As I said in my previous post, I have been disappointed in the lost potential of the Stellar signs. At the time of that post, I hadn’t had the chance to see the signs in Bremen and Bourbon. I had the opportunity to see those signs the other day. While both of these seemed to be making better use of the opportunities and goals set for these signs, they are still under used.
Bremen is doing the best with use of it for town events. It had quite a few different local events listed, but there was still the ubiquitous Time & Date filler and “Welcome to Bremen”. Nothing was shown regarding the events outside of Bremen when I was there.
Bourbon wasn’t being used as much with the Time & Date filler prominent. Bourbon did make the move of including other local connections. They included screens with their town website address which I thought was an improvement and something the others should consider. (The sign was legible up close, but obviously not enough so for a picture.)
As I stated in the previous post, I realize there are limitations to the time municipal employees have to keep up with these things. Just this past week, I was please to see that Culver’s sign had shown some improvement, including advertising the “Paint Out” that was scheduled here this weekend. But events like the Paint Out should be showing up on all of these signs. The opportunity for cross-county tourism is a real one, plus the event would have been seen by travelers passing through those communities too. I’ll keep an eye on all of them for improvements. Time will tell. The opportunity is still there.
There was a recent discussion on LinkedIn about the value of small town theaters. It linked to another article here. Both made some interesting points that apply to Culver and Marshall County. Culver’s theater, most recently the Uptown Cinema (Formerly the Lakeside Cinema and before that the El Rancho Theater in my lifetime.), shutdown several years ago citing costs for upgrading to digital projectors as a major factor. Around the county, the Princess (or Lido) theater in Argos closed years ago and the same for Bourbon’s Comet and Gem theaters. The Rees Theater (picture here) is no longer operational in downtown Plymouth. The Tri-Way Drive-in Theatre has cited the digital projector issue as a potential obstacle to their continued operation. (More on Tri-Way’s upgrade costs here.)