While attending Highlight Midwest last Friday, I had the chance to view a few rooms of the Des Moines Social Club, the venue for the event, but I didn’t hear too much about the organization itself. I’m glad I saw a tweet of theirs earlier today: “Listen in NOW. Zachary Mannheimer and Matthew Mciver were interviewed on NPR about the DMSC!” So, I took a listen. It was an excellent piece.

The public radio show State of the Re:Union, a new show which aims to present how we are more alike than we are different and the many ways our differences are celebrate, did an episode on Des Moines. I encourage you to take a listen, you can find it at desmoines.stateofthereunion.com.

Here’s their lead-in to the part on the Social Club:

A local theater director in Brooklyn, New York, set off to try his hand at creating an art scene in a town he”d never been to. Three years later, the Des Moines Social Club is a 30,000 square foot center bustling with a wide range of activities, from opera to wrestling, and bringing together pockets of the community that wouldn”t otherwise meet.

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Another tweet from @DMSocialClub caught my attention: “We made the NY Times!” It ended with a link to today’s New York Time’s article titled Cure for Urban Blight: Plant Lots of Sculpture.

As the title alludes, its focus is on a sculpture garden, Des Moines’ recently completed John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park to be exact, but it also includes nice mentions of the Des Moines Social Club and Smash. Without spoiling the article, I’ll take a line from its ending:

There are also small independent shops like Sticks, a crafts gallery with locally made wood furniture, and Smash, which sells cheeky, Iowacentric T-shirts, including one that sums up the mood around here: “Des Moines: Greatest City in the World.”

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