Bowling alley

1. Bowlmor Lanes

2. Miller Time Bowl

3. Fargo Dance & Sports

3. Milan Lanes

Best bowling alley

Bowlmor Lanes

True story: During my first week of full-time Reader employment, our publisher - a truly radical guy - treated the staff to a late-afternoon get-together at Davenport's Bowlmor Lanes, voted the area's "best bowling alley." It was a great surprise and an even greater time, though you're probably already well aware of Bowlmor's charms, as the venue has been a Quad Cities institution now for nearly 70 years. "My grandfather built it in 1940," says owner Trent Lorfeld, who has worked in the family business since 1975. "You know, we just try to keep the place clean, and to keep it interesting for everyone." Mission more than accomplished. With brightly colored bowling murals above the 20 available lanes (brand-new lanes were installed last summer), and niceties such LCD screens, newly improved electronic scoring, and 10 big-screen TVs against the back wall for "media bowl" ("On Friday and Saturday nights, we'll play either sports or dance videos"), Bowlmor is a much-loved destination for all ages and talents - "families, neighborhood people, league bowlers, college kids ... everyone," says Lorfeld. (Bring your IDs, though, if you want to enjoy the warm, inviting lounge.) And whether you bowl your best in the morning, afternoon, night, or late night, Bowlmor's hours - opening at 9 a.m. most weekdays, and staying open until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday - make for ideal entertainment anytime, "especially in a down economy," says Lorfeld. "You can bring your family here and have fun and not spend a tremendous amount of money." Bowlmor Lanes is located at 2952 Brady Street, and more information is available by calling (563)324-3595.

- Mike Schulz

Each year, Sonoma State University's Project Censored produces a list of the most "important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the U.S. corporate media," according to its Web site (ProjectCensored.org).

Below is the list of the most-recent choices, with selected excerpts. The full summaries, including sources, are available at (ProjectCensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009).

When the River Cities' Reader profiled Figge Art Museum Executive Director Sean O'Harrow in March 2008, he was, by virtue of having just seven months on the job, mostly talk. There wasn't much of a track record to cite, but he spoke with passion about enhancing the Figge's educational and community missions.

Ten months later, O'Harrow seems poised to deliver on many of his promises.

For example, a March exhibit of Michaelangelo sculptures will be the first time those have been seen outside of Florence, Italy, O'Harrow said.

More importantly, those Michaelangelo sculptures - newly cast in bronze from the fragile originals, which were scanned with a laser - can be touched, and O'Harrow is working to bring in sight-impaired people to feel them.

"Art museums normally ignore these communities," O'Harrow said in an interview Monday. "My view is: Bring everyone in sometime, somehow, for some reason. ...

"I'm really keen to have people experience things in different ways," he added. "No one living has ever been able to touch a Michaelangelo work."

The announcement on Friday that the Figge would be housing most of the University of Iowa Museum of Art collection (nearly all of which is being stored in Chicago following the summer flood in Iowa City) was further confirmation that O'Harrow is serious about education.

Now that the Davenport City Council has approved a March 3 referendum on the Davenport Promise proposal, one can be certain that the coalition that has been built over the past year-plus is being mobilized to demonstrate broad community support.

It will not be technically affiliated with any major community player, but it will include a lot of familiar names and faces behind the scenes. It will undoubtedly feature "real," everyday citizens, so voters won't feel like they're getting bullied by the heavy hitters. And the campaign will basically argue that there's no sensible reason to vote against the Promise, that there's no way the program could fail, and that the risk of voting the proposal down is too great.

That style of PR push was the successful approach of backers of River Renaissance in 2001. And the work in 2007 and 2008 of a Promise exploratory committee and a Promise task force has looked less like objective analysis than propaganda.

But don't mistake the marketing for unanimity.