I’m only a year late discovering this incredible Tom Waits concert over at NPR (stream or download).
by Bob Butler for Public Image Photography
His rendition of 9th & Hennepin got me thinking about the current bland state of that corner here in Minneapolis. Here’s how Waits described it (from Wikipedia):
As with most Waits albums since Swordfishtrombones, Rain Dogs includes a spoken word number. “9th and Hennepin” concerns a character who observes the inhabitants of Hennepin Avenue and 9th Street in Minneapolis, Minnesota “through the yellow windows of the evening train.” The songs depicts a bleak portrayal of characters who “started out with bad directions,” in an environment where “everyone is behaving like dogs”. In interview Waits described the inspiration for its lyrics, admitting that while the street itself is in Minneapolis,
…most of the imagery is from New York. It’s just that I was on 9th and Hennepin years ago in the middle of a pimp war, and 9th and Hennepin always stuck in my mind. “There’s trouble at 9th and Hennepin.” To this day I’m sure there continues to be trouble at 9th and Hennepin. At this donut shop. They were playing “Our Day Will Come” by Dinah Washington when these three 12-year-old pimps came in in chinchilla coats armed with knives and, uh, forks and spoons and ladles and they started throwing them out in the streets. Which was answered by live ammunition over their heads into our booth. And I knew “Our Day Was Here.” I remember the names of all the donuts: cherry twist, lime rickey. But mostly I was thinking of the guy going back to Philadelphia from Manhattan on the Metroliner with the New York Times, looking out the window in New York as he pulls out of the station, imagining all the terrible things he doesn’t have to be a part of.
Nothing so interesting on that corner today (ignoring the fact that the imagery is a mix of MPLS and NYC). Not that a pimp war is a good thing, but the fact that 90% of the character of downtown Minneapolis has been destroyed in the last 30 or so years by new buildings and parking lots is a little sad.
Nothing symbolizes this suburbanization of the city better than the Block E project, an enormous shopping mall/eyesore that is quickly being abandoned by its big box tenants. I don’t want to dwell too much on the good/bad old days, but some forward thinking from our urban planners and city leaders would be a nice way to give downtown just enough of its edge back. I won’t get my hopes up…
