Best Field Trip EVER!

[dreamshark]

vgqn was in town (still is, actually) and we had just one evening to have dinner, together with my family and friend Barb. Minneapolis has had a lot of exciting developments since vgqn moved away, and I was filling her in, puffed up with an unexpected gust of civic pride. Suddenly it seemed like a good idea to take a cruise along the riverfront on the way to dinner and view the new Guthrie. I'd biked past the site while it was under construction, and was very impressed with the way the whole area had been redesigned. Let me tell you, this is a great little free field trip, especially if you go at dusk.

For folks who don't live here, or haven't been paying attention, the new Guthrie is nowhere near the old Guthrie site. It's located just a little east of the historic Stone Arch Bridge, on the Mpls side of the river. Just a year or two ago this was a blighted, abandoned urbanscape in the old flour mill district, a great waste of the only spot in Minneapolis from which you can actually see St. Anthony Falls (the original reason for having a city here at all). The real jewel of the project, imho, is the brilliantly restored Gold Medal Flour Mill. The 10-story limestone shell of the building is still standing. Well, most of it. On one side there's still a building, which presumably has a museum on the upper stories, accessible by a deliberately anachronistic glass elevator. There's a central plaza, partially open to the sky, with one jagged wall just stabilized and cleaned up a little, with empty window holes staring out like eye sockets. Barb assures me that this is all very post-modernist. She keeps trying to explain that concept to me, and for a brief moment there it sort of made sense. I find I can't explain it now, though.

Eastward a half-block and up on a little rise is the new Guthrie, which from some angles looks like the industrial ruins around it (dark blocky building with cylindrical stacks rising out of it) and from other angles looks like a light-sculpture. The building looks black at first, but it's glossy. And midnight blue. With giant ghostly images imbedded in it somehow - scenes from King Lear and other things.

A strange-looking spike sticks horizontally out of the 5th floor, jutting over the river road. As night falls, the building changes color, the pictures in the walls start to glow faintly, and cobalt blue lights come on under the infinity bridge. And a light show of pictures and words starts running up the stacks on top of the building. If you walk west towards the Stone Arch Bridge and then look back at the mill ruins, you realize that from the correct angle the lights running up the stacks on the Guthrie are lined up perfectly with a vertical line of empty windows in the mill building, so you can see the lights leaping from window to window and then reappearing at the top. This was not an accident, I feel sure. There are more discoveries to be made outdoors, such as the view of the Fragile Mill Ruins under the lip of the bluff that can only be seen from the Stone Arch Bridge.

But back to the Guthrie, the sight we came to see. The old Guthrie could only be entered by ticket-holders. All the amenities inside -- the circular promenade, the little cash bars -- were for theater patrons only. The great secret of the new Guthrie is that most of it is open to the public, for free. We only discovered this when we decided to take a shortcut through the lobby to get back to our car. Once in the lobby, you can peek into the thrust stage on the first level, or ride an amusement ride of an escalator up to the infinity bridge level. The other 2 stages are up there somewhere, but we were mostly interested in getting out to the end to see the view. It's not exactly what I was expecting. It's dark and cool and padded, with funny little windows along the way... that have odd characteristics I'm not even go to try to describe. Each window has an intimate little seating area near it, where you can nurse the overpriced drinks sold by the bar at the end and watch the sunset. This has to be the most romantic date spot in the Twin Cities, open until 2am most nights. And if you continue to the very end of the infinity bridge, past the bar, you find yourself on an outdoor patio hanging in midair with spectacular views of the river in both directions.

It's definitely worth seeing, preferably at sunset or beyond.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

How fun! Thanks for the discovery. I wish I'd felt like going out that night, but.... I really wasn't in any shape to go.

K.

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I hadn't realized that the new Guthrie was at a whole new site. (Seeing the new facade of the Walker museum, I'd assumed it was all one project.) Good descriptions! I'll have to check this out.

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I've been over to the new Guthrie three times now. (I work two blocks away.) I've had lunch there twice. All of those have been during the day, however, so now I'm very interested in seeing the place after dark. I think the black and chrome styling of the bar/dining areas will work much better after dark and your description of the exterior sounds great too.