I cannot necessarily complain about my current housing state in Minneapolis. It's conveniently close to the university I attend graduate school and provides a comfortable place for me to live. Despite a few mishaps with disorganization on the part of the management when I first came here, and the fact that we cannot have private bedrooms separate from random roommate assignments, it has overall been a positive experience. However, I will not be living here next year, even if they have a great deal on the apartments they have available.
The reason for this may seem very trivial for many, but I maintain that it involves something that is very dear to one of my passions in life. That is, my apartment building has recently changed its name. Originally, it was called Metro Park East which, while a little odd, made some sense in that it is located on the east side of Minneapolis, just a couple blocks from St. Paul. However, they changed their name to “44 North,” and that has made all the difference for me, being that it refers to its geographical location, and they are blatantly, unforgivably, impudently wrong.
Again, I know that this is probably not going to bother a lot of people, but for me it is an infraction on not only geography, but on the basis of science in general. Obviously the apartment management wanted to tell people what latitude they are at. In looking at what latitude we are actually at, I found out that where I am living is almost at the same latitude where I grew up, give or take three miles or so. That said, the latitude that “44 North’s” leasing office is at is 44.9724097 degrees north latitude.
Automatically one can see the problem with this number. It is indeed much closer to 45 degrees north than 44. If one were to calculate how far from 45 we are, they would find that it is only about 3-4 miles away. Alternatively, anyone in science, or if one has even dabbled in science in high school and college, and even as far back as grade school, would know the rounding rules for numbers. In this case, they are rounding to a whole number, so we see that the tenths place is a nine. Now, I think we can agree that anything above five would go to the larger number, and this is certainly as close to the higher whole number as many could be. In fact, if they wanted to be accurate and still use “44 North” as their name, they would have to move about 34 miles south of here, on the outskirts of the metropolis that is the Twin Cities.
Do not get me wrong, I am not inconsolably upset about this. I understand that the name may make typing in the complex’s name for a google search to be done just a slight bit faster, easier to remember, or rolls off the tongue a little smoother. Instead, I am just disappointed, and this is certainly a place that will not be getting business from me or [hopefully] any other hardcore geographer who is looking for a place in the Twin Cities. For now, I can tolerate this for the remainder of my stay here, for the exact same reasons that I laid out at the beginning of this article. Soon, though, I will have a little bit of time to look for where I will be living next year. I am not sure where I will end up, and it may be less convenient, but at least I will not be living in a place with no respect for geography. In short, I will not live in a lie.
