July 2007

On Saturday, Jen and I had brunch downtown with Peter Merholz before he had to jump on the light rail to the airport for his trip home. As is often the case when people come in from out of town, we took the opportunity to see something new in the city that we really should have seen already. In this case, it was the new Guthrie Theater and the nearby farmers market.

I have to say, I’m very impressed with the Guthrie’s new building. It appears to do a good job of melding form with function and fits elegantly on its riverfront plot. But that’s where my Guthrie-stroking ends. I’m still of the opinion that the Guthrie’s productions have mostly been sub-par since Garland Wright left as artistic director and was replaced with Joe “Butts In The Seats” Dowling. I’m also upset by the way the Guthrie and the Walker simply abandoned the Guthrie’s previous historical space and allowed it to become a hole in the ground (yes, plans are that the space will become a park, but I see that, at best, as a lateral move). With all the theater troupes in the cities begging for spaces to perform, there was probably a way to keep the nation’s first thrust stage theater and get back to Sir Tyrone Guthrie’s vision of “a new kind of theater that would provide an atmosphere which would encourage the production of great works of literature and cultivate actors’ talents away from the more commercial environment of Broadway where increasing production costs demanded profitability over artistic content.”

Hmmm, Joe Dowling must not have gotten that memo as he often sounds more like a CEO than an artistic director. Check out his Broadway credits as well.

But I digress.

So, there we were, on the Guthrie’s “Endless Bridge,” taking pictures of the spectacular river view and the spankin’ new developments (condos and parks mostly) that have mushroomed all around the new theater when Jen mentioned our dog walking ritual to Peter. Not being that familiar with the location of our home and the seemingly endless varieties of walks available to us right out our door, he asked if we packed up the dogs every morning and drove to a suitable location. Those of you that have been following our dog walks know that every walk we’ve taken has been centered around our home, so my first reaction to Peter’s comment was to brag about how we didn’t need to drive anywhere, what with Theodore Wirth Park and the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway literally a block from our home. But as I looked out across the river and saw people walking across the renovated Stone Arch Bridge and playing in the new Gold Medal Park (paid for by a $5M donation from my former boss, the disgraced ex-CEO of UnitedHealth Group, William McGuire, which probably explains the stunning similarities between that park and the UnitedHealth Group corporate headquarters green space) it suddenly occurred to me that the riverfront would be a fantastic place to walk the dogs.

So, on Sunday morning we packed up Babbage and Pascal and drove down to St. Anthony Falls for a river walk. Despite being somewhat discouraged by all the trash from the previous evening’s Aquatennial fireworks celebration covering the bridge and floating in the river backwaters, we really enjoyed the change of scenery and will likely be back again some weekend.