This could be interesting, or embarassing.

Heartland Entertainment is putting together the Media Challenge for Charity. Fifteen media outlets, including the Rapid City Journal, are going to race virtual NASCAR cars on three weekends. Heartland, by the way, is on Cambell Street across from K mart and a little south.

The Journal team: sportswriter extraordinaire Jim Holland,  Editorisimo Mikel LeFort –  and yours truly.

Jim does a great job of covering car racing in the summer. We’ll see how he does behind the wheel. Mikel says he has trouble getting his own car out of his own driveway. I’m not making any promises about my performance.

<>But it’s for a good cause. The Journal team is racing for the Club for Boys. The other media have picked charities as well.

<> And it is a spectator sport.  I’m inviting everyone I know to come down and watch the races. And if you put a dollar in the Club for Boys bucket, that’s good too.

Jim races Saturday at 10 a.m. Mikel gets behind the wheel  on  Sunday, Feb. 10, at 2 p.m. I bring up the rear — behind my teammates, not the radio station guys — on Sunday, Feb. 17.

If you’re not doing anything on those dates, come down and watch us hit the wall. And if you’re inspired, you can get behind the wheel yourself. If you mention that you’re driving for the Journal, they’ll put 10 percent of the money you pay into the Club for Boys bucket.

Some of us took a test drive the other day. I have to say those simulators are pretty realistic. I beat my radio station competitors. I would have been second overall, but I spun out in the infield on Lap 5. I ended up in sixth.

This one is from Michelle:

<> “I’d like to see a discussion on the new hockey team coming — Rapid City Rush. What do businesses think about it? What about sponsorship opportunities / thoughts on season tickets / will people attend etc.?

“Our firm is thinking about both sponsorship and season tickets so I am curious to hear other opinions. Do you think the Rush is here to stay?”

Here’s my take, for what it’s worth:

<>Over the years I’ve seen professional sports teams come and go. The biggest success — although Pat Hall might not completely agree — was the Rapid City Thrillers CBA basketball team in the 1990s. At the other end of the scale, the far end, was the Flying Aces indoor football team of 2006. (The owner skipped town.)But the owners of the Rapid City Rush seem to be doing things right. They are local, willing to spend money, promoting an emerging, popular sport. And they’re selling tons of season tickets without even putting a team on the ice. Heck, they don’t even have ice, yet.

What do you all think?

This comment, from Joe Shmoe, was in the “you name it category.”

“How about a thread on “what downtown needs”. I’m not talking about branding the area and macro issues. Downtown seems to be a marketplace of niches. So what niche is not being filled downtown? Besides the dining niches that your readers always seem to be obsessing about, let’s talk retail.”

So what do you think downtown needs?

I did a story in today’s paper that noted Rapid City issued a record $213 million in building permits last year. That’s up 24 percent.

County building permits were up 20 percent, and that is mostly residential.

Yet single-family home permits are down about 18 percent in Rapid City.

Builders say people aren’t buying because of all the bad press about foreclosures, falling values and unsold homes on the national front. The Rapid City market, they say, is solid, and they hate being tarred with the same brush.

But there are also some indications that builders themselves might have overdone it a bit, especially in 2006 and early 2007. They built more than the market could absorb.

So where to you see the local housing market going?

Will all these big commercial project keep the economy chugging, or will the national downturn come home to roost here?

I don’t know if this has been posted on the web yet, but I filed a story tonight on Leadership Rapid City’s announcement about their summer event, tentatively called Summer Nights on the Plaza.

<>It’s the same Alive After Five project that Bob Fuchs was talking about last week, but it sounds like they are going for a broader appeal.

It will be part street dance, part arts festival, part kiddie arcade and part farmers market. It will run between St. Joe and Apolda, Sixth and Seventh.

Wait a minute … they did post the story. CLICK HERE to read it.

Whatcha think?

Since we’re on a downtown roll, here, I thought I’d bring up the letter to the editor that ran in today’s paper.

It begins: “I will no longer patronize any downtown Rapid City business unitl the parking situation is fixed.”

The writer said he parked outside the restaurant at 2:35 p.m., came out at 6 p.m. and had a $5 ticket on his windshield. He had violated the two-hour limit.

My first thought: 31/2 hours for a meal? Service must have been slow.

My second thought: Ouch. I hate to see people avoiding downtown because of parking problems, perceived or otherwise.

Is there a better way to let people shop leisurely without letting people who work downtown camp out in all the spaces?

Would more off-street parking help? Or would the campers keep camping because they don’t want to pay monthly fees?

Maybe allow unlimited free parking on some of the less-used streets. You rarely see any parked on St. Joe in front of Hardee’s.

Or is there even a real parking problem? People hike three blocks at the Rushmore Mall, but some people don’t want to park on a downtown side street and walk around the corner.

A new effort to breathe new life into Rapid City’s nightlife is taking shape.

Bob Fuchs of Sports Rock and Firehouse Brewing Co. is working with the United Downtown Association and Leadership Rapid City are organizing it. It’e working title is “Alive After Five.”

Every Thursday night this summer, they will throw a downtown street party with live music, a beer garden, food and vendors.

Fuchs said other cities such as Boise, Idaho, and Missoula, Mont., have had success with Alive After Five projects to keep downtown workers from going straight home after work.
Tentative sites include Seventh Street or the parking lot at Sixth and Main, he said.

I know when the Firehouse has outdoor bands in the summer, the draw a pretty good crowd. So this might have some possibilities.

What do you think?

OK, I’m trying to get fancy with this blog. I’ve added categories, including one called, “You name it.” Michelle, a regular reader, suggested that I open it up to discussions on topics that readers want to bring up.

<>That’s a great idea.

So if you have a rumor, an idea or a comment about something going on in the Black Hills, you can get the ball rolling.

And since the blog now contains more than one page of posts, I thought it might be time to break this into categories. So I’ve added “Dining” and “Retail.” But “Uncategorized” is still my biggest category.

<>So please let me know if you can think of other categories.

<>

The Fireside Restaurant, the upscale Rimrock Highway restaurant known for its steaks and seafood, will soon have a new executive chef.Panchero’s Mexican Grill, the Omaha Street restaurant known for its “fat burritos,” has a new partner.

What’s the connection?

Chef Rodney Lockwood replaces Paul Mosey, who spent most of his adult life working at the Fireside.

Mosey started out at age 11 washing dishes for his father, longtime owner Dave Mosey. When the restaurant changed hands in recent years, Paul Mosey continued working there.
Now, Paul Mosey wants to do something different, so he recently became a partner in Panchero’s.

First, a little bit about Chef Rodney. Fireside owners Dennis and Kim Krull brought Lockwood in to create a new vision for the Fireside.

Lockwood has quite a resume. He trained at the Culinary Institute of American in Hyde Park, N.Y. That’s the Harvard of chef schools. He then spent 15 years working in Europe. He worked at the top restaurants in Germany, earning the title of European Master Chef, or Meisterkoch.

He cooked personally for the likes of Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, Helmut Kohl, Francois Mitterand, Bruce Willis, Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Jackson.
He returned to the United States and became chef at the Corner House Restaurant, the Whitefish, Mont., eatery owned by billionaire William Foley II.

Chef Rodney will start at the Fireside in February.

Paul Mosey, meanwhile, remained on at the Fireside until Dec. 30. He was running it for the Krulls, of Hill City. Both the Krulls and Mosey said they parted on friendly terms.

“I’ve got the utmost respect for Dennis and Kim Krull. They were great to me, but this opportunity sort of fell into my lap,” Mosey said.

His friends, Panchero’s partners Mike Johnson and Brett Lawlor, invited him to join them in the franchise business. They have big plans, and wanted Mosey to help them see it through.

In fact, they are actively working to open a second Panchero’s in Sioux Falls, possibly by this summer.

He said Panchero’s fresh-made burrito concept – even the tortillas are made fresh when you place your order – appeals to him. He thinks it could become a success well beyond Omaha Street.

I don’t know if you all saw my stories on Roger Brooks and his arts-and-entertainment idea for downtown Rapid City.

In a nutshell, he suggested that Rapid City needs a public square, plaza or some other gathering place in the center of town. And that place should be anchored by a big fountain or water feature. We could name it, Fountain Square or something, and build advertising slogans, diversions such as restaurants and stores, around the theme.

The Rapid Replies on the stories have turned into something of a catfight. (One clever writer called him “Babbling Brooks”.

<> So a woman named Michelle, one of the folks who reads this blog, suggested I put the question here. What do you think of Brooks’ idea? Or more specifically, what does downtown Rapid City need?