Positively Fourth Street

Uptown has Lake Calhoun, Summit Avenue has its mansions, Nordeast has its retro dive bars and the Art-A-Whirl gallery event. But Minneapolis’s Dinkytown can say that it’s been the partial subject of an art exhibit.

A tribute to the distinctive Minneapolis commercial district snuggled next to the University of Minnesota was a key part of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum’s 2007 exhibition, “Bob Dylan’s American Journey, 1956–1966.” One of the show’s highlights was a 1960 recording of Dylan playing in the living room of someone’s Dinkytown apartment, shortly before he left his home state and moved to Greenwich Village.

Even though Dinkytown once saw a young Dylan roaming its streets (his classic song “Positively Fourth Street” may have referred, in part, to the district’s main drag), to say that it has ever been the Twin Cities’ version of the Village may be going too far. To several generations of University of Minnesota students, Dinkytown’s compact commercial node and its long-established independent businesses—like Al’s Breakfast, Annie’s Parlour, and the House of Hanson grocery store—seemed much like the hometown Main Streets that they left behind.

Its geography, with the U of M’s East Bank campus on its south, train yards to its north and east, and Interstate 35W on its west, effectively isolated Dinkytown and the adjacent Marcy-Holmes residential neighborhood, leaving them somewhat immune to forces changing the rest of the city. It still takes something of a special effort to get there.

(The origins of the area’s name aren’t certain. The most widely accepted theory is that it refers to the little trolleys, nicknamed “dinkies,” that were plentiful there decades ago.)

Along with typical Main Street-style businesses within its four square blocks, Dinkytown has always included college bars and countercultural establishments: head shops, used book and record stores, and eclectic clothing shops. It remains a unique mix of the staid and the psychedelic, a homey and unpretentious base covered with a veneer of bohemia.

But in the last few years, Dinkytowners say, there have been some changes. The district is emerging as a citywide nighttime dining and entertainment destination. The construction of the nearby TCF Bank Stadium, which will bring Minnesota Gophers football as well as other events to campus starting next fall, is increasing Dinkytown’s exposure to people who may have never seen it—as well as to those who, like Bob Dylan, have left it behind after brief stops years ago.