from the (K)now Blog:
We are the Other - Reggie at 38th Avenue & 4th Street, South Minneapolis, Minnesota (2012)
This was the spot. Back in the day, some forty years ago when Jet Record and Crown Barber Shop were on the corners, Reggie would hang out with his boys doing the things bad boys did, smoking, drinking, singing, shooting dice, stealing potato chips out of a potato chip factory or beer and pop off a truck. “We weren’t a gang,” he says. Just the guys other moms would tell their children to stay clear of.
“Mom worked several jobs, but she didn’t have the money to go out and buy me a bike, so we stole them,” says Reggie. “Not that stealing is right.” He was in and out of juvenile detention, kicked out of two schools and ended up in jail for seven months before getting serious with his life. He worked construction for 30 years and is now retired. Many of his friends from those days are dead or in prison.
Reggie never married but he fathered four children, and now lives in a studio apartment with two of his boys, age 25 and 33. The younger one just got out of prison and he’s trying to keep them both off the street. He tells them the same thing his mother told him: “Give me my flowers now. Don’t bring them to my grave.” In other words, make me proud now instead of when I’m dead. When he says this to his boys they tell him, “Dad, you ain’t going nowhere.”
Seward Market Community Mural to be unveiled Sunday
An unveiling of the new mural on the eat wall of Seward Market will take place on Sunday. ArtiCulture did an amazing job pulling this summer-long project together. Neighborhood youth went out to photograph their community, and their work is displayed beautifully on five panels, each four-by-eight foot, mounted against the community-painted wall.
I have been following their progress this summer and wrote this story for Twin Cities Daily Planet:
A community gathering will take place at the Seward Market August 28, this time celebrating community rather than marking tragedy. A year and a half ago, on a cold January night, Seward neighbors gathered together outside this market to show solidarity with and compassion for the families of three Somali Americans who were tragically gunned down by teens in what was reported as a robbery gone bad. In the following weeks posters proclaiming “Seward Stands Together” sprouted up in neighborhood businesses to show continuing support and to take a stand against violence. more »
Sunday August 28 3 - 5 pm
2431 E Franklin Ave Minneapolis MN
The Murals of Victor Yepez
Last weekend I went to check out the new mural being created at 35th Street and Chicago, and I was fortunate enough to come across Victor Yepez. He not only told me about this mural, Great Day In Powderhorn Park, but he told me about his other murals as well, including that new fabulously colorful one at 42nd and Cedar I’ve been admiring.
If you want to see these photos in a non-flash sort of way, just go to my flickr set.
