Talk:Rapid City, South Dakota

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 This page is within the scope of WikiProject South Dakota, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on South Dakota on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
B This article has been rated as B-Class on the Project's quality scale.
(If you rated the article please give a short summary at comments to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses.)
This article has been marked as needing immediate attention.
It is requested that a photograph or photographs be included in this article to improve its quality.

Wikipedians in South Dakota may be able to help!
The Free Image Search Tool (FIST) may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites.

Contents

[edit] 1972 flood

As a former resident of the city, I remember having heard, I think, theat the flood may have been precipitated by some cloudseeding experiments. I seem to remember having heard it on the local KOTA TV news one night back in the 80s. Can anyone verify if that is true or not? Badbilltucker 15:17, 16 September 2006 (UTC)


Yes, I believe this is true.


Just a word of note, the Hermosa flood of August 17, 2007 (which is about a 15 drive from downtown Rapid City) was a pretty bad disaster of itself. It basically wiped the town of Hermosa out.

[edit] Restaurants

Does this section really add anything to the article, other than noting the city has a lot of chain restaurants? If anything, I would like to see a list of establishments with local flavor, if any.

     Yes. This. Rapid has quite a few new ethnic restaurants, ranging from Indian to Sushi and I think some Indian Tacos. 
     Which, frankly, wails the trendy pants off of TGI Friday's.

[edit] Crime and Controvery

The comments were unsupported and racist. Rapid City has no more rapes statistically than Aurora, CO or even Sioux Falls and less of a rape rate (per 100,000) than Yankton, SD which had 13 rapes in 2005. The hypothesis presented that Rapid had a high rape rate (which it does not) is due to its proximity in west river, SD to Pine Ridge, Rosebud, and Lower Brule to the south and Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Lakota reservations to the north is not even relevant to the person who presented its thesis (that Indians are causing a high rape rate in Rapid) The fact that the individual mentioned "crime" without noting the recent string of murders, some suspected hate crimes, of Lakota homeless men near the Lakota Homes area of Rapid is most interesting. Wolakota

I don't know the comments to which you were referring, and maybe they were overtly racist, but as a former resident when I heard the elevated rape statistics/rumors the college was always discussed as the main reason, not the Native Americans. Of course a bigot may try to make a connection where none exists. But on the other hand, if that connection was not made by the commenter, don't assume the rationale for him. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.2.6.128 (talk) 21:25, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Major Companies and Institutions

What is the point of this section? Those companies don't really have anything to do with Rapid other than they have a bank there or something like that. Spiesr 17:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ad-tastic

I removed several big chunks from this article because they were advertisements and full of weasel words. This is an encyclopedia, which means it deals with verifiable facts and measureable statistics. Writing about how beautiful the city is, what warm people it has, and it's award-winning health care, is just opinionated crap and has no place in an encyclopedia. Jboyler 16:11, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Businesses and restaurants

I removed the sections listing businesses and restaurants in the city. I haven't seen all that many articles on American cities, but I'm guessing that they don't all have lists of all the fast food chains and banks that lurk within them. If this is common policy, however, feel free to revert, but I can't see how they add to the quality of the article. Phileas 01:57, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Population statistics

Where did the statistics for the estimated 2007 population come from? I didn't see anything about 82,000 people on the Rapid City government website. Not only that, but a 22,000+ population jump in 7 years seems a little unusual for Rapid City. Anybody have a source for that?(planes)

I don't think the article reads like an advertisement. It seems like JBoyler's edit solved that problem, but the tag remains? Any problem with removing that tag? Nasch 20:15, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

The city's website estimates the 2006 population is 67,000, so the 82K number must be wrong.AlexiusHoratius 14:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Changed it - I looked it up on the census site, and the 2005 estimate was 62,167, not 82,167. AlexiusHoratius 11:45, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Development and Expansion

Does the Development and Expansion section really belong in this article? It mostly just lists housing developments. Spiesr 15:03, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suburbs

Is Hill City really a Suburb of Rapid City? What criteria were used to determine what municipalities are considered suberbs? There are some towns that are closer to Rapid City that are not on the list such as New Underwood, and Keystone. Lmielke359 18:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

With no reply in quite awhile now - I am removing Hill City as a suburb of Rapid City Lmielke359 00:59, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Record Temperature Increase

Both Spearfish SD and Rapid City SD claim to have the largest temperature increase, with two different sources given. Could they both be right? Lmielke359 23:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I have heard many times that Spearfish held the record, I have never however heard that Rapid City claimed the record also... A quick internet search revealed another candidate in the running, Edinborough, Scotland. This would be interesting to find out, does anyone have a copy of the guiness book of world records to consult? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.2.6.128 (talk) 21:36, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
I tried to find it but can't. However, there's another little problem: this page lists the fastest drop as 5 minutes, but the list of weather records puts it at 15. Which is it? --66.67.187.203 (talk) 23:37, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Metro Population

The article states that the metro population is estimated at 150,000 people. However, the entire population of Pennington, Lawrence, Meade, and Custer counties is only ~145,000. Will someone who knows how the metro area of Rapid City is defined (perhaps sum of the city and the suburbs listed in the suburbs section) take a look at this. Is the metro pop. given by the census? Thanks for taking a look at this. Lmielke359 22:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

  • I don't think most people would consider other towns like Custer or Spearfish to be part of the Rapid City "metro;" except for the suburbs listed, there is a lot of open space and little connecting development between Rapid City and those towns. For lack of another small city in the area, businesses in Rapid will count the populations of other communities in the Black Hills as part of their customer base, which may be why that number appears here. But for all other purposes your definition is better. --209.234.78.69 10:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Oh, looking through old edits, I guess the reference is to the metropolitan statistical area, for whatever that's worth. --209.234.78.69 10:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
OK I found that the population of the Rapid City MSA is 118,763 which is the combined population of Pennington and Meade Counties as of 2006 - so I guess we will go with that number. However, when I think of metropolitan area of Rapid City, I don't think of Quinn, South Dakota or northern Meade Country - it just doesn't seem right! Lmielke359 02:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Seal of Rapid City.jpg

Image:Seal of Rapid City.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 20:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sports

I'm not familiar with the Rapid City Thunder, listed as a hockey team... I notice that the Rapid City Rush, the current CHL affiliated team, is not listed. Was Thunder another shortlived team that has folded? Was Thunder a failed name for the Rush? I am adding Rush but will leave Thunder up for now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.2.6.128 (talk) 21:44, 3 January 2008 (UTC)