Weekend Open Thread + Crane picture

You've got to admit, that's a serious crane. I'm not sure what they're lifting, but apparently something needs to be put on top of the MidAmerican building.

I'll be out of town today, as I'm representing the QC area at a small get together in Des Moines with some of the folks from AbsoluteDSM.com. The people on that site seem to be a lot more excited about some of things happening in Davenport than a lot of Davenport residents are...

I won't be all the way out of touch, since I think the bar we're eating at has wireless internet, and I'll have my laptop. So don't get too rowdy while the moderator is away.

Also, GO IOWA!
(I saw some OSU fans skulking around
downtown yesterday, so watch out)

4th Street Lofts Images

I got to walk through the 4th Street Lofts tonight, and took some pictures of the progress. The actual apartments are still in various stages of completion, so I took mostly shots of the views from the windows.

This is going to be one of the neatest areas of the building. The image on the left is from my pre-renovation tour almost a year ago, and the image on the right was taken today. They've reused these old doors in what would have otherwise been a plain hallway, with the actual apartment doors interspersed between the old metal-clad doors.

Here's a view out of a south-facing window, which will someday be improved by the destruction of the cement plant. It had a pretty good view of the lock and dam, even with the trees, but my camera isn't much for zooming in.
The view to the west, which could someday include a repainted bridge and hopefully a renovated Blackhawk hotel. It will also probably include washed windows.The view to the east is the building I live in, the Crescent Macaroni Building or Davenport Lofts. People on both sides of the street will have to be mindful of keeping their blinds closed if they don't want an audience.

Alexander Company is hopeful that people will be able to start moving into the 4th Street Lofts by December, and 5 apartments are already rented, despite this week being the first time any potential renters have been able to get in to see the building.

Finally someone got the "WitQC?" image

I'm not sure if it was someone who actually knew where the architectural feature was from, drove around the downtown one-ways until they saw it, or just guessed every downtown building, but someone finally got Where in the QC is this? #11.

The winner was anonymous 6:10, who said the Democrat on Brady Street.Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture of the Democrat building itself, as I was down there taking pictures of the Kapheim memorial progress and the John Forest block project. This shot at least shows where the design is located on the building. I was trying to come up with a 3rd clue somehow tying into the Democrat name, but fortunately someone got it before I had to try and come up with something clever and witty.

Coming soon: My reflections on a tour of the new 4th Street Lofts.

Where in the QC is this? #11

Edit: I'm moving this back to the top because no one has gotten it yet.

Clue #1: This place is in Davenport.

Clue#2: You've hopefully only driven by it in one direction, and its near a building being renovated, overlooking something else that's newly changed.

This is a rare weekend where I didn't have a bunch of stuff to attend or take care of, so you folks will have to excuse my relative lack of posts. I was going to be lazy tonight and post an open thread, but instead I'll be nearly as lazy and post a "Where in the QC is this?."

(Click image for a larger view)

A couple new links

Pioneer98, of the Bridge to Somewhere blog, is on a bit of a hiatus. However, he is still posting pictures on the Bridge to Somewhere Flickr site, so I've added the link to that to my link bar.

I've also added a link to the Crescent Lofts new website, even though its unfinished and has little beyond a fancy flash intro and all the floorplans for the building opening later this year.

Real Estate Davenport-style

I spend a couple hours from time to time looking through Ruhl-Ruhl.com at houses in Davenport. Partly I do this out of curiosity, and partly because I hope to buy a home in the next couple years. I picked 4 homes that I felt like saying something about, and here they are. Images are mostly taken from Scott County's online Parcel Search.

1. 1502 Kirkwood -Its our old friend the Kirkwood boarded-up house. It can be yours for a mere 44 grand. I'm sure under that plywood its a real beauty. The pictures on Ruhl&Ruhl's site show how well it was taken care of. Perfect for Bix parties!

2. 1127 Bridge -I remember about a decade ago this house was completely fixed up, at least on the outside, and it really looked great. Then apparently whoever did the fixing instantly moved away and whoever moved in started letting it fall apart from day one. They're asking $95,000 for it, so maybe the inside is still in good shape. The lack of any inside pictures on the site isn't encouraging though. This neighborhood could really use this house being back in good shape.

3. 604 Gaines -This really looks like it has great potential. I can picture what it would look like renovated, and combined with the other efforts in that neighborhood it would definitely be a good thing. Unfortunately, even if I had $90,000 to buy it plus the many thousands to spend on supplies to fix it up, my fear of heights would keep me far away from the 3rd floor and turrets. It looks like it was sold in 1989 for $10,000 and in 2002 for $45,000, so in a few more years it should be worth at least 200 grand.

4. 3117 E Locust -Its the castle-looking home directly across from the 14th hole of the Duck Creek golf course. Its a pretty amazing home, but I found a couple other things interesting about it. Judging from its Parcel Summary on Scott County's site, its assessed at $320,740 and sold for nearly that ($310,000) in 2003. While homes in many Davenport neighborhoods are lucky to get their assessed value for a purchase price, this one did. Not only that, but 3 years later its selling for $549,000! I'm not into the real estate business, so maybe this is just an optimistic starting point, or maybe some serious work has been done to the house. Either way, a bit too rich for my blood. Oh yeah, it even has a website, www.davenportcastle.com, even though I consider this to be the real Davenport castle.

If anyone buys any of these after reading about them here, I would expect the realtor to at least buy me dinner. A piece of their commission wouldn't be too bad either...

Your Dream Downtown

(Note: This image is not my dream downtown, but a whimsical conversation starter)

The recent discussions about the possibility of an indoor water park next to the Blackhawk got me thinking, what things would I really love to see downtown? I have a few ideas that I may share in the upcoming days, but I figured I'd throw it out there for the blog readers to make suggestions.

For the purpose of this exercise, lets assume that none of these buildings or ideas will involve any taxpayer money, or block anyone's views. I know that both of those are improbable bordering on impossible, but pretend they aren't for the sake of argument.

What things would you folks most like to see built, installed, or added to downtown Davenport?

Fly gets his wish

According to the agenda for tonight's council meeting, the city cable commission will actually get some members tonight. Six people are being appointed, and they're all listed as new appointments. This was always one of the Fly's pet peeves, and he'd probably know if 6 is the final number or if that's just a partial cable commission. QCI, however, doesn't know how many people belong on a cable commission. (or really care, but don't tell Fly)

Sunrise on the river

Where in the QC is this? #10

Here we go again.... where is it? Maybe posting it at 6:37am will stop someone from getting it in 10 minutes or less.

Click to enlarge, as usual

After a number of good guesses "hoganj300" got the correct answer, which I'll leave off the front page so others can see if they were right.

Weekend Roundup

As you can see in the image above, the Ghost Bridge presentation worked considerably better Sunday night. I didn't make it down there until a bit after 9pm, and by that time there were less than 20 people watching. Every time I was down there Kathy Wine was down there by the projection van. If she spent 8 hours this weekend watching the presentation she probably knows the lines by heart. Part of the problem with the Ghost Bridge was that the 3D rendering video was made in a "ghostly" greenish color that might not have shown up as well. The full color sponsor screens at the end really showed what this system could do. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of those.

Halloween comes after we "Fall Back" this year, so even though its from 5-7PM, it should actually be dark for trick-or-treating this year. Here's the city's notice about it. I guess this year I don't have to complain that it sends a message about our city if we make kids trick-or-treat in broad daylight.

Since the new city website is so easy to use, you folks shouldn't even need me to point things out anymore, but here's a link to a notice about a public meeting about a possible recreational trail between 46th and 53rd along Goose Creek. I really like how the newest things posted get shown right on the front page of the site.

This QCTimes article about Buysse Dodge being bought doesn't really spell it out, but I assume their current property on Brady will be vacant now? The article talks about them moving the cars to West Kimberly, but doesn't mention what will happen to the Brady Street property.

Saturday night I worked at the RiverWay info tent on the Figge Plaza, and who should my fellow volunteer be but Ray "2000 Feet" Ambrose. Needless to say, there was some spirited discussion between info-giving, but I was at least impressed with his advice to out-of-towners about what to see downtown. I hope to do a post about said tourists sometime this week. Alderman Ambrose and I sure don't agree on much, but I still admit that he's just trying to do what he thinks is best for Davenport. If everyone felt that way about the other side, maybe we'd have a council that got along better.

Next month is the 1 year anniversary of the QuadCityImages blog. I was planning on having a big bash at the Radisson with free drinks and caviar and whatnot, but the blog business wasn't very profitable this year. Maybe next year.

Ghostbridge + high wind = wet and disappointed people

The first night the Ghostbridge still had some kinks to work out. The second night I've heard it worked pretty well. Tonight they had it set up right, but high winds made it pretty tough to see, and also soaked some of the crowds. Hopefully tomorrow night everything works perfectly and the wind calms down.

Riverway 2006 Day 3

No schedule posting today, but you can find the schedule I've been posting from here. Instead, today's post is dedicated to images from this morning's events.

At 7:30 the Taming of the Slough: Mississippi River Adventure Race started off with participants paddling 1 mile in kayaks or canoes.After they returned to their starting docks near the QC Rowing Club boathouse, the rowers either jumped on mountain bikes themselves, or handed off to their biking relay partners. The cyclists than rode down the riverfront path to Sylvan Island, where they had to do 3 laps around a tough off-road course for a total of 6 miles biked. After finishing this, they traded bikes for running shoes and set off on a 2 mile run into downtown Moline and the finish line.Even while this was going on, huge crowds were turning downtown Rock Island into a chaotic traffic jam of railfans, families, and surprised passers-by. People were stopping their cars in the middle of 1st Avenue and jumping out in the middle of the street. All 3 steam engines were coupled together at the front of the Milwaukee 261's passenger train. It was really something to see, and it left me hoping that we could have some sort of permanent or semi-permanent steam engine presence in the Quad Cities. The cars seemed pretty packed with passengers, and the streets were definitely packed with gawkers, including myself.Considering that all this happened before 9:30 in the morning, this should be quite a weekend.

Local blogger discovers expensive chair plot

Here's an article from QCOnline (at least for a little while), and I assume also the Argus/Dispatch, about the new Moline Library spending over $600 each for Herman Miller Aeron chairs.

The Inside Dope recently took issue with these pricey chairs over on his blog, as part of a multi-page review of the new library. Apparently Dawn Neuses of the Dispatch smelled a story there, and contacted the library for their comments on the expensive chairs.

They basically said they're appropriate chairs, and that quality chairs will last longer and have to be repurchased less often. That argument does make sense, but I also feel like going all out and getting brand name Herman Miller chairs is probably over the top. I don't buy many office chairs, but I know in almost every other case when buying "the best name in... " you pay a premium for the name itself. I suspect there's a compromise between $600+ chairs and $20 IKEA chairs that might last fairly long.

The comments section of the article on QCOnline shows that Davenport isn't the only city around here with a negativity problem though. Its also interesting to see an issue brought up by a local blog get mainstream coverage, and most importantly, be cited for bringing up the issue. A lot of times I feel like the Times and QConline folks troll for articles on the blogs and then give us no credit.

RiverWay 2006 Day 2

Here's today's schedule. Its not really stated anywhere that I can find, but I believe the lecture/story topics for each person are the same as yesterday, unless otherwise noted. I kind of feel like this schedule was thrown together as an after-thought, but hey, its the first year of the event.

Friday, Sept. 15
10:30-12:00 Putnam Museum Julie Bull & Reid Miller
11:00 LeClaire House Karen Anderson
11:00-12:15 Family Museum Duffy De France & Jan Gray
11:00-11:45 Mississippi River Visitors Center Babs Trieber
12:30-1:15 pm Colonel Davenport House Bill Hannnan
1:00-2:30 Deere-Wiman House Patricia Coffie & Joe Nobling
1:00-1:45 Mississippi River Visitors Center Babs Trieber
1:30-2:15 Arsenal Museum Steve Marriott
2:00-3:30 Quad City Botanical Center Leanne Johnson & Peggy Jones
2:00-2:45 Figge Art Museum Effie Afton Trial Reenactment
2:15-3:00 Colonel Davenport House Bill Hannan
2:30-4:00 Deere Wiman house Patricia Coffie & Joe Nobling
2:45-3:30 Figge Art Museum Larry Lockwood
3:30-4:15 Figge Art Museum Dee Anderson -Stories featuring trains and boats
3:00-3:45 Arsenal Museum Steve Marriott
4:00 LeClaire House Karen Anderson
6:00-7:00 District of Rock Island Bev Heintz -Iowa Women/trains & growing up
Larry Lockwood
7:00 LeClaire Park Art Pitz -Bridge Building Descendants
8:00-10:00 LeClaire Park Ghost Bridge

I'm stuck working 6pm-6am yesterday and today, so I haven't gotten to experience much of this. From what the Times article said, they had some glitches with the ghost bridge, but they plan to try some things to fix it tonight. I figure by the time I see it Saturday night it should be all worked out.

QCI Around Town

I had some errands to run today, and snapped a few shots while I was out.The Davenport Main library was closed today, by the looks of it for filming. I'm all for this Avati movie (The Hideout) showcasing Davenport, but wouldn't it have been possible to film the scenes in the PUBLIC library on a day when its normally closed? Like yesterday... Oh well, I guess I didn't need a book.
Anyone that says we don't need to widen Kimberly Road in the next few years, and some people have, need only to look at this 4:30 snapshot of cars backed up from Elmore. I'm not usually out in that area during rush hour, but it seems worse than I remember.

RiverWay 2006 Day 1

From RiverAction.org's online schedule:

Thursday, Sept. 14
10:30 am Augustana College-Olin Center Dr. Michael Conzen -Railroad Leaps Mississippi
11:00 LeClaire House Karen Anderson -Gateway to the West frontier
12:00-12:45 pm Figge Art Museum Effie Afton Trial Reenactment
12:45-1:30 Figge Art Museum Larry Lockwood -Native American storytelling
12:30-1:15 Colonel Davenport House Bill Hannan -Colonel George Davenport
1:00-4:00 Deere-Wiman House Patricia Coffie -Railroad and river tales
Joe Nobling -Irish music
2:15-3:00 Colonel Davenport House Bill Hannan -Colonel George Davenport
2:30-4:00 Putnam Museum Julie Bull -Hobo Days & Iowa Farm life
Reid Miller -Storytelling, music & humor
3:00-3:45 Arsenal Museum Steve Marriott Building of the first bridge
3:30-4:15 Mississippi River Visitors Center Babs Trieber -Houseboat & train tales
3:30-5:00 Quad City Botanical Center Leanne Johnson -Folktales on animals of the area Peggy Jones -Railroad and river tales
4:00 LeClaire House Karen Anderson
5:30 Modern Woodman Train Dedication Ceremony, downtown Rock Island
6:30-7:45 Family Museum Duffy DeFrance -Interactive family stories
Jan Gray -Legendary figures
8:00-10:00 LeClaire Park Ghost Bridge

There will also be Transportation/Info Centers at the Figge, John Deere Commons, and downtown Rock Island, along with a shuttle bus route between the many events going on this weekend. If this event becomes a tradition I could see it someday being one of our biggest festival weekends.

Steam Engines Galore

I took about 50 pictures over in Rock Island, because the 2 Chinese steam engines and the Milwaukee 261 were all over there moving around. I might post a few more, or maybe upload them somewhere else like Flickr and post a link. I also saw the 2 Chinese engines to past my apartment over the Arsenal bridge, which isn't something you see every day outside your window.
Here you see all 3 nose-to-nose.

Davenport's new site is partly up

I don't know if they want it to be up yet, but some of the areas on the old site link to new pages, and through those you can get to the main page of the new site, which is temporarily located at http://209.43.125.183/ Looks pretty decent so far, but I just started looking.

Wednesday Morning Assortment

I signed up yesterday to volunteer at one of the hubs of this weekend's RiverWay 2006. It looked like RiverAction could still use a few more volunteers to fill up the remaining 3 hour shifts.
There is a massive amount of stuff going on this weekend, and I'm hoping to post a schedule for each day of RiverWay, starting tomorrow. The steam engines are already in the area, and its been neat to hear their whistles echoing through the river valley.

The "Oneida Landing" condo project has a website, which the developer revealed over on this thread at AbsoluteDSM. The website is, shockingly enough, www.oneidalanding.com. I've given this project a hard time, but really its a great looking building, and will be good for Davenport. I just still wish it was being built downtown. It would help our skyline and create more density down here.

Construction is moving along on the Lincoln/Bechtel Park at 2nd and Iowa, so check that out if you're downtown this weekend, which you should be.

In (rare) Illinois news, what's up with the stoplight being broken at the intersection of 5th Avenue and I believe 4th Street? The control box has been smashed and stop signs have been controlling the intersection instead for at least 3 weeks now.

Congrats to my elementary school principal, Ken Krumwiede, for winning a seat on the Davenport School Board. He was the source of a number of detentions back in my Garfield days, but I can't hold that against him since I probably deserved them. Non-congrats to the many thousands of registered voters that didn't vote.

The Political Side of 9/11: Rebuilding

I normally try to avoid national politics, because they are about the only thing more divisive than Davenport politics lately. They are also probably more likely to get me in trouble later in my life, because I write this blog with the full understanding that every position I take has the possibility of being brought up years down the road. That said... I'll now make a rare exception.

One of the biggest tragedies of 9/11 to me personally is that we are accepting defeat in that battle. We're taking the attitude of, "they won this time, but we will prevail in the long run." I truly believe we will prevail in the long run, but I don't see why we have to let them leave a hole in NYC. Instead of rebuilding the World Trade Center, we are building an enormous monument to terrorism. Instead of putting back what terrorists tried to destroy, we are leaving it destroyed.

If terrorists had knocked down the White House, the Capitol, the Statue of Liberty, or other Washington monuments, I would like to think we would rebuild them just as they were. Why, then, are we throwing in the towel on the Twin Towers? What makes a better statement then having the World Trade Center rebuilt stronger than before, so potential terrorists will see that NYC has been restored to the way it was before September 11th? It would show them the futility of the mission to destroy the United States through murdering civilians. The hijackers would still be dead, and the towers would stand again over New York.

Instead we're building an ugly spire, and leaving 2 empty sockets in the ground of NY and calling them memorials. They will be a perfect place for future terrorists-in-training to come and see what their kind have done before. Imagine them instead coming to the site and seeing it looking essentially the same as it did on September 10th? If I had been killed working or visiting a national symbol, I would most certainly want it rebuilt. Replacing what was lost gives a big "F You" to terrorists everywhere.

In fact, I have come up with 2 rules I'd like to leave behind in the exceedingly unlikely chance that I'm ever killed in a terrorist attack.

#1. Don't use my death as justification to kill anyone not directly involved in my death. I'm not going to get into this one.

#2. Rebuild. I don't care if I was killed by terrorists in the Statue of Liberty, the Sears Tower, or a Kwik Shop in Davenport, Iowa. Build it back the way it was, and find another way to memorialize the people lost besides leaving a gaping hole.

More info can be found on rebuilding at makenynyagain.com

Mediacom broken?

Sadly I'm only able to access blogspot from my phone, and not my (expensive) cable connection.

If any of you are having better luck with the "internets" today, use this open thread for your comments.

Just remember, the internet is not a truck, it's a series of tubes.

James P. Hopper

A couple weeks ago, Ambrose Fulton of SoLo sent me the link to the 2996 Project, and I could not think of a better way for bloggers to honor the 9/11 victims. Here's my tribute to James P. Hopper.

James was killed in the World Trade Center. He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, a brokerage company that lost 658 of its employees that day, over half of its workforce. He was a retired corrections officer for the City of New York. James was 51 years old, and lived in Farmingdale, New York. He left behind his wife Rita, and his 2 kids, James and Lauren. His brother-in-law, Richard Poulos, also lost his life in the WTC that day. The only thing that I can imagine worse than losing a family member that way is losing more than one.

I am proud to do my part to help us remember this man, and as the 2996 Project states,

"We will honor them by remembering their lives, and not by remembering their murderers."

This will be the only post on this day. Please spend the time normally used for political discourse remembering the nearly 3000 people that were killed 5 years ago.

5 Years ago

Five years ago tomorrow morning, I got up to get ready for my day's classes at Scott. My dad had taken the day off and was in front of the TV watching CNN like every morning. That morning he told me to come look, because an airliner had crashed into the World Trade Center. I wondered how that could happen in the era of autopilot and computer maps, but then we watched the 2nd plane hit the other tower and I had the terrible realization that this was being done on purpose. The news kept coming in: the attack on the pentagon, the "missing plane," the crash in Pennsylvania...

I kept coming back to two thoughts. One was that the horrible things written about in books by Tom Clancy and Dale Brown were happening for real, and the other was that things would never be the same for our country. If I had known then how true that would turn out to be I would have been even more devastated. I drove over to school, but people were just walking around the halls like zombies, or clustering around the TVs watching. My Literature professor said there was no way we could concentrate on our studies with this happening, and we sat around talking about it until everyone just drifted off to the TVs or their homes. I felt a strange need to watch the TV coverage essentially non-stop, because I felt like doing anything else but paying attention to this was disrespectful to what had happened.

A Des Moine(s)r's view of the QC

I've been off camping in the rain on the grounds of Skydive Chicago, so I don't have a whole lot to write about today. And no, I didn't skydive.

Mainly I want to point people to this post on AbsoluteDSM's forum's Iowa Cities & Development forum. Its been split off another discussion, because one of the DSM area regulars starts talking about his upcoming trip to the Quad Cities. Today he posted his reflections on this weekend's trip, and its interesting to see an outsider's point of view.

In other news, the shooting at the constantly low-quality hotel currently called the Howard Johnson.

Providing further evidence that I should never read the comments on QCTimes.com, one of these comments is either written by a moron or someone who didn't even read the story. They confused the time the call came in for a suspicious smell with the time the guy was shot, and imply that the cop shot the guy, left, and the police didn't arrive for 2 more hours, which is completely different than what happened. On an unfortunate note, this is the same officer that was involved in the incident at the fair that got the department sued. This really is a bad coincidence, because unfortunately some people will try and use it to go after a good cop.

Crescent Warehouse District updates

Windows are going in on the newest addition to the warehouse district.

It seems that they've decided to call the whole area the Crescent Warehouse District, and then have different names for each building. The new project looks like it'll be called the Fourth Street Lofts, which will join the existing Crescent Macaroni building and Waterloo Mills building.

Alexander has also finally set up a website for the area, but its long on fluff and short on content at the moment. It does have floorplans and prices for all of the apartments in the 4th Street Lofts building, which should be opening by Christmas. I've heard that they already have 4 or 5 deposits down on apartments and a large waiting list, despite not even physically showing the apartments yet.

They are going to be having an open house or ribbon cutting or other event sometime before the project opens, although it sounds like it won't be before October or November. I'll post it when it is announced, and I'm looking forward to seeing the inside of the building again. I'm sure it'll look quite different from the last time I was there.

New post coming later today, I swear

Until then... open thread.

Also, join in on the feisty discussion of political parties' relevance on local politics in the thread below.

2 Changes for the sake of Change

Partisan Elections:

City Hall has been a circus for the last few years, and some people think that bringing back openly partisan elections will solve that problem. I don't buy it. For one, as I said over at SoLo, which party is going to run the Keith Meyer and Shawn Hamerlincks of Davenport? What's the point of exchanging D1 vs Againsters vs QCRPA for Democrats vs Republicans vs "other?" Just look to our state or federal elected officials if you start thinking that partisan politics create a civil and professional elected body. Or are people just that lazy that they need a party to tell them who to vote for, instead of actually learning about the candidates? An educated electorate doesn't mean an electorate of party-obeying sheep.

2 Way Brady/Harrison:

This was covered over on Bridge to Somewhere, but I just really think its another change for the sake of change. I don't know that I've ever heard a "Joe Citizen" type resident complain about Brady or Harrison being one way streets. That suggests that we're only talking about this issue because of the complaints of a few businesses along that corridor. The fact is, when businesses started leaving the 61 corridor for newer and greener pastures along Kimberly and 53rd, they pretty much doomed the folks left behind. Now they're sitting amidst buildings for sale or rent, and blaming the direction that cars are driving past. Blame Northpark, or Elmore, not efficient traffic planning.

September Fog

It's been soooo foggy this week...

How foggy was it?

It was so foggy that you could zoom right past the speed cameras without them seeing your plates.

It was so foggy that you have to trust that the street you're driving down doesn't suddenly end in a Looney Toons-style cliff or bottomless hole.

It was so foggy that you never go past 20mph and hope that no kids are out at that time of night.

It was so foggy that you could use a 25 foot tall yellow thumbtack on every corner to keep from missing your turn.

It was so foggy that the lights on the Skybridge actually prevented a barge from running aground in LeClaire Park.

It was so foggy that city officials actually had an excuse to say they don't see a crime problem in Davenport.

Rock Island Grand Prix

I went over to the Rock Island Grand Prix for the first time ever on Sunday. I'm not sure why I had never been over to it, but somehow its one of those QC events that I just hadn't experienced. I was pretty impressed, but it made me dream further about an actual Grand Prix style road race in the Quad Cities. I suppose its better to have one of the best kart races in the world rather than one of the smallest and least attended Grand Prix races. We'll never have something like the Grand Prix of Houston, I suppose. Overall I had a good time at the races Sunday, and I definitely plan to return next year.

Also, I took a 7 second movie of the karts racing past, but its annoyingly large, so I don't recommend anyone with a slow connection try and watch it. Also, let me know if embedding this movie breaks your computer or something.

Click the Play symbol to watch (Broadband only)

She's back....

No, not Niky.

The Nancy Kapheim memorial has been put in place at 4th and Brady, although its still covered with plastic sheeting. Obviously there's a lot of landscaping and work that has to be done before the small memorial plaza is completed, but overall I'm amazed at how fast the whole thing got done. Its amazing what can happen when rich people get upset...

A Few Friday Questions

Is it possible for the River City Reader to write an editorial without mentioning the casino hotels?

What's happening with that OTHER riverfront highrise, the Oneida landing condos?

Did Tom Saul's change of assignment have anything to do with the Malin fiasco?

Why doesn't Alderman Meyer have a blog? He's helped countless people on SoLo and this blog, why not have his own too?

Sadly I'm probably going to miss the Riverfront Pops Concert this year, the year I'd most like to go. (I'm a Beatles fan) Anyone know if PBS or anyone is taping it this year?

Speaking the Pops, am I the only one that thinks Davenport's "Official Song" is the corniest thing ever?