🧵 SKY Chairs HQ moves in

In February there were signs of new activity on the southwest corner of 42nd Ave and 41st St. The building has always caught my curiosity: Anchored by Alamane Salon on the corner and divided into six commercial spaces of varying curb appeal, it's of a particular style of quaint, single-story, beautifully-brickworked commercial buildings that dot the old streetcar routes throughout south Minneapolis.

(Side note before we get into it: Does anyone know what this style of building is called, with the distinctive cream brick pattern inset into a single-story brick corner commercial building? You know, the same as Turtle Bread, Flourish Pilates, the soon-to-be Lynette? If not, what should we call it? E-mail with any answers or snappy ideas.) 

At the south end of the building is now a bright yellow canvas chair hanging from the tree out front, and a weathered metal sign on the ground that reads: "SKY Chairs." It is, as advertised, the new SKY Chairs global headquarters.  

Inside slicing, sewing, tying, and folding is Bob "Boblo" Anderson. Boblo's responsible for popularizing the simple hanging chair – canvas, nylon rope, wooden dowels, and a metal S-hook – that you may have seen swaying from porch roofs and tree branches around town. Along with a few optional accessories, it remains the company's only product.