The Black Box Theatre of Moline, Illinois, as the name implies, is a simple theater space. That didn’t hold back its recent production of The Lion in Winter, which closed the company’s 2025 season with a slow-burning play that uses the intimacy of its space to ratchet up the intensity of its production of James […]
Eastern Iowa
Posted inCommunity/News
The infamous Epstein birthday book includes a cringeworthy Iowa anecdote from 1988
In some cases, the truism “there’s always an Iowa connection” becomes a threat. The Jeffrey Epstein “birthday book,” revealed this summer, is one such case. Amid 238 pages of fawning, friendly and conspiratorial birthday messages to the billionaire rapist and child trafficker written by his rich, powerful cohorts and gathered by Ghislaine Maxwell in 2003 […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Before he became Tom Tomorrow, political cartoonist Dan Perkins was a Zephyr employee making zines in Iowa City
This Modern World, the long-running, award-winning satirical comic that Dan Perkins publishes under the pen name Tom Tomorrow, came to life in Iowa City during the mid-’80s. Perkins first began sketching the strip while working at a downtown copy shop, though his passion for cartooning developed much earlier when his parents first moved to Iowa […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Review: A cozy costume party inside a fever dream, Dada Prom brought surreal fun and funds to Public Space One
On a cold, snowy Saturday night in Iowa City, around 150 costumed art-lovers gathered at the historic Close House mansion for Public Space One’s Dada Prom. Despite the total snow accumulation topping off at around five inches, PS1 announced that the fourth annual fundraiser was the “most successful Dada Prom by far.” Dada Prom also […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Coe College awarded $1.3 million grant to lead physics research collab with UI, Caltech, CERN and others
Coe College will lead universities in Iowa and across the U.S. in research of “high-level physics” with the aid of a seven-figure federal grant. The Cedar Rapids university announced Thursday in a news release that it received a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics to lead collaborative […]
Posted inStatewide
Historians, unions and legislators fight against the clock to save the Centennial Building and its archive
The sign on the door of the State Historical Society of Iowa’s Centennial Building, where the society’s Iowa City research facility has been located since 1956, let visitors on Wednesday know there were only a few days left to access its remarkable archival collections or even the building itself. The Centennial Building has been open […]
Posted inBook Reviews
Book Review: ‘More Hell: Stories, Tilled and Driftless’ by Adam Al-Sirgany
The book oozes with palpable Midwest dread, as I like to call it, with nods to Iowa City and the Quad Cities tossed in. It also helped me reflect on my own Midwestern background.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
‘You’re My Waterloo’: How a very 1982 tourism song became a Cedar Valley sensation
In 1982, the inaugural My Waterloo Days Festival was held as a celebration of the beginning of the summer. Replete with a parade, laser light shows and hot air balloons, it was a special event seeking to foster community bonding amid economic strife. John Deere was seeing mass layoffs, the Rath Packing Company was on […]
Posted inLetters
Letter to the editor: Downtown Iowa City’s 500-foot rule for bars matters
By Karen Kubby, Iowa City Fifteen years ago, there were public health initiatives that launched the current era of downtown Iowa City. Downtown had an overabundance of bars. Our city had a reputation of being built around a culture of alcohol. Iowa City was rated as one of the top party schools. The University of […]
Posted inEastern Iowa
Worth a Rewatch: ‘The Idiot’ (1951) is a Kurosawa deep-cut from a Dostoevsky superfan — and an idiotic film studio
Akira Kurosawa seems keenly aware of the improbability of translating literature into film, especially in the case of Dostoevsky, who Kurosawa calls more psychological than visual. But Kurosawa wanted to make The Idiot.
Posted inEastern Iowa Arts & Entertainment
The Black Rose will continue as an online bookstore after closing its West Branch location
The Black Rose, the West Branch bookstore and cocktail lounge that opened earlier this year, has closed its brick-and-mortar location, owner Ashley Kofoed announced on Sunday on social media. “This isn’t a goodbye,” she said. “It’s a page turn.” Even without the Main Street store, “the story continues online, where so many of you have […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Iowa City’s favorite bell disappeared after an incident involving a ‘madman,’ a mob and the Mormon Trail. Now, 177 years later, it’s back.
After 177 years, 1,200 miles, $35,000 and a 70-page report by historians from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a 782-pound church bell was returned to its original home in Iowa City. On Oct. 5, Iowa City’s First Presbyterian Church held a dedication and blessing for what they now call their “Hummer Bell.” […]
