Do pay attention to the hours. Most are open until 10 on weekdays, 8 on Saturdays and 6 on Sundays. There’s a handful open longer hours and a handful open shorter hours.
As you’ll be living downtown, have a look at the Downtown Minneapolis Neighborhood Association.
Oh, if you enjoy an adult beverage here and there, it is important to know: The beer sold in grocery stores contains only 3.2% alcohol by weight. So go to liquor stores to buy your beer. But if it’s Sunday, you’re out of luck. Liquor stores are closed on Sundays. Hours of Liquor stores are until 8pm M-Th, and until 10pm F-Sat.
Most bars downtown close at 2am on Friday and Saturday, but stop serving alcohol at 1am. Monday-Thursday they close at 1 usually.
You’ll want to check out the Walker Art Center and then the Minneapolis Institute of Arts before you get settled in, otherwise you’ll miss them in the hustle and bustle of normal life. While at the MIA, be sure to swing buy the school, MCAD, sometimes I find their exhibits to be more interesting.
When do you come in? We’ve been looking for excuses for a dope lunch.
Hee hee! Nobody’s mentioned the Mall of America. Funny, that.
Something important somebody told me about Minnesotans: If you’re talking to somebody, and explaining something to him, he’ll look you in the eye, and nod, and start to make “uh-huh” noises so it sounds like he’s agreeing with you, but all he’s really saying is that he heard you. He might be disagreeing with everything you say, and is just too nice to say so and interrupt you.
The real Minnesota food is walleye. Minnesotans only “pretend” everyone eats lutefisk. But walleye is what you will find on nearly every restaurant menu.
You’ll probably want a car. Living downtown can make life livable without a car, but Twin Cities public transportation isn’t great.
Can anyone tell me if the downtown Marshall Field’s still has the Marketplace in the basement?
Leanne Chin’s has passable Chinese food.
Robin
I’m quite close to you, Snickers, in the NW corner of MPLS (Camden-Victory).
Most of the questions have been answered, but here’s my 2 cents:
-My absolutely favorite restaurant is Origami (sushi place) in downtown Mpls. There are many great restaurants here.
-I think in your neighborhood, you’ll have Time Warner/Roadrunner. Roadrunner is owned by Time Warner.
-One weird custom here is, people say things like “Good afternoon” and “Excuse me” to complete strangers as they pass in the street.
-There is a huge farmers market in Minneapolis every weekend until December. It’s slightly west of downtown and not far from you.
-You will be close to lots of bars and music venues. The most famous is First Avenue (scene of Purple Rain), but really, there are too many to mention. One of my favorites is the Cedar Cultural Center.
It’s still there, yeah. We’ll see what happens when it becomes Macy’s.
I’m not big on Chinese, but there are a lot of Asian restaurants here… Sawatdee has excellent Thai food and is close to the OP’s new address. Origami has great sushi. There’s a nice Mexican restaurant, very authentic, called Salsa de la Salsa. I’m making myself hungry…
Certainly makes sense. There is a lot of Minneapolis that isn’t downtown and it’s suburbs and I’ve just never known anyone that lives downtown. I’m sure it’ll be great for you.
Will you have a car? I live in uptown (very bus friendly by twin cities standards) and work at the university (very bus friendly) and still find myself awfully glad to have a car.
I work for the U too. Small world wide web.
Wild tix were fairly hard to come by (I think) before the strike, but now it may be easier. I’m sure it’s easier than Toronto to get in. Like I said, High school is the big thing. The Mpls. city teams are the worst in the state though. The Gophers are also a big deal. The Wild have drawn well, but have yet to develop a real hard-core following here.
I meant to say the image of the Twin Cities being mono-cultural is wrong.
Oh, and don’t say “Minneites.” No one says that. People wouldn’t know if you were referring to Minnesotans or Minneapolitans.
So do I. What depts. are you guys in?
OIT. E-mail me if you want to know more.
Oh yeah. For the price it’s really good. Even the ketchup I had with my fries was homemade fresh.
Yeah, especially since emacknight isn’t too far from the light rail on down there.
And while Minneapolis’ farmer’s market is nice, St Paul’s is a more “authentic” one with growers having to be within a 50 mile radius of the city
(as opposed to Minneapolis where one can buy bananas :rolleyes: )
There’s the speech. We will ask if “you want to come with”. Don’t expect a word to follow the preposition on that question.
Don’t expect a lot of eye contact. We tend not to look at strangers.
Locals have been accused of being rather clicque-ish.
The Cedar is one of my favorites as well. If you’re into folk/world music, it’s a perfect joint, intimate, friendly, and has some awesome brews and indian food. It’s closed during the hot summer months. One should also note that the bigger name acts tend to come during the spring-summer-fall to the cities and winter tends to be the smaller name acts.
Snickers mentioned bike trails and Minnesota has the most in the US (and I’ve heard we’re second only to Japan). There aren’t that many areas that aren’t accessible one way or another via bike here.
You do have a lot of shopping near you, including a relatively new Target just a couple blocks away. (Oh, this is Targetland up here. Walmart and Kmart are around too)
A couple places other places worth checking out:
Sebastian Joe’s (Ice cream)
The Guthrie Theatre and Theatre de la Jeune Lune
Block E for Hollywood movies and The Uptown/Lagoon or Oak Street for indie
The Sculpture Gardens either at the Walker Museum or a drive up to Franconia
Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press are the two main newspapers. (the Strib leans left, PP leans right).
The “lakes”: Lake Calhoun is the busiest, Lake Harriet, and Lake of the Isles are the main three city lakes with walking/bike paths all the way around. Good for people watching.
Coincidentally, I just finished lunch at Hell’s Kitchen, and my coworker and I wondered why we don’t go there more often.
Did you have a bloody Mary with your lunch, lno?
No, but that’s the place to go for one. If it had been a 10 am breakfast on a weekend, then I’d have given you a different answer. 
And I grew up in the Camden-Victory area (went to Henry before we moved to Bklyn Park and ended up at [gack] Anoka). Still go to church down there at Gethsemane on 46th/Colfax.
Now I live in Crystal off 42nd/Douglas, probably no more than a mile from Snickers.
Starts singing “It’s a Small World After All”
Anyways. Welcome to the Twin Cities, emacknight. Along with all of the interesting places noted above, the river walk downtown is very nice. In college I would often spend the afternoons lying on a blanket besides the Mississippi writing, drawing, avoiding going back.
You will notice a distinct difference between Minneapolis and St Paul architecturally. St Paul has retained much of it’s history. Minneapolis? Not so much. However, (IMO), Minneapolis is platted out much more logically. You will also find that many people (such as myself, I’m sad to say) when having been raised on one side of the river rarely will cross it.
I know more than a few people who live DT also and say other than the grocery shopping difficulties, it’s not bad. But, with the train it’s not so much a difficulty anymore.
True. Even though St Paul is just ten minutes down I-94, I go there maybe once every three months, compared to into downtown Minneapolis.
It’s strange and confusing, and there are wolves after me there.
But the Wolves play in Minneapolis. Maybe it’s Macalaster students circling you hungrily?
My girlfriend was born and always lived in the St Paul suburbs until she moved in with me in Minneapolis. We joke that I made her move across the country.
Spooky, I work for OIT too. And I live in Golden Valley. Right by all you guys. Too close for comfort.
The Mpls/St. Paul thing is just odd to me. There’s a huge rivalry between the two for reasons that escape me. Most of the animosity is from the St. Paul side. I used to live there and when I mentioned to someone I was leaving for the western part of town I swear her jaw just dropped in astonishment. “Can I ask why you would move over there?” My cousin’s husband (who lives in White Bear) once told he hadn’t been in Minneapolis in the past fifteen years.
And AFAIK the skyways are open all night. And there are lots of them.