Bob CollinsHello, America, and welcome to Minneapolis-St. Paul! Well, actually, just Minneapolis; the Minnesota Twins may honor two cities, but this week’s All-Star Game is pretty much showcasing only one of them.
We hope you enjoy your stay. We know you’re busy, but if you could just occasionally post a tweet about how spectacular Minneapolis-St. Paul is — whoops, I mean, Minneapolis is — that’ll help us get through the coming winter. Also, please note that today’s weather is not the coming winter.
ESPN’s Rob Neyer likes us. He really likes us.
Today convinced me that when the weather's pleasant, Minneapolis-St. Paul must be among the very nicest places in America.
— robneyer (@robneyer) July 14, 2014
Neyer lived in St. Paul when he was three, but we’re putting him in the “out-of-towners who like us” column anyway.
As far as we know, Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports isn’t one of us.
And It’s absolutely gorgeous here in Minneapolis too. Last year’s All-Star week in New York featured temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s and stifling humidity. Yesterday it was in the 70s with pleasant breezes. Today it’s only supposed to climb into the low 60s. Which may be too cool for the tastes of some of you but is absolutely ideal for pasty, thick-blooded people like me whose ancestors inhabited chilly, craggy, windswept British island shores for a few thousand years like mine did. Give me this stuff every day.
The city seems quite pleasant itself. Later this morning I will post something about my experiences with an item of local cuisine, but for now let me just say that Minneapolis seems to be a well-ordered and well-run place. The signage is good, the streets are clean, the people are pleasant and the light rail runs on time and to and from places I want and need to go. Of course, I’m sure Minneapolis has idiosyncrasies, inefficiencies, scandals and skeletons like every other city, but it does make a good first impression for people like me who are, more or less, in town for the convention, as they say.
