I saw a post about new Spring menu items on their Facebook Group (they’re still struggling with a Facebook Page strategy) yesterday, and we immediately made plans to go sample them.

Tommy’s has two Lucy’s — the Tommy’s Lucy stuffed with American Cheese, fried onions and pickles, and the Smoky Lucy stuffed with jalapenos and pepper jack cheese, topped with fried onions and chipotle mayo. Both are served in baskets with frieds, and the Tommy’s Lucy is only $2 more than a normal burger.

All of Tommy’s burger buns are buttered and grilled, just like an old fashion diner. Their fries are always crisp (just be sure to ask for the sweet potato fries not to be too crisp – they sometimes overcook them a bit), and we’ve never had a bad meal there.

After being warned by both the kitchen manager and our waitress to be careful with our molten cheese-filled burgers, my wife and I dove into the oral orgasm that is the experience of eating two beef patties crimped around a puddle of piping hot cheese.

They were amazing. I’m not a food critic so lack the adjectives to share with you. Let’s just say, they were amazing.

Matt’s Jucy Lucy will always be the best. But I don’t live across the street from Matt’s, so this is more than sufficient!

(note to Brett and Emily, I would love to sit with you for an hour and volunteer some help in setting up your Facebook strategy and profiles. You’re missing out on great word of mouth and organic social media opportunities by not having your channels properly set up. Let me know! We love Tommy’s and are big advocates!)

What a great opportunity to get to know your neighbors even better!

I’m helping to organize NNO for our neighborhood in downtown Chaska again this year (west of 41).

Hope to see you there!

You’re invited to National Night Out
Date: Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Time: 6-7:30 p.m.
Location: Hickory Park, downtown Chaska
Event Specifics:
Come to Hickory Park, meet your neighbors, let the kids play, and meet Chaska Police, Firefighters and McGruff the Crime Dog.

Want to help with the event? Contact: Greg Swan, gregoryswan@gmail.com, 304-449-GREG

Photos from our 2010 NNO event:

In the upper part of the photo, you can see the Minnesota River completely covering State Highway 41. Below that is the closed bridge, of which I have more shots below. And the red circle is my house.

(Photo from Scott County Sheriff’s Office via Chaska Herald)

And here are some photos I took on Thursday evening:

The river last flooded in March of this year. Here are my 5 Lessons From the Chaska Flood from that one.

Grant was in the parade representing his school:

Here’s a shot of the Little Angels Biker Gang:

The kids loved the carnival:

And the food:

Later, Grant and I took a tour of the old friary and had the opportunity to see the Bibles of Carver County Bible Exhibit, of which we loaned them a 117 year-old family bible:

More photos here.

By my count, we had about 40-50 total people, including kids, attend the West Downtown Chaska National Night Out 2010 event this year. Pretty darn good for the first event in recent memory. I printed off 150 flyers and walked up and down every block handing them out. Then I ran out and printed 75 more! I still missed Spruce Street (ran out of time and broke my foot — long story), but almost every occupied house in the neighborhood got a flyer.

It was really fun to personally walk up to every house in my neighborhood to hand out the flyers, and I learned a lot on those walks. This neighborhood has terrific character, picturesque homes and gardens and very friendly people. The first night I was handing out flyers I took my four year-old with me door-to-door, and everyone talked to him and was super nice.

There is also a significant amount of architectural styles, historical preservation in progress and some fascinating yard art.

Lastly, there are a lot more empty homes than I thought. Although only two homes in the area have foreclosure papers on the front door, I was surprised how many vacant homes there were. (FOR THE RECORD: unlike Sarpinos, SW Metro Transit, Chaska Fire Department and Qwest Dex, I did not leave these flyers as litter on empty homes). Some of the houses are move-in ready, while others will need some TLC. I hope our civic leaders and communities are thinking about how to get families into these homes ASAP.

The event itself was just great. I was a little nervous nobody would show up — either because they didn’t know, didn’t care or wouldn’t go to an outdoor event at 89 degrees on a Tuesday evening. Since I only had a week to put this together and didn’t have a budget or any help, I wasn’t able to pull together a big barbecue or anything.

I bought 100 popsicles, and my mom bought a bunch of bottled water and bubbles (BUBBLES!). We went out 30 minutes early, moved the picnic table in Hickory Park into the shade, set out chairs and did the Field of Dreams prayer.

AND THEN….people showed up! Lots of people. The kids instantly hit it off, and my son didn’t stop running and playing for almost two hours straight.

The Chaska Police Department came with McGruff (and we talked him onto the seesaw).

Then the Chaska Police Department came with folks from Target in tow to distribute sidewalk chalk and market to us.

Then the Chaska Fire Department came and let our kids climb all over their truck.

Mollee at the Chaska Herald came out and took some photos. She wrote a quick recap and put together a slideshow featuring shots from many NNO neighborhood events, including ours.

Residents across the city gathered at more than 35 parties Tuesday to celebrate National Night Out. The event is designed to increase awareness for crime prevention in community neighborhoods.

Greg Swan organized his first National Night Out party at Hickory Park for residents in downtown Chaska. He was pleased with the turnout.

“It’s been great,” said Swan.

Kids created sidewalk chalk art and played on the playground equipment while the adults chatted nearby. The group even convinced McGruff the Crime Dog to take a turn on the see-saw during his visit.

It’s been great? Nice one, Greg. Now that’s a quote to remember. :)

Mollee’s slideshow:

Overally, I’m extremely pleased with the event. The fact we know a good chunk of our neighbors now is even more exciting. Plus we have a Neighborhood Contact List started now. Just rockin’ awesome.

More photos here.

What a great opportunity to get to know your neighbors even better!

I’m helping to organize NNO for our neighborhood in downtown Chaska this year (west of 41).

Hope to see you there!

You’re invited to National Night Out
Date: Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Time: 6-7:30 p.m.
Location: Hickory Park, downtown Chaska
Event Specifics:
Come to Hickory Park, meet your neighbors, let the kids play, and meet Chaska Police, Firefighters and McGruff the Crime Dog.

Want to help with the event? Contact: Greg Swan, gregoryswan@gmail.com, 304-449-GREG

Hey hey – it’s Chaska River City Days this weekend.

City Square Park is packed full of food vendors, inflatables for the kids, and music and refreshments for the parents. I just love seeing historic downtown Chaska so packed full of people.

It was two years ago this weekend that Jenny and I fell in love with the community, and RCD had a lot to do with it. My parents are in town from Florida, so we’re be taking them tomorrow. Our church, Oasis Church, is again hosting the pork chop on a stick booth. Can’t wait for one of those.

And the parade is Sunday at 1 p.m. The photo is my son from last year. Gotta love a parade with candy…especially when you can lift one or two pieces without them noticing (guilty as charged).

Links to plan your weekend:

• RIVER CITY DAYS SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
• PARADE ROUTE
• CHASKA HERALD’S RIVER CITY DAYS COVERAGE

Shoot me a text or DM if you come out. Would love to say hello.

Carver-based Ash Borer Tree and Lawn littered a flyer on the foreclosed house next door, even though the property is clearly in foreclosure and vacant. I still don’t understand why Chaska Police can’t enforce littering laws on companies like this one, Qwest Dex, Sarpinos, SW Metro Transit, Chaska Fire Department and other businesses who continue to dump their trash on vacant properties.

I added this as an update to the 110 N Pine St. saga.

Chaska was one of the first U.S. cities to offer city-wide wi-fi, and the articles goes in-depth on the history and technical upgrades that got the network where it is today.

When we moved to town 17 months ago, we were willing and eager to try out the service. Unfortunately, as my comments in the paper indicate, our experience with Chaska.net was it was too slow and not accommodating for a net-savvy household (3 computers, DirecTV, Wii, iPhone — all requiring Web access – often at the same time). We live across the street from a tower and used an external antenna, but if you want to download movies and music, upload pictures or Skype with a friend, you’re not going to want DSL’s kid brother for service.

Beyond speed, you 1) can’t use routers to share the net with devices like DVR and video gaming systems, and 2) can’t use a router to have more than one compute online at once. These are total deal breakers.

Okay, so why does it suck so badly? I thought the article’s history lede summed it up nicely:
Rewind to 2004 – that was before Twitter, back when Facebook was a fledgling operation that few had heard of, and when saying you connected to the Internet using dial-up didn’t get you laughed out of the room.

Okay, so we’re at 2010 and cable internet is adequate for a digital native’s needs. Rather than upgrade all the wi-fi antenna towers, let’s think out six years from now. My idea? Take all that fiber aroudn town and hard wire the fiber direct to every home. Depending on the infrastructure, it could be as fast as 50 Mbps downstream and 10 Mbps upstream and carry hundreds of HD TV channels to every home…like Verizon’s FiOS (full disclosure: I used to do PR for Verizon FiOS, and they are still a client of my employer).

You can’t get FiOS in Minnesota, but I’d love to see civic leaders exhibit the thought leadership that made Chaska a municipal case study for city-wide wi-fi and build the next generation of online infrastructure to handle the bandwidth of technologies and social applications of the future we’ve never considered.

Meanwhile, I want to give major kudos to the Herald for building and maintaining a Facebook community where it leads discussions and adds value that leads to reporting like this story. A comment I left in December was repurposed — with my permission — for the story. Great stuff.