As someone from the middle of Kansas, it's funny reading someone describe Minneapolis like a sleepy backwater town. If you truly grew up in the heartland, major cities like Minneapolis and Chicago feel incredibly alive and full of energy.
Minneapolis is a cosmopolitan city. It has the second most theater seats of any US city (after NYC). It has lots of great food and international diversity, being home to large diasporas from Africa and SE Asia. If you're a Bay Area native, the most shocking thing about Minneapolis will be the weather, not the culture or people.
In my opinion, the worst part about the weather in the Midwest is the variability. Good luck trying to plan a few days ahead - fronts whip through and drop or raise the temps dramatically. Rain/sleet/snow can happen almost anytime, and the intraday changes in weather are going to be foreign to anyone accustomed to coastal living. I've personally seen it go from 90F to 28F within 24 hours. If you can handle that, then Minneapolis is a great place to live.
I was interested in the "second most theater seats of any US city (after NYC)" claim. After a little google, it looks like its actually _per capita_. Which is still cool, but not the same.
Ha, thank you, I was about to inject the pro-Cleveland piece mentioned in your link, so that was educational. How bounteous our country is to have so many second place cities!
‘Pro-Cleveland’ is something you don’t hear a lot, lol. If it wasn’t for the gray winters it really would be a solid place. I grew up there and went to school in Indiana. The difference in sun was remarkable and made a lot of difference when it was cold.
Central KS USA here. Moved here five years ago after 20 years in DC. Paid off my house in four years.
Day to day it’s not all that different. With kids you cook, clean, watch movies, read books, and exercise. COVID lockdown didn’t really happen here. Kids missed a total of a month of in person school. We do have to drive 40 miles for sushi, but that takes a reliable 35 min - no traffic and speeds to the city are 80 MPH. My internet is 200 Mb and could easily double that if needed.
There are things I miss but nothing I can’t get with a drive or some travel. Cities are now enjoyable for me to visit.
Yes it’s hilarious hearing people describe midwestern towns as quaint when we have massive cities like Chicago and pretty much everything most other coastal cities have
I grew up in North Dakota. I lived through some brutal winters. There's no way I could have lived in Minneapolis. The river adds a new dimension to the misery of winter.
Probably the humidity. In the western part of North Dakota, it's generally a bit dry so it doesn't _feel_ quite so cold. That's a big difference from even say, Grand Forks or Fargo which are right next to the Red River.
No matter how dismissive one is of the midwest, how could you be ignorant of the existence of a major metro area like Minneapolis-St. Paul? Per [0], it's the 16th largest in the U.S. Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB).
I dunno, I almost just don't believe the OP's anecdotes, unless they are talking to recent arrivals to the U.S. from other countries. I'm from a significantly smaller Midwestern city than Minneapolis, and I don't recall anyone ever saying "where's that" or "are there buildings there" when I say where I'm from.
Edit: Based on comments it seems many do agree with OPs view. Maybe it's a California/SV thing, I've never lived there. But I've been in the south/east/mountain regions and never encountered this level of ignorance that civilization exists in the Midwest (whether real or feigned.)
I guess I'll volunteer to be the sacrificial ... thing.
I have no idea where Minneapolis is. In fact, I know you just said the state, but I already forgot. (I'm going out of my way not to read it while typing.)
Okay, I remembered it was in Indiana. And Indiana is to the right of Illinois. That's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Minneapolis.
I live in Missouri.
</shame>
Oh god, I had this nagging feeling before posting this comment, so I went and looked it up. Not only did you not say the state (it was the article), but Minneapolis is in Minnesota, not Indiana.
... And I don't know where Minnesota is. At all.
The final nail in my coffin is that apparently the article starts with an image of precisely where Minneapolis is. I didn't consciously recognize it.
Not really. The southern midwest and northern midwest are pretty distinct, and the bootheel of Missouri has more in common with Oklahoma than with Iowa.
Lots of Missourians don't make it north of of the Mason-Dixon very often. I'd definitely expect more KC folks to make it to Colorado than to Minnesota. Etc.
Not sure why you'd prime facie expect Missourians to have a better mental model of the upper midwest than Californians. If you don't go to a place, you don't go to a place. Doesn't matter if it's around the world or six hours north.
Have you ever seen any of the comedian Man on the Street interviews? People so don't care about geography any longer than (if that) it takes to get past the subject in whatever school grade forcing it upon them. I've always had a fascination with maps/globes/etc, so I spend a considerable amount of time with that stuff. Even I couldn't place the exact location of cities within states I've never visited. Absurd is not the word I'd use.
I don't think people in the USA ever cared about Geography. Being able to name a couple of cities in every state is useless as is know state capitols other than your own. You could always read up (in a library or internet) about a place if you were going to visit there or looking for a new place to check out on vacation. It really isn't that valuable as far as information goes. I would rather know more about France or Russia as I'm probably more likely to visit there on vacation than I would be to go to Minnesota.
Last time I checked, Missouri lies almost exactly smack dab at the midpoint between the sierra nevada and the (eastern reaches of the) appalachia mountains.
But that's not even really the important point. The attitude that the Midwest is full of humble salt of the earth types and the coasts are full of arrogant elites is itself... well, astoundingly arrogant. Believe it or not, the midwest has plenty of arrogant folks and many of the nicest and most humble people in the world happen to live on the coasts.
Just think about what you're saying here. How is it any different than the ostensible coastal attitude you are critiquing here? "I value X and people from those other places don't have X." Pot, meet kettle.
In a thread where you're attacking someone for being geographically arrogant (incorrectly, no less!!!), you could at least refrain from being geographically arrogant...
To be quite blunt, I meet WAY more Midwesterners who make asinine and negative assertions about people on "the coast" than coastal folks who have any strong feels at all about the interior. Being a dick about where you live is, increasingly, a distinctly Midwestern thing.
I’ve spent years doing engineering work in both Silicon Valley and the Twin Cities and the anecdotes are apt. This take on Minnesota life (and peoples’ reaction to it) is spot on.
It was hard for me and my partner to get over the passive aggressiveness and silent racism so we left the Twin Cities but it still sure as hell beat living in Bay Area from a quality of life standpoint.
In my personal anecdotal experience, I found the US Midwest culture's handling of conflict shares a lot in common with what I saw in Japan. It is not too surprising to me the homogeneity enforcement follows similar structures in both cultures.
This has a good side to it, though. Once you the friendship of an individual deeply embedded into that culture, beyond that surface niceness, though it may take decades, it is a firm friendship, and they'll give you the benefit of the doubt to give you time to prove your point.
I’m sorry, but I read all 3 of those links and I didn’t find a single one convincing. They rely on largely anecdotal experiences which dont appear to be any different than many that come out of non-Midwestern states, and yet don’t get roped around the regions neck the same way. George Floyd dying in Minnesota is somehow a reflection of “Midwestern nice” gone wrong, but Trayvon Martin being killed in Florida, or Eric Garner strangled in NYC, or Rodney King being beaten on the streets of LA are only ever contextualized as “America’s racism problem” and not the problems of California, New York, or Florida.
When these articles actually provided hard numbers, they only served to under,one their argument even more. The Midwest is decried as being overwhelmingly white at 81% of the population, compared to the nationwide average of… 76%? That hardly seems enough of a difference to have as monumental of an effect as claimed. What’s more, while the Midwest is decried as hostile to black Americans due to their overwhelming whiteness, in reality, most major Midwestern cities actually have far more black Americans than most West Coast and Northeast cities. One article cited that only 10% of the Midwest is black, compared to 13% nationally, but this ignores that the region that drags the average up is the equally pilloried South, not the “diverse” West or East Coasts, which are often have the same or less black representation in their population. For example the proportion of black people making up the population of Indianapolis is 3x as much as LA, and even more than places like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Boston.
In one of the articles, it states that in the Midwest, the median income for black Americans is $36,000 or lower, compared to $38,000 nationally. Not only is this difference minimal, but it ignores that the median wage for all people, regardless of race, is less in the Midwest than it is nationally. Another article says Midwestern states have noticeable differences in employment and other outcomes between black and white Americans, as if this is some differentiating feature of the region and not true of literally every single state in the nation.
Here’s the reality. Systemic racism pervades this country. However certain areas of the country (the coasts) have an outsized voice on national discourse, and therefore depict their ills as everyone’s ills, and the ills of the rest of the nation as unique to them and evidence of their inferiority. Therefore, it seems to me less like there is lots of evidence Midwest is genuinely, uniquely backwards and racist, and more that our society has decided that the Midwest is backwards and racist from the get go, and then works backwards finding whatever evidence is available to support that claim.
I worked for a company in the Twin Cities. We were acquired by a valley company.
I traveled to meet my new colleagues.
I was asked several times by coworkers:
“What do people there do for work?”
They seemed genuinely surprised that we did the same work they did. Things got tense over the years when they realized we did it faster / better than they did.
> Things got tense over the years when they realized we did it faster / better than they did.
Having lived most of my life in the Midwest, and about six years in Silicon Valley, I had to agree with this. There are smart people everywhere, but I've found above-average intelligence is somehow common in the Twin Cities area. (I know that's mathematically problematic.) There are a lot of unusually smart people living in the Twin Cities. I didn't know that was weird until I lived elsewhere.
> No matter how dismissive one is of the midwest, how could you be ignorant of the existence of a major metro area like Minneapolis-St. Paul? Per [0], it's the 16th largest in the U.S. Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB).
Idk how you could not know it exists, but i can imagine people not knowing much about it.
> I'm from a significantly smaller Midwestern city than Minneapolis, and I don't recall anyone ever saying "where's that" or "are there buildings there" when I say where I'm from.
The buildings thing is probably a bit of a joke, but i found that some people have cultural references to things and Minneapolis has less cultural touch points for people to identify with. Obviously LA and NYC have tons of visibility in movies and pop culture, and places like detroit are well known in news due to visible industries (and their problems lately)... but mid western cities? less so.
I lived in CLE and i always joked about how cleveland has buildings but no people. I was not alone in such jokes. I can only imagine what people in detroit experience, especially since cleveland's unofficial slogan is "at least we're not Detroit". Aside, but according to your link cleveland area is supposedly bigger than silicon valley, which is surprising..
> Its teams participate in every major televised sports league (NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB).
Plenty of people don't care about this, and wouldn't recognize this from it. Santa Clara county in california has offices or HQs of the top 5-10 largest companies in america (apple, msft, goog, amzn, fb, etc). For some, this is more recognizable than a big sports team. Despite being smaller, Boston has many of the top universities in america (Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, etc), again, some may identify with this metric better. This is especially true in tech.
Weather was a major reason I chose to move to Southern California from Toronto.
Bad weather affects my quality of life immensely. If it’s cold or wet I’m more likely to stay home, more likely to wake up late and it negatively affects my mood.
You sound like me. I hate cold weather, I hate snowy and icy roads and being cooped up inside because it's -10 outside. I hate the snow that never melts and the gray skies. Give me the American southwest any day over that.
I also live in Cleveland currently. I don't necessarily agree that it's 8 months of dreary skies. Winters can be some of the best and most beautiful months here.
I also don't think they Solon is a nice suburb (the downtown truly sucks) though.
I worked there for a couple of years. Solon has one of the best public school systems in the state and is near a couple of major freeways, which are probably the sorts of things you care about if you use phrases like "great suburb." :D
I'm not sure how to actually define "downtown" there. It's not exactly walkable. The older and grungier parts of that metro area are actually nicer to live in if you like to walk.
Solon native here - “walkable” downtown would be by the old City Hall and down Bainbridge to just across 91 (ie where you’d actually walk around when lit up at Christmas), and along Station St. Maybe the shopping center on Aurora but not after they killed the McDonald’s across the street.
The stereo type of "Coastal Elite" did not materialize from no where.
Personally my impression is this narrative has gotten worse not better of the last few decades as the political divide between "red states" and "blue states" have deepen, even if you live in a midwest "blue state".
Also by "are there buildings there" I would assume that a person on the east coast would be referring to Skyscrapers not just generalized building, which are quite rare in the mid-west.
My encounters with Coastal people generally result in them believing that the midwest is just farming and retail, Tech Jobs or other high income white collar jobs like Finance are not associated with the mid-west region...
> Skyscrapers not just generalized building, which are quite rare in the mid-west.
If you ignore cities like: Chicago, Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, etc.
So no not really quite rare by any measure. And if you want to take a look at economic output as well, Illinois (5) and Ohio(7) are heavy-hitters, with states like Michigan(14) and Indiana(17) rounding out the top 20 and Minnesota(19), Missouri(22), and Wisconsin(21) not far behind.
As an aside (not targeted toward you) we gotta stop the “Midwest” as a geographic representation. It makes no sense. Make it Great Plains and Great Lakes after the major geographic features of the regions and what uniquely define them.
An aside to your aside. I had quite an argument once with a man, who I learned after the fact was autistic (I wouldn't have engaged him on this point if I had known...), that was from New York City who was beyond adamant that Ohio, where I grew up, couldn't possibly be in the "Midwest" because it's not near the literal geographic center of the country. I eventually had to walk away from the guy because he would not let it go.
TBF, Ohio is an odd duck. Even if we follow GP's advice and split the midwest into plains and lakes, Ohio has both. Except the east, which is more like West Virginia. Ohio is kind of a West Virmichigiana.
I'd argue for adding Appalachia, rounding us out to three "not just one midwest" categories: plains, lakes, and sandstone/coal seams.
Ohio is, I think, the only state that would fall right smack dab in the middle of all 3 new sub-midwests!
So, to be fair to your autistic interloctuor, Ohio is uniquely difficult to type :)
You're not wrong, but... Ohioans, for better or worse, for right or wrong, consider themselves Midwesterners.
I grew up in and near the Appalachian foothills. Appalachia has my vote, if it ever happens.
edit/
> Ohio is, I think, the only state that would fall right smack dab in the middle of all 3 new sub-midwests!
IIRC, Colin Woodard, in his book American Nations, split Ohio into 3 distinct cultural regions. I think it's apt and your thoughts on the matter are shared by many others.
That seems like the opposite of what I'd expect. As an unrepentant coastal elite, I know that the Midwest starts in upstate NY and goes to... uh, IDK, eastern Oregon or something?
There are two "lines". One is the hundredth meridian. It's important because west of there, there's much less rain. (The hundredth meridian lines up pretty closely with the western edge of the Gulf of Mexico, meaning that moist air from there doesn't lead to rain west of that line.) Also, west of (approximately) there, the elevation rises to above 2000 feet. Agriculture is much more limited by water west of this line.
The other line is the mountains. Draw it through Denver. West of that line, you are definitely in "the West". It's the western third of the country.
Between Denver and the hundredth meridian? Maybe call it the "Great Plains".
Historically "the west" referred to west of the Mississippi river. "Midwest" was the Territories mid way between the eastern colonies and the western plains west of the Mississippi
Even smaller cities like Grand Rapids have skyscrapers. They're not rare in the Midwest at all.
I agree that Great Lakes and Great Plains are good to distinguish. The Great Lakes has a long history of industrial development, you can't lump in Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and Detroit along with vast expanses of farm land.
When ever possible I try to ignore cities... I firmly believe high population density is the root of most societal problems.
That aside, I never said there were no skyscrpers I said they were rare compared to area's like NYC...
Chicago is probably the closest, but a skyscraper is generally defined as building over 100m, indy has like 9 of them over a pretty large foot print, so ...
I agree with you w.r.t density. Skyscrapers are on the opposite end of the spectrum from suburbs. Probably better overall, but not great. Medium-density, mixed-use development is the sweet spot and how farming humans eventually lived.
It’s interesting to note that the first skyscraper is generally accepted to be built in Chicago (10 floors) and the steel frame technology was developed here, too. Although nowadays NYC has become synonymous with high buildings, this was not the case in early days: “New York trailed behind Chicago, having only four buildings over 16 stories tall by 1893.” [1]. An early jewel of a building from this ear still stands, The Rookery. If you’re ever in the Windy City I suggest you visit this building.
Other large Midwest cities I’ve visited, Indy and St Louis don’t really hold up, I’ve got to admit.
The mentality in Los Angeles is that nobody is from LA--it can be surprisingly true within a lot of social circles. My suspicion is that coastal elitism comes from people who chose to leave those center states. There seems to be waves of comedians that have affection or derision.
> Personally my impression is this narrative has gotten worse not better of the last few decades as the political divide between "red states" and "blue states" have deepen, even if you live in a midwest "blue state".
Honestly it goes beyond state lines. A liberal in Texas is a radically different liberal than one that's enjoyed coastal luxuries. Now living on the coast I feel it because it's almost as if some coastal liberals go out of their way to be exclusionary to life I've lived or the experiences I've had.
In my experience, some progressives are authoritarian-ish, but the same can be said of conservatives. I don't think it's a property of the political belief itself as much as some people have an innate character trait that makes them very all or nothing and probably not just about politics. Those kind of people are probably fairly intolerable to begin with, but the last few years we (both liberals and conservatives) have given a pass to people with nightmarish personalities for some reason.
I feel like the major reason people don't know where things are in the mid west is because it's a 2D position. Coastal cities have the benefit of only requiring you to remember a single dimension.
I know where San Diego, Los Angeles, SV, Portland, Seattle, NYC, and Washington DC all are because I really only need to memorize about where they are along some coast and go inwards until things look right. Midwestern cities like St Louis, Minneapolis, Omaha, etc. and even the midwestern states themselves require a lot more spatial awareness and memory, especially if you aren't from a midwestern city and don't have an anchor point already in memory somewhere nearby.
Rather than a coast line, you could just follow the Mississippi River to find most of those cities. Concept is the same, people like to build cities near sources of water and easy transportation.
I am from Indianapolis and regularly have people not know anything about it so I dont find this to be an exaggeration. The anecdotes really ring true for me so sounds like you arent from the midwest.
Greetings fellow Hoosier. It has been my experience as well at west coast conferences, some people think we are all from some redneck farm in the middle of nowhere. I think the close mindedness says more about them than us.
I recently moved to Idaho, the other I state. People occasionally call it Iowa multiple times in the same conversation! Similar to that Ohio/Iowa shirt, there's also an excellent one sold at the hipster grocery stores in Boise that has the outline of Idaho with some lovely drawings of a farmer working a field of (presumably) potatoes... IOWA is printed across it in huge, bold letters. The Idaho<>Iowa confusion must extend past my circle of friends and coworkers.
That being said, I'll freely admit I don't know where Des Moines is inside Iowa's confines.
Once I travelled in Asia and met someone from Taiwan in a hostel, and there were two things I noticed about him:
1. How much in kind he was with the culture of the Taiwanese immigrants I knew as a white kid going through a diverse school system - all the same little mannerisms and phrases.
2. That he thought it was oddly particular that I specified San Francisco when we discussed our places of origin. But then recalled it as "Old Gold Mountain", the term used by the Chinese who joined in the gold rush. (New Gold Mountain is Melbourne, Australia. Which as it happens is also a gold rush city that turned into a tech center.)
I feel like our ignorance is rather set by preexisting connections or lack thereof, bits of history learned here and there and how our local society positions itself relative to others: surprise at that idea that if people live in a place, it might have the trappings of civilization. On HN it would be strange to be unaware of San Francisco. Someone picked at random from the East Coast cities might think of it as irrelevant(compared to New York, which is actually a surprisingly common comparison). Likewise it doesn't surprise me that some city dwellers see the Midwest as somehow equivalent to the Siberian wilderness.
But like all the other Minneapolis-St Paul teams, it’s named after Minnesota, not Minneapolis or St Paul. I guess the Minnesota Twins kind of technically are, but.. it’s not great from a metropolitan branding perspective.
I bet you don't live in a large city though? This sounds like small town nickname games. Source: I grew up in a small town where everyone had to have a nickname.
My home state of Michigan is frequently mistaken for Minnesota by Californians — so I totally believe it when west coasters ask if it ever gets above freezing in Minnesota.
As a new englander, living in the PNW, dreaming of returning to california sun, I sure do miss my time in the midwest (although i've never been to Minnesota specifically).
Obviously you can't generalize everyone, but the people i met in the MW were way nicer than the people i knew from the east coast or west coast. I've been invited into many strangers homes as if i was a close friend. Very few people seem to be captured by a blind viral drive towards success the way you find in places like NYC or SF, and instead people are just happy and enjoy their position in life. (not to say people don't do good work, or don't succeed at goals). If you dream of a nice middle class life, with a quaint house and a nice family, and all that jazz, it seems like a great place to be, and a culture that wants you to have it... if you're straight and white and "normal".
The weather sure does suck though. Hot summers, cold snowy winters. Worse than new england, with less money to keep roads and infra in shape. That said, i find myself every fall on the west coast missing "real fall" where the leaves change and the brisk wind cools you down outside as you can see your breath. Throwing on a soft flannel and grabbing something warm to drink while you stand outside and enjoy nature...
The “if you’re straight and white and normal” sure doesn’t track with my experience. I’m a software engineer in Overland Park, Kansas, and live in a middle class neighborhood in the suburbs. Cows a mile one way and IKEA the other way. It’s the “American Dream” town, and it’s MORE diverse than when I lived in the city. My neighbors are Indian and Jordanian, Kenyan, Chinese, Vietnamese, Pakistani, African American, Caucasian (some from US, some from other countries). I bought this house from a Nepalese couple based on their names.
... Overland Park is 82% White[0]. It's one of the wealthiest white suburbs of Kansas City, and has been for decades.
I appreciate your experience is different than the statistics, but it's quite literally less diverse than the US as a whole, and less than Minneapolis and many other midwestern cities.
Okay but the grandparent seemed to be stating that enjoying living in a place like this in the Midwest requires being white and straight. I think the main thing my neighbors all have in common is they have children and work professional middle class jobs.
Also, I likely see the younger people, there are quite a few old people who retire in OP. The blue valley school districts have a makeup that skews fewer whites (70%) versus a place like San Francisco where whites apparently send their children to private schools rather than public schools. So in terms of actually raising children to meet people who are different than them, it seems like the Midwest is a clear winner. Despite whites making up 40% of the population of San Francisco, only 20% of the enrolled students are white.
> the grandparent seemed to be stating that enjoying living in a place like this in the Midwest requires being white and straight
I don't think they meant that you can't own a house and lead a nice life if you're not straight and white. I think they just meant to say it's difficult to 'fit into' Midwestern culture if you don't fall into certain identity categories. While I'm from the Midwest and have fondness in my heart for it, I have to concede this is true from experience.
From a quick look at what DDG feeds me, Overland Park is a nice Kansas City suburb. With a bunch of higher education institutions. And a botanical garden! This place seems like a midwestern outlier.
The town I grew up in (unnamed Iowa) now offers to pay remote workers to move there. The town has declined since I remember it in the 1980s as a fortune 500 factory town with a population of about 15,000. It has never had a botanical garden. It was always safest to be white, straight, and normie in whatever way possible if you have to be there.
Same stat likely applies to Kansas. The closest comparison to Overland Park would be some suburb of Milwaukee. I guarantee Milwaukee area diversity is higher than Wisconsin as a whole.
The point is that people make generalizations that they don't realize based on their personal experience. For example, I can make tons of generalization about how nice India is for tourists as an Indian (I currently live in America but travel back for family and as a tourist occasionally) but someone who's white might not share that same experience because they might be hounded by scammers and people looking to make a quick buck off of an unsuspecting foreigner.
Similarly, cities and people in the midwest might be great if you're straight, white, and "normal" but that might not be true for everyone. Will people be as welcoming if they see you as an outsider? Maybe. I try to keep an open mind but I also can't be 100% sure.
Yes but people don't care about Asians because they're white adjacent now. You're right though I had way more interactions with black people when I lived in the midwest.
He's just saying that the Midwest (eg. Wisconsin) is not generally as diverse as Overland Park, which is true. You should examine what made you react so strongly to this.
I'm currently in JoCo as well and my subdivision is much, much less diverse than my previous home within Kansas City city limits. My son's school is 80% white, 99% non-economically-disadvantaged, 93% students without disabilities. It's not representative of my past life experiences in KC, Boston, SF, Seattle, or SoCal.
Ahhhhh you gotta embrace it and find the good in it or you'll just resent everything :) St Paulite here. This morning it was 9 degrees F on the way to the bus. The snow has a beautiful, sparkling layer of ice from the rainy drizzle we got the other day. Most of the plants were covered in a thin coating of ice, the streetlights reflecting through them looked like inverted icicles. It's snowing now, we'll probably get 2" this afternoon, lovely to crunch through.
I live in Ohio and it's probably my faulty memory at work but it seems that our winters used to be much more like what you describe. I can distinctly recall hunting deer in -20F weather in the 80s and my cheap plastic orange vest just disintegrating as I walk. Lots of weekends and evenings spent sledding or trying to optimize packing vs throwing in a good snowball fight (afterall it's not good until someone bleeds, right?)
Aside from a nice blast of snow last year, it seems that our winters are now largely an indiscriminate blah of slush and rain and I'm tired. Need to relocate north or south and i can't figure out which.
I live an hour or so south of St. Cloud - you should have seen that ice on my drive yesterday. It covered the long grass that’s still around along with the trees and it was backlit by the sun making everything sparkle.
> the people i met in the MW were way nicer than the people i knew from the east coast or west coast.
I read once something along the lines of "People in New York say 'fuck off' but mean 'have a good one' where as people in California say 'have a good one' but mean 'fuck off'"
I am from the Seattle area and prefer neither of those scenarios because we are often fairly introverted (see the "Seattle Freeze").
> Obviously you can't generalize everyone, but the people i met in the MW were way nicer than the people i knew from the east coast or west coast.
> it seems like a great place to be, and a culture that wants you to have it... if you're straight and white and "normal".
That suggests that you are using a definition of “nice” that many people (especially those who are not, but even many who are, unless the last term includes bigotry within its ambit) straight and white and “normal” would rather strongly disagree with.
> the people i met in the MW were way nicer than the people i knew from the east coast or west coast.
The people i met were way more polite than people elsewhere. Thats what nice meant.
> it seems like a great place to be...
It seems to be a place that is rewarding to be in and will make you happy (if you fit in and want their cultural norms). Normal in this context = Want a quaint middle class hetero nuclear white-picket-fence american-dream style life and you're also polite and friendly just like those around you. Many people want that, especially "all american" people who grew up (white, middleclass, american) with that experience themselves (and american propoganda). No bigotry implied... thats not everyones experience, but its probably the "normal" for a native Midwesterner (from my time there).
Why did you feel it was necessary to put that in your comment? Are you upset that a specific skin color of people decided to migrate to the Midwest?
Did you witness lgbtq or people of certain skin colors being run out of town or receiving some sort of prejudice? Or are you being bigoted and just saying that due to their specific skin color and life choices they want people with different lifestyles to not enjoy prosperity?
> Did you witness lgbtq or people of certain skin colors being run out of town or receiving some sort of prejudice?
It's been a pretty consistent report of people I know who are visibly not “straight and white and ‘normal’” and whose prior US experience is limited to relatively cosmopolitan coastal areas who visit the Midwest (urban areas other otherwise) that not only does the WASP-normativity seem higher, but even minorities engage in more and more aggressive self-segregation from visibly different minorities, to the point of active avoidance on the street.
Oddly, people who are or pass as “straight and white and ‘normal’” are much less likely to report this, and often seem surprised to hear it from others.
The issue I have here is the problem that they are not strait or white? Or it is a cultural problem where their behavior and actions are not the cultural norm?
basically I dont believe it is the fact the person is non-white, or non-strait that is the issue, the issue is the actions, behaviors, attitude, and likely politics of the person that ends up being the problem, not their immutable characteristics.
Yes. It is not a problem to be non-white or non-straight. However, if that describes you, then you might have problems with society - people mistreating you.
> the issue is the actions, behaviors, attitude, and likely politics of the person that ends up being the problem, not their immutable characteristics.
Are you saying that non-white or non-straight people who have negative experiences are acting/behaving/believing in a problematic way? If so, then no - they should not have to act like straight white people to be respected by society.
Also you can believe whatever you want but that's also incorrect - some people act disrespectfully towards people strictly based on their immutable characteristics, knowing nothing about how the victims act/behave/etc.
> Did you witness lgbtq or people of certain skin colors being run out of town or receiving some sort of prejudice?
Yes. Multiple teachers at my middle and high school were fired/forced out. This was long ago but not that long ago. I'm sure much as changed since then, and I wouldn't generalize that experience to the entire region, but it's always astounding to me when people don't realize that hostility to lgbtq people is very, very much a thing that not-even-close-to-retirement folks experienced first-hand while living in the midwest.
> Did you witness lgbtq or people of certain skin colors being run out of town or receiving some sort of prejudice?
Yes. "Prejudice" is a very polite way of describing the treatment i've seen such people experience.
> Are you upset that a specific skin color of people decided to migrate to the Midwest?
No, people can move where ever they want. Its a warning to those people that they may not have the positive experience others had. See point on prejudice.
> due to their specific skin color and life choices they want people with different lifestyles to not enjoy prosperity?
1. StraightWhiteNormal are not life choices.
2. People who are different may not enjoy or be afforded the same experience. See point on prejudice.
3. "Enjoy Prosperity" is very loaded. Not everyone finds that implied life prosperous.
>>>Did you witness lgbtq or people of certain skin colors being run out of town or receiving some sort of prejudice?
A close friend of mine is a black Muslim, Marine Corps officer, and Afghanistan veteran. Likes to date white women (who doesn't?). He used to live/work predominantly in Ohio, also a bit in Texas I think. He got SOOOO tired of butthurt white guys harassing him at bars and such that he resigned his commission. Why was he fighting for this country to be treated this way at home? He then joined the New Zealand military for a few years, and now lives there permanently (presumably as a NZ citizen).
The largest collection of skinheads exists in Oregon. You're showing your bias, totally based off a handful of anecdotal evidence.
>It's reaffirming to hear so many other people have similar sentiments.
Oof sounds pretty similar to something a racist would say.
I'm fine with it though, move away. Part of the reason the Midwest is one of the better areas to live in and still affordable is because coastal elites continue believing they live in some utopia, while suckling the media narrative on flyover areas. Yep it's not appealing just avoid it. Enjoy all those homeless minorities you pretend to care about on the coasts! Thanks! :)
Ok how about this since we're going to just throw out unproven accusations and anecdotal evidence...
I was born in the rural midwest and lived there for almost 30 years of my life. Not once have I ever heard of anyone receiving the treatment you claim to have received. Not once have I ever seen anyone receiving that treatment. Therefore, I'm inclined to believe your wild accusations that are so far outside the norm are some Jussie Smollett level incarnations unless you have verifiable evidence.
Since I have the experience of multiple years in the midwest and you were just briefly visiting means my anecdotes have more weight. Just like I wouldn't trust a person from London to provide an accurate representation of life in the Congo I also do not trust you to provide and accurate depiction of life in the midwest.
I live in CO now. I heard the N word multiple times coming out of white student's mouths here. So, I'll just go ahead and make an unfair blanket statement and assume the entirety of the western US is racist scum? NO, because I'm more intelligent than that and not a prejudiced bigot that assumes one person or a handful of people represent and entire area of the country.
Take look at your responses. You're the one painting an entire group of people negatively based on one experience and we have online proof of it. That is the definition of bigotry.
> MARTIN: If you're just joining us, we're talking about a new study that literally puts certain racist, homophobic and hate speech directed toward people with disabilities on the map. Our guest is Professor Monica Stephens, who led a team that literally put these terms on a map. Danielle, you wanted to say something.
> BELTON: Oh, I was going to say that it doesn't surprise me that you'd have a lot of racist tweets out of Illinois or Indiana. Being a native Midwesterner, there are certain regions and hot spots within these individual states that have a reputation for people being very vocal about minorities. And in the case of Illinois and Indiana, and even my home state of Missouri, you have a significant African-American population, not enough where we're the majority in any type of capacity, but just enough where people feel the need that they can be very expressive in how they want to complain about it.
> You know, you can't complain about something unless you actually see it on a daily basis. So it's like - sometimes I think maybe people use Twitter less in Montana, but there's a lot fewer minorities in Montana.
> MARTIN: Well, but that's an interesting question, though, because there's all kinds of conventional wisdom, which may or may not comport with fact, around how racial attitudes are formed. But one of sort of the truisms is that familiarity would lessen these kinds of attitudes because people would know somebody, right, they would know somebody of a different race, and therefore - or hopefully more than one person - and therefore that there would be less inclination toward these kinds of attitudes.
> BELTON: You'd think. That's true, but in the Midwest, a lot of these major cities are heavily segregated. So in many cases, familiarity has bred like contempt between people, because people are in their segregated enclaves, and they feel very strongly about people who are different from them.
Exactly, thanks for agreeing with my point that a handful of experiences from a few people doesn't mean an entire area, race, religion, group etc. is abhorrent. Because, if you did think that way there would be a very specific term for you.
It would be pretty similar to me calling all Muslims evil since 9/11 happened. Agree?
Yup. That sums my experiences up nicely, although I would add "if you're straight and white and 'normal' and don't care about how people treat anyone else".
You think it's bad being from Minneapolis-St. Paul, try telling them you're originally from Detroit!
It's getting better but the amount of ignorance about Detroit is amazing! I tried once talking an evangelist into adding Detroit to the road show around twenty years ago. There had just been an article in Time magazine and it said something like the city had the lowest number of college graduates per capita of any major city and there were less than 670,000 people. The guy immediately hit me with that fact. He said we couldn't possibly go to a place that small and if we did there wouldn't be that many developers.
I said that may be true for the city of Detroit but the Detroit metro has over four million people and I assure you there are a lot of developers. So they decided to add Detroit as a tour stop and he later told me that it was one of the largest and most enthusiastic audiences on the entire tour.
Even today Detroit gets left off most tech tours and when one does add them they're pleasantly surprised by the turn out. That's despite the fact that Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Twitter have offices there.
There's something particularly exciting about Detroit that's hard to put my finger on, especially the last few years of development in the Midtown area. Something about all of the lovely art deco architecture slowly being re-occupied and revitalized by tech/retail/restaurants makes it an incredibly interesting time and place to be around.
Even during the worst of times there's a spirit about Detroit. A friend of mine said in the early days she would be on a call and people would ask out loud why Detroit is even on the call. Nowadays they don't want to start the call until Detroit is online.
It's still quite the secret but Detroit's startup community is strong and growing. The skeptics will say when you're that far down it's easy to grow. But it's been ten years and slows no sign of slowing down.
Instead of being jealous of Detroit suddenly getting the attention Ann Arbor leaders are now beginning to find ways to work together. Sadly I wish the rest of the state could get some of their joint mojo.
I don't have the gumption to move there, but I completely agree. There's a lot of desire to move to the "next big" city (recent example being Austin), but I think there's a lot more pride in revitalizing a city with an existing identity. I think there's also a future where we're just creating more pockets of urban (and suburban) decay by hopping to whichever trendy city. American population isn't expanding like it was decades ago. imo, some metros (recent growing ones like Austin, Dallas, Phoenix, Atlanta) are expanding at a rate that will not be sustainable in 30-40 years. Parts of those areas will be in an even worse situation than places like Detroit.
I live in the Twin Cities, but moved there from Detroit over twenty years ago when a Minnesota-based company bought the company where I was a contract developer and offered me a permanent position if I relocated (which they completely expensed). The company also agreed to fly me out for a weekend to visit the Twin Cities. I visited the downtown and Uptown and knew I would love living there. And I still love it here almost 25 years later. (I did live in the SF Bay Area from early 2016 to late 2018 then moved back to the T.C.)
I just wish I could get some decent coney dogs or Buddy's Pizza out here. (No I haven't been to Uncle Frankie's yet)
Going back to mason's point though the size of Greater Detroit metropolitan area is hugely underestimated. And not tapping into that area for market or talent opportunities (or delicious Coney dogs) is an unfortunate mistake.
Course if you prefer Lafayette Coney Island you're out of luck ;<).
Buddy's Pizza is finally starting to expand all over Michigan. Got one going in just down the street next Spring. Eventually they will make it out your way. Until then there's always GoldBelly:
The worst part of being a developer in the midwest is the companies; banks, financial services, insurance, telecoms, insurance, banks. Did I mention insurance and banks? Of course there is more variety, but I think most would agree there's not a lot of cutting edge stuff going on "here" generally.
Growing remote oppurtunities do mitigate that, but the number of companies trying to "modernize" their infrastructure is... depressing.
I was a developer for IBM in Rochester, MN 20 years ago, and an intern at Cray Research in Chippewa Falls WI before that. I have to say all the engineers were impressive, knowledgeable, and humble at the same time. Software engineering was looked on as profession, and not a lifestyle or a path to a quick buck, and it showed. I guess I don't know if that's how it was everywhere 20 years ago, or if that was the mid-west culture. But I sure do miss it.
Thanks for triggering my PTSD of working with both an insurance agency in Chicago and large bank in Cincinnati that were both launching new projects in Cold Fusion in 2016-2018. Luckily I was only development adjacent. Both orgs were very laid back and were typically 35 hour work weeks with moderated expectations and lots of 15+yr tenured people. If one wanted to slack and coast, it wouldn't really be noticed.
There are legacy companies everywhere. There are more than enough interesting startups or remote opportunities in the Midwest (city depending) that this isn’t really true any more
The interesting companies (Duolingo, Argo, Root, maybe Capital One, etc) in the Midwest won't hire anyone from regular local universities. They get all their people from CMU/Stanford/UCs. If you went to a place like Ohio State the best you can hope for locally is DBA at an insurance company. A lot of the engineers I graduated with have given up on this and are doing real estate or retraining to become a teacher. You can work for SpaceX, Google, Amazon, but you need to move out of the Midwest first. So out of college you need to ask yourself if giving up all your local friends and family is worth having a fulfilling career. It's hard.
The workplace culture is different too. If you're in the rust belt, your managers over age 50 came from manufacturing lines and were taught that they need to literally see you looking like you're working all the time and they'll use phrases like "extract value from human capital". They'll want you to beg and plead for permission to use your PTO, but then put in your performance review that you're getting a 1% instead of a 2% raise for excessive time off utilization. My friend's telecom workplace just announced that their holiday bonus is that they may wear jeans on Fridays all 2022.
I live in Columbus, worked at Chase, and currently work at ScriptDrop (we coordinate prescription deliveries). I don’t have a CS degree, just a bootcamp. I haven’t encountered, or heard of anyone who has encountered, any of the issues you mention (I’ve never had a PTO request turned down or even questioned).
Small sample size, so maybe there are idiotic companies and managers out there, but they’re probably not as common as you suggest.
Also, I prefer working for a company that has demonstrated and tangible real-world value. Not every problem in the world is an algorithm away from being solved.
That’s good to hear and I do believe you that there’s great work environments around here. The culture I’m describing is at places like Highmark, Norfolk Southern, and First National Bank which obviously couldn’t be anything like a startup even if they wanted to. It’s just the only thing I and the rest of my network locally can get.
n-of-one here, but i worked at a rust belt company that was very similar to what was described above. Not quite as bad, but def along that way of the spectrum and not "free lunch wear whatever" of an sf startup.
Rust belt company != tech startup/co though, right? We’re talking tech jobs at startups or later stage technology companies in the Midwest which are far more like typical tech startups elsewhere than not.
Of course there are lots of shitty legacy companies here that would be awful to work for, but those companies exist everywhere
Yea but my point is those companies are everywhere. If you go to work at a legacy company doing tech then you’re not working at the kind of company I’m talking about. Thankfully, tech companies that “get it” are far more numerous in the Midwest than even five years ago
Yeah, tons of exceptions, but the top tier of Midwestern startups are just as credential obsessed as their coastal counterparts in my experience.
And overall I'd say pay, benefits, and labor practices are often worse as well. Even if you don't work for some old economy company - not all are as bad as the above post suggests btw - hustle culture is often the norm. But without the six figure West Coast salary, and often less/no equity.
Not to mention that if you're dissatisfied, job hopping is a lot harder to do when there are only maybe a dozen companies in town - not all of which have your tech stack. Less of an issue now with remote.
Even accounting for cost of living differences you can make more on the West Coast, and be in a more competitive job market that allows you to switch jobs easily if you want more pay or are tired of your current employer. The Midwest can still work out great for many people though! Maybe you want a big house, or you have family close by, or you want a leadership role that you'd never get in a million years at your big coastal employer, etc...
Remote has made this far more equalized and competitive. Six figures are by far the norm for startup/tech salaries if you’ve started a new engineering job at a Midwest company in the last few years. I know many engineers making $150-200K+ and living here, along with equity.
As a startup employer in the Midwest this doesn’t resonate with me at all. We don’t care what school you went to as long as you’re good. In this hiring climate no one can afford to be weirdly selective about school
Midwest is broad and from what I hear about Chicago and Minneapolis they're much more progressive. I'm referring mostly to Ohio/western Pennsylvania/WV.
It's good to hear that you'd give local grads a chance though, thanks.
People in Ohio, western PA, and WV are very, very friendly toward local university graduates. You’re more like to get a job in West Virginia graduating from Ohio State than you are Harvard…
To your point about getting jobs at SpaceX and Amazon you have to leave the Midwest but that’s only after you graduate from Ohio State, Michigan, Purdue, Northwestern, Wisconsin, or any of the other schools these companies regularly recruit at. Have friends and colleagues at all of them. You’d be surprised.
Same here, I helped do recruiting for a previous employer, a healthcare tech company in Columbus, OH. AFAIK the other local tech companies are fairly egalitarian regarding higher education.
Technically Pennsylvannia isn’t the Midwest but I don’t think you need CMU to prove your point - you can just list all sorts of other notable powerhouse Midwest schools.
The Midwest doesn’t neatly divide according to state lines. Cities like Pittsburg and Buffalo are pretty solidly Midwestern, despite the fact that the eastern parts of their states are definitely not.
- Cost of living. Its the cheapest place in the US to live.
- Gender ratio. This is something new grads should absolutely consider. The gender ratio even on midwest tech teams feels nation-leading, with many of the companies I've talked to (including my own) near 50-50. But even beyond tech; its far more equitable here. This is a theme I see all the time with west-coast tech; they talk about making change, implement tons of policies to try to it happen, but here, its already happened. We just don't talk about it. This is important for new grads even beyond their job; finding a partner here is so much easier & more fun.
- Pay & Job Security. Some companies are "old" and still stuck in their ways and won't match more high-tech salaries. You'll find that anywhere. Other companies have more progressive leadership, despite being a traditionally old business, and pay aggressively well. You'll also find that anywhere. You have to spend some time researching who is who, but: these companies have tons of money, desire to modernize, and the best part: very little sense of what being a "good engineer" means. Read into that what you will, but: you literally won't ever have a problem finding a job. I've gotten offers after literally just casually talking with someone for fifteen minutes in a company's engineering leadership at a tech meetup.
- Remote. Many west coast companies are now paying west coast salaries regardless of work location. Local companies are pushing for more work-from-home or hybrid.
- Novelty. Tech still feels nascent in many of these cities. Maybe not MSP/Chicago, but more of the second tier midwestern cities. The communities are small, three-person startups are still everywhere, and there's a startling amount of "old money" looking to invest. Most awesomely, there's much less bullshit; in general, you hear what some of these companies are working on and think "shit, that will sell".
- Weather. You get used to it. But you know what we don't get? Wildfires, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Tornadoes are common, but they generally don't strike major cities. I'd take the midwest environment over west coast any day; warm weather every day is fine, but imagine buying a house in an area that's years overdue for an earthquake that will level your city.
> Cost of living. Its the cheapest place in the US to live.
When I lived in a "low COL town" that wasn't in the midwest (about 2 hours from a major city of any kind and about an hour in various directions from a couple small cities) people would say this all the time... "Sure I'm only making 60% of what I could be but my CoL is so low!!"[0]
But my rent was still over $600/mo + utilities for a 2-room apartment (each). There were some really bad options for sub-$300, but you were living in a sub-$300 apartment. You can make this choice anywhere.
Gas costed the same it costs everywhere else
Walmart prices were walmart prices.
Restaurants were typically cheap but that's because they weren't amazing - the population couldn't afford to sustain an high-end restaurant. There are cheap restaurants everywhere.
I felt like it was cheap compared to outliers like seattle and the bay area, but not cheap on its own. I'm interested in how this might be different from the midwest. What kinds of products or services stand out to you as significantly contributing towards a low CoL?
[0] With remote the bit about 60% is no longer as accurate, but it's what a lot of people said at the time, and some of them still make comparatively little and say they're fine because of the low CoL.
The $1300/mo apartment I have in the midwest would easily cost $3000+ in SF/LA/NYC. Three bedrooms, 2000 sq ft, two stories. I live alone. I can afford it easily.
Median home values. My state: $152k. CA: $551k. WA: $393k. NY: $305k.
Gas absolutely does not cost the same as everywhere else. In my midwest state, the average today is $3.05/gal. In California, $4.65. WA: $3.85. Even in IL, which is "expensive midwest" for sure, its $3.37.
Electricity: my state, $0.135/kwh. CA: $0.226. NY: $0.196. There are some generally high COL states like WA which have pretty cheap electricity.
"There are cheap restaurants everywhere". Even McDonalds charges more in different states. Its not the same! My state, a Big Mac costs $4.10. CA: $5.11. WA: $4.67.
Amount of paid sick/parental leave depends on the company. Overtime laws are if you work more than 40 you get paid time and a half or double for wage workers, and minimum wage is probably the federal minimum wage.
It depends on "where", in any city. You could certainly find a 2BR in somewhere like MSP or Chicago, but it won't be near the downtown core, and you'll have some interesting neighbors.
A couple years ago, myself and two friends were living in a 6Br/2.5Ba house for a total of $1900/mo. So, $633 each, and while the house was a little cold in the winter and the neighborhood wasn't exactly the cultural center of the midwestern city, it was a short drive to somewhere more interesting, and we each had two bedrooms. And no, it wasn't a mansion; it just had a really strange layout, and a couple of the "bedrooms" legally weren't "bedrooms".
You can find it. But oftentimes kids coming right out of college come to big towns with this idealism of "i want to live in a high rise apartment, in the downtown center, go out with friends every weekend". Every time I have that conversation, I encourage them: do that for a year. You'll have the money. But year 2: think more critically about saving money, move further away from the "hip" areas. And still go out every weekend with your friends!
Top 50 covers a lot more than you'd think! The Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington metro is actually the 16th largest, and there's plenty more midwest cities included as well. But you are of course right that $600/month is widely less than what you'd be paying in any of the high cost coastal cities
> but imagine buying a house in an area that's years overdue for an earthquake that will level your city.
Is there credibility to the notion of knowing that a place is going to have an earthquake within the precision of one human’s lifetime, or even a few generations of human’s lifetimes?
The gender ratio thing is weird and a surprising reason for why people my age seem to want to work in New York City. I really don’t get it - as a non-white guy people like me are out of luck no matter the ratio.
I've stared at this comment for about an hour now.
I'm reading this as you saying that where you currently are (the Midwest?) people your age perceive the gender ratio as poor, and think they'll have better luck with a better ratio in NYC. You feel like it doesn't matter whether you're in the Midwest or NYC, or whether the ratio is good or bad, being non-white is a larger factor than location or ratio.
The gender ratios are so messed up in New York and San Francisco that at one point there was a service that would fly women from NY to SF, and men from SF to NY, for the weekend for group dating.
I’ve heard first hand people take jobs in NY instead of SF as they think they’ll have a better chance at finding a woman partner.
Gender ratios in NYC aren’t actually bad for women. There are actually more single men in nyc between ages 18-35 than single women. This stat is widely glossed over. But this is because that’s true in 95% of metros in the USA!!
There are only more women overall in nyc because they include women past 35 - which is past the prime dating years.
This holds true in just about every major city in the USA. 5% more men are born overall. It’s only evened out by age 40 because men kill themselves at a much higher rate than women. (General mental health crisis going on for men that is shoved under the rug)
>>>being non-white is a larger factor than location or ratio
Back when OKCupid's blog had a bunch of interesting data and insights about dating, the conclusion was: if you are male, and you are NOT a top-tier chiseled-jaw white/black/Latin guy....your prospects in the US are slim-to-none. And that was before women had legions of OnlyFans simps at their fingertips.
I miss the Minneapolis that was. I lived and worked there for a time after getting married. The city is not what it was ten years ago, though.
Most of the restaurants I frequented (and they were exceptionally good) are gone. Crime has dramatically increased, including all time highs for murders in St. Paul, and Minneapolis three murders away from its all time high.
I lived in an apartment in Minneapolis. I could walk just a block or two into downtown. It was a wonderful, vibrant city. A ten minute walk to Lake Calhoun, groceries down the street, my barber, and the ice cream shop right next to each other. It was my favorite of all the places I've lived. I just wish it was still as I recall it. Perhaps my perspective is too full from consuming news and has too little from current residents.
> Perhaps my perspective is too full from consuming news and has too little from current residents.
Yeah, you're pretty deep into "old man yells at clouds" territory here :) Turn off the news and come visit. The Twin Cities are still great. Maybe you can come discover some new favorite restaurants, we've got loads of great ones.
Having lived in Minneapolis proper for the last 10 years and growing up nearby, the restaurant scene is VASTLY better than it was before. We used to have stuffy, overpriced, mediocre restaurants. Now we’ve gotten vibrant, new and creative places that aren’t just serving the same old fair dressed up. Sure some of the old classics have closed, but there’s always been a new, better place taking their spot. Case in point, Lucia’s => Sooki & Mimi. Lucias’s was good, but Sooki & Mimi is phenomenal
That gave me a good laugh. I used to live right near the Walker Art Center. Lake Calhoun was about two miles away, so yes, that was more like thirty minutes. Seemed shorter, though.
I live downtown (North Loop) with my wife and two daughters under 5.
The crime narrative is strange, and the restaurant scene has never been better.
The downtown core isn’t quite the same, but that’s of course because nobody goes to the office anymore - but they’re still building everywhere (including another 40+ tower on Nicollet)
I in uptown and got an email a few weeks ago explaining the bullet holes in the building, and still get emails from the U about armed robberies regularly and much more often than a decade before. There is no question crime rates are up significantly, police are too busy to respond to many calls, and even caught crime isn’t being investigated, charged, or convicted anywhere near properly.
The restaurant scene did take a significant covid dip and several of my favorite places are gone but there is still quite a lot and a few new things.
Yeah uptown got hit really hard. Maybe the other commenters don't live in uptown but I do and the crime issues are pretty wild since the riots. My neighbor was carjacked at gunpoint by a group of teenagers in our parking lot. You have to be very aware of your surroundings now. I'd say about half of the businesses have closed permanently around me.
The Walgreens on 27th and Hennepin gets robbed at least once a month. One time they just shot up drive through windows and the employees left while they robbed the place. Luckily the glass is bulletproof on them. The cops don't seem to really respond things.
One of the weirdest things was this summer where they were doing construction on 28th and Hennepin and there was a cop posted up there during the day. I asked him why and he said "because the construction workers were being assaulted and their tools were being stolen". And this is in a nice area right by Lake of the Isles.
Deny it if you want, it's just like a political mess now because the DA will no longer bring a lot of prosecutions to trial it seems like.
Sure, a few restaurants I loved have closed, but that seems to mostly be due to covid (e.g. Bachelor's Farmer) or poor management (Butcher & the Boar). If anything restaurants have gotten even better in the last 10 years in the Twin Cities. There's of course higher-end places like Spoon and Stable, Kado no Mise, and Owamni, and also quite a few better Chinese options that have opened in Dinkytown (e.g., Lao Sze Chuan). And of course old favorites like Bar La Grassa that's still going strong.
My pet theory on Bachelor Farmer is that being owned by the Daytons affected the closing quite a bit.
It was a hobby of theirs, but nothing they were willing to keep around as a risk (contrast with Spoon and Stable, Gavin’s identity). The other restaurants in the area are booming (Kado no Mise, Belacour, Billys are a few particular post-Covid success stories on the same block)
I just wish somebody would take that wonderful space. I’m sure it commands a hefty rent.
Batchelor Farmer went downhill when the original chef left, years before Covid. Spoon and Stable spelled the end of it what with being a block away and far better. I visit MN a couple times a year from CA, the food scene is strong and getting stronger.
There are absolutely problems in the twin cities, including ineffectual leadership, but I am - to a degree - amazed by the picture my WI family has of the place I live. By their telling, the entire city is still in flames from the George Floyd protests, and you have a 50/50 chance of being carjacked by teenagers every time you drive. My gut tells me that it must speak to the effectiveness of media filtering, but I am at a loss for how to effectively push back on it.
It's been close to 20 years since I was in Minnesota. I was there doing contract work for Wells Fargo and really enjoyed the city. I can't remember what it was called but I still tell people about the human habitrail on the second floor that you (well, presumably mostly 'we' unaccustomed visitors) can use to get around town when it's too damn cold outside.
The skyways! They're fun and iconic, but in some ways they're the worst thing about downtown Minneapolis. Since so many office workers use them to get around, the streets feel dead and car-dominated even by the standards of American cities.
I also have the opposite view of Minneapolis 10-15 years ago.
so much urban renewal has happened since then. It honestly became pretty run down in the core suburban sprawl/white flight years of the 90s. The last decade has been pretty amazing with renovations, neighborhood developments, and almost all of the surface parking lots turned into something far better.
I don't understand why people quote the murder rates as any kind of indication of the city itself. Murders are far and away being committed by people you have no association with to people you have no association with.
Are you in a gang? No? You're fine. It's horrible and awful, but the way you've quoted it here is as if your personal likelihood of being murdered has meaningfully changed, when it hasn't (or maybe you rep tre tre crips or something, I don't know your life).
Check out this cool little late night snack place in St. Paul.[1] The idea is a bunch of little food trucks, but it’s all inside so you can enjoy it during the winter, too. What a cute date idea, right? Go out and see a movie, then get some late night tacos. It’s right in downtown, surely it’s safe.
Oh wait, it’s not at all safe. Fourteen innocent people were shot because some gang members showed up and opened fire indiscriminately. It hardly made the news.
I almost moved to uptown a few months ago and I am unbelievably happy that I decided to move to safe and boring Wayzata instead. I’ve lived in Houston and I never felt uncomfortable about walking around Montrose and Alabama at 1am, and I go to the rougher parts of Milwaukee regularly (Dineen Park), but I’ve never felt more exposed than in Minneapolis. I feel safer in most of Chicago than I do in most of Minneapolis.
Just to clarify, are you saying that because one single bad event happened, it therefore means something general about where that single bad event happened?
You say you feel safe in Texas?[0] Interesting.
34 people were murdered in St. Paul in 2020 [1]. The population of St. Paul is 311,527 [2]. That puts the murder rate at ~10.91 per 100,000 people.
400 people were murdered in Houston in 2020 [3]. The population of Houston is 2,304,580 [4]. That puts the murder rate at ~17.36 per 100,000 people.
Can you please explain to me why you feel safer in a place that is substantially more murderous?
Murder rates are useful for estimating the prevalence of violent crime, and crime overall, because they're almost always recorded. Compare to something like shoplifting in San Francisco: the number of incidents reported to the police is probably a big underestimate of how often it happens, since the police can't really do much.
Murder is not a useful measurement of overall crime, considering how disparately (both geographically and demographically) murder is spread through a city.
Like I said, if you're not interacting with a gang in a given city, you are substantially less likely to be murdered.
> In Minnesota, the emphasis is on working hard at whatever you do, and living a good life
I moved to Minnesota from Connecticut about 20 years ago. When describing the company culture during my interview, my manager said "well, we have a choice of Summer hours to give you more time off during our very short summers, but come Winter, everyone just hunkers down and gets to work." Said with a broad smile and excitement about getting to work! Really nice guy though, and a damn good engineer.
As I work more with someone from the midwest, and being from the mid-atlantic region myself, I'm growing more and more suspicious of the "hard worker" mindset.
What I'm seeing, over and over, is that this drive to "work hard" ends up creating all kinds of "bad" work; difficult/tedious labor intensive decisions rather than efficient and innovative ways that are objectively better.
He gets stuck on a problem, and won't put it down and go pick up the other problems that are easier to complete and provide similar (if slightly reduced) value to the customer. That's his "hard work" ethic at play, and I've found it pretty difficult to break him of that habit.
And this isn't some idle efficiency meddling on my behalf; instead of providing some incremental value on a daily or near-daily basis, he goes completely dark for days or even weeks at a time before surfacing with a "glorious solution" to the problem he's ratholed on. If he had dropped the work at the first sign of trouble (seemingly anathema to a "hard worker"), he would have found other ways to have an impact on our customers. He's substantially less effective because he wants to "work hard".
I do believe that people who value "hard work" generally don't understand this downside, and it's kind of fascinating to me, because of how ingrained this flawed trait is into an entire subset of American culture (being an American myself).
This is quite the hasty generalization. 70 million people live in the American Midwest. Do you really think that your coworker is the first person from the Midwest you’ve worked with? Jack Dorsey and Sam Altman are from St. Louis. John Carmack is from Kansas. Larry Page is from Michigan.
It sounds to me like you don’t like your coworker so you started to make a generalization about millions of people. Pretty silly thing to do, if you ask me.
I didn't say all midwesterners are like my coworker, I said the midwestern trait of "hard worker" that's referenced explicitly in the article has a logical flaw that I'm noticing in my coworker.
Though it does sound like I've struck a nerve! Not my intention, I'm just growing more suspicious of people who highly value "hard work" as a result of this logical issue with this value that I've noticed.
What kind of software do you write that self-describes too difficult problems as taking a few weeks? It’s crazy to me how attention seeking and superficial some software jobs and engineers are these days. Taking a few weeks to learn about the problem domain, research and implement a good solution is not extreme at all.
I probably wouldn’t think too highly of an engineer who drops work at the first sign of trouble and is only interested in going after low hanging fruit, with the rationalization that anything hard isn’t immediately delivering value to the customer and hence not worth it.
I’m also suspicious of people who are intentionally biased at such work. The next time someone is “rat holed”, instead of hating them for it, maybe try and take a break from your 0.5 point task and help out your fellow teammate stuck on a difficult problem?
It's immensely important to involve your users in what you're building, and going multiple weeks without showing a customer what you've built to gather feedback is a great way to build the wrong thing and kill a startup.
It may be fine if you're in a large company, but when your runway is measured in weeks not months, you don't have the luxury of rat holing. Even if you have "months" of runway, it's not generally acceptable to take 1/6th of that to build just one feature, especially if that feature isn't work on as a group, including the customer.
I value engineers that collect feedback every single day from customers, and if a "hard work ethic" means the developer is unwilling to collect iterative feedback, that developer should probably look for a role not on my team.
If you are having engineers talk to customers daily, the value of each of those interactions is likely not very high, or the scope of the work you are doing is transactional in nature. I would be cautious to fall into the trap of thinking the only thing that matters is customer feedback, it doesn't replace product strategy and is often times not the source of innovation. So many products have been built by rumination and coming up with something new, how do you explain Apple, Google, hardware tech companies, etc that release a product once a year? Henry Ford famously said if he had listened to his customers to the fault of everything, he would have delivered to them a faster horse, not a car. Many of the best products are created by solving problems that customers didn't even know they had in new and creative ways.
I would encourage you to keep an open mind and understand that if you want to grow beyond incremental work, you will need engineers that work on longer term projects, and be able to take gambles on work where the idea didn't directly come from a customer. Sure most of them probably won't pan out, but for the few that do, they often times open up entirely new features or product lines that you or your customers didn't even know existed, and are quite rewarding for the team. Every team needs a healthy balance of different kinds of thinkers, it's not something to be angry or resentful about.
This is an issue with hustle culture and not Midwesterners, IMO. I see just as much of this sort of thing, if not more, at my current West Coast employer that mainly hires out of top-20 CS programs
My experience with "hustle" culture is entirely the opposite. "hustle culture" folks are loathe to do any work at all until you can tie to directly back to value, usually for them.
Maybe on the business side, but I've seen lots of undesirable grinding from engineers from all sorts of places, and wanting to prove they have hustle (ie. they are hard workers) is often at the root of it.
I will vouch that the Midwest is highly underrated. People are friendly; there's way more diversity and culture than people seem to think; it's affordable.
My family (parents and siblings) sold their properties in California and moved to Minnesota, shortly before I moved to Washington with my wife. 2.5 years later we moved to Fargo. It looks like Irvine most of the year and has everything you need in Southern California for a fraction of the price.
Greetings from Wisconsin. I'd describe the attitude towards work a bit differently: I think we tend to have generally healthy attitudes about work-life balance. I've not seen the 996 culture here except in some rare cases. When we work, we work. Then we go home. There's probably a different age distribution among tech workers, that might be reflected in our attitudes. I have colleagues who are past 65 and still enjoy coming in and doing their thing.
Not everybody hates the winter. I love it. Right now I'm looking out at a nice snowstorm, and hoping to take a long walk in it. I believe the trick to dealing with the weather -- hot and cold -- is to get out and embrace it. If you're outside every day, the seasons won't take you by surprise. You'll figure out clothing. You'll find the nice places to take walks or ride your bike. It doesn't have to happen all at once, or even within the space of one year.
I live in Madison and believe it or not we have coastal VC-backed startups (including my own and a SoftBank-backed unicorn or two) and lots of professional engineers. A lot of people on the coasts are frankly just not that knowledgeable outside of their bubble and that’s okay, it really doesn’t mean that what the Midwest has isn’t significant. I have actually grown to quite like being an under the radar city for all the benefits that brings and having a different perspective on America
There's also a full-fledged Google office in Madison, in addition to their offices in Chicago and (soon) Rochester, Minnesota. Working as a developer and living in the Midwest doesn't necessarily mean leaving Big Tech.
I love Chicago and Minnesota but the Google offices in the MW tend to be data center jobs which I see complaints aren’t really “tech” jobs so much as supporting be data center. I recall a lot of the jobs were even sourced through temp agencies.
"In Minnesota, the emphasis is on working hard at whatever you do, and living a good life."
Having done my undergrad at the University of Michigan and spent a year and half in Detroit afterwards, I relate a lot to this article. People are just nicer and more personable here, there is less arrogance and an attitude of "doing the work".
It should be noted that CBBS, the first Computerized Bulletin Board System, was created because of a snow storm in the Chicago area. Constraints inspire creativity.
I lasted about 2 years in the PNW before I decided to go back to the midwest. It's worked out really well. A side benefit, Cincinnati is within driving distance of a lot of furry conventions. (Before the pandemic...)
The midwest is a lot more laid back than other places I've been. People are friendly here. I've had a few nice conversations with random strangers, just because we were standing in the same line. If you don't want to talk to people in line, that's fine too. You're not forced to interact with anyone, but there are a lot of opportunities if you want to.
This is so lovely and so remarkably familiar. Thank you so much for sharing. Having recently moved back to the midwest (SE WI) after being in the Seattle area for almost ten years, I feel so much of this. You've put it into words far better than I could dream of doing.
when I was at GDC 2016 I met a couple who are somewhat well-known in those circles and while hanging out one night they started talking about the complex mix of feelings they had about having just moved back to San Francisco after being away for years. they said that because the weather is so mild and largely unvaried there, it's easy for one to lose track of time month after month, and the years sometimes just seem to run together as a result. this was incredibly interesting to me, having grown up in South Dakota (whose status as "midwest" is disputed (if not "midwest," then what?)), which was an experience much like the one in this article. recently worsening cold-season arthritis aside, I very much enjoy the seasonal weather. "The summers are humid, hot, and fleeting, yet caked in an energy that can only be felt when a resource is limited" really resonates with me (except for the humid part).
Great Plains is a subset of the Midwest, not a distinct region. The Midwest is divided into the “Great Plains” and the “Great Lakes” subregions by the Census Bureau.
> it's easy for one to lose track of time month after month, and the years sometimes just seem to run together as a result.
I grew up with four distinct seasons and found this to be the case living in the Bay Area as well. There are a lot of microclimates on the coast and so experiences can vary, but I moved there on the tail end of an El Nino, which was one sort of season, and then experienced some other season for many years.
As a Canadian, I dig the midwest. It feels eminently familiar. Maybe more Canadian than much of Canada. Or large parts of Canada are a vaguely Britishy extension of the midwest. Or something.
I find it interesting, the geographical division in the US, too. Here, we are roughly "west coast -> rockies -> prairies -> central (great lakes st lawrence) -> maritime". Down there it's like "west coast -> rockies -> west -> new england / mid-atnlantic / east coast" and so our central and prairies overlap with what's "midwest." Ontario is sorta both midwest (a lot like Ohio) and also New England?
Anyways, praise to the midwest :-) I'd like to visit someday when things at the border aren't so insane.
This take is pretty spot-on. Many developers also move to Minnesota, so there are some pretty striking personality clashes in odd ways. As long as you like craft beer, though, you're golden
You wouldn't believe the extent of the beer scene in the Twin Cities. There's pretty much any beer you could imagine, then probably some ones you can't.
I moved here from Chicago ~6 years ago and was disappointed at how much worse the TC food scene was (it still has some gems, and is improving, as another commenter pointed out), but immediately I noticed a stark contrast in my social circles. In Chicago people would invite you to bars and restaurants, but in Minneapolis nearly everyone I met (coworkers, dates, etc) wanted to go to a brewery! And it's clear why - there's genuinely fantastic beers on every corner. You could spend months just trying to sample all the single cans that your local liquor store sells.
Even beer haters would be delighted at the nice array of sours and ciders around. My mom, a known beer-despiser, still asks me when we can get more "nice beers from that place you took me."
Thank you for sharing your experience. I recently became a midwest developer myself having moved to Chicago 2 years ago and I've wondered about the lives of colleagues in this part of the country as we've explored a little of Wisconsin and Indiana. They warned me that 6 weeks of the year I would wish to be anywhere else. 2019 was fine - I found the cold invigorating, and with like more than a few inches of accumulated snow, I thought reports had been exaggerated. The winter of 2020-2021, disabused me of that - 3 feet of snow piled outside for 2-3 months has humbled me.
I started as a southern developer 30 years ago, but in Texas I was considered a hippie. When I moved to Silicon Valley to fix that, I was considered too much of a Texan. After 10 years in CA we went back to Texas which felt more like home, but paradoxically was more isolating, because I knew very few software developers (working for myself). I must have thought this adventure in Chicago was going to be my happy medium.
So I wish you continued good luck in Minnesota. Say hello to Al Franken and Garrison Keillor for me (two Minnesotans I've enjoyed listening to for years).
I grew up in Detroit, but moved south about 15 years ago. I've got a couple friends from MN, and visited there for a conference ... maybe 8-9 years ago. I loved the downtown - big enough to feel like a 'real city', but not overwhelmingly so. That was my impression, anyway. I was only there for a few days, but really liked the short vibe I got. I was visiting in July, however, and kept imagining how brutal the winters would be. I have to imaging 'as bad as Detroit' or perhaps worse. It was amazing to me how quickly I don't miss winter/snow at all. I never cared for it, even when living there, but when you're born in to an area, you 'live with it'. After a while, much of your life is there, and leaving can be hard (friends/family/work/etc).
My family is in 34(f)-degrees-Detroit area right now, while I had a 72(f)-degrees afternoon. Just could not think of moving back permanently, but I do like to visit.
This is very good, and applies to so many people from the Midwest. This describes, pleasantly and without vitriol, the attitudes (shaped by perspective) that many coastal folks with little exposure to the rest of the US have. These are the same folks who call the Midwest states "flyover states", implying "nobody who's anybody stops or lives there".
I've been asked by someone from Boston if we celebrated Independence Day in Texas, and have seen a UC Berkeley graduate become genuinely frightened by the sight of a Southern Living cookbook.
Being ignorant of places you haven't been to is understandable, but it seems a common pattern for those in the Midwest to see the coastal places as "special" and desirable to at least visit; whereas geographically ignorant Californians (the ones I'm most familiar with) generally view all the interior states as "lesser". Granted, this is a bit of a generalized judgement on my own part.
I grew up in Minneapolis and then the suburbs and left as soon as I could... but returned to a small town about 2 hours drive southeast in a small town called Winona. It's the home of Fastenal, Peerless Chain, and a ton of other "startups" from the last 50 years. I work "remote" for my own consultancy turned Electron-based software company making apps for label printers. The cost of a home here in Winona, circa 10 years ago was about $100k and even though prices have nearly doubled the houses are still affordable. You don't need to make much to live here, and we love the beauty of Minnesota... especially southeastern Minnesota. It's MN "NICE!"
Hey, I live near you. Agree on multiple points. I doubt most people from the coasts would believe how good the food and drink scene in Winona and La Crosse is.
I think one of the biggest differences for midwest towns (I'm a native of St. Louis) is that when we meet someone else in our city who has similar interests / passion for tech, we're surprised, and automatically form some sort of bond, mostly because there are comparatively few.
The OP hits the nail on the head with the introverted part, too—there are many hardware and software devs in flyover country, but it seems like most are the heads-down, family-over-work types, and don't tend to be as public and/or extroverted (thus leading back to my mention of surprise when one of us finds another local).
I think I've met a grand total of two other people in my city who have ever commented on HN.
Oh boy. Thoughts from someone who's worked extensively east coast, west coast, and now midwest: Insanely cargo-culty with regard to technology and development practices, but 5 years behind. Tall nail gets hammered down. On the west coast, if you're really good, you're a god. On the east coast, people will try to level up to you. In the midwest, you'll get bullied/ostracized. Seriously. With limited decent opportunities, you're seen as an existential threat. Most opportunities pay poorly, and most of the ones that pay decently are awful. Layoffs and corporate instability rampant. Many places think offshoring is a silver bullet (!)
I was originally a developer from Des Moines, IA. Moving to Boston, and Los Angeles after that I was surprised to learn one of the early real time operating systems, called os9, came from a company from Des Moines in the 80's. That OS was used on the original generations of ATM machines deployed world wide. I worked on early real time streaming during the early 90's in Los Angeles, and Des Moines was one of the better places for locating experienced real time developers. A while ago I heard Iowa in general and Omaha, NE have growing tech hubs.
I'm a Midwest native and huge fan of the region. It's been great to see more big tech firms open offices here, in addition to a rising number of startups and software consulting firms. Was happily surprised to see that Tundra Labs, who recently launched a well-reviewed VR full-body tracking product, is based out of Green Bay, Wisconsin (I am not affiliated, just a Midwest VR enthusiast):
I like this one. Reminds me of how I felt moving into software engineering growing up in south Louisiana. I only moved to ATX, and yet others' bewilderment is my amusement.
i moved to the midwest from the san fran bay area. i could not have imagined it. people from the coast think they know but they dont know. coastal people have absolutely no idea about the midwest. like this guy says, if you tell a coastie some midwestern city or state they just stare blankly. two minutes later they will refer to your city/state again but mix it up with some other cliche midwestern city/state.
the experience of living in this place and sharing a house with natives has been mind bending. i have been to a dozen countries and these people are less like me than any other people i have met. it really makes you see how there are so many things that we take for granted that are really totally invaluable triumphs of cultural curation and accumulation. there are sensibilities that simply dont exist here and you didnt even realize that these things were sensibilities at all or that a person could not have them. there are so many gears and cogs that are essential to a good quality of life and a civilized standard of living that are invisible and whos names arent in the lexicon. to see a place like this is to see those pieces finally, through their absence. i really believe that raising a child in the midwest is form of child abuse.
many of these places are in need of nothing besides more intelligent people. they just suffer from poor planning, a lack of intellectual rigor within public institutions... if a bunch of coastal people would just come back then these midwestern cities would be the best cities in the country without a doubt. but its still a great choice if you just want an affordable place to escape to that has a functional economy/society.
yeah, exposing a child to nothing more than a corn field is abusive because when they become adults they have no tools to succeed or any context with which to understand and navigate the world. and also it creates a cultural barrier that really makes it hard for them to get along on the coast. you create this stunted human, yeah i think it meets the criteria for abuse if only just and if only in the most modern interpretation of the word abuse. i certainly would never do it to any kid that i had to raise. maybe youre from the midwest and if i have offended you then i apologize but no problem has ever gone away because people ignored it. it must be confronted like all the other societal problems that hurt people needlessly.
I grew up 15 minutes from Minneapolis, and have lived & worked in the Southern California area as well as up and down the Northeast (from Boston to DC).
It's not that people are specifically ignorant of the Midwest, it's that they're insular and myopic, and generally ignorant of anything outside of their regions and vacation spots (Hawaii and Florida respectively, sometimes Western Europe).
If anybody is looking for a vc-backed startup with deep MN roots, connect with me about Civic Eagle. Email is jesse@
Definitely have had some similar experiences though overall I have to say it hasn’t been a barrier to hiring and interfacing with tech folks from the coasts. Our MN team members are extra loyal, though ;) Honestly it’s a bigger barrier on the finance side.
About 10 years ago, the recruiters at Netflix focused on Midwestern/Southern devs. It seemed like there were a lot of good people working for Target/Walmart/Dominoes/Playboy, etc. who were mostly getting overlooked. Netflix paid enough money to convince most of them to move to California, and some of our best people came from there.
The part about working on side projects in the winter resonates with me. I've lived in Indiana my entire life and am considering moving to Texas to escape the cold, gray winters. Part of me is worried that I'll be less productive in the winter because of that, but I think it will be worth the tradeoff.
> another half hour in an act known as a Minnesotan Goodbye
I’m not a big town city slicker (I am) but my dad (from Iowa) does this and while it was easy to adapt to Minnesota (it wasn’t, but this was) I fucking hate it. Please do not do this, whatever your “I’m done with my time” signal should be reliably done.
I'm not American. According to Google Earth's ruler, Minneapolis Minnesota is 1500 miles from the west coast and 1000 miles from the east coast. How can it be called Midwest? It feels more Mideast to me.
The first thing that comes to my mind about Minneapolis is 80s punk and alt. rock (Hüsker Dü and The Replacements to be more specific, I am European and probably a bit of an outlier)
In flyover country you have insane racists screaming at you for being gay/black/whatever.
In NYC/SF you have insane homeless people screaming at you for ...whatever they are screaming at you for.
I think the important question is - what percentage of the population in any of these areas is really shitty to live around, and how often does a person have these types of experiences. In either case, it's hard to avoid some form of unpleasant shitty people.
All that being said, that really sucks and I hope the world changes for the better soon.
There are certainly parts of the Midwest like you describe, but not the bigger cosmopolitan cities (Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit, Columbus, Madison etc.) that people are likely talking about here, but overall you're mostly describing rural small towns all over the country, with a few exceptions (ski towns, vermont).
Yeah, being even slightly queer or non-white is majorly disruptive to leading a reasonable, hate-free life in the midwest IME (I specifically have experience with Chicago). I think people that talk about how diverse, open, and respectful places like Chicago are are either white/straight or have never lived in a coastal USA city (that is, NYC, SF, LA, Seattle, etc).
Minnesota, the state being discussed in the article, hasn't gone red in a presidential election since 1972 - longer than any other state. (Only DC has a longer blue streak.) We were also the first state in the midwest to legalize gay marriage via legislation rather than a court order.
Yes, the rural parts of the state are very conservative. (The district just north of me was Michele Bachmann's.) But this is true nationwide - just look at rural California or Washington.
The midwest is absolutely a shared culture, not sure why you're getting offended by that. There are variations and sub-cultures, but "midwest" share a lot of overlapping traditions and societal mores, including some of the ugly ones mentioned by the above commenter.
He's overreacting I think, but he's not entirely wrong. The midwest is by no measure more diverse than other parts of the US, and is therefore less tolerant, in general, than those other parts.
Besides the obvious divide between urban and rural areas, there are definitely very different cultures present in the area typically called the Midwest.
For example, Missouri and Minnesota are both in the Midwest. However, Minnesota is influenced heavily by Scandinavian culture, and Missouri is born of French and German roots. Minnesota is more interested in social engineering and a trust in government, and Missouri is more interested in social independence and religious authorities.
I'm not saying that the original commenter's experiences are invalid, but blanket statements like theirs get under my skin.
Also: nowhere did I say that the Midwest is more diverse than the rest of the United States. I'm saying that the Midwest is more than one culture and cannot be considered a single entity.
That book is one of the most unpleasant experiences I’ve ever subjected myself to. It has no historical bases or evidence to support its assertions, or really any value of any kind. Woodard isn’t a historian or academic, he’s a writer for a small newspaper in Maine. The book is closer to astrology or those quizzes that tell you what Hogwarts House you belong to than anything that should be taken seriously in any capacity.
Nah, it's pretty a pretty accurate representation of how American culture is really many cultures that tend to get clumped together for convenience, but actually have not very much in common.
Maybe the lines don't go where he drew them, but the lines absolutely exist, and cultural anthropologists have been plumbing these depths for wisdom for decades, well before Woodard arrived.
Anyone who's travelled to two places in the US will be able to immediately observe the differences.
Driving through Illinois during the election last year was interesting. Having grown up and currently living in Chicago, you won't see much "Trumpling" (as you put it) culture in the city proper and much of the surrounding suburbs, but that changes drastically even an hour or 2 drive out from the city. It's like an entirely different world.
Minneapolis is a cosmopolitan city. It has the second most theater seats of any US city (after NYC). It has lots of great food and international diversity, being home to large diasporas from Africa and SE Asia. If you're a Bay Area native, the most shocking thing about Minneapolis will be the weather, not the culture or people.
In my opinion, the worst part about the weather in the Midwest is the variability. Good luck trying to plan a few days ahead - fronts whip through and drop or raise the temps dramatically. Rain/sleet/snow can happen almost anytime, and the intraday changes in weather are going to be foreign to anyone accustomed to coastal living. I've personally seen it go from 90F to 28F within 24 hours. If you can handle that, then Minneapolis is a great place to live.