FINLANDER PURPLE. That's an Iron Range pejorative about differing tastes in house painting. Yes, there can be diversity, and a social pecking order, in a region where most of the population is of Scandinavian extraction (and working for the Great Northern) with the French-Canadians being exotic (and working for the Northern Pacific.) Virginia Postrel expands.

Is an outré paint job, like an unkempt lawn or a car on blocks, a blight on the landscape and a violation of middle-class norms? Or is it just another form of self-expression, acceptable as long as it’s well executed? Neighbors disagree.

In proper libertarian fashion, she makes the case for diversity of neighborhood standards.

The selfishness goes both ways, however. That purple house may be the life’s dream of its owner. It’s just as important for people in less-regulated communities to stick by their tolerant norms as it is for people in strictly controlled neighborhoods to obey their rules. You put up with their paint, so they’ll put up with your camper. “To me,” says Rohrmann, “that freedom is more valuable than the possibility of a person painting his house an obscure color that I might not necessarily like.” Besides, if you really hate it, you can always move to a subdivision that allows only beige shingles.

That's more constructive than railing against the "beige nazis."

(Via a Dynamist post that hints at Finlanders in Brooklyn.)