It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. The local news media even those who write for our newspaper. . .the one that has been serving the city since the late 1800s have a hard time understanding the geography of St. Paul and the names of our neighborhoods so they re-name parts of the city to make things easier for themselves and at the same time they show us St. Paul natives that they are not from our beloved city.
There is no “East Saint Paul” — the name was given to the East side of St. Paul by the news media at some point in the 1980’s and some people who didn’t know any better started calling the east side “East Saint Paul”. There is a West St. Paul and a North Saint Paul and a South St. Paul. They are not part of St. Paul — they are separate cities. They even have their own mayors.
There is no east St. Paul, none nadda, zilch. Just because the news media say East St. Paul like it is a real place doesn’t make it a real place. Narnia isn’t a real place either even though C.S Lewis named the place in his famous chronicles of Narnia books that doesn’t make it a real place.
Over the weekend when there was a water main break and one of the local news papers actually referred to the “Lower West End” in a news story. There is no lower west end! My neighbors are most upset. They have not yet lit their torches and chased anyone out of town but it could still happen.
There is a lower West side because of the river bluff on the south side of the river. Part of the west side is on top and part of it is below, the land on the lower west side is flat and sometimes referred to as “the flats”. I don’t care if you think I am making this up. The west end is flat and there is no upper or lower and it is west of downtown and on the west side of the city but it is not the west side.
The West side of St. Paul is in the southern part of St. Paul and West St. Paul and South of St. Paul are both south of downtown St. Paul but they are not part of St. Paul. The west side is also on the west side of the Mississippi River because it runs north and south on part of it’s journey through St. Paul.
There is no such place as St. Paul – Minneapolis or Minneapolis – St. Paul but that is the subject of a future rant. You can call them the twin cities but they are not identical twins and they are two separate cities.
If you write for our local paper or talk about St. Paul on the local TV news stations or on the radio please print this and post it in your news room and stop renaming parts of the city and greater metro area.
Image: Map of the world
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