The Twin Cities are a wonderfull and wonderfully mixed up locale. I like to compare it to the Nile River valley, a place of mystery,
mad genius, and confusion.
For example:
Like the Nile valley, the Twin Cities are mixed up on the cardinal directions. Uptown is south of downtown Minneapolis and,(obviously!) downtown Minneapolis is north of the uptown neighborhoods. In anicent Egypt, the misconception was that south was north based upon the nature of the river(like all of their civilization it seems). Egyptians believed that all rivers flow north to south, but the Nile flows in the opposite direction, and the regions of Egypt were misnamed as such. Lower Egypt was the north half of the region and Upper Egypt was south. Bizzare!
The twin cities are located on the banks of a hot muddy river, also like the Nile valley.
Finally:
The cities are populated by crazy sun and star worshiping nutcases who erect billion ton pyramids that perfectly align to the constelations and formulate pi with their facets. We then embalm our dead and hide them in the ground instead of in our amazing monoliths of creation.