What the skatepark would be, and why we need it

First of all, some commenters over on SoLo seem to be under the impression that this will be an indoor skatepark. This is not the case. Here's an image of what the park may look like, taken from the city's CAT grant application.

(Click to enlarge)

This was apparently designed with the public input of local skaterboarders, BMX bikers, rollerbladers, and parents at a series of public meetings. I didn't attend any of the meetings because I am terrible at all 3 of those activities. Maybe someone who was there can add something in the comments. Maybe they could also explain what half the things in that design are, such as a "hubba ledge" or "fun box."

As a popular T-shirt says, "skateboarding is not a crime," or at least shouldn't be. The crime comes when private or public property is damaged by "grinding" along it with the metal trucks on the bottom of a skateboard. Many local properties have been damaged by this, and have taken measures to try and prevent it. The problem is there are no legal places in Davenport for skaters to particpate in their sport. I believe the skatepark would help alleviate this problem.

I am sure that there are as many skaters/rollerbladers/bikers in Davenport as there are tennis players, yet we have multiple city-owned tennis courts scattered around the city, and no skateparks. I think I've seen the tennis courts at Garfield Park being used about 5 times over my lifetime, yet the city still has to maintain them and clean them off after floods. We have places for soccer, bike riding, baseball, softball, tennis, basketball, and sand volleyball. Why shouldn't skateboarders get a place? A bunch of railings, cement shapes and empty swimming pools aren't going to require thousands of dollars to clean up after a flood; they'll require a hose.

Crazy Storm Follow-Up

The images I took minutes after the worst part of the storm can be found in the post directly below this one.

I decided that on my way to pick up my weekly late Sunday night fast food, I'd take a spin around town and see how the cleanup was going. Armed with the seemingly common sense knowledge of not driving into water I don't know the depth of, I set out to check on the spots I had photographed earlier. Third and fourth streets near the QCTimes were back to normal, and River Drive was mostly cleared of large debris. I can't be sure at night, but I believe that parts of River Drive have actually been scoured by water and rocks until they are rough. The Federal and Farnam sinkhole was more heavily barricaded, and the dump truck load of gravel and debris that came out of the sinkhole had been bulldozed out of the way. Rockingham by Oscar Mayer was also back to normal. I didn't bother taking pictures of Locust by St. Ambrose earlier, because that floods every time it sprinkles. Locust was still closed from Ripley to Gaines at 3am, and street sweepers were working there. I saw a number of city vehicles all over town.

I was pretty impressed with the cleanup actually, and anyone who didn't watch the news last night or look at pictures this morning might not even know how bad it was. However, I think every small asphalt patch in any Davenport street has been washed away, so our roads are populated with unfilled holes and hole-sized chunks of loose asphalt.

2 Inches of Rain in 30 minutes

Its crazy out there. The police station apparently had water running into the lobby, cars were stranded, swift water rescue squads were called out, streets are washing away, and power and stoplights are out around town.

Click to Enlarge

Cars that were stranded on Rockingham near Kraft (Oscar Mayer), although I believe the waters had gone down quite a bit by this point.
River Drive at the bottom of Oneida covered with brick -sized pieces of asphalt and concrete.
An 8 foot wide sinkhole or storm sewer blowout at Farnam and Federal.
This debris came out of the hole in the previous picture and washed onto Federal. There were no barricades yet set up despite the rock and gravel being at least 8 inches deep.

More awesome Quad City publicity

If you do a Google search for Davenport Bus you can see that 56 different media outlets picked up the story about the bus driver that dumped the 6 year old kid off the school bus when he pointed out that he was being taken to the wrong school.

Top of the list? The Washington Post. There are others from as far away as Australia.

I don't think we've gotten any positive national media attention since the large wave of national and international articles we had the first few months after the Figge opened. Or maybe the Today Show story about how cheap our housing is.

What's it take to get a feature article about River Renaissance or the introduction of industrial loft housing into a mid-sized city in Iowa?

Talk about an unrealistic education

This has nothing to do with the QC, but I found it interesting.

Private high school tuition can top $30,000 per year. -CNN

Imagine going to school only with people who are rich. How do you learn empathy and the ability to relate to those different than yourself? I've always thought PV and Bettendorf were bad, but at least the ALLOW poor kids to attend.

Dark for the rest of the day

There will be no further articles posted today in honor of Darian Willette.

QCTimes article about him.

He was a year ahead of me at Central, and while we weren't super close, he was a friend. I played on a softball team with him and we had a lot of mutual friends. He was a good guy back then, and seems to have become even more of a good guy since.

He was killed February 28th in a bus crash in Peru, where he was teaching English. With as much as he had accompished by the age of 24, we will sadly never know what great things he would have done with the rest of his life.

As always with something like this, it makes the usual bickering and pettiness seem a little less important.

QCTimes censorship?

The purpose of this blog is to attempt to promote discussion and debate about the Quad Cities, and especially Davenport. This discussion and debate is sometimes messy, but that's ok.

The purpose of the QCTimes and QCTimes.net is to make money. The purpose of their allowing comments to their articles was to maintain readership and continue making money. Therefore is it at all wrong for them to arbitrarily censor their own comments?

Yesterday there were lots of comments on this letter to the editor from Alderman Brooke. Right now there are just 2, including someone asking what happened to all the comments. Did the QCTimes.net staff delete them for a reason? I didn't see how out of hand the discussion was getting, but I don't see why all comments would have to go.

I say let the newspapers make the newspapers and the bloggers make the blogs.

Blogspot Problems

Blogspot is running terribly slow for me, so I was trying different web browsers than my usual Mozilla Firefox, and noticed it is working slightly better in Microsoft Internet Explorer. I also noticed that my right side link menu seems to have placed itself below the entire blog. Has everyone always been having this problem, or do some of you see the links to the right of the text like it should be.

I always use Firefox, and it looks fine in that.

Magic Snickerdoodles

This week's River City Reader has an article about Beverly van Hook, the author of the Supergranny series of children's books. She's going to be speaking Saturday at a Midwest Writing Center banquet at the Outing Club in Davenport.

The Supergranny series was one of my favorite sets of books as a kid, and I've been known to still read them on occasion. According to the article she has sold more than 100,000 of the books, which feature a crime-fighting senior citizen named Mrs. Oglepop. They are set in an area very similar to the Quad Cities, and include a book centered around a Ride the River style bike ride.

I'm not sure if these books can still be bought around here. I remember years ago seeing them for sale in the old Putnam Museum store, but I haven't seen them in the new IMAX gift shop. If someone knows any local retailers that carry the books, which I believe are still in print, let me know. I still have my copies of all 7, but they're looking a little worn. There aren't exactly a ton of children's books that relate to the Quad Cities, so I think this author should be considered a local treasure on par with Max Allan Collins.

Some Good News for a change

Iowa is the 3rd "Most Livable" State -Cedar Rapids Gazette

Maybe people are starting to realize we're not all corn and pigs.
I know insurance, gas, and home prices are definitely a lot better here than in the Phoenix area. A friend of mine who moved to California wasn't amused when I was showing him beautiful 2-story homes on Kirkwood that he could get for a lower monthly payment than he was paying for a 1 bedroom apartment in the Oakland area.

Wrong school, eh? Get off my bus

School bus driver leaves child on corner -QCTimes

Here's what the bus driver had to say in the article:
“I picked up children at a stop. One was crying and said he needed to go to a certain school. I said, ‘This bus doesn’t go there,’ ” she said. “We were running about 20 minutes late. I thought his bus was going to be by later. … He was pretty upset. But 6-year-olds get upset if a leaf falls. I am not alarmed by crying 6-year-olds because I see a lot of them.”

I bet you do...

Mid-week Open Thread

If you judge by QCTimes letters to the editor, people aren't pleased about the upcoming inspector disappearance. Just as reading the blogs doesn't give you a good feeling for how the public feels, the Opinion page might not either. I wonder what most people actually think about the budget solution.

What else is going on?

Tuesday TouchPlay

This is an interesting article from the QCTimes about TouchPlay machines.

I especially liked this part,
"At a convenience store in Waterloo, gamblers dropping dollars in the Iowa Lottery’s TouchPlay video gambling devices are welcomed around the clock with free soda, coffee and a place to smoke while they play.Those amenities and the around-the-clock access have made Waterloo’s Pantry Express home to the busiest TouchPlay machine in the state.....“We have a couple of times — late morning, early afternoon — when it’s kind of slow. But other than that they’re pretty much going all the time,” store manager Pat Smith said. Pantry Express has four TouchPlay machines in a room within sight of the cash register that is monitored by video surveillance.“We try to make it very comfortable,” said Smith, who wants to add free popcorn as a perk for people trying their luck at TouchPlay."

Now if only we could get rid of these pesky gas pumps and hot dog cookers, we could bring in 20 more TouchPlay machines and change the name to Waterloo's Pantry Casino.

Late Night with QCI and the 5th Street Orchestra

Just a few things:

I dislike Walmart, and try to go there as little as possible. That said, I'm not very financially "comfortable" (spend too much on rent) so I can't really afford to pay much higher prices on principle. One thing I learned in my time in Macomb, (where Walmart is one of only 2 places to buy household items) was that the best times to do your shopping there are between 1 and 4 in the morning. Here in Davenport, I'd say this is even more true. Think Elmore is a pain? Its a 4 lane pleasure drive at 1:30am.

I swung through downtown to see what was up on the way uptown. What was up? Not a whole lot. I did see a car parked across from the Starting Line on Brady Street that had enough snow on and around it to show that it had been there since at least Saturday night. I believe the limit in Davenport is 24 hours, so I hope it will be gone by morning. Unless the parking attendants have given up on even writing tickets since we don't make people pay them.

Sitting in the drive-thru at McDonalds on East Kimberly on my way home, I could see there were flashing lights on the other side of Eastern. Big surprise, some sort of disturbance at Las Bananas. Actually it was somewhat surprising to me because it was quarter to 2am on a Sunday night. Seems like all these folks should be getting to bed so they can get up for their jobs in the morning... They must all work 3rd shift like me. That particular club/bar is the poster child for charging a fee for frequent police calls. At one point I know the police would just count on spending from 1:30-2:30am on one particular night a week babysitting the customers as they got in their cars and headed home. I believe this was a few months after a stabbing had taken place in the lot at closing time. It seems like any business requiring such heavy police attention should lose their liquor license, or at least be heavily charged or fined. Just shows not all problems are south of Locust.

On a more positive note, I can think of one particular property downtown that used to attract crime and provide a place for prostitutes and their clients to park. Its looking a little better now, even if some people can't accept its success.

A Jewel on the Mississippi

I took this last night from the Skybridge.

Which one is different from the other?

Looks like a pair of slot machines to me. Unfortunately, while the one on the right was taken this evening in the Rhythm City Casino, the one on the left was taken a week ago in the East Kimberly HyVee. If we're going to become Vegas, where there are slot machines in the airport, gas stations, and hotels, we should at least admit it and allow land based casinos to come in and start building Egyptian pyramids and Eiffel Towers.

Or better yet, leave it on the riverboats and reservations. I'm sure Nevada or Atlantic City can help out by purchasing our 5,000 Touchplay machines.

More discussion of this at QCBackstage here.

An Educated Electorate?

City leaders neglect West Davenport -QCTimes Letter to the Editor

This individual seems to believe that the city council is in charge of choosing where stores, restaurants and clinics decide to build their businesses. It reminds me of a class I had at Scott where students were complaining about the Mayor for building a Walgreens and an Osco across the street from each other. Do people actually think that's how things work?

A Couple Loft Progress Pictures

Construction on Phase 2 of the Davenport Loft project is continuing. I believe all the window openings have been cut, and the courtyard has been cut into the roof of the lower building.



(Click for a larger view)

Budget problem solved (sort of) and QCTimes borrows an idea from me

No Cuts to police, fire Staff -QCTimes

Apparently it was all a bluff after all.


Help Davenport get Freight House on track -QCTimes

This sounds to me a lot like what I said in this post back on February 17th. They even end the editorial with a similar promise to donate, just as I did. I'm sure its just a coincidence... at least I hope it is.

Not all my predictions are as wrong as my 2006 council picks

I believe Davenport's budget problems can't be solved without either cutting services or raising income. Whether that's a tax increase, or a fee of any sort is immaterial. Either more money had to come in, or everyone start enjoying 20 minute response times to your next police emergency. I think a lot of people are going to get elected to city council on the "No new fees or taxes" rallying cry, and then immediately find out that in the real world of city finance, new taxes are sometimes necessary.
-Me, May 9th, 2005 in my first post on DDP

Here we are with a new council, partly elected on a "No new fees or taxes" platform. The working deal doesn't completely repeal the stormwater fee, yet it also cuts public safety. It seems like no one wins here. Shawn and his gang have failed in their campaign promise, and all 11 elected officials are going to be on record with a cut to police and fire. Police and Fire. Do we have less need for police suddenly? No, I would argue we have a much greater need lately. Do we have less need for firefighters? No, considering how much building has been going on in the last 10 years.

As I've said, this seems bad for all politicians involved. However, the anti-fee squad told all of us that the city was just scaring people about public safety whenever fee-repeal talk came up. Now the city is not even repealing the whole fee, yet public safety is indeed being cut. Apparently the scare tactics weren't just a bluff. Many people also wanted a council that could behave like adults, and instead we have half a council that takes their ball and goes home when things don't go their way. I would say we could have another big turnover election in 2007 if our council keeps going this way. The people who wanted civility in the chambers aren't happy. The people who wanted fee cuts with no cuts in service aren't happy. The people that wanted continued growth and downtown progress aren't happy. At least we haven't had any Christmas poems yet.