Uptown
I like the whole city of Minneapolis. It offers a unique lifestyle that I have yet to see an equal for in my many travels. By far however, my favorite part of the city is the walk between my house near Lyndale Avenue and 26th, and the Uptown area (Lake and Hennepin). This is a busy road less traveled in that it is filled with unusual shops, restaurants, and people. It is this variety that makes the area special. The kind of originality most other places try for and miss comes naturally to this unique stretch of road. You may not like everything you see or try, but you can be sure something will be different than what you've experienced before.
The area attracts the most varied crowd of people you will ever see in their natural habitats; and therein lays the beauty of Uptown. You can show off your new car or Mohawk hair with equal enthusiasm. The person with the best skirt and matching pumps may not be a woman. You can feel free to show up how you are. This simple fact I feel represents much more that just a local flair. Kris Kristofferson is wrong, real freedom is not "nothing left to lose", but nothing to be forced to defend, explain, or change. Parts of Uptown may be strange to some of us, but it is surely a symbol of true freedom by this definition.
The embraced diversity of the neighborhood is the reason I live there (and I am rapidly realizing I am becoming one of the people I used to come to see). As I walk along, enjoying a "going home" stogie from the Gold Leaf, a highly addictive peanut butter cup from Maud Borup, and a glass of summer night ecstasy known as a green melon bubble tea from The Loading Zone, stopping to watch a punk band play a set on a hair salon roof, I realize the importance of this place. If the rest of the world could try and live with the same tolerance and acceptance for even just an hour or two that a special corner in Minneapolis does every day, we would all be considerably better off.