Adam, Sales
“It’s getting better in some ways, but the rent is going up. 18 years ago, the area wasn’t good but we feel more safe. We started here for $3000 rent, but now we are at $4700.”
Linda, Owner
“It seems like the city of Minneapolis, now, is more about making sure that there’s a million apartments out there for renters. It’s kind of where their focus is, I mean look at uptown, uptown’s like down the toilet now there’s not even anything up there anymore it’s awful."
JJ, Co-owner
“Parking? Hate it. They came out here and put meters up because there weren’t meters here at first but this area is pushing bigger so they decided, hey, let’s put meters up here. We know that the parking does effect the business because even when I go to lunch and come back I can’t find no parking, it sometimes takes me fifteen minutes because I’m not gonna park four blocks away.”
Bradley, Mechanic
“We have a much smaller customer base than a lot of the other stores but it’s super loyal to us, people will come here to buy their bikes and boards because their dad came here or because their mom got her first skis from here, with the influx of all the younger people moving in, it’s a generation of people who are very accustomed to online shopping and getting the best price possible and not really wanting to settle for something they don’t want, they’re a little bit harder to cater to and there’s not a lot of return business with the younger people”
Nick, Sales
“As far as the ma and pop brick and mortar stores, we’re basically one of the last ones in this area, there were a lot more previously but now they’re building all these condos, these developers are coming in and these conglomerates are coming in and buy up, ya know, the yarn store down the block and next thing you know you have an eight-story condo. I’m not too happy with what’s been going on around here because not only are they building condos but they’re building condos that are extremely out of most people’s price range who are from here.”
Esther, Sales
“Customers are always complaining about the parking, there’s events here, there’s so many apartments. Always complaining about parking”
Voices and Faces of Uptown (2018) is a photo series of locally owned storefronts in the Uptown area of Minneapolis. These photographs were shot in the midst of infrastructure changes as the city has taken major steps to gentrify the area.
Alongside the photographs are short text excerpts from my interviews with the business owners or workers that highlight their opinions and observations on changes in the area as well as the effects they have had on their respective businesses.