A friend of the blog emails:
Some hipster soccer fan from Brooklyn stayed at a hotel in Minneapolis and was not impressed
The beginning of the thread is pretty funny. He complains that the Hilton Gardens isn’t really downtown because it is between a highway and a vacant building. (Surprise-that is what our downtown is like these days). In the next tweet, he complains that the hotel seems to be full of people “waiting until things with the police cooled down or their wives took them back.” (Another surprise, I guess, because this seems to also be something many people are saying about downtown Minneapolis these days. It’s just not that #vibrant).
Sorry the guy got some big bed bug welt. I’m also sorry that the bed bug made the news but the deterioration of our Twin Cities, with all it’s vacant buildings, vacant lots, and ongoing crime do not really make the news in any significant way.
Stay with me, here.
Minneapolis has always had an inferiority complex re New York. It even adopted “The Mini-Apple” as its marketing slogan in the ’80s (during the later years of NYC’s nadir in the Dinkins years, for crying out loud).
If New York media figures start dunking on Minneapolis? That might get the administration’s attention.
Yeah, I’m sure New Jersey is free of bed bugs…even bed bugs have standards.
Sources tell me that it is no longer unusual for professionals working out of offices in the Twin Cities & inner suburbs to keep their doors locked. You wanna see your optometrist? Announce yourself on the telecom and they buzz you in.
UMMP,
Yea, home burglaries where at least one person working from them is there, are up about 40% in the metro. Apparently, they think that just because they are home, they can leave their doors unlocked. My cousin on the Bloomington PD, told me that the home workers are almost never working on the main floor. They are either in second floor or basement offices, where they can’t hear anyone coming in.
By the way, with all of the police bashing that’s been going on over the past six years, he retired last week on his first eligible date. Had that crap not happened, he would have stayed in for a couple more years.
Permethrin for the bugs/bedding
I travel with a can of Repel Permethrin Clothing and Gear available at most hardware stores. Works like a charm.
As recently as 1990, bed bugs were virtually unknown in the US…now we have to travel with insecticide.
What changed?
Let’s see, soccer stadium is at Snelling and University in St Paul. He stays in downtown Mpls? I suppose so he can be hip and ride the Green line. The pic is certainly a bedbug, but they are nocturnal feeders, so his story is suspect. Probably scraped it during an encounter with a hooker and it got infected. Naturally he has to lie to his wife. She deserves him.
Regarding bed bugs, didn’t they use DDT against them at one time? I’ll defer to Golfdoc on the specifics of the bite and the rash.
Regarding downtown, last time I was there, a few years back, what struck me is that the guy is right about it. It’s just not much fun anymore because the storefronts are gone–it’s all offices and pretentious looking open spaces. I guess that’s what happens when you let the Met Council decide everything, and the notion that “maybe some restaurants and stores might be a good idea” never occurs to them.