How will the "Minnesota Nice" receive those that aren't? (Minneapolis: live, moving)

[MN55]

^You're spending too much time in Minneapolis. Come to St. Paul and you won't see nearly as many. Too many people come to Minneapolis from the rest of the upper Midwest for their "big city experience" and act like hipsters before growing up moving out to the suburbs. Still, if you think Minneapolis is bad, try visiting Portland, OR; that place is so oversaturated with hipsters it makes me want to puke.

[ColdRedRain]

Because, hipsters tend to be collectivist and Minnesota culture tends to be collectivist.

Oh, and you'll probably find this read to be interesting. Tracing the origin of "Minnesota Nice" | Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

[ColdRedRain]

+1 to MN55. You explained it exactly!!!!

[west336]

Originally Posted by 303miles

Question: why is everyone a hipster here?

You seem to be a pretty negative and prejudiced person....every thread you post on you're are saying something slanderish or racist. Is this "self defense" or your personality?

[uptown_urbanist]

Not everyone in Minneapolis is a hipster. Certain neighborhoods have more of them than others.

Then again, that's true of most cities in the US. If you don't like them then find yourself a different neighborhood.

[wag-pete]

I just found this thread and can't wait to come back and read through it. This has been something that has bugged me ever since I first moved here in 1974.

It's true that most people are very nice here, but I've found that to be true for the most part everywhere, really! At least when it comes to everyday interaction. Even in Chicago, I've always found people on the street when you approach them are helpful and friendly. When I was growing up in Milwaukee, people were much friendlier than they seemed here in many situations--if I was at a bus stop, I found I could strike up a conversation with any stranger very easily in Milwaukee, but not when I moved here. It seemed that Minnesotans needed to be formally introduced or in a situation where it was "acceptable" or "appropriate" to interact on a friendly level.

I was horrified when I was a teaching assistant working on my PhD five years ago and the department head at the U of M told me that "You can be friendly but you can't be friends" with students! Several of my best friends to this day are professors whose classes I took at UW-Milwaukee (and one from the U of M). This may be a clue as to part of the thinking that is a cultural norm here.

Like many I've heard, yes, it is true that it seems harder to make really true, close friends here than other cities where I've lived. I have made several, though, in 35+ years. And I do think that people have loosened up since 1974! I now find it very easy to engage strangers in friendly interaction here, compared to back then.

I find that I like the way Minneapolitans are at parties, where I draw caricatures for a living. I feel the chemistry is "just right" for me here. I enjoy entertaining people at parties and events in any city, but I feel right at home here. The only place I enjoy more is Madison, WI, where they really get into watching the performance. Here they are a bit more shy about watching.

One of the flip sides of "Minnesota Nice" is that when they drive, Minnesotans are now quite horrid! Rude, selfish, nasty. A lot of people act nice in direct personal interactions here but then save up all their pent-up unexpressed anger for behind the wheel. Three decades ago, they were super-polite, would slam on their brakes if they even THOUGHT you might be wanting to cross the street. Now they literally try to mow you down, to "teach you a lesson" it seems.

I have heard over and over from people moving here from bigger cities and more industrial cities like where I grew up that Minnesotans are very passive-aggressive. That is, they don't say what they think right to your face if they have a problem with you, but rather smile and ACT polite and then proceed to decimate you in whatever sneaky way they can. I do agree! There is a lack of honesty in this regard. When I was publishing a free humor tabloid, a "competitor" sprang up and began using all kinds of dirty tactics, like throwing out thousands of copies of our paper, and dumping theirs on top of our racks! (Talk about "Minnesota Nice!") The shop owners who witnessed this would tell me about it, but say nothing to the perpetrators. "I don't want to get in the middle of this." In Milwaukee or Chicago, they would have told the offending party to take a hike!

So here, the bad guys often win as a result of Minnesotans trying to be nice in situations where they NEED to speak up and take the chance of not being liked. There is a fear of confrontation that ends up producing phoniness and cattiness and backstabbing reminiscent of Sinclair Lewis' novels based in this part of the country. This place was quite isolated for the most part and people had kind of a superiority complex based on the luxury of having no other large cities nearby to compare realistically to.

The worst thing about this is that it results in a culture that is mediocre. "All the children are above average," or so folks here like to think. What it really means is that everyone gets dragged down to the lowest common denominator.

It was also super-homogenous until recently (I always remember a line in the "Mary Tyler Moore" show where Ted Baxter comes back from a segment on the Asian immigrant community in Minneapolis and says, "And aren't they three of the nicest people you would ever want to meet"). The 99% white, Scandinavian-German, Christian population made it problematic to be at all "different." That has improved a lot but we are still at kind of a stage where minorities are fetishized rather than simply accepted. The election of a Muslim congressperson may be an example of this.

Joe Soucheray's use of the term "Euphorian" to describe Minneapolitans is quite funny and so was the characterization in the movie "Fargo." Those are painfully true in some ways. The Mrs. Olson character in "Little House on the Prairie" also comes to mind when contemplating the negatives of the area. It is the GREAT PLAINS here, NOT the "Upper Midwest." (Another snooty concept.) It took me many years to realize that Minneapolis, despite its pretense of cosmopolitanism, was more like Des Moines or Omaha or Fargo than it was like Chicago or New York or even Milwaukee. In some ways that should be seen as a good thing, but a more realistic self-image would help the city improve.

I could go on and on...

[acrylic]

Originally Posted by wag-pete

It took me many years to realize that Minneapolis, despite its pretense of cosmopolitanism, was more like Des Moines or Omaha or Fargo than it was like Chicago or New York or even Milwaukee.

Absolutely false.

[northstar22]

Minnesota is NOT a Great Plains state.

[uptown_urbanist]

How is "Upper Midwest" a snooty concept? I think it's highly accurate. I would highly disagree with the argument that the Twin Cities are in any way a Great Plains city. There's nothing wrong with the Great Plains, but I can't see any ways in which Minneapolis and St. Paul could possibly fit into that definition, geographically or culturally.

Just one comment about the U: this must vary by department. It also gets complicated since so few U professors are actually from MN, or at least few of my professors were; your particular department may well have been following some sort of cultural norm, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions. It could be something as simple as a department chair skittish from prior experiences. While a student I had several people (professors and former grad students) recall one high-profile event in a department in CLA; a professor had become, well, more than just friendly, and it resulted in a law suit.

I'd also disagree about the 99% Scandinavian German Christian thing, assuming we're talking about the Twin Cities, or Minneapolis in particular; Minneapolis certainly is far, far more diverse in recent years than it used to be, but certainly growing up in the '80s my city classrooms were still fairly diverse (white majority usually, but not blindingly so -- mostly white and black students, but also Hmong, Native American, Chinese, etc), and certainly not everyone -- or anywhere near 99% -- was Christian. I've done some census work with the 1930s Minneapolis census, and even then while it was fairly white, it was definitely not all from stereotypical German and Scandinavian countries. I will concede that the state as a whole has been overwhelmingly white (and many of the suburbs), and when I attended the U in the late '90s I was surprised at just how white the school felt. Not surprising, I suppose, since the school's student body draws heavily from (obviously) all of MN, plus also heavily white reciprocity states such as the Dakotas and Wisconsin.

I agree that Minnesotans seem to be worse drivers than in many states. Not sure if that's due to culture or what.

[MN55]

Also agree that Minnesotans suck at driving.

I'm going to disagree about us not being in the upper Midwest. Minnesota is the upper midwest and Minneapolis/St Paul is the primary metro area. All other cities in the upper midwest (fargo, duluth, saint cloud, rochester, souix city, mankato, la crosse, and eau claire) all draw primarily off of Minneapolis/St Paul. You can basically define the Upper Midwest as any area where MSP is the largest influencing city.