All day yesterday I told people what an amazing show I had seen the previous evening at Gabe’s: the March Fourth Marching Band. “What were they like, Yale?” And that was the problem. I couldn’t say what they were “like” because they were so damn unique. I’d never seen anything “like” them ever before in […]
Yale Cohn
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A Keg on Every Corner
Were there a facility large enough to house us all I suspect we’d have long ago been ordered by the court to attend some ambiguously-named in-patient rehab facility where our bags would be searched for mouthwash, daily urine tests would be administered and T-shirts commemorating pub crawls would be confiscated at the door.
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Binge Drinking, B.C.
Between the city council’s passage of the “21-Only” ordinance aimed at keeping those under the age of 21 out of Iowa City bars after 10 p.m. and The University of Iowa’s new “Think Before You Drink” initiative aimed at cracking down on tailgating-related drinking, the powers that be are hoping to alter the course of the river of booze that flows through Iowa City.
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Public Spaces
“Panhandling”–what it is, who can do it and where–has been a hot topic in Iowa City recently ever since the city council proposed–and ultimately passed–a new ordinance prohibiting “aggressive panhandling” in response to some folks’ concerns over solicitation on the ped mall. That there already were laws on the books prohibiting this–laws that had never […]
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Summertime
I first realized adults live lives quite different from children when I was 10 or so and asked one of my father’s employees what his plans were for the summer.
“Work,” he said, somewhat confused by my question.
“You don’t get the summer off?”
“No,” he said, “nobody does.”
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Dangerous Curves
Photos by Ofer Sivan I am in a large, crowded and noisy room watching a group of women on roller skates delivering powerful and cringe-inducing hits to one another and taking spills that no amount of protective padding–store bought or God-given–could ever fully protect them from. By day, they are college professors and paramedics and […]
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Fire up the grill
Commentary: April 2010 – Springtime, when it truly arrives in earnest, is usually heralded by trees sprouting their first buds, gardeners gleefully getting their knees muddy for the first time in months, snow blowers and lawnmowers switching places in their owners’ garages, and the rich, meaty “thwap” sound that baseballs make when they land true […]
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When Irish Eyes Are Smiling
Features: March 2010 – I don’t have a lot of good memories of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t have a lot of bad ones either, I just don’t have too many memories of it at all as the handful of times I’ve actually made an effort to go out and celebrate it it’s almost […]
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Brains, Brawn & Beauty
Commentary: February 2010 By Yale Cohn When I first moved to Iowa City I would get knocked off kilter when attractive women I didn’t know would smile and nod at me when we’d pass each other by on the sidewalk or in an aisle at the grocery store or the public library. This was a […]
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Grab Winter by the Snowballs
When it gets as cold as it did after our first real snowstorm of the season a few weeks ago, it gets so you don’t notice it anymore after a while because it’s not a thing to “notice” so much as it’s the only thing you’re thinking about to begin with. It was, in retrospect, […]
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Goodwill Hunting
It’s a Tuesday, two days before Christmas, and I’m standing in front of the bookshelves at the Goodwill store on Highway 6. In my pocket is the $15 I received after returning several months’ worth of empty cans to the Hy-Vee next door. I wanted a new frying pan but they don’t have anything I […]
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We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made Of
We wait. Every year we wait. We wait with bated breath, face paint purchased, coolers full of ice, grills freshly cleaned, coals and meat at the ready, beers lined up in formation, newly purchased giant foam fingers proclaiming us to be “#1” waiting to be donned for the first time after last year’s fingers were […]
