While you were sleeping

Somewhere between last week's food coma and the onslaught of holiday music, the downtown Central station really starting shaping up. At first, I thought it was just some sort of Caddyshack-inspired public art. Go Gophers?


Man, those construction guys are always fighting an uphill battle.

But then I walked past tonight, and - holy bananas - that station is done! I only stood there to pout for a minute or two. No offense, 50. It's just that I'm ready for the upgrade.


Right next door, the small leftover space is starting to look like...a plaza? I think Leftover Plaza is a great name, but again, that might be the Thanksgiving buzz talking. Pie. We need to add pie here.


That's right. Saint Paul's got railgating, too. Somebody get this guy a plaza before he gets hit by a train.




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Location:4th & Cedar

It's baaaack

Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he'd ever spent was a summer in Duluth. Oh how far we've come.

Today, in what seems to be the new norm, we topped off at a blistering 41 degrees. I'll have you know that's only 6 degrees off my personal flip flop tolerance. You see, 47 feels like 74 after a long winter - once the puddles are gone there's no reason to continue putting yourself through the agony of wearing socks. It's all relative in Minnesota...normally.

And then there's this year. Wait, are we having better weather over our winter construction break than we had last summer? It was so tropical this week that crews were pouring concrete on the downtown Central Station, with what seems to be an excessively tall concrete spewing bendy straw machine (technical name).



Please insert LRT here:



In a couple weeks, we'll be back in the swing of tearing up the Avenue and putting in more rail. Construction officially restarts March 1st. Yikes.


p.s. Love that the 4th & Cedar construction site appears to have some sort of internal parking problem - that's so Central Corridor!



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Video Roundup

If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how much a time lapse video is worth. $957 million dollars, perhaps? Here are two of my favorites to recap the 2011 season.