Good morning.

Good evening.

Good afternoon.

Whatever the case may be, this is McDowell's World number four thirty three for Thanksgiving twenty twenty five.

I guess it's officially the twenty seventh.

And today, I want first off, I wanna say a happy Thanksgiving.

You know, it's Thanksgiving in The United States, so hopefully, you find some good food somewhere and and some good family camaraderie and and whatnot.

This is gonna be kind of a rough one for us in some ways because it's the first Thanksgiving without my dad, who passed away a couple weeks after Thanksgiving last year.

So, yeah, we're gonna leave an empty chair at the table for him and, yeah, kinda kinda rough around the edges.

But what I wanted to talk about today is how Traverse City still has the feeling of a small town.

And I kinda preface that with saying, sort of.

You know, we've had a couple of interesting crimes around here lately.

I'm sure you're you know, well, maybe you didn't, maybe you did.

But we had a big, stabbing incident at the Walmart here in Traverse City, this summer.

And just here last week or so, we had a murder, and, you know, a couple of kids, were were breaking into cars.

And, anyway, they shot a parking deck worker.

And, of course, when I say the word parking deck, that also sort of denotes that Traverse City isn't that small anymore, but, I'll get to that.

And, also, just yesterday, I think it was or maybe the day before, over at the Meijer gas station, somebody tried to abduct a woman and, you know, he got stopped, but still, you know, that kind of stuff normally doesn't happen here and when it does, it's it's definitely a big deal.

So I guess that that puts it in the in the realm of small town, but you know Traverse City still has that small town feel sometimes.

You know, around Cherry Festival, it's definitely not.

Let me give you some statistics.

Traverse City, the actual city of Traverse City, which, you know, encompasses, you know, downtown and a few neighborhoods around.

So it's not, you know, physically too small.

But, you know, in the 2020 census, we were just shy of 16,000 people living in the city of Traverse City.

Now the metropolitan area, which covers about four counties, I believe they count Grand Traverse County, which is Traverse City, Leelanau County, Benzie County, and I believe it's Kalkaska County that they, also count.

And that's at a 153,000, hundred fifty three five hundred, something like that.

And so, you know, think think of a small city with a 100 and some odd thousand people, but only 15,016 in this in the city limits.

I'm just outside the city limits and literally I'm a half a block away from the airport property, which, is considered city.

And about a half a mile to the west of me, is considered the city limits.

So I'm in what's called East Bay Township, and it's a it's a metropolitan township.

It's not really rural.

I mean parts of it are, of course, but where I'm at it, it's not.

I, you know, I'm on a double city lot in the woods, so it seems sort of rural, but again not really because, you know, half mile from the airport, so you get airplanes and helicopters.

I get, you know, not that far from the bay, so I get that traffic and I'm on a five lane road.

So, you know, not exactly oh, and there's a train track going through, but not a lot of trains, you know, half a block away.

So, you know, I I get it.

You know, I'm not really in the country, not really in the city, but, you know, I consider myself part of Traverse City and my address is Traverse City.

But, but Traverse City does have kind of a small town feel to it still.

And that's, you know, something that, it's gonna take a while to go away if it ever does go away.

There's some distinct neighborhoods.

And, of course, there's the downtown district, which I talked all about in two episodes in this, this month.

And then there's the Traverse Heights area, which is kind of on the East Side of Boardman Lake, from, you know, US 31 out to South Airport Road, I guess, would be considered the heights.

There's the the Old Town District along, Union Street, and there's the, they call it, the central neighborhoods, which is on the West Side of downtown.

You know, west and a little bit south of downtown, and then, you know, there's a couple other areas in Greylockville, which is actually in Leelanau County, but part of Traverse City, at least the the little part of of the of Greylockville.

And on the East Side, there's Acme, which is has its own ZIP code and, you know, and all that, but, you know, I consider that part of the city.

And then there's what we call a Miracle Mile, which is about three or four miles of hotels and all touristy stuff along the bay.

Hotels, restaurants, motels, you you name it.

It's just a, you know, a big long stretch of that kind of thing.

But you go somewhere here in the wintertime and, you know, there is some winter tourism now.

Not as much as, you know, in the summer obviously, but there is some winter tourism.

Here, snowmobilers come up here, skiers come up here, cross country skiers, you know, there's a lot to to do, ice fishermen, all that.

There's stuff to do here in the winter.

But, you know, I can walk into a bar downtown, you know, right downtown, walk into Union Street Station or Sledders or, you know, whatever bar and, you know, it's the the typical small town sort of feel to it.

Whereas, you know, in the in the summertime it's a lot of tourists.

Of course, there's a lot of, you know, a lot of locals around too in the summer, of course, but you know, I don't know.

It just feels still like a small town.

We have, I guess, officially four high schools.

We got the Catholic schools, you know, we have a high school, and then there's three public schools.

There's Central West and then there's one just called Traverse City High School, which was kind of the alternative school, but you know they're actually they're the closest one to me.

Just literally up the street here.

The home of the Mavericks, but they're a small, you know, niche school, but it's a public school.

And then we got the two main high schools, the Trojans and the Titans.

When I was going to school, there was just one.

Well, the Catholic school though, it's still been around, but you know, it was just one Traverse City Senior High School, which turned into Central.

And then they built one out west of town, kind of out by my folks place, in Long Lake Township.

Well, actually, it's in Garfield Township.

It's in the Long Lake area on North Long Lake Road.

And that school was built around the same time as the Columbine shootings there in Colorado.

I'm sure you guys remember that or maybe you don't.

But, whenever they were showing aerial shots of the Columbine High School, it looks exactly like Traverse City West.

That building is I I I think the same guy designed it or something because every time I saw that on TV, I said, that looks like West, which, like I said, was under construction or just done, and they, you know, hadn't started having classes in there at the time.

But, you know, it's a very prominent building going along North Long Lake Road, so it was easy to see the resemblance of the buildings.

But, you know, the old Central High School downtown or well, it's at the base of the peninsula.

It's still more or less in the same configuration it was back when I went to school.

One thing interesting about Traverse City Schools, both the West, what we call junior high, now they call it West Middle School, and the one Central School that's, you know, back then was senior high.

They had separate buildings, and you had to go between the buildings and they had covered walkways.

But, you know, something like that should should not be in an area where it snows and and gets really cold because you had to go out into the weather to, you know, switch classes.

You know?

And, now they've connected all the buildings together.

They've enclosed those walkways and built buildings kind of in between buildings and, you know, so it's configured a little different.

The layout's the same.

But, and I understand they're tearing down the original gym at the Central High School if they haven't already, and, they're remodeling and putting in a new gym and all that.

And it was, you know, well overdue.

I mean, my folks went to that school in the sixties, early sixties.

And, you know, it hadn't really changed a whole lot in the eighties when I went.

And, now it's, yeah, they are changing it up again a little bit.

But, you know, it still kinda has that that old, that that that small town feel to it.

The, you know, the the school, anyway, does, or did.

You know, maybe not now.

I don't know.

One thing of interest that's completely not about Traverse City being a small town, but whenever I'm flying and I use Runway 18, I turn my base to final turn pretty much right over that high school.

That's kind of, you know, kind of a landmark there, when you turn base to final, on 18 in Traverse City, but, I digress.

Let's see what else kinda gives it that small town feel.

Yeah.

There is not a lot of paid parking around Traverse City.

Now in Traverse City, downtown, especially, there's always been parking meters.

You know, as long as I can remember when I was a kid, you know, I had to feed the meter, you know.

So, you know, right downtown, there was parking meters.

And and nowadays, the parking meters are all digital.

You gotta have an app on your phone and you pay that way.

I think the ones right on front street, though, still take coins, maybe on State Street, the kind of the two main drags downtown.

And, you know, and then there's parking decks.

There's two or three or four or five of them around here.

See, I'm thinking of one.

There's the Hardy, but the Hardy Parking Deck, that's where the murder happened, here recently.

But that there's that one that's, kind of off of state and park in front, you know, kinda in that block right near the Paul Bunyan Building where WTCM radio is.

But, that parking deck there is a paid parking deck.

There's one on the West Side now, I believe, but I don't remember where.

There's a couple of surface lots across the river from downtown that you have to have a permit to park in.

It's mainly for the workers down there, but you can also pay to park, you know, when tourist season's on.

And they still have a big farm market down there in the in this summer, which is kinda nice.

They clear out one of the big parking lots, and, it's a big farm market.

During Cherry Festival, that whole area is is the midway, you know, with all the, you know, carnival rides and and games and food carts and gibby fries.

Oh my gosh.

Gibby fries.

That's, that's actually a local thing.

They travel around the country going to fairs and and festivals and whatnot, but, it's a French fry cart.

The cart, I don't know.

It's like a big trailer, a bunch of it.

I think they have multiples, but they are based right here in Traverse City and they are always in Traverse City when there's any kind of festival going on, especially the Cherry Festival or the, Northwest Michigan Fair.

That's the two places I remember going.

It's the first time I had fries with malt vinegar on them, and, oh my gosh.

You know, every year, at least once during Cherry Festival, I have to sneak down there through the crowds and get my Gibby's fries.

But, yeah, actually, the carnival people do the rides and stuff.

That's based actually well, not right in Traverse City, but, in Acme, Arnold Amusements.

And, you know, if you're anywhere in Michigan at a at a place that puts up a carnival, well, that's that's usually Arnold Entertainment or Arnold Amusements.

You know, they they kinda nomadic carnies, you know, but based right here.

Let's see.

What else kinda gives it the old the the the small time town feel.

You know, you go, certain places.

I don't know if this works this way in big cities, but, in Traverse City at a certain time of the night,

it's usually, I think, 10:00.

The traffic lights all go into blink mode or at least a majority of them.

Of course, now a lot of the traffic lights have been replaced with roundabouts or or whatever you call them.

And you know, that's a sort of a controversy.

I kinda like them.

As I talked about in the Iceland episode, the first time I ever saw one was in Reykjavik.

Well, the second time I ever dealt with one was when they built the first one here and now there's several.

And, yeah.

So, you know, that's that's kind of a a tick against being still a small town.

One of the other things that's strange for a small town, we have right now two Meijer stores.

Meijer's, as I I think I mentioned in another episode, is a, you know, kind of a Walmart sized grocery, and, other you know, pretty much an everything store, but it's a kind of regional chain in the Midwest, mostly Michigan, Ohio, Indiana.

I think they're into Kentucky and maybe Illinois, but, you know, they're not a national chain like like Walmart, and they're no relation to the Fred Meyer's out West, although they're very similar stores.

I I found that to be interesting when I was researching that, but there's going to be a third Meijer store in the area, and they got one, you know, this the the main one, the first one, was right along the The US 31 Highway and Silver Lake Road area, kind of by West Middle School, and that one's been around since the seventies.

You know, I started about the seventy eight storm.

That's where my uncle and I went in the jeep to mire, you know, to get the first supplies after the roads got cleared.

But that Meyer has been there.

It's been, you know, tore down and rebuilt two or three times over the years, but, it's it's still there.

And, oh, another side note.

I saw the original Star Wars in the Meyer parking lot.

There they had a twin theater, and that was a big thing back in the day.

But, we went to the to the original Star Wars at that theater that was in the Meyer parking lot there, but now that's gone and that's where the Meyer gas station is where the the lady almost got a duck abducted the other night.

So kind of mixed memories.

But, the second one is out in Acme, Williamsburg to be exact, but they call it the Acme Meyers, but it's in Williamsburg.

And what's kind of interesting to me, anyway, I know I'm weird, it's at ex exactly the same distance for me to drive to the original Meijer store as it is to for me to drive to the Acme store, and they're building a third one.

They just built a big Amazon warehouse out there too, at Chum's Corners.

That's kind of a, I guess a neighborhood, but it's South Of Traverse City along the highways, on the way south out of town or coming into town depending on the direction of travel, but they're building another Meijer store out there, Chum's Corners.

So we're gonna have three Meijer stores.

Now we're a small town, at least I think it in my head, but there'll be a third one.

And also, ironically, that one is exactly the same distance as the other two are for me.

So I'm kinda in the middle between three three Meijer stores.

Kinda kinda strange, I guess.

I guess maybe only I think that's interesting.

But, hey.

My show.

Deal with it.

But, you know, that it definitely seems smallish.

You know?

I talked about the airport a lot.

Again, the airport.

One thing about going to the airport is I know most of the counter people at most of the airlines there.

I know the TSA people.

It takes me, you know, four minutes to get through TSA, there because it's not super busy.

Now we just had our record year of airline passengers, but it's still nothing compared to most even midsize towns airports.

So and, you know, one thing we don't have up here yet and we, you know, I guess I'm not too worried about us getting it is train service.

You know Amtrak doesn't come here.

The closest closest to Amtrak, I think, is either Grand Rapids or Holland.

And, you know, I would utilize Amtrak if it was up here.

You know?

And I go to Chicago, I do utilize Amtrak, if I don't go to Manistee Airport and fly a little jumper down.

But, you know, if I if, you you know, if I had the option of taking the train, I would.

You know, what I normally do when I have to go to Chicago, for something in Chicago, I'll drive down to New Buffalo, Michigan, which is right in the far Southwest corner of the Lower Peninsula.

And they have an Amtrak station there.

You get free parking.

It's a small town.

And then it's about an hour ride into Chicago, and you don't have to deal with parking your car and the traffic and all that stuff.

So I've done that a few times going to Chicago, you know, if, if I'm not flying through Chicago.

But, anyway so, yeah.

I like to still think this is a small town again.

Maybe, maybe by definition, it really isn't, but yeah.

You know?

And and another thing about Traverse City that a lot of people will notice is we're not super big on chain restaurants.

We have our chain restaurants, of course.

I've got a couple of McDonald's, but two McDonald's in the area went out of business.

I've never even heard of that anywhere else.

So I think we're down to, who is it, there's one Yes.

There's one on 31.

There's one at, at, Chum's Corners.

There's one in downtown.

There's one on Airport Road, and there's one in Acme.

So there's five McDonald's, and at one time, I think we had seven or eight.

I think it was seven because there was one in the mall and there was one in, Greylockville, but, those went out of business.

You just don't hear that.

Same with Burger King.

You know, we've got, you know, three, four, maybe five Burger Kings, but the the biggest one, the one that's been around the longest, just went out of business.

We've had Arby's go out of business.

We had, I think we at one time had three Arby's, and now we're down to one.

You know, we have, I think two Taco Bell no, three Taco Bells.

So, but like I said, there's no there's no five guys.

There's no, you know, there's a lot of fast food that we don't get here, which is fine because we have some really awesome local places, even for burgers.

You know, we've got, what is it, Slabtown Burgers, I think it's probably my favorite in town.

There's also Bubba's downtown.

There's one in Eastfield, that's another neighborhood along 8th Street.

There's one there called the proper burger.

I forget what the Bergstrom's, no Bergstrom's burgers up by Chumps Corners.

There's another, it's called Proper Burger, and I gotta be completely honest with you, they suck, but that's between you, me, and the fence post.

But, hey, you know, we've got some local places, and same thing with like, Ruby Tuesday's.

Now I don't know if they've they've had trouble nationwide, but ours went out of business.

We had a Hooters.

They went out of business.

We've had we do have a Chili's and a Applebee's.

They're, they're still going, but we have another restaurant in that same area where Chili's and Applebee's are that, definitely isn't doing so good.

It's, Opa.

It's a local place.

Well, I don't say I guess they're doing okay.

They're still there, but they don't seem as busy as some of the others.

We do have a Chick fil A, and that's a recent addition.

And it was kind of funny when they first opened it.

They, had police out there directing traffic and all that.

Now it's just, you know, normal, but they have, you know, they do have a Chick fil A Chick fil A here.

I guess I could do a whole show about fast food.

In fact, I used to do a whole show about fast food called Fast Food History, but, I digress.

But yeah, a lot of chain restaurants don't make it here or are not super popular here.

You know, we have a couple of local Mexican places.

La Senorita is one, and, I forget what the other one is.

Again, they don't make big impressions on me.

I'm not a super big Mexican food fan, but, but, you know, it's still like I said, I still get the small town feel.

You know, I I don't feel at all concerned when I walk around the neighborhood here in Traverse City.

The traffic does get a little ridiculous sometimes, but, you know, that's just being in a tourist town, not so bad in the off season.

You know, I can still get all the way across town in fifteen minutes, which, you know, considering how many traffic lights and that there's only, like, three viable ways around Boardman Lake to get from east to west, that that's not bad.

Not too bad at all.

So anyway, I've beaten that dead horse enough.

Hope hopefully, you don't overeat on this Thanksgiving or, if you've already eaten and you're listening to this later, I hope you didn't overeat.

I hope you got your fill and, got your camaraderie and and everything else that goes along with the holiday.

I'm just thankful that I can do a podcast every day here at NAPOD POMO.

Anyway, catch me tomorrow.