Ok, caveat first: We don’t know, nor care, much about All Time Low. However (however!!!) we need more of this kind of thing in Sioux Falls!
Our live concert scene was starting to come together pre-covid. Cool little indie bands would be at Total Drag twice-a-week, mid-level acts showed up at the Icon or the Orpheum, big stuff hit The Denny, and The District seemed to find a way with bringing in plenty of profitable shows too.
So find yourself a high-school kid that needs a night out and take ’em to see All Time Low this Wednesday, October 27th. Consider it a donation to the world of Rock ‘n Roll. Then play ’em some Clash on the way home. You gotta start ’em somewhere!
Local Reddit-legend @SoDakZak popped this pic on the interwebs recently. It’s a look at the road-work schedule for the next 5 years around town. Yeah, that might seem like a ways off, but big projects need a lot planning, and a lot of coordination between the city, counties, and state. Not to mention funding, which comes from multiple sources (including federal) with multiple strings attached.
But it’s good news overall. Everyone one knows we’ve got some wonky interchanges and inadequate roads in this town. We don’t (and maybe never will) have a decent east-west artery, and the intersections connecting 229 to most everything were squeezed in when we had half the traffic. Eventually, they’ll get it figured out. And maybe by then we can start biking and walking and taking a little public transit too. You know, like they do in real cities.
This just in… Mayor Paul TenHaken looks to have achieved plastic-fantastic immortality! Via his Instagram, there is now a Funko Pop Bobble Head of him out in the wild. Not sure where you can get yours, Zandbroz maybe? We’ll be on the lookout.
Also the big question – did they carve his Batman-abs under the suit? The first thing we’ll be doing is peeling back the layers to see!
Did you know that the banking industry that built modern Sioux Falls is pretty rock ‘n roll? Sioux Falls got back on the map in the 1980s by loosening up usury laws, allowing CitiBank to set-up shop and turning local business-boys like T. Denny to billionaires. How exactly did they do that? They threw out the rule book and let anything go. Kinda like being backstage at a Mötley Crüe show in ’82. Good times, mostly.
Hiding in plain sight: the South Dakota Trust Company in downtown Sioux Falls
But sometime you wake up in the morning wondering who you’ve been drinking with. And that’s what The Pandora Papers did a few weeks ago. The guys at International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a ginormous report on the shady wealth of the world, and South Dakota took the spotlight. If you didn’t know, Sioux Falls is a big hub in the international network of blind trusts, places to stash your money if you don’t want anyone to come looking for it. Think Swiss bank accounts, think the Cayman Islands. Yep, that’s us. We’ve got well over $350 Billion just sitting here, stashed away for some sheik’s rainy day.
It’s a tricky thing. On the one hand, it’s a can’t-miss business. Low-overhead, with easy money to be made charging these guys a fee for white-collar services and associated paper-pushing. On the other hand, we’re probably helping out a bunch of criminally-adjacent a**holes who should be paying taxes or decent wages or should otherwise not be engaged in the grey-zones of morally compromised activity.
“Ecuador’s president, Guillermo Lasso, moved assets here in 2017 after reports of questionable interests in a bank in Panama. Carlos Morales Troncoso was the president of Central Romana Corp., the largest sugar producer in the Dominican Republic. The company has long been accused of violating the human rights of its workers. Troncoso’s family — who has dual citizenship in the United States — opened a South Dakota trust in 2019. José “Pepe” Douer Ambar, a Columbian businessman who U.S. investigators said was laundering money for drug traffickers, opened his trust in 2014. All three are linked to a company called Trident Trust, which is owned by its employees — but whoever they are isn’t required to be disclosed.”
Do we really want to be in bed with these guys? Something to think about. One thing’s for sure – with this much money in play, the party’s long from over.
We aren’t ones to complain. Finding fault’s the lazy way to write, and we like this to be safe space (pardon the term!) for all things good and wonderful happening around Sioux Falls. That being said, how many times have you heard someone say, “Sioux Falls drivers are the worst!” We’re guessing you’ve lost count by now.
But there is something to it. Sioux Falls is the Big City in an empty state, and the ever-so-polite rituals of rural drivers smack hard against the realities of driving in a proper (if still kinda little) city, one that increasingly attracts transplants from other parts of the country. There’s a culture-clash playing out on the roads.
26th & 229 – just before things got redone.
In a big town, driving is a team sport, not a solo endeavor.
On busy roads and packed freeways, it’s polite and smart to use up all all available space, and to make sure that everybody around you is in a good place too. You do things like put your blinker on announce that you need to change lanes. You might blink your lights to let someone know it’s safe to merge. You might actually take turns and learn how to do a zipper merge when necessary.
A recent Sioux Falls Reddit thread caught our eye as it summed up one of the biggest peaves of new arrivals in town: “What’s with people stopping 8 feet to nearly a car length from the white line at stoplights?“ Yes! What’s with that! Out-of-town drivers are often on the edge of rear-ending fender bender around here, yelling vainly at no one, “why is everyone stopping!” You look up to see that that the cars in front of you are double-spaced between bumpers, putting you 20-feet back from where your driving instincts are telling you to stop.
Take a look at the thread. Plenty of good comments like, “Omg this and so many other things I’ve noticed about drivers here after moving from NY!” that might (and ya, should) resonate with you.
So here’s the deal: Take all the space you want when tooling around Renner or Freeman, but when you’re in town, learn to share the road. If there are two lanes, it’s ok if someone wants to turn into the the other one. They aren’t trying to hit you. If the road narrows a few miles up, it’s ok to use both lanes and merger politely when you get there. You don’t need to line up five minutes ahead of time. And at the next red light, stop when you have to, you don’t need a magical air-bubble to keep you safe from the rest of us. We’re all in it together.
