[thechat] Find your ideal US city

Erik Mattheis gozz at gozz.com
Wed Jun 12 20:27:00 CDT 2002


The best thing about Minneapolis/St. Paul is it's size: it's big
enough so you can find any service or entertainment you want, but as
has been noted, it's not extremely urban. Minneapolis only has 350K
people and St. Paul less than that ... the entire metro area is about
4M ... yes, quite a bit of sprawl ...

Housing is quite expensive - I pay $780/month for less than 700
square feet ... easy to find a bigger place for less in Chicago.

There is amazing food of all kind here ... _all_ kinds! All price ranges.

If you like coffee shops and/or churches, this is the place for you.
Not seen statistics, but Minneapolis has to be in the top 3 per
capita for US cities for both.

Downtown Minneapolis looks super good - the respective architects of
the buildings really have made it a priority to make the building
look like it should be where it is ... an amazing continuity and
amazingly beautiful skyline for all directions. It's all glass ...
approaching from the right direction at sunrise is surreal; almost
spiritual.

Lots of good looking women, but they're fond of wearing boots on the
outside of their pants, which I find irritating ... being that over
50% of the unmarried male population are gay, it is a good place for
homo- and heterosexual males, but maybe not so good as far as dating
goes for heterosexual females.

If you don't like planning ahead to buy booze, this is not the place
for you: Can't buy alcohol in a store after 8 PM M-TH, 10 PM F-Sa,
none at all on Sundays. And if stores sell anything more than 3.2%
alcohol, they're not allowed to sell food. Extremely motivated
drinkers can do the 40 mile drive into Wisconsin if they're
desperate. Bars are open 7 days a week till 1 AM.

You have to go to the suburbs to find a decent computer store ...
except for the Apple Authorized dealer/repair which is conveniently
located one block from me.

If you're into theater, it has more stages than anywhere in the US
other than NYC.

Parking in the winter sucks - expect to be towed at a cool $140 ) _at
least_ once a year ... this is funny:
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/snow/FAQ/parkway.asp

At 4:28 PM -0500 6/12/02, Hugh Blair wrote:
>Great place. Green and hilly, lots of woods and water recreation, nice
>people, great food places (but not many of the native Madhu type),

I would disagree ... for the population of the area, there's an
extraordinary variety of ethnic restaurants: heavy on the Mexican and
SE Asian, but there's quite a few South Asain places too - including
the first Afgan restaurant in N. America.

>  good transportation - public and road system,

Maybe it is because we've been spoiled by completely uncongested
roads until about 5 years ago, but driving during rush hour is kind
of a pain in the arse.

One neat thing is that there are stoplights at the entrance ramps to
the highways. Also that we had the first "highway" anywhere: HWY 100.

>a wonderful bar - Sherlock's Home - where every scotch imported into the US
>can be found (about 150 different ones),

If you like English food or Scotch, I guess!

>  pretty good airport system,

Excellent, I'd say ... as MSP is NWA's hub!


>  but do
>you really want the cold winters? Unless you'd really want a change, I'd
>think it might be a bit cold for you.

Depends on who you are: Minneapolis is the #1 "hot" spot for Somalis
... apparently they're telling people back home that the winters are
tolerable. Also tons of immigrants from other warmer climes: Mexico,
SE Asia.

The first week of about freezing are always the hardest to me ...
after I'm acclimated, the sub zero stuff doesn't bother me.

--

__________________________________________
- Erik Mattheis

(612) 377 2272
http://goZz.com/

Through June 15
9am - 3pm M-F:
(952) 838 7698

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