They are called the Twin Cities, but Minneapolis has been more like St. Paul's bigger, more glamorous brother for generations.
Now the two cities are being asked to overcome their municipal sibling rivalry for a marketing campaign that portrays them as a single tourist hot spot.
Can they do it?
The test will come this summer, with the rollout of a national campaign that will include a logo, Web site, billboards, print ads and perhaps TV and radio commercials, all aimed at attracting tourists, conventioneers and new residents.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the idea came from tourism officials in Minneapolis.
With a population of 380,000, Minneapolis has almost 100,000 more residents than St. Paul and is seen as the more cosmopolitan of the two, with its modern skyline, wide boulevards and bustling economy. It likes to call itself the first city of the West.
That makes scrappy St. Paul, just across the Mississippi River, the last city of the East, and it fits the bill with its winding streets, Victorian mansions and working-class character. Former Gov. Jesse Ventura, a Minneapolis boy, once ticked off the entire city of St. Paul with an offhand remark on national TV that the city's streets appeared to have been laid out by drunken Irishmen.
"When I go to Minneapolis, someone is always trying to give me a quiche or a slice of pizza with goat cheese and pine nuts on it," said Bruce Larson, a lifelong St. Paulite who helps organize neighborhood festivals for the city. "In St. Paul they give me a brat and a beer, and that's what I want."
Though the marketers want Minneapolis and St. Paul to work together, they will avoid using the Twin Cities nickname, which has been around for decades. They say research has shown that too many people confuse it with twin cities in other parts of the country.
Escaping the Twin Cities name won't be easy. There's the baseball team, which took the Twins name in 1961 when the Washington Senators moved here. And the Minneapolis phone book alone has more than two pages of businesses with some variant of the Twin Cities name, among them: Twin Cities Cremation; Twin Cities Vein and Laser Clinic; Twin City Fan and Blower; and Twin Cities Flooring and Foam.
While St. Paul has undeniably humble roots - it was founded in 1840 as Pig's Eye after a French Canadian trader settled the area - it wasn't always this way. By the time Minnesota became a state in 1858, the renamed St. Paul was its biggest city, the state capital and a regional transportation hub. But a late-19th century boom in lumber and flour milling triggered a population explosion in Minneapolis.
In the 1880 census, Minneapolis surpassed St. Paul in population. That led to an intense census war, and in 1890, authorities in both cities arrested census takers from the other side of the river and charged them with padding their population counts. Both cities were guilty.
"They were counting people in cemeteries," said Mary Lethert Wingerd, a historian of the Twin Cities and proud St. Paul resident. "One barber shop supposedly had 15 people living in it. It was shameless."
The resentment lingered. For generations, St. Paul parents told their children not to spend their money in Minneapolis.
"Part of the St. Paul community identity was that Minneapolis didn't need - didn't deserve - our money," Wingerd said.
Decades of hearing "and St. Paul" affixed to Minneapolis have given many capital city residents something of an inferiority complex.
"Sure, it's a little sleepier over here," said Ralph Kromarek, owner of an antiques shop on St. Paul's hardscrabble East Side.
The minds behind the new campaign are quick to stress that St. Paul attractions will be just as heavily featured in the promotion. Still, some St. Paulites suspect that the marketing scheme is likely to leave their hometown in Minneapolis' shadow. Again.
"Oh, sure, you're the `big city' over there," said Don Corcoran, a cabinetmaker and third-generation St. Paulite, making quotation marks with his fingers. "You've got the Twins. You've got the Vikings. Well, you've also got your murder rate."
And what do Minneapolis folk think of being linked to St. Paul for the purposes of national advertisements? The better question might be whether they think of St. Paul at all.
"The truth is I just hardly ever get over there," said Lisa Scholl, a stay-at-home mom having lunch recently at a trendy bakery in her city's well-to- Linden Hills neighborhood. "Everything we need is over here."