Posted July 03, 2024in Food Dude
A few years back, I was taking a food writers tour of Kansas City with a score of writers, most of them from Texas. My Dallas friends ran into restaurant buddies from home who were in town for a Rangers-Royals series. The Texas friends were raving about “the best steakhouse
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Posted July 03, 2024in Des Moines Forgotten
The Midwest is one the best places to be to celebrate the Fourth of July. No matter what faith you follow or orientation you swing, you can usually come together for our country’s Independence Day. As a kid in the 1990s, I remember my dad picking me up from my
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Posted July 03, 2024in Joe's Neighborhood
I sat in the back of Macbride Hall for a reason. I wanted to be invisible. I wanted to slink in early unseen and slink out in the crowd unnoticed. As a result, even the last row of this large auditorium was too close to the stage for me. So,
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Posted July 03, 2024in Center Stage
July brings a variety of stage enticements, from opera to plays to musicals. Free your inner cultural adventurer and explore these immersive performance worlds. Wiz One of the most beloved stories to hit the stage is L. Frank Baum’s adaptation of his initial Oz book, “The Wonderful Wizard of
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Posted July 03, 2024in Lunch With...
Angela Harrington is a developer, hotelier and civic promoter of the I-80 corridor from Des Moines to Iowa City. We asked her to lunch and met at Panka Peruvian Restaurant, a marvelous, minority- and female-owned café on Ingersoll. Mariella Maya’s restaurant upgraded recently after she closed her rotisserie chicken shop
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Posted July 03, 2024in Collections & Hobbies
Those who consider themselves gym rats might want to rethink that self-imposed title. Bodybuilding is not for the faint of heart. The time and dedication to strict diets and workout schedules have broken many wills, but not Kali Spaulding’s. “I’ve had friends that competed for a while, and I said
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Posted July 03, 2024in Your Neighbors
According to the Iowa Department for the Blind, about 54,000 Iowans have experienced visual impairment. One organization, Iowa Reading Radio Information Services (IRIS), aims to aid those with the disability through, of course, reading. With braille being a difficult skill to learn, and books, newspapers and magazines not being printed
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Posted July 03, 2024in Belly Up To...
When approaching 30hop at The District at Prairie Trail in Ankeny, the colorful outdoor patio resembles a large downtown metro area. Maybe because, on the second story of the building, is a New York Life sign. Turning the corner, yet another patio provides both sun and shade options. Inside, the
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A casual ballhawk
We live in a cozy brick ranch on the west side of Des Moines that was built in 1954, the same year I was put together. From the street, you’d never suspect it’s big enough to include a ballroom. But it does. Some might call it a mancave, but I
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