On Wednesday the final piece of the Lowry Bridge arch was put into place. This is going to be a world-class bridge that will bring north and northeast Minneapolis back together. The aesthetics are already amazing, but we found out it's just getting better. The bridge will have LED lighting similar to the 35W bridge, the bike lanes are done right, and the county is building storage tanks that will hold hundreds of gallons of rainwater before the runoff gets to the Mississippi. Hennepin County really hit it out of the park here, and this bridge will help transform and revitalize our communities by leaps and bounds.
A side note on blogging and social media here: the implosion of the Lowry Bridge was the first video I uploaded onto Youtube. In the spirit of trying new ways to connect people and events through social media and smartphone technology, I streamed footage live from my phone on an application called Qik, and uploaded videos 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the event. I'm still ironing out the wrinkles and looking for a way to stream live directly on Blogger, but live streaming is yet another way blogs and social media can get coverage of an event out faster and more nimbly than traditional sources. (Although the Strib's video is quite cool if I do say so myself.)
The videos of the final piece being put into place are indicative of the building process as a whole. The arch was completed so slowly as to be almost imperceptible. I moved the camera from side to side a few times just to show anyone watching that the video had not paused in any way. I am compelled to warn you, with some degree of irony, that you should not watch those clips while operating heavy machinery. But once the arch was completed, one almost forgets how long it took to finish the job.
More photos after the jump...
 |
| I think this guy had the best view. |
By the way people, I'm sick of the whole refrain that I hear about how people in northeast don't want the bridge to reopen because crime is down now that the northside rifraff can't get over the river as easily. So unless those comments are accompanied by links to data supporting such claims, I'm just not going to publish them from now on.
ReplyDeleteI second the motion and would like nothing better than to stuff the data up any given racist's ass no matter what it is. The key to all of this is to progressively link or re-link our beautiful city for those who like the feeling of multi-culturalism spread around and have things the way they are supposed to be. One example of that would be learning how to live together and getting to know the uniqueness of one another. There are certain elements of society that will remain ignorant and hopefully all of you teabagging losers, who relish in the racist past of Northeast Minneapolis, move out to Anoka with your peers who previously fled. P.S. Let's solve it by giving our native brothers and sisters their land back. Good Day.
ReplyDeletePlease see the following reference sites regarding lower crime in North East Minneapolis following the closing of the Lowry Bridge.
ReplyDeletehttp://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2008/08/lowry-bridge-to-reopening-to.html
http://www.americandreamcoalition.org/safety/spantocrime.doc
Anon 4:07,
ReplyDeleteThe first link goes to a post that verifies or documents almost nothing at all. I read quite a few other posts on that pathetic excuse for a blog and was equally at a loss for real data.
The second link, which is also linked on the first blog post, refers back to a Star Tribune article from March of 2005. That article, in turn, references crime statistics from 2003-2004. Do I really need to describe how crime statistics from nine years ago are quite irrelevant to the reopening of the Lowry Bridge in the summer of 2012?
Furthermore, residents, businesses, and law enforcement agencies were hesitant to make the simplistic leap of illogic that you are perpetrating, even back in the bad old days.
Maybe we need to be more afraid of what may come our way from the NE side? Ignorance, stupidity, redneck attitudes - now that's the real scary stuff!
ReplyDelete(Those above mentioned links were pathetic at best)