I went to an art opening with my sisters and a friend. It was at a gallery on Lake street and Bryant, called the Flanders & Associates Gallery.
It was a beautiful autumn evening, warm but breezy. The first thing we noticed was that the neighborhood had changed significantly since we were last paying attention. Yes, we’d been to the KC hall in August but didn’t really notice the surrounding blocks since we ubered over. You can learn a lot about a place by looking for parking.
In years past, Lake and Lydale (one block from Bryant) has been what your parents would call ‘iffy’. Pawn shops, tattoo parlors, street corner negotiations…it’s all happening at LynLake! A mile up the road, at Hennepin and Lake is the heart of Uptown, the vibrant beating heart of artsy fartsy Minneapolis. Vintage clothes, upscale tattoo salons and live music to your heart’s content! For decades, this is where the Uptown Art Fair happens during the first weekend of August. Gays were cool in Uptown before the rest of the world even knew they existed. The only problem with flying your freak flag in Uptown was figuring out how to get noticed among all the other weirder, freakier flags, banners, bumper stickers and t-shirts. Oh, and tattoos. Never discount the soul baring properties of a tattoo.
But a mile can be a long, long distance in a city as diverse as Minneapolis.
Not anymore!
On Saturday night we old fogies who practically live in Edina and Richfield discovered that while we’ve been shopping at Kowalskies, LynLake has been slowly morphing into the East end of Uptown. Blocks of new, chic, contemporary condos now line narrow little streets with balconies overlooking the greenway bike and walk paths. Saplings swaying in the evening breeze gave it the feel of a very American version of a Parisienne side street. And Lake street itself was hoppin! In addition to the opening, there were galleries, bistros and bars with their doors open, sidewalk tables packed with the before dinner trade, waiting a few hours before the live music would start. It was great.
Exactly the kind of neighborhood where it would be a blast to be a young, unencumbered up and comer. A few blocks off Lake and it might even be a good place to be an old but not quite washed up empty nester. I’m not sure about that: I was home in bed before the music started.
I’m in favor of gentrification. It’s part of the natural evolution of a living city. A hundred years ago, Portland Avenue was a chi-chi address. You can tell because the houses there are all huge, magnificent Victorians with big lawns. Then, the street became a four lane thoroughfare and people with money moved towards the lakes. Now, those big Victorians are mostly in disrepair, some having been divided into rental units.
When I was a kid, the Lowry Hill neighborhood between Uptown, Mt Curve and Lake of the Isles was fairly run down. It was never seedy but again, lots of the enormous mansions that had been high living in the first part of the century had been chopped into rental units.
What a lot of people don’t remember is that the lakes here in town were fairly wild until the ‘70s. that’s when the park board first put in asphalt walking and biking paths. Until then, the lakes were not destinations in town and living near one wasn’t a big deal. That’s also why we kids who did live on a lake considered them our own, personal property. I was ten when the first path went in around Lake Harriet. Margy and I couldn’t wait to roller skate around the lake! I remember people laughed at us but we ignored them. Three miles is a long way to skate when you’re ten and seven years old and your skates are the old metal, attach to your tennis shoes with a key type. We did it but we only did it once.
Anyway, it seems to me that the only people who complain about ‘gentrification’ are the very people who make it happen.
The show is fabulous!
The title is “Capturing Nature’s Light: three plein air painters”
Plein air means work that is done outside. The paintings are landscapes, seascapes and city scapes and every one of them exemplifies what I love about painting. The three artists are Scott Lloyd Anderson, Carl Bretzke and Rich Kochenash.
I’m not going to waste any time describing it: go see it. You won’t regret it.
The only part I regret is that I can’t afford to buy one from each artist.