Can Minneapolis, St. Paul put aside differences for tourism cash?
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(AP)- For generations, St. Paul parents taught their children a simple lesson: Don't spend your money in Minneapolis. "Part of the St. Paul community identity was that Minneapolis didn't need - didn't deserve - our money," said Mary Lethert Wingerd, a historian of the Twin Cities and proud St. Paul resident herself.
But the 21st century economy is forcing St. Paulites to swallow their civic pride - and obliging indifferent Minneapolitans to stop ignoring their neighbor. This summer the so-called Twin Cities will embark on a joint marketing campaign to tie the longtime competitors together as a single tourist destination. While the Minneapolis-St. Paul rivalry has abated some in recent decades, it still burns strong in the local imagination. And even St. Paul boosters admit that selling Minneapolis and St. Paul as one place, while economically beneficial, has a predictable result.
"The truth is, if you're not from here you probably just think it's all Minneapolis," said Karolyn Kirchgesler, St. Paul's chief tourism official.
Plans for the national ad campaign include a logo, Web site, billboards and print ads and potentially TV and radio commercials to attract tourists, conventioneers and new residents to what will be portrayed as one Minnesota hot spot.
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, the idea came from tourism officials in Minneapolis. While they're called twins, Minneapolis has been more like St. Paul's bigger brother for more than a century.
While St. Paul has undeniably humble roots - it was founded in 1840 as Pig's Eye, for the French Canadian trader who settled the area - it wasn't always this way. By the time Minnesota became a state in 1858, the renamed St. Paul was its biggest city, the state capital and a regional transportation hub.
Then came a late-19th century boom in lumber and flour milling, which triggered a population explosion across the Mississippi in the city that St. Paul once considered its "industrial suburb," Wingerd said.
In the 1880 census, Minneapolis surpassed St. Paul in population. That led to an intense census war, and in 1890, authorities in both cities arrested census takers from the other side of the river and charged them with padding their population counts. Turns out, both cities were guilty.
"They were counting people in cemeteries," Wingerd said. "One barber shop supposedly had 15 people living in it. It was shameless."
But since then, Minneapolis has never looked back. Today, it has almost 100,000 more residents than St. Paul and is seen as the more cosmopolitan of the two, with its modern skyline, wide boulevards and bustling economy marking it as the first city of the West.
That makes scrappy St. Paul the last city of the East, and it fits the bill with its winding streets, Victorian mansions and working-class character. Former Gov. Jesse Ventura, a Minneapolis boy, once ticked off the entire city of St. Paul with an offhand remark on national TV that the city's streets appeared to have been laid out by drunken Irishmen.
"When I go to Minneapolis, someone is always trying to give me a quiche or a slice of pizza with goat cheese and pine nuts on it," said Bruce Larson, a lifelong St. Paulite who helps organize neighborhood festivals for the city. "In St. Paul they give me a brat and a beer, and that's what I want."
But decades of hearing "and St. Paul" affixed to Minneapolis has given plenty of capital city residents something of an inferiority complex.
"Sure, it's a little sleepier over here," said Ralph Kromarek, owner of an antique shop on St. Paul's hardscrabble East Side.
The minds behind the new campaign are quick to stress that St. Paul attractions will be just as heavily featured in the promotion. And St. Paul boosters are quick to point out that perhaps the biggest convention in Minnesota history, the 2008 Republican National Convention, will be held not in Minneapolis but in St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.
Still, some stubbornly proud St. Paulites suspect that the marketing scheme is likely to leave their hometown in Minneapolis's shadow. Again.
"Oh sure, you're the 'big city' over there," said Don Corcoran, a cabinetmaker and third-generation St. Paulite, making quotation marks with his fingers. "You've got the Twins. You've got the Vikings ... well, you've also got your murder rate."
And what do Minneapolis folk think of being linked to St. Paul for the purposes of national advertisements? The better question might be whether they think of St. Paul at all.
"The truth is I just hardly ever get over there," said Lisa Scholl, a stay-at-home mom having lunch recently at a trendy bakery in her city's posh Linden Hills neighborhood. "Everything we need is over here."