New York is nicknamed the Big Apple, and accordingly Minneapolis is nicknamed the Mini Apple. See what they did there?
Before you all ask: no, I have not done anything Prince-related during my time in Minneapolis. The Paisley Park complex is about 20 miles out of town, it's at least $56 to get in, and I never really listened to Prince anyway.
Instead I went to...(cue groans) the football! Or 'soccer' as they call it here. Minnesota United versus Portland Timbers, and it was a bit of a ding-dong, a 4-4 draw with the first goal coming after just 13 seconds. (Quite bemused to see that the Minnesota manager was Adrian 'Inchy' Heath, fully 38 years after his appearance as an Evertonian in my first-ever Panini sticker album). There was a sell-out crowd of 20,000 or so. No away fans as far as I could tell, but in fairness, Portland is a 1,732 mile drive away. That's roughly equivalent to driving from Sunderland to Gibraltar.
Speaking of football, there have of course been some exciting developments for the ladies since my last blog, so please forgive me if I use this platform briefly to celebrate events back home. It was a close run thing but definitely the right result, and frankly it was long overdue. And I was definitely on Team Colleen all along.
Back to Minneapolis. I went to the Mall of America, which is the biggest shopping mall in the western hemisphere. It's just under three times the size of the Metrocentre in Gateshead, and it contains Nickelodeon Universe, America's biggest indoor theme park, which is six times the size Metroland used to be. Not that I bought anything or went on any of the rides. I just gawped and took pictures, and felt faintly depressed about the way our entire economy and indeed society both seem to be based entirely on the manufacture and marketing of pointlessly expensive answers to invented needs. But then who am I to lecture? I spend most of my spare cash doing this travelling malarkey, which is an invented need of my own...
It's been baking hot the whole time I've been here. My old flat cap was falling to bits so I got two replacements, a baseball cap and a sun hat, both ordered from an Amazon seller that specialises in bespoke hats for weirdly big skulls like mine. It was on the way to collecting them from an Amazon Locker that I chanced upon the intersection of Chicago Avenue and 38th St, which two years ago became briefly the world's most famous street corner, and is now officially known as George Floyd Square. It would have been crass to take tourist photos, so I didn't.
The memorial is mostly placatory and respectful, but at the same time there's graffiti saying 'No Justice No Peace'. Currently the prescribed text of progressive opinion on these matters is a book called 'How To Be An Anti-Racist' by Dr Ibram X. Kendi. I chanced upon a dog-eared copy in the living room of my Milwaukee AirBnB and read it from beginning to end over a few days, but I can't say I was convinced. It's easy to formulate all-encompassing solutions to society's problems when you've never held office, or ran for office, or ran an organisation, or indeed done anything at all in life other than go to university and then never leave it.
I really liked Milwaukee but Minneapolis hasn't grabbed me in quite the same way. The downtown area reminds me of Dallas, in that it seems to contain nothing but offices and business hotels. There's no real life there other than vagrants and junkies and suchlike. The suburbs are nice enough though, full of parks and surprisingly big lakes. In fact I felt safer in the environs of George Floyd Square than I did among the high-rises downtown, or on the light rail network that shuttles between Minneapolis and its twin city St Paul.
Big cities have their merits, but I prefer the smaller towns and the wide open spaces; that's what will feature in my next few updates. And there'll be no more football. I promise.
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| Downtown Minneapolis and St Anthony Falls. Seen from the northeast end of the Stone Arch Bridge. |
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| Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall Of America |
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| Mall Of America |
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| Another view of downtown, this time from 30 floors up at the Foshay Tower |
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| Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul |
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| Minnesota United Football Club They have people with loudhailers whose job is to lead the crowd in singing. Bless 'em. |
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| Plenty of space out the back of the AirBnB. My hosts run their own tequila distillery. Enjoy responsibly. |
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| That last bit made me laugh all day and I don't care who knows it. |
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| Edd vs Food #103 Falafel wrap and veggie sambusa at the Afro Deli, 5 W 7th Place, St Paul, MN. (Sambusa is the Somali / Ethiopian version of samosa.) I don't think this is the first ever fully veggie Edd vs Food, but there can't have been too many. |
