Walking in Minneapolis

So I have said goodbye to Texas once and for all. I mean, I may return as no one knows what the future holds. But for the foreseeable future, goodbye Texas.

I decided to head to Minneapolis, for a number of reasons. One, I have never really been there. Now, I have flown into MSP many times but we would then depart for an hour drive into Wisconsin almost immediately. I figure it’d be cool to visit a new city, see what’s going on. My cousin kept talking about how nice it is so why not.

That brings me to reason number 2. I have always been told how important family is. I can see that. It’s really the first network you ever have in life. Before you make any friends or even know what a friend is, you have your family.

Now in my case, we lived over 1,000 miles from the closest family and quite frankly, we never had the money to visit regularly. Once every 3–4 years for 2 weeks was normal for us. With that, we didn’t talk much to extended family outside of the birthday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas calls. When you say family to me I have an intellectual understanding of it, but not really an emotional one.

In adulthood, I grew closer to one of my cousins. Probably just because we weren’t dependent on our parents to communicate and were financially able to visit each other and what not. A little over a year and a half ago she made it a point to visit me in Austin so I figured I’d return the favor and visit her in Minneapolis.

I was honestly surprised while in Minneapolis for a lot of reasons. One, I have always thought that Minneapolis (and really the whole Midwest, except maybe Chicago) was 90% white (a tad of an exaggeration). I saw a lot of people from all over the world and a lot of religions. Being in Texas, never seen the amount of Muslim tolerance/acceptance that I did here.

I was so curious, I looked up the 2010 census and found that Minneapolis was around 18% black people while Austin is closer to 8%. Other numbers seemed more diverse than I am used to as well.

To me, this is important because I fully believe that being around other people is what will cure bigotry. Take homosexuality for example. 20–30+ years ago, homosexuality was not widely accepted except for in some very liberal pockets in America. However, after years of exposure to them through television shows, high profiled celebrities coming out as gay, having friends who are gay, etc., we as a society started to think “oh, hey, aside from who they find attractive, they really aren’t that different from me.”

Exposure helps us realize that while we all have different things that we like to do, different foods, different styles, etc., at the end of the day, we are all in same boat, all want the same things, and no one group has a monopoly on assholes or heroes.

I felt like Minneapolis was easily one of the friendliest cities I have ever been to (so far). If I smiled at someone, I often got one in return. I was able to just shoot the shit with most people at coffee shops, bakeries, whatever. Now, to be fair, you can often do that in Austin too, but I just wasn’t expecting this in Minneapolis.

Now that aside, I also wasn’t expecting a “hip” culture. I checked out quite a few trendy micro breweries, coffee shops and bakeries and let me tell you, their stuff was on point. I consider myself something of a coffee snob but I was thoroughly impressed by the offerings in Minneapolis.

The food was so-so. Nothing was terrible, but I didn’t eat anything that rocked my world either. Overall, I was impressed with Minneapolis. If it weren’t for the bitter cold, I would move there.

I also enjoyed my cousin and her friends and fiancee. I went camping for the first time and that was cool. Something I never did before but rather enjoyed. I could see me buying a tent and hitting the wilderness a bit.

I guess I am starting to realize how important family is, to an extent. I feel like friends are as important if not more so, but family is as well. I guess the fact that family is kind of assigned to you has always been weird to me. I feel like you are supposed to love your family unconditionally regardless of what kind of person they are due to blood.

I do enjoy my grandparents and cousin though but other members, I don’t know. If we weren’t related, would we get along? I digress, I do enjoy the idea of family though. It’s like a built in social network, and I guess it teaches you how to get along with people you may or may not like. Or at least it teaches you how to pretend. But if you have those you like, it’s great.

I also met a nice girl on Tinder. We had a nice little date at a coffee shop followed by a walk around the neighborhood. Then she dropped me off at my cousin’s place. Very smart woman and I thought she was attractive. IDK, maybe I like Minneapolis now :)

Well I am going off into a world of disjointed thoughts. Publishing now….