Cedar-Riverside, also referred to as the West Bank, or simply Riverside, is a neighborhood within Minneapolis, Minnesota. Its boundaries are the Mississippi River to the north and east, Interstate 94 to the south, and Hiawatha Avenue and Interstate 35W to the west. It has a longstanding tradition of cultural diversity and settlement, with a robust arts tradition.

The neighborhood has been a port of entry for immigrants since Swedes, Germans, and Bohemians began arriving in large numbers during the late 19th century. Cedar Avenue became a hub of the Minneapolis Scandinavian community in the late 1800s. Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish were spoken in many of the businesses, and in the early days, stars of Swedish American vaudeville entertained at Dania Hall, Mozart Hall and The Southern Theater.

There was Samuelsen’s confectionery and soda shop, Hagen's appliance store, Moberg’s Norwegian deli, and a host of other Scandinavian-owned businesses. On Cedar Avenue was Dania Hall, where the Danish community would meet. An eclectic mix of Gothic and classical styles, the building included a dining hall and kitchen in the basement, commercial space on the first floor, offices for the Society of Dania plus billiard and reading rooms on the second floor. A theater/assembly hall on the third and fourth floors featured Scandinavian vaudeville acts and weekend dances. On the corner of Cedar and Washington, just before the Washington Ave Bridge, was the Breezy Point Tavern owned by Oscar Carlsen, a Norwegian immigrant from the turn of the 20th century. Oscar had come to Minnesota to work in the lumber camps and saved a stake to buy this tavern.

Whereas men in the community had once worked in small businesses or as skilled tradesmen, railroad workers or in flour mills and breweries, Cedar-Riverside declined as a core community in the 1920s due to the impact of Prohibition on the entertainment district. Into the 1940s, Cedar-Riverside remained heavily Scandinavian. Postwar immigrants from all over Eastern Europe then settled in the area. The junction of Washington Avenue, Cedar Avenue, and 19th Avenue was known as Seven Corners. The Cedar-Riverside area had been known as "Snoose Boulevard" (Snusgatan) because so many Scandinavians lived there.

Cedar-Riverside, with the locally infamous Seven Corners district, mouldered into a skid row scene in the 1950s. In the mid-to-late 1960s, the University of Minnesota expanded across the Mississippi River into the Cedar-Riverside area, which was on the river's west bank. The area became known as the "West Bank" and became the center of the University-oriented counterculture and antiwar movement. It was home to local hippies, protesters, and other anti-establishment groups between the 1960s and early 1970s. During those days, the neighborhood was known as the "Haight-Ashbury of the Midwest."

The West Bank was home to McCosh's secondhand book store, a center for Beat and Hippie left-leaning bookworms, and later Things, probably the first head shop in the Twin Cities, which sold counterculture curios, anti-Vietnam War buttons and posters, incense and drug paraphernalia. Marijuana, hashish and LSD were readily available in the area after about 1967. A community of hippies — and numerous students and hangers-on who emulated the hippie lifestyle (at least on weekends) — lived in old rental houses in the area and congregated at coffeehouses, such as the Extemporé, The Scholar and the Broken Drum, and at bars, such as the Triangle Bar, the Viking, Caesar's, The Mixers and the Music Bar. (The latter burned down the night Robert Kennedy was assassinated, and eventually was replaced by a "people's park"). The Triangle often featured performers and recording artists Dave Ray, Tony Glover and John Koerner, who had associated to some degree with Bob Dylan during his brief Minneapolis sojourn.

Coffeehouse Extempore was at one time the nation’s oldest continuously operated folk music and arts center. It operated from the mid-1960s until it was permanently closed in 1987. It was originally founded on the model of 17th- and 18th-century English coffeehouses. Its programming was "aimed at promoting understanding and tolerance in the West Bank community.” As such, the Coffeehouse Extempore was unusual among the Cedar-Riverside venues in that it was non-alcoholic: it had tables for chatting over coffee, dedicated discussion rooms, and chess tables. The Café Extempore was a hub for a wide variety of people, including musicians, poets, chess players, LGBTQ+ individuals, runaways, academics, and both religious and non-religious people. It was a welcoming place where anyone and everyone was accepted, and people from all walks of life talked freely with one another. The Extempore provided an escape from stresses of poverty and it was a non-alcoholic, music-filled haven where patrons could enjoy low-cost concerts in the gallery, and a sense of safety and fun was pervasive. The venue's unpaved, potholed back lot even offered free parking. Inside, chess and other board games might be in play, and it was safe for adolescents.

But music was its great attraction, especially for local artists. In the first years, it was the venue where up-and-coming musicians such as Dakota Dave Hull and Sean Blackburn frequently performed. In the 1980s and until 1987 when it closed, hundreds of musicians had performed at the Coffeehouse Extempore in those years alone. The list included Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Don Williams, Peggy Seeger, Walkin' Jim Stoltz and Mike Seeger.