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Today we nailed out challenge for fun in the Cities it with Open Streets on East Lake Street. Open Streets is an effort to give the streets back to everyone not in a car – for a day. It happens in different parts of Minneapolis on different weekends. I’ve been to a few of them in the last year or two. But I have never been more impressed than I was on Lake Street today.

They closed at least 20 blocks of the street. There was music and tons of food and a lot of fun kid games. We walked about 6 miles. (Aine loves to walk huge amounts in the heat!)

I’m going on a limb to say Aine’s favorite activity was the musical chairs. Big game musical chairs. We didn’t win – but I have to say they did a great job getting us excited for it.

We also tried to pogo. Word to the wise – pencil skirts aren’t the best for a pogo stick. We shot an apple of each other’s heads with a bazooka squirt gun. A soaky fun thing on a hot, hot day. Watched a pie eating contest.

We saw some gorgeous Aztec dancers, some breakdancing and a band that was new to me called Tabah. I just thought the Open Streets people did a great job bringing back every fun thing from being a kid with blocks and blocks of blocks of easy distractions.

The older girls have gone to Ireland leaving me and Aine with the challenge of having even more fun in the Cities. The extra challenge on Friday was the insane heat. Luckily Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes and we have a friend with a boat – so we went swimming off the boat.

I love swimming. Swimming in a lake is a little different for me. First I’m a baby because I always think it’s going to be too cold. I must admit it wasn’t. The water actually felt pretty good.

BUT it turns out lakes have fish – tons of them. And you’d think they’d like to swim away from people. Not true. The swim toward you. Aine loved it – spent half her time trying to catch a fish. Luckily she was not successful or we may have been looking for a new receipt for fish stew!

Got any plans for your summer? We plan to get out to see the street art in the Twin Cities – one street or neighborhood at a time. I’m a fan of street art; I’ve been lucky enough to see Banksy in New York, murals in Belfast and Blu in Berlin. This summer, I’ll be staying home but I figured there must be some sights to see in my home town too with. So my plan for the summer is long walks with a camera.

We started with Lake Street – from the Lake Street Bridge to Lake Calhoun. We started there because my favorite street art is hidden under the Lake Street Bridge on the St Paul side. It honors a soldier; I remember when it went up two years ago around Memorial weekend. My hope this summer it to find more hidden gems like it. (If you know of any art I should check out please let me know atreacy@treacyinfo.com.)

Under the Lake Street Bridge

The street art in Lake Street is primarily paintings and murals. Some are clearly commercial, some are community-focused and a few might have been unsanctioned. Heading from St Paul, the art starts rolling with the Longfellow Artists in Lake Street (LoLA). They are sponsoring lots of opportunities for artists, such as the utility boxes along Lake Street. (The Minneapolis Public Arts Administration issues permits and supports “wrapped and painted utility boxes” around the city. )

Lake Street Utility Box: Gordon Coons

As we strolled down the avenue we found that street art increases as languages in the shop windows increase. There were a lot of scenes celebrating different ethnicities Mexican, Native American, African and Scandinavian. Some of these seemed commercial; some seemed like community projects. We saw quite a few between the train station on Minnehaha until S 1st Avenue.

Lake Street near 15th

There were some store fronts that seemed to sponsor or promote street art such as Urban Ventures, Safari Restaurant and the former Resource Center of the Americas.

Urban Ventures

There were also a lot of art that was clever or good or otherwise struck us. We were surprised at the dearth of street art on Lake Street in Uptown. Perhaps that’s because for this trip we stayed on Lake Street. We learned that sometimes the most interesting work happens off the main drag; we’re hoping to get to more of that later.

Lyndale and Lake

Originally I thought we might spend a day or two traipsing the city to uncover gems but we’ve learned you’ve really got to be walking to get the flavor of a community and it’s going to take all summer to get a decent start. If you see us out in your street, please tell us the story of your local art. (Or feel free to post a comment.)