Riverfront

I'm very well familiar with the Riverfront area. I longboard there often, usually hitting the bridge or going down the hills underneath the bridge. But I never really take the time to look. I'm usually too caught up in not falling off my board... In fact, up until that day I had never even been inside the Guthrie Theatre.
The Guthrie is/was probably one of the most modern buildings that I've been in to date, so it kind of took me by surprise. Especially the 4 story escalator.

The Guthrie stuck out to me because its such a modern building amidst what seems to be a very antique location.  Between the brewery and the old rail station, I get the impression that the Riverfront has been developed (and continues to be developed) for quite some time.  Modern takes on a whole new meaning at the Riverfront.  Its like a look into the past really.  You see the railways, and how it literally is a museum now, and you wonder what will be the museum in this location 50 years from now.  Maybe something electric... or maybe a car.  

Another one of the images that I provided is a sketch of a portion of water that had thick layers of foam, debris and wood floating on top of it.  I found that this image directly correlates to what we had discussed simply because it was a collection of "items" that have accumulated in this one space over  a period of time.  Some were natural, such as the water foam and wood, but others, such as the plastic bottles and trash, were obviously man-made.  Looking at this is kind of a glimpse of what the story of the Riverfront really is in my opinion.  At a distance, the Riverfront looks controlled, contained and orderly... the flow of water guided by the shore banks and walls with neat little bridges to watch from.  But upon closer inspection, you find that the Riverfront is actually just a collection of our own mess, our own excrement.  It really puts the prompt of "Is/Was" into a new context for me.  Such as... if THIS is what it IS, what WAS it then?  I can only imagine what the "Riverfront" looked like a century ago, unmarked by man and the mess that we inevitably leave behind.  I can only hope that at some point, we can find a happy medium between "is" and "was" in situations such as this.

~Danny J Levar