Whatever your outdoor wants and needs, our area's many parks and recreation facilities can provide. The following is your guide to more than 120 great places to get some much-needed and much-deserved outdoor time in the Quad Cities, with the locations delineated by city and mentions of specific amenities included.
This feature collects articles published online by Quad Cities-area media outlets and by CapitolFax.com and the state-politics sections of the Des Moines Register and the State Journal-Register.
Ryan Lounsbury, Marketing Director for the Rhythm City Casino Resort in Davenport, discusses the venue's operations during this period of social distancing. We spoke on Thursday, July 2.
Terry Tilka, owner of the Rock Island Brewing Company (RIBCO) and 2nd Ave Dance Club in Rock Island, discusses the venues' operations during this period of social distancing. We spoke on Thursday, July 2.
Tyson Danner, Executive Director of the River Music Experience (RME) in Davenport, discusses the live-music and music-education venue's operations during this period of social distancing. We spoke on Thursday, July 2.
Months after the nation's economy crashed and millions were (and continue to be) put out of work, a large group of Illinois House Democrats is still quite upset at the way Governor JB Pritzker's administration is handling unemployment insurance-claims.
But the Pritzker administration is refusing to bend on their most important demands, saying the governor will not move selected constituents to the “front of the line” ahead of others, which created a backlash within his own party.
Illinois Rising Action, a dark-money super PAC, is running a TV ad against Governor JB Pritzker. The group is reportedly putting $1 million behind the spot on both cable and broadcast over two weeks.
As Illinois slowly begins the reopening process, some state legislators have decided to start hosting in-person fundraisers.
It turns out that Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer who was filmed killing George Floyd last week, has had 17 different complaints of serious misconduct during his career. That puts him among the 10-percent-worst offenders in the Minneapolis police department.
The complaints vary from being named in a brutality lawsuit, to using demeaning, unprofessional language in public, to aiming his weapon at children. But Chauvin never got into any serious trouble.
Sure, governors have statutory authority to declare emergencies and bypass the people's so-called representatives, but not on the say-so of foreign technocrats. Ask yourself how much will you comply with future emergency orders when your governor cites the World Health Organization again as its primary source for temporarily suspending your rights they swore an oath to protect?
Described by the Los Angeles Times as “an ingenious twist on an old-school ghost story” and, according to the British Theatre Guide, boasting “plenty of moments that are funny, frightening, or exciting,” playwright Jeffrey Hatcher's take on Henry James' classic chiller The Turn of the Screw enjoys a four-performance run at Moline's Black Box Theatre July 16 through 19 – the Quad Cities' first stage production since theatres nationwide closed in mid-March.
A longstanding, beloved Quad Cities entertainment troupe will soon be delivering distinctly 2020 performances, with the striptease artists and comedians of Bottoms Up Quad City Burlesque, on June 19 and 20, hosting live-streaming presentations of their two latest productions.
Dan Danielowski, executive director of the Timber Lake Playhouse in Mt. Carroll, discusses the theatre's operations during this period of social distancing. We spoke on Wednesday, May 20.
Brett Hitchcock, director of audience development at the Circa ’21 Dinner Playhouse in Rock Island, discusses the venue's operations during this period of social distancing. We spoke on Thursday, May 7.
Daniel DP Sheridan, Artistic Director and Performing Arts Supervisor for Davenport Junior Theatre (DJT), discusses the organization's operations during this period of social distancing. We spoke on Tuesday, April 14.
dead lizard grin (a.k.a. Terry Skaggs) follows up on his excellent April release Notes from a Temporary World with a new full-length titled We Are Shadows Dispersing Upon the Warm Spring Air. While the composer/synthesist/producer tries out a palette of tones here that remain in line with his typically zoned out and transportive drone/ambient excursions, this album finds him shifting his practice toward the twin poles of absolute formless drift and more animated, even beat-driven composition.
The very act of paring down your favorite albums will always have value. There’s something warm and cozy about imagining those albums existing as discrete milestones in music history, having reached so many ears in their compact form, entertaining outside of the framework of infinite availability and almost too-comfortable omni-selection that streaming has produced. With that in mind, here are my picks.
Robert Earl Davis Jr., better known to the world as DJ Screw, passed away nearly 20 years ago in the year 2000, but his legacy and the diaspora of his musical trademarks remain as strong as ever.
A new collection of music titled DAY DAY from Iowa City's electronic artist and composer Kent Williams, a.k.a. Chaircrusher, hit Bandcamp sometime in the recent past. Though the album has a release date of October 2020 listed, it’s available in full to stream and purchase now – perhaps a sign that Williams is, in fact, living in the future.
Braxton’s work long ago shattered the divide between the gritty, atonal language of improvised free jazz performance and the typically cloistered world of academic classical and minimalist composition, and he continues to expand in unexpected directions with new works that emerge to this day.
As we continue to wait for large, semi-large, and even intimate public-entertainment venues to safely open again, here are a few more home-viewing favorites from my nostalgia cabinet: five – well, make that six – excellent works from 1979 to 1992 all focused on the business of show, with different titles for different nostalgic moods.
The Reader's Mike Schulz returns to Living Local on OurQuadCiti
As a record of filmed theatre – especially considering Lin-Manuel Miranda's achievement is probably the greatest musical-theatre offering of the last 20 years – this Hamilton might have exactly zero peers.
Now playing at area drive-ins.
Interactive exhibits don't get any more interactive than Remote Control, the new, community-created exhibition at Davenport's Figge Art Museum. On display from July 10 through August 30, this response-driven collection is part game, part art showcase, and all celebration of our local collective imagination – the rare exhibit that literally doesn't exist without the participation of its viewers.
Appearing in a virtual July 16 Curator Talk hosted by Davenport's Figge Art Museum, Dr. Jennifer Jankauskas, Curator of Art at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, discusses works in the venue's current exhibition About Face: Contemporary Ceramic Sculpture – a celebration of the beauty of hand-crafted objects on view through August 30.
Gorgeous new works by an Iowa-based artist will soon fill the Beréskin Gallery & Art Academy, with the Bettendorf venue showcasing colorful, evocative paintings by Susan Reinier in the exhibition Shiny Objects, on display from June 27 through July 30, and with the artist herself in attendance at the exhibit's opening reception on July 3.
People gather in celebration with friends and strangers alike on the streets of downtown Davenport while rainbow banners wave behind them. Taken during the 2019 Pridefest, these images by photojournalist Andy Abeyta document one of the many events planned by Quad Cities Unity Pride during its annual QC Unity Pride Week, and can currently be viewed online in the Figge Art Museum's virtual exhibition QC Pride Photographs by Andy Abeyta, on display through August 2.
From June 26 through August 14, two gifted photographers from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, will enjoy one shared venue in Rock Island, Illinois, when the Quad City Arts Center gallery hosts a pair of new fascinating new exhibitions: David Van Allen's Assembled Portraits, and Ron Meyer's Jazz Noir: Images from the Iowa City Jazz Festival.
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