I try to avoid nostalgia for the sake of lamenting and complaining, because it suggests your brain shut down after you passed 40 and assumed the permanent scowl of someone who views everything with ignorance and contempt. Why can't we take the trolley down to the Gopher theater and talk about Dave Moore? Things were better then.
Well, in some ways, sure.,The Gopher theater was beautiful in its day, but it was a grimy grind-house when I arrived in Mpls to go to the U, and downtown was something you did once or twice a month as a field trip. Minneapolis and St. Paul lost a lot in the the last three decades, but we're better off, overall. Downtown is better. The riverfront is better. The freeways are better. If you're a light-rail enthusiast, you have two lines and more to come. If you're a sports fan, you may lament the loss of the Met, but c'mon: Target Field. And so on, and so on. Change is a given but improvement is not, and we're not only getting better but gaining recognition by the sources that count the most - surveys and magazine articles, of course.
That said: consider The Weatherball. If the subject makes you scratch your head, consult this account at Forgotten Minnesota, a nifty blog about just that. Watch this jingle:
Now consider this, which I spied at Hunt & Gather Antiques.
It's for a branch office; wonder where it's been all these years. But. What's wrong with this picture? I'll put the answer down below.
Illustrator's cliche: show the reflective nature of a globe by drawing a window mirrored on its surface. Except this was a giant orb atop a tall building. There would have to be a massive, enormous window floating above downtown.
