As his family prepares to move to St. Paul's Lowertown, filmmaker Troy Parkinson is getting ready to create a series of video vignettes about the downtown St. Paul neighborhood they'll soon call home. Parkinson plans to show them to the world at his "
Life in Lowertown" website.
"So much is happening in Lowertown these days," Parkinson says. "It's an exciting place to be." He's taking a cue, in part, from an old Sesame Street song ("Who are the people in your neighborhood?"), Parkinson says he intends to feature the artists, events, and day-to-day life of Lowertown that he has observed while working at the
Co-Co co-working space located there.
At first though, Parkinson figures the "Life in Lowertown" videos will focus on his family's move to the Galtier Plaza tower--a location that is closer to the kids' school than was the house they've been renting in St. Paul's Highland Park neighborhood since coming to the Twin Cities from Fargo last year.
Parkinson sees his project as a bit like the recent documentary feature "No Impact Man," about a filmmaker's family in New York City trying to have zero environmental impact (his family will likewise downsize). It's complementary, in his view, to a TPT television documentary about Lowertown that is in the works.
And if "Life in Lowertown" sounds like a project for a guy with time on his hands in a slumping economy, Parkinson says in fact he regularly works for network cable productions like "Monster Quest" (among
other ventures).
Source: Troy Parkinson, Parkinson Productions
Writer: Chris Steller