Do the Most Hipster Thing Possible - Move to Des Moines [2014]

[Battlehymn Republic]

Do the Most Hipster Thing Possible - Move to Des Moines

October 16, 2014
Matt Vasilogambros and Mauro Whiteman

DES MOINES, Iowa—This is too nice a place to spawn a war cry. But if the city had one, it would be the sen­ti­ment heard across a down­town pop­u­lated by baris­tas, tech start-up founders, mu­si­cians, and non­profit pro­fes­sion­als alike: “It’s Des Moines against the world.”

Young people here know what you think of this city. It doesn’t need re­peat­ing. But am­bi­tious minds are in the pro­cess of build­ing a new Des Moines, a tech hub in Sil­ic­on Prair­ie, an artist­ic cen­ter in the Heart­land, a des­tin­a­tion for people who want to cre­ate something mean­ing­ful out­side of the lim­its im­posed by an over­sat­ur­ated city like Chica­go or New York.

That’s ex­actly what former Brook­lyn­ite Zachary Man­nheimer sought sev­en years ago. Man­nheimer, 36, had launched res­taur­ants and theat­er pro­jects in New York, but he wanted to find a city where he could tap loc­al artist­ic tal­ent and re­vital­ize a stag­nant urb­an com­munity. He vis­ited 22 cit­ies in eight weeks dur­ing the sum­mer of 2007, and fell for this Mid­west­ern cap­it­al, where he foun­ded the Des Moines So­cial Club, a non­profit cen­ter for the arts. The So­cial Club is now lodged in an old fire­house built in 1937, and has a theat­er, classrooms, bars, art gal­lery, and ad­join­ing res­taur­ant—and it hosts events every night of the week. An av­er­age of 20,000 vis­it­ors come through every month, per­haps for a WWE-style wrest­ling match or an aer­i­al arts class or a punk show.

Man­nheimer cre­ated something that would have taken the rest his life and $300 mil­lion to com­plete if he’d stayed in New York. It took him sev­en years and $12 mil­lion. He also left his crappy, ex­pens­ive apart­ment in Brook­lyn for com­par­at­ively lav­ish digs in Des Moines. Now, he wants people liv­ing in New York or Chica­go or Wash­ing­ton to think about do­ing the same.

“How much are you work­ing every day? How much are you be­ing paid? How much is your cost of liv­ing?” Man­nheimer asks. “What if I told you we have per cap­ita the same amount of cul­tur­al amen­it­ies here that you do in New York? Get over your, ‘How do we even pro­nounce Des Moines?’ and ‘Where is it?’ and ‘Why should I even care about it?’ Get over it, and come out here and vis­it.”

Be­sides, he says, “In the world of hip­sters, is there any­thing more iron­ic than com­ing to live in Des Moines, as op­posed to liv­ing in Brook­lyn?”

On pa­per, Des Moines has the as­sets to back up Man­nheimer’s pitch: Cost of liv­ing is six per­cent­age points be­low the na­tion­al av­er­age, me­di­an salary is $51,200, job growth is 2.9 per­cent, there is one com­pany with 500 or more em­ploy­ees for every 612 people, and mil­len­ni­als are pour­ing in­to Des Moines at a high­er rate than they are na­tion­ally. For­bes even lists it as the best city for young pro­fes­sion­als.

It was a nor­mal night at the So­cial Club when we vis­ited. The art gal­lery was open, just next to Capes Kafe cof­fee shop and com­ic-book store; up­stairs, nine people in a com­ic-book draw­ing class watched an ec­cent­ric, gray-haired in­struct­or in skinny black jeans and thick-rimmed glasses draw a car­toon about a re­tired Elvis im­per­son­at­or named “Sid.” Out on the pur­posely graf­fit­ied porch with rope-spool tables, dozens of mem­bers of the loc­al Young Non­profit Pro­fes­sion­als Net­work chapter met to net­work, drink, and take pro­fes­sion­al head shots.

Look­ing out over the court­yard marked by an old tele­phone tower and mur­als, Bri­anne Sanc­hez and Danny Heg­gen, both 29, de­scribe the chapter they foun­ded in 2013 for monthly cof­fee meet­ings. It has turned in­to a group of more than 550 mem­bers that suc­cess­fully draws mil­len­ni­als down­town to con­nect and help each oth­er out. It’s a quint­es­sen­tially Mid­west­ern mix of self­less­ness in a deep pool of am­bi­tion and drive.

“We al­ways joke that Des Moines is a big small town,” says Heg­gen, a pro­ject man­ager for a firm that trans­forms old art deco build­ings in­to new apart­ments. “But really, Des Moines is a large liv­ing room. There’s this homey feel. What I most want is every­body around me to be suc­cess­ful. And I be­lieve that every­one wants that for me, as well.”

Sanc­hez, too, moved to Des Moines “to start build­ing things, to do something big­ger than your­self.” Her hope in start­ing a chapter, she says, was that maybe more young pro­fes­sion­als would move to Des Moines. Or to bor­row a line from a movie based in Iowa: If you build it, they will come.

Talk­ing Heads front­man and Des Moines fan Dav­id Byrne touched on that idea at the So­cial Club’s launch party in this same court­yard, where he pondered why a mu­sic scene or an artist­ic scene or a theat­er scene de­vel­ops in any city. “What makes it hap­pen?” he asked the crowd of 500. “It’s hard to say. There’s no guar­an­tees, but it is pos­sible and it’s cer­tainly not go­ing to hap­pen un­less there are places like this. And, sad for me to say, it’s not go­ing to hap­pen in Man­hat­tan any­more, which means it’s up to you guys.”

Geoff Wood thinks this mod­el could work for start-ups too. He foun­ded Grav­it­ate, 6,000 square feet of of­fice space in the heart of down­town for emer­ging tech start-ups. Of the 12 floors in this build­ing on 6th and Mul­berry, five house start-ups. Wood cur­rently leases space for 40 en­tre­pren­eurs, and could take 60 more look­ing to take ad­vant­age of the re­laxed ac­com­mod­a­tions with artsy fur­niture, hard­wood floors, and ample desks. Those who don’t go in for tra­di­tion­al of­fice set-ups can try the stand­ing desks paired with Indo Boards.

Iowa has the homegrown tal­ent. Ben Sil­ber­mann, the founder of Pin­terest, was raised in Des Moines. Marc An­dreessen, a lead­ing ven­ture cap­it­al­ist, is from Ce­dar Falls. Tom Pre­ston-Wern­er, the cofounder of Git­Hub, grew up in Dubuque. The first di­git­al com­puter was even in­ven­ted at Iowa State Uni­versity. Wood wants to give people like this an op­por­tun­ity to find a home in Sil­ic­on Prair­ie be­fore they de­cide to move to Sil­ic­on Val­ley. “I want them to al­ways feel like if they choose to, they can come back or they could in­vest here,” Wood says. “We choose to be here.”\

Tech­no­logy leveled the play­ing field with start-ups. Geo­graphy doesn’t mat­ter any­more. They read the same blogs, use the same ma­chines, and are con­nec­ted to the same In­ter­net as every­body else in the in­dustry. The only dif­fer­ence is that in Des Moines, they do it for much less, ex­plains An­drew Kirpa­lani, a product man­ager for Bunch­ball, a gami­fic­a­tion com­pany with a satel­lite of­fice in Grav­it­ate.

“For a com­pany in Cali­for­nia, we are a cheap­er re­source,” says Kirpa­lani, stand­ing next to a uni­cycle, as his team­mates blast mu­sic be­hind him. “It’s easi­er to find of­fice space here, you don’t have to pay as much, and our salar­ies—while very com­pet­it­ive and even premi­um to Iowa—are not ne­ces­sar­ily as ex­pens­ive as they might have to be in Cali­for­nia. We, as de­velopers, end up in a situ­ation where we get whatever we want be­cause it’s cheap here.”

These start-ups are cre­at­ing a com­munity, grow­ing an eco­sys­tem of en­tre­pren­eurs in the middle of Iowa, a state that provides sup­port for com­pan­ies through dif­fer­ent funds sponsored by the Iowa Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­ity, and of­fers re­l­at­ively low tax rates and busi­ness costs. Dwolla, an on­line pay­ment sup­port com­pany that’s gained na­tion­al at­ten­tion in re­cent years, star­ted and is still based in Des Moines. Rüster Sports is an­oth­er small busi­ness based here that’s turn­ing heads na­tion­ally.

The most aero­dy­nam­ic ra­cing bi­cycle in the world is made in a busi­ness park five blocks from down­town Des Moines at Rüster. The bike runs $6,000 at the ba­sic level, or $10,000 with all com­pon­ents. Eth­an Dav­id­son, the 24-year-old chief op­er­at­ing of­ficer, wants to build a cul­ture here that chal­lenges the old way of think­ing—that man­u­fac­tur­ing world-class products should hap­pen else­where. “Why not here?” says Dav­id­son, walk­ing through an of­fice with desks wel­ded and bikes craf­ted in the same space. “Why not man­u­fac­ture car­bon fiber com­pos­ite products right here in Des Moines? It is hap­pen­ing here. It’s real.”

And that en­ergy goes bey­ond start-ups. Amedeo Rossi uses en­tre­pren­eur­ship to boost the mu­sic scene in Des Moines as the pro­gram man­ager of the 80/35 Mu­sic Fest­iv­al. Named after the two in­ter­sect­ing in­ter­states that go through Des Moines, the sum­mer fest­iv­al fea­tures sev­er­al loc­al bands and big­ger acts like the Avett Broth­ers, Wu Tang Clan, and Cake. It star­ted in 2008 us­ing funds from the city’s de­part­ment of parks and re­cre­ation and the Com­munity Found­a­tion of Great­er Des Moines. For Rossi, there’s a big­ger pur­pose to the fest­iv­al.

“If you im­prove the mu­sic scene, you get more bands to stop here,” he says. “Hope­fully it will im­prove the loc­al scene as well, and some of these people will break out a little bit. It’s helped raise the level of mu­sic.”

This could only hap­pen be­cause of the in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ment in Des Moines, Rossi says. Earli­er this fall, work began on a $49 mil­lion real es­tate de­vel­op­ment pro­ject in the East Vil­lage, a trendy neigh­bor­hood down­town that was once just home to an old Chev­ro­let shop, a few eat­er­ies, and some tav­erns that couldn’t even gen­er­ously be called dive bars. Com­bined with a $40 mil­lion sculp­ture garden, a 16,000-seat arena for con­certs and sports, 700 miles of con­nec­ted trails and bike­ways, an am­phi­theat­er along the river­front, and count­less new mu­sic ven­ues, res­taur­ants, and bars that neigh­bor thriv­ing in­sur­ance and fin­an­cial com­pan­ies headquartered here, the down­town area is pleas­ingly aes­thet­ic, liv­able, and big enough to host large events like the Farm­ers Mar­ket, the Arts Fest­iv­al, and 80/35.

There’s a T-shirt shop and com­munity staple in East Vil­lage called Ray­gun. It’s cush­ioned between food­ie res­taur­ants and base­ment bars, and provides iron­ic wear for the oth­er­wise earn­est cus­tom­ers who fre­quent the neigh­bor­hood. One of their most pop­u­lar shirt designs is a per­fect ex­pres­sion of the am­bi­tion and slight ex­as­per­a­tion of the loc­als here: “Des Moines, Iowa: Let us ex­ceed your already low ex­pect­a­tions.”

Na­tion­al Journ­al re­cently vis­ited Des Moines to see how an in­creas­ingly di­verse pop­u­la­tion—a ma­jor­ity of pub­lic-school stu­dents are now minor­it­ies—and boom­ing eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment have changed this once-sleepy town. This art­icle is part of a Next Amer­ica series about the real­ity of 21st-cen­tury Iowa.

Six or more years after this original article, it looks like Iowa continues to be an attractive place for people to move for jobs. And it sounds like the cultural variety might not be as bad as previously reported, surprisingly enough.

It's rather like how in the last season of Parks and Recreation, a tech start-up arrives from somewhere to gentify a midwestern town in the middle of nowhere.

[General Zod]

On the other hand, you probably need a car to live. And the winters are bound to be shit.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I have a friend who was transferred to Des Moines for work, and he has lived there for about a year. He speaks very well of the place. In fact, he was very surprised how much he ended up liking Des Moines considering that his job had previously posted him in Peru.

[Zaune]

On the other hand, you probably need a car to live.

For the first few years maybe, but get enough well-off and politically active people in one place for long enough and they'll start making things like bus and light-rail services happen.

And the winters are bound to be shit.

Worse than New York or Chicago or Seattle?

[Terralthra]

Seattle has a fairly mild winter.

[General Zod]

Seattle rarely gets much snow. It's about on par with Chicago given it's out in the Midwest, and New York winters are pretty shit but at least I don't have to drive.

[Adam Reynolds]

Worse than New York or Chicago or Seattle?

Those cities are all near large bodies of water that have the affect of making the winters more mild than they would otherwise be.

[Kingmaker]

Iowa's climate is somewhat similar to that of Ukraine, but with more tornadoes and fewer Russians. It won't impress your Canadian friends, but the winters can get pretty bitterly cold. Noticeably colder than Chicago or NYC on account of there not being a large body of water to moderate things.

Des Moines is a nice place if you don't mind living in a mid-sized city instead of a major one, and having a car isn't nearly as much of a hassle as it would be in a larger metro area. As an added bonus your neighbors are Iowans instead of New Yorkers.

[Dartzap]

But does it have a cereal cafe? No true hipsterville can go without!

[His Divine Shadow]

Des Moines is a nice place if you don't mind living in a mid-sized city instead of a major one, and having a car isn't nearly as much of a hassle as it would be in a larger metro area. As an added bonus your neighbors are Iowans instead of New Yorkers.

The smaller & more remote, the better I think. Goddamn I love going out and chopping firewood in the finnish winter and seeing hares run in the woods.

[General Zod]

Des Moines is a nice place if you don't mind living in a mid-sized city instead of a major one, and having a car isn't nearly as much of a hassle as it would be in a larger metro area. As an added bonus your neighbors are Iowans instead of New Yorkers.

The smaller & more remote, the better I think. Goddamn I love going out and chopping firewood in the finnish winter and seeing hares run in the woods.

Maybe it's not so bad in Finland but a lot of small towns in the US tend to be the "God-fearing, ultra conservative Christian Republican" variety with a smattering of redneck thrown in for good measure. Sometimes I think it wouldn't be so bad for the lower cost of living but since I've had a taste of living in real cities I don't think I can go back.

[wautd]

I've been there a couple of times for work. Can't say I'm a huge fan but I had some fun evenings (quiz night, board game clubs) and I was rather impressed at the large selection of belgian trappist/abbey beers at some pubs.

Mercifully I've been spared the ice cold winters, but the summer period can be boiling hot

[Me2005]

On the other hand, you probably need a car to live.

For the first few years maybe, but get enough well-off and politically active people in one place for long enough and they'll start making things like bus and light-rail services happen.[/q][/q]

Traffic there can't be worse than any major cost-city. Getting around Iowa in general is easy by car - my family used to cross the state for shopping in the time it'd take me to get to Seattle from Tacoma.

You also probably don't need a car any time of year - they have one of the largest enclosed skywalk systems in the country.

And the winters are bound to be shit.

Worse than New York or Chicago or Seattle?

Way worse. It's never gone below 0 F in Seattle and they average 6x more snow per season. Summers are worse too, they can easily get 100+ while the record high is 103 F in Seattle. And the humidity - ugh. Go outside in midday in the summer and you can't breathe.