iowa city

i know that

* it is a "college town"
* lots of people have PhDs
* is in Iowa
* lol writers
* is smallish

overrun with young evangelical christians.

wait really??

i thought it was iowa's "cool" town.

like the burlington VT of the midwest

yea i've heard great stuff about iowa city

bartender at my local is a native, ask him!

tumans?

I might be mixing it up w/ames

i stopped there once

it's nice

my friend shaun says "def the coolest city in Iowa, but overrun by hippies"

i stand corrected

about as hip as iowa gets, outside maybe a few nabes in dsm

xp

gbx, yes. i might be stopping by there tonight if i finish the book i'm reading on the commute home tonight if you're up for a post work pint.

lol college!

lol like there isn't a cool city in the upper midwest that isn't overrun by hippies

IIRC, Amateurist went to grad school there briefly.

what were his grades?

Our hippie count is at our lowest, but that is probably due to the active spraying programs implemented in the last few years. xpost

i am driving back to mpls in a minute, kev, otherwise i'd take you up on that

iowa has invited me to trick them into letting me go to school there. it seems like it'd be a good place to study for a bit; some of the trappings of the city, but not all in your face about it when you're supposed to be grinding in the library

apparently there is good singletrack there!

ah, good, because i just remembered some other errands i should attend to. david will have to wait another couple days for my book.

things i know about iowa city
*~4 hr drive from chicago
* hubs went to undergrad there
* was fine to visit the couple of times i've been there
* used to get decent amt of bands coming through acc. to hubs, but that was early-mid 1990s

downtown bars and movie houses
Black Angel in cemetery
corn bran musk wafting in from Cedar Rapids all summer long

I drove through there once after visiting West Branch and the Hoover Library.

I used to live there for three years in the mid-'90s. great town. The black angel's cool. I don't remember any young Christian evangelicals, I remember at least 5 Catholic churches though.

the hippies hung out at a bar called the Sanctuary, which also had a kick-ass beer selection.

this is all encouraging!

I definitely enjoyed my time there, for whatever that's worth.

the picador i think it's called (used to be dave's) has some pretty cool shows

The Picador used to be Gabe's Oasis.

And if you hadn't mentioned that, I wouldn't have even remembered that I played there last year.

I had some good nights at Gabes. Wasn't there another bar downstairs (Dublin Underground???)

Can we revive? I have a screening there and am considering going. Any decent place to stay, or things to do and eat?

You can see Golden Arches from Herbert Hoover's grave.

I really don't know ANYTHING about Iowa. What is the vibe? Is it a post-industrial/cornfield thing like Ohio or Indiana? Or is it like that but with more drinking and wildness?

I'll let some actual Iowans get into more details, but it's a rather diverse state. Iowa is the one state that I've spent the most time in without ever spending the night. The cornfields and the silos and the windmills – Dutch and modern – and the cities are all rather rad. Des Moines has one of the best looking capital cities. Iowa City was funky enough. Dubuque is downright Memphian. And up at the top, Mason City and those places, are really chill. If someone offered me a book deal to take 99 pictures from each county, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I never got an industrial vibe. Ottuma seemed like a blue-collar town. Waterloo was kind of a hole, in my brief time there. Oh, God, Council Bluffs doesn't count, does it? But I never got that wasteland vibe like Ohio or Indiana. The sky seems just a little bluer in Iowa.

I can't say anything in general about the people. Every Iowan I've met has been pretty honest and hearty. Definitely Midwestern, but maybe a bit more emphasis on the "western" part.