Secrets of the City

I love it.

Great… Here comes another whopper of a thread where people who are separated by a few miles geographically get blasted for ruining the utopia that the urban hipsters have painstakingly created.

I know. It’s going to be awesome.

Can we get a 30 day moratorium on the usage of Hipster on MNSpeak?

When people are loud, I know they are from suburbia – and I hate them for it. I mean, you don’t see me driving to their neighborhood, being WAY smarter and cooler than them, and ruining the utopian existence that is Redstone.

Scenester!

I second the motion on the word “hipster”. Give that word a rest, please! And loud, ignorant people come from everywhere, not just suburbia.

I don’t really think the summary of the article is fair.

To be sure, there are a bunch of people now living downtown who think I’d be perfect — if only they could shut down those gosh darned clubs.

But in this case, the club in question is clearly violating Minneapolis noise ordinances. You shouldn’t be able to hear the music outside the club.

The article points out the great lengths the Triple Rock went to in order to follow that regulation and get along with its neighbors. Bravo for them, and boo on any establishment that would try to follow a lessor standard.

“LOOK AT ME, I’M A DRUNK ASSHOLE, BUT I’M TOTALLY ANONYMOUS BECAUSE I LIVE IN CHASKA!!! WOOOOOOOOOOO!”

I almost agree with adam, although I’m not sure they have a superiority complex. Downtown’s cool enough, just stay out of that kiddie pool on the weekend, when it takes on a yellowish tinge.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask businesses to make their noise self-contained, but on the flipside, there’s definitely something wrong with you if you expect country quiet when you move downtown, Uptown, by the U… or really anywhere in the city (it’s not like ‘peaceful’ Southwest doesn’t have airport traffic). If noise is an issue, I’m sure there’s a nice multi-acre McMansion lot for you in Monticello or St. Michael, well outside the (4/6)94 beltway.

I’m sorry, but hipster seems to have firmly entered the MNSpeak vernacular. The power of stevemarsh is not to be underestimated.

I think the nail in the coffin for hipster was when Mpls-StPaul thought it was cool to use.

I suggest “MNspeakster.”

Who the hell is Steve Marsh and why should we be yielding to his so-called “power”? Egads.

Google says:
hipster – about 62 matches
suburbanite – about 15 matches
suburban (without the “ite”) – about 40 matches (including legit non-hating uses)
scenester – about 5 matches

Hipster is overused.
Suburban and suburbanite are just hitting their stride.
Scenester is just out of the gate, ready to be the next snark ordinance.

Microsoft suggests “semester” for scenester and “shark” for snark. I love the spellcheck oracle.

I love the hypocrisy of downtown dwellers like the woman in St. Paul who complained about all the light. ha ha ha ha ha

i moved back downtown because uptown was too quiet for me

yeah, this is another one of those “only in minneapolis” sorts of articles. gee, a downtown that has any nightlife at all is not going to be as silent as the grave. and if it’s not too loud, it’s too quiet– people constantly gripe about what a ghost town St. Paul is after office hours.

haha, i’ve seen alot of people from outside the city move downtown because its “cool” only to move the second their lease is up because it wasnt as “sex n the city” as they imagined it

I think the problem is too much city, not enough sex.

Interesting article, definitely an issue that will be around for a while, unlike Trocaderos.

It’s pretty quiet here in Elliot Park.

The summary was a bit inflamatory, considering the condos were there before trocaderos, but the article is well worth discussion.

Potential residents should be warned about the Downtown Overlay District, which covers mostly the warehouse district. This areas lacks many of the impediments to bars/clubs & strip joints, that the rest of the city enjoys. This is the only area where you can build a strip club (damn you supreme court!), and also there is no food sales requirement for new bars, so it’s all booze all the time.

Look up the boundaries of the overlay district before you buy, or go high rise, if you want to insulate yourself.

Otherwise, you’ll be dealing with this on a continuing basis.

Anyone reading this part of the party crowd? I wanna know more about the lifestyle.

Neat! Here’s some commonality! Tons of people in outer ring suburbs (exurbs or whatever) hate that same drunk asshole from Chaska because he brings his boat out to Monticello on the weekend, thinks he owns the place and doesn’t care if these stupid hicks have a problem with his antics.

champs – Heh… I live in Monticello. Sorry, no McMansion.

This reminds me of all the suburbanites who move to the country and then cut down most of the trees, mow every inch of their yard, let their dogs run loose to kill all the wild life, and send their children out to the yard to scream out their frustrations. Soon the neighbors begin fighting as each disturbs the country dream of the others. Then they put their homes up for sale and move further away while bitching about the need for another lane of freeway to get them to work more quickly.

If you want to live in a certain environment, adapt to it. The city is louder, but has it’s own conveniences and fun. The country is meant to be quieter and a place of nature, so be respectful of the other tenents – especially furry critters who have their homes there and can’t just purchase more comfortable real estate for themselves when it gets dicey. For everything else there’s the suburbs.

I think the solution to this “problem” may be to send anyone living downtown who insists on complaining about noise/light to live in Manhattan for a few weeks.

But really, if this is the worst someone can find to write about, we’re doing just fine.

Saved y’all the time of searching for the overlay maps.

Downtown Zoning Overlay Maps

You’re Welcome

Carrie –

True story. My parents lived on a pig farm west of Plymouth years ago (30 or so). (Actually, I was born while they lived there.) As people started sprawling westward, someone built a house across the field from the farm. Within months, they were campaigning to the city/township/whatever to have something done about that horrible smell. I guess their country dream didn’t involve the pig farm in plain sight of their house.

Today, I think the land is a housing development.

I’m from Iowa. The smell of pig shit is right up there with Chanel No. 5 in our olfactory hierarchy.

Burbsters?

Suburbanistas?

Urbanistas? Fantastic. That’s what I’m using from now on.

1. As a downtown dweller who subscribes to the party lifestyle, I think that it’s pretty obvious that it’s going to be loud downtown on the weekends, what with all the suburbanistas getting hammered at Drink or the Loon or Brothers or Spin or The Lodge or Rosen’s or Bar Fly or Harvey’s or… I’ll stop.

2. While the same thing happens all over the city where there’s concentrations of party spots — University and Marshall bars in the NE, for example, or Dinkytown — it’s much more obnoxious downtown because there’s a more careless attitude that translates into incredibly asinine behavior that I can’t imagine anywhere else, except maybe the karoke and beer fights at the U Otter Stop Inn.

3. Here’s a good story about this very subject: one late weekend night I was walking home from drinks at Mission American Kitchen (which I keepin trying to convince folks is the best MSP bar) when I looked over and saw that some hammered dood in a tight white t-shirt with beads around his neck, a guy who clearly spends a lot of time getting pumped at the gym, had grabbed the bongo right out of a street performer’s hands and started to play it for the juicy girls who were scampering by.

4. While I still think that scene was awesome (in a “let’s start another cheap hipster discussion thread way”), other people who live downtown prolly don’t agree.

Is there a Minneapolis equivalent to the ‘bridge and tunnel’ crowd? I’ve got ideas but hesitate throwing a molotov cocktail like that into this thread.

i live across the bridge from trocaderos and i don’t have any complaint, apart from its rather uninspiring exterior and the suburban feel its clientele seems to lend. i haven’t seen a marked increase of hooting and hollering on the weekends (no more than usual, that is). it’s still pretty nice and quiet to sleep at night. not year 2000 quiet, but…

I used to live in Atlanta, where the ring road is called the Perimeter. The populace was neatly divided into ITP and OTP (inside/outside the perimeter). Very easy shorthand for cool/not cool. It also helped that in Georgia the county of registration is listed on every license plate. Thus, you knew whether the driver in front of you was potentially cool (Fulton, Dekalb, or Clarke counties), suburban (Cobb, Gwinnett, Douglas, Rockdale, Clayton), or hick (everywhere else). We need that here.

We do have the Circle of Safety!

The 694 – 494 loop. I try to at all times stay within the circle of safety!

How about “metrosexual”? Oh, wait….

I live near 1st Avenue, but luckily my windows are on an alley rather than a street, so that cuts out a lot of the “woo-hoo, I’m so drunk and I’m screaming and aren’t I cool?” factor. I have more of a hassle with my upstairs neighbors, who host a lot of after-parties. More power to them for having that stamina, but here are some tips to people who after-bar in apartments:

-Cranking your music at 4:30 AM so that it’s so loud it’s practically painful in an adjacent unit is not very neighborly or smart. I’m not expecting total silence, just some courtesy.

-When your floors are wood and there’s not much insulation between your floors and the ceiling of your downstairs neighbors, it’s probably a good idea not to wear shoes, especially heels, as you tramp through your apartment. It’s not good for the floors, either.

-When your guests leave, don’t let them leave with bottles or cans, which will inevitably make their way to the entrance area or just outside the door. It makes our building look like shit.

How about Overgeneralizing Xenophobes or Those Who Are Absolved of Their Consumption and Privilege Because of Their Zip Code? Now, those are commonalities!

Minnesota is the Chaska of the United States anyway.

Bland –

These people are friends with the guy who built a house next to the airport and then complained about the noise.

I grew up in the country (not a farm) and can tell the difference between pig dropping and cow droppings by the smell (yes, a real marketable skill). Normally the smell of the family farm isn’t very noticeable to neighbors except on the days the barn is cleaned and the wind is the right direction, or when the manure is being spread onto fields in the spring. (Giant corporate farms are different; they can be a source of health endangering air pollution)

When I was a kid, if somone had called our local body of govenrment to complain about the smell of the neighbor’s farm, they’d still be laughing about it today.

Seems Mr Lileks has put the last nail in the hipster coffin.

James Lileks “What’s hip, What’s not…”

Noise control has to be part of the cost of doing business for these bars. I’m sure it’s a significant investment (e.g. the Triple Rock’s tons of rock insulation), but it must be made. I’m all for a great night-life — but not if the establishments end up bringing down the value of neighboring properties. I’d like to see stronger enforcement to ensure business owners make appropriate sound-control investments.

Cann: absolution comes from your behavior, not your zipcode. You don’t need a 612 area code to be cool, you just can’t be part of the Obnoxious Behavior By People Who Should Know Better crowd. You know who those people are, and they don’t have 55401-55410 ZIP codes.

I think burbsters for the people who love the suburbs; burbanistas for the people who think suburbs are the greatest place on earth, and; urbanistas for people like me who wouldn’t be caught dead with an address like 2121 Hidden Spruce Creek Willow Lane in Blooming Lake Valley, MN.

But what are these downtowners going to do when there is LIGHT and SOUND from a Twins stadium?

I wouldn’t hold your breath they will ever build a Twins Stadium. But! If they do put it over by Target Center the only people they will be disturbing are people with no permanent address for the most part.

Why do I feel that Lileks wrote that piece in response to my blog entry about him?

Oh, yeah. Because I’m paranoid.

Instead of “hipsters” how about “trendoids?’ Used in a sentence: “This haircut makes me look like a dorky Uptown trendoid.”

You’re exactly right, Champs. No zip code absolves ANYONE of ANYTHING.

Screw the 464/694 in/out debate. The northside/southside debate is much more entertaining. 55418 represent.

Truer words have never been spoken than those spak by Carrie and Rat in this thread. Bravo, MNSpeakers, bravo.

I have a question… it seems your coolness depends on where you are from or where you live. There is a lot of discussion about suburban vs. urban. How do most of you feel about places like Rochester and St. Cloud? Are they just completely off the radar?

St. Cloud: Word reaches us of stories from Stearns County.

Shadowy, unsubstantiated tales of monks and militiamen.

When we travel there, we keep to the roads and stay away from the moors.

I hear tell they make meth in those parts.

> St. Cloud

Rosemary, front seat, engine idling, windows fogged, outside the club, 1:30AM, 1987.

Wait, that was Moorhead. Or Fargo.

Regarding the woman in St Paul who complained about all the light… if you haven’t been downtown St Paul recently, check out all the tops of the buildings. It seems that the thing to do for companies has been to put a big bright sign on the top of the building. In recent years we’ve seen St Paul Companies pop up, Wells Fargo pop up on the Minnesota World Trade Center, US Bank pop up on US Bank Center, and Bremer Bank is talking about putting lighted signage on the First National Bank Building (how dare they desecrate that building!).

Downtown Minneapolis doesn’t have even close to all that “tagging” that I see in St Paul.

I can’t believe the whole NE Mpls comment, I bar hop NE all the time especially to the U Otter Stop Inn. My friends and I enjoy the other patrons and the bartenders and karaoke people are awesome. I’ve been frequenting the place for over 4 years and I’ve never seen a fight. That’s a horrible statement!