A Travellerspoint blog

America's Northern Midwest: Minneapolis

Minneapolis grew into a metropolis in the late 19th century on the strength of immigration from Germany and Scandinavia and the city still displays those strong cultural influences. In more recent years, however, Minnesota's welcoming policies for refugees have encouraged the settlement of tens of thousands of Hmong in the 1970's and more recently Somalis. Minneapolis has the highest concentration of refugees of any major American city, and their impact on the cultural fiber of the community has been dramatic. In addition, Minneapolis has a rapidly growing Latino population as well as a thriving gay community. As with other Midwestern cities, Minneapolis is far more complex than the white bread thumbnail sketch imagined by most coastal denizens.
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Our Airbnb was a mid-sized house in the Sheridan neighborhood of northeast Minneapolis. It was a fairly typical residential neighborhood in the process of gentrification, with a seeming excess of coffee shops and brew pubs.
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Downtown Minneapolis would be an ordinary cluster of business skyscrapers and low-end eateries if it wasn't for the enormous network of bridges between buildings known as the Minneapolis Skyways. The skyways have been proliferating since 1962 and now extend for a total of eight miles, allowing downtown workers to shuttle between destinations without having to brave the brutal outdoor elements of Minnesota winters. All the foot traffic has nourished an industry of ethnic restaurants and small boutiques that make the Skyway a tourist attraction in and of itself. The effect is somewhat reminiscent of the enormous complexes of interconnected skyscrapers and malls we explored in east Asia.
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Minneapolis is the northernmost major city on the Mississippi River, which runs through the center of the metropolitan area. Minneapolis doesn't have a redeveloped RiverWalk like Milwaukee but there are some interesting attractions along the western bank such as the historic Gold Medal Flour sign and the Guthrie Theater. The architectural quirks of the innovative Guthrie include the Pohlad Lobby, an amber-tinted box that projects from the side of the building, and the Endless Bridge. The Endless Bridge is a cantilevered extension that hovers over the parkway and terminates in a balcony with amazing views over the river.
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On the east bank of the river about a mile downstream of the Guthrie is the Frank Gehry-designed Weisman Art Museum. The appearance of the museum is similar enough to Gehry's famed Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao that it has been affectionately nicknamed the "Baby Bilbao", although the Weisman was constructed years earlier.
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Before visiting an American city I always research ethnic neighborhoods. Minnesota's German and Scandinavian heritage are well-known, as well as the more recent Somali diaspora, but few know that Minneapolis has a sizeable Mexican community who are largely the descendants of migrant farm workers. All of these different elements collide on Lake Street in the diverse Phillips neighborhood south of Downtown. Here one can find the historic Scandinavian market Ingbretsen's, Somali restaurants and markets, and numerous Mexican mercados and taquerias. The Swedish folk art murals outside of Ingbretsen's are a landmark in the neighborhood.
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One of Minneapolis's most unique and beloved attractions is Minnehaha Falls. I'm hard-pressed to think of another major American city that has a sizeable waterfall within its boundaries. It's an easy descent down to the trail and the waterfall is a beautiful sight as the water pours thirty-five feet into the pool underneath and sunlight streams through the gap in the tree cover. The park surrounding the falls offers four wheel surrey bicycles to rent which are a fun way to experience the landscape. Although it was a weekday there were hundreds of people enjoying the park, either riding the surreys or getting their feet wet in one of the countless shallow areas of Minnehaha Creek.
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Minneapolis's twin city St. Paul tends to exist in the shadow of its larger neighbor despite being the state capital. Although the city has its own list of attractions we were mainly interested in HmongTown, a center for Hmong culture that has filled a former lumbar yard with a farmers' market, shops, and a food court. At the food court we had the most satisfying meal of our stay in Minneapolis, a delicious repast of stuffed chicken wings, pho, fried fish, and numerous other Hmong specialties. Hmong people began emigrating to Minnesota in the 1970's mainly as refugees from the wars that were ravaging their homeland in Southeast Asia.They and their descendants now number at least 75000 in the Twin Cities, which is probably the largest urban population of Hmong in the entire world. Being in Hmongtown was the closest feeling we had to international travel during the road trip.
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In Minneapolis we were able to continue the offbeat theme we had established in Milwaukee by visiting the House of Balls, the studio and gallery of mixed media artist Allen Christian. The gallery takes its risque name from the the artist's favorite medium of bowling balls, from which he coaxes all manner of startling faces and alien shapes. Bowling balls are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this artist's original and entertaining body of work which ultimately defies categorization. We were expecting a tourist attraction of sorts and were taken aback to find no one present except for the artist himself, who graciously invited us to tour his studio despite the lack of advance notice. He told us that over time the House of Balls moniker had acquired a new meaning to him as a place where he finds the inner courage to explore new artistic territory. We were either too self-conscious or too overwhelmed to take any photos, but fortunately anyone can experience the gallery virtually on YouTube.

Restaurant night was at Spoon and Stable, the triumphant return of local culinary hero Gavin Kaysen from New York City where he was executive chef for Daniel Boulud. The farm-to-table style American bistro had an upscale setting and an unmistakable buzz in its second year after opening.
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On the morning we left we stopped at the Minneapolis Farmers Market close to Downtown. This was an enormous daily market with hundreds of vendors offering virtually every variety of local produce as well as freshly prepared food. It was a fitting postscript to our three day stay in Minneapolis. We concluded it was an enjoyable city, at least in the summer, and worthwhile to visit but we didn't feel the same affinity for it as we had for Milwaukee. It was time to proceed onward to Iowa, a state I had never in my life expected to visit.
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Posted by zzlangerhans 01:51 Archived in USA

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