A little over 45 years ago, I lived in the storefront of a former pickle factory about 20 blocks from where Renee Good was shot and killed. I’m sure the neighborhood has changed drastically since I lived there, but when I see the old housing stock and hard-working residents of the Powderhorn neighborhood, I’m reminded of my time there. There were not clouds of tear-gas hanging in the air back then, or pepper ball stains in the concrete of the streets. But the majority of the details ring familiar.
Most of my time in Minneapolis was spent living in my beloved Elliot Park neighborhood (working at the equally beloved Band Box Diner), but I remember Powderhorn well. When snowstorms hit, we made sure our sidewalks were shoveled, because it was a genuine safety hazard. We helped each other out of snowdrifts. We attended each other’s plays and readings and concerts. And if an occupying army of masked and armed Federal Troops attempted to “control” us, we would have united as one and happily manned the barricades.
During my time in Powderhorn I lived with an anarchist named Jan R. (who, according to the internet, might be still around, and writing crunchy anarchist-adjacent articles for Counterpoint). He was the first real life anarchist I’d ever met. I’d always been curious about anarchism, especially as a young man, but I never took the leap. My main issue with my first real world anarchist was that Jan was kind of an asshole. Further, anarchism often gave him cover, and allowed him a philosophy that justified his dickish behavior. He could shoplift as a political act. He could treat people he disapproved of poorly. He could steal from neighbors and roommates guiltlessly if he found they were on the wrong side of his personal political line (that’s called foreshadowing, dear reader).
Yes, I used shoplifted paint to paint the tin ceilings of that old pickle store (I remember laughing, calling shoplifting “Jan R.’s personal war against inflation,” echoing a popular quote from President Jimmy Carter at the time). I used the first set of shoplifted cans of paint to learn the wrong way to paint a tin ceiling (I simply painted over the rust, which won’t work because the paint won’t stick to the rusted tin), and a second set to paint it the right way (scrape the rust off first, duh). I don’t believe in shoplifting, but I was new to anarchism. I used the paint (again, foreshadowing).
Living there in the winter was hard. Minneapolis gets COLD. Caulking on the glass in the pickle store was cracked or missing; I spent many hours recaulking glass. Insulation was nonexistent, so I spent time adding makeshift insulation where I could. My bed was a mattress on the floor, heaped with four or five blankets.
My day job was one of my odder ones, and a favorite. I somehow managed to land a job, through a college contact, at the Guthrie Theater, as part of the changeover crew and running crew. On changeover days, I only worked a couple of hours, late at night, taking down the set of that night after the show was over and putting up the set for the next day. It was really fun work. Running crew was harder, and more rewarding: each show ran 40 performances, crew was there the entire time, setting up props and set-pieces and helping actors find their spots, so you ended up watching each show 40 times. You can learn a lot from watching a show 40 times. A fast example: the Guthrie put on a production of Our Town, a show I’d seen multiple times, in high school productions. I was snobbishly dismissive of the play, until I saw the Guthrie perform it. The audience reacted like one person, laughing, crying, pregnantly silent. They’d become one. Applause always erupted at the end, and standing ovations were common. I’d never seen that before, and have only witnessed it a few times since. I realized then what a masterpiece Our Town is. The show was a great education. There were others.
One of the few photos of the 81 Guthrie production of The Tempest. Sadly it does not show the moat of blood. Francis Conroy as Miranda, Ken Ruta as Prospero. I got to bring him a cup of hot tea before every performance.
One of the plays I worked on was Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I didn’t get to work the show, sadly, but I worked changeover, and so got to witness, every night it played, the creation of a moat of blood surrounding the stage, filled with artifacts from all time: an adding machine, a suit of armor, the Mona Lisa. That image, of objects from throughout time sitting in a moat of blood surrounding the world, has stayed with me for nearly half a century.
Anyway. All my work in the pickle store was in an attempt to mount a version of Eugene Ionesco’s Killing Game, a play I was obsessed with for a long time (and briefly obsessed with again during COVID). My version, as best my memory can recreate, involved a two level stage (that part would be easy, the second level already existed). I made wild edits of the original script. I researched old productions at the library. There was a large foot-high lump in the wooden flooring of the store that could not be repaired (a friend of mine opined it was a petrified pickle); I turned it into part of the set. I designed a giant two-story puppet made out of garbage cans for the body and garbage can lids for faces. The esthetic was partly based on the work of the wonderful Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre (still alive and kicking 45 years later) in Powderhorn Park, and on the Andre Gregory (of My Dinner With Andre fame) version of Alice in Wonderland staged in Manhattan in the 70s.
My production of Killing Game never happened. A lot of that had to do with the landlord raising our rent, after we had fixed the place up. Mostly, if I am to be honest, it had to do with the fact that the anarchist and I simply didn’t get along. When I moved out, he grabbed my stereo system and speakers and moved them out of the pickle store, and to some other unknown location. When I confronted him, he made a couple lukewarm promises to meet me at the pickle store and return my stereo, but of course he was never there when I returned. I contemplated schemes to force him to give me the stereo, involving low level harassment, but never took action. It’s not in my blood. Instead, I took it as cosmic payback for using all that stolen paint.
I don’t believe in shoplifting. I believe in paying back what you owe.
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I’ll make little attempt to connect my memories of the Powderhorn neighborhood. This was all 45 years ago.
But let’s return to this idea: whenever there was a big snow, we’d all help each other out. Shoveling the snow off your sidewalk (and the sidewalks of your neighbors, if theirs was unshoveled) first thing in the morning was important, because people needed to use the sidewalks, and a foot of snow is very hard to walk in. It was more than a courtesy, it was necessary to survive.
Similarly, cars simply got stuck after big snowstorms, and all the kitty litter and cardboard stored in the trunk wouldn’t help. It was common practice among the neighborhood residents I hung out with to stop whenever you saw a stuck car, and help them out. A car that would take a half an hour for one person to carve out of the snow could be freed in minutes by a group of three. It got the person to work (or wherever) on time, it made everyone involved feel good, and the effort involved raised that all-important core body temperature while braving the Minnesota cold.
My point is this: the faces (and skin colors) of the Powderhorn neighborhood may have changed, but I think I recognize the vibe. These are working people, paying reasonable rent in a neighborhood filled with wonderful old housing stock, struggling to survive. The stores and restaurants are cheap. The school system is top rated. The neighborhood park is a jewel, and on May Day, it sponsors a parade and a celebration and some of the most ingenious puppets you’ve ever seen (thanks again, to Heart of the Beast Puppet Theatre).
Minneapolis has a strong sense of neighborhood solidarity. I suppose every mid-sized to large city is divided into neighborhoods, but Minneapolis is the only area where I saw action arise from neighborhood level politicking. Each neighborhood has a central park and a neighborhood center. And people use them. Powderhorn Park is famously crowded. Elliot Park is a sweet little pocket park in a quickly gentrifying area, and you are only a quick walk away from grabbing a burger at the Band Box (every burger an adventure!).
The Powderhorn neighborhood is under attack. A young woman was shot dead there by our own government. There are daily protests, and I recognize the expressions of those on the front lines. Folks are angry, they are scared, and most of all, they are united. For every ICE officer arriving in Minneapolis, there will be two more Minneapolitans at the barricades. All that extreme cold has made Minneapolitans tough.
We’re in a moat of blood, surrounded by the debris of history.
Peace.
