"THE TRACKS"

PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE FORGOTTEN WALLS AND GRAFFITI HISTORY ALONG THE LAKE ST. CORRIDOR IN SOUTH MINNEAPOLIS FROM THE 1990'S.

Locals rocking a daytime spot at the famous "Tracks" in the early 90's.  This was the heyday of the Twin Cities graffiti scene.  Writers hit these walls for years and battled the city and then Mayor Sharon Sales Belton.  For some reason she had a real problem with graffiti back then and ran her campaign around the issue of cleaning up the city.  At some point the city tore out one of the tracks and replaced it with a bike path.  They also set up camera's and lights along the path.  It's such a great space for art that it's too bad the city can't figure out a way to work with artist to bring back the art.  Copyright 2016 M. Nielsen

The walls along this set of railroad tracks were to Minneapolis what the subways were to New York in the early 1990's.  Walls for miles connected by graffiti and railroad tracks.  The Tracks were a pretty ill area in the early 90's.  People would dump their trash, old tv's, shopping carts, you name it it was down there, one could find prostitutes fucking their Johns and sadly many Native Americans frequented this space to huff paint.  It wasn't somewhere to go by oneself.  I made that mistake once and ran into a group of kids who decided they were going to throw rocks at me from above the bridge.  

Crisis AKB near the old Sears building if I remember correctly.  Copyright 2016 M. Nielsen

Love him or hate him Mope aka Kept was one of the few artists to do entire productions by himself.  Copyright 2016 M. Nielsen