News and notes from around town:

• So, what’s the best coffee house in Lawrence? That conversation can get more heated than the Joe that’s in the cup, but one national magazine seems to think it has the question answered. Complex magazine — which seems to be a hip publication aimed at the younger set, so of course I’d never heard of it — has named The Bourgeois Pig the fifth best College Coffee Shop in America. The Pig gets high marks for serving both alcohol and coffee and it also is praised for its vibe. It notes The Pig has a “reputation for the radical,” and its first art show featured shotgun paintings by William S. Burroughs. “Just as often as they have new art, they have smart-ass undergrads hotly debating in the cramped, beloved spot,” the magazine writes. If The Pig — or any of Lawrence’s other coffee shops — want to take over the top spot, they’ll have to knock off Spider House in Austin. The University of Texas joint offers booze, art, music, pizza, tacos and occasionally haircuts. That, of course, leaves me wondering what a haircut at The Pig would look like. If you want to see the whole list from Complex magazine, click here.

• Here’s a little something for all motorists to look forward to. As we reported yesterday, westbound traffic on the 23rd Street bridge will be reduced to one lane beginning today through Tuesday. But think of that just as a warm-up. In talking with some City Hall folks, next summer (2012) may be one for the ages when it comes to motorist frustration. That same 23rd Street bridge that is getting patched today, will be torn down and replaced by the Kansas Department of Transportation. Traffic will go down two shoe-fly ramps on both sides of the bridge. The project will be a long one. But, the twist comes with what else will be going on. Crews also will have Iowa Street — from about 15th to Harvard — torn up for a complete reconstruction. So, if you are keeping score, that’s the city’s main north-south artery and the main east-west artery torn up at the same time. Now, to make things really interesting, there’s a good chance the state’s repaving project in the city could be on a portion of Sixth Street. In addition, the city this year is rebuilding the westbound lanes of Bob Billings Parkway from Kasold Drive to Crestline. The eastbound lanes will need to be rebuilt too. Perhaps City Hall will decide to do that project next year too — and issue everybody a note that we can carry around with us explaining why we are late.

Crews work on pouring cement as part of the reconstruction of Kasold Drive from Clinton Parkway to 31st Street.

• It would be tough to accuse the construction crews working on the project to rebuild Kasold Drive from Clinton Parkway to 31st Street as moving slow. It would be easy to accuse them of being noisy. Public Works Director Chuck Soules told me he’s been impressed at how much concrete crews have been pouring as part of that project. Soules said crews have been pouring about 1,300 cubic yards of concrete per day at the site. That’s impressive, he said, considering that a cement truck holds only about 8 cubic yards. He figured that there was a truckload of concrete being dumped about every five minutes at the job site recently. But all that pouring also means a lot of concrete cutting. (Concrete has to be cut soon after it cures to help control cracking.) That has meant crews have been running large cutting saws past midnight on some occasions. Yes, they are noisy, and Soules apologizes for that. But he said the city has taken the approach that it wants to get the project done as soon as possible and get out everyone’s hair.

• From cars to trains, another funding opportunity to refurbish the Santa Fe Depot in East Lawrence has failed to arrive. The city confirmed that its recent application for $1.1 million from the Federal Railroad Administration wasn’t selected for funding. The federal government had about $2 billion in rail funding to distribute after a high-speed rail project in Florida did not get off the ground as planned. But the Lawrence project lost out to a host of other rail upgrades. You can read about where the feds decided to send the money, here.