Community Corner
Lighting The Night on Excelsior Boulevard
Lights, action, and a camera: A look at the nightlife in St. Louis Park
Working until 5 a.m. for two nights in a row, Skip Fitting and his Natural Reflections crew have decorated the Excelsior Boulevard trees for the city of St. Louis Park for more than eight years.
Undaunted by the dark and the cold, their biggest concern is oncoming traffic.
"Last year we had snow and ice," says Skip. "One of our crew almost got hit by a snowplow."
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Stepping out into the street to hang the highest lights, a voice of experience periodically calls "car" when traffic approaches. Lit by headlights, this fluorescent-clad crew turns into human night lights.
Working down the length of the boulevard with their custom-made poles, the crew performs as a creative and technically coordinated team, grabbing rows of lights, attaching them to branches, swinging sections around, consulting each other on the angle and position.
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At midnight the crew took a warm-up break with hot coffee and homemade caramel roles baked by Skip's wife. Next meal: breakfast at dawn, when Excelsior Boulevard will get too busy for them to do their job.
It won't be until evening, when the lights are turned on, that anyone will know they were there.
