Years ago, Cedar Rapids was a real deli town. You could pop out of work or school to grab a good sandwich at any number of locally owned shops peppered throughout the quadrants. But the city looks different after decades of restaurant closures — Cork ‘n Fork in 2014, Sub City and Emil’s Delicatessen in […]
Peak Iowa
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Peak Iowa: The Clown prince of heavy metal reigns on, 25 years after Slipknot’s Safari Club debut
Since the release of their eponymous debut studio album in 1999, and the even more hellacious follow-up Iowa in 2001, the music and masked musicians of metal band Slipknot have resonated with irrefutable musical defiance for millions of “maggots,” as their fans proudly call themselves, the world over. It all started in Des Moines, hometown […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Nesper Sign celebrates 100 years and a jillion jests
Long before the Iowa DOT began bombarding our senses with messaging tortured enough to ensure that drivers’ eyes stay on the road, travelers along I-380 had just one source of entertainment to liven up their route: the Nesper sign. Cedar Rapids mainstay Nesper Sign Advertising sits just past the Highway 30 interchange, offering northbound drivers […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Bumper Crops: Pinball bans and the Des Moines mafia
There was never an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting pinball, but that didn’t stop some major cities from banning the game from the 1930s through the mid-’70s. In fact, Oakland, California still had a ban on pinball machines as recently as 2014. I first learned about pinball’s checkered history after trying to cajole my mom […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Storm names coined in the state
It’s probably best not to dwell on what it says about life in Iowa that the names of two fearsome types of weather originated here. But in 1870, a northwest Iowa newspaper attached an already violence-laced word to the most violent sort of snowstorm, and 18 years later, a former UI professor borrowed the Spanish […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Inside Squirrel Cage Jail, Council Bluffs’ spinning panopticon of misery
A rotating steel drum of pie-shaped prison cells inside a cylindrical cage. On each of three floors, there’s only one way in, one way out. Is this a pitch for a Saw trap? Nah, this is the Squirrel Cage Jail in Council Bluffs. The Squirrel Cage Jail operated as the Pottawattamie County jail from 1885 […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Astride her hobby horse, a Dubuque teen wins a new national championship
For those who love the idea of sports played with an extraneous stick-like object between their legs but find Quidditch too ideologically freighted, hobby horsing is the new trend sweeping through a very specific subset of the nation. This year marked the inaugural U.S. Hobby Horse Championships in Almont, Michigan, where Dubuque teen Gwen Maiers […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: Behold the most mesmerizing, ‘violently Midwest’ vibes on TikTok
Who will you really miss if TikTok is banned? Not the Hawk Tuah girl, surely. Not watching oversized Stanley cups fill with colorful liquids. Certainly not the clipped content from Jubilee, Logan Paul and Andrew Tate. No, you’ll miss those moments of magic captured by everyday people: A Boston cop plunging down on a metal […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: History’s most prolific book bandit is an Ottumwa man. Librarians helped bring him down.
“Organized crime” usually refers to illegal activity as a collaborative enterprise, involving large networks of people and undertaken for profit or power. That’s too damned bad, really, because there is no better turn of phrase to lean on when discussing the wild work of the Guinness World Record holder for Most Prolific Book Thief: Ottumwa’s […]
Posted inCommunity/News
Peak Iowa: 175 years of Cedar Rapids history began with a log-cabin tavern run by an outlaw
Cedar Rapids celebrated its 175th birthday in 2024. Iowa had been a state for barely two years when the new city was incorporated on Jan. 15, 1849. Of course, people had been living in the area for thousands of years before that happened. Archeologists have found evidence of habitation dating back 9,500 years. At least […]
Posted inRecreation
‘Escarp’ to Brush Creek Canyon, a wild nature preserve in Fayette County
Brush Creek Canyon is one of 95 preserves that protect natural, geological, archeological or historical sites in Iowa. They are often minimally maintained, which only adds to their charm. A 217-acre preserve located in Fayette County, near the town of Arlington, Brush Creek Canyon State Preserve is announced by a modest sign on a telephone […]
Posted inCentral Iowa, Recreation
Descend into Yellow Banks Park, 576 acres of ancient history
Tucked along a panoramic stretch of the Des Moines River in southeast Polk County is a park that feels many miles away from the state’s largest metro area. Buffered from the usual traffic sounds by dense woods and isolated stretches of natural landscape, Yellow Banks Park exudes an almost zen-like allure, with 150-foot high yellow-colored […]
