East Side West Side

Saturday's Star Tribune included this headline on a brief Metro story:

St. Paul Police Look into Report of Officer's Actions Across River

The gist was that a St. Paul cop had gone to the West Bank neighborhood of Minneapolis where he entered the home of a Somali father and son without a warrant and hit and kicked them.

But the thing that got my attention was that, although the West Bank is clearly on the other side of the Mississippi from most of St. Paul, it is incorrect to make a general statement that Minneapolis is across the river from St. Paul -- there is some of St. Paul on the west side, and even more of Minneapolis on the east side.

I thought it was only people who weren't from here who think the two cities are across the river from each other.

But then again, maybe the Strib is outsourcing its headline writing to India, like it does its ad production.

A note about the map: I found this superb 1913 map of the Twin Cities Rapid Transit Co. system in the University of Texas's library's extensive map collection. The heavy black lines indicate the street cars that connected us until they were junked in the 1950s by General Motors. (Click the image for an enlarged version.)