Catch that weedle! PokeMon GO is on the move in the Valley

YOUNGSTOWN

For the last few days, Boardman Park has been crawling with visitors of an unusual kind.

Pidgeys, spearows, weedles and other virtual creatures have been found daily since the launch of the wildly popular Pokemon GO app.

Players converged on the park – and other area hotspots throughout the Mahoning Valley – in droves to try to “catch ’em all,” as the beloved 1990s game urged them to do.

“Last night at 8 o’clock, at St. James Meeting House, the parking lot looked like there was a wedding reservation. The entire lot was filled,” park Director Dan Slagle said Tuesday, noting the park has had hundreds of additional visitors each day since the start of the weekend.

Asked whether the game has drawn more customers to their restaurant, a manager at the Boardman Chipotle simply laughed. “Yes,” he said.

AJ Vincent, 22, of Canfield found that out firsthand over the weekend.

“We started playing around with [Pokémon GO] and ended up going to Boardman Park. When we got there, we saw probably 100 people walking all around the park playing the game,” he said in a Twitter message. “Then we went to Chipotle for dinner and saw some people that were in the park. ... I bet half of the customers in Chipotle [that] night were playing the game as they ate. It’s crazy how popular it got.”

Read more about this new mobile phenomenon in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.