[HN Gopher] "Poetry City": Iowa City, Iowa
___________________________________________________________________
"Poetry City": Iowa City, Iowa
Author : samclemens
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-04-25 06:05 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.publicbooks.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.publicbooks.org)
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I lived in Iowa City for several years while my kids were young.
| It is an amazing city. Everyone is lovely, the restaurants are
| great, home of an active local grocer, tons of activities by the
| university, great schools, low CoL, completely walkable, and
| nothing was ever more than 5 minutes away (yes, when we moved, I
| had to reorient myself on what "far away" was). I think my kids
| were lucky to grow up there!
| yesfitz wrote:
| Everyone should live in Iowa City at least once in their lives.
|
| I love downtown Iowa City. Absolutely adore it. I've spent a lot
| of time trying to convince family, friends, and anyone who will
| listen to move here.
|
| It's everything people say: active, friendly, community-oriented,
| walkable, safe, smart, rebellious, affordable.
|
| I only recognize 2 claims against it:
|
| 1. It gets cold in Winter. But you learn to live with it. The
| whole city's living with it too.
|
| 2. Natural beauty is harder to see. There are no mountains or
| beaches. 99% of Iowa's land is unnatural[1]. But it sure does
| make you appreciate the smaller-scale natural beauty that is
| available every day, and especially the grandeur of the
| traditionally beautiful areas of the country.
|
| 1:https://www.iaenvironment.org/blog/iowa-environmental-voice/...
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm in Des Moines and have always kept a wide berth from Iowa
| City because I have always had it strongly associated with the
| "binge-drinking-and-college-football are my entire personality"
| crowd; I'm happy to hear there is another side of it and I'd be
| interested to check it out. Any recommendations for a chill day
| trip? Favorite cafes or museums or similar?
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| It's funny because Iowa City has almost the exact opposite
| reputation among all professional American poets
| yesfitz wrote:
| Absolutely! There's no shortage of drinking and football, we
| are still a college town, but Summer's right around the
| corner and while the students are (mostly) away, the townies
| come out to play.
|
| The Iowa City Arts Festival or Jazzfest would be great times
| to visit.
|
| I'd recommend stopping by Kindred for coffee, and Prairie
| Lights for the books and ambience. Museum-wise, the Museum of
| Natural History, the Old Capitol Museum, and the Stanley
| Museum of Art are all worth your time and free to the public.
|
| Dinner is hard to go wrong, but Trumpet Blossom Cafe is very
| popular, and Vue is on the 12th story of a hotel has great
| views of the airport and city, and outdoor seating. I'd also
| recommend checking out the Iowa City Public Library and the
| rest of the Pedestrian Mall, and maybe catch a movie at
| FilmScene in the Chauncey on the next visit.
|
| World of Bikes rents bikes for the day, and the river trail
| is a pleasant ride between City Park (where you may catch
| Shakespeare in The Park in the Summer) and Big Grove Brewery,
| and extends down to Terry Trueblood Recreation Area in the
| South.
|
| I think the biggest thing that's hard to communicate with a
| day/weekend trip is how incredibly lovely living here is
| every day. The hardest part is choosing between all of the
| activities available.
| throwaway653880 wrote:
| We don't have a lot in terms of museums, but the Stanley Art
| museum is really nice and it's completely free:
|
| - https://stanleymuseum.uiowa.edu/
|
| PSOne is smaller but they have a couple of galleries and also
| have live music sometimes:
|
| - https://www.publicspaceone.com/
|
| We have FilmScene where you can see some Hollywood movies but
| also rarer and more artsy stuff: - https://icfilmscene.org/
|
| As far as cafes:
|
| - Press Coffee
|
| - Kindred Coffee
|
| - DayDrink
|
| The main reason I've lived here as long as I did is because
| of the live music, so if you're into that there are lots of
| great venues (also check out the Mission Creek festival next
| year):
|
| - The Englert
|
| - The James
|
| - Trumpet Blossom
|
| - Gabe's
|
| - Hancher
|
| I get annoyed by the same crowd you're talking about, but if
| you come during the summer most of those people are gone and
| it's the cool people that are left.
|
| I actually don't get to Des Moines very often but have been
| meaning to, but what kinds of things would you recommend for
| Des Moines? I've heard the Des Moines Art Center is really
| good and have been meaning to go.
| teachrdan wrote:
| > Everyone should live in Iowa City at least once in their
| lives.
|
| This is trivially disprovable.
|
| The world has a population of ~8,000,000,000 people. Assuming
| an average life expectancy of 65 years, if everyone lived in
| Iowa City (pop. 74,828 [0]) for just one day, its population
| would _increase by 337,197_ , effectively quintupling its
| population.
|
| It would diminish the city's walkability due to 6,743.9 buses
| [1] going into the city every day, or almost 4.68 every minute.
| And because visitors would be around 4x more people from
| outside Iowa City than from Iowa City itself, the average
| friendliness, safeness, intelligence and rebelliousness of its
| residents would all revert toward the global mean. And I'll
| leave it as an exercise for the reader to extrapolate what
| would happen to Iowa City's affordability when it has to
| support all these additional people.
|
| 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iowa_City,_Iowa
|
| 1. https://nationsbus.com/motor-coaches-for-sale/dimensions-
| and...
| miltonlost wrote:
| ... did you just take a very common expression in an overly
| literal way?
|
| You also confused "should" with "could".
| yesfitz wrote:
| What a fun exercise in obtuseness!
|
| I'll stand by my statement though and challenge the entire
| population of Earth to live in Iowa City at least once.
|
| The ball's in their court now. Imagine my crushing
| disappointment when only a few million rise to the challenge.
| breaker-kind wrote:
| oh no! growth!
| BSOhealth wrote:
| but FAC at SpoCo would be AWESOME with 500k people. Like how
| do you even make that many Jello shots?
| iAMkenough wrote:
| Unless Iowa City can become self-sufficient and stop relying on
| State and Federal dollars, I believe we're watching the
| beginning of the end.
|
| The U.S. Department of State notified the University of Iowa
| International Writing Program on Feb. 26 that its grants
| through the department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural
| Affairs were being terminated, stating that the awards "no
| longer effectuate agency priorities," nor align "with agency
| priorities and national interest."
|
| Iowa City's property tax growth has also been capped by the
| State Legislature, at a rate that won't keep up with inflation.
| yesfitz wrote:
| You've identified some real headwinds that the community is
| facing, but I think the gubernatorial and mid-term
| legislative elections will shed more light on the future.
|
| Maybe research and cultural hubs like Iowa City will just
| need to weather the storm until 2028 or maybe they start
| making longer term plans for austerity.
|
| The general vibe around town has been an even greater focus
| on building local community regardless.
| cybadger wrote:
| I will add a third claim against it: all that black and gold.
| As an Iowa State grad, there's a certain arrogance that the
| University of Iowa undergrads give off (grad students and
| faculty seem to be fine). [For those not from 'round here, U of
| Iowa and Iowa State are the two largest universities in the
| state. There's a healthy--and occasionally unhealthy--rivalry.]
|
| That said, I do actually really like the town itself. Like you
| said, active, friendly, with a real vibrancy to it. I don't get
| there often (strange, since Cedar Rapids is not that far away),
| but enjoy it when I'm there.
| billjive wrote:
| I'm from Iowa City! It's awesome to see this pop up on HN. IC has
| a number of great older bars like this. Sadly my favorite (The
| Sanctuary) closed recently and may be lost forever.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I was from that area as a kid, West Liberty. Been awhile since
| I've been back up there.
| cartothemax wrote:
| Iowa City natives raise up! There has got to be less then a
| dozen of us (on Hacker News)!
| billjive wrote:
| Any City High grads here? The School That Leads... :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| As it happens, I'm looking at a travel guide to include Iowa
| City. I had the "Hamburg Inn No. 2" as a food-stop and
| "Devonian Fossil Gorge" as a tourist-stop.
|
| Am I missing something? (I'll probably head out there for
| research in May, ha ha.)
| 100k wrote:
| If song lyrics count, Eleni Mandell's "Iowa City" is the poem
| that will always stick in my mind about that town.
| Girls, the boys don't cheat in Iowa City Iowa City nothing
| to do Now they're crisp and they're clean Iowa City
| Iowa Iowa Skies are blue Not so, Chicago
| Never, New York When you're off and you're looking for
| something What will you do? Where will you go?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_mpBLD6_V0
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| And I think of "Iowa City Adieu" by Autumn Defense:
| https://youtu.be/8r55RdA8BZE
| Boogie_Man wrote:
| Nearby Amana Iowa hosts a yearly Bratwurst festival at which you
| can learn about the history of an attempt at a utopian society
| and watch dachshunds race while very very drunk
| quuxly wrote:
| Why do they get the dachshunds drunk??
| BSOhealth wrote:
| Iowa City has great aspects. New Pioneer Co-Op: having spent more
| life afterwards in Boulder, CO, I can safely say IC still holds
| the prize for ideal progressive food grocery option in the US
| (admittedly I haven't been to Portland, and imagine they might
| compete). Prairie Lights is cool and all but I'd rather be at The
| Strand. Or Goblin Market or Samdmeyer's in Chicago. Or Old Town
| in Stockholm.
|
| Iowa City starts feeling small VERY quickly. The winters are
| cold. There are no amazing natural areas for activity. Downtown
| is getting more sterile every year (circa 20 years ago).
|
| University of Iowa is a great example of a University scene, but
| if you are not a student or professor, you'll quickly bump up
| against the guardrails of small town US economics.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-04-25 23:01 UTC)