Fraters Libertas

Just Listen To The Music Of The Traffic In The City

As regular visitors to this site may already know, I spent a significant portion of last week in downtown Minneapolis at the American Institute of Architects convention. You folks may also be reassured in knowing that I am no longer feeling threatened by a certain bow tie wearing practitioner of the architectural arts. Those details, however, are strictly a matter between my therapist and me.

I learned a lot over those few days away from the office, and I'm not referring to the endless seminars I attended or even the mindless stroll through the exhibit hall filled with equally mindless industry salesmen and simple hucksters that are drawn to such events. (Never, EVER make eye contact with these people or you'll be sucked into a twenty minute spiel about how a quarter inch of argon gas in your glazing system can save your client thousands of dollars in heating costs.)

No, what I learned is that I love being downtown. I work in a dreary little "office park" in the suburbs. I go to work, work for a while, and then go home. If I get out at all, it's for lunch and we invariably drive to Chipotle or Panera Bread or Bruegger's or Schlotszky's or one of the several hundred other chain restaurants that grow like weeds around these suburban nightmares.

Downtown is different. It has character. It has Keys Cafe on Nicollet Mall and they serve breakfast all day long. I'm talking a pile of bacon and eggs at 3:00 in the afternoon. Now, while I can't say that I've even desired such a departure from the societal norm of morning breakfast too many times, it's nice to know that the option is there for me. Try ordering an omelet at Applebees during the cocktail hour and see what response your server Brittany gives you. Keys Cafe has waitresses, not servers. They have names like Alice or Trudy and if you order a stack of pancakes with a side of hamburgers, well goddammit, that's just what you'll get.

Downtown has the constant undercurrent of urgency. The streets are teeming with traffic. People on the sidewalks walk with a purpose. Now, maybe that purpose is to stay a step ahead of the armed thug behind them, but the feeling is palpable nonetheless. No one uses the sidewalks near my office in Edina. Why would they since very few useful destinations are within walking distance?

Downtown people seem busy and preoccupied. I much prefer this to the slack jawed casualness of the chucklehead standing next to me on my smoke break who finds it necessary to blather on and on about how the snowstorm last weekend screwed up his plans to head down to Home Depot for a couple of toggle bolts so he could finally hang that cabinet in the bathroom his wife has been nagging him about for weeks. If only he had somewhere to go.

There are plenty of places to go downtown. There's Let It Be Records, where I could spend an entire work day and still not find all the music I think I need. There's the Local, where I can enjoy a marvelous three Guinness lunch (at happy hour prices, mind you) while reading the entire newspaper. There are countless little coffee shops and delis where I could blend into the crowd for an hour and finish reading that book I started two months ago but never completed since I can't ever find a quiet moment in my office break room to do so.

Downtown people also dress like they're serious about their jobs. They wear ties and pressed shirts and polished shoes and have pants with sharp pleats and cuffs. They wear overcoats and carry umbrellas and briefcases. They embody everything I imagined about the working world when I was a child. It never occurred to me that I would be working next to people wearing loose fit jeans and oversized grey sweatshirts. I always thought I'd be working with adults.

Now, if I could only find a parking space for under $20 a day.