Secrets of the City

Before someone else says it, a) there are of course several other factors and b) zip codes aren’t perfect for demographics. But still…

wow is this dumb. just wanted to make sure everybody knows that i think it’s dumb

the whole internet is pretty dumb. but i sure do love the internet!

Your post made me get off my ass on something that I had forgotten to add into the mix (crime rate), so I just threw that in there, and it changes the result rather dramatically. The Target on Broadway is now the worst score, with the one on Lake & Minnehaha coming in a close second. The one you mentioned, on the east side, now comes in third. Three cheers for dumb!

The internet steals your soul too. Which makes me glad I’m already hollow and dead inside.

The Northside Target has been closed for a really long time.

The Fridley Target has also been closed for a while, although not nearly as long as Northside.

Zipcode hardly works. I’m in the same zipcode as Lake of the Isles, which I imagine would skew our average income slightly.

This is perverse. A bunch of web-savvy hipsters doing demographic research to see which Target score gets a cute moniker? To what end? So MNSpeak readers can stay the hell away from the Target where the poor, brown people go?

I have poor brown people friends, so its okay.

but i sure do love the internet!

Me too.

The internet steals your soul too. Which makes me glad I’m already hollow and dead inside.

Me too.

[This is really, really stupid.]

We are all now dumber for having read this post.

Strangely, the Targets I have been to are, for the most part, cleaner, better run, have a more helpful staff, and considerably less trashy customers than msot of the WalMarts I’ve been to in the suburbs.

How ghetto.

Southside Des Moines, traditionally heavily populated by Italians, has a Targhetti.

The Polish have Kowalski’s!

This is perverse. A bunch of web-savvy hipsters doing demographic research to see which Target score gets a cute moniker? To what end? So MNSpeak readers can stay the hell away from the Target where the poor, brown people go?

No, no, no.

The hipsters are all listed in Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, not here.

It’s cool that those Targets actually do take on the feel of the areas they are in. The demographic of the neighborhood is stronger that the corporate power of brand image.

This is awesome! Nice work magnetbox.

Now if we could just get the trolls off this site we’d all be happy!

No kidding. Accusing Ben of being a hipster — or, implicitly, a racist — is just about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Jesus, people.

People expressing an opinion are trolls, Moe? Grow the f&$# up and accept that your opinion isn’t the only one.

I don’t know Ben, Rex, but I think there’s something racist about this. Ghetto, of course, refers to the long-ago Italian island where Jews were corralled, but now, of course, it refers to an ethnic pocket and, in more recent folksonomy, a group of blacks. So Target stores in poor neighborhoods are therefore black and “ghetto.” That’s messed up. But whatever. Spending the time to crunch numbers about which Target store is in which poor neighborhood seems misplaced: is he doing this so we can all guffaw about the “accurate” use of an epithet, or is there any other redeeming quality to all this… other than the amusement of the technorati? And, Moe, as James suggests, I’m not a troll. Just somebody who thinks our language shapes our behavior.

I’d like to see a similar graphing of stores like Kowalski’s, Lunds and Byerly’s.

Well, this made me laught, at least.

The “winning” Targhetto at 701 W Broadway has been a Cub foods for over a year now. Cubhetto?

Okay, I’m checking off “ghetto” from the list of words I can use anymore. Got it.

How retarded.

Oh wait.

(How do you people navigate society? The Daily Show must make you ill.)

Anyway, I also would like to see the same thing applied elsewhere. Here’s one with fast food — no Twin Cities data, but check out Chicago!

rex: Accusing Ben of being a hipster — or, implicitly, a racist — is just about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. Jesus, people.

Oh, well, if he’s Rex’s friend Ben, then everything must be cool….

Rex, you would be a lot more effective in these discussions if you stopped whinging about the PC thought police and tried to actually formulate an argument about how there’s nothing plausibly offensive about using “household income data, average home sale price,” and crime data to compute where the “ghetto” might be, and then making light of it.

You mean, like what urban planners, city officials, zoning officials, and politicians do every day — analyze data to compute socio-economic regions?

I give up. I’m apparently dragging good people like Ben down for merely knowing them. I’m officially removing my own site from the RSS reader.

Rex, urban planners, city officials, zoning officials, and politicians tend to use their analysis for useful purposes — or at least not to make light of (for lack of a better phrase) communities that already have obvious problems (e.g., low household income, low average home sale price, high crime). I think this project has some potential, except that it has been presented in a glib way, that doesn’t seem to consider the real-world impact of the data it’s using.

If plugging data into a computer is racist… we’ve got big problems. How people choose to use the data determines whether they are racist or not.

I can see where people would take issue to the “targhetto” reference… but that’s been a part of the pop culture lexicon for awhile now. I think it was creating and thoughtful to plug in real data and analyze it. Not to mention thought-provoking.

Are you people for real?

The Broadway Targhetto that Alexis mentioned is closed is actually a Cubghetto. Ah, Navin beat me to it.

The Lake & Minnehaha Target is MY target, and I’m not poor or brown. It seems like an equal opportunity retail establishment to me. And are there really demographic differences in toilet paper and laundry detergent?

Some people are devoid of humor.

There is little that can be done to change that.

I love humor.

Humor usually relates to something funny.

The “winning” Targhetto at 701 W Broadway has been a Cub foods for over a year now. Cubhetto?

That would be the “Up in da Cub,” not to be confused with the “Rainbow Foods Coalition.”

For what it’s worth, the word “ghetto” was bowdlerized from the MNspeak lexicon last December, so let’s move on to something else superficially offensive, like the Walocaust.

There remain such things as irony and satire in this world. Or at least I thought so. But I’ll be the first to say I have no idea if the intent of the map involved irony or satire…or racism for that matter.

Here’s a suggestion: Why don’t we ASK Ben himself what his intent was? Hmm? If it was meant to be funny (which is how I took it), then by God we’ve already sucked the air out of the room, so the punchline might as well be explained.

Comedy also relates to something funny. I also love comedy.

What would make this project even more valuable is to do a basic price comparisson on various common goods as Target does price variations based on store location.

The word we’re looking for with all this fun data is psychographics or cluster marketing. Variations of this are used by everyone. Everyone meaning “the man”.

Good point, Saloth Sar.

Another interesting thing to look at would be differences in the products offered at various Targets. I go to three Targets (which is sort of odd, because I don’t even own a car) and there seem to be significant differences in theproducts sold at each.

Another retail mapping idea: If so-called hood stores could be defined, identified, and plotted, it would be interesting to try to figure out their relationship with area crime rates. (Yes, I am aware the monicker isn’t far from “Targhetto,” but this slang seems specific to how stores do business, not where they’re located.)

We can’t forget Tar-zhay Boutique (Edina-Southdale location) and Tar-Gay (St. Louis Park location).

Is it safe to say Sambo’s is out of the running for best breakfast?

We all know Rex took a job at Microsoft, so he’s probably not slummin’ it in Seattle. Where the rest of y’all live? In the “ghetto”? Given my proximity to the closed Targhetto, apparently I do (15th and Penn N). How depressing…

Man, I miss Sambo’s.

I just watched My Breakfast with Blassie which was shot at Sambo’s. Let’s talk about the misunderstood comedy of Andy Kaufman, how ’bout?!

He was more funny in theory than practice. He had a very sadistic sensibility, with the audience as his victims. I’d rather talk about Michael O’Donoghue, who managed to be a sadist AND funny — a tough trick.

I never found O’Donoghue funny, just mean. Of course, he was a key player in shaping the tone of SNL. I haven’t seen much of his performances. What are some highlights?

Kaufman was hilarious to me. Everything he did.

Which SLP Target is the gay one? I shop at both and have never noticed overt gayness at either. Then again, I’m not sure what to look for. Is there a special gay department?

If it’s the Knollwood location, it’s about to become a Super Tar-Gay!

I thought St. Louis Park was stereotyped as jewish, not gay. Maybe Tarcheapo would be better. As long as we’re at it, how about the Super Target in Chaska be Tarcaucasio or Tarsnobo (pronounced Tar-snob-O).

Wouldn’t that make the Target in SLP “TarYid?”

No. Jews are already targets.

Heh.

Nice mashup Ben! It would be interesting to add more data to the equation and see what filters out.

Who the fuck is Ben?

It’s not just black people who live near and shop at Targhetto. Plenty of white people live nearby and frequent the place just as much.

To me, Targhetto means a Target store in a poor neighborhood, not necessarily black. But it probably wouldn’t have gotten the name Targhetto if the store wasn’t completely trashed.

That’s the point I think he’s making about Targhetto. The stores are trashed by people who are messy themselves. End of story.