Baloise Park Construction Trudges Ever Onward; Basel Beer Rivalry Continues; Pinball Wizards Wanted; Drug Dealing Kids Caught

News For 8 August 2017

For the last two years the area in front of the SBB has been an ongoing construction zone.  Once the old Hilton hotel was removed construction immediately began on filling the hole left behind with a 90 meter high rise building which will become a hotel and headquarters for the Baloise Insurance company.  At an estimated cost of 350 million CHF the project should be completed in 3 years.  In an effort to offset some of the public grumbling about the never ending construction, Philippe Furstenberger, project manager for Baloise Park promised a plaza that will welcome public use.  For those interested, a downloadable app is also available called Baloise Park that gives users a virtual tour of the finished project.

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Recently, 20 Minuten launched a poll on their website for Basler to rate their favorite local beers. The winner was quite obvious: Ueli Bier got 513 votes out of a total of 1600. This puts them well ahead of second placed Unser Bier at 320 votes. Unser Bier is just as honored as Ueli Bier, stating that they are not rivals but rather colleagues. At the beginning of this year, Ueli and Unser even produced a new beer together. 

*********** Since March 2016, Flipperclub Basel has been hosting pinball "dinner" events at its Grabenackerstrasse location in Munchenstein.  Those interested in the retro gaming halls of yesteryear can join the club, joining the 400 people that are already members.  Membership can be bought on an annual basis, or on the evening of one of their events when you can play any of their 55 pinball machines.  Once inside, you can play any of the machines which span the old mechanical technologies of the 1950s all the way to today's most modern digitized blinking pinballs.  At a recent Friday evening event, 40 people were already lined up outside the arcade before the 8pm opening.  Despite the demand, the club has no plans to open to the general public, or extend its limited Friday and Saturday, "event only" hours. *********** Students as young as 12 have apparently been dealing cannabis, prescription medication and even cocaine at a middle school in Gelterkinden. It seems that the youngest students buy the drugs from dealers and sell them to the older students. The situation was first noticed when performance as well as attendance of some students started to decrease. According to students, this has been a problem for at least two years, but the school only started taking measures against it around six months ago.  They have started issuing warnings as well as expelling certain students.