Mark Koscielski, owner of Koscielski's Guns and Ammo store in the Phillips neighborhood of Minneapolis, models the "Murderapolis" t-shirts that he created in the summer of 1995.
From the "Minneapolis" entry at urbandictionary.com:
"Minneapolis aint nothin but a unknown ghetto. Only reason people dont think its ghetto cause aint no rappers come from up outta there. Same thing wit Tenessee, Memphis, Houston, New Orleans, all that shit. Erybody thought that it was all cowboys and cactuses in Texas until Chopped N Screwd music got popular and put it on the map. No one thought Nashville Teneseee was anythign but the home of country music till Young Buck did his lil thang and put it on the Map. Its the same thing with Minneapolis, everyone just assumes its soft cause aint nobody really came out and represented. It aint on the map cause aint nobody put it there. Plain and simple..Minneapolis was one of the worse cities in America back in 95 when it was known as Murderapolis and since then it has been relatively quiet and peaceful, but since like the summer of 04 crime rate and homicide rate and all that shit has been going wayyy up. Only thing about it is that they got the worse cops in America too. Toughest, biggest and highest employed gang-units in America. They doin that CODEFOUR crime-stoppin thing up there and thats some shit that most cities aint even gotta deal wit, i dunno even know if LAPD got they shit all like that. Its pretty crazy up there cause on one hand you have one of the most dangerous cities in America (Top10 at least) and on the other hand you have one of the toughest Law Enforcement companies up there too (like Top5 prolly) so theres justa whole lotta violence goin on up there.You people that aint been there dont know shit, so dont talk about it. But im pretty sure you could google search Murderapolis and getta whole lotta stats and figures on how it is actually ghetto up there not jus some fluff ass city like St. Paul."
The term "Murderapolis" is one familiar to Minneapolis residents during the summer months, when there seem to be high-profile shootings with some regularity. It was famously used in a New York Times article entitled "Nice City's Nasty Distinction: Murder Soars in Minneapolis" that appeared in 1996.
1 comment:
I remember that summer. The term "Murderapolis" also struck me wrong though -- the people you heard calling it that were the conservative whites from the suburbs who were completely unaffected (except for the irrational fear they felt) by the crime wave, which was almost totally confined to one section of Minneapolis and one demographic group, young black males.
The people who called it Murderapolis were the same ones who insisted on calling President Clinton "Slick Willie," a monicker that mimicked the much more accepted Nixon nickname, "Tricky Dick."
The Clinton pet name smacked of the most aggressive partin politics, and so, in a way, does "Murderapolis."
Still, there's a sick sort of pride one feels when his hometown(s) gets on the national radar for violence and crime: see everyone? We're a big city, too!
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