The Hopscotch
I was out canvassing when I spotted a hopscotch game painted on a sidewalk. I stopped. I tried to jump through it while holding my phone. I failed. That's when she caught me.
I wasn't very graceful about it.
I was out in the neighborhood, phone in hand, and I spotted a hopscotch game painted right on the sidewalk. Bright colors. Clean squares. The kind of thing that makes you smile before you even decide to.
So I tried to jump through it. While recording. While holding the phone.
That's when she came outside. The neighbor who painted it. She caught me mid-hop, laughing at myself, and we started talking. Twenty minutes later I had one of the best conversations I've had on this entire campaign.
What She Told Me
She painted the hopscotch because it seemed like a fun thing to do. No grand plan. No neighborhood initiative. She just had paint and a sidewalk and thought — why not.
Then one day the city came and tore up her sidewalk. Necessary work. Infrastructure. The kind of thing cities do.
The new concrete went in. Clean. Smooth. Bare.
Weeks went by. The hopscotch didn't come back.
Then something happened. One neighbor stopped to ask her about it. Then another. Then a third — someone she barely knew — said they'd been watching for it to reappear.
Three different people. Three separate conversations. All of them asking the same thing: do you know when the hopscotch is coming back?
She told me she hadn't realized. She thought it was just something she'd done for herself, maybe for the kids in the neighborhood. She didn't know people had been seeing it. Counting on it. That it had become part of what her block felt like.
So she got her paint out again. She redrew it.
What Placemaking Actually Is
We talk about placemaking in city planning like it's a capital project. A mural commissioned by committee. A plaza redesigned with a grant. A streetscape improvement in the budget.
And those things matter. I believe in them.
But this woman with her paint and her sidewalk — that's placemaking too. That's actually where it starts.
Placemaking is the thing that makes a street feel like a neighborhood. It's the detail that tells a stranger: people live here, and they care about it. It's the small act that turns out to be less small than anyone expected.
She didn't set out to build community. She just showed up with something to give. And the community received it — quietly, daily, without ever saying so — until the day it was gone and everyone noticed.
Showing Up Looks Different for All of Us
I told her she should put something out front where people could prop their phone and record themselves jumping through — because I'd just proved you can't do both at once.
She laughed. Said she'd think about it.
But that moment stuck with me. Because showing up for your neighborhood doesn't require a title or a platform or a plan. It just requires you to do the thing you're able to do.
For her, it was paint.
For someone else it might be planting something in a bare patch near the curb. Picking up trash on your morning walk. Waving at the same person every day until they wave back. Knowing your neighbor's name.
None of these are small things. They're the whole thing. They're what makes a city feel like it belongs to the people who live in it.
The hopscotch on that sidewalk wasn't a policy. It was a person who showed up. And when she thought about stopping, three strangers reminded her that what she'd built was real.
Be That Person
Sioux Falls is full of people like her. People who do something quietly generous and have no idea how much it lands.
I'm asking you to be one of them.
Paint something. Plant something. Fix something. Start a conversation with a neighbor you've never spoken to. Do the small thing you've been putting off because it seems too small to matter.
It matters.
The proof is a woman who almost didn't redraw her hopscotch — and a neighborhood that would have noticed if she hadn't.
That's the city I'm running to build. One where people show up for each other not because someone told them to, but because they've seen what it looks like when someone does.
It's always been our city, and now is our moment.
Let's rise together. ☀️
— Vince Danh
Candidate, Sioux Falls City Council At-Large | June 2nd, 2026