Searching For ‘Minnesota Nice’ At Pride

“‘Minnesota Nice’ doesn’t mean what you think it means,” the guy behind me was saying.

I had just finished running a strange 5k with a Saint Paul “run club” and was en route to meet a friend for dinner.

“It’s kind of like ‘Bless your heart,'” the young guy continued explaining to the elderly couple he was with. “In the Southern United States, people will say, this thing: ‘bless your heart,’ and they’ll say it really nice and polite. It sounds like a compliment, but really they’re insulting you. That’s ‘Minnesota nice.'”

Personally, I couldn’t tell you what “Minnesota nice” means.

Maybe it means driving like a complete asshole without giving someone the finger. Maybe it means building lightrail that skips all the really shitty parts of town (which are then serviced by a complicated system of disjointed buses). Or maybe it’s breaking into my truck and stealing an empty gear bag, some cigarettes and the $6 in quarters I was saving for a laundromat, but leaving the toll pass, dry food and first aid gear.

Oh, bless your heart, Minneapolis.

I came out here to help a friend and colleague who had fallen into a rough spot. A self-described functioning addict, she was on the verge of a serious relapse when she called for help. So I drove out to Minneapolis, and figured I might get a few lucky shots of the US Olympic gymnastics team tryouts being held in town.

Instead, we found ourselves in the middle of the city’s Pride festival.

In the 21st century, it’s a safe assumption that most people who support expanding civil rights to include more than two genders and different sexualities have seen a Pride festival. But not everyone.

My friend came from a southern state where it’s decidedly not OK to be a lesbian, gay, bi, queer, non-binary, asexual, trans, or anything other than a southern religious conservative in a cis(/straight) relationship that resembles a Norman Rockwell painting. Now in her 30s and comfortably out of the closet, she told me she’d never been to a Pride festival.

I’ve covered truly massive and over-the-top Pride celebrations in cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Orlando; Minneapolis felt more cozy than crazy. One of the oldest Pride celebrations in the US, it has been held annually since 1972. All 34 acres of Loring are jammed with vendors, stages, people in costumes, independent merchants hawking tiaras, kitschy clothes, bondage gear, campy tchotchkes, and the usual shameless corporate pinkwashing.

“I’m going to go buy a flag,” my friend squealed when she saw the park full of people and bathed in rainbows. “I know it’s expensive, and some of these guys don’t really care about gay rights, but I don’t care!”

So she wandered into a booth and bought heart-shaped sunglasses and a big rainbow pride flag.

“I want to be a part of this,” she said with a smile.

She realized she wasn’t alone. She could be herself. In the congestion of costumes, high heels, barely there clothing, a shy person who had never felt comfortable in crowds, she could breathe. She could be proud.

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