Nordeast or Not?

[Mark]

I have a pet peeve about people saying Nordeast. I have lived here 12 years and am proud to be a Northeaster, but I hate that term Nordeast. I quess because I only hear it from people I do not consider to be true Northeaster, they are the wanna-be's.

[Jason Maher]

When I first moved to Minnesota my soon to be father-in-law (a North Dakotan by birth but also a former resident of Northeast) asked if we were looking for a duplex in "Nordeast". I had no idea what he was talking about. Duplex? Nordeast? It had to be explained to me. So I have some affection for the term "Nordeast" but rarely say it myself even though I've lived here for years now.

[Jill]

Isn't there an area of Northeast specifically known as Nordeast? I'm pretty sure there is. I've only been here 3 years and it used to bug me too when people would say that. I believe the true area known as Nordeast is the section on the east side of Central that goes up Johnson St. I could be wrong.

[Egan]

Nah, it was just a way of people trying to be cute. Pretty sure its a general term for NE. Or as the politicos like to say "The East Side". I usually just define upper (north of broadway) or lower northeast.

[Egan]

I'm going with Ed on this too. As far as the upper-lower thing I do remember some of the (older) native northeasters saying that the "hill" was the "better/snobby(?) " part of NE. but I guess I just never heard the upper part. I was going with the geographic and/or numarical identifier as far as upper and lower. I have only been here 9 years and would never claim to know the real Northeast breakdown.

[Ed Antolak]

All that's wrong. "Nordeast" came from how Americans perceived the Eastern European immigrants' pronunciation of Northeast. Not having a "th" sound in most slavic languages, it came out as "Norteast". "Nordeast" is just the dumbing-down of "Norteast".

Now, for the geological discrepancy: growing up, lower NE was considered everything west of Central, upper NE was everything east of Central (look east up Lowry Ave once), and the area around Beltrami was simply (but affectionately) known as "Dogtown". Edison High school was where these divisions would be most evident. There was always a little tension between the Sheridan/Holy Cross kids and the Northeast Junior Hight/St. Charles kids.

I don't know where the north/south division came from. Maybe it's a new perception of the area.

[Kelly]

Yeah, I'm with Ed. That's what my mom always said growing up here too--that "upper" was "the hill" going up east past Central and toward Johnson (where the rich folks lived), and the "valley" was everything else going west toward the river (where the poorer folks lived). I think her rough sense of class is still fairly evident today--plus I always thought it interesting that the "valley" has all the bars. (Polish/Ukrainian and most Catholic churches down der by University, and dem der Lutren Nordeasters going up da hill.)
FYI--nordeast is an old term, not a wannabe term, even if it's been co-opted. For example, The Sample Room used to be the Polish Palace--sponsor to my dad's bowling team and funder of red and white satin jackets with "nordeast" emblazoned on them, along with the Polish crest. Elsie's was hoppin in the Donkey Kong era.

[Mark]

Right, but do you say "Nordeast"? My perception is that the people who say it are not really familiar with the area. Also, Northeast won 5th best place to live in the Twin Cities in Vita.mn last week, and Rogue Buddha was #4 Fox Tax #10 for galleries

[Kelly]

I do say Nordeast. Not all the time, but it doesn't seem weird to me. I can see how it would be annoying in a certain light though.

[Curt]

I do say it, and affectionately. I think that's part of the neighborhood's charm, we're proud of our history. I'm also originally from North Dakota, and heard a lot of "Nort" and "Nord" there too, so it's definitely not just Slavic (mostly Cherman and Scandihoovian back dere den.)

[Chank Diesel]

Yeah, well I was looking at the Pioneer Press, newspaper of the St. Paul, and they specifically referenced "Nordeast Minneapolis" in an article about the Fringe Festival. So it looks like "Nordeast Minneapolis" is acceptable in dictionaries in St. Paul. Maybe it's just visitors that call it Northeast. And I think some old-timers affectionately call it Nordeast, too.

I've been here over ten years and almost always call it "Northeast". (But I also registered nordeast.com for myself just to be safe.)

[Andy "Silky" Johnson]

It's a new era in NE...it is now officially called Northeast and not this Nordeast garbage of yesteryear. An oldtimer once told me that Columbia GC was Lake Sandy at the turn of the century and was filled in with the dredge of lake of the isle and lake harriet to form the golf course. Off the topic, but, I'm guessing the polish population has dropped significantly and thus "nordeast" has gone the route of Lake Sandy and is no longer...

[Ed Antolak]

Not to be over-sensitive, but the Polish population didn't coin the term "nordeast". It spawned from an Anglican perspective of their dialect.

You're dead on about NE losing it's only lake so the folks around Lake of the Isle could have a lake instead of the holding pond it once was. I've even heard old timers say that the removal of all the elm trees in NE was to stop the Dutch elm beetle from reaching the rest of the city. That might sound like a NE conspiracy theory, but what the hell, the more character we get the more interesting we get.