News Cut

News Cut: June 28, 2008 Archive

The end

Posted at 8:22 AM on June 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (12 Comments)
Filed under: Icons

As planned, they dynamited the Xcel High Bridge plant smokestack in St. Paul on Saturday morning (previous thoughts on this here). News Cut readers are sending images and video. Use this form to send images.

You know how I am by now, right? I like to turn the camera around and photograph the people photographing and watching. So if you've got one of those, feel free to send those along too.

Nathan Levine of St. Paul gets the award for being the first to send an image:

smokestack_1.jpg

And Mark Jungmann, one of my colleagues, followed seconds behind with the first video:

It fell gracefully, almost beautifully. And in Mark's video above, the little puff of smoke coming out of the stack just before it crashed seemed its way of saying, "so long." That's the way I prefer to look at it, anyway.

Teresa Boardman of St. Paul Real Estate blog fame, has sent a series...

teresa_smokestack_1.jpg

"Oh The dust! People ran," Teresa says.

teresa_smokestack_2.jpg

"The earth trembled..."

teresa_smokestack_3.jpg

.. and now they've got a mess to clean up.

teresa_smokestack_4.jpg

From a different vantage point, Luke Albrecht says, "The shockwave was amazing from just across Shepard Road."

luke_smokestack_1.jpg

Tracy Anderson of St. Paul took a series of images. Click on the image to see them in all of their implosive glory.

smokestack_triptych.jpg

I'm getting some e-mailed links to posted video.

  • David Zuhn of St. Paul from the Smith Avenue High Bridge.
  • Todd Pittman with the view from Lilydale.
  • Noah Kunin's two cameras. "During the second "take" there's some interesting audience reaction in audio and in the foreground. High fives, someone woefully misjudging the size of the stack, etc.," he says.

    (12 Comments)
  • Blimp

    Posted at 6:58 PM on June 28, 2008 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)

    blimp.jpg

    Here's the thing about blimps: They're about the only aircraft left that people will talk about, as in "hey, did you see the blimp?" There's a B-25 based out of South St. Paul that flies around these parts and, so far, I'm the only one I know who says, "hey did you see the B-25?"

    But a blimp -- airship as they're officially called -- is still a mysterious beast.

    At Crystal Airport on Saturday, its Orlando-based crew tethered it (only the nose is tied down, that way it can swing 360 degrees like a weathervane) and then sat out the storms before resuming flights over the various activities of the Twin Cities this weekend.

    blimpo2.jpg

    blimp3.jpg

    (9 Comments)
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