So here’s the deal MPLS, you’re hot. I admit, I’ve been checking you out. All those bike lanes you installed downtown this year? Super sexy, totally show off your rockin bod. Your park systems? Remarkably well kept, which tells me you know your way around a state-level congressional policy hearing or two, which I find very attractive. Additionally, if I want a whole wheat loaf of unblemished earthly grain grown within 2.5 km of my northeast duplex, I know exactly where to find it. And when I’m getting face planted drunk on PBR and staring at hipster girls in super tight pants, I remember why I moved to your sexy ass Minneapolis. Seriously, you got it going on. The only problem is, you know it.
Yea, you don’t exactly L.A. know it, but at the very least you Seattle know it and let’s face it, that’s not really how the Midwest rolls. Look at Chicago. Does anyone ever remember Chicago exists? No, and that’s the way we like it. Big, smelly and largely underappreciated. I know you know you’re hot Minneapolis. You’re that girl I try to hit on, end up drinking too much to compensate for my lack of confidence and resort to blowing chunks in the bathroom of the CC Club, too hot for your own good. Let me do you the favor of taking you down a notch…by listing all the ways you’ve taken me down a notch over the years.
You’re traffic. Seriously, stop it with this shit. If I have to forget how to navigate 35W to 62S to Highway 7 and get lost doing so one more time, I will leave you, all alone with your lonely sexy ass. If you don’t figure out how to connect 94 West to 35 South I’m filing for divorce, seriously, these are your two largest thoroughfares, get you’re shit together. Don’t even get me started on your lack of warnings regarding closed on-ramps, off-ramps and construction work. Seriously, you have to let us know when it’s that time of the month, we’ll gladly put a towel down on the bed before hand.
Downtown. It’s hip, I get it. You have a outdoor mall and a lightrail. An outdoor baseball park without a roof in the coldest place ever, how ironic of you. Plus there’s a bunch of skyways, businesses doing well throughout the winter, totally kosh. But walking through your downtown can be like shotputting in a wind tunnel: a solitary, sad endeavor no one wants to watch on espn 8. The mood downtown shifts between empty, pedestrian-unfriendly streets cloaked in shadows to Friday and Saturday night slut fests for attention (are there any other kind of slut fests?). It’s like the idea of an open relationship, there’s a lot to offer there but I largely try to avoid it, largely out of insecurity.
The Vikings. You should probably just start over with this one. When god collapses your roof onto your field which you’ve named Mall of America Field, it’s a sign.
Suburbs. Now granted, they aren’t technically part of your city Minneapolis, but you have a shit ton of them around you and they make up a large portion of people who drive in and out of you, using up all your roads, Guthrie theaters, art museums, Malls of Americas, sampling your vibrant diversity and cultural experiences…only to drive back to their enclaves and send their children to appropriately funded school systems. I mean if you wanna hang around with that crowd that’s cool and all but you’ve changed man, you’ve changed.
The point is Minneapolis, you’re hot. We’ve been together a long time, and like most long term relationships, probably a little too long. I love your taste in music (The Current) but where’s your quality Hip Hop station? I love your enthusiasm for bicycles, but you look ridiculous when it’s -5 and I can’t drive around you because all the other lanes on the road are taken up by snow. For real, you’re super hot but you never shut up about it. That’s cool for the first 8 years and all but after awhile I’m going to get a little tired of it.
So what do you say we get a way for the weekend, huh? Just the two of us, go somewhere warm. Perhaps somewhere where the beer flows like wine and the cheese flows like beer. Where the people aren’t that hot but they know it and they’ll totally let you hook up with their younger sister. Some place that has a team in the Superbowl this year? If only there were somewhere close by…if only…
