View from the Tundra (Minneapolis)

After the storm cleared, One Republic was next up on stage.  I never did get to see them play since I had to run meet up with a friend, but I took a few shots of their road crew trying to mop up the stage.  There was a lot of static with those wet guitar plugs!  One of the guys from the band came out signing autographs and chatting with friends, I thought that was super cool, seemed like a very genuine guy.

I had a blast at this year’s Basilica Block Party near downtown Minneapolis.  The last couple year’s I haven’t had permission to shoot the bands, but we got the ok (for everyone buy Ziggy Marley) this year.  Definitely added a fun new element to be up in the action (not to mention some pretty funny stories from the crowd).

Pictured here is lead singer Robin Wilson of rock band Gin Blossoms.  I’ve actually seen these guys twice before… once in high school when they were touring with Cracker (”Low” and “Get Off This” are still great tunes) and Spin Doctors.

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Castelo dos Mouros (”Castle of the Moors”) was built by the Muslim Moors who ruled this area for hundreds of years. True to European tourism (as opposed to places in the United States of Litigation), you can wander off any short / narrow ledge you want here. I think I saw a few tourists bodies piled up on the hillside below…

It probably doesn’t take an MBA to figure out that a putting a $5000 price tag on this Superman statue (not kidding) eventually leads to putting up more signs in back…

I’ve started putting my content on Flickr…  While I love many things about Fotki, Flickr makes it easier to upload and organize, so I’ll be using some of both.  Here’s the new content (many of these will appear in future posts)…  In the process of updating, I found a fun old photo… look for it tomorrow.

http://flickr.com/photos/gbenz/collections/

So many people dump their pops (yes, we say pop in Minnesota, check the map) from the overlook of the theme park has stained shingles. Not that this place is a dump, but come on…

Minneapolis still has a ton of old flour mills, train tracks, etc that are the legacy of flour milling in this town.

The Southern Theater hosts “Balls” every Saturday night at midnight.  It’s been on my list of things to check out for a while.  I don’t really know much about it other than I read once that the actors  sometimes go out with the audience for pancakes.

If you don’t already know, I’ve been maintaining 2 blogs since I started last year (this one and “BeyondTheTundra.com”).  My original idea was to create one focused on the Twin Cities and surrounding area, and one for travels elsewhere.  This has gotten to be a bit of work (double posting) and it hurts traffic to the site when it’s split (lower page rank in searches), so I’ve decided to merge them.  ViewFromTheTundra will now be my only blog, but it will now include images from travels to other places.  My goal is to have this combined site showcase the Twin Cities, and put it in perspective by showing a bit of the outside world from the perspective of a Midwesterner. 

Note that I’ll imported the other blog into this one, so you’ll see a bunch of “new” posts show up in the categories (marked as “Beyond The Tundra”, which indicates that the photos are outside the state of Minnesota).

I’d love any comments and feedback on the new direction…