I have never read Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Tale of Two Cities,” although its title certainly became the central theme of a recent weekend in Minneapolis.
On a Saturday, I drove to my friend’s house for a cookout. He was doing multiple projects to prepare his house for sale. The idea that he might move was not particularly surprising. My friend is a free spirit and has talked occasionally about buying a hobby farm to commune with nature. He travels frequently, and his job would probably allow him to work almost anywhere. So it wouldn’t have been a shock if he told me he was making a big shift in his life.
When I asked where he was moving to, he told me he was looking at a small house in St. Paul (Highland Park). Or maybe Golden Valley or Richfield. He described looking at houses that sounded identical to his own Corcoran neighborhood bungalow.
“But why is that better than here?” I asked.
He told me the anxiety of the neighborhood was too much. The sirens are constant. People are racing their cars up and down the street at all hours of the night. He doesn’t feel safe. He said the last time he took the light rail downtown for work, more passengers were fiddling with their fentanyl than commuting to their jobs. He was angry the city was talking about rebuilding the Third Precinct police station and worried violence could easily erupt if that moved forward.
All of this was shocking to me. My friend is a hardcore, super-liberal urbanite. He likes the people with purple hair and unicycles. His job and, more importantly, his core values are focused on diversity and inclusion. His neighborhood has always been eclectic and moderately spicy, characteristics he sought out and embraced. But things, of course, have changed in the last three years. His neighbors are still wonderful, while the neighborhood no longer feels safe.
As I drove home, I took Lake Street rather than the freeway. It was pretty rough. Still lots of empty storefronts. The Hiawatha station had hordes of people hanging out. I don’t think many of them were headed to trains. The liquor store felt like the center of the neighborhood. I drove by the open sore that is the abandoned Kmart. The ugly chain link fences did nothing to prevent several dozen people from milling about in small groups. Drugs? Living on the streets? Bored? Does it matter?
I thought about my own downtown neighborhood and how empty most days look and feel. I remembered Billy Porter’s recent performance at the State Theater when he talked on stage about going for a walk in the city and his shock at how barren it felt. “Where the *&^X are you people?”
The following day, I was scheduled to meet another friend of mine. The weather was delightful, so I hopped on my bike and headed out. I rode through Loring Park and saw the beautiful water features and gardens. Lots of folks were out and about, walking their dogs and jogging. I biked by the Walker and cut through Lowry Hill. The streets were terrible, but of course this lovely enclave looked beautiful and serene.
I arrived at Lake of the Isles and strolled alongside the water. Soon, I was riding alongside Bde Maka Ska which had sailboats on the water and little kids playing on the beach. Up a small hill and I had arrived at Lake Harriet to meet my friend Patty. We walked around the lake, catching up, joined by people of all ages, races and activity levels. At one point, a huge turtle was crossing the ring road around the lake. A man got out of his car, covered the turtle with a blanket and eventually was able to scoop him up safely and deposit him at the water’s edge. Our small crowd of onlookers cheered.
I rode home and marveled at the beauty of this place and how easy it was for me to gain access to all these treasures – the park, the museum, three lakes! The vast majority of my trip was on safe, dedicated bike lanes where I didn’t have to worry about traffic. What a gift.
So that’s my Minneapolis. Reeling and gorgeous. Adrift and blessed. Two realities, both true.
I am so desperate to have a positive vision for the future. I want some hope for our next chapter, which no one can seem to articulate. Our leaders mumble about 92-point plans and empty cop cars on Nicollet Mall, hoping this will somehow demonstrate strength. In fairness, I’m not sure what they could say or do to reassure me. But I am constantly feeling like our city is wandering aimlessly at a time when we need common purpose and direction. We love celebrating our parks and bike lanes but appear clueless about public safety and thriving neighborhoods.
I look into the future, unsure if we are entering a long trough of decline, or if we are poised for robust recovery. If only I was more confident about the answer.
Eric Molho lives in downtown Minneapolis.
Thanks for this column, which articulates much of what I’ve been feeling about our fair city lately. This is my hometown, and there are so many wonderful places here. But there are also so many troubled ones. And so many unifying public events have been disappearing: no May Day Parade, no Northern Spark, no Thursday farmers market on Nicollet, no Basilica Block Party, no Rock the Garden… It feels like something essential has gotten lost.
For me it’s either central city or rural–none of that awful in-between-stuff!
Im from California but have lived here the last 2 decades and think of my self as an adopted Minnesotan. I love Minneapolis, or at least I did until my neighborhood went up in flames and exploded in violence. I don’t know how to fix the problem but I also knew I couldnt handle living in the constant state of stress of feeling unsafe in my neighborhood. Fortunately for me I was able to move, not far, just to St Louis Park but it feels a world away from the sound of constant gun shots and crime. But I really fear for so many of my past fellow neighbors who can’t afford to get out, who are stuck living in the chaos. So many of my fellow liberals seem unfazed by this because while saying they care about poor people, they don’t have to live their life. So many who championed refunding the police aren’t actually affected by the lack of protection police offer. While trying to protect the few, they put many in danger, often the same people they claim they are trying to protect.
did you intend to write “defunding” ?
The One Minneapolis you describe is actually two: North Minneapolis and South Minneapolis. After a person finishes the loop around south Minneapolis lakes, head over north and behold the wonders that are there. Very few. North has been waiting in vain for improvements and parades for decades.
The article refers to the Corcoran neighborhood: Near Powderhorn Park, S Minneapolis.
As a former life long resident of Minneapolis, I have seen Minneapolis/twin cities unfortunately evolve from a nice medium sized city with manageable problems to a megamatropolis with all the major social issues that come with city’s like Chicago or L.A. These social issues have made the twin cities a more crowded, expensive, polluted and unsafe place. Unfortunately
all of these issues are not easily addressed.
And One issue the author
of this post neglected to mentioned is how unaffordable Mpls/Twin cities has become. One of the main reasons I left the cities for rural MN, plus I wanted to live in a truly natural eveniroment not the artificial world of the city. I visit the cities occasionally, but don’t miss them when I go to my home in the north woods. I wish all my former fellow city dwellers the best of luck. Michael M.
After 28 years in Highland Park, I had to move to a Dakota County suburb. I couldn’t handle it anymore. City government being being more concerned with reparations, climate change, and bike paths, while crime is out of control, the streets are falling apart, poor snowplowing, while taxes went up every year.
Last year while talking with the police chief at a city event, I said my car was rifled through, and yes, I forgot to lock my car door. She asked if I reported it and I said no. She said you report those kind of crimes in this town and we take it seriously. Good to know. St Paul citizens are victims of this all the time. Heck, they aren’t even punishing car theft in the two big cities.
Sure, you can go to the city for events you want to go to. The burbs are safer.
“while crime is out of control”
While I have no doubt that a lack of fellow right wing travellers drove you out of the increasingly left leaning, green leafy Highland Park, crime is not “out of control”:
https://crimegrade.org/property-crime-st-paul-mn/
Money goes where money likes to go and the Highland Bridge development at the Ford site shows confidence in the Highland Park neighborhood: 122 Acres, over 1 billion of new investment.
I appreciate the article. I’m a former long term resident of Minneapolis and I still own property that I rent out there. When I go in to Minneapolis now, I feel anxious about my safety and the direction of the city. I also worry for my tenants and their future. My rents used to be below the market by a fair amount, but I have recently increased them close to the market rate because I am concerned that rent control will soon be implemented. I worry that by implementing rent control that it is going to further exacerbate the problem of housing affordability. I, also, worry that the middle class has very little voice in Minneapolis lately. It feels as if they’re being driven out and Minneapolis will soon become like the other super liberal cities with only the wealthy and the poor for them to look down on.
These fictionalized stories always omit the most important detail, the sale price of the house. If you are being driven out of town by urban decline, but also selling your house for twice what you paid for it, the sky is falling narrative does not hold as well.
Yet they get nailed with a capital gains tax plus the cost of moving. They also have to pay that same high cost for their new house I would suspect they would be very lucky not to loose on the deal.
If you roll the proceeds into a new home, you don’t pay the tax. When you do finally make that last sale, it doesn’t typically come close to offsetting all those years of mortgage tax deductions. In short, the tax code is very friendly to homeowners. It’s basically a form of subsidized housing.
lol
“If you are being driven out of town by urban decline, but also selling your house for twice what you paid for it, the sky is falling narrative does not hold as well.”
I live Over North in a home that has been in my family for nearly a century. If crime gets so bad that I feel I have to move (it hasn’t) I wouldn’t care how much I’d get for my house. I inherited it, and I am affluent, so whatever I’d get for it isn’t going to mitigate the fact that I’m being forced from my familial home because it’s no longer safe due to poor and ineffective governance. Despite what Progressives believe (and it’s a core belief at that) money doesn’t cure all ills. Never has. Never will.
I had the privilege of working with some of our state’s wealthiest citizens, and the one thing I found to be true is that there’s one way in which the poor are better off than the rich. And it’s that unlike the poor, the rich can’t comfort themselves with the mistaken belief that all of their troubles would go away, if only they had more money. For years I worked for a multi-millionaire who’s mother suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and his wife MS. Do you really think he went to bed happy at night just because he’s got bank?
cool story
I would bet your multi-millionaire friend goes to bed every night secure and with far less anxiety than someone poor, not having to worry about losing those millions due to the cost of health insurance, medical bills and long-term care.
There have always been two cities here. What’s different about the last couple years is the comfortable are more aware of the poverty stricken.
Those poor, poverty stricken Kia Boys. Just doing their best to make an honest living.
Thanks for encapsulating, anecdotally (perhaps accidentally?) one of the major, but under-discussed, reasons that we have many of the ongoing issues and problems you list in this essay. I assume your Corcoran friend votes.
You write: “People are racing their cars up and down the street at all hours of the night. He doesn’t feel safe. He said the last time he took the light rail downtown for work, more passengers were fiddling with their fentanyl than commuting to their jobs.” And, without skipping a beat or inserting another word, you continue: “He was angry the city was talking about rebuilding the Third Precinct police station…”
This was literally enough for me to involuntarily do one of those comic head-jerk “double-takes” and exclaim “Wait… WHAT?” This short passage illustrates the dissonant attitude of far too many urban voters – We can SEE the problems, we DISLIKE the problems, we want the problems to be solved or at least to go away – But we are unwilling to let go of comforting fantasies (some with roots deep in our personal sociopolitical ideologies) long enough to advocate for even the most basic things needed to effectively deal with the problems. So they persist while we argue about the purest ways to not address them. I’ve been as guilty, at times, as anyone else.
But it does focus the mind a bit to read in the words of another person the progression from problem recognition to resistance to taking even obvious first steps toward solution of the problem. Thanks for writing.
Hate to break the news, but, this has been a quiet North side summer so far, quietest in 4-5-6 years, knocking on wood every day!
I took my dog for a walk around Lake of the Isles last night around 10:00 pm. Beautiful evening, quiet… and perfectly safe. I only came across 8-10 other people, several walking alone, and there were people hanging out (sleeping?) in hammocks here and there. You gotta feel pretty safe to do that. Got back to the car around 11:00 pm, and it was in tact, with it’s catalytic converter still attached. I frequently ride my bike day or night, and walk the dog during the day. Once in 40 years someone broke into our van but there was nothing to steal so we just had to fix the window.
This is certainly a very different MPLS than the one I hear about on Nextdoor where it’s all crime reporting all the time and one warning after another. Obviously it’s not North MPLS or Lake Street, but it IS still MPLS.