With all the transportation news going on, Roadguy has fallen a bit behind on his correspondence. Last week, alert reader Mary sent in this question:

When is Nicollet Mall opening back up for buses? I see quite a few older and handicapped residents using the bus to get from apartments just south of downtown to Target, Walgreens, and all the other stores along the mall. Right now, they have to either walk down the mall or walk up from Hennepin, which can be a trek the farther south you go.

As if by magic, two days after the e-mail arrived, the Mall reopened to bus traffic. (Metro Transit’s news release is here.) But Mary, who first got us talking about Nicollet Mall a few weeks ago in this post, had more to say:

I do hope that they aren’t going to keep buses off the Mall to placate the handful of folks dining al fresco. I saw the same people busing every day; you walk past the restaurants, and there’s always different people there, and most of the day the tables are empty. If they don’t like the fumes or noise, eat inside. Eat outside, you have birds flying over, bugs attacking your lunch, etc….

And there’s much worse noise pollution than the buses … there was a guy on Nicollet playing his guitar and singing about Jerry Falwell:

Jerry Falwell is dead
Let the joyous news be spread
Mr. Falwell has died
Spread the good news far and wide
What is that smell?
Mr. Falwell burns in hell
There’s no pearly gate
For someone who spewed such hate

He was singing LOUDLY as I passed the Crate & Barrel on the way to Target, and was still singing the same song when I was on my way back to work. The folks at the nearby restaurants must have been tearing out their hair after about the third time around.

Roadguy doesn’t have any hair to tear out, but he thinks Mary might have a point. He also knows there are differing views on what Nicollet Mall is for — this past weekend, Strib architecture writer Linda Mack wrote about the challenging mix; click here for text and video.

Linda’s commentary declined to weigh in on the extent to which painfully repetitive lyrics might diminish the urban experience, but you can weigh in below with any thoughts and tales about getting around downtown. And feel free to share your views on yesterday’s Star Tribune letter of the day, which tackled the pressing issue of whether Hennepin Avenue, not Nicollet, is Minneapolis’ signature street.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Scenes and stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.