Most local round-ups are copied from other local round-ups. That is how a brewery that closed in 2024 keeps appearing on "best of" lists, and how a page can confidently tell you a museum has a play area it has never had. This page describes what we do instead. It is a description of practice, not a promise of perfection.
"We checked this" means we read the operator's own page
Every fact about a business, park, venue or organization on this site was read on that operator's own website — the page actually carrying the claim, not their homepage and not a directory listing. If a bowling alley's cosmic schedule is the fact, we read the cosmic schedule page.
We do not take facts from aggregators, directories, review sites or map listings. Those go stale silently: a directory can list a business twenty months after it closes, and nothing about the listing looks wrong. A link checker will not catch it either, because the page still loads.
The date means when we last looked
Where an entry carries a date, that is the last day someone opened the operator's own page for it. Every one of those visits confirms, at the least, that the place is still there, under that name, at that address — the check that catches a business that has closed while its website stays up. Hours and prices are the details that move most, so they are re-read on their own schedule, and a newer date does not always mean every line beside it was read again that day. The date is not a claim that the fact is still true today, and it is not a promise that we will notice if it changes. Opening hours change without announcement. A venue can drop a weekly session and tell nobody.
So treat the date as what it is: the age of our last look. An old date is not a warning that something is wrong — it means we have not checked recently, and you should call ahead if it matters.
"Not published yet" means the venue has not published it
When a field says Not published yet, that is not us failing to look. It means we looked and the operator does not publish that detail on the pages of their site we read — you will have to call and ask.
We show the gap rather than hiding it, because an admitted gap and a confirmed answer are different things and should never look the same. Filling the hole with a plausible-sounding guess is how a page stops being worth trusting.
When a source contradicts itself, we show both
This happens more than you would think. West Acres Bowling's Family Cosmic session is a real example: the schedule block on their page says 3:30–5:30pm at $8, and the description a few lines below says 3–5pm at $7. Both are on the venue's own site.
We do not pick the one we prefer and present it as settled. Our page carries both figures and suggests calling ahead — because the honest thing to tell you is exactly what the venue published, including that the venue is not sure.
Sources get rejected when they cannot meet the standard
The events calendar pulls from several public feeds. Others were examined and turned down, and the reasons are written up rather than forgotten, so nobody re-checks them next year and reaches the same dead end.
One is worth repeating here because it shows why this matters. A local events site listed a bowling alley's "Cosmic Bowling" as family programming twenty-six times over three months. The tag was accurate by that site's own system. But reading the venue's page showed three of its four cosmic sessions run between 10pm and 1:45am, with drink deals and karaoke next door. The venue labels all four "All Ages Welcome", and the one built for families is Saturday afternoon. A listing built on that tag would have sent parents to an 11pm session at a bar. That is why we read the operator's page instead of trusting a label.
We also turn down sources that publish events with no venue, no address and no link, however good the content is — because a listing you cannot act on is not worth putting in front of you.
What we do not do
- We do not take payment to include a business, and there is no paid directory.
- We do not publish prices for things that change yearly, like registration fees — a stale price costs you money. Where we do give a figure it is because the operator publishes it and we read it on the date shown.
- We do not publish a link we have not opened.
- We do not pad a list to make it look comprehensive. Three places someone stood behind beats twenty nobody checked.
We get things wrong
Some of this is one person reading a lot of websites, and websites change the day after you read them. If something here is out of date or wrong, telling us is genuinely useful — it is the fastest way this gets better.
This page describes the method. Who does the checking, and why is the other half of it — a page making claims this strong should say who stands behind them.