Lovely day: Minneapolis man looks to change narrative around Minneapolis with cheerful tweets, photos

On an unseasonably warm fall Friday in Minneapolis, Mike Norton paused along the Bryant Avenue bike path to snap a photo of a magnificently yellow tree. Another city scene added to the tens of thousands stored on his camera roll, a chronicle of Norton’s one-man social media quest to improve his city’s reputation.

Norton shares these Minneapolis scenes, of its lakes and protected bike lanes and other quality-of-life drivers, on his locally popular X account. It’s a way for the former DFL activist and one-time City Council candidate to push back against some of the negativity around safety and livability in Minneapolis that began to emerge in earnest after the unrest that followed George Floyd’s murder in 2020. President-elect Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have helped keep those outsider perceptions alive with their own critical election-season comments about Minnesota’s largest city.

“It was basically like trolling people that don’t live in Minneapolis, but want to tell you how things are in Minneapolis, it was kind of a clapback,” said Norton, 40, who lives in southwest Minneapolis and owns a small shipping-container business in Uptown. “This is what it’s like, actually. This is my experience every day.”

In 2020, gun violence and other crimes surged to record levels in Minneapolis. Those rates remain above pre-pandemic levels. But in 2022 and 2023, violent crime fell in the city, even after an exodus of Minneapolis police officers that started in 2020.

Norton said the intent of his initial pushback posts was to help restaurants and other businesses that rely on customers from beyond the city limits at a time when even residents of neighboring suburbs, much less farther away, seemed convinced that Minneapolis was little more than a smoldering ruin.

Norton’s political allegiance has likely fueled some of the online trolling his chronicling has generated. He is a past vice chair of the Minneapolis DFL, and in 2021 he unsuccessfully challenged City Council Member Linea Palmisano from the left. Simple statements he makes in his posts, like “Minneapolis is a lovely place to live,” alongside photos or videos from his bicycle commute to work, are often derided with police siren emojis and assertions that he is in denial.

When Vance visited in October and held a news conference in front of the shuttered Third Precinct police station, he portrayed Minneapolis as a city in decline. Residents, he said, told him that with Gov. Tim Walz in office, their quality of life had declined and that Minneapolis was “overrun with crime.”

The local internet responded with outrage, largely mimicking Norton’s understated cheerleading. City residents posted photos from around Minneapolis paired with quotes from Vance’s speech. Mayor Jacob Frey put up a video of his own, showing him on a jog around a Minneapolis lake and noting that violent crime in the city has declined.

Frey said that addressing Vance’s remarks in a formal news conference would have only legitimized them. So he chose the video instead.

“I thought I’ll just send him a message that is just a beautiful visual of the city. You had this exquisite fall day... the lake was teeming with people that were outside, loving on a great city,” he said.

Norton’s snarky comeback to Vance, which included a colorful name for the now-vice president elect and a bicycle selfie at the same intersection later that day, got more than 1 million views on X.

“That’s what it really is, is standing up for Minneapolis,” Norton said.

His posts have a hallmark: the use of the word “lovely” to describe his latest Minneapolis scene. “I think lovely just gets to the point,” he said.

The posts have resonated across local social media because they showcase good things about the city without ignoring its challenges, said Robert Haider of Minneapolis, who has posted similar content.

Norton does not dismiss the past uptick in crime or the people who have been affected by it. Everyone knows someone who’s been mugged or carjacked, he said, but that doesn’t mean it’s an the everyday experience in Minneapolis.

While Norton said he posts about Minneapolis “for the love of the game,” a social media campaign like his could have genuine value for the city. Many people use their preferred social platform as a search engine when making decisions about where to travel, said Christine Scherping, founder of Friend of a Friend PR, which worked with Meet Minneapolis on its 2023 “See What All the Fuss is About” marketing campaign.

“I would say a lot of our inspiration does come off what we experience and see ourselves because we’re always on social platforms and seeing what people are authentically saying,” Scherping said. “It’s one thing for us to say it, but if people are already experiencing and sharing, that’s a great gut check.”

While many variables go into the pricing of social media ad campaigns, a multiyear sustaining program, working with multiple creators, would require an investment in the six to seven figures, she said.

While more marketing is always welcome, there’s something about an individual person capturing the way they experience the city that can’t be beat, Frey said.

“Organic always beats manicured, especially in this online age,” the mayor said. “It’s got to be based on the emotion people are feeling and their desire to step up and defend.”

At the end of the day, Norton said, he would rather not be a known, public-facing person.

While he has fans who greet him on leaf-covered bike trails, he has his share of haters, too. Norton said some of the vitriol directed his way has been deeply offensive and he does occasionally worry about provoking extreme or violent behavior.

Still, he doesn’t block anyone on social media, he said, since he can’t in real life. “If you ignore it, then you’re surprised by it when it pops up in your community. They are real human beings, mostly, that are genuinely upset at Minneapolis just for existing,” Norton said.

The next Trump presidency could bring Minneapolis more unwanted attention from detractors. Norton said it will be up to the people who live here to define what the city is like and to counter that narrative with photographic proof that it’s lovely indeed.