Old North Minneapolis and Historypin

Top photo, Lowry Bridge 1958; bottom photo West Broadway Bridge, 1978.

In the fall of 2013, a new Facebook group started up called "Old North Minneapolis."  Its administrators tend to focus most of the content on items north of Lowry Avenue, since that's their part of the community.  But the page contains a wealth of photos from across the northside.  Over Christmas break, I downloaded ninety-five photos from the page, and there have been perhaps two dozen more added since then.

My goal is to get every picture that's posted on that page--and eventually the Camden Community Historical Society FB group as well, although there's some overlap of pictures--posted on Historypin. 

For the uninitiated, Historypin is a website and smartphone app that allows old pictures to be layered on Google street view.  Once the picture is "pinned," then anyone with the Historypin smartphone app can stand in front of the physical location of the photo and see, through the camera view of their phone, what was there years ago superimposed over what is there today.  Long-term, I would love to see this app used to coordinate historic walking tours throughout north Minneapolis.  But in order to do that, photos need to be pinned on the site.

And in order to pin a photo, I need three things:  a physical street address where the picture was taken (sometimes problematic if the actual address no longer exists; when a bunch of properties have been torn down and been combined in to one parcel, for instance, then photos can be jumbled together), a year when the photo was taken (and since that's not always clear from the picture or someone's personal knowledge, it's often guesswork based on cars and clothing), and the man-hours needed to layer the photo on the site.  The last item is the most important.  It can take 5-10 minutes to do one picture, which is not too burdensome unless you've got a few hundred pictures to wade through.

But if a few members of these pages made a habit of pinning a photo when the post to Facebook, then we could make our communal history far more accessible.

How the NAZ Ball Lost Its Luster

Photo from the envelope of this year's NAZ Christmas card.

First things first, I do think the Northside Achievement Zone is doing good work in north Minneapolis, and we're a better community for it.  And I chose to publish this now, instead of around the time of their gala, so as not to discourage supporters from attending.

The Peace Ball, now known as the NAZ Ball after the Peace Foundation changed its name, was the social event of the year for north Minneapolis.  I looked forward to it every year, as it was a chance to come together and celebrate our community.  But to me, it hasn't felt that way for a few years now.  The change in what the NAZ Ball meant to me happened when...

Buying a Home After a Financial Crisis Doesn't Have to Cost $350,000

Sunday's edition of the Star Tribune had a heartwarming story of someone who had bought her first home after significant financial obstacles.  In today's housing market, there are more and more of these "ready again" buyers--people who are purchasing a new home after recovering from a bankruptcy, foreclosure, or short sale.  I should know; I was one of them.  After a divorce, my home went into foreclosure.  My ex-wife remained in that house, but was unable to get my name off of the loan or keep up with the payments.  We notified the mortgage company when she decided to move out.  I returned at one point to explore moving back in and seeking a loan modification that would be workable under one income, but found a skating rink in the basement due to burst pipes from a poor job of winterizing the place.

Since I had neither the credit nor the assets to make the home livable again, a foreclosure was the only option.  I spent several years rebuilding my credit and saving for a home, so I certainly could relate to this story.  What I couldn't relate to, however, was the purchase price of this house, ringing in at...

"Demonstra" Book Release Comes to North Minneapolis!

Bottom photo from the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

The end of the year is almost here and Bryan Thao Worra is back in town!  And while that's reason enough to celebrate, the launch party for his new book is coming to north Minneapolis tomorrow night.  The collection of Speculative Poetry, DEMONSTRA will be released on Monday, December 30th at the Lao Cultural Center at  2648 West Broadway Avenue in Minneapolis from 4:30 to 6:30 PM.  He'll be sharing the spotlight with debut children's book author Nor Sanavongsay and Saymoukda Vongsay of "Kung Fu Zombies vs. Cannibals" fame.

It's free and open to the public and a great chance to see what the inside of the Lao Advancement Organization looks like.  And it will be a rare opportunity to celebrate a book release on the northside.

Like his previous collections BARROW and On the Other Side of the Eye, his new book is heavily influenced by his experiences in Minnesota, particularly North Minneapolis. Obviously I'm partial to "Iku Turso Came to NoMi," which combines Thao Worra's unique perspective with some Finnish sea monster mythos and bits and pieces of Hawthorne Hawkman trivia. 

But you'll also catch poems that give nods to many of Minnesota's popular science fiction, fantasy and horror writers such as Catherine Lundoff, David J. Schwartz, and the Lady Poetesses from Hell. DEMONSTRA also includes great illustrations by Vongduane Manivong including all-new takes on legendary Lao monsters.  I've been privy to some of those illustrations, through the book's Kickstarter campaign, and they are quite impressive.

He's thrown in entities such as the Hodag, Cthulhu, and cannibal grandmother, and another highlight is the Lao weretigers roaming a fabled Laotown of the future. (Hodags, and Weretigers, and Cthulhu, oh my!)  Bryan's Laotown is a bustling corner of North Minneapolis where the Lao set up the world's largest fermented fish factory to make their notoriously stinky padaek, only to get taken over by a benevolent Artificial Intelligence prone to playing elevator jazz. It could happen.

Lao American author Nor Sanavongsay is debuting his very first children's book from Sahtu Press, "A Sticky Mess." He has created a beautifully illustrated adaptation of a traditional Lao legend that has been popular for almost six centuries involving a trickster. Nor Sanavongsay last presented a preview of this book in 2010 during the National Lao American Writer's Summit at the Loft Literary Center, and now, 3 years later, here it is.

Copies of DEMONSTRA will be on sale for $10 and there will be additional entertainment and refreshment. Catch it if you can!

A Lot to Like About the "Capri Renaissance" (and One Thing to Watch Out For)

*Disclaimer* Some of the events described below occurred at a Jordan Area Community Council housing committee meeting.  I was recently elected as Board Chair for the organization, and my comments are my own opinions, and not the position of JACC unless expressly stated as such.

At a recent community meeting, the Capri Theater presented its proposal for an expansion of their current building.  Overall, these changes are excellent, and especially as someone who lives around the corner I cannot wait for them to happen.  In fact, a main issue with the upgrades is that the fundraising needed will likely mean that we're at least a year or even two or more away from breaking ground.

Even though the Capri has already won accolades for its jazz venue, changes like adding dressing rooms and more performance and gathering spaces will greatly enhance this community asset.  But there's one thing that has me concerned, and that's...

Hong Kong International Building Sold to Kemps, Rumored to Be Slated for Demolition and a Parking Lot

Photo from the "Old North Minneapolis" Facebook page.

The storefront and office or living space at 404 West Broadway, the Vietnam Hong Kong International building, has been in limbo and a source of speculation in north Minneapolis.  Today on a thread in the Old North Minneapolis Facebook group, some answers came forward, and they do not bode well for the building.

Reportedly the property has been acquired by Kemps, and that part can be verified as the Minneapolis property information website lists Kemps as the owner.  The speculation that follows, however, is not yet confirmed.  But there seems to be only one potential use that Kemps would have for the parcel...

Photo Tour of Tax Forfeitures, Continued

 

The first round of tax forfeiture photos were just the properties in Jordan, but I set out to chronicle all of the houses that the County will have in their possession if they aren't redeemed.  Neighborhood groups are typically asked to make one of three recommendations on such properties; either that we support the city's acquisition, that we recommend allowing the houses to go to an auction, or that we recommend the properties be withheld from auction for six months while an alternate use is determined.

Where that limited set of recommendations falls short is that we may not support what the city does with a property post-acquisition (not to mention that neither we nor the city may even know such things at this moment).  We certainly don't have reason to trust that the County will avoid selling to slumlords at auction.  And there's no way to know whether we'll find a good investor in six months or if that investor will even find the County to be a willing seller.

So in general, those three choices almost ought to be scrapped for a different system entirely--at least for distressed communities where the tax auction process invites a worse breed of buyers than other parts of Hennepin County.  What that process might look like is a topic for another post.  For now, we march on with the photo tour.  The above property is 3301 Oliver Avenue North, and then we have...