Cityview | Central Iowa's Independent Weekly

Year in rewind

A look at the people, places and events we covered in 2009

January
We opened 2009 with our wish list for the year, crossing our fingers that many of our requests would come true. Our requests covered a number of topics including politics, weather, athletics, bailouts, employment and nightlife. Looking back on the calendar year, many of our wishes were fulfilled, including President Barack Obama not avoiding criticism about ongoing political issues.

The second week of the New Year brought a preview of the uphill challenge many legislators would face during the 83rd General Assembly at the state capitol. One of the biggest issues in the state’s history was the legality of same-sex marriage. On April 3, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples were allowed to marry in Iowa. The decision made Iowa the third state, along with Massachusetts and Connecticut, to permit same-sex marriage. Gov. Chet Culver and legislators also had their hands full battling the state’s budget woes. Gov. Culver enacted a 1.5 percent across-the-board reduction on Jan. 1 to help balance Iowa’s $6.1 billion budget.

Reporter Matt Miller’s “We The People” column detailed many local businesses staying afloat after the Consumer Product Safety Commission gave approval to changes in new lead-testing rules. Thousands of clothing retailers and thrift stores nationwide, including Kidding Around, in West Des Moines, would have been forced to close their doors or to stop selling children’s clothing in light of the Act which went into affect Feb. 10...Read More>>

A Gross (but not Doug) item; Archie’s back; Bedell sails on
The cast of characters for this first item:

— Jill Shesol is a Drake graduate who worked on the John Edwards campaign in Iowa in 2008 while she was still a student. In class, once, she observed that “It’s interesting working on the Edwards campaign and seeing what does or does not receive media coverage. It almost seems sometimes as if Hillary Clinton gets media for sneezing, or laughing, whereas John Edwards can release a major policy and receive nothing.” She now works for the Democratic National Committee in Washington, but she clearly remembers you need to do more than sneeze or laugh to get media attention.

— Jennifer O’Malley Dillon is a political operative who took a couple of tours through Iowa — working here for Edwards in the 2004 and 2008 campaigns and, after he lost, for Barack Obama. After the election, she ended up in the very powerful job of executive director of the Democratic National Committee...Read More>>

Wanted: place to stay after Des Moines show

Lest you think that PJ Bond is a flirt or a thief should he ask if he could crash at your place after his show on Jan. 5 at the Vaudeville Mews, guess again and keep reading.

The 28-year-old, itinerant, Americana artist is more than half way through his “Year of A Thousand Roommates” journey, which he launched April 15. That’s when he moved everything he owned into a friend’s basement in Montclair, N.J., and hit the road with his guitar, a list of friends and boxes of his new album, “You Didn’t Know I Was Alphabetical.” For the New Jersey native who cut his musical teeth on the road, traveling in overcrowded vans with indie-rock bands Outsmarting Simon, Marigold, Communipaw and The Color Fred and performing in dive bars, art spaces, coffeehouses and sweaty basements, his decision to live without a permanent home as a solo artist for a year was a bold, but necessary decision...Read More>>

Restaurant of the year — Alba

Occupying the north edge of East Village, Alba swaggers with edgy style. The venue is an architectural treasure, a Deco era Ford dealership dashingly redesigned by cutting edge architect Greg Wattier with orangewood tables, fishbowl windows, antique door ceiling tiles, curved walls, a door-less “private” room and oversized Tiki lounge of a bar. The latter’s faux lava walls focus on the best table in town — a six seat semicircular bar that bellys up to an immaculate open kitchen. This year, owner-chef Jason Simon recruited top new talent, including Scott Stroud, who had been a head chef at Dos Rios, and Greg Moore, who used to manage the bar at Centro. No place has better overall service.

Simon and three other chefs serve more than 100 seats efficiently with a sensible menu of barely 20 items, stylishly tweaked several times a year. On the raw level, last spring’s tartare hamachi duo, with paprika aioli, mango paste, micro greens and blood orange segments, was replaced in summer with a Kobe beef carpaccio, rolled and served gorgeously with a five pepper sauce, scallions and bulls blood beet sprouts. This month, that became a carpaccio of bay scallops with lemon and fresh mint. ...Read More>>”