"You people that ain't been there don't know shit."

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.

Flags, part two.

Following up on yesterday's post, this is what they fly east of the river. I can't find much information on the design -- the log cabin, capitol building and north star are easy enough, but where does the winged wheel come from? At least there's no microscopes on it.

"The beauty, harmony and brilliant future of our City."

"Whereas, the City Council has heretofore appointed a committee to select a flag of the City of Minneapolis; and

"Whereas, the said committee has, after diligent effort, selected a suitable design for such a flag; the design of said flag being as follows:

"A royal blue pennant on a white field or background with a white circle on a blue pennant divided by four parts; each of the four parts of the circle containing a blue symbol, i.e., a building symbolizing education and the arts; a cogged wheel and square symbolizing labor and industry; a pilot wheel symbolizing our lakes and rivers and all activities identified with them; a microscope symbolizing research, skilled craftsmanship and progress – all of these symbols combined point out the beauty, harmony and brilliant future of our City.

"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.

"Be It Further Resolved that the City Council of the City of Minneapolis, for itself and on behalf of all the citizens of the City of Minneapolis again express deep appreciation and heartfelt thanks to all persons who contributed to make this project a success."

- Resolution to adopt a new city flag, passed May 27, 1955 by Eugene E. Stokowski, President of the City Council. Presented by Aldermen Earl Johnson and Jack Jorgensen. Judges for the "Flag Contest" included Russell Plimpton, Director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and Mrs. John Rood, member of the Minneapolis Library Board. The winning design was created by Louise Sundin (above), a progressive union leader who went on to head the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and was voted out as union head just last year.

It's not pleasant to admit, but Minneapolis has a pretty awful flag. I'm sure Ms. Sundin meant well -- and judging by her biography, she must have been quite young when she won the contest -- but the fact is, our city flag doesn't really possess any of the qualities that make anyone really 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).

Minneapolis is, after all, a "design city." There are quite a few intelligent, creative individuals here that know their way around a drafting board. It seems like we could do a lot better now. We could start, for example, by making the field more purple.

I think we could keep the pennant shape, though. I'll give Louise that -- the pennant shape is pretty damn cool.

"I just beat Verne Gagne."

"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!"


-Handsome Dick Manitoba, introducing "Two Tub Man" on the first Dictators LP, 1975.

In the 1960s, Minneapolis was home base for the American Wrestling Assoication, which aside from the above-mentioned personalities also gave the world such a wrestling luminaries as Baron von Raschke and future Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura. The AWA was sort of the missing link between the old regional barnstorming amateur wrestling circuits of the earlier part of the century and the slick, profitable "sports entertainment" industry that it became with the WWF in the 1980s and '90s.

The Dictators were big fans of old-school pro wrestling, and "Two Tub Man" was their tribute of sorts ("I can go anywhere, people look and people stare / They all know that I'm the one, not to let your son become"). They were a New York City band through and through, having emerged in that mid-70s window between the trashy psychedelic metal of the Blue Oyster Cult (who Manitoba namechecks above) and the punk rock of the CBGB's bands. A strange thread of references to Minneapolis run through their early catalog, though -- Handsome Dick was born in the Bronx, but on the cover of that first album, Go Girl Crazy!, he's standing in a locker room in a wrestling unitard, with a varsity jacket behind him bearing his name and an image of Minnesota, a gold star over Minneapolis. And of course, there is the legendary "Minnesota Strip" a few albums later, the chorus of which is something like "there's a tunnel that leads to the city."

I only mention this because there's a sort of low-level reverse thrill in seeing a native New Yorker placing so much emphasis on passing as a fake Minnesotan, instead of the more common opposite.

Above: Robbinsdale's own Verne Gagne, circa 1960. The highest-paid wrestler in the world in the 1950s, and founder of the American Wrestling Association.

"Certain obvious differences."

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.

Artwork created for the WPA Federal Art Project. Top: Charles J. Grant, 5th St. & 1st Ave. North, Minneapolis, watercolor on paper, c. 1940. Bottom: Bennet Swanson, Early Mass, lithograph on paper, c. 1940.

"Like East Germans."

Hüsker Dü in Philadelphia, mid-1980s (Grant Hart not pictured). Photo by Savage Pink.

"It was 'OK, we're not from L.A. and we're not from New York and we're not from London,' but we felt pretty good and we could play with the best of 'em." But the problem was not that they weren't from L.A., New York or London -- they weren't even from Minneapolis. "We were St. Paul people, which was like East Germans," Hart explains. "So we had to live that down."

-Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü, in Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground 1981-1991, 2001.

"Getting lost every single time I left my apartment."

Uptown Bar and Grill at 2 A.M. Photo from How Was The Show?

Not many people know this, but I lived in Minneapolis in the summer of 1994. The reason not many people know this is because I only lived there for five weeks. As such, there's not much in Minneapolis for me to be nostalgic about; I didn't even live there long enough to keep from getting lost every single time I left my apartment. However, I did saunter into the Uptown Bar and Grill twice a week (always for supper on Sunday night), so this place serves as my emotive ground zero by default. The Uptown Bar and Grill is interesting, because it's almost like two wholly different establishments: One half of the room is like a dive bar-rock club, and the other half is a nice little Midwestern restaurant. The night before the '94 Lollapalooza, I was able to eat a delicious hot turkey sandwich with potatoes and gravy while listening to a semi-hard rock band called Hester Moffet. Everybody in the place was drinking Rolling Rock, and two girls told me it was because Rolling Rock is Rock 'n' Roll in reverse. We were all pretty stupid in the good old days.

Per capita, Minneapolis produces more rock critics than any city on earth. If you meet a rock critic who isn't from New York, there's a 33 percent chance they were raised (or once worked) in the Twin Cities.

-Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story, 2005