Black Friday

Avoided the east side of Carbondale on Black Friday, which is where most of the mass merchants congregate. Driving on the west side, traffic seemed no more heavy than a typical Friday morning, though the Murphysboro Wal-mart's lot was packed.

Trash Collection Changes

The city will move to fully automated trash collection starting January 20th. Starting Dec. 16th in order to prepare for the changeover, the city will ask that you place trash bins at least 3 feet from any possible obstruction such as a tree or light pole, face the wheels of the cart away from the street, position trash carts at least 1 foot away from each other and not put anything on the lids.

The cans arrived designed for automatic pickup but the city's refuse trucks apparently were not set up to perform auto pickup until January.

Holiday Shopping Data

According to this survey conducted by the National Retail Federation, over 80% of Americans already started holiday shopping before Thanksgiving, with just over 40% making purchases in October or earlier. The average shopper plans to spend about $1048 in total, with $659 of that going for gifts, $227 on food and decorations and $162 on other holiday spending such as new clothing.

Clothing is the most popular gift item, followed by gift cards in second place and toys in third. Overall, the NRF expects consumers to spend about 3% more than last year.

Handicapped Parking Stings

Police statewide will be checking on people parking in public handicapped parking spaces this weekend, making sure that the person to whom the tag is registered to is in the car and gets out of the car when they have parked in the space.  The person to whom the tag is registered to has to leave the car when it is parked. They cannot sit inside in it while the driver or passenger gets out to run into the store.

Note that this only applies to reserved spaces in public parking lots, such as the town square lots. Spaces on private property, such as in the Kroger or Schunck's parking lots, will only be checked by police if someone calls the police. The law requires private parking lots to provide a certain number of disabled parking spots but does not enforce them.

Pot Sales

City council will take up legal sales of pot in Carbondale at the meeting tonight. Unfortunately, it appears that legalized pot and CBD sales are not proving the pot of money for growers and taxing agencies hoped for. Illegal pot sales are still strong, likely because the taxes imposed still make black market marijuana profitable while CBD production is running into bottlenecks in that there are not enough plants set up to take the raw hemp and convert it into CBD products.

Geese Population Decline

Caught on WSIU over the weekend that the geese population wintering in southern Illinois has dropped by about 99% over the past 20 years. In 1990, roughly 1 million geese came to southern Illinois to winter and support a thriving hunting industry. This year, the expected number looks about 1000.

Primary reasons for the drop are warmer winters, the rise of no-till farming and the floods of 93 and 94. Geese only fly as far south as they need to in order to find open water during the winter and the warmer temperatures make them able to find that further north than here.

No-till farming means more forage left on the ground, compared to prior years when farmers plowed it all under while the 93-94 floods reduced a lot of feed in the area for the geese, causing them to look for other locales, with more food, to winter over.

Retail Space Filled

Always glad to see empty retail space in downtown filling. After several rotations of tenants, the three storefronts behind Phoenix Cycle have occupants. Two are actively open:  an event planner and a hair salon. The third, Quall's Hats and Company has slowly been adding merchandise but no indication as to when it will officially open.