Brandon Sheley

Why do you live in Topeka Kansas? is it the schools, the great jobs, or the excellent community? The reason I moved here was to follow a girl, who I married shortly after! She was going to Washburn University so I knew it would be at least 2 or 3 years before we were moving, until she finished school…

I moved to Emporia Kansas when I was in the 6th grade. I finished high school and continued to live in Emporia a few years after graduation but the job market just wasn’t cutting it for me.. I had pretty much worked at every job in the town that I had any interest in, it was time to move on.

That’s where Topeka comes into my life… I was able to find a decent cooking job ($7/hr) within weeks of coming to Topeka. I did the cooking thing for a year and had made it up to 10 dollars an hour, which I thought was outstanding. I started looking around for better jobs, I was able to search the classified section online at cjonline and for free! At the time, the Emporia paper was a paid deal for the full online content.

So i won’t go further into my job resume, but I did find a better job and was at it for 4 years before I gave it up for bigger and better things. The point is this… One thing that has definitely kept me in Topeka is the job market.

Going back to a comparison of Emporia and Topkea, strangely enough it takes longer to get around Emporia then it does Topeka.. I really like how the roads are laid out in Topeka. You have 2 lane roads that you can drive 35-40 mph in just the right areas.. at least the ones I drive.

Lets see.. another thing I like about Topeka are the parks, it’s nice having Shunga park so close with long bike trails and a 2 nice disc gold courses, with Shawnee lake as well.

I’ll try to wrap this up, I need to go to bed.

A few more things I like about Topeka are.

The houses, like the Potwin area.. you’ll see some very cool old houses driving around there.

The Art.. I like the first Friday and the number of galleries that are open to the public.

Washburn.. I’ve gone to a few plays at WU, and it’s just a nice campus to walk around.. I’ve never gone to school at WU, but Lis has and I’ve walked around inside a few of the buildings.

The Expo center.. even tho it doesn’t seem like it gets used but it could be a real money maker if the right gig’s were scheduled.

TPAC- same as the Expo center.. it’s cool but doesn’t seem like it gets used much.

I’m sure I could spout off a few more, but I still need to post a few things that really need improvement for Topeka to be a 5 star city.

I sort of went into a few of these above, but the Expo center and TPAC seems like they could really be profitable, but doesn’t seem like they get used.. Maybe the media doesn’t broadcast it like they should! Or they don’t even know about the events?? Someone needs to get on top of this!! seriously..

I think some of the roads are pretty bad, pot holes and patches all over the place.. it’s nothing I would leave over, but especially up on Wanamaker, they need to just shut down a whole lane and refinish them.. they suck!

I don’t like how, apparently in some areas of town, their tax $goes to the county and not the city.. what’s up with this? I understand how town’s grow and all, but we should annex all of lake Sherwood, and I think up north there is some populated land that should be annexed as well.. They all come to town for their shoping but go home and pay the taxes to the county.. It should be going to the city like the rest of us

Not so much a “I don’t like” as ” I think this needs improvement” the downtown area.. We should take note from Lawrence and try and mimic their downtown Mass street atmosphere. Oh, and maybe have stores stay open past 5pm!!! that is just ridiculous,, the only thing open after that is a bar or two..

I don’t like the image the stupid Phelps try to imply on Topeka. It’s just a group of ignorant people that are on there way out of town and by the sounds, at least a few behind bars. I don’t really care what happens to them, I just get sick of seeing them, and it being a first impression to the town. Topeka is so much more, maybe we just need to advertise more or just do a general “rebranding” of the town..

I can’t think of anything else I don’t like about the town.. If I think of something pro/con for this post, I’ll come in and edit the post.

Hope you all enjoyed this post, what do you like about Topeka?

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