28thavenue.net

Yesterday a fire broke out at a small restaurant called “Heidi’s” on 50th Street, just east of Bryant Ave. in Southwest Minneapolis. It quickly spread to take the whole building, you can read about it here.

A friend noted on her Facebook page that she was sad for her husband, who had fond memories from his childhood of going to one of the neighboring businesses, called The Malt Shop (fortunately this one survived the blaze). I recently stopped in Patina, another business destroyed, to find a gift for friends, a salt and pepper shaker set that looked like one of those plastic honey containers shaped like a bear. I swung in after leaving my brother’s house, which is just a few blocks away.

50th and Bryant is one of Minneapolis’s little commercial nodes that add so much to the quality of our neighborhoods. They’re remnants of the streetcar days, before the age of the automobile and big box stores took over.

This type of place is what James Howard Kunstler calls places worth caring about, and I think the reaction of so many prove the point.

People don’t cry when they see a Don Pablo’s go up in flames. Fond memories of childhood are not stirred when a K-Mart meets the wrecking ball.

I have all the confidence in the world that this little corner of Minneapolis will be rebuilt, and it will be done with care and be just as cozy as it was before. We should take note of this occurrence, though, and remember that these are the kinds of places we should be creating. These are places worth caring about.