared to the college and high school variants. In every single NBA game I’ve seen, the teams couldn’t hold a lead. This was no exception. The Bucks got ahead by 20 points over the Cleveland Cavaliers, only to find the game tied a few minutes later. Part of the problem is that no one in the NBA (players, coaches, or fans) seems to care about anything other than offense. The whole time I was there neither team put on a defensive press, and only rarely did they guard their opponents closely. The refs also call pro games very loosely, particularly allowing the pro players to travel on almost every play. You’d think the NBA should provide the best basketball around, but in fact every game I’ve seen has seemed sloppy. It’s all about show, rather than athletic ability, which makes it seem more like the intramural games I supervise at the high school than a “top level” sporting event.
Something else that is annoying when you watch an NBA game live is the time-outs. In high school time-outs are limited to one minute, and they are used by the teams to discuss strategy. In the NBA the main purpose isn’t coaching but rather providing an opportunity for the TV networks to show banks of commercials. The time-outs are five minute long, which really gets endless. This isn’t unique to the NBA, but to all events where media coverage is more important than the live crowd. I saw the same thing at the one NFL game I’ve ever been to in my life and when my co-worker’s daughter played in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament. They alter the rules of the game to allow for more commercials. The exception is baseball, where the nature of the game provides natural commercial-friendly breaks between innings and whenever there’s a pitching change. When you watch a game at home, you can go to the bathroom or get a snack during the commercials. Live, it’s just a long stretch of boredom.
I was quite bored by the end of the third period, so I left. I watched the re-cap back at the hotel, and it didn’t appear I’d missed much. None of the highlights were from the fourth quarter, and the Bucks ended up winning by the same margin they were leading by when I left.
I was up around 7:00 this morning, and after showering I grabbed a quick cup of coffee in the breakfast room. It was quite chilly when I set out this morning, though not nearly so slippery as it had been yesterday. The reason: salt. Milwaukee seemed to have scattered tons of salt over all its streets and sidewalks. It’s amazing Lake Michigan doesn’t turn into an ocean from all the briny runoff.
I walked about eight blocks east and a couple blocks north, past several homeless people who were hoping I was in a generous mood on Easter. I wasn’t in a bad mood, but I’m almost never one to directly give to street people. I instead give to organizations like Covenant House that can do more with the amount I am able to contribute. While those I passed were not happy with me, I managed to make it to my destination without incident.
That destination was the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The cathedral is an interesting combination of old and new. It was originally built in the 1850s and rebuilt to essentially the same plans following a fire during the Great Depression. It is modeled on several German churches, but it reminded me of the Spanish colonial designs I’d seen in California. Built of light-colored brick (according to the museum I visited yesterday, 19th Century Milwaukee was called the “Cream City”—not because of dairying, but because almost everything in town was built of this color of brick), the main body of the church is very simple, but it is capped with an extremely elaborate copper-domed tower (the only part of the church original to t852 construction). The interior of the church is extremely modern, contrasting starkly with the outside. The altar is at the center of the cruciform structure, with individual wooden chairs extending in rows in all directions. The chair seats were covered with orange and yellow velour, and each had a velour-covered kneeler that could be used by the seat behind it. Almost every seat was filled for 8:00 mass. The standard cross-shape means one section is much longer than the others, and this is where most of the congregation sat. Above the altar is an empty cross (not a crucifix) made of fiberglass (though I thought at first it was metal) in a very modern design and capped with an abstract crown of fiberglass “thorns”.
One thing extremely unique about the cathedral was the view from the long leg of the sanctuary. This is just about the only Catholic church I’ve ever been in where organ pipes were prominently featured. An elegant display of pipes lined the far wall where you’d expect elaborately carved statues or a marble and gold altar-piece. It reminded me of the Congregational church I attend in Algona, and “worshipping the organ” is certainly much more common for Protestants than Catholics.
There were only a couple of statues in the church—very tame for any Catholic church, let alone a Cathedral. The main decoration was very nice stained glass. The organ pipes framed a comparatively modern cross-shaped window, while the long leg of the sanctuary was lined with very old-fashioned stained glass windows illustrating the Stations of the Cross. Overall the combination of old and new as odd, but it worked surprisingly well.
I’d come to the cathedral mostly because I knew (from checking out their website) that they’d be having an 8:00 mass on Easter. What I didn’t know was that this would be the archbishop’s mass that would be aired on local television. Cameras lined the balcony, and there’s a good chance my bald head showed up in more than one shot of the congregation. His Excellency, the Most Reverend Timothy Dolan, was surprisingly jovial. He did a service that was reverent, but not overly formal. One strange thing he did was to repeatedly refer to the “radio” audience, when it was clear the service was being broadcast on television. He also warmly welcomed those who were guests and those who happened to not be Catholic, so I felt doubly welcomed.
The service was really quite pleasant. We sang fairly standard Easter hymns (mostly to the “wrong” tunes), went through the prayers that are familiar to me from teaching at Garrigan, and quickly passed the peace to one another. Archbishop Dolan did an extremely brief homily (about three minutes) that seemed to have little to do with any of the readings of the day but was certainly appropriate to Easter. He talked about a parishioner he’d once had who was the father of a critically sick child. Each time he’d visit the child in the hospital, the father was extremely optimistic for a recovery. When the kid died, the archbishop thought the father would be devastated, but instead he was joyful, for he said, “I know one day I’ll see my son in heaven”. The various elements combined to make a pleasant, uplifting service—precisely right for Easter.
After church I walked back to the hotel by a different route. By purposely taking different routes as I walked around, I ended up seeing almost everything there was in downtown Milwaukee. I’d find fairly quickly, though, that except for Wisconsin Avenue, there really wasn’t much difference between one street and another. Interestingly, though, there don’t seem to be any homeless people other than on Wisconsin Avenue; they milk people by the businesses, but not anywhere else. By taking another route, I made it back to the hotel unaccosted.
I had a full breakfast back at the hotel. Today they were serving more sausage patties, but this time they were accompanied by allegedly “fried” eggs that looked totally fake. They were flat rubbery discs with a circle of bright yellow surrounded by a ring of white. I wondered if they hadn’t been frozen and microwaved, yielding a result that was “sunny side up”, but cooked hard. Strangely, they actually tasted fairly good, and with the same fruit and yogurt I’d had yesterday, the combination made a nice breakfast.
I gathered my stuff together and went down to the lobby to check out. That took a while, because a woman was at the desk complaining. Apparently her car had been broken into while it was parked in the ramp next to the hotel. The clerk at the desk offered to help her file a police report, but that was really all she could do. The ramp belonged to the city, not the hotel, and the city leased it to a private parking firm. Pretty much everyone disclaimed responsibility, and signs throughout the ramp warned that all parking was at the driver’s own risk. While I’m sure that if it were my car that had been broken into, I’d have been as upset as the woman here, it also seemed to me that the woman at the desk really was doing everything she could. It’s not like she could stop the crime after it happened; nor would it make sense for the hotel to pay for whatever damages and losses the woman said had happened—particularly without any proof of what had been in the car. It’s really the insurance company’s problem, and the police report is probably the key to getting a settlement from them.
Once the woman at the counter finally got to me, the check-out process was quite efficient. Surprisingly, they didn’t even bill me for the room safe. I settled things up and then set out again.
I hauled my suitcase to the Amtrak station, which was a little bit easier today than it had been during the snowstorm on Friday. I checked my bag easily and then had just a plastic bag from Borders to carry things around during the day. I next walked back toward the Marquette area and had some more coffee and a “Boston kreme” roll at a Dunkin’ Donuts shop there.
After having my third cup of coffee of the morning, I headed to my second church service this Easter morning. Just up the street from Dunkin’ Donuts was St. James Episcopal Church. I’ve only been to an Episcopal church one other time in my life, at the funeral of a co-worker’s mother. I’d checked out St. James’ website, and it sounded like an interesting place to spend some time on Easter.
St. James is a charming old church with a small congregation, superficially similar to my own church back in Algona. While I was certainly not unwelcome there, it was clear when I entered that this was not a church that often gets many visitors. Even at Easter, I felt a bit like I was the answer in a game of “Which of these things doesn’t belong?”
The physical structure of the church was gorgeous. It’s a century-old stone building with beautiful stained glass windows in unusually dark, deep colors. The neo-Gothic interior is covered in white plaster, with gilded highlights throughout. They have elegant altar furnishings, communion ware, and offering plates. The choir and multiple clergy wore old English liturgical garb of neatly pressed linen and lace. Even the bulletin was embossed in gold and printed on heavy paper. While it is in a somewhat depressed neighborhood and provides several ministries to the homeless, the general feeling is that this is a place where Milwaukee’s wealthy worship. No expense was spared in providing a home befitting the glory of God. The effect was much more elegant than the cathedral.
The congregation certainly came across as upper class. Almost entirely white (with a couple of obviously wealthy blacks), they were dressed much more traditionally than most people do for church these days. Almost all the women were in dresses, and many donned Easter bonnets. About half the men were in suits, an additional quarter wore ties without jackets, and the remainder (all quite young) had expensive casual clothes—the sort of thing professional golfers wear. I wore the dress shirt I’d gotten at the Bay in Vancouver. It looked nice, but I was really underdressed for this church.
The head minister (apparently called the “rector”) at St. James is the Rev. Debra Trakel (Mother Debra), a plump woman slightly older than me. Only on a couple of occasions have I been to a service led by a woman before, and I must say Mother Debra did a very nice job. Her sermon was particularly interesting. She spoke of a recent trip to Menards where she happened to pick up a brochure about compact fluorescent lights, and her sermon compared Christ to those funny shaped energy-efficient light bulbs. (The motivation was the gospel, where Jesus was not immediately recognized after the resurrection.) Just as the brochure boasted that the miraculous little bulbs will change the world, so has Christ changed everything. The strange analogy certainly kept my attention. She went on for about twenty-five minutes, but it really seemed to go quite quickly.
The sermon was one place where the Episcopalian mass was very different from a Catholic mass. The basic flow was quite similar, but the wording (taken from the Book of Common Prayer) was generally closer to a Methodist service than a Catholic one. It was more than a little bit tricky to follow the service, too. We’d been given no less than three different hand-outs, plus the hymnal (which was handed out to us, not placed in pew holders). Everyone else, of course, knew instinctively what to turn to when (and likely had the more routine prayers memorized), but I was forever shuffling among the hand-outs and never did get it entirely right.
In addition to the priestess, there were three deacons assisting with the service. They were dressed in the same garb as the choir, and their main purpose seemed to be helping to serve communion. Mother Debra made a big point that the Episcopal church holds open communion (anyone is welcome to partake), obviously another major difference from the Catholics. For communion they had people kneel at an altar rail to first be served unleavened wafers and then sip from a common cup. The “blood of Christ” at this church was white wine, and I must say it was more than a bit of a stretch to see something that wasn’t red as even remotely symbolic of blood. While the wine was strange, I must say I like going to the altar rail for communion. Very few churches do that these days, and to me it’s just a more reverent way of taking the elements.
Another difference from the Catholics was that the Episcopal congregation sang audibly. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing, though. The hymns they chose to sing were more along the line of mournful dirges than joyous Easter carols. Music was definitely not the highlight of the service.
Another thing that was memorable in a negative way was the time in the service my sister and her late husband refer to as “happy minute”. As in the Catholic church, the Episcopalians call this “passing the peace”. Instead of just a few handshakes here and there, though, they went on forever with it. Everybody went up and down the aisles, kissing and embracing their fellow parishioners as if they hadn’t seen them in years. I stood awkwardly for about three minutes before eventually just sitting down again. The “peacemakers” continued for at least two more minutes after that.
The service was longer than standard because it also included a double baptism. The Episcopalians apparently use pouring as their method of baptism, and I think Mother Debra got wetter than the infants in the process. The kids were remarkably well behaved, and it was refreshing that neither the rector nor the parents felt the need to endlessly put them on display after the ceremony.
After church almost everyone exited by a side door to head to a reception in the parish hall. I snuck out to the street and went on my way. As I headed to my next destination I had an experience I’ve had many times now—being a tourist that others perceive as a local and thus pick to ask directions. In this case a group of Asian tourists were looking for Lake Michigan. What they actually said was, “Can you tell me where Michigan is?” That was an awkward question, particularly since they were driving down Michigan Avenue (a mile-long stretch of parking ramps one block south of Wisconsin) when they asked the question. I also thought of the state of Michigan, which was a couple hundred miles to the east. Once they clarified that it was the lake they were interested in, I was able to assure them that Michigan Avenue would lead directly there, about a mile ahead.
I was also headed to the lake. Milwaukee has a nicely developed lakefront,. However, unlike in Chicago, the shoreline here is separated from and mostly incidental to downtown. Most of downtown is on land that is quite a bit higher than the lake (I’d bet they had flooding in the early years and relocated to higher ground), and only a couple streets continue all the way to the shore. Once I finally got there, I was able to enjoy a nice (though mostly deserted) lakefront walk.
Milwaukee Museum of Art I was planning to visit the Milwaukee Museum of Art , which is on the lakefront east of downtown. The museum was hard to miss. Its entry hall is located in a very strange modern building with a wing or sail design. It looks much more like an airport terminal than a museum, but it certainly stands out from its boxy brick neighbors.
While the museum itself was obvious, what I couldn’t figure out was how to enter the place. I think the primary access is via yet another parking ramp, something not immediately evident to a pedestrian. I literally circled the building (and several surrounding buildings without finding any entrance). I did see an uncovered skywalk that connected to a park at the top of a cliff above the lake. The park was officially closed, but others had obviously trampled through the snow there, and I followed suit. The skywalk led to the top floor of the “wing” building, where a sign directed people down to the basement (near the aforementioned ramp). I made my way down there, paid my admission, and spent a couple hours exploring the museum.
In addition to the standard museum admission ($4), I had forked over an additional eight bucks for a ticket to their special exhibition. That was a huge waste of money. The exhibit turned out to be a large, but unimpressive display of photography. More specifically, it displayed “The Camera in Central Europe Between the Wars”. Apparently the photographers were famous, but I certainly was unimpressed by their work, which was basically bleak industrial landscapes in black and white. The exhibit was huge, but it only took about fifteen minutes to get my fill of it.
While the wing building is the identifying feature of the museum, there really isn’t much in that building. In addition to the special exhibition, all that is there is a restaurant, a gift shop, and the restrooms. They certainly wasted no expense in building the place, though; every surface is white marble or glass. It’s really lovely, though it struck me as strange that there really wasn’t much art there.
To get to the real art museum, I walked down a long hallway to a dark, barracks-like structure that rests on top of the underground auxiliary parking area. (Parking should never be a problem for anyone anywhere in Milwaukee.) This three-story windowless box houses a surprisingly diverse and interesting collection. Something I especially liked was that the works were broad (representing pretty much every era and style), but not especially deep (only one or two items in each category). For that reason it’s a much easier museum to visit than larger places like the Chicago Art Institute or the Metropolitan Museum in New York. They had a nice variety of art (some I liked and some I hated), and overall it made a very nice way to pass the afternoon.
After leaving the museum I walked southward, under Interstate 794 and into the area known as the Third Ward. This is Milwaukee’s version of trendy warehouses rapidly being gentrified into overpriced loft apartments. The center of this allegedly “historic” district is the Milwaukee Public Market, an imitation Old World emporium whose stalls of merchants selling pretentious foodstuffs serve the dubious needs of this well-heeled neighborhood’s residents.
I saw one other business in the Third Ward with a sign that made me do a double-take. A Chevron station right on the Milwaukee River had one of those digital signs that allows them to change the prices more easily. I looked, did a double-take, and then took a picture of the sign. It was the first time in my life I’d seen fuel in America advertised for over four dollars a gallon. In their defense, there were a variety of grades offered, the cheapest of which cost $3.499. The highest price, though, was $4.099. I remember several years ago snapping a picture of a sign at a gas station in Chicago the first time I saw a “2” at the beginning of a gas price. Now we’re seeing four-dollar gas. I shutter to think where it will go from there. ...
I made my way back to the Amtrak station and took a seat by a table in their brightly lit atrium. Both the toll-free number and the TV in the station said the train would be departing right on time, but that was still about an hour and a half from now. I filled the time by grading two different sets of tests I’d given in my high school classes shortly before I’d left. The station rapidly filled up. I was pleased to have gotten there early and claimed a pleasant seat. Almost exactly as I finished grading the last test, they announced the train was ready for boarding.
The boarding process took quite a while. This was complicated by the fact that we’d formed a line that went back from the boarding door to the windows on the far wall and then followed those windows about half the length of the station. For no reason anyone could figure out, a security guard didn’t want people lined up near the windows. He snapped at us to get away from the windows, apparently finding it somehow safer to have a mob in the middle of the station charging toward the ticket-taker.
Passengers were directed to various cars, based on their destinations. Winona and other nearby places were conveniently sent to a car that was right outside the boarding door. The car was entirely almost entirely full (and was, in fact, over-full by the time we left Milwaukee). I managed to find a seat next to an elderly man who was headed to Portage. Other than grunting an initial greeting he was silent for the entire trip, and so was I.
I mostly spent the trip reading a book called Predictably Irrational that I happened to find on Amazon.com. While its topic, behavioral economics, isn’t something I’d normally choose, it really was fascinating. It was easy to read and kept my interest, which allowed me to almost finish the book in the four-hour trip to Winona. The book’s premise is that most economic theory is flawed, because it assumes that people will always behave in a rational way. The author argues, though, that this is rarely what happens in the real world. He cited numerous examples of this, many of which he had researched with scientific studies (some of which I’ll probably use as examples in my Statistics class). For example, he noted that consumers almost always overreact to the word “free”, something marketers (if not economists) have known for decades. They’ll often spend more on some packaged combination of products than they otherwise would because something in that package is thrown in free. There were dozens of similar examples, and I’m almost ashamed to say I could see my own behavior in many of the irrational decisions he said people made all too predictably.
There was more snow between Tomah and LaCrosse. Margaret, who was visiting my Aunt Alaire over Easter, called during this stretch, and we had a pleasant chat. The snow goofed up another switch, and we were also slowed down slightly by a freight train just outside LaCrosse. By the time we got to Winona, the train was running twenty minutes late. This is really nothing for an Amtrak train, but it was too much for some passengers. A couple were on their cell phones complaining to people at their destination, while others rudely asked the car attendant what was up. I checked later and found out the train was nearly an hour late getting into Minneapolis, but it picked up time overnight and crossed the plains on time. Both of the Empire Builder’s two sections arrived in their ultimate destinations (Seattle and Portland) ahead of schedule two days later.
It took about five minutes to claim my bag in Winona. I was pleased to find that it had been warm enough that my car was no buried in snow. The wheels were frozen to the ground, but a jolt of the accelerator let me break free.
I left the station and headed south to my destination for the night, the Holiday Inn—Winona. I’d pretty much all of Winona’s chain hotels before leaving, and all of them were extremely overpriced. I really have no clue why. The Holiday Inn probably has 150 rooms, but there weren’t more than thirty cars in the parking lot. Even so, they wanted right at $100 a night for the place. Pretty much everywhere else was even steeper.
I checked in quickly. The rate I’d booked was prepaid (it would have been more like $150 if I’d just driven up and asked for a room), so I didn’t even need to present a credit card. The clerk presented me with my key card and two coupons I could use for discounts at dinner and breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I read their menu in my room and quickly discovered that even with the coupons the cost more than I cared to spend. (Dinner entrees started around $20 and went up to $50 a plate, while breakfast was in the $15 - $20 range.) I walked across the parking lot to a McDonalds, where I got a salad and some French fries as my meal for the night.
While it wasn’t worth a hundred bucks, my room at the Holiday Inn was really very nice. I’ve stayed at Holiday Inns a couple of times before, and they’ve mostly been older hotels that have seen their better days. This one was in no way new, but it had been very nicely kept up. The room was enormous, immaculate, and comfortable. I was pleasantly surprised that, unlike most hotels these days, this one had traditional bedding—sheets and a blanket covered by a comforter, with normal pillows like what most people have in their homes. Far too many hotels these days have gone to those stupid “duvet” things with a heavy blanket between two layers of sheet. They then throw a pile of decorative pillows on top of everything. The pillows are uncomfortable, and the duvet is not only ugly, but also doesn’t provide much temperature option; it’s too hot with it and too cold without. I give Holiday Inn four stars for not caving into this stupid trend.
The strangest thing about the room was that they had hung a second TV from the ceiling of the bathroom. I really don’t see much point to such a feature, but since they saw fit to put the thing there, I watched part of a public TV documentary on photographer Annie Liebowitz as I soaked in the tub. Once clean and comfortable I settled in for the night.
I was up around 6am, showered (I always over-use the water at hotels), and quickly packed and checked out. I had a bit of breakfast at that same McDoanlds and then set off for the day. I followed U.S. 61, the Great River Road, north from Winona. This is mostly a badly surfaced, empty four-lane highway. It was foggy as I headed northward past Wabasha and Red Wing, and fresh snow swirled around in the air.
Before long I made it to Hastings, the southeast edge of the Twin Cities area. According to an article in today’s paper, Hastings has one of the highest foreclosure rates in America. . As I drove through Hastings, “For Sale” signs dotted the landscape everywhere, confirming what I’d read in the paper. That’s certainly easy to believe. Like far too much of the Cities, Hastings is mile after mile of “McMansions”, enormous look-alike brand-new homes crammed into microscopic lots. You can see the same thing in West Des Moines and much of Coralville—and pretty much every other newer suburb, for that matter. These homes are way bigger than the “little houses made of ticky-tacky from the ‘50s and ‘60s. Most are even bigger than the old farmhouses in small towns. They’re frankly more than most families need (four and five bedrooms, when families these days have at most two kids), and apparently they’re more than many of the owners could actually afford. I would think the bankers could have predicted this slump, but apparently everyone thought real estate prices could do nothing but increase. I’ll be amazed if they ever find ANY buyer for most of these places, and I while I don’t want to see people losing their homes, I must say it’s hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy for people who chose such an ostentatious lifestyle.
I took the beltway (494 / 694) around the Twin Cities. It was toward the end of rush hour, so traffic was heavy but not too annoying. Then I headed further north on I-35. I’d recently re-read the brief travelogue of my trip out to the badlands years ago. In that I describe the endless billboards that create an eyesore along I-90 in South Dakota. The problem is even worse north of St. Paul on I-35. Minnesota seems to have found every possible loophole in the Highway Beautification Act. That’s really quite a shame. This route through the great north woods could be one of the most beautiful interstates anywhere. Instead it’s just billboard after billboard after billboard.
Something that really stood out as I drove north on I-35 was how few SUVs there were on the highway. While lots of commuters on the beltway were driving those gas-guzzling tanks, not many people seemed to be making long-distance trips in them. I’d read an article in the paper yesterday lamenting that no one seemed to be buying any of the vehicles Detroit was making. That’s probably because they’re still mostly making SUVs, light trucks, and luxury-oriented cars. Even the “small” cars for sale these days don’t get particularly good gas mileage. There’s nothing other than hybrids that even approaches what my Metro makes—but they don’t sell Metros in America anymore. In an era of skyrocketing gas prices, you’d think they’d realize that economy is something people want. I could certainly be in the market for trading my car, but until they come out with something at least as fuel efficient, I have no plans to get rid of it.
* * * * *
[After visiting my brother in northern Minnesota], I stopped for lunch at a White Castle in Hinckley, a place best known for its casino. I think of White Castle as being mostly in urban locations, either right in the city or perhaps the close-in suburbs. Hinckley is the only place I’ve seen one in a rural setting. They sell the same “slyders” in Hinckley I’d enjoyed in Chicago, though, and in this era of ever-rising prices, White Castle is one of the few places that remains truly cheap to eat.
I followed I-35 back south to its split north of the Cities. 35-W is closed indefinitely while they rebuild the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis last year. Because of that 35-E is carrying extremely heavy traffic loads on a section in St. Paul that was never built to even minimal freeway standards (with 45mph speed limits and no real median). I was very glad I’d timed things to make it through this before rush hour. Traffic was still heavy, but it moved right along.
I made it down to 494 and then went west a couple of exits to 34th Avenue, which is also the exit for MSP Airport. I went south to American Boulevard, which is essentially the freeway access road, and headed west about a mile to Metro Drive. Sandwiched between American Boulevard and the freeway were two brand new hotels, one of which was my destination for the evening.
The Cambria Suites—Bloomington is one of the strangest hotels I’ve ever stayed in. It is franchised by Choice Hotels, the same company that operates Comfort Inns, Sleep Inns, Quality Inns, and Clarion Hotels. Cambria is clearly designed to be more pretentious than any of those brands, though. I wouldn’t have even thought about staying here, except that I was able to get a good rate (actually the lowest I paid at any of the hotels on this trip) and earn Choice Privileges points for the stay.
Cambria Suites says it was designed “with the young, urban lifestyle in mind”. I think that means they’re appealing to people who are trying to pretend they’re living in those mega-houses in Hastings while crammed into a downtown loft apartment. Combine that with an airport hotel, ant the result is very strange indeed. My two-room suite was probably smaller than the single room I had at the holiday inn last night. It was like two Motel 6 rooms fused together. The bedroom had an enormous (and extremely high) king sized bed, but there was barely room for an end table at the side. The living room had a love seat a chair, a desk, and “kitchen” unit that held a microwave, mini-fridge, and coffee maker. Again, they couldn’t have crammed anything more in there if they’d tried. All the furnishings were very modern, and while they attempted to look elegant, they came across as tacky to me. It was the sort of stuff you see in the furniture department at Target—pretensions on a budget.
The room featured just about every electronic device known to man. There were two flat-screen TVs, two DVD players, a CD player, and some device I couldn’t figure out the purpose of. There were also wired computer hook-ups everywhere (including the bathroom), plus wireless internet access.
The strangest part of the suite was the bathroom, which again was smaller than what I’d had at the Holiday Inn. I took a picture of the sink, because it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Instead of being recessed into a counter, it sat on top of what looked like a lab table (a simple pine table, topped with black plastic that resembled slate). A single chrome tube extended up from the sink, with a straight faucet extending from it, out over the sink. There was a strange button on top of the tube that I figured out later was how water was regulated. It operated sort of like the tracking pad on a laptop computer. There were no directions whatsoever on how to work the thing, though.
The décor was minimal at best. The lab table sink was pretty typical. Everything was black, tan, and chrome. Even the accessories were minimal. The soap dish was just a slab of cloudy plastic, and where you’d normally see one of those standard hotel room paintings they had a black and white photograph that was a close-up of a single flower. The most decorative part of the room was a room divider that filled half the wall between the living room and bedroom. It was sectioned off like a curio cabinet, and some of the parts were filled with permanently attached vases. (The vases had apparently been super-glued to the frame.) I gather from looking at the hotel literature that every single suite has the exact same arrangement of vases in its room divider. Apparently vases are somehow the symbol of Cambria Suites. Their key cards have pictures of vases on them, and even their complimentary ballpoint pens have are shaped like vases. What’s strange is that these are just vases. There are no flowers in them, only empty vases filling some of the space in the wall between the rooms.
I actually had to wait a bit before I could see the pleasures my room had to offer. First, when I checked in, the manager didn’t want to take my gift card. It wasn’t, as has been the case at other hotels, that he didn’t know how to take gift cards. Rather, he said they had a policy against taking them. I assured him that I had checked the Choice Hotels website shortly before leaving on this trip, and they listed the Cambria Suites as one of the Minnesota properties where their gift cards were welcome. When he didn’t believe me, I literally showed him that was what the website said. He then agreed, though he grumbled that he’d have to figure out how to get payment for them. Strangely, once he decided he would take the card, it took about two seconds for him to process it. He obviously knew how to do it; he just didn’t want to.
Once I paid and went up to my room, I found that neither of the two key cards I’d been given would open the door. I double-checked, thinking I might have accidentally gone to the wrong room. I was in the right place, though, so I trudged back to the elevator and went down five floors to the lobby. They re-programmed my keys, but when I went up only one of them worked. I really didn’t care to annoy the desk again, so I used that one key exclusively.
While it’s not really convenient to anything other than the Hampton Inn next door, the Cambria Suites is vaguely near the 28th Avenue station of Minneapolis’ Hiawatha light rail line. (There’s a Fairfield Inn that’s virtually adjacent to that station that’s both cheaper and nicer, and that’s where I’ll likely stay if I’m in the area again in the future.) After dumping my bag and gawking at the strange room, I set off on a ten-minute walk to the station.
I arrived just as a train was leaving and waited another ten minutes for the next one. I rode just one stop down to the end of the line at Mall of America. (I probably could have walked there in the time it took to wait for the train.) I exited and made my way from the east parking ramp (where the transit center is located) into the mall itself.
They’ve done a lot of renovating at Mall of America since I was last there. I never really cared much for the place, but I must say now I like it less than ever. They’ve added on to it and turned the whole thing into more of an amusement park than a shopping center. They describe it as “a family destination”, and I’m sure there are big bucks to be made in occupying the kiddies’ time while mom is shopping. I found it awkward and above all loud, though. I’d love to know just how many decibels the central atrium of Mall of America registers. It struck me as louder than a New York subway station—and it never quiets down.
My purpose for going here really wasn’t shopping. I was here for dinner. I’d read that Mall of America had the one U.S. location of Opa!, the Greek place I’d eaten at when I was at the Metropolis at Metrotown (an equally enormous, but better organized mall) near Vancouver. I’d really liked my dinner at Opa! after Christmas, so I thought I’d catch a bite there again tonight.
Predictably, the Minneapolis version of Opa! wasn’t nearly as flavorful as its Canadian cousin. The most noticeable difference was that in Vancouver they grilled the pita bread, giving it a nice toasty crust. Here they just served it plain, and it tasted not unlike a raw flour tortilla. The Greek salad was also different. Here it was mostly iceberg lettuce. In Vancouver there was just a tiny bed of lettuce, topped with peppers, tomatoes, olives, and feta cheese.
After the somewhat disappointing meal, I took the train north to the other end of the line at Hennepin Avenue. I checked out the construction site of the new ballpark where the Twins will move when the leave the Metrodome two years from now. The new place certainly won’t lack for parking. At the west edge of downtown Minneapolis I-394 ends in a sea of enormous ramps. They razed one of those ramps to make room for the new park. The place is well west of anything of interest downtown. I assume they’re hoping it will generate development, but at the moment there’s literally nothing there. A lot of Minnesotans see the new park as a white elephant, and I must say it strikes me that way. The great thing about the Metrodome is that it’s indoors. No one in their right mind would want to go to a baseball game outdoors in Minneapolis in either April or in July and August.. I can’t imagine they’ll draw much of a for half the season.
I made my way back to Hennepin and saw a large crowd near Target Center. I’d find out later that there was a big concert there this evening, and in fact some of my Garrigan students were part of that crowd. I wandered around downtown a while (and believe me, downtown Minneapolis is much nicer than downtown Milwaukee) and eventually made my way back to the train.
I decided to stop in at a Taco Bell near the Franklin Avenue station for dessert. I got a bit more of an experience than I bargained for. Franklin Avenue is in a rather down-at-the-heels part of Minneapolis, and when I walked in the manager at Taco Bell was having some problems with a homeless man who refused to leave the restaurant. The man, who clearly had mental problems, had bought and received his dinner, but he wouldn’t take the food and he wouldn’t leave. What’s more, there was a serious communication problem. Guillermo, the manager, appeared to speak both English and Spanish fluently. If the black customer spoke English, it was only the most ghetto-oriented dialect of it. He might as well have been speaking Japanese. He certainly was loud, though. He kept screaming unintelligible stuff at Guillermo, who responded with things like “there’s your food” and “would you please take it”. Guillermo eventually called the police. I left before they showed up, but hopefully they eventually dealt with the situation.
The man eventually sat down on the floor blocking the exit from the counter. There were three other customers in line ahead of me. One at a time we made our way to the front of the maze where the register was located. We all placed our orders, waited there for our food, and then made our way back through the maze, carefully avoiding the strange man. I’ve seen a lot of bizarre things in my travels, but this was definitely one of the strangest.
I had again just missed a train, and by now it was getting quite chilly. To keep warm, I took a northbound train one station north so I had a shorter wait outside for the next southbound train. On my ride back to 28th Avenue I ended up sitting behind a black woman with one of the strangest hair-dos I’ve ever seen. Her hair had obviously been straightened, and then gelled together and twisted with a curling iron. The hairs weren’t in individual strands, but instead in ribbons about half an inch wide, as if her hair were made up of fabric or crepe paper. Each ribbon had been alternately curled in differing directions, making sort of a vertical sine wave She certainly stood out on the train, but I can’t imagine why anyone would want such ugly hair.
The office park neighborhood around 28th Avenue was absolutely deserted when I got back, and it was a bit creepy walking back to the hotel in the dark. I made it back all right, though, and I spent most of the evening watching Food Network on TV.
Let me make one more comment about the odd room at Cambria Suites. I absolutely hated the bed. First, it was far too high. They actually had a little step at the side you could use to get up on top of the thing. I felt like I was in “The Princess and the Pea” when I finally laid down to sleep. Second, there were far too many pillows. There were six separate “normal” pillows at the top of the bed, plus a separate cylinder shaped pillow that appeared to be nothing but decorative. Finally, the bed was way too soft. Lots of hotels have that problem these days. They think “pillow top” mattresses are a good thing. I like a hard bed, not one I sink down in. I woke with a back ache after spending a night at the Cambria Suites.
I was up around 6:00 this morning, and I quickly showered and packed. Like most pretentious hotels, there was no complimentary breakfast at the Cambria Suites, though I could have bought overpriced coffee and a scone at their “Energy Counter” (the name made me think there would be a gas meter set up in the lobby). Since there was nothing to keep me there, I checked out of the hotel before 7am.
I figured I’d take the train downtown to have breakfast. 28th Avenue is a park-and-ride. Unfortunately, the parking is currently quite limited because they’re building a multi-level ramp where their main lot used to be. Until the ramp is finished, it’s pretty much impossible to park there. I instead drove to the Ft. Snelling park-and-ride on the other side of the airport.
I quickly caught a train and had an uneventful ride to Nicollet Mall, the pedestrian-oriented street that houses about half of downtown Minneapolis’ shopping (which, of course, means they’ve got at least twice as much as Milwaukee—even though it’s a smaller city). I had a cheese soufflé and coffee at Panera. I also, for the first time in my life, bought a loaf of Panera’s freshly baked bread, this one a three cheese whole grain variety. I munched on that bread for more than a week, enjoying it immensely.
I walked around a bit more downtown and then caught a train back south. Across the aisle from me were a young black man who was taking his infant daughter to daycare. (It’s strange to think of taking your kid to daycare on the train, but people in cities must do it all the time.) In front of them were an elderly white woman and a black college girl in a Moslem veil. Those two appeared to have nothing in common, but they had a surprisingly involved chat as the train made its way southward. What got them talking was the older woman’s comment that the veil must come in handy on a cold morning like this. The girl laughed and agreed. It turned out she was from Somalia and had just come to Minnesota this year. Having grown up in the tropics, she was definitely not used to Midwestern winters, and she was very glad spring was on the way. I had fun listening to the two of them as I made my way back to Ft. Snelling.
They’d changed the exit to Ft. Snelling station since I was last there, and I had a bit of trouble finding my way to I-35. I did eventually make it, though, and before long I was out of the Cities. I stopped in Faribault for gas and then drove on home. I unpacked and then went out to school, where I needed to supervise our intramural playoffs. It was there I found out that many of the kids had also been in Minneapolis last night.
… And so the trip came to an end. I can’t say this was the most exciting trip I’ve ever taken (or that I’ll ever be rushing back to Milwaukee—that is, unless my former student ends up playing ball there). It was fun, though, and it made a nice break from the routine.
The background music on this page is "Beer Barrel Polka", a song that just seems appropriate for Milwaukee
(c) 2008 davidmburrow@yahoo.com