These are some pictures I took of¹ 35W ruins on campus last month.

The images link to larger files. Facebook/RSS readers: click here if you have problems viewing the gallery.

I remember watching coverage of the bridge collapse from my dorm room in Miami, thinking “and this is where I want to go to law school?”

Drake was also on my list of possible law schools. The Des Moines area experienced some major flooding the next summer, shortly before I committed to going to UMN law. It felt like a disaster avoided.

The new I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge opened a month after I moved to Minneapolis. Around that time the Washington Avenue pedestrian bridge was also deemed unsafe.

The Washington Avenue bridge remained under construction for most of the semester and the area that was “safe” to use kept getting smaller, and smaller. There was also this ridiculous situation of bikers plowing through pedestrians in the 14-foot safe area. The school eventually posted cops in the bridge to ticket people who biked across the bridge.

I think those cops should have been devoted to catching the mystery bike groper sooner, but I don’t know if that would have actually worked…

---

¹ At least that’s what I think they are.