The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

Today was the launch of MetroMSP —  a new Web site that offers companies and site selectors instant access to comprehensive and crucial marketplace information about available commercial, industrial and retail sites in the 11-county Minneapolis Saint Paul metro region.

The Web site covers the anchor cities of Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and Bloomington, as well as Anoka, Carver, Chisago, Dakota, Hennepin, Isanti, Ramsey, Scott, Sherburne, Washington, and Wright counties.

One of life’s great truths—one that we desperately seek to avoid with proverbs and catechisms and even magazine articles—is that beneath its surface lies complexity. Our beloved fictions of heroes and villains crumble with scrutiny, leaving only convolution, shifting meanings, and unstable realities. The same is true of things. Even the simplest object has its hidden history of longing, love, and despair. Take, for example, cake. Chiffon cake.

At 9:28 a.m. thirty-one grain traders are milling around a trading pit—an octagon about the size of a pontoon boat, recessed into the hardwood floor—at the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. Steps are wide and lazy, chests are thrust outward. Several of the men (and they are all men) discuss the price of downtown real estate; a few ruminate on Gophers football; nearly everyone chews gum, frantically. Then, at five seconds before 9:30, voices trail off, order books open, and feet are squared.

Once upon a time, the American office was a nightclub with typewriters—at least according to mid-century myths like The Hucksters or The Apartment. Formal dress was mandatory. Client meetings had a two-drink minimum and every plush blond secretary was as tightly tufted as a Florence Knoll lounge chair. On occasion, there were papers to shuffle, bosses to placate, but ultimately all it took to succeed in this hectic but undemanding middle-management Eden was a crisp white collar, a bottle of aspirin, and an aptitude for caustic banter. This was the American workplace.

I’d read plenty about Buffalo Ridge, the windiest swath of Minnesota, located in the state’s grassy and treeless southwest quadrant, before I ever got there. I’d heard stories of hats blowing off, of windburn, of tumbleweeds that just kept tumbling. People living in the area are said to suffer perpetual bad hair days. But it was one thing to read about the place and quite another to be there. As I stepped out of my car, the February wind attacked viciously, whipping across my face. I was tempted to crawl back inside and duck for cover.