For as long as I can remember I wanted to be a resident New Yorker. I'd like to think I have always been one in spirit. When the opportunity to live in New York, or lack of opportunities - I came here with nothing but my boxes - dangled golden carrots, I rabidly gobbled them up. I dotted all of my stray "i"s and "t"s, tied up my loose strings and jumped the mother ship: "Bye-bye, Minneapolis." The process of swimming to Manhattan's shore and establishing respectable roots has been anything but easy, but after almost a decade, the foundation of my life is laid and here I am: resident New Yorker. Even better, ever-gratefully, I am able to be a writer - a major reason for living and relocating - in New York.
When I left the mini apple, Minneapolis, I braced myself for many worst case scenarios, however, my instinct told me that regardless of the outcome or sacrifice, the move was something that I needed to accomplish.
And it wasn't so easy to leave. I saw many brazenly do so only to come back as the proverbial dog with a tucked tail; it's not so easy to be reduced to small fish prey in the panoramic ocean. Luckily for me, it's never been so much about ego, as it is about adventure, so the peon-thing never demoralized me. You see, my first love, young adulthood, the party of all parties, was winding down: the lights were flicking on and the buzz, rickety-rickety...the wonderful music that none of us ever foresees ending, was beginning to do just that.
It was time to go.
When I finally left, Minneapolis would remain the place that my mind always went back to when things in New York weren't meeting my expectations, so after two children, one husband, and five years, it was time to go back. Of course, I knew that I would visit friends and family on occasion, but (on my last trip) I went back with the intent to re-live the past, if just for a weekend. That was the first red flag. The second? I departed on Friday, February the 13th. I should have known. My flight was delayed three hours and I grumpily arrived in the bitter cold (one does forget how bitter north-north winters really are) to find that all of the scant cab drivers are Somalians, as most people there, in the service industry, are, which I found to be racist and backward. Unfortunately, the cab drivers are also entirely incompetent, cavalier speeders on icy highways with no clear sense of direction, which does not help their cause for advancement.
Minneapolis has changed and so have I. The only problem is that Minneapolis isn't supposed to change.
I was supposed to be impressed by the expensive hip-hot-modern-cool Chambers hotel, whose New York version in the West Fifties is way too touristy and sterile to be appreciated in the same context in New York. I was supposed to ooh and ahh over the new fancy Foshay Tower digs of the former dive, Key's Cafe, whose former cramped, smoke-hash-browns-coffee-smelling hole-in-the-wall on Nicollet Mall was much better appreciated with better tasting food. Same thing goes for the Uptown Diner, unrecognizable as a strip mall island w/parking on Lyndale Avenue with strip mall quality food to boot: what the hell happened to the rock and roll grunge hang-out that everyone would barrage, early morning/late afternoon? Finally, gone was the iconic Marshall Field's department store where I found fabulous, under-the-radar, under-appreciated Chanel and Missoni mark-downs. In its place: a floundering, depressing, disarray of a mediocre Macy's.
To sum up my assessment of the once eclectic and interesting downtown Minneapolis, it's now a massive Target store: brand-spanking-new, vacant, and void of any character or characters. The key haunts of my freedom days: The Lounge, Nikki's Bar, free Happy Hour gourmet sushi at the Metropolitan Club, First Avenue DJs and Danceteria nights, immortally fabulous adventures with my gay best friend cum stranger...now gone, restructured, or under new ownership.
Of course, I can only see the world through my own eyes, but it's always a valiant effort to see it as someone else. I can see me in my former city, a scowling and impatient visitor from New York: intolerant by anything not razor sharp or record fast, livid by the lack of of cabs and concise answers...looking straight through Midwestern nice and curiosity with irritation or indifference. Me, the New York, so-called stuck-up bitch: bored to the point of exhaustion with the mass-market stores, so-homogeneous-it-must-be-incest couples, and lack of industry and variety. I see me: a cranky shadow in head-to-toe neutrals, reeling within all of the Midwestern accents.
A person ca usually get what they wish for in literal or ironic ways: I am a New Yorker; my home, the Midwest, is no longer. This sinks in...
It's alright: "home" never really was.
