Nice, clean, but lacking character
-
11/11/2005
Minneapolis is a very nice and clean city. The white collar economy is a large reason it is so liveable with tons of jobs brought by Minneapolis being home to large national franchises, like Best Buy. The city tries very hard to keep up with much larger American cities. I have been here for 4 years while I have been at the University of Minnesota and could see why it has attracted people from other cities. The problem with Minneapolis (and for all purposes the rest of Minnesota) is that it lacks character. It has a kind of boring, empty existence, the two biggest features of the Twin Cities are: the Mall of America and the airport. People not from Minnesota will notice: there actually isn't much to do, they LOVE their university (which they egotistically refer to as The 'U'), the drivers aren't afraid to go 10 under in the left lane (which is good for you if you like to drive slow), the rush hours as bad because the suburbs go on forever (Minneapolis has under 400,000 people, St. Paul about 280,000 people, but the metro area has 3 million people), they have frostbite advisories for a reason, and they believe that everyone else in the world has a close eye on what the Twin Cities area is thinking and doing. It's a beautiful city, but the people are a little sheltered. If America was just a large metropolian area, Minneapolis would be an upper middle class suburb. Also, it coined the name Murderapolis from a local and that was only because it had a higher per capita murder rate than in New York City in 1995, but it has never had more than 100 homicides (the average is usually about 45) and overall crime is low. Don't pay any attention to the comment about Minneapolis being dangerous because it is untrue, and that is typical for the thought of someone from Minnesota.
Kenny | Minneapolis, MN