At 1054 University Avenue a two story, brick facade building with an overt security presence – multiple surveillance cameras and a private security guard at the door – stands alone. Its east, south, and west aspects are described by parking lots. The main business entrance is an unassuming, low-slung inset announced overhead by the red-lettered sign of CSL Plasma Services (formerly ZLB Plasma Services).
From this locus, and for several hundred yards in both directions, the attentive pedestrian on University Avenue may notice, or periodically sidestep, a small but persistent kind of personal artifact. Unlike the seasonal ebb and flow of graffiti this mark is not an expression of territory, but a gesture more closely akin to that of expedience. Found routinely adhered to the sidewalk, and on any amenable surface, is the post-CSL visit wad of gauze and adhesive bandage. Short sleeve weather precipitates a red-tinged, cottony bloom from the bus stop near Oxford Street in a line of transit westward to the White Castle and ALDI surface lots, and eastward to the Super America lot at Chatsworth Street.
Describing downtown Minneapolis seventy years earlier, Sinclair Lewis wrote of “parking lots like scabs.”