Beloit, WI - bad times in the badger state

[Thundertubs]

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[TinChelseaNYC]

GREAT thread! I really enjoyed it. Looks better than Schenectady.

[kcexpress69]

Wow!! Excellent tour Thundertubs!! That must suck doing it over again!! Several times I almost hit the back button on skyscraper page instead of Flikr!! It hasn't happened yet,but I'm sure it will. Beloit does look like it's seen better days!! You wonder what it takes to turn something like that around!! I have a city for you coming up that reminds you of Beloit. You'll know when you see it!!

[Rusty van Reddick]

THANK YOU for this thread. I have a couple connections to Beloit: my ex (the person I was with for 5 years of grad school) was from Beloit and we'd often visit his parents there- his dad was retired from Beloit Corp so I wonder what happened to his pension.... second and less directly, I did my PhD at Madison and got to know a gaggle of folks who were all Beloit College alums. Very bright and interesting group of people, and apparently the move from Beloit to Madison was pretty common- not for grad school, but to live and work.

The town-gown situation with Beloit College is typical, I think, of a lot of small libarts schools; they just lack the gravity (too small in area, too small a student body, too tiny a faculty) to have a real impact on even the directly adjacent neighbourhood. You see the same relationship, or lack of one, with Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, an ultra-liberal libarts college in a blue-collar sea. My own alma mater (for undergrad) is Reed in Portland, and with 1100 students it also had very little impact on any but the directly south adjacent neighbourhood. A bus ride away was needed to appreciate Portland. I never got the impact a college COULD have until I went to Madison.

Anyway, thanks for an excellent, interesting thread!

[Andy6]

Interesting reflections on a place whose name one recollects from labels on various mechanical items more than anything else. What will these places be in fifty or a hundred years, I wonder.

I've also retyped my share of threads over the years....

[Tex1899]

I'm 29, so you must be a "few" years older than me, based upon the cars in the photos.

Isn't this car a Daihatsu or something Japanese/Korean? Or is it a Pinto?

[Top Of The Park]

Wow...pretty rough there. However, those are incredibly interesting photos!

[Ex-Ithacan]

Yikes, that's not a nice looking city. When I did a midwest trip back in '02, I by-passed Beloit in favor of Janesville (no prize there either). Guess I didn't miss much. Thanks for the tour Tt.

[skyline]

Holy Crap! Thanks for depressing me.....
Excellent Wisconsin grit!

[Thundertubs]

Thanks everyone, this thread means a bunch to me. I remember the summer before I left for college I was looking at a Wisconsin travel guide in a Barnes&noble in New Jersey. All it mentioned about Beloit was that it was an "industrial eyesore" and "home to the world's largest can of chili". I remember thinking "awesome". Furrycanuck is right, the college just isn't big enough to make much of a difference. Since I have graduated, though, the college has been making more of a presence downtown, which is just a few blocks off campus.

Having later lived in Madison and taken some courses at NYU and DePaul, I find that environment overwhelming. Beloit was nice because to escape school for a little while all you had to do was walk a block off campus and you're in a different world. I liked going to school in a place where the college wasn't the center of the universe.

Next time I go back I'll try and take pics of the good stuff like campus and the Near East Side historic district just east of campus, which has a surprising amount of victorians, many of which are fixed up.

Originally Posted by Tex1899

I'm 29, so you must be a "few" years older than me, based upon the cars in the photos.

Haha, I'm 28. Beloit just won't let go of the 80's. I'm surprised there aren't any Camaros in the photos, Beloit has more Iroc's than Central Jersey. I too was thinking how ancient the cars looked for only 7-9 years ago.

Originally Posted by Ex-Ithacan

Yikes, that's not a nice looking city. When I did a midwest trip back in '02, I by-passed Beloit in favor of Janesville (no prize there either). Guess I didn't miss much. Thanks for the tour Tt.

Pfft, Janesville. They think they're so great with their... mall...and truckstop.
Janesville does actually have a bit more going on downtown than Beloit. But unfortunately Janesville is losing thier huge GM truck plant, so Beloit might not be the sole armpit of Rock County for long.

Downtown Beloit was killed by the Beloit Mall, which was killed by the Janesville Mall, and then everything was obliterated by the Beloit Super Walmart (biggest in the state!). The Beloit mall is totally empty except for some Mexican women selling clothes on card tables. The city mostly uses it as a place to evacuate the students to from Beloit Memorial HS when they have thier bi-monthly bomb scare.

[kcexpress69]

Isn't this car a Daihatsu or something Japanese/Korean? Or is it a Pinto?

It's a Chevy Chevette!! My sister had one in the mid-80s'. I used it to get my drivers liscense!!

[Shasta]

Wow. What a cool thread. Thanks so much for doing this.

I attended a small libarts college in a smaller town that used to be a bustling industrial city (Geneva, NY) too. That said, no matter what we Hobart + William Smithers said, Geneva never looked quite this rough.

[pdizzle]

I passed through there several years ago on the way to Wisconsin.
All I can remember is the college and it being rather nice (the college, that is). I think I can remember an older, rather sad-looking abandoned mall as well. Is that right?

[CTBill]

Interesting thread and photos- Thanks.

[DeBaliviere]

Awesome thread.

I remember checking out Beloit when I was looking at schools - looked like a very cool little college.

[Kingofthehill]

Great!

[DetroitSky]

Excellent tour.

[Wheelingman04]

I had no idea that town was in that bad of shape. Scary.

[DuluthJon]

You should see the northwestern-most area of Wisconsin...Superior, WI is in about as bad of shape also, with no big cities within at least 165 miles (Minneapolis) and Milwaukee/Chicago being over 400 miles away!

[Macbeth]

Tremendous pictures.

Enjoyed it.