Juxtaposing Iowa City

Note to readers: I performed this meandering monologue at the 4th  Annual Roast of Iowa City at the Trumpet Blossom Cafe on 10/13/13. The event was sponsored by the Little Village.

I love Iowa City for its many juxtapositions. Some cases in point:

·        We love putting retail spaces in every new building in the Central Business District, but we hate Coralville because of its crass commercialism.

·        We love our little libraries that are popping up everywhere, but wonder why we can’t return our books from the big library to them.

·        We love the well-educated people here. They make excellent wait staff, test scorers, and roast emcees.

·        We love being a progressive community, as long as that progress doesn’t include a 20 story building made by non-Union labor.

·        We like The River Crossing plan for South of Burlington St., but calling it the SoBur neighborhood would be too ironic.

·        We love our city leaders…until they make any decisions at all.

·        We love our school board; but we also love watching Phil Hemingway yell at them on cable.

·        We love our extensive trail system and walkable neighborhoods, but don’t have enough parking spaces downtown because everybody drives there or some restaurant turned them into an outdoor patio.

·        We love our Hawkeyes Football team, but will love them even more when they land a bowl game in December or January someplace warm.

·        We love the Sycamore Mall or, as it’s now called, the Jaycees’ Haunted House.

·        We love frozen yogurt in Iowa City. It is so competitive that Yotopia is petitioning the city so they can keep an urban cow on its premises.

·        We love City Park, although it rained so much this spring that Riverside Theater is renaming their festival “Shakespeare in the Pool,” just in case.

·        We love the Co-op, we especially like its new name Costco.

·        We love our college students, generally between the months of May and August and also when there isn’t an issue of concern to them on the ballot.

·        We love Public Access PATV; it breaks up the monotony of watching year old Friday Night concert’s on the City Channel.

·        We love shopping locally in Iowa City, especially at Costco.

·        We love our bars in Iowa City, as long as they are not attached to a holding cell in the Johnson County Jail.

·        We love recycling in Iowa City so much that Terry Dickens and Susan Mims are running for reelection.

·        And speaking of reusing, reducing, and recycling, we love Connie Champion who is stepping down after all these years. But the good news is she plans to campaign with her daughter Catherine ---I understand Catherine has chosen a Queen song for her campaign rallies with her Mom. You’d have thought it might be “We are the Champions,” but Catherine is going with “Tie Your Mother Down.”

·        We love the fact that Rockne Cole, Royce Ann Porter, and Kingsley Botchway are running for the City Council, they bring those kind of fresh perspectives and creative ideas that City Manager Tom Markus loves to ignore.

·        We love the idea of having free WIFI downtown, but fear this will lead to County Supervisors uploading naked “selfies” on Facebook in front of the Irving Weber statue.

·         We love bicycles in Iowa City. They make very attractive hood ornaments on the city and campus buses.

·        We love our famous writers. We even have permanent bronze plaques embedded in the sidewalks in their honor. We think of them as literary “tramp stamps.”

We love our friends from Little Village; it is one publication that brings us together in agreeing that the ad space sales team must be pretty good because what other reason could account for it still being published?