"Now, Therefore, Be it Resolved: That the above described design be and is hereby adopted as the Official Flag of the City of Minneapolis and that the original design therefore be filed and kept of record in the Office of the City Clerk as a model to be used and copied by all persons desiring and authorized to reproduce the flag.
very excited about waving it around. I hadn't been aware that Minneapolis even had a flag until I saw the design for the new Vikings stadium -- there it is to the right, up in the northwest corner, flying alongside the flags of the Vikes, Minnesota and the U.S.A. Where I grew up, in Louisville, the city flag was a source of almost psychotic pride among locals. You saw it flying everywhere when I was growing up; hipsters had it tattooed to their foreams. Rightfully so, too -- it was a beautiful flag, designed by the Austrian typographer Victor Hammer. It paid homage to the city's French roots with the fleur-dis-lis and its colonial-era origins with the 13 stars. Plus, it was simple enough to reproduce, and all that negative space looked great. Chicago and Washington, D.C. have similarly beloved flags that follow a similar principle -- simple without being too literal, too ham-handedly "symbolic," or too awkward (the D.C. flag is put to good use in that link back there by the late-'80s era hardcore troublemakers the Nation of Ulysses). This is where Minneapolis' flag falls short -- I mean, my goodness, a microscope? Right on the flag? Plus, a wheel for a barge? A gear and ruler? A neo-classical building? For a city that spend most of the 1950s and '60s tearing down its historic architecture, it seems a bit disingenuous to be waving that particular image in people's faces. All four of these icons, artlessly arranged in a four-square pie, don't make a particularly compelling case for the beauty, harmony and brilliant future of a city for me, anyway. You would think we were a city full of barge captains that hang around museums and research laboratories all the time (which, come to think of it, may have seemed reasonable from a branding perspective at the time).
"I just come back from Minn-e-aaah-polis, where I just beat Verne Gagne and Dick the Bruiser, daddy! There ain't no -- you can bring on Haystack Calhoun, Eric Bloom, I don't care who you bring here, daddy. Rainbow, Strongbow. They're all going under the thunder of Manitoba!"
Even the casual visitor (when he overcomes his bewilderment and determines into which city he has wandered), cannot fail to note certain obvious differences. The St. Paul skyline is all of a piece, Minneapolis sprawls; St. Paul is hilly, Minneapolis level; St. Paul's bridges leap down from the high shore to the loop; in Minneapolis they snake across the river with no regard for distance; St. Paul's loop streets are narrow and concentrated, while in its twin city the center of activity extends many blocks along the broad shopping avenues. Minneapolis marks its streets and ornaments its lakes, but leaves its river shore ragged and unkempt below the cream-colored elevators. St. Paul makes much of its river shore but illumines no street sign for a nervous driver. St. Paul has already attained a degree of mellowness and seems to be clinging to its Victorian dignity, while in Minneapolis dignity is less prized than modern spruceness. The visitor from the East will perhaps feel more at home in St. Paul; if from the West he is likely to prefer Minneapolis.Less obvious, but quite as distinctive, are the cities' social differences. While Minneapolis has outstripped its neighbor in wealth and population, 
St. Paul has clung more tenaciously to its cherished New England traditions and to the tenets of family aristocracy. St. Paul's largest foreign immigrations were German and Irish. Minneapolis, on the other hand, was built largely through the help of Scandinavians, most of whom were of peasant stock whose descendants today hold important positions in banks, industry, politics, and the professions, as they also make up in large measure the thrifty middle class of small business folk. This difference in racial element is again suggested by the great cathedral dome that dominates St. Paul's hill and proclaims the city the seat of a Roman Catholic archbishopric, even as the spires and towers of scores of Lutheran churches proclaim Minneapolis the Lutheran center of the same area.
- The Federal Writers' Project, The WPA Guide to Minnesota, 1938.
