Greeting, Trainers of Logansport! It's time to take a step back, and actually talk about our little Pokémon Go community for a change.
For those who don't know who we are, Logansport is located in the heart of northcentral Indiana--that's roughly 25 miles to Kokomo, 35 miles to Lafayette, and about 75 miles to Indianapolis and Fort Wayne, respectively. Like the state of Indiana itself, we are a crossroad city... meaning we are a hub for both state highways and US highways. We are also blessed to have the historic Michigan Road route run through our downtown district. With a population of about 18,000 people, we are a predominant blend of Caucasian, Hispanic, and Burmese. What are we famous for? The historic Dentzel Carousel, the iconic Mr. Happy Burger franchise, the hometown of actor Greg Kinnear, and the first-ever DC Comic-licensed 1966 Batmobile replica business, Fiberglass Freaks, which, by the way, will include a Batman '66 museum later this summer. We're also the first community to adopt a mascot for the local high school, and who better to adopt than the magical Felix the Cat!
And that is just scratching the surface, but you're not really here to learn the history of our community, are you? We didn't think so.
But here's something worth checking out: because Logansport is an old, artistic city, we have a lot of points of interest worthy to appear in all Niantic gaming platforms, including Pokémon Go. Our biggest playgrounds can be located in downtown and at Mount Hope Cemetery--kudos to the sexton for allowing us to play after all these years! Both of these areas consist of multiple gyms, large spawn points, and a plethora of stops to stock up after a rough battle (Kyogre, anyone?). We also have parks with nests of all sizes: mini, small, medium, and large. Our current gym count within city limits is 56... yes, we know it's tough to process. 18,000 people with 56 gyms. Would you believe us if we told you that we've outdone Plainfield's 45 with a population of 32,000? Probably not, but again, Logansport has untapped potential with all these POIs, whether they're historical, artistic, or even in parks.
And we're not done. Jason Peterson (MasterOogwaySD) and Liz Smith (djravenwolfe) have been busy updating our Open Street Map, which was poorly done and cost us EX Gym data and nest data in the early days of Pokémon Go. We're fortunate to have our nests and additional spawn points, but until Niantic throws the switch on their end, Logansport will forever be without EX Gyms. Even so, that doesn't give some of our busy bees an excuse to cease their hard work--Jason has been adding trails and buildings across town, and last year, Liz had been gracious enough to take on another Niantic platform: Ingress. Currently, all of Melbourne Park on the west side is complete, while Fairview Park and Church of Christ at Logansport are nearly finished with new gyms in the works; in fact, we got one back at Fairview Park, only this time it's legit! The main MO for the rest of April and into May is adding a third gym in two S2 cell blocks in downtown Logansport, particularly at Heritage Park (does this mean we can see the return of the Heritage Park Fountain gym badge?) and at Veterans Freedom Park. While there are potential portals to play with for Heritage Park, the operation for Veterans Freedom Park will be no cake walk. Be patient--the goal is to cover as many city and county parks over the summer and upgrade the 4-H Fairgrounds and AIM High Park before the fair comes to town in July.
(At some point, we'll get around to talking about how Ingress and Pokémon Go correlate.)
Now onto bigger highlights!
Second Saturday Meetup
This was something that we didn't think would continue, but it has brought veteran players together and new players into the fold. Every second Saturday of the month, we frequent either Black Dog Coffee or Martin's Side Door Café/Starbucks at noon for discussion, trading, Meltan boxes, and other whatnots we might be interested in at the moment. We hope to start up an unofficial PvP tournament during these meetups so we can incorporate more of the PvP feature locally. What's great about these locations is the fact that both Black Dog Coffee and Starbucks are POIs in Pokémon Go, in this case, Poké Stops! Need to do a crapshoot trade? Drop a lure module!
However, we do make a few exceptions... particularly, the forthcoming Detective Pikachu movie due out Mother's Day weekend, which falls on a SSM. Guess what we're doing? Once we find out more from Mary Max, we'll post details on our Facebook group page.
Earth Day Event & Downtown Green & Clean
Leave it to Niantic to throw a big curveball at us.
But we can't complain too much about this curveball. As part of Niantic's 2019 Earth Day challenge, we participated in Logan's Landing's Downtown Green & Clean community event on Saturday, April 20th. This year, 6 Trainers and 1 non-Trainer participated, which will go toward the global challenge after April 28th for shiny Diglett variants and Groudon raids for 48 hours, and while we were given the task for Erie Avenue along 5th through 8th Street, we essentially stuck with our mini nest at Burkhart Park. Needless to say, we left it better than how we found it. About 13 bags of shrubs and leaves, as well as trash, were collected and properly disposed! Even better--all three teams were balanced with two representatives a piece. It's a shame we can't claim this little street corner as our own, but we were proud to adopt it for a day.
Here are some pics of our progress, courtesy of Liz (djravenwolfe), Becki Harris of Logan's Landing, and Phil & Michelle Dials of Cass County Communication Network.
But we can't complain too much about this curveball. As part of Niantic's 2019 Earth Day challenge, we participated in Logan's Landing's Downtown Green & Clean community event on Saturday, April 20th. This year, 6 Trainers and 1 non-Trainer participated, which will go toward the global challenge after April 28th for shiny Diglett variants and Groudon raids for 48 hours, and while we were given the task for Erie Avenue along 5th through 8th Street, we essentially stuck with our mini nest at Burkhart Park. Needless to say, we left it better than how we found it. About 13 bags of shrubs and leaves, as well as trash, were collected and properly disposed! Even better--all three teams were balanced with two representatives a piece. It's a shame we can't claim this little street corner as our own, but we were proud to adopt it for a day.
Here are some pics of our progress, courtesy of Liz (djravenwolfe), Becki Harris of Logan's Landing, and Phil & Michelle Dials of Cass County Communication Network.
And as always, a quick in-game recap to wrap up this post!
- Giratina came back in both its forms, but Latios made a brief appearance during the Holy Week events, along with a shiny variant. Congratulations to those who got high IVs and that Crest toothpaste-schemed dragon! (His name is Crest, not Latios, okay? Don't judge us.)
- Speaking about Holy Week events, the Easter Eggstravaganza returned with a shiny Buneary! Also, Safari Zone took place in Singapore, and while we didn't get any Lapras spawns, we were flooded with lots of Shuckle. However, like Psyduck, the shiny odds were not in favor for most players with either event. But good job to those who got more than one!
- Go Fest. Ah, yes... we'll get back with you on that if we have any representatives going.
Be sure to visit us on Facebook, and download the Discord app so we can get you in on our server. A lot of activity happens there, and we would love to have you be a part of our community!
