Midwest Pride

I remember when I was looking at colleges, the main criteria was that it be outside Minnesota, even better if it was outside the Midwest. I wanted nothing to do with the Midwest and was easily seduced by the allure of both coasts. I ended up on the East Coast and have been here for the last 5 years. It’s weird that the main reason for wanting to get out of Minnesota was to escape the boonies and farm land and I ended up going to the East Coast, but to somewhere even more rural (i.e. Williamstown, MA).

Since then, I’ve progressively moved to more metropolitan/urban areas, now finding myself in probably the most metropolitan/urban environment, New York City. The last year has been a quest to get to New York, but now that I’m here…well, I’m not sure how to describe it. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with New York.

My friend Drew just moved to Minneapolis and is starting grad school in September at the U of M. It’s been great talking to him as he’s gone through the process of moving out there. I’ve never found myself so excited to talk about Minnesota. I’ve tried to give him a list of place and things he needs to see. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to justify the greatness of Minnesota, not only to him, but to myself. But my love for the Midwest has only grown since living on the East Coast.

Being on the East Coast, I’ve had to deal with peoples’ ridiculous misconceptions of the Midwest; I’ve even had to defend the West Coast (in particular, California) as well. I guess I was lucky growing up because I had the opportunity to travel a lot, both in and outside the US. It was a shock to me when I first went to college that a lot of people I had met had never traveled outside of their region of the US. Not internationally, I mean to other regions of the US. And a lot of those people had no intention of doing it in the future. Common responses were, “Why would I want to go to the Midwest?” or “California sucks. I’ve never been there, but I know I don’t want to visit.” This really just blew my mind and I think has added to my growing discontent with the East Coast. I understand that everyone has strong regional pride (hence the topic of this post), but damn, there is a difference between pride and ignorance.

Anyway, I miss the Midwest and I miss Minnesota, especially the Twin Cities. New York is great, but the great thing about the Twin Cities is that its still young…it’s an underdog and everyone loves rooting for the underdog. New York is already congested and almost completely deficient of space whereas Minneapolis and St. Paul can only continue to grow. It’s great being able to actively see this happen. Kottke posted a nice thing about Minneapolis today that made me miss it even more. The sad thing is, I barely make it back there anymore.