Hiawatha Avenue is the forgotten sister of Lake Street. The Avenue has garnered little attention in the academic or popular literature, despite the nearly 3/4 billion-dollar LRT project. But Lake Street is another story. The beat of the city throbs on Lake Street. It's a street on the move. Start-up businesses, new construction, and a general up-tick in vitality characterize the area around Lake and Hiawatha. The pace is about to accelerate. A $25 million project is slated to rebuild a four-mile stretch of Lake Street from Dupont Avenue to the Mississippi River, beginning in 2005.
I feel at home on Lake Street -- especially around Minnehaha and Lake. This is a no-nonsense neighborhood with working class people, start-up businesses, and quiet neighborhoods. Recently I sat eating lunch in Los Portales, a Mexican cafe next door to a Japanese cafe as I looked out the window at two women in Moslem dress walk by.
I like to visit Lake Street during my lunch break. I enjoy watching people going about their business. Big red Minneapolis fire trucks, diesel engines idling, park outside Wendy's. Fast fire fighters -- fast food. I know all is well in the neighborhood if I see the usual group of Mexican women dressed in blue uniforms grabbing a smoke break in back of Dennys.
Today I spot a woman covered from head to ankle in a brown cloak of Moslem tradition walking through the parking lot outside a grocery store. She walks with her arms folded across her chest. Her destination turns out to be the East African Gift Shop, formerly a shore repair store.
You could hardly ask for a better Hiawatha day. The morning sun is warm on my face as I scout the neighborhood south of Lake Street. I am intrigued by glimpses of the city skyline poking up in the distance. I recall a different skyline from my homeland, the Snowy Range outside Laramie, Wyoming. I always enjoyed a quick visual check of the Snowies each morning as I drove to work at the University of Wyoming.
This morning, west of Hiawatha, a small pink and white bicycle parked in a front yard catches my eye. A shaft of sunlight spotlights the bike overlooked by an oak tree flush with autumn's gold. Preacher men, slick in word and cloth of God, are already working the neighborhood, house to house, as a black man and his son rake leaves in their yard. I make my way to Hiawatha to snap a picture of the city hot mix plant. The plant is set behind a recently-built masonry wall featuring a Southwestern-style motif of geometric relief and powder blue color.
Click. I grab the shot.
I turn to see two young men who have walked up behind me. Both are husky, one is Indian and one man is white. Each sports a partially shaved skull, while the Indian has an hair outcropping that almost passes as a ponytail.
"Hey," I say. "How's it going?"
"Good morning, sir" they respond in unison as they pass me by.
"Nice day."
"Yes, sir. Not too cold, not to hot."
The young men continue on Hiawatha. To what destination? The journalist in me realizes that had I been quicker I may have gotten a picture of the two streetwalkers and learned of their lives.
It's the people, not the street.
HIAWATHA AVENUE
A man shuffles along Hiawatha Avenue beside the spiffy $675.4 million Light Rail project. Shaggy hair protrudes from underneath a well-worn ball cap. His powder blue cap matches the Minnesota sky. His jeans, soiled with shit, hang low -- poised to fall from his scrawny butt. Where does this man journey? Where are we going as we pass him by?
SOUTH HIGH SCHOOL
I can feel the flush of anxiety as I walk into the high school. I am a stranger in a strange land, an ageing white man trying to scoot into young, hip hop South High. Inside a woman staffs a desk near a sign: "No entry without ID." I secure my Visitors Pass to the Main Office where my quest is to gain permission to enter the football field to photograph a mural.
I round the corner and encounter a large open area, The Commons. The space is jammed with hundreds of students during the lunch period. Young people of all shapes, colors, and dress greet my eyes. The noise, the buzz of conversation fills the air. I walk purposefully. Yet I want to stop and stare. I want to drink the sights of young people full of ideas and hopefully full of anticipation. I want to learn about them, about their homes, their dreams. I can feel their energy. It's almost primal, albeit institutional. I am reminded of prison bullpen. I glance up at a banner hanging down from the 2nd-floor balcony. "Zero Tolerance for Violence," it proudly declares. I'd be happy with tolerance.