Twin Lakes

[This was a once a parking lot. Would you guess it's only a few blocks NE of the 35W and Highway 36 interchange?]

Shana and the kids are out of town, and I was feeling antsy after dinner so I hopped on my bike (something I don’t do too often) and set out on a little field research in my role as a member of the Roseville Planning Commission.

Mission – to visit the Twin Lakes site. I won’t go into all the gory history, and there is a lot of history. It’s still something of a hot-button political issue in Roseville.

I had visited the site on other occasions, but always as a motorist, driving the streets. Up until now I had only driven the main streets. Tonight I wanted more detail so I used the bike. I biked around the overgrown parking lots. Some of it felt very post-apocalyptic – like a Twilight Zone episode or maybe that book published recently about what would happen to our infrastructure if humans suddenly “left” Earth. There are numbers of open buildings, warehouses mostly with loading-docks. There are plenty of areas where kids and others could walk right into these buildings. I suspect lots of partying takes place back here – or at least it would have when I was a kid. Maybe kids today are different? Lots of interesting graffiti.

When I was back there the police showed up. I biked over to the squad car to greet the officer figuring they were after me (trespasser), but he just said "hello" and kept driving. I probably didn't look too threatening.

Later I discovered what the young kids were doing. While riding by the Metro Transit Park and Ride multi-story ramp I observed several kids skate boarding in the ramp. It’s probably a great skate boarding site once the cars clear out post-rush hour. The police didn't drive through the ramp – maybe he didn’t see them, or figured kids will be kids.


[A view of Langton Lake, located at the north end of the Twin Lakes area.]