Stroll Down 35W bridge

February 28, 2008 8:04 AM

Take a stroll down the Minneapolis 35W bridge using Google's street view (now with more cities)

I can only guess about the timing of this street view, but it looks eerily similar to what the bridge looked like in the months/days before its demise

street view resources:
streetvwr
streetview sightings
street view fun

other finds:
Frank Gehry's Walt Disney Concert Hall
man bending over
decapitated man walks
girls sunbathing

so many possible hours of interesting and or fun things, so many privacy fears to ignore...

posted by localhuman (22 comments total)

What's their beef with Seattle?
posted by The Loch Ness Monster at 8:09 AM on February 28, 2008

I found one recently where the camera car driving guys had stopped at MacDonalds but didn't turn off the geotagging thingie until after they parked. So it was road, road, road, parking lot and a guy walking in, that same guy walking out with food, pulling out of parking lot, road road road
posted by DU at 8:14 AM on February 28, 2008

Pfff, I lose compared to some of those "fun" ones. Bikini carwashing the google van.
posted by DU at 8:17 AM on February 28, 2008

Interesting. Judging by the state of the bridge construction, I'm thinking the pictures were taken in July or maybe June.

Weird sort-of-related fact: I work just downstream from the 35W bridge site, right next to the Washington Avenue Bridge. The pedestrian part of the Washington Avenue Bridge overlooks the park area where the NTSB has set up all of the steelwork they fished out of the river. It's still a pretty strange experience to stand there and look down at all the twisted metal, now partly covered by snow.
posted by COBRA! at 8:17 AM on February 28, 2008

Man, I was driving through MN a couple months ago and I sware it took me 30 minutes to get across that river and probably another 20 to get back on to 35-W south after I missed the detour signs.

Fucking sucked.
posted by delmoi at 8:18 AM on February 28, 2008

(Actually I took a photo later of the GPS track I took to get back to 35-W. It actually only took me a little time to get across the river, but once that had happened, I had no idea how to get back to 35)
posted by delmoi at 8:22 AM on February 28, 2008

My techno love of Streetview is tempered by the fact that they drove by unassuming suburban Philly house and took pictures.

"the future can go from cute to terrifying in the blink of a third eye"
posted by djrock3k at 8:47 AM on February 28, 2008

Decapitated man moonwalks, no less.
posted by gauchodaspampas at 9:03 AM on February 28, 2008

Yeah delmoi, my wife works on Washington Ave right by where the bridge terminates and the traffic there during rush hour is awful because of the detour. On the plus side, the whole thing has forced me to figure out several creative ways to get around it.

We drive over the 10th Street Bridge (which overlooks the site) every day, and it's been remarkable watching the new construction go up. Once the weather warms up a little more they're going to be running shifts 24 hours a day (2 12-hour shifts if I recall)

If you drive by there now, they have these HUGE tent-like structures set up on the Washington Ave. side- we wondered what they were for until we heard a story about it on MPR, apparently they're heating tents that keep the internal temperature high enough for mixing concrete. Some days this winter they were heating those things 60+ degrees above the outside air temperature.

Thanks for the post. 6 months out, seeing the site every day, has had a really profound effect on me. I still think about the 13 that died when the bridge fell- the landscape of the river valley is so different without the bridge that it's hard not to see it. But then I see the pylons that they're building (they've only got one up in the water right now) and it's sort of like watching a wound close...it hurts for a while afterwards, but it gives you an intimate view of the healing process, and that's comforting.
posted by baphomet at 9:11 AM on February 28, 2008

I can see my house from here!
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:12 AM on February 28, 2008

When I was working in Jersey City, NJ, I was out walking to lunch, and the google street view car drove by me and a friend. We went up to the guy in the car when he was stopped to confirm, he had a dell laptop set up like a cop with google maps displaying realtime where he had driven. Unfortunatly the pics aren't up yet for that area. What could be more internet famous then yourself in Street View? NOTHING! I won the geek lottery!
posted by Mach5 at 9:56 AM on February 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I was recently checking out the street view, Minneapolis is quite well covered. As it goes by my house (North of downtown MPLS) you can see our cars on the street and I swear you can barely make us out sitting on the porch.
posted by djseafood at 10:27 AM on February 28, 2008

I've always wanted to drive through Minnesota at 5 mouseclicks per hour.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:52 AM on February 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

I have to wonder if this is intended for iPhone users, or some larger device Apple is working on. The idiom for "looking around" uses the iPhone/iPod Touch finger motions.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:55 AM on February 28, 2008

This is kind of creepy.
posted by marxchivist at 11:04 AM on February 28, 2008

Streetview sounds safer than driving across it.
posted by anthill at 11:15 AM on February 28, 2008 [1 favorite]

On the bridge, the sun looks to me like it's very high and nearly due south, so the picture was taken around noon. It looks to be at an altitude of around 60-70 degrees, which is consistent with July.

Assuming the picture was taken in July, the moon should be visible at this time of day after about July 6th and prior to around July 22nd. I cannot find the moon anywhere in the picture.

If you go to SE Main, between 5th and 6th, you can see a line of news vans, indicating that other parts of the closely surrounding area were photographed very soon after the bridge collapsed. I take this to mean the bridge itself was likely photographed very close to the date of collapse, August 1st. Supporting this is the fact that the sun looks similarly positioned in the photos of Main St., although this location was apparently covered a little while after noon.

My best guess is that the date of the bridge photographs lands somewhere between July 22nd and August 1st, 2007.

A simple date and time stamp would make this much easier.
posted by dsword at 11:17 AM on February 28, 2008

Strange coincidents
posted by hortense at 11:53 AM on February 28, 2008

there should be something with a date on it - sign for conferences, digital thermometer, stock tickers, news stands, etc. etc.
posted by joelf at 5:24 PM on February 28, 2008

I live right near the bridge and spent much of last summer avoiding it, because the construction slowed down traffic. For a while, it was closed completely. One day we drove past it and I saw that it had reopened. Workers were drilling on the bridge and people were driving past them.

"Can they do that? Is that safe?"
"It has to be."

24 hours later, it was in the river.
posted by streetdreams at 9:20 PM on February 28, 2008

I just joined specifically to comment on this post.

I lived right down the block from the bridge, at University and Eighth, and worked for one of the networks to cover the collapse. The bridge photos are obviously pre-collapse, but you can see the media frenzy that followed if you look at the streetview along where University Ave. goes over 35W, just north of the Mississippi.

Those photos were at least taken in the week following the collapse. Most of the networks were gone after that.
posted by rigby51 at 8:05 AM on February 29, 2008

I still get a little creeped out by that accident, since I used to live really close to there (4th St and 6th Ave SE), and have probably driven over that bridge around 1000 times....
posted by kaszeta at 9:14 PM on February 29, 2008