#koolhaas

As a barista within the skyway, I have a privileged view of its psychological effects. Space takes on a different logic in the semi-planned indoor sprawl, simultaneously obscuring immediate environs and suggesting such extensiveness as to appear infinite.

The most common question I’m asked by lost denizens of the skyway is how to find the restroom—an essential bit of infrastructure that’s both nearby and almost impossible to find without insider knowledge. Language fails to articulate its location at least fifty percent of the time. I watch people take a wrong turn despite my best efforts to explain, their gait slowing until they lose all certainty and find themselves adrift between food courts. I’ve gotten in the habit of walking restroom-seekers to the very edge of the coffee shop so I can physically indicate their destination. Better to point and grunt than to waste words in the skyway.

The system is poorly designed and nowhere near as extensive as, say, the Minneapolis skyway, but it is nevertheless a total system that implies infinity and denies the existence of anything outside. I’m often asked how to take the skyway to the capitol or some other far-flung destination. It doesn’t occur to the directions-seeker that getting to the capitol would require a comically long bridge across an interstate and sparsely developed dead land. It also doesn’t occur to people that they can traverse sidewalks open to the sky. When I answer the perennial question and tell someone that the nearest Starbucks is a few blocks away but not accessible via skyway, their eyes glaze over and they either drift away aimlessly or settle for the coffee I sell.

Map of the Saint Paul skyway system. Source

Of course, I only point them in the direction I think leads to Starbucks. I’m about seventy-five percent sure I know the cardinal directions from within the skyway. Inside and outside are disconnected realities.

“Because it costs money,” Koolhaas writes, “conditioned space inevitably becomes conditional space.” The skyway offers some refuge for the homeless and dispossessed, some room for human contact and pursuits in its variety of spaces; but humanity is kept within strict parameters. Eventually the seating areas are closed and the bathrooms locked. Coffee shop seats are for customers only, and a cup of water costs just enough to withhold patron status from the penniless. A racist security guard patrols his zone in dark sunglasses and black gloves that look like they might have reinforced knuckles.

The Town Square skyway junction at night, when security guards are likely to ask questions

Aside from the actual bridges connecting buildings, skyway space is predicated on and solely in service to capitalism. Many visitors to the city, unfamiliar with the concept of connecting downtown buildings to defend against the extreme cold, venture out of the hotel near the coffee shop and ask me in confusion if they are in a mall. Or they assume they are in a mall and ask where they can find a clothing store.

Like the nation’s malls, the Saint Paul skyway is languishing. Some retail spaces are perpetually empty. The mezzanine level above where I work has supposedly been closed for a decade or more, temporary-looking signs permanently blocking its dormant escalators. Décor in many spots is at least a decade or two old, which in the fast-moving world of branded interior design is hopelessly tacky. Melting snow reveals leaks in the roof. An unpredictable drip from a pipe above the entrance to my store is received by a five-gallon bucket guarded by a wet floor sign.

Escalator to Purgatory