Springfield_Mapper

If you've been on this sub for any appreciable amount of time, you've undoubtedly seen the posts. "I just moved here, I feel alienated and weird, no one likes me, and how do I make friends?" I'm paraphrasing, obviously, but you get the gist.

I don't like that people feel this way, and they shouldn't have to. We can shovel the usual platitudes into the comments on their posts - do some community service, go to this festival or what have you - but the fact that they have to come HERE to find out where to live, where to rent, where to have a sense of community or to connect with similar folks, is not ideal.

We are failing. And we need to do better. I don't know what the answer is. This wouldn

Looks like it happened within the last hour. If your commute involves crossing the 10th Street rail, you can now use Washington again instead of diverting to Cook or Carpenter (though you may opt for one of those if there's a train because the crossing on Washington is at-grade). It's two-way now, but still one-way west of 9th.

Somewhat related: the last city announcements newsletter said the Jefferson and Madison underpasses will open on August 13th at the earliest. So just a matter of weeks at this point. Cool stuff.

I've been on a bit of a Springfield/Sangamon County history binge lately and noticed something strange when researching the origins of the names of many of our streets. A lot of them are obvious, like Jefferson or Madison. Others are entirely locally resonant like Enos, Matheny, or Iles. But then I came across Douglas Avenue and thought... wait, didn't we get rid of this dude?

In 2020, as the nation saw a wave of Confederate statues removed from government grounds in the south and schools named after slave-owners adopting more progressive namesakes, Springfield had its own "cancelation" of Stephen A. Douglas, famous for his rivalry with Abraham Lincoln, but now justly deemed unworthy of est

Just throwing this out there for anyone with the requisite income, spare time, A/V know-how, and gastrointestinal fortitude: An entire YouTube channel devoted to the horseshoe. Hear me out. And if anyone has supplemental ideas, feel free to add onto this.

Start small. Go to local joints, order horseshoes, and review them. Maybe develop a rating system for the individual parts like bread, fries, cheese, etc. Having a pair of hosts might make this more interesting so the viewer can compare and contrast as they get a feel for one or the other.

But that isn't a particularly deep well, so another thought I had was that interspersed between these local horseshoe reviews, the hosts would try to c