Nine years ago, after he first set foot in Ames to survey the city’s retail climate, Bucky Wolford returned home satisfied. A year and a half later, the developer from Chattanooga, Tennessee, formally announced his desire to build a new mall here, setting into motion an impassioned – and often misunderstood – debate that continues [...]

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Union Pacific Railroad and the City of Ames are engaged in an ongoing series of negotiations to determine the fate of the Squaw Creek Bridge, know locally as the Dinkey Bridge, which runs parallel to 6th Street, east of the Iowa State campus. The bridge is an iconic landmark in Ames. The Dinkey was a [...]

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One of my first memories of Ames nightlife is World Beat Night at Boheme Bistro in the fall of 2005. I had just moved here as a freshman at Iowa State, and a group of students was gathered on a Friday evening for the two-and-a-half-block jaunt from my dormitory floor to 2900 West Street for [...]

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No one wanted to hire Daniel Brown. The 24-year-old Wisconsin native had begun looking for work in August of 2008, shortly after graduating from Iowa State University. After a four-month-long search, he decided to stop looking.
Instead, Brown persuaded his parents to co-sign a $10,000 small-business loan, which he used to lease a small space in [...]

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The following was published as a sidebar to “The Torch Singer” in our April issue.
The Singer Station will stock a variety of pipes, but there are city-imposed limitations on what specific kinds of pipes the shop will be able to carry. Section 17.23 of the Ames Municipal Code expressly forbids the sale of any “pipe [...]

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The second Sunday of January marked the first meeting of the Central Iowa Sewing Rebellion, a free monthly sewing workshop. The day was cold and the air was crisp, but it was warmer than the days before the Rebellion and, comparatively, was a great improvement. We began the meeting with good food, conversation and hot [...]

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For Kim
In one instant Sheng is in Chataranga, perfectly parallel to the ground, supporting himself with his arms bent at a 90 degree angle, his elbows against the side of his torso. And in the next instant he is in a Crow arm balance, his knees up in his armpits and his weight balanced on [...]

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From the Boheme (R.I.P.) to the M-Shop and the Practice Space, some of the best music in Ames is contained within divers and sundry living rooms, and I will be bold and state that there is another to add to that esteemed list: the Ames Progressive office. The shows there, which occur every Tuesday at [...]

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Kate Kennedy: Is there any way to save the Boheme?
Pete Sherman: Well, the business and the philosophy are two different things. What you’re doing is the Boheme. So there’s the business of the Boheme, but businesses come and go, and there’s the philosophy of the Boheme – and I know what you mean, [...]

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We all do it. Stare at the strangers around us and wonder what thoughts are flickering through their minds.
We endeavored to find out one night.
Location: Thumbs
Time: 10pm -2am
Question: What are you thinking?
“The people I am going to meet the rest of the day. The potential situations I am going to be in and how I [...]

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