Yes, the terrain was as flat as a sheet of paper, and about as colorful. Yes, it was cold, with nothing to get in the way of that biting wind. And yes, the people were friendly in a small-town, wide-eyed way (including the server at the HoDo who repeatedly called me "Dear," despite being about 30 years my junior, and the server at Zest, who wondered — when I asked for a glass with my beer — if I would also require ice).
But everything else about Fargo was a surprise. It was thriving, it was hip, it was arty, it was fun. I liked it! This I had not expected. Even more of a surprise: I want to go back.
My trip to North Dakota was whirlwind: in on a Sunday evening, out on a Tuesday afternoon. In between, I had obligations at a college in Moorhead, Minn., just across the Red River of the North.
But Moorhead has no downtown (it fell victim to misguided "urban renewal" back in the 1960s), so I slept, ate and hung out in Fargo. This, I was told, is pretty common.
Fargo doesn't have much to do with the river; the heart of downtown stretches along five or six blocks of Broadway, about a half-mile inland. But what a fun five blocks! Coffee shops and galleries, yoga studios, a couple of bakeries, the Art Deco Fargo Theatre, restaurants and bars. At night the stretch glows with funky neon.
Fargo is North Dakota's largest city, with 118,000 residents, and when you add in the population of Moorhead it swells to more than 230,000. There are three main colleges — North Dakota State University in Fargo, and Concordia College and Minnesota State University in Moorhead — which means coffee shops, an alternative weekly, film festivals and art shows.
The city, named for William Fargo of Wells-Fargo fame, was founded in 1871 and burned to the ground 20 years later. (And then, voila! Rebuilt.) It was established at the confluence of the river and the railroad tracks, and while I barely glimpsed the river while I was there, the railroad tracks still define one edge of downtown.
The city had perhaps no national reputation until it became the butt of a million jokes after the Coen brothers' movie "Fargo." But the citizens of Fargo have a good sense of humor, and a good sense of marketing; upstairs in the lovely, refurbished circa-1920s Fargo Theatre, whose blinking lights and neon are the heart of Broadway after dark, stands a chainsaw sculpture of the lantern-jawed Marge Gunderson from the film. "Wood-Chip Marge" is 8 feet tall and formidable.
