Wednesday, June 13, 2007
The Drinking Life
Literary taste is a mercurial thing, but the Fox Head, the preferred tavern of Iowa MFAs going back many years, has weathered the caprice of faddish loyalties because it offers the dypsomaniac something no other bar in Iowa City can: a location on the same downtown block as Mercy Hospital. Nota bene: Writers drink a lot. When Dylan Thomas visited the workshop in the 1950s, he outdid himself, tumbling down three flights of stairs in a drunken swoon, according to legend. So what? you might be howling--Thomas did plenty of stuff like that. Bear in mind this is Iowa City. Five decades later you'd still be pressed to find a building higher than two stories.
In Praise of Folly
Each day I've been here, the city has seemed less anodyne, and more like a copying error. The civic high points of your favorite cosmopolis can be found, but they'll have a flaw that almost defeats their purpose. The summer outdoor movie festival is held on the narrowest strip of the river's east bank, minimizing the number of decent sightlines. A concert series takes place in the shadow of the city's highest parking garage. The water sculpture that anchors downtown's civic plaza comprises four water bands that emerge abruptly from the brown brick piazza with the same diameter, the same flow rate, and the same languid arc of your elementary school's drinking fountain. The common fault in all these examples is modesty. The city fathers in New York, when they err, err greatly. Likewise, Princeton's pastiche of architectural styles has created a herd of white elephants, but it's dynamic. The Regents of the University have adopted a strict policy of awarding each major architectural commission to a different, Iowa-based architect, resulting in a tumblework of unambitious brick-and-concrete buildings that manage the improbable feat of being simultaneously incoherent and repetitive. Only today, when I eyed a filthy wino staggering up Washington St., did I flash back gratefully to city life in Brooklyn. He swept past me and veered wildly toward a chatting pack of young parents and strollered children. I stopped and braced for the confrontation. "Don't stop in the middle of the street!" he remonstrated in a clear voice. How discouraging it was, to find that in Iowa City, even the delinquents are conscientious upholders of the civic order.
President Blues
To boost citizenship and literacy on campus, the student government allocated funds a few years back to offer students complimentary copies of any or all of the following newspapers: USA Today, the NY Times, WSJ, Chicago Tribune, Des Moines Register, Cedar Rapids Gazette, Iowa City Press-Citizen, et al. You need only swipe your valid Hawk-ID through one of the card-only vending machines located conveniently throughout campus, and draw as many periodicals as you'd like. I've drawn late the past two afternoons, and I've drawn from the top of the pile.
Like most campus newspapers, the Daily Iowan pre-recycles itself, accumulating unread in large piles at various drop spots. This, despite the fever of an ongoing search for U of I's next President, which has meant open forums with the four finalists all week, and banner treatment from the DI, the credulity and obeisance of whose reporting make the Daily Princetonian look like The Final Call. Yesterday's show pony was a slick provost from South Carolina with only six years of administrative experience, who seems to have annoyed the Regents with glib answers, sycophancy, and an unconvincing denial that he would use Iowa as a stepping-stone to an even more prestigious post. "Universities are crown jewels, candidate says," led the Daily Iowan, loyally. One of the remaining finalists is a VP at Rutgers, who, thanks more to New Jersey's glutted patronage system than its cost of living, would take a pay cut if he got the Iowa job. The other, more consequential Presidential race going on in Iowa is quiet here. By far, the largest poster-, flyer- and meet-up presence belongs to Ron Paul, proving once again that drunk college kids will only turn over in bed for the candidate wearing the mantle of the no-shot wacko who blows up his own campaign attempting to speak truth to power.
Like most campus newspapers, the Daily Iowan pre-recycles itself, accumulating unread in large piles at various drop spots. This, despite the fever of an ongoing search for U of I's next President, which has meant open forums with the four finalists all week, and banner treatment from the DI, the credulity and obeisance of whose reporting make the Daily Princetonian look like The Final Call. Yesterday's show pony was a slick provost from South Carolina with only six years of administrative experience, who seems to have annoyed the Regents with glib answers, sycophancy, and an unconvincing denial that he would use Iowa as a stepping-stone to an even more prestigious post. "Universities are crown jewels, candidate says," led the Daily Iowan, loyally. One of the remaining finalists is a VP at Rutgers, who, thanks more to New Jersey's glutted patronage system than its cost of living, would take a pay cut if he got the Iowa job. The other, more consequential Presidential race going on in Iowa is quiet here. By far, the largest poster-, flyer- and meet-up presence belongs to Ron Paul, proving once again that drunk college kids will only turn over in bed for the candidate wearing the mantle of the no-shot wacko who blows up his own campaign attempting to speak truth to power.
First Impressions of Iowa
The last seven years, whenever I have moved into a new apartment, it's been my trite custom to christen the new space by unpacking my gear to the strains of an increasingly fatigued LP of the London Philharmonic playing Dvorak's Symphony "From the New World." The appropriateness this time was more than thematic. Dvorak composed the symphony in New York City under contractual obligation, then fled the new world promptly and sought refuge in a Czech enclave in northern Iowa called Spillville. With a current population of 300 (sic), Spillville is smaller than Iowa City. But not much smaller.
My new housemate Monica, a neuroscience researcher at the University who will pay me to participate in her study if I can convince her I've taken ecstasy, welcomed me Sunday night with a dinner of barbequed chicken breast, asparagus tips and local mushrooms. Then she conducted me through a meticulous walking tour of downtown Iowa City, which took ten minutes. According to Monica, her fellow Cedar Rapids native Ashton Kutcher went unnoticed by the professional beauty scouts until relocating to Iowa City, where he was promptly spotted (hitting on a 40-year-old woman, one can only imagine) in a prepossessing local nightspot called The Airliner. The Airliner turns out to have been a pedigreed cafe during Iowa City's literary heyday some decades back, but it's kept step with the changing identity of the Iowa University student body by converting itself into a generic sports bar, with $3 pitchers of domestic swill whenever the Cubs are playing. (The same racial divide that fissures Chicago--the Southside Sox belong to minority fans, the northside Cubbies to the bourgie whites--exists here: Nobody roots for the White Sox.)
Because the university has thoroughly strangled off the town, the persecution complex borne by the rightfully insecure lifetime academics eschews town-gown resentment for a demonization known locally as "across the river." On the Iowa River's east bank lie the student union, the undergrad dorms, the bars, and the humanities departments. West of the river, the graduate and professional schools sprawl over large, unlovely tracts. They're joined there by all the athletics departments and facilities, which should come as no surprise. At the University of Iowa, the football program counts as a professional school.
My new housemate Monica, a neuroscience researcher at the University who will pay me to participate in her study if I can convince her I've taken ecstasy, welcomed me Sunday night with a dinner of barbequed chicken breast, asparagus tips and local mushrooms. Then she conducted me through a meticulous walking tour of downtown Iowa City, which took ten minutes. According to Monica, her fellow Cedar Rapids native Ashton Kutcher went unnoticed by the professional beauty scouts until relocating to Iowa City, where he was promptly spotted (hitting on a 40-year-old woman, one can only imagine) in a prepossessing local nightspot called The Airliner. The Airliner turns out to have been a pedigreed cafe during Iowa City's literary heyday some decades back, but it's kept step with the changing identity of the Iowa University student body by converting itself into a generic sports bar, with $3 pitchers of domestic swill whenever the Cubs are playing. (The same racial divide that fissures Chicago--the Southside Sox belong to minority fans, the northside Cubbies to the bourgie whites--exists here: Nobody roots for the White Sox.)
Because the university has thoroughly strangled off the town, the persecution complex borne by the rightfully insecure lifetime academics eschews town-gown resentment for a demonization known locally as "across the river." On the Iowa River's east bank lie the student union, the undergrad dorms, the bars, and the humanities departments. West of the river, the graduate and professional schools sprawl over large, unlovely tracts. They're joined there by all the athletics departments and facilities, which should come as no surprise. At the University of Iowa, the football program counts as a professional school.
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