Andy Sturdevant’s “Alley Atlas” runs through December 29 in the MAEP Galleries.
As promised, here’s the second installment of intriguing alley names from Andy Sturdevant’s popular MAEP exhibition Alley Atlas. These are largely alleys in Uptown, the Lyn-Lake area, and downtown Minneapolis. And as much as South Minneapolis residents seemed to name their alleys for kindly neighbors or nefarious creatures (human and animal), capturing a kind of rough-and-ready urbanism, the stories from the youthful lakes area bent slightly toward the hedonistic and the carefree.
The story of Drunk Ass Alley chronicles a debauched night at the Red Dragon and Liquor Lyle’s that ended up presumably where it began, in the alley behind 24th Street and Harriet Avenue, complete with emptied stomachs. Beware, the poster helpfully added, the Red Dragon Special and tequila shots.
Directly across from the MIA (well, behind the houses) is the proposed Stevens 4-Plex Alley, west of 24th Street and Stevens Avenue. “This is the first place I lived with my girlfriend in Minneapolis,” the namer writes. “It was a summer sublet. Walked across the street to the MIA. Driving up and down the alley was always tricky because there were always people just sitting in the alley talking, smoking, visiting. The alley was an entirely different world than being on the sidewalk, yet it was exactly the same.”
Over in the Warehouse District, someone gave the name Bike Messenger Alley to the lane behind One On One Bicycle Studio behind Washington Avenue—a “real workingman’s alley,” he notes. “Bike messengers hang out, drink beer, smoke pot, and do tricks with their bikes,” he says, tolerated by cooks from Haute Dish, landscape architects whose offices are nearby, and workers—for lack of a better word—on their way to Sex World and Deja Vu. Nearby (and he doesn’t note how he knows this) is a warehouse full of original Zubaz pants. Actually, perhaps we can presume how he knows this.
The namer of Sorry It’s Been So Long Alley at 24XX Dupont Avenue S. gets points for honesty—”I forgot about my alley,” she admits. The back steps of her place were steep, so she never went out that way. Fair enough. And major points for being inspired to give the alley another chance. “I started purposefully using the alley,” she notes. And because her parents would often reminisce about the alleys of Chicago, having similar experiences here “makes me feel independent and grown up. I now have an alley.”
An unexpected benefit of these alley stories is that they occasionally answer some pressing questions, as in the case of Steve’s Alley east of Lyndale Avenue between 25th and 26th streets, just behind the Loon Deli. It’s named for the guy who lives in the camper “perma-parked” behind a house there—aha! “He played with our landlord’s kid, rode his cruiser on the sidewalk and was a chill dude.” The namer also mentions meeting “the love of my life while living in that house (not Steve).” Thanks for clarifying.