Withering Glance: Codgers recall downtown's better days

Rick Nelson and Claude Peck dispense unasked-for advice about clothing, etiquette, culture, relationships, grooming and more.

CP: Maybe it's just me, but downtown seems deader than a doornail these days.

RN: You've just noticed?

CP: On a recent Saturday afternoon in Chicago, I was on a CTA train to the Loop from O'Hare, and it was full of suburban teens who seemed hell-bent on having fun downtown. You know, shopping, having some French fries, getting high on a shared Marlboro, mooching around. I don't see that happening in Minneapolis.

RN: You're preaching to the choir, missy. Remember, I was the 12-year-old nerd who read in Barbara Flanagan's column about how Jackson Graves installed a glass elevator to entice its customers to the second floor of its Nicollet Mall store. Naturally, I had to check it out for myself. It was the epitome of early 1970s fabulousness.

CP: Barry Bonoff's dress shop as a Rick magnet? How prescient. All the things that used to draw me downtown on a Saturday -- record stores, fashion outlets, Shinder's, Dayton's, looking at the live finches for sale at Woolworth's -- are long gone.

RN: No kidding. For me, the tipping point was the death of Dayton's. I could bore you senseless with my diatribe on that sad subject.

RN: How much time do you have? Once upon a time I pretty much dropped the majority of my net income at 700 Nicollet. Now, beyond shaving cream and underpants, I can barely find anything to buy at Macy's. Dayton's made coming downtown an adventure.

CP: I also haunted the one-of-a-kind stores. March Fourth. The Arcade. Merle's. Northern Lights and Let It Be records. Rifle Sport gallery. Curl Up and Dye.

RN: How about the postage stamp-sized Fanny Farmer in the lobby of the Medical Arts Building? Listen to me. I sound like my late grandfather, reminiscing about how pork chops were 5 cents a pound at Witt's in the 1920s.

CP: I suppose we are codgers, but come on. Now we have one chain bookstore, and an Applebee's at Block E. It's enough to make one abandon one's progressive view of history.

RN: Target Field was a big boost, vitality wise, but off-season, the House of Mauer is a daytime tomb. I sometimes imagine a Mall of America-free metro area, one with a single downtown. Kind of like a Midwestern San Francisco. Well, without all the wealth. And tourism. And sophistication.

RN: Here's my 5-cent question: Where are the galvanizing civic leaders, like the Dayton brothers, who acted in enlightened self-interest to keep downtown alive?

CP: Oh, please, they're all shopping at Nordstrom Rack.