{"id":6948,"date":"2015-12-30T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T16:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/?p=6948"},"modified":"2015-12-29T20:54:20","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T02:54:20","slug":"des-moines-represents-backwoods-rubes-in-column","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/2015\/12\/des-moines-represents-backwoods-rubes-in-column\/","title":{"rendered":"Des Moines represents ‘backwoods rubes’ in column"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’ll cost you $400 to eat at the Times Square Olive Garden<\/a> on New Year’s Eve night.\u00a0To those of us\u00a0foolish enough to think income of $250,000 a year is nothing to sneeze at<\/a>, forking over four Benjamins (before tax) for a meal is a hefty price, regardless of ambiance.\u00a0A writer at Fusion went close to home<\/a>\u00a0to reassure sophisticated urbanites that for a bumpkin enraptured by the big city, it’s worth the price.<\/p>\n

Try putting yourself in the shoes of a potential Olive Garden New Year\u2019s Eve guest. Let\u2019s say you\u2019re a chiropractor from Des Moines who made a little extra money this year, and you want to spend New Year\u2019s Eve doing something really special.\u00a0<\/em><\/em>[Hello instant\u00a0Register<\/em>\u00a0story idea! \u2014Ed.] You\u2019ve been watching Dick Clark on TV since you were a kid, and\u00a0<\/i>going to New York City to see the ball drop in Times Square has always seemed, to you, like the apex of luxury.<\/em><\/p>\n

Sure, $400 per person is a lot of money. But it\u2019s not ridiculous for an experience you\u2019re going to remember for the rest of your life. … And while spending New Years Eve in Times Square might not be the experiential equal of those things for you, Urbane Tastemaker, it is for many people.<\/em><\/p>\n

Picking on the largest city in Iowa in this manner is nothing new. In fact, it’s practically a cliche, if only because coastal writers rely on it as a crutch for “place in the Great Flyover that people have heard of”. The insulting bit is when it comes with the condescending implication that Des Moines isn’t a “real” city at all, or at the least, one that should be seen as a place to escape from.<\/p>\n

(The Consumerist, meanwhile,\u00a0went for slamming Topeka<\/a>\u00a0in its piece that, like in Fusion, included the obligatory drive-by slap of eating at a chain restaurant in Times Square.)<\/p>\n

My brother did a New Year’s Eve in Times Square, by which I mean, he spent the entire<\/em> New Year’s Eve Day standing and waiting and standing and waiting. The ball drop is pretty to watch with a camera focused on it, but frankly, you<\/em> would have to pay me<\/em> to be there in person, and more than $400, too. Not even Carrie Underwood can make New Year’s goggles look good.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’ll cost you $400 to eat at the Times Square Olive Garden on New Year’s Eve night.\u00a0To those of us\u00a0foolish enough to think income of $250,000 a year is nothing to sneeze at, forking over four Benjamins (before tax) for … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iowa-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6950,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6948\/revisions\/6950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/iowahighwayends.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}