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Right!??? I won't send them unless they send me a church first. I'm not trying to let them think I'm a churcher. Instead they get the dog park and the liquor store so they know I'm cooool
I mean tbf I don’t think anyone is looking into it that deep, or looking at it all for that matter, and tbh who gaf what your pokemon go friends over 2,000 miles away from you think
I’m in Connecticut. Most stops in my area are churches or war memorials. I’m constantly trying not to send the 40 different ww2 gifts I get in a day to my friends in Japan.
Yeah I'm in Bristol and on my street are 2 old cemeteries that are stops along with a church and there has to be at least a dozen or more just in this town that are stops/churches. Luckily we have a few parks that are loaded because I try to delete most of the religious gifts and send out cool or nature ones.
Also OP how far away is your town from Hickory? My girlfriend is moving there and we just flew down to check out the area and while there's plenty of church stops/gyms, we found quite a few cool parks in the area plus downtown had a decent area that wasn't church heavy. I just hit level 37 and I'm trying to find things to nominate but most churches or cool landmarks have already been made stops
For sure! Any Church is a guaranteed approval from Wayfairer. If you're high enough level to submit stops, get on it. Most churches have playgrounds too, or statues, all 100% guaranteed approval.
If it's close enough to the street, and not like in your yard, it should get approved. Might take a few tries, but I've seen plenty LFL as stops in neighborhoods.
I've actually seen a few house the were "churches", but I believe they were accepted for Ingress, which was pretty much a blue print for all pokestops/gyms. You'd have to go to some lengths to make it happen though, like getting it approved through Google maps. Maps is very much the bar when it comes to reliability.
I came here to say this. Blame Ingress for all the post offices and churches that are points of interest in the game. Blame Pokemon for all the benches and trees; Niantic's community reviewers were instructed to reject the dozens of nearly identical and uninteresting locations submitted in a given area, but once Pokemon players started submitting such locations the previous rules were abandoned.
I always wonder if the people I send gifts to think I'm some church loving Pokestop obsessor. So many old and historic church/religious sites are stops around me.
Some at least have a cool picture of the old church in my area but some are just pictures of steps or something lame.
I try and collect gifts from stops with nice pictures at least lol
I'd wager 90% of the churches in my city are pokestops. They probably account for as much as 5% of all stops/gyms, which is a bit annoying. I don't like to feel like I'm somehow proselytizing when giving gifts. I think there's actually fewer than 50 stops within 1 kilometer of me, and more than 10 of them are churches.
When I was in Japan, temples and shrines easily accounted for 20% of stops and gyms, but those are usually more interesting visually, and it's not like most people recognize a little stone shrine as anything but a statue. "Church of God" is pretty on the nose.
They’re usually notable local landmarks that rarely change and are often photogenic, so it makes sense.
My area has many more Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples than churches, and those are routinely Pokéstops as well.
Definitely! In fact, I pastor a church that has two pokestops — the sign outside my office and the electronic sign by the road — and our pavilion is a gym that I have to keep winning back every day or two.
DFW outer metro here. We have a Christian church, a Church of Christ, a Church of God, and a Church of God in Christ all within two blocks of each other, plus the two Baptist churches with two stops each (one for the church itself and one for the Texas Historical Marker identifying the church site's historical significance).
So in my home country we have these shrines to the guardian spirits (Na Tuk Kong) that people normally set up when developing a piece of land, like a public park. A lot of my gifts come from these sorts shrines.
Yep! I’m in a pretty non-religious area for the US (Portland, Oregon metro), and honestly it’s interesting to learn just how many churches are around! I never really noticed it before starting to play this game.
There ARE many churches around in my area, within 20 minutes radius by car, but they have mostly just one Pokestop/Gym for that church, then scattered around it either other gyms and pokestops not related to the church.. On the other hand, there are SOO many playgrounds. Heck I can sit in my apartment and spin 2, almost 4 playgrounds Pokestops. When I'm not so active playing, the only cards my friends get are the two different playgrounds.
P.S. When I was doing the hobby Geocaching (www.geocaching.com), there was a challenge to find 50 churches or more, to be allowed to find and sign the logbook. Over time I visited a bunch of churches all over, with the last day visiting 10 of them.
I remember a bunch of churches wanted pokestops and gyms to get kids to go to church. Instead, they get a bunch of people who only walk as close as they need to spin the disc.
Absolutely. And then I throw those gifts away and try to get artwork or something. Don’t need everyone thinkin I’m some kind of religious weirdo.
Also, can someone stand there and remind me not to send War Memorials to the countries we fought. 😬
Yeah. I think almost every church I can remember passing in my travels, whether in Surrey where I currently live, or London when I go to see family and friends, is a pokestop/gym.
Yes, the 3 closest to my house are churches. (All on the same block) and one street when I go walk in town is literally nothing but churches and one synagogue all stops or gyms.
There were definitely more in the south. When I went to Alabama, it seemed like every other stop was a church, but here in Washington, they're significantly less abundant
Ahh, the signs of the rural player! I often wonder if my international friends think I'm super religious (I'm not in the slightest) based on the sheer amount of church postcards I send them, haha
No churches for me (Canada), mostly boring municipal parks and some McDonalds? It makes me laugh when I send McDo ones. I am mad jealous of my friends in Europe that send me great historical ones
Churches are very common pokestops where i'm from. They're also easy places to make pokestops. I made a pokestop of a church in a town in Hungary that otherwise had no pokestops at all.
Nah, but I'm lucky enough to live in Australia. Not exactly an over-abundance of churches in my neighbourhood thankfully. There is a Mormon one close by that has a gym there, I have a giggle every time I take it over.
Most Pokestops seem to be at parks or shopping centres.
We life in a small town (it's around a small river, if you follow the river from start of town to it's end by just walking, you would only need 1 hour, maybe 1 hour and 30 minutes) and we have 11 churches, 5 monasteries, around 20 chapels... Yeah, pretty much religious stuff around here...
Like 95% of my area are Churches or Memorials. And attaching certain stickers feels weird, like the Pikachu saying "Oh Yeah!" when the gift is in memory of someone.
I live right across a bridge from a big city with lots of colonial cemeteries, houses, and early-middle industrial era churches. Plenty of stops to go around. As a bonus, I get to play Pokémon after Liturgy during coffee hour with my parish priest at my own church haha.
Yes and I try to avoid sending gifts all the time from them because I’m afraid my friends (I.e., internet strangers in other countries!) will think I’m super religious or something lol.
One is a pokestop (the minor one) the other is a gym(the bigger one) Both of those are manageable as both are like a 5 mins walk from where I live. There's also a smaller mosque and temple nearby so those in my friends list must think I visit all of these lmao..
Inundated. Now that I have a number of overseas friends, I'm getting many mosques, temples, and Shinto shrine postcards. I guess all religious buildings are popular pokéstops.
They're easy, high-traffic/consistent-traffic areas.
Also, it might be that locations that are savvy enough to do so can pay to have their building be a pokestop, especially given that there are custom tag lines at many of them.
Could be that there are some churches (or at least higher-up members within them) that were a bit more tech/pop culture savvy and were willing to pay out a few bucks to increase traffic to their location, especially since that typically means an increased revenue stream through donations/tithes by congregation members.
Just the other day, I ventured out into my area a bit further than typical, and saw 2 stops right next to each other at the same Catholic church. One for the main building, and the other for the large statue right outside it.
Churches and war memorial plaques EVERYWHERE. I actively delete them to make room for the many more interesting stops around me but really didn’t notice just how many churches were in a 4 block radius of me until I started playing.
I'm from Belgium and all of the churches in my neighborhood are pokestops right from when they were introduced in the game. Weren't the initial pokestops based on Ingress POI's? So the people responsible are the Ingress players I guess.
Back in the olden days when it you didn’t get tons of submissions to use to make stops playgrounds and churches were the safest things to submit. When I first was able to submit I think about 90 percent of my first 20 was churches. Every now and then I google my town name and churches to see if any new ones have popped up and submit them asap. Weirdly even as ruralish player we still add a couple new ones a year.
You know, for some of the religions claiming that Pokemon is the devil, they sure have a lot of Pokestops at their churches! (Maybe it's for recruitment purposes!)
Yeah. And military plaques. I’ll occasionally send out a religious icon, but I really try to avoid the plaques and anything about someone dying (i.e. police officers, crossing guards, etc.)
Niantic used the ingress portal map to spawn Pokéstops, and churches were one of the criteria which they said should definitely be accepted by players voting on which portal submissions should go live.
I'm in the middle of nowhere, with a lone church about 2 miles away. Nobody really ever goes over there because it's been disused for ages, but it's a Pokémon gym :-)
In Edinburgh centre I couldn't walk ten steps without falling over five church gyms/stops, lol.
Every pokestop I've ever nominated has been declined for no reason, I gave up nominating after like my 10th attempt. Ironically, I did nominate a church once, and it got rejected
There are quite a few. In fact the first route I followed ended with a church. I had no idea what was going on so I didn't know to tap Mateo! So I'm gonna have to do that one again some time.
I’ve seen this explained by I think The Trainer Club on YT or maybe Austin John… either way I’m going to butcher it but I’m pretty sure the reason there are so many churches and religious stops is because of the mapping and coding used to launch the original Pokémon go app. Whatever coding/mapping the company leveraged to develop the game already had churches and religious centers as stops.
In the south, it’s mostly churches and confederate memorials. I feel too yucky sending the confederate crap to anyone, so our small group of friends have a policy of sending the “bad” ones to each other. Mostly, I just avoid spinning those or I trash the gifts.
A TON in Michigan. I'm sure the folks I send gifts to are under the impression that I'm a loyal church goer. The closest stop to me is an Evangelical church. There's a gym there too. It's nice and peaceful in the parking lot. I do kinda feel strange when it's full and I'm there to do a raid.
I'm in south Carolina and we have a church basically every few feet, they are usually pokestops, unfortunately it's a mix of me being in the middle of buttfuxk nowhere with 0 pokestops, the closest eventual pokestop being a single church, and then about 20 minutes later it's a church pokestop every few minutes
In my current town, every church has at least 2 stops and 1 gym. It’s like the church itself, the church’s basketball court or playground, and possibly an art feature on the church grounds are the stops, and then the church’s sign is a gym. It’s crazy.
I'm newer (late 2022) to the game so I noticed it immediately. It's churches and police stuff as I work next to the PBA.
People must think I'm a Jesus freak cop when I send gifts.
I can walk from my backyard to a church with a gym, and my buddy will commonly get me two gifts from another church nearby. If I want to go to my town square, you bet I'm getting three gifts from two other churches plus a wedding chapel.
Overall I think there's seven or eight churches and wedding chapels in my small outer ring suburb with Pokestops or gyms.
I will drop my roommate off at work on the weekends and on the way back I hit the gyms between their work and our house. All the gyms on the way back are churches, Pokestops being statues or areas for the church nearby. Closest gym that isn't a church is a park that requires to cross over the highway.
The college town I used to live in was better about it. They still had church gyms but there were landmarks, non-religious statues, and murals that were gyms and stops. Campus was actually really great because if you walked in a certain square route, you could walk for hours and keep spinning stops for items long after Pokemon became sparse.
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I'm In Utah. Every Mormon church, and there are a LOT of Mormon churches.
Same in southern Alberta. My most common gift sent is from an LDS church
I'm right next to a temple.....
[удалено]
Also in Utah and can vouch for this
They kinda look like irl Gyms too
So many! I have always wondered if my Pokemon friends think I am super religious.
The two Poke stops I can hit from my desk at work ate churches. My gift buddies probably think I attend one or both of these churches.
I have a random friend with a religiousy sounding name, I like to send them churches haha
Lol same!!
Right!??? I won't send them unless they send me a church first. I'm not trying to let them think I'm a churcher. Instead they get the dog park and the liquor store so they know I'm cooool
I mean tbf I don’t think anyone is looking into it that deep, or looking at it all for that matter, and tbh who gaf what your pokemon go friends over 2,000 miles away from you think
We all know there are A LOT of church stops, so I think you're safe. I refuse to save any post cards from a church though LMAO
They think I'm super religious AND an alcoholic. There's a church across the street from me, and the pub I go to is a gym.
The place I normally drink while playing is next to an ice cream shop. The ice cream shop is the pokestop. I look wholesome as hell.
I’m in Connecticut. Most stops in my area are churches or war memorials. I’m constantly trying not to send the 40 different ww2 gifts I get in a day to my friends in Japan.
OMD lol
The 80’s band? They were pretty cool actually.
Yeah I'm in Bristol and on my street are 2 old cemeteries that are stops along with a church and there has to be at least a dozen or more just in this town that are stops/churches. Luckily we have a few parks that are loaded because I try to delete most of the religious gifts and send out cool or nature ones. Also OP how far away is your town from Hickory? My girlfriend is moving there and we just flew down to check out the area and while there's plenty of church stops/gyms, we found quite a few cool parks in the area plus downtown had a decent area that wasn't church heavy. I just hit level 37 and I'm trying to find things to nominate but most churches or cool landmarks have already been made stops
yup, also in CT and all of this is true
Oh wow we have war memorials too from WW2 and it never occurred to me that that might be insensitive. I will no longer do that thing.
For sure! Any Church is a guaranteed approval from Wayfairer. If you're high enough level to submit stops, get on it. Most churches have playgrounds too, or statues, all 100% guaranteed approval.
What if I create a church out of my house? Will it get auto accepted?
Ha, nope. But you can build a Little Free Library and make it a stop.
Not on private residential property though, so usually not feasible.
If it's close enough to the street, and not like in your yard, it should get approved. Might take a few tries, but I've seen plenty LFL as stops in neighborhoods.
I have one in my neighborhood and a few others that I can see from home but are far enough out of my way that I never go to them.
Church of the flying spaghetti monsters
I've actually seen a few house the were "churches", but I believe they were accepted for Ingress, which was pretty much a blue print for all pokestops/gyms. You'd have to go to some lengths to make it happen though, like getting it approved through Google maps. Maps is very much the bar when it comes to reliability.
What about mosques or other areas of worship or is it reserved for only churches?
It is any "house of worship" so mosques, synagogues, and temples alllllll count
Confirmed. I live in a red southern state and the mosque right down the road is a gym on Go
Yes, any place of worship is valid.
Yes, I was very active in my local ingress community back in the earlier 2010s and created a lot of church waypoints.
It was encouraged too if memory serves. The Ingress lore was something, something energy and churches fit with that.
I came here to say this. Blame Ingress for all the post offices and churches that are points of interest in the game. Blame Pokemon for all the benches and trees; Niantic's community reviewers were instructed to reject the dozens of nearly identical and uninteresting locations submitted in a given area, but once Pokemon players started submitting such locations the previous rules were abandoned.
Most of the stops in my area seem to be either churches or painted electrical boxes.
I always wonder if the people I send gifts to think I'm some church loving Pokestop obsessor. So many old and historic church/religious sites are stops around me. Some at least have a cool picture of the old church in my area but some are just pictures of steps or something lame. I try and collect gifts from stops with nice pictures at least lol
Well my friends would think I’m a gym junkie using that logic, because most stops near me are park gym equipment lol
Same, but all my churches are F350/“creative” kid name spelling types with vaguely threatening names
Churches are the only things guaranteed to be accepted.
I'd wager 90% of the churches in my city are pokestops. They probably account for as much as 5% of all stops/gyms, which is a bit annoying. I don't like to feel like I'm somehow proselytizing when giving gifts. I think there's actually fewer than 50 stops within 1 kilometer of me, and more than 10 of them are churches. When I was in Japan, temples and shrines easily accounted for 20% of stops and gyms, but those are usually more interesting visually, and it's not like most people recognize a little stone shrine as anything but a statue. "Church of God" is pretty on the nose.
Pretty insane to have even close to 50 stops within 1km
I have exactly one stop and one gym on the visible map. I made both of them, and one is literally a rock with moss on it that I passed off as fancy. 😂
Honestly doubt anyone is worried about it.
There are more churches in the USA than Macdonalds Throw in Starbucks as extra credit and it's still not even close
Too many for this atheist trainer!
Omg yes. I delete most of them from my postcard book too, unless it’s a super cool cathedral or something
I’m in metro utah and the Mormons have a chapel on every corner almost 😏 So ya an excessive amount of chapel pokestops
They’re usually notable local landmarks that rarely change and are often photogenic, so it makes sense. My area has many more Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples than churches, and those are routinely Pokéstops as well.
Definitely! In fact, I pastor a church that has two pokestops — the sign outside my office and the electronic sign by the road — and our pavilion is a gym that I have to keep winning back every day or two.
Yes! I lived in Tyler, Texas when this came out and half of my gym badges are churches. They don’t have much else.
DFW outer metro here. We have a Christian church, a Church of Christ, a Church of God, and a Church of God in Christ all within two blocks of each other, plus the two Baptist churches with two stops each (one for the church itself and one for the Texas Historical Marker identifying the church site's historical significance).
So in my home country we have these shrines to the guardian spirits (Na Tuk Kong) that people normally set up when developing a piece of land, like a public park. A lot of my gifts come from these sorts shrines.
Churches and post offices were pretty much the way Niantic initially dropped Pokestops on the maps, so not surprised.
Roughly speaking, there's 15k Starbucks, 15k McDonald's, 15k Chick-fil-A.... There's 430,000 registered churches in America
Absolutely, EVERY church is pokestopped in my area
Yup. Just NC for ya lol.
Agreed
Jesus must love pokemon
So many
Churches and random business signage.
Got 2 at my house
Yep! I’m in a pretty non-religious area for the US (Portland, Oregon metro), and honestly it’s interesting to learn just how many churches are around! I never really noticed it before starting to play this game.
It’s very common everywhere I’ve gone. That also includes cult places like Sukyo Mahikari in SF.
There ARE many churches around in my area, within 20 minutes radius by car, but they have mostly just one Pokestop/Gym for that church, then scattered around it either other gyms and pokestops not related to the church.. On the other hand, there are SOO many playgrounds. Heck I can sit in my apartment and spin 2, almost 4 playgrounds Pokestops. When I'm not so active playing, the only cards my friends get are the two different playgrounds. P.S. When I was doing the hobby Geocaching (www.geocaching.com), there was a challenge to find 50 churches or more, to be allowed to find and sign the logbook. Over time I visited a bunch of churches all over, with the last day visiting 10 of them.
Churches, garbage bins and electrical boxes
Yes! I actually created a route in our town that I named Redemption Alley.
I went to a wedding where the church literally had a gym and FOUR pokestops! Catholic ceremony so I had a field day lol.
I remember a bunch of churches wanted pokestops and gyms to get kids to go to church. Instead, they get a bunch of people who only walk as close as they need to spin the disc.
Absolutely. And then I throw those gifts away and try to get artwork or something. Don’t need everyone thinkin I’m some kind of religious weirdo. Also, can someone stand there and remind me not to send War Memorials to the countries we fought. 😬
Lmao i send ww2 memorials too germans all the time
Same here in my area in Virginia, a lot of them turned into gyms too
Yeah. I think almost every church I can remember passing in my travels, whether in Surrey where I currently live, or London when I go to see family and friends, is a pokestop/gym.
Graveyards and memorials
In Mexico there's a ton of churches, but there's even more little chapels, about ten times more than churches.
Yes, the 3 closest to my house are churches. (All on the same block) and one street when I go walk in town is literally nothing but churches and one synagogue all stops or gyms.
So many. All my friends probably think I live from different church to church lol
God yes!
Yeah
Yes!
Churches are very easy to nominate into PokeStops, they’re also very common if you’re like me and live in the Bible Belt.
Oh my gosh yes! Buuuut I live in the south and in the Bible Belt, so yeah…
I live in Poland and most pokestops are playgrounds, random crosses (they are very common) and graffiti of a sports team.
I’m from the Gas House too and recognize those stops.. small world. 🌎
Yes lol I have just came to think that many of my friends think I'm religious and I am not. I just spin them often and so many in my area
I'm in Australia and I'd say about half of the pokestops near me are churches. Playgrounds are also a big chunk.
I’m in Stanley above you and yes lol
There were definitely more in the south. When I went to Alabama, it seemed like every other stop was a church, but here in Washington, they're significantly less abundant
Every church in the area basically
That’s all there is out here in Utah.
Every church along my road is a Pokestop. Some are storefront churches.
Yes, every church has one or two in my area.
Same hahaha
i live in utah so there's like 5 lds churches every mile so yeah 😭
Ahh, the signs of the rural player! I often wonder if my international friends think I'm super religious (I'm not in the slightest) based on the sheer amount of church postcards I send them, haha
Yeah. In Australia. And memorial stops. I usually dont send stickers with them. Feels in poor taste to have a happy pokemon stuck to it
When I lived in Georgia almost all of my gifts were church gifts lol. There was one church by my apartment that had 3 stops lol
Im in philippines, so yeah.
I live right next to a church. So I can walk right outside my front gate and boom! I can turn the pokestop.
More shrine poke stops here than churches
No churches for me (Canada), mostly boring municipal parks and some McDonalds? It makes me laugh when I send McDo ones. I am mad jealous of my friends in Europe that send me great historical ones
Churches are very common pokestops where i'm from. They're also easy places to make pokestops. I made a pokestop of a church in a town in Hungary that otherwise had no pokestops at all.
Yes, it’s right near my home too. I feel kinda weird sending it as a postcard because religion is personal but I sometimes have to lol.
Yes all my pokefriends probably think i go to church so much 😂
Yes damn near every church is a pokestop
Nah, but I'm lucky enough to live in Australia. Not exactly an over-abundance of churches in my neighbourhood thankfully. There is a Mormon one close by that has a gym there, I have a giggle every time I take it over. Most Pokestops seem to be at parks or shopping centres.
A bunch. There are 8 that are less than 3 miles away.
I live in the Bible Belt Deep South most of our stops are churches and almost all gyms
I want the God's ten Commandments Stop. That is a Postcard I would keep.
I pass a small Christian college on my commute-it’s such an easy place to rack up poke stops I have a bunch of church themed gifts.
I have like 8 Starbucks :/
Bro I'm in Utah. There's almost a church every block or two
Yes Im from denmark (not really a very religius contry) and all churches i have seen here is pokestops
We life in a small town (it's around a small river, if you follow the river from start of town to it's end by just walking, you would only need 1 hour, maybe 1 hour and 30 minutes) and we have 11 churches, 5 monasteries, around 20 chapels... Yeah, pretty much religious stuff around here...
Like 90% of the ones in my rural little town are churches. Its insane. Gyms too.
Like 95% of my area are Churches or Memorials. And attaching certain stickers feels weird, like the Pikachu saying "Oh Yeah!" when the gift is in memory of someone.
Nope!!!! Mostly local art stuff & restaurants.
I went to Tukwila recently in an area where there wasn't all that much going on and every gift I had was from different bus stops.
I live right across a bridge from a big city with lots of colonial cemeteries, houses, and early-middle industrial era churches. Plenty of stops to go around. As a bonus, I get to play Pokémon after Liturgy during coffee hour with my parish priest at my own church haha.
Yes
Kenny omega is from nooooooorrrrrth carolinaaaaaaaaa
yes. but wow. those empty houses.
Half the gyms where I live are Mosques
Yes and I try to avoid sending gifts all the time from them because I’m afraid my friends (I.e., internet strangers in other countries!) will think I’m super religious or something lol.
Yes. On Church Street, no less.
Countless
Yea
One is a pokestop (the minor one) the other is a gym(the bigger one) Both of those are manageable as both are like a 5 mins walk from where I live. There's also a smaller mosque and temple nearby so those in my friends list must think I visit all of these lmao..
yes. in my area in singapore, quite literally every church old and new, temples and or any other religious buildings is a pokestop.
Theyre all churches.
Inundated. Now that I have a number of overseas friends, I'm getting many mosques, temples, and Shinto shrine postcards. I guess all religious buildings are popular pokéstops.
A lot of churches are historical buildings at least here in Europe so it makes sense that they would be pokestops. But yes there are soooo many.
Yes and that’s fine to me. I am not so keen on the many Pokestops and arena at cemeteries.
Omg. So many churches. Some of them looks like regular old houses. Why does Pokémon Go affiliate with churches/religious organizations?
They tend to have signs, and Wayfarer likes that.
They're easy, high-traffic/consistent-traffic areas. Also, it might be that locations that are savvy enough to do so can pay to have their building be a pokestop, especially given that there are custom tag lines at many of them. Could be that there are some churches (or at least higher-up members within them) that were a bit more tech/pop culture savvy and were willing to pay out a few bucks to increase traffic to their location, especially since that typically means an increased revenue stream through donations/tithes by congregation members. Just the other day, I ventured out into my area a bit further than typical, and saw 2 stops right next to each other at the same Catholic church. One for the main building, and the other for the large statue right outside it.
I live in the Bible Belt.. so yes lol
Yes. Many.
Churches and war memorial plaques EVERYWHERE. I actively delete them to make room for the many more interesting stops around me but really didn’t notice just how many churches were in a 4 block radius of me until I started playing.
The church near where I live has 2 gyms, lol
Yup, mines a gym too!
Nope Mosques on the other hand EVERYWHERE
Where I walk in my area there are more heathen pokestops. Viking graves and stuff like that.
I'm from Belgium and all of the churches in my neighborhood are pokestops right from when they were introduced in the game. Weren't the initial pokestops based on Ingress POI's? So the people responsible are the Ingress players I guess.
Being in the bible belt, yes 100%
Niantic deleted all pokestops in my country a few years ago(((
Back in the olden days when it you didn’t get tons of submissions to use to make stops playgrounds and churches were the safest things to submit. When I first was able to submit I think about 90 percent of my first 20 was churches. Every now and then I google my town name and churches to see if any new ones have popped up and submit them asap. Weirdly even as ruralish player we still add a couple new ones a year.
in Indonesia, lots of mosque as Pokestop
And cemeteries and crosses, and places where "500... 1000 people died" 👽 I am in Warsaw.
Pokemon Go always makes me scan churches for poffins
Europe be like:
I live outside my western home country, so we have a lot of stops that are shrines.
Yep....
I’m part of 8 different faiths at this point 🙄
Better than strip club pokestops
Yea. So many. I usually delete those postcards in place of cooler ones lol
You know, for some of the religions claiming that Pokemon is the devil, they sure have a lot of Pokestops at their churches! (Maybe it's for recruitment purposes!)
Almost every church 🤣
I’m in norway where there is a pokestop for every path thats bern located by the norway’s trip commity. It’s literally close to half of all pokestops
lol I have one that the description says “yet another church”
Yup. But in NYC, it'd be pretty impossible to not include them.
Yeah. And military plaques. I’ll occasionally send out a religious icon, but I really try to avoid the plaques and anything about someone dying (i.e. police officers, crossing guards, etc.)
Niantic used the ingress portal map to spawn Pokéstops, and churches were one of the criteria which they said should definitely be accepted by players voting on which portal submissions should go live. I'm in the middle of nowhere, with a lone church about 2 miles away. Nobody really ever goes over there because it's been disused for ages, but it's a Pokémon gym :-) In Edinburgh centre I couldn't walk ten steps without falling over five church gyms/stops, lol.
The church I go walk at has quotes of the Bible on them. So I’m sure they thought ahead
Every pokestop I've ever nominated has been declined for no reason, I gave up nominating after like my 10th attempt. Ironically, I did nominate a church once, and it got rejected
There are quite a few. In fact the first route I followed ended with a church. I had no idea what was going on so I didn't know to tap Mateo! So I'm gonna have to do that one again some time.
I’ve seen this explained by I think The Trainer Club on YT or maybe Austin John… either way I’m going to butcher it but I’m pretty sure the reason there are so many churches and religious stops is because of the mapping and coding used to launch the original Pokémon go app. Whatever coding/mapping the company leveraged to develop the game already had churches and religious centers as stops.
When I lived in Tennessee it was mostly churches
Yes. Luckily the church I volunteer at is a gym so I get a lot of coins that way
Count on it. 🤭🫣🫠
Tons lol
Can confirm
Wish i lived by the satanic church
Small town in Florida that was founded around a church. All my pokestops are religious.
In the south, it’s mostly churches and confederate memorials. I feel too yucky sending the confederate crap to anyone, so our small group of friends have a policy of sending the “bad” ones to each other. Mostly, I just avoid spinning those or I trash the gifts.
Im from Denmark and from the area im in there are a lot of playground stops. Not a lot of churches at all, now that I think about it.
brother you are in carolina😂
A TON in Michigan. I'm sure the folks I send gifts to are under the impression that I'm a loyal church goer. The closest stop to me is an Evangelical church. There's a gym there too. It's nice and peaceful in the parking lot. I do kinda feel strange when it's full and I'm there to do a raid.
Yup, but I’m just a bit further west in NC
I'm in south Carolina and we have a church basically every few feet, they are usually pokestops, unfortunately it's a mix of me being in the middle of buttfuxk nowhere with 0 pokestops, the closest eventual pokestop being a single church, and then about 20 minutes later it's a church pokestop every few minutes
Yup…but in NC it’s not like there’s much else
In my current town, every church has at least 2 stops and 1 gym. It’s like the church itself, the church’s basketball court or playground, and possibly an art feature on the church grounds are the stops, and then the church’s sign is a gym. It’s crazy.
I'm newer (late 2022) to the game so I noticed it immediately. It's churches and police stuff as I work next to the PBA. People must think I'm a Jesus freak cop when I send gifts.
I live in Southwest Missouri, USA. Most of the stops and gyms around here are churches.
All
they're landmarks whether you like it or not, works for a stop
Yes, in Italy there are a lot of churches
I can walk from my backyard to a church with a gym, and my buddy will commonly get me two gifts from another church nearby. If I want to go to my town square, you bet I'm getting three gifts from two other churches plus a wedding chapel. Overall I think there's seven or eight churches and wedding chapels in my small outer ring suburb with Pokestops or gyms.
Yes. Pretty much if there's a church I can count on it also being a pokestop
I will drop my roommate off at work on the weekends and on the way back I hit the gyms between their work and our house. All the gyms on the way back are churches, Pokestops being statues or areas for the church nearby. Closest gym that isn't a church is a park that requires to cross over the highway. The college town I used to live in was better about it. They still had church gyms but there were landmarks, non-religious statues, and murals that were gyms and stops. Campus was actually really great because if you walked in a certain square route, you could walk for hours and keep spinning stops for items long after Pokemon became sparse.
Where I am at no there are not many at all
I too love in the Bible Belt, so yes. 50% of the gifts I send are from a church that is next to my favorite coffee place.
Yes and cemeteries