About a week and half-ish ago, we talked about the first five things that make Minnesota a special place. Now we’re back with the remaining five. 6. Hot Dish. AKA casserole. At least that’s what most of us who are not from Minnesota call this. (Although apparently, while every hotdish is a casserole, not every casserole is a hot dish.) Whatever. Your basic dish “constructed on a base of canned cream of mushroom soup and canned vegetables.” The question is, do you want to eat this? 7. Co-ops. OK. This is a little tricky, since it’s not like Minnesota invented co-ops, or is the only place that has them. Let’s just be real. There are pros and cons to joining and shopping at a co-op; we just like to poke fun at the fact that it feels like it costs $25.93 for some peanut butter. And the way our budgets are set up… 8. The Lynx. Or as you might know them, the winningest sports team in Minnesota. Here at TeamBlackasotan, we love the Lynx. If we …

Over the years, we and many of our fellow transplant Blackasotans have noticed some of the things that make Minnesota…unique. After talking it over, we decided to speak on just ten of these things. You know how they say, “Keep Portland weird?” Well, these things must be part of some hidden conversation about “keeping Minnesota weird AF.” You can’t just have regular bikes. OK. Admit it. You didn’t see people just riding along on “alterna-bikes” before you moved here. You know what we’re talking about: “lay down bikes,” “shoulder pushers” and unicycles. Yes, we went on to learn that the first two are really called recumbent bikes and hand bikes or hand cycles, and that there are ergonomic and health- and ability-related reasons for choosing these over your more commonly-known bike. We respect that, but had to admit before we learned more, we would wonder, exactly who just rides this to work? (And sorry, not sorry – still can’t wrap our minds around riding a unicycle for anything outside of performance or entertainment contexts.) White people …