Minneapolis in Mourning: A City Celebrates Prince

The black brick walls outside of First Avenue, the downtown Minneapolis rock club that Prince made legendary in Purple Rain, are decorated with large white stars, each bearing the name of an act that performed there. Prince’s is among the most prominent. Within two hours after the announcement of his death, that star is the backdrop for a makeshift shrine of flowers, candles, balloons, and, at the center, a guitar. There’s no less purple than you’d expect.

It was one of many focal points in and around Minneapolis following the icon’s untimely death, as the city so closely tied to the singer mourned and celebrated the musician.  

Around 100 people form a semicircle around the display, maintaining a respectful 10-foot distance, like an apprehensive crowd at a punk show. Most wander off after 10 or 15 minutes, replaced by new mourners, so the numbers stay constant – just enough to spill off the sidewalk into a small area of barricaded roadway. There aren’t too many tears. Some say they cried themselves out earlier; others that they’re still too shocked.

Here, as throughout Minneapolis – which struggles through a citywide day of mourning for a hometown hero like no other – stories about Prince circulate. Someone recalls pumping gas on a winter night in the ‘burbs, looking over to see a driver in a Vikings parka, saying “Hey Prince” and getting a friendly nod. Another attendee remembers recently seeing Prince escorted into First Avenue past some tough, tall punk who straight-up squealed at the sighting.

The loudest voice belongs to a woman named Montesia Smith, who periodically announces that she is circulating a petition to get Prince a bigger star on the front of First Avenue, gold, with his name lettered in purple. “We loved him first,” she says. “Can we get him up where he belongs – in color?” She asks everyone to sign a small spiral-bound notebook.

Further downtown, Prince hits blast out from the sports bars, while local radio station 89.3 The Current has been working its way chronologically through his recordings all day. But here in front of the club, there’s only the occasional echo of an Eighties Linn drum, lewd yelp or a guitar wail from a passing car to remind us of the music Prince made. For now.

At around 6:30 p.m., a full rainbow stretches across Arboretum Boulevard in Chanhassen, Minnesota, the route to Paisley Park, suggesting for once that the nondescript studio and performance compound is as magical as the music created there. It’s an almost embarrassingly wonderful sight, and one woman who notices says simply, “He’s happy.”