Rocks glasses, tumblers, coffee mugs and notebooks. Lots of notebooks. It’s a common scene at one of Iowa City’s open mic nights, where aspiring comedians try out new material. As a comedy lover and Iowa City resident I am happy to take a few bombs alongside the new favorite jokes because I love that there […]
Yale Cohn
Art Show Photos: Jesse Albrecht, UXO (Unexploded Ordinance) Art Show, PS1 – 11/19
I presently catching up on my blogging — there are lots of shows from November that I hope to share with all of you in the next few days (if all goes as planned) so they’re likely to be brief and loaded with photos. Those of you who have read the December Issue of the […]
Little Village vs. NaNoWriMo: Day 1
View all NaNoWriMo entries “Did you see the moon tonight?” he said. “No,” I said, “why?” “It doesn’t even look real, it looks like a painting of the moon, like at an opera.” “Have you ever even been to an opera?” I asked him. “No,” he said, “why?” “Then how would you know what it […]
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.
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.
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 […]
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.”
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]

