How Low Can You Fargo?

You are one magnificent bison-of-a-bitch!

I’m a walker. It’s just how I’m constructed. I can walk for days. My calves are like bowling balls. If I have visited your town for any length of time, there’s a good chance I’ve thoroughly walked its streets. Personally, I think it is the only way to truly know a city, and I would highly recommend it. (Also, like me, if you are north of 6’ and weigh about as much as a Japanese motorcycle, don't pass up the opportunity to meander through the seedier parts of town. Your size will protect you, and it’s where a city’s true personality expresses itself.)

Gratuitous streetscape shot.

Now that we've planted ourselves in Fargo for a few weeks and Wife is spending some quality time with her sister, I spent the morning logging about 5 miles on a crisscross track through Fargo and its surrounding neighborhoods. I have always liked Fargo. For my money, it’s about the best representation of straight-up heartland you can get. 

No, they don't show Fargo, the movie, on a continuous loop.

I have no idea why ESPN is represented downtown, and I'm too lazy to make a joke about it..

The HoDo makes wonderful Martinis and
Old Fashioneds. If you order a long island
ice tea here, they will probably beat you.
If they don't, I will.

The downtown is an impossibly clean collection of new and old buildings sprawled along one side of the Red River (Moorhead, Minnesota skanks up the right bank). There’s a vibrant bar scene downtown with the requisite number of craft breweries and BBQ joints you would expect from a college-adjacent town still waiting for the next dining trend to emerge. There’s also a refreshing amount of retail that is apparently immune to the typical, traffic-sucking effects of the big box retailers located in the windy flood plains just west of the city proper. 

Where's the Beav?

The area just north of downtown, or NoFa, as I’m sure some clever, hipster-influenced, civic organization will someday dub it, consists of 20-plus blocks of tree-lined streets with original craftsman residences dating back to the 20's combined with just about every other architectural style practiced since. It’s a long stretch of occupied neighborhoods where an updated, and possibly tattooed, Wally and The Beaver wouldn’t be completely out of place engaging in sanitized hi-jinks. 

Even Fargo alleys are clean.

These are not ready-to-be-gentrified neighborhoods waiting for the financial stimulus of prodigal seniors with bloated IRAs. No, these neighborhoods never really needed saving. They’ve simply been chugging along, showing various states of wear and wealth, with their embedded grade schools, Lutheran churches, Masonic lodges, and nearly an infinite number of casseroles surely passed across their shared alleys and fences to neighbors in times of mourning and/or celebration since about the time FDR was president. It’s a slightly distressed, Norman Rockwell painting writ large and updated with Toyota Priuses and GMC SUVs painted over top the original Studebakers and Nash Ramblers. 

North Dakota State University also lies north of Downtown and spills into the area west of NoFa. It’s a typical college campus with manicured grounds, surprisingly well-maintained frat houses, and skinny co-eds out jogging in little more than their underwear. Subsequently, it’s not a bad place to grab a beer at an outside patio bar. 

I do enjoy his salad dressing, but does it really make him saint-worthy?

If there’s a weak spot in this Grain Belt Utopia (besides the winters), it’s West Fargo, and not for the reasons you might guess. West Fargo sprawls south of I-94, southwest of the city, and sprawl is absolutely the appropriate term to use here. A recent side effect of Fargo’s low unemployment, West Fargo is an infinite suburbia rising where continuous quarter-sections of old farmland once produced beets and grain rather than upscale condos, better-funded schools, and mini-mansion, housing developments. And although the new homes (with their clean, Scandinavian influenced aesthetic) are sure pretty to look at, I suspect their existence spells the demise of the Rockwell-esque neighborhoods within the city limits that are agreeably short on square footage but enviably long on character. Being from the Detroit area, I've witnessed what happens to a city that lets its neighborhoods relocate to the suburbs.

Sorry, Beaver.