35W

I took this shot from the 46th Street bridge over 35W. I remember crossing the Diamond Lake Road bridge (54th Street) as a kid and watching the cars and looking at the same view although it was quite a different skyline back in the 70s.

Minneapolis Skyline

Photo taken during my March 19 visit to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. As a kid in the 1970s I was always captivated by this view. Of course, the skyline looked a bit different than this. It's still a striking view despite the gray winter day. 

The Mary Tyler Moore Statue

Yes, The Mary Tyler Moore Show is my all-time favorite television sit-com. I remember Mom pointing out scenes of Minneapolis from the opening credits of the show as it played on our portable Panasonic television while she was cutting my hair in the kitchen on a summer night way back in 1970 or 1971. I was young enough to think that Mary actually lived here.

Photo by @mapledipped on Instagram as it appeared in Midwest Living magazine.

The Minneapolis Tribune from 38 Years Ago Today

I found this old edition of the Minneapolis Tribune from 38 years ago (today!) at an antique store near Stillwater. Pretty historic stuff, huh?! Our family got the Minneapolis Star which came out in the afternoon. The Tribune was the morning paper. Dad liked to read the news after work so we subscribed to the afternoon paper which, obviously, had slightly more current info. Hard to believe in this era of 24-hour news that the news was updated at only certain points of the day. I liked getting the Star because it ran the Peanuts comic strip. The Tribune did not. The Star and Tribune merged in the 1980s and adopted the slogan "Newspaper of the Twin Cities." The top photo is of the Star and Tribune building in downtown Minneapolis and, I'm guessing, from the 1960s.

Curran's Part 3

Met some work chums at Curran's right before school the other day. This photo is hanging in the waiting area. Judging by the cars it looks like the shot is from the early or mid-1970's.  It reminds me of when we first started eating there after church when we were kids.

Powderhorn Park Part 2

I took the above picture on my walk to Powderhorn Park today. The City of Minneapolis used to do their 4th of July fireworks, which were shot off from the island shown in the picture above, from Powderhorn Park. Mom, Dad, Sam, Pete, and I used to go see fireworks here in the 1970's.

IDS and Foshay Towers

More shots of the IDS and Foshay towers. Found this pair on the Old Minneapolis page on Facebook. Photos submitted by Kent Mitchell. I love that the old Curtis Hotel is visible in the first picture. I remember driving by this many times due to one of the downtown freeway exits spitting you out in front of it. I remember Dad driving us up to Two Harbors in the early 1970's. For some reason we had to exit downtown on the way. Maybe it was due to some kind of construction detour. Anyway, as we drove by a drunk man, who looked and dressed very much like Otis on the old Andy Griffith Show, was hobbling out of the Curtis. I remember Dad saying in his very dry way, "He looks like I feel."

IDS and Foshay Towers

Love this photo. Credit goes to the Flashbacks of Bloomington group on Facebook. Photo dated 1972.

The Boulevard Theater Part 3

During my time growing up in the Tangletown (formerly Fuller) neighborhood in Minneapolis the Boulevard Theater was was a second-run theater known for it's cheap seats. Because it only charged 99 cents to see film that had already been in wide release, many neighborhood folks called it the "99 cent-er". I remember seeing a lot of movies there including A Christmas Story, Star Wars, Reds, The Verdict, The Breakfast Club, Peggy Sue Got Married, Moonstruck, and more.

Dad took me to see Paul Newman in The Verdict in 1982. I remember it was the first movie that just the two of us went to alone since a re-release of Disney's The Jungle Book in the early 1970's. I remember a couple of women sitting behind us going nuts over Paul Newman's blue eyes during a close-up of him.

Sam, Pete and I went to see Star Wars when it was re-released in the late 1970's and Sam and I hiked over to see A Christmas Story during Christmas break of 1982/83.

I have early memories of seeing Saturday matinees for kids in the early 1970's. The Pippi Longstocking films from Scandanavia were my favorites although I also had a good time seeing those Disney nature movies as well.

The above photo is my own that I took on July 17, 2011. Although the theater is no longer there, the marquee remains.

Boulevard Theater Part 2

I found the above photo, dated 1974, online. I remember the theater from this time but have no recollection of the structure on top of the theater. I'm guessing it was taken down when the theater was remodeled and divided into two theaters from one in the late 1970's. The Boulevard Theater closed sometime in the 1990's. The building now holds a restaurant named Prima, a Caribou Coffee shop, Anytime Fitness, Nokomis Chiropractic and a Subway sandwich shop. The Red Owl grocery store just to the left of the theater is now a grocery store named Kowalski's.

Boulevard Theater

The local neighborhood theater that we frequented when growing up in the Tangletown neighborhood (formerly named the Fuller neighborhood) of Minneapolis was the Boulevard Theater. I just did a web search for it and a website named cinematreasures.org came up. This is what they had to say about it:

"Designed by Perry E. Crosier in 1933 in Art Deco style and seating about 1,000, this theater opened as the Boulevard Twins, not beause it had two screens (though it was later twinned in the late-1970's), but because it was partly a movie house and part restaurant, a format it retained into the 1960's."

"Today, the former Boulevard Theater houses a video and DVD rental store, in a touch of irony. However, its beautiful Art Deco style marquee is still intact and still used by the store."

Actually, in a case of reverse irony, the video rental store has closed since that posting on cinematreasures.org. As far as I can tell the space is vacant.

I took the above photo on July 17, 2011.

Anthony Junior High School

I attended Anthony Junior High School from 1978-1980. At the time I attended, Anthony was grades 7-8. As of this writing, it is called Anthony Middle School and includes grades 6-8. I'm now a teacher with Minneapolis Public Schools and have recently attended some workshops that were held at Anthony. It looks exactly as it did when I attended there in the late 1970's and, I believe, has held up quite well. It was at this school that I met two of my lifelong best friends, Heidi and her brother Rob.

Page Elementary School

Page Elementary School was a Minneapolis public school that I attended from Kindergarten to fourth grade (1971-1976). Sam attended here for Kindergarten (1976-1976). The school, along with many others in Minneapolis, was closed in 1982 due to declining enrollment. It was torn down shortly after and townhouses now occupy this site. I have very fond memories of this school. I loved the teachers, I loved the other kids, and I loved my time there.

Church of the Annunciation - Minneapolis

The Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis is a Roman Catholic parish that was attended by my family starting in 1969 when we moved to south Minneapolis. The church is located at 509 West 54th Street near the corner of Diamond Lake Road and Lyndale Avenue.

The following history is from Annunciation's website:

"The parish of Annunciation was created by Archbishop Dowling with the appointment of the Rev. Francis J. Lang, as pastor, on September 8 1922. Most of the pioneer parishioners were young and middle-aged couples, many with children. Before 1922, most of the people in this area worshipped at Incarnation parish to the north and Assumption parish in Richfield to the south. The first parish Mass was offered on October 1, 1922."

"Within a year, this young community occupied the first rooms of a new church-school building, which still serves our community well. On August 5, 1923 the first liturgy was offered in the building and on September 10, 1923, four Dominican Sisters opened Annunciation School, with 72 pupils."

"The Post-War Boom, 1945-1960, brought the challenge of rapid population growth and expansion. On December 16, 1962 the first Mass was offered by the community in its new worship space."

I remember the big summer rummage sales in the school gymnasium in the summer in the 1970's and I remember the parish festival, Septemberfest, which I believe began in the 1980's. Dad contributed a lot of time and effort to the set up and take down of that festival.