Uh…OK. 
To be fair, I once had pretty good beef stew for lunch in Scotland.
Is Pagliai’s Pizza still around? And has the tradition of students hitting the Danish Maid Bakery in the predawn hours survived?
Hmmmmmm. :
: Well, I do like to iron. But I’m already in MY dotage, darn it.
Stranger, I hear ya, on the cultural stuff. In the 1950’s, my English teacher wouldn’t allow me to do a book report on Silent Spring. It was considered subversive. The school library wouldn’t let me check out their copy of Brave New World when I was in high school.
The only thing that saved me from growing up even more provincial than I am was reading widely, from a quite decent selection of paperback books available in the drug store and at the tavern.
I don’t know if it’s gotten much better. The kids and adults that I interact with at the community college are really dumb about lots of stuff.
One of my friends from high school goes to Grinnell and she feels the same way you do. If only my mom hadn’t been so anti-Iowa , we might be classmates 
Just popping in to say an Iowa Dopefest would be great - and hey Death of Rats - an Iowan and a Discworld fan! At least I hope that’s what you user name means.
I’d also like to point out to the naysayers that right now, there are 18 Rockettes performing in downtown Des Moines! How much more proof of culture do you need?
20 miles to Ankeny for bagels fluiddruid? That would have to be Panera on Delaware. Used to be a good shop until Bob and George left to manage Starbucks.
I think all you need to do is clear off a big patch of farmland. The Dopefest will take care of itself but there is no way to know the exact timing. If you build it, Dopers will come.
I believe this predated the Panera. It was Bruegger’s. This was about 12 years ago, though.
[QUOTE=Mrs. Cake]
Just popping in to say an Iowa Dopefest would be great - and hey Death of Rats - an Iowan and a Discworld fan! At least I hope that’s what you user name means.
[QUOTE]
SQUEAK, Mrs. Cake!
To be fair, alot of these issues are more small-town living issues as opposed to Iowa living issues. These are indicative of rural life around the US and are not representative of living in Iowa specifically. I have seen the same issues and complaints in small town in most parts of the country
I live in Dubuque, but when I left for college in '99 I swore I wouldn’t be back. The meat packing plant had closed and the city was in a crazy recession and was really getting sad.
Luckily in the last 5 years there has been a renaissance here and I wouldn’t live anywhere else. There are really awesome locally owned restaurants. In the past week I had
[ul]
[li]a fantastic shrimp and pineapple curry from the pan-Asian restaurant/grocery owned by the little old couple who can barely speak English.[/li][li]a really awesome gyro (no lettuce) server by folks who know not to pronounce the “g”[/li][li]the best pollo y mole my BFF from the Hispanic part of Chicago has ever tasted.[/li][/ul]
And those are just the ethnic restaurants, there are plenty of cafes and “California cuisine” places with crazy drizzles and pan seared ahi tuna too.
We have arts festivals almost every weekend in the nice weather, community theater mixing with local collages for really interesting non-traditional theatre productions, fantastic parks and views of the Missisippi and surrounding bluffs, a Smithsonian-partnered museum of the river, and other super neat stuff. We’ve got an old movie theater re-opening as an art-house for people who don’t mind reading subtitles. The Hy-Vee grocery stores have really great food and nice “health market” sections with organic and other hippie foods. Crime is so low that every murder is a media frenzy and I almost never lock my car or worry about walking around at night. Our whole downtown and warehouse district is being fancied up with new street lamps and beautiful concrete (red and yellow contrasting, really pretty) and we have free wi-fi all over that area.
I know people have a really bad opinion of Iowa, but they’re mostly pulling that from the smaller towns and rural areas. Believe me, there is a world of difference between the rural areas and the larger cities, and between eastern and western Iowa. But all over the state, people tend to be better educated and friendlier than we are given credit for. I certainly hope people will not judge us unless the have seen what we have to offer. We will try not to judge you.
Except you dirty Wisconsin cheddar heads. Learn to drive!!!
I kid! I kid! Call off the badgers!!! Ouch!!!