Bloomington–Normal, Illinois

Uh, tell me about what, um...

You know, as, as Route 66 turns 100, what would Bloomington-Normal have been like when the highway was commissioned in 1926?

Mm-hmm.

So the highway was, uh, officially commissioned on the federal level in 1926, and this legislation essentially, um, provided funding to connect a bunch of roads that already existed.

So, um, you know, I think there's often a fallacy that, you know, history, they were less technologically advanced or, um, whatnot, but that's not always necessarily the case.

Life just looked a little bit different.

So what happens with the Interstate Highway System in Bloomington-Normal and, and greater McLean County to Route 66 and all this stuff that had been sort of built up along it?

Absolutely.

Right when the chain started, opened in the '70s, they, they had a brief period up here.

They, due to my travel and the fact that it's my f- my son's favorite restaurant, we, we stumbled upon one in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois.

Exactly.

It's in the Love's truck stop.

But it was the weather.

I was on a show in Bloomington Normal, Illinois, central Illinois, WJBC.

And our weather was very similar to the New York weather.

Blue skies, beautiful day, just bright blue, one of those crisp, you know, late summer days.

A million dollars.

And we're not talking a Chicago or a Dallas or a LA or that kind of thing.

It was Bloomington Normal, Illinois.

And so it was popular.

It's true.

Because at our height, at our conference here in Bloomington Normal, we would have 6,000 moms.

60,000, did you say? No, 6,000 moms.

6,000 moms.

Over at Belleville, there's a great parade going on.

Bloomington Normal has a parade.

Danville, Decatur, Granite City, West Peoria, Springfield, obviously Quad Cities, like we talked about.

Hey, Milwaukee has Labor Fest, and that's at the Summerfest grounds from 11 to 4.

And I follow the, because of my job, partly, I follow the Reddit threads for a number of downstate Illinois communities.

And one of the most common posts I see is, hey, I'm thinking about moving to Springfield, Bloomington Normal, Champaign-Urbana, whatever it would be.

What is there to do there? And you do get that nothing, you know, don't bother kind of thing you get, you definitely get that, like, classic internet negativity.

So, you know, talk to me about your sort of like, do you do rapid response? How are you monitoring this? How are you actually what is like, engaging the community actually look like in practice?

Brownfield's Jared White has more with Mark McLaren, the founder of ShockAvoid.

Mark, we've gathered here in Bloomington Normal today.

It's Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association's annual Maggie show, and we've crossed paths here to talk about ShockAvoid.

Give us a little background about ShockAvoid.

800-222-9455 if you wanna join Paul Nalli and I on The 21st Show today.

He is the candidate, the Democratic nominee for the 16th Congressional District, which includes, uh, Galena and the rural areas outside of Rockford, Peoria, and Bloomington-Normal.

Much of north central Illinois is in the 16th District.

The incumbent candidate is Darren LaHood, a Republican.

Mm.

That's where they were all going, in Bloomington-Normal, Illinois.

Mm.

And we started having meetings with people that, uh, Jeff and Terry knew down there and thought potentially they could be members of this theater company that we were getting a-going.