South 12th

Things I Learned About From Mike Gunther, #2: The Midtown Phillips Light Aircraft Graveyard.

South Minneapolis is unlike a lot of other urban areas in the sense that it’s not as dense as it seems like it should be — this part of the city wasn’t developed until the 1910s and ’20s, so instead of multistory apartment buildings, it’s miles and miles of really narrow lots laid out on a grid, each with tiny front and back yards with single-family houses, duplexes and triplexes (or, in the case of the S. 12th residential compound for which this tumblelog is named, a six-plex). More than one east coast native has pointed out to me that the southside has to them a somewhat suburban feel to it. Rightfully so, because it is suburban. Literally: South Minneapolis is right below the urban core, and was populated by the first generation of Minneapolitans that could just as easily take the streetcars to and from downtown as live there. The southside is still laid out, in a grid, along those streetcar lines — Cedar, Bloomington, Chicago, 28th. Though the streetcars were torn out sixty years ago, those avenues still form the skeleton of the area, with Nicollet as the spine.

My point is that when you’re walking or driving through Powderhorn or Phillips or Longfellow or any of the other neighborhoods south of Franklin, the grid layout and its endless lots can all run together. Superficially, there’s a kind of a bland, repetitive quality to these neighborhoods. Stucco duplex, stucco cottage, Lutheran church, brick triplex, stucco duplex…

Hidden away, however, behind streetcorner buildings and between all those stucco duplexes are all sorts of weird little details that make South Minneapolis so quietly interesting. A case in point is the light airplane graveyard in Phillips, a block or two north of my house on 13th.

Mike tipped me off on its existence, and if he hadn’t, I might never have noticed it — it’s behind a tall wooden fence with barbed wire lining the top. There is no information on the fence or the adjoining building about who owns the lot, or how to get in touch with them, or anything else. There’s just rows and rows of Piper Cubs and Cessna 120s, crushed and stacked atop one another in piles. They are stacked just high enough that a bent propeller or wing will peek over the fence. Did people die in these planes? Or just sell them for scrap? It’s hard to get a look. Apparently the business is called Wentworth Aircraft (“the world’s leading supplier of used aircraft parts for single-engine aircraft”), but you’d never know from the exterior.

The airplane graveyard is next door to a squat, one-story light industrial building that’s been repurposed as a mosque. In the summer, sometimes the East African teenage boys will take their shirts off and do chin-ups on the metal railing overlooking the Greenway. Two block away is the Circle of Discipline, a converted garage in which neighborhood kids train in martial arts; you sometimes hear them jogging in formation down 12th chanting “Who are we? C.O.D.! Who are we? C.O.D.!” South Minneapolis doesn’t wear its eccentricities on its sleeve. You have to find them yourself. Or have Mike Gunther find them for you.

Did you know? If the Burj Dubai tower had been built in South Minneapolis, it would be more than 2,652 feet taller than Matt’s Bar.

Ruben, Andy and me; photo by Jaime. Here is the first appearance of the formidable sweater vest/suit/ushanka combination that will sustain me through the winter.

I didn’t know anyone that drank Black Label before I lived here. It is another indicator that Minneapolis is the most Canadian of American cities, like when you watch Guy Maddin movies or Twitch City and pretend they take place here.

The corona around my house, as seen in Google Street View. To find where I live, you simply walk towards the sun until it is directly in front of you.

Fortune cookie from lunch today. South Minneapolis!

Here’s a fun piece of S. 12th trivia — take a look at the infographic above. According to Google Analytics, those are my top four keywords. It makes sense that the name of the blog would be the top, and that my name would be third, right?

(Regarding #2: I have no idea why the gangster burger remains such a favorite with the web-browsing public. I wrote about it briefly a long time ago, back when S. 12th was a lot linkier in orientation and probably before you even started following — you can read all about the damnable saga of the GB here, here and here. For the record, let me say that I never even saw a god-damned gangster burger in person, let alone ate one.)

However, let’s look at number four. Andy DuCett! The Minneapolis-based artist and a great personal friend! A shocking amount of people come to this very tumblelog looking for Andy DuCett. Here is a list of keywords bringing people here that are less popular than Andy DuCett:

• “1957 red wine”
• “classy animated gif”
• “girls playing accordion”
• “hey wanna make out”

If I’m extrapolating this correctly, that means more people come to S. 12th looking for information about Andy DuCett than come hoping to find animated GIFs of people making out with vintage wine-slurping accordion girls (I believe Molly Lambert would be your best source for such a creation, if it indeed exists).

A world that chooses Andy DuCett over classy animated GIFs. Any way you look at it, readers, that is a triumph for culture.

So, to placate you DuCett-crazed masses, let me direct you to this: the man himself is showing at Art Of This here in south Minneapolis next weekend:

Andy DuCett deeply delves into the histories of the building Art of This inhabits, Nicollet Avenue and the surrounding neighborhood to construct his latest sculptural installation, A.O.T. as been here forever, except when it wasn’t. Building upon much of his past installation work employing all things thrift store kitsch, as well as his architectural and illustrative drawings, DuCett investigates the various ways we subjectively interpret and connect with the world around us all.

I’ll be there, and I hope you will, too. Someday, in the far-off future, S. 12th may just be a repository for information about Andy DuCett, like those websites you stumble across when you accidentally type in a URL incorrectly, like kiknos.com, and it’s a blank page with spammy links that says “what you need it, when you need it.” Andy DuCett, when you need it.