Secrets of the City

Yeah, I was hoping Rex would weigh in on this story when he got a chance.

I would add that I think the piece sort of tries to address the general story of rural depopulation in the U.S. Even though the internet was supposed to make it possible to live and work anywhere, in your underwear– that hasn’t exactly happened.

Why are all you NDak expatriates here in MN, instead of Fargo? ( I don’t ask out of complete ignorance. I spent my freshman year at UND.)

by the way, Hans has a video up on MNstories today.

unrelated: i watched Fargo on IFC last night. still love that movie. though the accents seemed even more exaggerated then i remembered.

Funny you should mention “Fargo,” Chuck. The other day I was listening to MPR’s “Future Tense,” and they interviewed a guy from Mankato (my hometown), and I was floored by the accent. Someone really ought to do a podcast or a vlog on Minnesota accents. There’s a book about them that we mentioned one time at the magazine, especially in connection to MN politicians and the fake redneck accent that some Republicans affect.

whoops, let me try that link again for anyone actually interested in this arcana: here.

“Dakistan”? Seriously, I’ve never heard that before in my life.

This article is tremendous, and I’ve forwarded it to a lot of people who will no doubt appreciate it. The only thing that may have been interesting to include is the mention of a push a few years back for ND to simply go by the name “Dakota” to take some of the sting off of perception that the state is too cold to live in. But a really great read.

Thanks for posting this article, it is a really great read. Even though I don’t live there anymore and I’m not particularly happy with some of the changes in Bismarck (how many Applebee’s does one town need?) I do love the place, and I hate to see it becoming a ghost town state. It makes me sad.

Taylor, are you going to become an ND ambassador? Considering your great love of Lewis and Clark, you’d be a natural choice.

As a fourth generation North Dakotan who grew up in the far western region of a mostly empty state. It saddens me to think that my little town probably won’t exist in 25 years. But then again, it’s desolate and quiet and I surely didn’t want to stay. I grew up 65 miles from the nearest stoplight… a place where you could be in the night, turn 360 degrees and not see one light; a place where during the day you could turn the same 360 degrees an not see one tree. There are no lakes, no attractions. It’s like a large desert covered in tall grass that is only beautiful to those of us who called it home. I could blather on about this for ever, but what North Dakotan couldn’t? It’s just sad to think that someday there won’t be anywhere to go back home to.

We come to Minnesota because it’s beautiful and it’s not too far away from that place full of nothing…

I could talk forever about North Dakota — too many words that you don’t really want to read. Here are some miscellaneous reactions:

+ As this story suggests, central/western North Dakota (Bismarck, Dickinson, Minot, and all the desolate little towns you hear about) is much different than eastern North Dakota (Fargo, Grand Forks). Much different. The Red River Valley in the east is one of the most fertile areas of land in the world, and many of the farmers are millionaires. Sugar beets, baby. And now there’s Microsoft money to make the region even sweeter.

+ Hearing a Minnesotan gripe about North Dakota weather is a little peculiar. Is there really a difference between -20º and -25º?

+ Buffalo Commons is a nutty idea. I don’t use the phrase “east coast liberal” very often, but that’s one seriously fucked up notion of nostalgic America.

+ These resilient people don’t like to admit it, but the flood of ‘97 really did devastate the cultural and economic scene. So many bright young people who were adamant Dakotans — people who were fighting for a better cultural scene, including my friends and innumerable other people — split town after the flood/fire. I personally lost everything I owned — why stay? I’ve spoken at length about this in other places, so I’ll just throw a stat out for you: the 1997 flood in Grand Forks was the largest evacuation of an American city in the 20th century. Fo’ real. Almost 10 years later, the most cultural city in North Dakota is still badly struggling. I hope New Orleans is listening.

+ Just after the flood, Amazon.com bought NoDak’s very own Tool Crib of the North for their tools & hardware section. Awesome. Huge. Great potential. This was followed by speculation that Amazon.com would open a distribution center in Grand Forks. This could have changed everything. After the city spent a huge amount of cash courting the company, Amazon.com backed out of the deal. It was devastating.

+ Fargo really is a different story. Completely different. You simply can’t find a person between the ages of 22 and 35 in Bismarck or Grand Forks or Williston or Minot — they don’t exist; everyone has moved to the Twin Cities. Unlike those cities, Fargo has an emerging young middle class. (I’m a UND/GrandForks kid, so I say that with regret.) There’s a yuppie hipster joint in Fargo called The HoDo (”Hotel Donaldson” in this story, but no one calls it that), which is packed with 30-year-old hotties everytime I go through. I hit on vastly more girls there than than the last time I was in Manhattan. This simply didn’t exist anywhere in North Dakota when I was there.

+ NoDaks are starting to dominate the Minneapolis culture scene. Don’t laugh. Just one example: several of the big local bands (The Deaths, Faux Jean, The Soviettes) are majority-owned NoDaks. When you grow up in a place so culturally starved, you become resourceful and creative in ways that comfortable hipsters don’t. NoDaks are scrappy culturalists — they’ll devour anything one pixel off the mainstream.

+ Yesterday, I told my mother how much my downpayment on my new condo in Seattle would be. She said the downpayment could buy me two entire houses in the town she lives in. My condo is only 800 sq. feet.

+ One catastrophe that paradoxically hasn’t struck the family farms of North Dakota: corporate mega-farms. You hear about these in Texas and Montana and Kansas… and even Minnesota (particularly large dairy corporations that buy out small farms). But this isn’t a threat (savior? who knows!) in central NoDak, simply because it’s not even cost-productive for gigantic corporate farms to move in.

+ In the small town my mother lives in (1100 people when I was there; 800 people now), a new idea has recently been introduced: become the next Bangalore. I’m serious. Helpdesk call centers have sprung up throughout central North Dakota. Two girls that I graduated from high school with manage the just-outta-high-school 19-year-olds who work there. They struggle to compete with the Asian sub-continent for telemarketer business. Just think about that for a while.

+ I haven’t even mentioned Ralph’s yet. Sigh.

+ Anecdote #1: me and some friends started an alt-weekly in Fargo/GrandForks that changed hands a couple times after I left. It was briefly a Microsoft property when Microsoft purchased Great Plains Software. That’s weird.

+ Anecdote #2: Klosterman has a Cenex t-shirt. Only a rural North Dakotan knows what the hell that even means. New Yorkers think it’s a pharmaceutical. I’ve tried to buy it from him. I want it badly.

No one read this far, did they? Oh well, that’s life on the prairie.

i read the whole thing rex. you are bona fide.

I think they should rename North Dakota Coon Rapids.

Perhaps Burning Man could be moved to NoDak. Just imagine the residual effects.

And during the rest of the year, everyone could work in call centers.

Former NDSUer and MSUer here, so I know a bit about the NoDak scene. Loved my time in the Margo’s Forehead area but haven’t been back except for a friend’s wedding. If only the rest of the state could bottle up what Fargo has, the population would reach more than 800,000. Too bad it won’t happen.

BTW: We all know how flat NoDak is, right? It’s so flat that if you stood on top of the Radisson Hotel in downtown Fargo and looked west you’d see the back of your head. Okay, I know it’s lame, but that’s all I got at 2:00am.

But North Dakota isn’t flat. It’s flat from West Fargo to Fergus Falls (and northward to GF), but the other 95% is more hilly than anything around these parts. Again, Fargo to GF is the exception — culturally, economically, geographically.

Rex, you’re right, NoDak isn’t THAT flat. (I do seem to recall it being fairly flat almost out to Bismarck or so)

Besides, what’s a better story, mine or the complete truth?

It isn’t just “desolate” rural areas that see depopulation. My parents are from SW Wisconsin. It’s the so-called driftless area–really beautiful with lots of rolling hills and traditionally dairy country. If you drive on rural roads, you see so many abandoned farmhouses or farms where the house is still occupied but the barns and silos are no longer used. It’s rather depressing, so I can’t imagine what it would be like on a larger scale.

What’s so wrong about the Buffalo Commons idea (franklyk, I thought the military training camp was worse)? If some areas aren’t very suitable for agriculture, why not return them to a prairie state? It could be more loony–a few months ago there was that proposal to put African wildlife on the plains of the US, to return the predator-prey relationships in North America to a more natural state and to provide some endangered animals with a larger habitat.

Nodak represent!

I read that whole thing, too Rex– I didn’t even skim once. You have bona fide ND street cred, my friend. I’m impressed.

Fergus Falls is in MN and there is not much ND between Fargo and Fergus, mostly Lindenwood I think. Valley City or shortly past seems to be the edge of the valley on the ND side; after that it is still fairly flat until you get past Bismarck.

On MPLS creative talent being farmed out of ND, I completely agree. Most of the creative people I know in this part of the country and beyond have roots in ND or at least went to school there. Most of the local poster show at MCAD right now can be traced back that way somehow.

It’s simple. Kids who grew up in Fargo come to Minneapolis. Kids who grew up in Minneapolis go to Chicago.

I have it on good authority that Osama bin Laden (along with Pony Boy Curtis) is hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse 40 miles northwest of Devil’s Lake.

What about the impact all these Nodaks are having on Minnesota? Everytime I drive up 94 (especially between Maple Grove and the Cloud) the road is full of huge SUVs with Bush Stickers, support our troops ribbons (you know you need to have two now), and North Dakota plates.

I believe Noth Dakota is to Minnesota what Texas is to the US. Now, before everyone freaks out on me, I want to say: It’s probably not you. You are here, at MNspeak, our haven of hip urban humor. But ask yourself this, why do the treelsess developments of Wright County vote GOP? I submit to you that out-of-state immigrants (especially from North Dakota) are to the reason.

Q: Why is NoDak so windy?

A: Because Montana sucks and Minnesota blows. Har dee har har.

I dunno, man. If all of North Dakota picked up and moved the burbs of the Twin Cities, the electoral college of this state would increment by one.

I can’t believe I’m coming into this post so late! As a true-blue NoDak boy (and fuck that Dakistan crap, btw), I loved this article, was happy to see Rex weigh in (only a UND alum would call GF the most cultural city in North Dakota), and hereby invite all former-ND MNSpeakers to my parents’ farm in Gackle this summer. It’s five miles away from where Gordon Kahl holed up from the feds after his Medina shoot-out. Awesome.

GF is absolutely the most cultural and the most liberal: writer’s conference, NDMA, etc. Fuck the Fargodome.

What’s funny about the 100-mile perimeter around Gackle is that every little town claims that Gordon Kahl spent the night in their city after the Medina shoot-out. I once worked at an agricultural research station in Streeter and every farmer claimed they knew Kahl personally. I’ve deduced that Gordon Kahl is sorta their Bob Dylan.

Of all of the comments on all of the posts that I’ve ever read on the internet, posting as QUENTIN BURDICK is the absolute best. QB, you are a true genius.

We should start a band called Quentin Burdick. That would be so dece.

They’re probably telling the truth, since everyone in a 100-mile perimeter of Gacklek knows/drinks with everyone else who lives there. Which makes their idolatry of Kahl all the creepier, what with him being a militant white supremacist and all.

Tony needs to take the Bill Langer quiz.

Hurray Chuck T

Boo Chuck T.

Nodak til 6th grade. I hated living without the trees (we moved to MN because of my dad’s job and the promise of living near my grandparents) but if you’ve ever been to western North Dakota you cannot deny the beauty of the beutte and bison. I definately hold a romantical spot for it in my heart, but I’m not going back.

No Dak is the Saudi Arabia for wind energy. There just aren’t any powerlines to get it out of the state.

By the way, the Dakistan reference is fromthis article in the Bismarck Tribune. Apparently it was the military’s idea. Military not noted for its sensitivity or its gifts of expression.

QB is going to be the hardest rocking band that anyone has ever seen. Even more than Ross Raihala and the Saint Paul Front.

Since I mentioned mega-farmers, I’ll drop a link to this new CP story a mega-dairy.

I lived in Fargo/Moorhead for essentially the entire ’90s (or, more technically, from 9/90 to 6/00 — minus one summer spent back up in my northern Minnesota hometown after my freshman year at MSU).

While I would never, ever, ever move back there again, there’s plenty that happened to me there that I can look back at with fondness. I met some of my best friends in the world during that time, essentially grew up in public (as a journalist, anyway) and killed countless brain cells in the corner booth at Duffy’s. (I even inadvertently met Rex, for the first time, in maybe 1994? when he was banging the chick who lived next door, and had signed for a UPS package of mine that was filled with import Pet Shop Boys cd singles.)

Fargo these days looks a lot different than it did when I lived there — even _more_ obscene urban sprawl and some semi-serious attempts at reinvigorating the downtown. Still, though, whenever I do visit, it feels like a Twin Cities wannabe suburb that just happens to be 3 1/2 hours away.

And despite my decade spent living there, I know almost nothing of the state beyond Fargo city limits. I ventured up to Grand Forks a few times, but the only time I went more than 30 miles west out of Fargo was when I moved to Olympia — and on the return trip in July 2004.

Also, Free Yorie Kahl!

Gackle! Streeter! Burdick! Medina!

I love this post.

massachusetts also lost residents during that time period. one of them is typing this right now…

What, no Byron Dorgan jokes? He used to play a helluva baritone, I hear.

Thank you, Rex.

Gackle? I’ll round up a crew from Mott-Regent-Hettinger-New England and we’ll head your way, just tell us when.

Has anyone under the age of 50 ever Zipped to Zap? Just wondering.

Hey honeybun,
Massachusetts lost population between 04 and 05, true enough, but its having a riotous boom compared to North Dakota when you take into account the past five years, gaining a whopping 49,646 people. Thats practically the whole town of Grand Forks.
Glad you all liked the piece…

Oh wow, Zip To Zap, I completely forgot about that. I remember my mom explaining it to me when I was little. I thought it was stupid… but really, it’s just like a flash mob! Fucking hippies beat us to it again!

Wow, Zip To Zap is in Wikipedia.

First of all, the term “Dakistan” pulls up 1,030 hits on Google.
So it’s perfectly accurate to say people call it “Dakistan.”
Try typing in less complimentary terms like “North Dakota”
with the word “backwards” and see how many hits you get.
Of course, I would be pleased if my attempts to popularize
terms like “economic hurtbag of the nation” and “Appalachia
Plains” and “America’s rural ghetto” were to flourish like “Dakistan.” Well, “rural ghetto” isn’t doing too badly. There is a book with
“rural ghetto” in the title, and it’s about the most accurate way
to describe the economic desperation of the state.

Second, the evacuation of people from New Orleans and the
surrounding areas has knocked Grand Forks out of it’s
greatest evac ever status. But there’s always hope that
some place like Grand Forks can capture the number one
spot in, say, binge drinking.

Third, people in the Red River Valley get all excited about sugarbeet money, but it’s not like anybody is rolling in riches. Many places, like productive vegetable growing areas in California, or the wine industry in Napa Valley, or a dirtload of other places can easily hold candles to the pathetic Red River Valley.

Fourth, calling the Buffalo Commons idea “nutty” is nothing but name calling. Name calling is not a valid or logical argument. The Buffalo Commons idea supports itself well enough based on nothing more than declining people and increasing buffalo. If you think Buffalo Commons is nutty, wait until you read MY idea: Buffalo Nation. Rather than having North Dakota become a big federal reserve, let’s cede vast portions of it back to the Native Americans and let them run it as a nominally sovereign Buffalo Nation.

Fifth…I might be willing to give you something about Nodaks making a name for themselves in the Twin Cities cultural scene. But “dominating” that scene? Hardly. Nodaks see another Nodak and get all worked up. You have to subtract out people who merely sojourned there for a while and aren’t really Nodaks. Since Nodaks don’t accept outsiders, it’s very hard to become a Nodak. Like, I have a North Dakota driver’s license and U of M considers me officially a Nodak, and I have the majority of my property in North Dakota, and North Dakota plates on one of my vehicles. Am I a Nodak? Thankfully, no.

Sixth…plenty of people outside North Dakota know what a Cenex store is, and there are Cenex stores outside North Dakota. Really, if you’re going to live in the Twin Cities you need to shake off that Dakistan mental bubble mentality.

Seventh. “Margo’s Forehead.” Now that’s funny shit.

Eighth. Regarding North Dakota being the Saudi Arabia of Wind Energy. At one time I called it the “Botswana of Wind Energy.” There was a time when Botswana had resources, (like diamonds) but couldn’t do anything with its resources, just like North Dakota. However, I can’t say that anymore because Botswana apparently hired some legal talent and has managed to harness its resources. So even Botswana is leading North Dakota. Dakistan. Whatever. When it comes to alternative energy, North Dakota is literally blowing wind. It’s one thing to try to raise consciousness, but quite another to just brag while not doing anything effective. North Dakota should just shut up and follow California’s lead when it comes to wind energy.

Ninth, and this is just my own point of view and not a response to anything. I sent this article to the Grand Forks Herald. I posted it on the anti-logo listserv at UND. I am saving a copy forever and ever in my large and fat “North Dakota sucks” file. The only critiques I make of the article are some times when it is actually too kind to North Dakota and goes easy on the place. This article rocks. Mostly.

I mean, really, that stuff about the big sky and taking your breath away and all of that…I’ve tried to feel that. Honestly. For five miserable fucking years that felt more like twenty-five I would sometimes look at the clouds or the land and try to feel that magnificent self-negating sense of desolation in the gaze of the diety that Nodaks wax on and on about tediously. But I couldn’t get there from here. Even the parts of the state which people think are beautiful or awe inspiring are merely adequate compared to any other place in the nation or the world.

Yes, I liked the article a lot. I just wish public consciousness could be raised enough to do something about the place…to find some kind of drastic cure, once and for all.

By the way, I own an empty house in Inkster, and an empty house in Alsen City. If anybody wants to go there and squat and grow vegetables and experience the magnificent desolation or whatever, you’re very welcome to go and live in Dakistan hell-on-earth. I’m serious. Those two houses are up for grabs and have been up for grabs for a while. It’s just too bad that a movement can’t get started for people to go and claim empty houses there, and put them to use, at least during the summer as a place to kick back, write a Masters thesis or whatever. Not because North Dakota is a nice place to hang out…because it isn’t…no, rather just because a cheap house is a rare thing and could be, like, useful.

Let the flaming begin. I know from experience what a bunch of haters Nodaks are when it comes to a truly pointed and accurate critique of their miserable state. I’m surprised nobody has ripped on the writer of the article more. I guess truth is it’s own defense.

John:

Name calling is not a valid or logical argument.

Right, John. So when you imply in your columns that North Dakotans are incestuous retards, that is a logical argument?

Give me a break.

Yes, I liked the article a lot. I just wish public consciousness could be raised enough to do something about the place…to find some kind of drastic cure, once and for all.

Almost like a “final solution” to the “North Dakota” problem, right?

You’re off your rocker, dude. Why don’t you go find some garbage to root through.

As for North Dakota losing population, that trend has reversed. At least a little bit.

Robster–

Why are you comparing an (alleged) implication to actual name
calling? Are you saying that implications are the same as
name calling? That since you found what you allege to be
an “implication” in my column, that it’s the same as name
calling?

And how did you get all the way from “drastic cure” to “final
solution?” It must be all that ongoing discussion in the state
about Ralph Engelstad…pity North Dakotans, it would appear, who have Nazis on the brain more than most folks.

No, Robster, it seems that you’re the one on the “rhetorical fun ride”
with its quick, steep deeps and sudden, massive ascents…not
me. I have suggested cure, not genocide. I used a metaphor or simile about incest, but ask yourself why, exactly, you are leaping so quickly to say it’s an implication?

Regarding rooting through garbage…OK, I was thinking of saving
this for one of my future books about dumpster diving, but consider: Did you ever notice that North Dakota is the most “dumpster like” of all the states in its shape and terrain? It even beats South Dakota in this way.
State Highway 2 is like the seam of the lid, and the town of Grand
Forks sits there right at the edge of Highway 2 and the eastern
border like…like the lock on a dumpster. The hilly west becomes like
bags and piles of refuse piled inside, just so.

I tell ya…there is a destiny and a purpose to all of our suffering. I want things to get better in North Dakota, not worse. Like I want things to get better everywhere, but some places have more than a snowball’s chance in hell. But a chance to get better is still a chance.

In order for that to happen, an honest airing of North Dakota’s issues needs to take place, not a desperate search for some kind of quirk in data that denies the painful, ugly trend. Living in denial isn’t going to get you anywhere.

When people write columns like my two columns, and articles like that excellent “No. 1 Hard” article in The Rake, it’s not because some collective decision has been made that it’s “pick on a Nodak day.” It’s because the state has ugly, sordid issues which aren’t being solved and, yes, North Dakota’s issues are slopping over and having an impact on its neighbors, like an alcoholic has an impact on all those around.

2 Things:

1 – From Rex – “You simply can’t find a person between the ages of 22 and 35 in Bismarck or Grand Forks or Williston or Minot — they don’t exist; everyone has moved to the Twin Cities”

Now that’s just ridiculous and stupid. I am 22-35 and I happen to be sitting in Bismarck right now. Oh, and I know a whole lot of 22-35ers in those towns. Actually, the 22-35 scene, especially in Bismarck and Grand Forks, is really picking up.

2 – I am glad John Hoff is not a Nodak! Somebody else take him, please.

Well, if one takes issue with the definition of “person” instead of “22-35,” or whether you can be “found,” then the statement might still be accurate. Furthermore, the fact you “happen to be sitting in Bismarck right now” doesn’t mean you’ll be staying there very long. Maybe you’re just visiting from the Twin Cities. For your sake, I hope so.

Does anyone body on this realize that the rest of the country doesn’t even know you exist? Much less give a rat’s ass about such a desolate place as North Dakota. Before I moved out here North Dakota was not even in my conscienceness and my family still gets where I live messed up. “Hey are you still in Grand Rapids, South Dakota”? To them, North Dakota might as well be Minnesota/Utah/Nebraska/Wisconsin any other lame ass state….it’s all the same right? MN/ND is such a non-entity to the real United States. And to that jerkoff who mocked the vehicles he saw on I-94 with Support the Troops stickers like some kind of liberal kiss ass wannabe who wanted to show his peers that even though he’s a mid-westerner he’s hip because a SUV with Support the Troops stickers is lame…FUCK YOU! You’d be surprised at how many people back east are conservatives. It’s the transient liberal trash that moves into New York, Boston and DC (from places like MN) that gives us a bad reputation. People back east (or I should say the real US) are very patriotic and do Support the Troops. It’s funny to think that anyone who would think dropping the “North” in North Dakota would make any difference to tourism or anything else. It would just further prove how pathetic and petty your simple brains are. Oh yeah it’s called soda, not POP and no I don’t want my receipt in the “Baaaaaa—aaaaaaag”. Have a nice day!

John Hoff, please email the addresses of your houses to johnshotmailaddress@hotmail.com I like checking out abandoned houses and I want to check out yours. Also, I might need a place to live when I’m done with college because I have no plans.

to JOHN HOFF: Me and my husband are origanlly from wisconsin and now here in south dakota. Do you still have those houses? Would you be interested in someone fixing one of them up for you? And not at your cost! Please let me know at emross@netzero.net

John…do you mind if we call you Jack Hoff?