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Posted inCommunity/News, UR Here

UR Here: Small Towns, Big Loss

by Thomas Dean

In my last column, I presented some statistics demonstrating that the majority of Iowans are “urban” by U.S. Census standards and have been since 1950. With fewer farmers, the raison d’être of most small communities in Iowa—servicing the region’s agricultural economy—has disappeared. If the economic foundation of a town disappears, what’s the big deal? Close […]

Posted inAlbum Reviews

Album Review: Petit Mal

by John Schlotfelt

Petit Mal Bless Your Little Heart Public Schools Records www.myspace.com/petitmal Petit Mal’s latest, Bless Your Little Heart, is a collection of 10 scrappy tunes following in the footsteps of fellow Iowa alt-rockers House of Large Sizes. The saccharine sweetness of the album’s title is almost nowhere to be found. If you want Care Bears and […]

Posted inArts & Entertainment

Break Out

by Mike Mendenhall

Chuy Renteria is a b-boy. Sporting a cherry track jacket trimmed in white, caramel hair slicked into a pony-tail, the 24-year-old stands alone in an empty pedestrian mall. At 8:30 p.m. on a football Friday, he begins to stretch, reaching for the brick pavement beneath his Nike sneakers. Charlie Bui arrives casually, boom-box and laptop […]

Posted inArts & Entertainment

On the Beat: Beyond Jazz Fest

by Craig Eley

Over the last few years, it seemed like the exponential spread of the summer mega-festival was never going to stop, as little Bonnaroos and Coachellas started showing up from Maine to Oregon and everywhere in-between, including our own state. Like anything, this trend has been slowed by the economic situation—the Langerado Music Festival in Florida […]

Posted inCommunity/News

Roosevelt Part 3: The Shuttering

by David Henderson

Despite months of public protest, the Iowa City School Board voted unanimously during their June 9 meeting to close Roosevelt Elementary and build a new school on the west edge of town. But many in the community never accepted the administration’s premise, much less conclusion, if that meant ignoring the “how” and “why” questions behind […]

Posted inCommunity/News

Closing Arguments

by David Henderson

Superintendent Lane Plugge’s office on Dubuque Street is in the three-story brick building that used to be Henry Sabin Elementary School. The elementary school closed in 1979. Now it’s the Iowa City Community School District’s administration building, and site of increasingly fractious school board meetings on the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. Plugge […]

Posted inArts & Entertainment, Prairie Pop

Prairie Pop: Pop Summit

by Kembrew McLeod

Springtime is here, and I’m ready to rock: in this case, at the Experience Music Project’s Pop Conference, held last month in Seattle. It’s one of my favorite places to be, for a variety of reasons. The event attracts a diverse mix of music-obsessed scholars, journalists, critics, musicians, and other misfits—a strange brew that injects […]

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