Author: Grant Wentzel

If you haven’t found yourself waylaid by a Gilli’s burrito in the wee-hours of the night, you haven’t partied in Sioux Falls. That’s facts. And Gilliberto’s always seemed like a safespace too, where everyone could show up, united by the basic human compulsion to revel in adobado, cabeza, lengua, and a side of guac.

Until this weekend when shots rang out.

Seriously guys, what you gotta do this? There were ten shots fired at our local Walgreen’s this summer. My kid spotted a drug deal in the parking lot of HyVee. We watched the mobile crime unit investigating a sketched-out minivan at a south-side Burger King a few weeks ago.

Sioux Falls is definitely experiencing some growing pains. Not that we’re special. Per-capita crime isn’t much different here than any similarly-sliced chunk of America. (Last year we watched the cops amass at a tidy suburban California shopping center, between a Marshall’s and a boba-tea joint. Why? Some wanna-be gangbangers had a throw-down there the day before and social media was indicating they were going to do it again.)

Chill out, y’all. Everyone’s begging for workers. We’ve got plenty of entertainment. Local bands would love to have a few new fans. Don’t you have something better to do than strut your stuff over a little baggy of ditchweed? Let’s figure this out before a stray bullet puts a tragic end to some burrito-lovin’ kid’s life. Seriously.

On landing in Sioux Falls a decade ago, we signed up for some stuff: Trash pickup, MidCo bundled services, and the Argus Leader.

At the time, we were already a little south of the paper-gettin’ demographic. (When propositioned for a subscription at Walgreen’s we were met with incredulous smiles when we told the guy we already subscribed. “But you don’t look retired…?”)

It’s moral requirement to know your town. Any responsible citizen should be able to get around without GPS, should know who’s representing them in Pierre and Washington, should have a feel for what’s poppin’ up, and also when the good-old-boy network is getting down. It’s your civic duty, kids.

The Argus did a decent job back then. There was a Thursday section on music, food, and fun; a thick ad-filled Sunday edition; veteran journalists armed with bursting rolodexes; and enthusiastic new reporters ready to get on the beat.

And then it started to slide. Not-so-old guys started announcing their “retirement.” Sections were cut. New faces came and went. We went digital for a few a bucks a month to get around the internet paywall and never looked back.

The last time we saw a physical copy (at the doctor’s office) we felt sorry for it. Lying there on the table, so small and fragile, like a bird with a broken wing, we were afraid we’d hurt the poor thing if we picked it up.

And now that’s coming to an end too. The roaring presses are soon to be up-for-sale as the Argus moves printing duties to a shared facility in Des Moines.

Print media is in a bind. Has been for years. Breaking news hits Twitter and TV far faster than ink can mark paper. But print still has its place: Sitting down with some in-depth reporting, the kind worth committing indelibly to the page, delivers ruminative insights you’ll miss on a screen.

Will the Argus transition its print edition to think-pieces of regional importance? We doubt it. As news director Cory Meyers puts it, “we have tens of thousands of readers that depend on the print product and love that printed newspaper. And we’re going to continue to deliver that to them as best we can””

“As best we can.” That doesn’t sound hopeful. We’re guessing what hits your driveway will just be stale stuff, enough to keep the habitual advertisers and subscribers appeased for a few years longer.

Mayber Silverstar can convert the old digs into a carwash. Ah, progress.

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.

Here’s a link to the embiggened version so you can zoom in.

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.