Travel blogger asks: ‘How run down is South Dakota’s biggest city?’

A travel blogger from Texas stopped in Sioux Falls earlier this month and produced a video titled “How run down is South Dakota’s largest city?”

Turns out, not much.

The headline might have set expectations for a certain look at the city, but the blogger known as Lord Spoda had largely positive things to say.

“It’s all about these breathtaking falls,” he said in a first stop at Falls Park. “It’s astonishingly beautiful.”

Spoda clearly does his homework on the places he visits, mentioning the city’s 70 parks, bike trail loop and Big Sioux River.

“One of the better developed park systems in the United States,” he said at Falls Park. “And why wouldn’t you if you’ve got something like this to build your parks on.”

Spoda went on to highlight the Arc of Dreams, SculptureWalk and State Theatre.

Early negatives for Sioux Falls? A “pretty fierce wind,” of course.

“It gets cold in the winter here,” he said. “Conversely, it gets really hot in the summer.”

Spoda then explored the neighborhoods around downtown, including the Cathedral District where he admires historic homes, and the areas immediately east and west of downtown.

“All the houses here look pretty good though,” he said at one point.

Of course, there’s the occasional outlier, he notes.

“That, wow, I don’t know what to say about that. That is a lot of satellite dishes,” he said.

He was more complimentary about McKennan Park.

“Clearly, this is the nice part of town,” he said. “That is a bona fide mansion there.”

Spoda doesn’t go to the newly constructed areas of the cities he visits.

“I don’t really go to those kind of places because to me they all kind of look the same,” he said. “Mostly when I do a video, I’m pretty much just there to see the downtown and the neighborhoods surrounding downtown because they’re usually older and much more interesting.”

One element that did stand out and maybe not in the best way:

“You see a lot of these little strip mall casinos,” Spoda said. “I’ve read that many in the city don’t particularly care for them and consider them a blight. I’m not sure how I feel about them either.”

Spoda later brought his wife into the video, stopping again at Falls Park where they encountered the Festival of Cultures.

“It’s pretty cool here,” he said. “A great afternoon, lots of stuff, lots of little shops.”

They stopped at Bread & Circus Sandwich Kitchen because of its appearance on “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” and Spoda ordered a Vietnamese fried chicken sandwich.

“If it is good enough for Guy Fieri, it’s good enough for me,” he said, while noting that even though he’s not a chicken sandwich type, “that was awesome, that’s the best one I’ve ever had.”

Overall, the travel blogger had good things to say about the city.

“Sioux Falls is not a huge city, but it’s big enough that it has just about everything,” he said.

“It has all the big-city amenities, but it’s not huge, and when you’re here, you don’t feel the weight of a million people around you, high crime, the horrid traffic, which makes it for me as I get older really appealing.”

By Monday afternoon, the video had been viewed more than 69,000 times.

Here’s a look at the full video: