South 12th

The Pioneer Press reports:

The remnant of this last winter’s snow still remains in the University Avenue Sears parking lot in St. Paul, Tuesday, June 7, 2011. The dirt and garbage-covered snow pile, once a towering hill of snow from streets and parking lots, is slowly melting away as the temperatures increase. 

And the topography of Minneapolis and St. Paul returns, finally, to its complete, pure warm weather state. On this 100-degrees-plus afternoon, here is a fond look back at this winter’s S. 12th Snowbank Atlas. Enjoy exciting photographs of such memorable peaks as Mt. Gruen, Mt. Peebles, Mt. Exterminate, Mt. Filth, Mt. Bauhaus, Mt. Cybill Shepherd, and Mt. Geringhoettenreidie. Thank you to all regular readers that submitted photos from their own explorations. In a perverse twist on the usual formula, the explorers remain, but the peaks themselves are gone forever. We are our own walking, talking, sweating mountaineering memorials.

I was going to add an exclamation mark to that last sentence to make it seem less portentous, but I have vowed to stop overusing exclamation marks and ALL CAPS DECLAMATIONS in my internet-based writing. So you’re stuck with portentous. Happy summer!

Greater and Lesser Ararat, “as viewed from the Mill City Cafe / California Building parking lot in Northeast Minneapolis.”

A submission to the S. 12th Snowbank Atlas from Peter Hajinian, proprietor of Exorbitant Porridge, America’s best online robotic radio drama.

As it continues to warm up (and I use that phrase advisedly), the snowbank topography of the cities has changed quite a bit. Many of the larger peaks have reduced in size dramatically, though many of them look more like mountains now more than ever — the bottom layers of most mountains are now soot and ice, and the way they peek out from behind the fresher, whiter layers of snow gives the impression of snow-dusted rock formations. Much of it will be gone in the next three weeks.

A snowbank atlas submission from Andy DuCett, photographed in hostile cake-eater territory, Edina. This 13’ peak is located in the parking lot of America’s oldest indoor shopping mall (and the first of the suburban “dales”), the estimable Southdale. 

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about the mall’s designer, an Austrian architect hired by the mighty Dayton family named Victor Gruen:

Gruen was a European style socialist [presumably the writer means “European-style socialist,” with a hyphen — a “European style socialist” would be Paul Weller circa 1983 - Ed.]; he hated the suburban lifestyle of 1950s America and wanted to design a building that would bring people together into a community, by providing a meeting place that American towns lacked. They would come together to shop, drink coffee, and socialize. He modeled Southdale on the arcades of European cities, although his original version was never achieved.

Obviously, in deference to Herr Gruen’s socialist style vision for suburban America, and to the majestic peaks of his native Austria, this one is called Mt. Gruen.

Another dispatch from the ranges of Northeast Minneapolis. This four-story peak was submitted by The Soap Factory’s executive director and noted Dr. Who enthusiast Ben Heywood.

In honor of that fact, we will name this one Mt. Exterminate:

Conquering this mighty peak (just over the railway from the Northup King building) gives you dominion over all the hipsters of Quincy St. NE and permits you to prevent them blocking your alleyway with their damned pickups that they ‘just got from their dad.’

Mountaineers Sherpa Tensing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hilary (AKA Madeleine and Genevieve Heywood). Beware the ominous yeti caves on the lower slopes.

Like Jesus, we can see our house from up there.

A closer view of Mt. Peebles, from the Marek-Spartz expedition.

A legitimately awe-inspiring range near TCF Stadium by the University, from reader Kyle Marek-Spartz. “These are pictures from the corners of 6th St. SE and 23rd Ave. SE of snow piles four stories high, formed by the snow removal crews. The snow removed from the streets has to go somewhere, and in this case, it went here. There supposedly are larger ones on the state fairgrounds but I have yet to work my way over there.”

I name these peaks Mt. Bruininks and Mt. Cerra, after two beloved, retiring University of Minnesota administrators whose accomplishments will ring down through the ages.

Heh heh, just kidding. Let’s name them after old-timey Gophers sports people. On the left, Mt. Peebles (after coach Thomas Peebles, who in the 1895 football season was described as having “a twinkling eye, a moustache, winged collars and the bearing of a scholar so that even on the field of play he looked as though he were en route to the court of St. James,” and when the Gophers played Carleton, couldn’t figure out if they were playing soccer or rugby), and on the right Mt. Vita (after Theodore Vita, who played guard for the Gophers during the 1906 season, which is the one where the Minnesota-Wisconsin game was cancelled by Theodore Roosevelt because he thought college football was getting too violent because no one had invented the forward pass yet so players had to move the ball forward on the field by murdering each other instead).

Four stories high! 

Memory is not enough.

A few months ago my pal Rebekah was kind enough to send me a few tiny, spiral-bound art books from Chicago called Memory is Not Enough. They are collections of photographs made with 2005-era drug phones, very much like the model that I own (the LG2000, which some cell phone camera connoisseurs have dubbed the “Leica M4 of mid-fi cell phone cameras”) (that link goes nowhere because I made that quote up). 

This morning, I was rushing to catch the bus at Bloomington and Lake, and passed another snowbank that had an empty, dry Little Caesar’s pizza box resting on top of it, very much like Mt. Hoettenreiddie. I didn’t really have time to stop, since I could hear the bus approaching from behind me and I was still a hundred yards from the stop, but I stopped anyway to take a quick shot.

Of course, when I hit the button with the tiny camera embossed on it, the screen flashed this message: “MEMORY IS NOT ENOUGH.”

Damn it! The LG2000 may be the Leica M4 of mid-fi cell phone cameras, but it only holds about 10 images at a time. I couldn’t spare the time to go in and erase one, so I had to stuff the phone back in my pocket and run to catch the bus, leaving Hoettenreidie’s sister peak uncaptured.

Sitting on the bus and thinking about the lost opportunity, I thought then about the poignance of that phrase, “memory is not enough.” I understood why the publishers of Rebekah’s book had chosen it. Memory isn’t enough. Memory is never enough. That’s why you have been unable to go to a party in the past six or seven years without cameras flying out of people’s bags and photos of you ending up on Facebook the next day with your hair looking all crazy and from a not-very-flattering angle. I have certain friends I feel a great deal of anxiety going out with, because I know the whole evening is going to end up documented no matter how awful I look. If it didn’t happen on camera, it’s like it never happened!

So you’ll just have to trust that I passed Hoettenreidie’s sister peak today on the way to the bus, at Bloomington and Lake, without the benefit of photographic documentation. Drawing on memory, I have depicted it below on paper with pen. I will call it Mt. Geringhoettenreidie, which is mangled fake Germano-European for “Little Hoettenreidie” (unless any of our German-speaking readers rule otherwise).

In this instance, the presence of the pizza box is less surprising, since the nearest Little Caesar’s is only nine block away.

Do you think it’s the same party that left the first box, at Dupont and 34th? Was this a set of earlier provisions on their westward journey, consumed in a panic and then abandoned? Frankly, it seems unlikely. But it would be pure hubris to rule it out entirely.

“Make your knapsack as light as possible but carry plenty of provisions to last you, should you be later than you expect; a famished party is a weak one and most accidents have come at the end of a hard day when men are tired, hungry, and careless.”

— Mountaineering, Clinton Thomas Dent, 1892.

Noah sends an updated (and possibly doctored) photo that better reflects the perils of Mt. Hoettenreidie.