Top Of The Foshay Tower

Top Of The Foshay Tower, Droid Shots, Northern Spark, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June, 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

It was 4:45am when we walked into the Foshay Tower lobby, hoping to catch the sunrise from the 30th floor observation deck. We had stayed up the entire night of June 9th for the second Northern Spark; it was now June 10th. After a random tweet from the Northern Spark app, I won a Jump The Line At The Foshay prize, a gift that proved fruitful. We walked straight to the front of the line and flashed my Droid screen toward the guard. “Wow, that’s cool. Off you go,” he said, shooing us in the direction of the packed elevator.

My stomach dropped on the ride up; the tower view to the east took my breath away. The light was just beginning to change. The deck was crammed with Northern Sparkers, waiting for the sun. It was the perfect ending to the Nuit Blanche, a community shared art event for the soul. Sunrise on top of the sky; a tour of the Foshay museum. Details. Details. Details. Not just tree, what kind of tree. Not just building, what kind of building. A Minnesota icon, built to last, still inspiring sunrises after all these years.

FOSHAY FACTS

• Named for Wilbur Foshay, the original owner & builder

• Modeled after the Washington Monument as a tribute to George Washington

• 32 stories high, tallest building in the Twin Cities for 4 decades
  

• Construction began in 1927 & ended August 1929. Built completely by all-union labor.

• Wilbur Foshay & Gottlieb Magney patented the shape and method of construction

• Faced with Indiana Bedford limestone, 750 window bays, able to stand up to winds of 400 mph

• Numbers: 447 feet, 3 inches high, mast on the top 160 feet; 81 by 87 feet at the base; 59 by 65 feet at the top; contains 2,599,666 cubic feet

• 60 feet below ground with four basement levels

• John Philip Sousa wrote the Foshay Tower-Washington Memorial March for the Foshay Dedication Ceremonies

• Tower Observation Deck is located on the 30th floor where you can see 30 miles on a clear day

• Foshay lights are 10 feet tall, 44 feet across, lit by 900 60-watt bulbs

• Placed on National Register of Historic Places in 1977

• In 1987 the Tower was adorned with a 50-foot by 50-foot banner (the largest ever installed on a highrise office building) congratulating the Minnesota Twins for their championship year

• In 2008, the renovated Foshay opened as the Foshay Museum & Observation Deck, part of W Minneapolis — The Foshay
  

Foshay Moon, Droid Shots, Northern Spark, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June, 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

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-related to posts:  Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche, Northern Spark 2012 – Night Owl Paradise, Northern Spark — Sunrise To Sunset

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, September 4th, 2013

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Northern Spark: Sunset To Sunrise

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Northern Spark kicks off on Saturday, June 8th, at 8:58pm in Lowertown St. Paul, Minnesota. This will be our third year attending Northern Spark (a little history of the Nuit Blanche movement in this piece). Last year we stayed awake from dusk to dawn, and ended our night viewing the sunrise from the top of the Foshay Tower. It’s more difficult than you think to stay awake all night, an insomniac’s dream!

Here’s a link to Northern’s Spark’s full schedule and two more to their Facebook and Twitter pages. Last year we downloaded the Northern Spark app on our Droids and highly recommend it. The slideshow is a glimpse into our night walk around Minneapolis at last year’s Northern Spark, and at a pre-Spark gathering the week before. We are looking forward to Lowertown, St. Paul. It’s a gift to share the night, the light, and the Arts in community.

-posted on red Ravine, Friday, June 7th, 2013

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Northern Spark 2012 – Night Owl Paradise

Night On Fire, BlackBerry Shots, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Original BlackBerry photo June 2011, part of Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.

Northern Spark 2012 begins next weekend in the Twin Cities at dusk on Saturday, June 9th and ends at the crack of dawn, Sunday, June 10th. Northern Spark is a free, dusk to dawn, participatory arts festival that presents visual arts, performance, films, and interactive media. Tonight at the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis we plan to attend the Pre-Spark Bridge Lighting where planners will flip the switch for Northern Spark’s signature artwork, Robin Schwartzman’s THINK AND WONDER, WONDER AND THINK.  They will also be giving out festival guidebooks to preview before June 9.

Last year’s inaugural Northern Spark was magical. In 2011, over the course of the night, there were 50,000 visits to 100 projects by more than 200 mostly local artists at 34 venues in collaboration with 60 partner organizations and sponsors. I have listed a few of the places we visited in 2011 and a little history of the Nuit Blanche (“white night”) movement in the piece Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.

The three photographs in this piece were taken while I was standing in the middle of Jim Campbell’s Scattered Light installation, part of Northern Spark 2011. In Annotated Artwork: The Making Of Jim Campbell’s ‘Scattered Light‘, Jim says moving from 2-D to 3D art is about “exploding an image, tearing it apart, and spreading it out.” His tips: 1. Pick a spot 2. Grab Source Material 3. Turn it into code 4. Create depth 5. Consider the planet. Honoring point 5, he and his assistants revamped thousands of standard lightbulbs, sawed them open, stuffed them with LEDs, and glued them back together, making handmade, unique, energy-efficient hybrids.

I am looking forward to Northern Spark 2012. At the Northern Spark website, there is a Planning Your Night page with a full list of events, including a link to download their new Northern Spark mobile app. We’ve already got ours loaded on our Androids. I only hope there is enough time to make all the events we’ve listed. It’s perfect for all of our fellow NightOwls! Hope to see our local readers there! If you can’t make it, you can follow Northern Spark on their Facebook page and at Twitter @Northern_Spark #NSPK.

Out Of The Darkness (L), #NorthernSpark – Scattered Light by Jim Campbell 23/52 (R), BlackBerry Shots, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Original BlackBerry photos June 2011, part of Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, June 2nd, 2012

-related to posts: Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche, Suspended In Light (Reprise), Insomnia Haiku: Counting Syllables In My Sleep, Mickey’s Night Owl Sandwich, Dreams Of A Creative Insomniac

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Under The Rainbow — Twin Cities Pride

Under The Rainbow – 24/52, BlackBerry 52 — Week 24, Minneapolis,
Minnesota, June 24th 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights
reserved. Medium: Droid snapshot of the new I-35 Bridge on Pride
weekend, June 2011 in response to Lotus Jump-Off – The Biggest Heart.

Compassion —
learning to accept
what we don’t understand;
a city with a big heart
knows how to hold its differences.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, June 26th, 2011

Lotus and I will continue to respond to each other’s BlackBerry Jump-Off photos with text, photography, poetry (however we are inspired) for the 52 weeks of 2011. You can read more at BlackBerry 52 Collaboration. If you are inspired to join us, send us a link to your images, poetry, or prose and we’ll add them to our posts.

-related to posts:  haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52, Berth Of The Night Owl haiku, Marriage Equality In Maine & The Catholic Church

-related links: I-35W Bridge To Glow In Rainbow Colors For Pride Festival, NY Becomes 6th State to Legalize Gay Marriage, NY Birthplace of Gay Rights Movement Fetes New Law, Pride Parade Celebrates Passage Of Gay Marriage

Photos: Bridge Light, I-35 Bridge In Rainbow Colors For Pride – 24/52, BlackBerry 52 — Week 24, Minneapolis, Minnesota, June 24th 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Medium: Droid snapshots of the new I-35 Bridge on Pride weekend, June 2011 in response to Lotus Jump-Off – The Biggest Heart.

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