I'm not from Minneapolis. I'm from down south where a winter's day may present the option of wearing a hat, not necessitate it. Being from a place where a cold day still allows a $30 clothing to be done without, you can imagine the novelty of a winter adaptation that sounds as Jetsons-esque and expensive as a “Skyway.” "Why, some people who live downtown don't even own coats," I was told (certainly from someone who had never lived downtown nor ever needed to go to a grocery store). Nor was the skyway, as I unrealistically envisioned it, a network of blue translucent tubules whisking individuals about the elevated recesses of the sky. However, it was still a novelty, it was real… and it went unexplored when I moved in a couple of Augusts ago.

And unexplored it stayed as I burrowed into academic journals, Dinkytown coffee shops, and other things grad school that kept my focus myopic and unconcerned with a structure only one block away. However, I would still ignorantly point it out to visitors from my seventh floor window, offering only a bit more than a shrug in the face of a further question. "Yeah, it connects the buildings so you don't have to go outside in the winter."

A friend of my mother used to visit Minneapolis and referred to the skyway as a 'giant mall'. Local guides offered it as for those unfamiliar to get lost. It was connected by fast-food places, coffee joints, clothing stores, department stores, card stores, and places to get a haircut. It had a newsletter of the same namesake, relating to problems and peculiarities to the residents of this place in forms as varied as articles to comic strips, ranging in topics from employment to plant theft.

The reality of being perpetually ignorant of this nearby subculture prompted me to go exploring with a friend one Friday. However, we couldn't really experience it in the same way as the people who worked near and used the structure(s). We were in the Skyway to be in the Skyway, not in the Skyway to get somewhere off the Skyway. Metaphorically, we were driving a car merely to discover the wonder of an interstate highway. As such, we lost something needed. And as tourists, we only got in the way of those already there.

I realized that these inter-building connections may be significant or well liked, but more as a means to an end than an end in itself. Like a hat on a cold winter's day, one doesn't appreciate the aesthetics as much as the practicality - especially when it gets really cold. The Skyway was interesting, but a relaxed 70-minute coffee break seemed a little misplaced. My friend and I seemed more so, boldly and ignorantly exploring dead-ends before knowledgeably and sheepishly returning to the mainstream. We had a fun afternoon, but such really doesn't seem the purpose of the Skyway.