Dinkytown is a small commercial district on the southern edge of the University of Minnesota's East Bank campus, centred on 4th Street SE and 14th Avenue SE. It has been a student neighbourhood for over a century, and the combination of cheap rents, high foot traffic, and a captive student population has made it unusually resistant to the chain-store homogenisation that afflicts most similar districts.
Bob Dylan lived on 4th Street SE when he arrived in Minneapolis in 1959, playing his first gigs at the Ten O'Clock Scholar coffee house. The area still has independent bookshops (Minnesota's best, Magers & Quinn, is a few blocks away in Uptown), pizza places, and diners that have served generations of students. The neighbourhood is compact enough to cover in an afternoon walk, and the proximity to the Mississippi River Gorge makes it easy to combine with a walk along the river bluffs.