This was one of my favorite bars downtown. (It makes a brief appearance in my first novel, actually.) It's a civilized place, humanely scaled, narrow and woody; you wouldn't be surprised to find it in New York City, where it would be a little more battered but full of lore.

Below is a picture that sums up the last 30 years of downtown Minneapolis - an ordinary and modest commercial structure giving way to a gigantic new office building. It hasn't always been a bad trade; by the late 50s, Minneapolis was looking dingy and busted, block after block of dirty brick buildings with tin storefronts, cheap neon, stripped cornices. But we've lost so many of the old buildings that any remnant of the pre-war period looks like a hardy old soul deserving respect and preservation. The Times bar block - actually the Fiske building - was such a building.

Next to the Times was a Thai restaurant; next on the block is Jitters, a big mod coffeehouse with thrift-store decor. They serve coffee in glasses big enough to beat up the largest A&W root-beer mug. Case closed, as far as I'm concerned.

The Fiske / Times / Jitters block has no great architectural merit, but there are some delightful details. Two sets of carved heads look out over the passersby. The old name of the block is still engraved over the door, under an oculi with a violin pasted against the glass. Between the divergent uses of the ground floor stores and the spare sober faux-classical details, the building has an iconoclastic spirit that's the opposite of the thick-headed structure next door. Until just a few years ago, much of the south end of the Nicollet Mall was asleep, the old storefronts taken over by odd small businesses. You could still see the shop-styles of the 30s, 40s, 50s. This undisciplined individuality is on the way out. To the north, a two-story block was wrecked last summer in preparation for the new Target store - and that project will pull down the glum old Physicians & Surgeons building. The good news: the building to the south of the Times, another two-story building decorated with livid terra-cotta in an odd French / Pompeii revival style, thrives with cafes and shops, and there would be great shouting and scowling if anyone tried to wreck it.

The Times was wrecked for phase two of Target's world headquarters - but the bar, and Jitters, relocated to Hennepin on the other side of the river. On the goes the new Target building - click HERE to watch it go up.