Dinkytown has been dead or dying since 1970. That’s when the creeping grasp of corporate restaurant culture first threatened, spurring an activist occupation that lasted over a month.
Or maybe the University of Minnesota-adjacent Minneapolis neighborhood has been dead since 1989. That’s when the Star Tribune published a front page Metro story—”Is flavorful Dinkytown becoming just another bland marketplace?”—that featured sources bemoaning the encroaching “plastic” and “corporate” culture.
Actually, time of death may have been around 2015. That’s when ex-Sen. Walter Mondale authored an Op-Ed warning that the “pell-mell” building boom of luxury student housing might destroy Dinkytown’s “remarkable history and culture.”…