Queen City Cycles: Downtown Springfield, Missouri

Queen City Cycles is a full service bike shop, and Springfield's exclusive dealer of Kona and Marin bikes. Located just seconds from nearly every campus in town at 301 W. Walnut, they will gladly do tune-ups, major repairs, sell you some parts or a new or used bike, or just answer your questions. They also have an eBay service for bicycles and bicycle equiptment/supplies if you are looking to sell.

Our visit was prompted by a bike trailer seen parked in front of a pizza place right off of the square. We stopped and ogled the trailer like we usually do to get ideas for design when we build our own, and the bike owner told us where the trailer was purchased. Since we were in the area, we decided to stop on in. *smile*

The store features informative, professional, slightly aloof personnel with a good spacious sales floor and minimal clutter making for a pleasant, but not overly friendly shopping experience. The easy to find customer assistance and helpful advice really tacked down the best products for our needs with a minimal of fuss and time taken. I'll take efficient and aloof over friendly and slow any day!

Open Tuesday-Saturday 11AM-8PM
417-831-0800
http://www.queencitycycles.com/
(photo copyright Queen City Cycles)

Tags: bike bicycle bike shop bicycle shop kona marin queen city cycles bike trailer trailer bicycle trailer store review place review downtown springfield springfield missouri [where: 301 W Walnut St Springfield, MO 65806]Map

The Well Fed Head Bookstore: Downtown Springfield, Missouri

Well Fed Head Books

A really classy bookstore with solid wood floors and shelving. Very pleasing, comfortable atmosphere, almost imperceptible calm music, excellent customer service, and clear section labeling.

This is how I expect a proper book store to feel. Personal, comfortable, and friendly. Like they used to be before the onset of huge commercial mega stores and garish fluorescents.

Well Fed Head buys, sells and trades high quality books in all subject areas including mysticism, and also offers community events like poetry readings, book signings, a book discussion group, monthly art exhibits, book release theme parties, and live music. They go the extra mile by having an online catalog of all of their books available, just in case you want to shop from your home or office. Now that's what I call above and beyond great service. I have never seen another used book store in Springfield do it.

Stopping in is a pleasurable respite from the usual harried bustle of downtown.

Well Fed Head is located in downtown Springfield at the corner of Campbell and Walnut (331 south Campbell) and is open from 11 am to 6 pm on Monday and 11 am to 9 pm Tuesday through Saturday. Their phone number is 417.832.9333

Interesting Factoids
Well Fed Head is housed in the historic Wallenburg Building which was constructed in 1892. It is the second oldest building in the Historic West Walnut Street Commercial District and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on March 20, 2002.

Originally home to the Max Scharff wholesale liquor distributorship and later the prominent Parisienne ladies apparel store, the building served as the home of the Farmers and Merchants Bank throughout the 1940s, and later spent two decades as a Halloween haunted house. The building was restored in 2002 by Tillman Redevelopment LLC.

(photos copyright MSU Paper, Drury Paper, Well Fed Head Books) [where: 331 S Campbell Ave Springfield, MO 65806-2049]

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Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches Restaurant

322 East Walnut 65806 832-0500 832-0504 Mondays-Sundays 10a-2p http://www.jimmyjohns.com/

Pricing is reasonable with subs and sandwiches ranging in price from $3-$7. Made with high quality ingredients, they are surprisingly nothing special. I shouldn't expect amazing for those prices I suppose, but my first opinion was that any place advertising as gourmet aught to reasonably have food that is high flavor, with great texture. I have since discovered that the addition of the word "gourmet" to the sign was more of a lark than an actual descriptor.

Sandwiches should be juicy and make my taste buds dance. These didn't. They were, instead, simply, good. Most anyone can make a sandwich of this quality in a few minutes with the right ingredients for less than you can but them, but such is the fact of all restaurants, no matter the type of food served.

Of course it is the downtown restaurant to get something healthy, quick, and inexpensive to fill your belly, as most of the other places in the area are much more expensive, not to mention slower to serve. The service at Jimmy John's is very fast, helpful, & friendly. It is obviously a great place to work, as the employees were laughing and joking with each other.

There was a lot to amuse a person there while waiting the two short minutes between walking in and receiving the order. This was our maximum wait time for each of our three orders, including first time menu inspection and ingredient questioning. Really fast service, while not compromising on smiles.

Very loud music & lots of conflicting colors in bright lighting makes it hard to think or concentrate. It might help to go online for the menu or grab a menu inside, then run back outside to decide what you want before you go in to order. Not suggested for anyone with heart or anxiety problems. Call you order in and have it delivered instead.

The sign for the bathroom was fun to decipher, and it was nice to see they have a community bulletin board.


I went to the website to see if I could get more information. The Jimmy John's website is entirely flash. Very annoying interface, nonintuitive navigation, lots of noise and movement. Website and store integration and similarity very well accomplished, as both the store and the website are garish, loud, obnoxious, and made me feel like I need to escape.



Maybe the loud garish atmosphere is to make people just come in to grab their food & leave? It seems like a logical idea with such a small store, but I know that can't be the reasoning for the website to be so terribly annoying, as any business worth it's salt wants people to stay and browse the website for a bit. My first visit to the website, I had my speakers turned on (big mistake). When I clicked to go forward into the site from the flash screens, my computer couldn't handle the load, had a fatal error, and rebooted. This was on a 1.5mhz computer with 256 megs of ram. Website is definitely not backwards compatible or legacy compliant in any manner whatsoever.

Final verdict: Healthier than a burger joint, cheaper than other places nearby, fast, friendly service, grab & go only.

[where: 322 E Walnut St Springfield, MO 65806-2302]

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