The inside scoop on Minneapolis
Long before I ever got to go to the city that never sleeps, I knew that New York was called “the Big Apple.” I latched on to this nickname, perhaps because it evoked a vivid image in my childhood mind, yet the moniker also appealed to me as I lived in a city that went by the opposite claim: the Mini-Apple.
There was the obvious play on words — Minneapolis/Mini-Apple — yet beyond that, explained my dad, Minneapolis did share some attributes with New York City.
A subway system runs beneath the Big Apple connecting one corner of the city with another while in Minneapolis the far ends of downtown are connected by a skyway system.
The skyways are an enclosed system of sidewalks located one story up from the ground and thus bridging over the streets below.
While New York is often thought of as the nation’s literary mecca, Minneapolis is also home to an impressive number of bookstores, small presses and authors. In fact, in 2007, Minneapolis was declared the most literate city in America by Jack Miller, president of Central Connecticut State University, who has been ranking the country’s literary bright spots since 2004.
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