I moved to Minneapolis in the fall of 1985.

It was a beautiful city – full of opportunity, while still being relatively affordable even by the cheaper standards of the 1980s.

And it had personality. Scenes like this were the norm in the Minneapolis of 1985-86:

I arrived at Lake of the Isles and strolled alongside the water. Soon, I was riding alongside [Calhoun] which had sailboats on the water and little kids playing on the beach. Up a small hill and I had arrived at Lake Harriet to meet my friend Patty. We walked around the lake, catching up, joined by people of all ages, races and activity levels. At one point, a huge turtle was crossing the ring road around the lake. A man got out of his car, covered the turtle with a blanket and eventually was able to scoop him up safely and deposit him at the water’s edge. Our small crowd of onlookers cheered. 

I rode home and marveled at the beauty of this place and how easy it was for me to gain access to all these treasures – the park, the museum, three lakes! The vast majority of my trip was on safe, dedicated bike lanes where I didn’t have to worry about traffic. What a gift.

In the summer of ’86, I was that guy, and I took that bike ride, and I saw those things.

But this isn’t my kids’ parents Minneapolis today, as this guy writes about it.

I’m not going to say “I’d never have dreamed of these sorts of scenes when I first moved here” – my faith in the social cohesion of left-wing cities is thinner than the social cohesion of left-wing cities – but hope sprang eternal, and until 2020 history obliged:

My friend is a free spirit and has talked occasionally about buying a hobby farm to commune with nature. He travels frequently, and his job would probably allow him to work almost anywhere. So it wouldn’t have been a shock if he told me he was making a big shift in his life.

When I asked where he was moving to, he told me he was looking at a small house in St. Paul (Highland Park)…

He told me the anxiety of the neighborhood was too much. The sirens are constant. People are racing their cars up and down the street at all hours of the night. He doesn’t feel safe. He said the last time he took the light rail downtown for work, more passengers were fiddling with their fentanyl than commuting to their jobs. He was angry the city was talking about rebuilding the Third Precinct police station and worried violence could easily erupt if that moved forward. 

And, surprising nobody:

All of this was shocking to me. My friend is a hardcore, super-liberal urbanite. 

So the lesson will go unlearned, by “friend”, or the writer: the difference between the Minneapolis of 1986 and the dystopic excrescence the writer is trying to enjoy today…:

As I drove home, I took Lake Street rather than the freeway. It was pretty rough. Still lots of empty storefronts. The Hiawatha station had hordes of people hanging out. I don’t think many of them were headed to trains. The liquor store felt like the center of the neighborhood. I drove by the open sore that is the abandoned Kmart. The ugly chain link fences did nothing to prevent several dozen people from milling about in small groups. Drugs? Living on the streets? Bored? Does it matter?

…is “people like them in absolute control”.