People talking about Grand Rapids

[Jonesey]

Toledo does have us beat on height, sadly.  Hopefully that will change soon

[GRDadof3]

7 hours ago, MJLO said:

Do you subscribe to the Toledo Blade lol?  Sits behind a paywall for me.   

Same for me. Guess I can't read their smack talk, oh well. #toledoisashithole

19 minutes ago, Jonesey said:

Toledo does have us beat on height, sadly.  Hopefully that will change soon

Goes to show that size isn't everything. 

[joeDowntown]

Whatever. Good for them that they look at us as a high water mark. I heard the Art museum is fantastic (and far surpasses ours).

Joe

[MJLO]

14 hours ago, joeDowntown said:

Whatever. Good for them that they look at us as a high water mark. I heard the Art museum is fantastic (and far surpasses ours).

Joe

The Toledo Art museum is stunning actually.  Built and endowed at a very different time in it's history.   I agree Grand Rapids should take that story as a compliment.  Though if I'm from Toledo I'm cringing that a local reporter touts a Hilton Garden Inn as a "leg up" over cities with dense vibrant downtowns, and a portfolio of  hotel brands.  Many of which are in  market segments above HGI.

[GR8scott]

On 9/15/2022 at 7:06 AM, MJLO said:

Do you subscribe to the Toledo Blade lol?  Sits behind a paywall for me.   

haha no, but for some reason was able to scroll down and read for before it popped up, now it does immediately. Thought the comment was interesting who they consider peer cities and for what reasons. TBH Toledo has a lot of potential to be a cool spot, its on the lake, a major interstate crossroads and close proximity to a couple major metro areas not to mention history and cedar point...  

[Pattmost20]

You can beat almost any paywall by copying and pasting the url into the site below. 

https://archive.ph

[GRDadof3]

18 hours ago, GR8scott said:

haha no, but for some reason was able to scroll down and read for before it popped up, now it does immediately. Thought the comment was interesting who they consider peer cities and for what reasons. TBH Toledo has a lot of potential to be a cool spot, its on the lake, a major interstate crossroads and close proximity to a couple major metro areas not to mention history and cedar point...  

Wait a minute, you can't give Cedar Point to Toledo, lol. It's way closer to Cleveland. 

[Khorasaurus1]

1 hour ago, GRDadof3 said:

Wait a minute, you can't give Cedar Point to Toledo, lol. It's way closer to Cleveland. 

It's almost exactly half way between them...

[MJLO]

Cedar Point is gods way of apologizing for Ohio. 

[GRDadof3]

5 hours ago, Khorasaurus1 said:

It's almost exactly half way between them...

Then you definitely can't bequeath it to Toledo. That'd be like saying Michigan's Adventure is a Grand Rapids feature.  But it's way closer to the Cleveland suburbs than Toledo suburbs. Of I'll put it this way, when you exit 280 in Toledo and start heading to Cedar Point, you're still over an hour away. 

[GrSportsGuy]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/moved-back-philadelphia-living-grand-110000981.html

[GR_Urbanist]

5 hours ago, GrSportsGuy said:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/moved-back-philadelphia-living-grand-110000981.html

I guess it's too much for a comment section that isnt replete with the cliched GR-bashing folk that just live to trash a place they never bother to leave. Oh well...

 

But it is always interesting to hear about the area from newbies or passers-by.

[walker]

People talking about  Grand Rapids but not in a good way:

New York Times writes about migrant children working in Grand Rapids food processing factories:

NEW YORK TIMES: 2023/02/25 - u. s, unaccompanied migrant child workers exploitation

If you don't subscribe to the New York Times, here is a free article from Mlive:

MLIVE: 2023/02 food processor exposed for illegally employing minors in grand rapids says its reviewing practices

Not as detailed or as dramatic as the Times article, here is a Detroit News free article that mentions some of the Grand Rapids story:

DETROIT NEWS: 2023/02/27 state-feds-investigate-reports-of-child-labor-in-west-michigan  

Edited February 28, 2023 by walker
fix typo - add photo and credit

[joeDowntown]

Here’s a gift link (free ) to The NY Times article:

https://nyti.ms/3IF70hj

Pretty terrible stuff. 

[grandrollerz]

https://grbj.com/news/law/local-lawyer-staffing-agency-respond-to-child-labor-allegations/- This article is pretty raw. I've driven by the migrant legal aid on Fuller like a thousand times, I guess I never thought to hard about what they do and why they are there...going to give them some money this morning.  Blueberry children, sheesh.

 

Quote

“It’s more surprising to me that this isn’t more widely known,” she said. “It’s the hidden cost of food. I mean, this is an exploding type of exploitation.”  In her history of migrant advocacy, Hendricks said she is unfortunately accustomed to seeing child labor.  “I myself have recovered wages for a 4-year-old and 6-year-old,” she said.  “If you just Google ‘child labor plus Michigan,’ or you Google ‘blueberry children,’ you’ll see the initial expose and (then) the public interest and outrage quickly died away. And all we heard was lip service from our legislators,” she said.

 

[GR8scott]

Odd that the NY press got ahold of this instead of ANYONE locally?! 

[joeDowntown]

3 hours ago, GR8scott said:

Odd that the NY press got ahold of this instead of ANYONE locally?! 

The unfortunate fact is that local investigative journalism is dead. Hope someone, some day finds a business models that allows local journalism to thrive, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. 

Joe

[Mjak]

Well that’s cool. https://wcsx.com/listicle/michigan-town-named-the-no-2-most-beautiful-affordable-in-the-us/   

[joeDowntown]

1 hour ago, Mjak said:

Well that’s cool. https://wcsx.com/listicle/michigan-town-named-the-no-2-most-beautiful-affordable-in-the-us/   

Funny that it's on a site that is showing a list from a Travel and Leisure article, which blends articles from US News. An article of an article of some articles.  But the US news articles that they are based on seem reasonably sound, so we'll take it.  Here's the Travel and Leisure article for reference (why they picked a photo of the 2/3rds sized farmhouse at Frederick Meijer Gardens perplexes me.

https://www.travelandleisure.com/most-beautiful-and-affordable-places-to-live-in-the-us-7368380

[Allison Slater]

2nd most beautiful and affordable yet people are still finding themselves priced out of GR and instead going to Kalamazoo, Muskegon, etc.

[Khorasaurus1]

7 hours ago, Mjak said:

Well that’s cool. https://wcsx.com/listicle/michigan-town-named-the-no-2-most-beautiful-affordable-in-the-us/   

I need a moment to reflect on the fact that the image in the picture is the corner of Weston and Division. But it works!

1990s me just had his head explode.

[walker]

Hickory NC is #1 on their list.  I traveled many times to Hickory back when I worked.  That was a long time ago.  If I thought for a while, I could probably come up with a few nice things I could say about Hickory and be sincere.  But I cannot think of any list where I would make Hickory #1 or even a top ten. 

[Winston1206]

On 3/29/2023 at 11:57 AM, Mjak said:

Well that’s cool. https://wcsx.com/listicle/michigan-town-named-the-no-2-most-beautiful-affordable-in-the-us/   

Pretty cool, but does it bother anyone else that they call Grand Rapids a “town” in the headline?

[RegalTDP]

While we're griping, what's with the pic they used for GR in the Travel + Leisure article?

All the other cities on the list get great drone shots or streetscapes, and GR gets a picture of Miss Havisham's overgrown garden.  I don't even know where the heck that house is.  I know listicle writers never put much effort into this, but there are so many great licensable pics of GR and you can find them in two seconds.

Edited March 30, 2023 by RegalTDP

[Mjak]

26 minutes ago, RegalTDP said:

While we're griping, what's with the pic they used for GR in the Travel + Leisure article?

All the other cities on the list get great drone shots or streetscapes, and GR gets a picture of Miss Havisham's overgrown garden.  I don't even know where the heck that house is.  I know listicle writers never put much effort into this, but there are so many great licensable pics of GR and you can find them in two seconds.

I believe that pic is from Meijer Garden.