The Twin Cities is at this point in my life one of the few
large metropolitan areas in the U .S. I haven’t explored to a significant
degree. I can’t say I’ve never been to the Twin Cities, though, because back in
2000 I went on a work trip with other members of my office to meet with some
others in the company which was headquartered in Minneapolis. That would be U.S.
Bank, or as I like to call it, Useless Bank. I’d hardly call it seeing the Twin
Cities, though. We were whisked from the airport to a hotel in Bloomington
where we spent most of the following day in a conference room, allowed out only
for a short time the evening of our arrival to go to dinner at the Mall of
America, known to a Minnesota acquaintance of mine as “The Mega Dump”. We then
flew back to Denver not more than 24 hours after landing in the Land of Lakes.
So I can’t really claim to have seen the Twin Cities.

It’s odd that I never made Minneapolis a destination on a
previous east-west trip between New Jersey/New York and Colorado or as a long
weekend trip during the year I lived in Chicago in 2002. My impressions of it
from afar have always been positive, as a nice forward-looking city with a high
quality of life (if you exclude the six months of winter). I was even very
curious about Minneapolis as a kid because it was where Mary Tyler Moore lived
and threw her hat into the sky on the downtown pedestrian mall. I was also very
intrigued by the Twin Cities after they were featured in an article in National
Geographic in 1979, the first year I started subscribing to the magazine .

I spent a good portion of my first day in Minneapolis at the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, one of the finest art museums in the Midwest. It
was a mostly cloudy muggy day so better for indoor activities. Minneapolis is also
Swede City, USA, the metro area with the largest Swedish-American population
and home of the large American Swedish Institute. Unfortunately, though, it was
closed for remodeling and the addition of a new wing.

So with time to spare in the late afternoon I decided to
head for “The Megadump” south of the city in Bloomington. Hmmmm, I guess I just
don’t get it. I hate shopping to begin with and I also hate crowds, so as far
as I’m concerned a bigger mall just has more to hate. And I don’t see why you
need umpteen million square feet of mall for your shopping. Most of the stores
in the Mall of America are the same as in other malls across the country,
except that every last one of them is represented and sometimes at several
locations . There’s not much retailing that is particularly unique or high end
at the Mall of America to justify it as being such a shopping destination or “shopping
resort” for people to come from far and wide to experience. I will admit that
the amusement park rides and Lego Land within the mall are a little different,
but they don’t excite me. I made one big circle, actually a square, around the
mall on one floor and then back on another floor, and I had enough. I escaped
without spending a dime.

I drove back downtown via city streets and around the many
urban lakes for which Minneapolis is famous. The city has many very pleasant
neighborhoods with small neighborhood shopping areas similar to some of the
trendy yuppified neighborhoods like Washington Park, Platte Park, and Bonnie
Brae in Denver. Maybe there are impoverished neighborhoods in Minneapolis, but
I didn’t see them while I was driving around.

I dinnered in the Loring Park neighborhood a little south of
downtown where there is a huge assortment of ethnic restaurants . I chose a
Malaysian once, a cuisine I rarely encounter in the U.S. I saw somewhere once
that the Twin Cities have one of the highest concentration of Asian restaurants
in the country and Asian cuisines are particularly popular here. I’m not sure
why – I mean the Asian population in Minneapolis is nowhere near as large as in
places like California.

So once one of America’s whitest metropolitan areas, the
Twin Cities now have a much more ethnically mixed population including the
largest communities of Liberians, Somalis, and Hmong in the country. Does that
make any sense? Why would people from some of the hottest places in the world
somehow gravitate to the coldest major metropolitan area in the country? It
defies all logic. Houston or Phoenix maybe, but Minneapolis!

My second full day in the city turned out to be sunny, hot,
and dry and spectacularly beautiful. Except for planning to visit the Walker
and Weisman Art Museums, I didn’t have too much of an agenda for the city other
than to walk around the center and take in as much of it as I could on foot .
Downtown Minneapolis is full of tall shiny office buildings and a reasonably
impressive skyline for a city of its size. However, I didn’t notice and major
new skyscrapers under construction. As in many cities nowadays, the boom is
more in residential, with modern condos and loft space conversions proliferating
in the warehouse district along the river and elsewhere around downtown. The
riverfront development around the Guthrie Theater and Mill City Museum is quite
nice, as is the parkland and walking trails along the Mississippi River,
including an old stone arch bridge across it. Minneapolis was originally chosen
as a location for a settlement because of Saint Anthony Falls, the rapids on
the Mississippi that were used as a power source for milling grain.

Minneapolis has some real architectural gems from over a
century ago when money was not the object in constructing public buildings it
is today. The neo-Gothic Minneapolis City Hall must be one of the grandest city
halls in the country . And although not as big as Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the
Basilica of Saint Mary is a grand Catholic church in what was originally a
mostly Protestant city. Of course, you can’t go to Minneapolis without walking
along Nicollet Mall, the downtown pedestrianized street, and stopping for your
picture with the iconic statue of Mary Tyler Moore throwing her hat into the
air.

By late afternoon on the hot dry day my feet were sore and
my throat was parched, so I thought I’d stop by the Minneapolis Eagle for “Beer
Bust”. Different states have different rules about alcohol, so a beer bust in
Minnesota doesn’t mean a bottomless cup and all-you-can-drink for a fixed price
the way it does in Denver. That was actually a good thing, since I’d eventually
have to drive back to my Motel 6 in the ‘burbs. A gay bar is a gay bar
everywhere in America, though, so nothing particularly unique about an Eagle in
Minneapolis compared to one in other cities. I did get into a few pleasant
conversations for a while, though, before walking back across downtown to the
other side of Loring Park where Ihad parked near the Walker Art Museum . The
sunset was mirrored spectacularly in downtown’s shiny skyscrapers, a pleasant
end to a beautiful day in a really nice city.