My dh is interviewing for a new position in his company. We were hoping it would take us to Texas, but it looks like the job is in Fargo. Can anyone tell me about it? I grew up in Buffalo, NY and went to college in Boston, so I am not too afraid of the winter (at least it won't be constant rain like it is in Seattle!). I am, however, a little worried...Seattle is so amazingly diverse, and I love how I fit in here. I am a bit of a treehugger. How are the schools? Any good parts of town? Availability of organic food? Any good hiking in the summer? Are there good ethnic food (Indian, Thai) restaurants?
TIA!
Bird-Mom,
I'm a transplant from Detroit who has lived in Fargo for the past few years. First, read Amberle's and Minnesota!'s posts to get a sense of how outsiders view Fargo. (Side note to Amberle--your post didn't offend me at all! But is Winnipeg that different? I've never been there, but former Winnipegians have told me they moved to Fargo for a better quality of life.)
Fargo's Reputation: The Weather
Moving to Fargo is a big geographic shock. First, the weather. I've lived in various parts of the Midwest and thought I knew winter. Until I moved to Fargo. You know how people say, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." Well, here they say, "It's not the snow, it's the wind." And winter lasts a long time.
During the summer, which seems short, the Fargo area is beautiful. Bright blue skies, fresh air, lots of bicycling and running. People don't really seem to hike around here--that's the other part of the state. The area is flat, as are the buildings, which reflects our soil, etc. What people tend to do during the summer is travel to what they call "the lakes" during the weekend (Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, but also refers to other regions). The region seems like it really values water activities, hunting, camping, etc., but you have to travel outside Fargo to do so. Most people travel east to Minneapolis for short trips, because Fargo is right at the border; I understand the Badlands are beautiful, but they're across the state.
Because of the extremes in weather, people talk about the weather a lot. It's one of the ways you learn to talk with locals and establish your stret cred. (I still don't have any, as I've missed any extreme winter and the great flood of 1997.)
Fargo and Diversity
Moving to Fargo is also a big culture shock. Here's the good news:
Cultural Events
Fargo is really the Fargo-Moorhead area, which consists of Fargo, West Fargo, and Moorhead, Minnesota. The population is under 200,000 for the region. F-M has three colleges (North Dakota State University, Minnesota State University Moorhead, and Concordia College), which means the area gets a lot of cultural programming. Recent events/personalities: David Eggers, George Carlin, Blue Man Group, Bob Dylan. Our high schools are very strong in terms of musical theatre (and we have university and community theatre, but our high-school productions are very strong in comparison with their peers). We have several theatre companies, an opera, jazz groups, etc.
We have a small, but growing, film festival, blues and country music festivals, and a strong music scene for the 20-something crowd. We've recently added a few wine bars and the prerequisit number of coffee shops (including Starbucks, of course). We do have the "big mall" for the area (Fargo, but also SD and Winnipeg), even if I find it lame, in part because I'm not a big shopper (We're also within 4 hours of the Mall of America.)
Families in Fargo
In terms of quality of living, I'm not sure about the quality of the schools (I'm child-free), but I could find out for you. Like I said, I hail from Detroit--whoo-hoo Tigers!--so I might be warped, but I find F-M incredibly safe. Lots of transplants said they chose to come here because it's a good place to raise children. It's fairly easy to live a healthy lifestyle here--a fair number of parks/greenspace in Fargo-Moorhead, some good biking/running trails, a Marathon in its 3rd year, cross-country skiing.
Diversity
Fargo has also grown a lot, and added a lot of diversity in the area in terms of cultural events if not in terms of population. The university helps, as does the industry in the area. There's a long history of powwows in the area, given our Native American population, but the historic Fargo theatre has started regularly showing Bollywood films (sponsored, in part, by prominent members of our small but growing Indian population).
Can You Be a Foodie in Fargo?
You asked about restaurants/food. We have a small, very small, organic store--Tocchi's. We also have a small African Market, an Asian market, and a food market--these are relatively new stores that reflect F-M's increasing international population. We also have a couple of bread places.
We do have two Indian restaurants, a Thai restaurant, a sushi place, among others. We have the Hotel Donaldson, a restaraunt with an upscale restaurant of American/continental food (upscale for the area), as well some other places. There are no vegetarian restaurants. There's a variety of Mexican places, as we have a small Hispanic population (mostly in Moorhead). The food tends to be mediocre to average, although it's improved a lot since I've been here. If you're a real foodie, you'll find yourself cooking more than going out.
The Wonderbread Reality Check
Now, here's the bad news. Fargo and F-M has a long way to go. Although Fargo the state's biggest city, it's a small town. The F-M area is approximately 95% white. The area is conservative, in many senses of the work beyond the political; you can read the local newspaper, The Fargo Forum, to get a sense of this. (Also, the state politics are often concerned with ND's outmigration or agricultural questions.)
The area's diversity is increasing, thanks to university efforts at recruitment for both faculty and students, an aggressive attempt on the part of industry, and various social services. (We have a growing Sudanese population, for instance.) With the growing population comes tensions, though the general reaction seems supportive of these changes to the F-M community.
Although you can find food here that's not run-of-the-mill, most of the restaurants are bland. I hope you like diners, because there's a lot of them here. And the ethnic food served in restaurants is geared to the local population, which means it's not nearly spicy or adventurous enough for my tastes.
Bottom Line
I'm not a native, and I speak with a metro-area person's biases. To summarize, as an outsider: I think if you visited F-M as a tourist, you might call it quirky or quaint, if you saw the right things. Or you might dismiss it as small and provincial, if just traveling through the area without a specific itinerary. But I'm not convinced that the average tourist would feel compelled to visit the area more than once; I think it's more of a "cross it off my list of places to visit" kind of reaction.
Now that I'm a resident, I've learned to like many things in F-M. But I still haven't learned to love the place or even to call it home. I get tired of people's reactions: 1) "Is Fargo is anything like the movie?" 2) "Do people in Fargo really speak like the characters in the movie?" 3) "I bet you it's cold there" or 4) "I'm sorry."
The scope and quality of those things you seem interested in--or the things I'm interested in, as I'm probably reading my situation into your post--is disappointing. F-M has the same things as a large urban area, but the number (of events, stores, restaurants) is MUCH smaller and the quality (due to lack of competition?) is spotty and generally inferior to those found in metro areas.
And my general assessment of locally produced events (art, music, theatre) is that they're not memorable. The restaurant scene caters to relatively bland taste buds. I often find myself traveling to Minneapolis (3 1/2 - 4 hours away) for culture, food, shopping. (Although, to be frank, I'm often underwhelmed by activities/events/performances Minneapolis, as well. No offense to those in Minneapolis.) I tend to "make do" with events in Fargo, but travel for "real" cultural experiences; I'm not sure it's fair to the area, or if I'm missing out on the area's recent development, but that's my impression.
I
have found surprises here that make me smile. I love the restored Fargo Theatre downtown--it's a great place to see a film with some quirky choices in between the extended runs of such films as March of the Penguins. The local chocolatier, Widman's, makes Chippers (chocolate-covered potato chips) and there is Nichole's, a nice pastry shop. The Green Market just opened, more of a deli than grocery, but it looks promising. We do have some solid artists in the area, with summer/fall gallery walks. There are tons of NPR or MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) stations--so that's good. And I live downtown, so I walk to work, to coffee shops, etc.
There are nice people here, as well, and the quality of relationships helps balance my other disappointments. If you and your family moved here, you'd be trading the benefits of a culturally diverse, urban lifestyle for the pleasures of smaller, slower-paced life. It's a trade-off, of course, but one that you could probably make.
I'd be willing to share more information with you, even though I'm afraid I've bombarded you with too much information/opinion already. You can PM me or ask questions here. I wish you and your family the best of luck.
And my dh will be thrilled about the diners! He loves them. I am excited that there is an organic store, no matter how small, and I also found a farm in Moorhead where I could buy organic beef. Now if I could find a midwife to apprentice with, I would be all set. The cost of housing is a big bonus for us-we could never afford to buy here. A house in my neighborhood runs around $450k and around $600k for the school distict we want to live in! 
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