Wireless (and Wired) Minneapolis

Copyright 2006 Star Tribune
All Rights Reserved
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN)

February 2, 2006

Minneapolis is cool with citywide Wi-Fi;
The city sees wireless Web as a way to keep its cred with hipsters. Hipsters seem to agree.

BYLINE: John Reinan, Staff Writer

BODY:


Stuck in flyover land, with a deep-seated fear of becoming a cold Omaha, Minneapolis has found another way to assert its hipness: Internet everywhere.

Mayor R.T. Rybak is touting citywide wireless Internet access as a path to urban greatness. Following the lead of such image-anxious places as Philadelphia, Minneapolis would offer Wi-Fi service for $20 or less a month.

In doing so, Rybak hopes to sound an age-old call: Minneapolis is cool.

Far from scoffing at the notion, local avatars of cool actually seem to embrace it.

Leslie Bock owns two of the hippest joints in town: St. Sabrina's Parlor in Purgatory, an Uptown clothing store and tattoo parlor, and Psycho Suzi's Motor Lounge, a Northeast tiki bar.

In Bock's world, a laptop computer is as essential as a good piercing. And Bock likes the notion of a wireless city.

"Yes, definitely - I'm all for it," she said. "I think always being one step ahead of people makes you a little cooler."

Tom Fugleberg came to Minneapolis from the one-stoplight town of Polson, Mont., drawn by the city's reputation as a progressive, forward-thinking place. Fugleberg, a vice president and creative director at the ad agency Olson, said he's "down with it."

Wireless Internet service, he said, is "a convenience that people are getting more and more used to. It's a bummer when you can't fire it up and shoot someone an e-mail."

"My thinking is, man, it's probably inevitable. Why not be in the forefront of it?"

John Knoll describes the laptop he was using at a south Minneapolis coffee shop Wednesday as his "electronic brain."

Knoll, 38, said citywide Wi-Fi would make Minneapolis more appealing to the personalities the Twin Cities wants: "people who are connected, who have blogs, who are online ... kind of the cool, with-it, leading-edge generation, being familiar with technology, comfortable with it, looking for whatever's new."

Visions lofty and less

Some tout the wireless service as a means of promoting democracy. Sean Kershaw, executive director of the nonprofit Citizens League, imagines residents logging in to webcasts of city meetings.

Rybak sees an Eat Street economy, with entrepreneurs hatching new companies at restaurant tables while waitresses swap ideas with biotech researchers.

Bock views it in less lofty terms. The 20-to-40 age group, she said, "wants to check out bands. They want to know what's going on that night. They're hungry and they want to find someplace to eat."

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Still, not everyone is on the wireless bandwagon. Chris Morris, chairman of the McKinley Community on the city's North Side, said his conversations with neighbors about wireless break down along economic and educational lines.

"People who are in the arts, people who are recent college graduates, young professionals - they love the idea," Morris said. "People who may or may not have graduated from high school and are struggling to make ends meet kind of question what's it going to do for me.

"For me, personally, I love it," he said. "The coolness, the cutting edge, the idea that we're a leader. Others see it as, it's not gonna help me. I can't even afford to put food on the table, much less [spend] another $15-20 a month on Internet service."

Ken Witt, vice chairman of the Hawthorne Area Community Council, echoed that thought.

"What good is reduced-cost wireless if you don't have a computer? That's the larger issue," Witt said. "Kids in my neighborhood don't have the money for a computer."

Rybak's vision isn't a big financial risk. Under the current proposal, the wireless network would be built by a vendor with no public money spent. Two companies are finalists for the job, and the city is expected to choose one of them as its Wi-Fi vendor by early spring.

"It's time for Minneapolis to claim its rightful place as the great city of our time," Rybak said in an interview. "We should be the city with the best urban environment and the most robust Internet access."

Even if Minneapolis goes Wi-Fi, it will be following the trendsetter to the southwest: the suburb of Chaska. That city's wireless service, Chaska.net, launched last year.

Katherine Rose Heal, a senior at Chaska High, has a $16-per-month account on Chaska.net. She's also a barista at a Dunn Bros coffee shop.

"I don't think we're that much ahead of anybody," she said. "It's like garbage pickup. A long time ago, that was a cutting-edge thing. In a couple of years, this won't be cutting edge."