Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The words do not have to be perfect.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

In my day, never was longer.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Optimism opens the door to great things.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The willow is too close to the house.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

This blog will pay for itself.

Not all heroes wear capes.

He really is that stupid.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Meetups and social events / Meet-Up Notice – (Eastern / Northeastern) Iowa, This Saturday

Meet-Up Notice – (Eastern / Northeastern) Iowa, This Saturday

by | 41 Comments

This post is in: ,

Front-paging comments from Stinger on Tuesday and DAW/Iowa Old Lady this morning:

NE Iowa BJ meetup at noon on Saturday at the Cherry Creek Grill in Waterloo. Stinger and I will be there with green balloons.

Friends, significant others & lurkers welcome, as at all Balloon Juice events. Y’all have fun!

Reader Interactions

41Comments

  5. 5.

    FlyingToaster

    @Baud: You bastard! Do you know what it takes for the teenagers who belong to that farm to stand the cows back up?

    True story: I lockered next to one of the [redacted] kids in junior high, and a different [redacted] in high school. They had 9 kids, 1 year apart, and we drove past their farm en route to JHS, HS, and the local shopping mall. And drunken louts from our HS would go out and tip cows every fucking weekend, and their dad would wake a brace of them up to go stand the cows back up in the middle of the night.

  6. 6.

    bk

    From a Yelp review: “Some of the better menu choices went away (muscles)”. I can understand why they took it off the menu.

  18. 18.

    NotMax

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)

    So Iowa cuisine (outside of corn) requires beating your meat?

    ;)

    Only thing I remember about the local food from when I was there (Des Moines, sometime in the mid 1970s) is tagging along on late night runs to the convenience store to get what were called Wonder Dogs . Basically 4 foot long Slim Jims.

  20. 20.

    Mike J

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): The foods you grew up with always sound delicious and those from other parts of the country usually sound iffy, at least at first. My ancestors left Iowa (one got brought back after he died and is buried at the capitol (he donated the land)) and I never spent enough time there to learn to appreciate the cuisine.

  21. 21.

    Alain the site fixer

    @NotMax: I’ve had a few fantastic meals in Des Moines, one involving walleye and the other fresh elk. Wait, three meals. Had trout another time and all were exceptional.

  25. 25.

    efgoldman

    @MomSense:

    The food item that cracks me up is the corn dog.

    I ate a ton of hot dogs, especially when I was a bachelor. (don’t judge me!) Pigs in blankets were a regular, but I never had a corn dog, living on the East coast and all.

  29. 29.

    MomSense

    @efgoldman:

    I love hot dogs. Growing up we weren’t allowed to eat them so I too went through a wicked hot dog phase. I especially liked the steamed ones from a hot dog cart.

    No more for me though. ?

  30. 30.

    frosty fred

    @Origuy: I saw those on the menu in a little Illinois diner once, and had one just to see. It was . . . totally unmemorable, now I try to describe it.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):

    Told the anecdote before, but what the hey.

    Friend who I was visiting had an apartment in Des Moines which he shared with other college students, right across the street from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union’s building, All the empty beer and liquor containers they generated were saved up and found their way (in the dead of the night before pick-up day was scheduled) into the WCTU’s trash cans sitting at the curb.

  36. 36.

    efgoldman

    @MomSense:

    I too went through a wicked hot dog phase. I especially liked the steamed ones from a hot dog cart.

    Grilled or otherwise browned. No steamed or broiled.
    My mom used to buy NEPCO knockwurst (fat all beef hot dogs, kosher style but not actually kosher). She was an awful cook, HER mother was an awful cook. She boiled them; turned me off them forever. Apparently long since absorbed into the Pearl brand.

  37. 37.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @efgoldman:

    No steamed or broiled.

    Surely that’s a typo and you meant “boiled.” I broil my kosher Hebrew National dogs and they come out browned and great.

  40. 40.

    SectionH

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I hope you have a fun meet-up, even if it’s small.

    Because that can be really nice too. Mr S and I got into meet-ups (not the same words but same thing) 10 or 12 years ago via a very different blog, but the principle is the same. We had one meet up with just one “friend” – he was supposed to have backup, but the other guy never showed. We all had a good time anyway, enough that the next time we were passing through his town, he took us to a restaurant near his place (it was great, and has been a favorite of ours ever since).

    So yeah, a few BJers, should be great.

  41. 41.

    Miss Bianca

    @efgoldman: Even among those of us who grew up in the corn-fed Midwest, there are some (petite moi, par example) who have never ingested a corn dog.

    Honestly, I just can’t. Even looking at them grosses me out. And looking at Michele Bachmann eating one, well….that’s just cruel and unusual punishment.

Comments are closed.