When the Seasons Circle Sideways Out of Turn

I think it's comforting for people who used to live in Iowa City to come back to town and find that very little has changed since they left. I have friends who worked at George's almost twenty years ago, and they're quite certain that if they walked behind the bar and opened the cooler, without even looking they could grab a Miller Lite because things are still exactly as they left them in that bar. George's still has a working Hamm's beer sign - the kind that produces the illusion of water flowing downstream.

Because of the constancy of the Iowa City landscape, I was slightly jarred when I was driving home from the Co-op on Saturday and noticed something askew at the yellow ghetto. If you lived in Iowa City in your late teens or early twenties, chances are you've probably been to a party at the yellow ghetto on Washington Street. And if you were like me during college, your memory of those parties is probably a little hazy.

The yellow ghetto is in the process of being painted a tan color. Those apartments have been the same stained, stale urine color since I first moved to town in 1983. It seems almost wrong to try to pretty them up. Plus, the tan ghetto doesn't have the same ring to it.

If you were worried that they were also going to take the time to fix things and replace the old steps, fear not. Like everything else, when you look closely enough, you can still see the rot just underneath the exterior.

Since I was in the neighborhood, I thought I'd check out the old sorority house that got ruined during the tornado. It received a lot of news coverage, and I even put this picture up on the old blog, but I hadn't wandered around to see what it looked like after they demolished the building.

Well, it looks like this. The driveway leads to a hole in the ground that needs to be graded. There's an orange plastic fence that's supposed to keep people out, that I foolishly crossed and there's a gas grill leaning to one side but still standing over where the deck used to be. I haven't heard whether they're going to rebuild the sorority house or if this corner will soon be home to a new apartment complex.

If you're looking for a pile of twisted chainlink fence, you should stop by here. I can't imagine why they didn't haul it away with the rest of the sorority - unless it belongs to the white houe next door. I went over there after I was done photographing the absence of the other structure and ignored all the No Trespassing signs to take pictures of the damage in that building. Maybe I'll charm you with quaint photos of the diseased innards of that house later this week.