We only heard one side of the Dentist’s conversation but it was enough to discern where he and Rosso had planned to meet: some café on the pedestrian mall just adjacent to the same playground where Rosso and I had had our discussion just prior. Either he wanted a public space to avoid any drama […]
Public Space One
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Iowa City Weekender: November 18-21
Bundle up and get to these events. You can shake your groove thing, laugh, hear beautiful songs, see amazing things, or remember how hard it was to be 10. All of these are better ideas that sitting in your house this weekend.
Posted inCommunity/News
Paint the Town
You may have noticed a small open space the size of a downtown building at the north end of the Pedestrian Mall in downtown Iowa City. People flow through this space day and night but few know that it is a city park. It’s called Black Hawk Mini Park and this is its story. After […]
Posted inArts & Entertainment
On the Beat: Rock
The organization Rock the Vote was founded back in 1992 with the goal of mobilizing young people to exercise their elective franchise, with a PSA campaign involving musicians like Madonna and Michael Stipe telling young folks to get out there. Some 18 years later, the very phrase “rock the vote” has implications for Iowa City’s music-going public, especially younger people, as the City Council’s current War on Alcohol has left music venues feeling like collateral damage.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Iowa City Weekender: October 7-10
It’s a beautiful world in Iowa City. Especially when we’re all doing our part to 1) Save the environment, and 2) Keep the art alive by going out to look at it, buy it, enjoy it and dance to it. Fortunately there are plenty of opportunities to do all of that this weekend. Here’s a checklist to help you make sure you have your fair share of the fun!
Posted inCommunity/News
Riverfront Rising
It’s already getting dark on Sunday when you hop off the train, just back from a weekend in Chicago. As the sun sets over the river, you take a stroll through the riverfront prairie before hitting up a few concerts: maybe a traveling symphony, followed by an electric mass of sound at the underground White Lightning Wherehouse. Ears still ringing, you wander back to your yuppie high-rise, grabbing a late night gyro on the ground floor before heading up to your condo in the solar powered elevator.
This could be a typical night in Iowa City’s “Riverfront Crossings” neighborhood, an 8-by-12 block area south of Burlington, east of the river and west of Gilbert Street.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
On the Beat: October’s bag of tricks
Best known for Halloween, its costume-and-trickery grand finale, October leaves almost everything to the imagination. The theme of surprise and disguise has also been a trend this year in local music promotion. With the rapidly changing venue scene, including new owners/bookers/venues, a bunch of shows popped up that had people saying, “Really? That show is happening there?.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
It’s About the Process
Perhaps more than any other arts festival, WiP is a thoroughly community affair. Along with being open to submissions from all of the artists in the city and taking place in community spaces such as Public Space ONE and the Iowa City Senior Center, WiP emphasizes audience participation by being, itself, a workshop.
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Review: Hubcap Holmes: Just for Funstuff
This is a free CD I picked up at a Public Space One show. Hubcap Holmes is a solo project of Kurt Austin, one of the loose cohort of early-20s musicians currently making noise in Iowa City. The live performance (with Matt Fenner on bass) showed that Hubcap Holmes has a good grasp of pop songwriting; his songs had sing-along melodies, simple without being too simple.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Iowa City Weekender: September 9-12
Hookahs n Funk | Goodbye, Casiotone | Hood Internet | Football Football Football | Literature | Jazz | Park Life | All the weekend you can handle
Posted inCommunity/News
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.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Gimme a (Line) Break
In a town like Iowa City, there’s no shortage of writers. It seems like everywhere you go–the Java House, The Times Club at Prairie Lights, the Burlington street Kum-and-Go at midnight on a Tuesday–you run into someone who either writes, wants to write, or (possibly) is holding a Pulitzer prize.
