Posted on 07/01/2017 5:14:30 AM PDT by dynachrome
If downtown is the heartbeat of Minneapolis, then its collective soul resides on Hennepin Avenue, the corridor that’s long served as its cultural, commercial, and entertainment epicenter. But these days, visitors aren’t seeing the intoxicating glimmer Schmidt beheld so long ago.
Talk to civic leaders, downtown workers, and couples descending from Burnsville, and they’ll tell you to drive down Hennepin with the windows open once the sun has called it day. If you watch and listen, the feeling isn’t one of good vibrations. It’s energy with a serrated edge, the vibe that comes from a city turning mean.
Apocalypse now
The harbinger that something was wrong came via letter in December. Among the four authors of the missive to Mayor Betsy Hodges was Steve Cramer, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, a business group with more than 400 members (including City Pages and its corporate parent, the Star Tribune).
The letter spoke of a new kind of peril threatening downtown. Unlike years past, when a spike in violent crime cast the city in an uncomfortable light, this cause for alarm was more elusive. The problem wasn’t necessarily crime in the technical sense. It was more of a belligerence, a creeping sense of depravity.
(Excerpt) Read more at citypages.com ...
Last February, the state Supreme Court legalized panhandling in Kentucky, and beggars quickly popped up on every major street corner in Louisville and Lexington. You can call it the state’s hottest new profession. I have a feeling Kentucky is going to become meaner as well, because the compassion of everybody else extends only so far. Especially when you hear rumors that the panhandlers can make more in one day than most of us with jobs can.
Without visual examples this written avoid excursion into Minneapolis lacks impact.
Ed Asner toe Libtard should go there and run for Mayor.
“Especially when you hear rumors that the panhandlers can make more in one day than most of us with jobs can.”
And your fellow citizens support them.
People stop giving,no more panhandling.
Do you think there are too many decadent Leftists in Minnesota to prevent it from coming to its collective senses and saving itself, or is Minnesota lost?
It’s not just Minneapolis. The whole country is turning mean. Maybe the Ferguson effect?
City Pages is known for in-depth reporting with emotive flair. They are the reason I read the article.
The language is common today. Everywhere. I’m close to being a hermit and I’m 74 and the article did not shock, outrage or disgust me. It is how people speak. It is indicative of the global culture.
I remember not only when no one spoke this way, I recall returning to college in 1966 and being encouraged to say these words and tolerate hearing them. Forty years down the road, we are at the entrance to the liberal goal.
The hipsters wanted this. They think it is edgy, just like they think diversity means colorful native dress and exotic restaurants. They believe resentment belongs to white, middle-class trogs who voted for Trump. They never accept that there is a thing to fear from cultural degradation. They expect beneficiaries of socialistic programs to be filled with gratitude. They are probably a bit embarrassed to have experienced fear up close and personal.
I will bet most residents of the Cities are already inured to it, if they don’t practice it themselves. As for me and my husband, almost daily we are grateful we traveled the world in the 1970s, 80s and 90s and then chose to live in rural America, relatively isolated. I never thought I’d appreciate being old, but there ya go: I really don’t want to live in the midst of the actual Fall of Civilization.
Agreed. THANK YOU SIR. AND, I believe the piece was way too long also. Drew68, none of the ADULTS I know uses that kind of language.
What percentage of minneapolis is somali now? Leftists?
So said to think of how far Minneapolis has fallen. I visited their in the earily 1970s when it was a delightful as it is portrayed in Mary Tyler Moore land.
The 16th St Mall is a tourist trap. It’s nice enough, but the parasites are thick there and it’s fruitcake city.
I was in downtown Seattle today and what an eyesore it has become. Below the ultra modern skyscrapers going up are the homeless tents right on the sidewalks. People are shooting up right on the sidewalk and pushing shopping carts loaded with whatever they can get for free. Every street has them. They are everywhere. The policies of the Left has become a magnet for dependency and tribal living.
RATs.
people are mean...
but I suspect the euphemism of "mean" stands for street huggers...
Minnedishu, Somalisota
Lots of people in Florida stopped shopping at Malls for the same reason... it’s like the country’s thugs have taken control of public squares... this doesn’t bode well for anyone.
as I was leaving I noticed all the people there..the kids, the families, visiting with each other on the way out...
I thought....isn't it nice to have a peaceful friendly place to go...they should make places like that, so decent people can visit and talk...oh, that would be parks...oh, that would mean a public place..
and anyone can use the public places...
you see, we just can't have nice things anymore in this country....
too many of "them"...and not enough of us...( the bad people vs the good people)
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