View From a Hotel Window, 4/18/18: Iowa City
Posted on April 18, 2018 Posted by John Scalzi 15 Comments
My hotel room is overlooking a lovely patio area, which unfortunately is not in use because it is currently 34 degrees outside (although the weather app assures me it feel like 26 degrees). April, I gotta say, you’re kind of sucking right about now. But my room is nice and warm, at least.
Tonight: I am at Prairie Lights! Which is a lovely place to have a book event, I have to say. Everything starts at 7. Please come. Please bring along all your friends and relations as well. We can keep warm together.
(Hmmmm, that sounded bad. Forget I said that. But still please come, and bring everyone.)
Tomorrow: I am going to be in the Twin Cities at the Barnes & Noble in Har Mar! I do not know what “Har Mar” means. Is it a hipster shortened version of something else? Someone will have to let me know. Nevertheless, there I will be, and at 7pm! Once again, please come and please bring along every single person you’ve ever met in your life. It will be fun, I promise.
Let me google that for you. From Wikipedia:
Deriving its name from its owners – Harold J. Slawik and his wife Marie – Har Mar is a combination of the two names.
Wait??? The Har Mar Mall STILL exists??? It was fully in the throes of Dying Mall Syndrome when I last saw it two decades ago. Well, good on them for bringing it back!
Thanks @Mike, I was gonna guess it was short for “Harvest Market” or something like that.
Now I don’t have to be proved wrong, I already know I am!
Is Har Mar Superstar somehow connected to all this?
Howcome I can’t see any photo?
Am I the only one who didn’t get a photo?
Ask and ye shall receive. I now have a photo. Thanks.
@mfennvt Har Mar Superstar took his name from the mall. He’s from Minnesota and apparently spent too much time there in his younger years.
Har Mar Superstar named himself after the place if I remember my local lore correctly. Other useless local area facts. That Barnes and Noble was a concept for an X-large Barnes and Noble and is huge. The Target to the immediate North is the site of the first Target., which was demolished and rebuilt into the current one.
@meganj1983 and @Steve, thanks for the info!
Are those buildings as ratty as they look?
“currently 34 degrees outside”
82°, 20% humidity, and sunny here on the shores of Lake Norman (N. of Charlotte) at 6:25 pm, down from a high of 86°. I don’t know why people around here don’t believe in global warming.
ron beilke – No, the ratty building is the biology building about 2 blocks north of there. Don’t stand next to the air vent from the rodent room.
Most of downtown Iowa City is more like the 105 year old Jefferson Hotel, visible in the right side of that photo just beside the glass & steel monstrosity on the far right.
My best friend from elementary school owns the rock and beads shop around the corner from the B&N. I think I’ll have to go see our gracious host and make him jealous. Maybe his wife will let him sneak over there, or vice versa.
I couldn’t make it, but I need to know! Which of the fabulous new shirts did you wear??