There are three things everyone from Iowa does: detassel, attend the Iowa State Fair and go to the caucus.
But Iowa is also a home for high-tech, with the success of its tech startup poster child Dwolla encouraging a budding startup scene. This just isn’t San Francisco’s idea of high-tech.
“[In the midwest], agriculture becomes part of your DNA,” says Jordan Lampe, director of communications and policy at Dwolla.
Dwolla builds software for faster payments and has seen success in signing up merchants, and several Des Moines government agencies. Now, they’re trying to get in the ring as the US develops a national interbank faster payments system.
But, as Lampe says, agricultural technology is still the focus in the Midwest.
Which brings us back to the first thing all Iowans do, detasseling, stripping corn of the pollen-producing tassel at the top and placing it on the ground to re-pollinate the land.
Agtech is an interesting market, one that Lampe wouldn’t mind moving into at some point, but it’s also challenging. Farmers like practicality, he says. For instance, you wouldn’t see a farmer using Instagram to increase his business.
“And when farmers hear ‘startup,’ that doesn’t sound pragmatic to them,” he says.
But whether they like it or not, startups in Des Moines are building products and services for them. And the momentum is so strong that after one co-working space closed its doors, another opened in its place. The new space, Gravitate is home to about 45 startups or sections of startups, usually the developer staff.
Like gamification platform, Bunchball developer, Jeff, who lives in Iowa but goes back and forth to San Francisco regularly. For Jeff, it’s great, because he gets to live in a house, close to family, in an area with a lower cost of living, and he doesn’t have to deal with the traffic and crowds in San Francisco.
But his choice does come with some stigma.
“The people in San Francisco think you’re not good [as a developer] because if you were you would already live in San Francisco,” he says.
The sentiment isn’t unique to the Bay Area.
“When people talk about the Midwest they equate it with being boring or less sophisticated,” says Geoff Wood, the founder and community builder at Gravitate.
Isn’t that the truth. Hailing from Missouri, I’m often offended by pretentious comments from people that have never stepped foot in the Midwest.
This kind of thinking is reinforced online. According to Urban Dictionary (the second entry), the Midwest is “a massed region that is thought to be full of hicks and more conservative people with dull, boring accents. These are bigotted, narrow-minded people from other regions who say this. The Midwest isn’t a bad place at all.”
Not to split hairs, but bigoted is spelled wrong, there isn’t proper punctuation for quotes and this is just a poorly written paragraph… But for all the dumbass things I hear about the Midwest, many times I’m left wondering, ‘Can I blame them?’
For many towns and cities throughout the Midwest, Fox News is on 24/7, racial tension is high and religious morality holds sway over politics. When conservatives in the Midwest support Donald J. Trump with “he just says it like it is,” this definitely doesn’t help. Racism should not be “like it is.”
It’s hard not to find yourself in the political debate in the Midwest. The region’s people thrive on being the new underdog, vehement that the country isn’t great because we’re trying to support the whole instead of relying on our rugged individuality, the everyone for themselves mindset, which forks into the complete dissipation of the US government into the hands of private entities.
And that expectation of America’s Heartland had me thinking Iowa would be littered with Republicans.
But I’m surprised stepping into Raygun, a printing and clothing store in Des Moines that specializes in parodying fly-over state stereotypes with car decals that say ‘Captive’ inside a particular Midwestern state’s outline, buttons that tout ‘I support the crazy one’ and shirts exhorting, ‘Iowa State Fair: Where Presidential Candidates Deepthroat Hot Dogs.’
———
In Iowa City I’m having a whiskey and ginger waiting for a friend when I start up a conversation with Joseph, an older man with a white ponytail.
He’s reading printed out news articles, but they’re not the kind I expect. It soon comes out that he’s a Democratic Socialist.
“Where the hell do the conservatives hang out?” I ask.
Sure, I have a septum piercing, a green peek-a-boo and find myself in hipster bars, so maybe I’m not the first person a Republican would walk up to, but I’m having trouble finding them anywhere.
Joseph explains it’s because we’re in a university town. Plus Iowa isn’t overly conservative in the first place, with a partisan split as of 2014 of 32-31, leaning only slightly Republican.
“If I was a senator or something I’d start with campaign finance reform; no one person could give over $200,” he says. “And politicians, every time they spoke, would be hooked up to a lie detector. And going further, they’d be hooked up to an electrode that shocked them every time they lied.”
I know he was sort of joking, but there’s something deeper in his sentiment. I think of Donald Trump and Fox News, the use of facts, out of context, how we all use facts out of context to support our own agendas.
Maybe they know the counterargument, maybe we know the counterargument and distort the facts on purpose, or maybe it’s a simple mistake.
Misinformation is the great American by-product, evaporating off the inflexible partisan politics that define the country today.
*And here’s another roadtripper, Stephen Marche with White Man Pathology in The Guardian, on the fandom of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders:
“Bernie Sanders wants a revolution to overthrow casino capitalism but the problem, or maybe just the first problem, is that the American people love casinos. They can’t build them fast enough. On the road from Iowa, I passed at least a dozen, a dozen Fun Cities of various shapes and sizes, enduring various conversations about Trump and Sanders. The highways of Illinois are a unique vision of the workings of human desire – a nearly limitless marketplace for addiction and its cure. Strip clubs or fried chicken or gambling or church or rehab or cancer treatment. The I-94 spoke right to the unwounded body – the promise of processed sugar and pussy, or salvation from them.”
Entertaining read of Ms. Bailey’s and Iowan’s perceptions of 21st century life. Regarding views from Central Valley Californian’s, decades ago Midwesterners contributed much given the agricultural needs in the 1930’s, and thru the years with WWII, and growth through the 50’s, 60’s and the boom in Silicon Valley, and noted in SF with today’s growth. Most don’t look down upon those from the mid-west; many realize the safety and freedom the Midwest provides but fear a permanent commitment! Regarding traveling thru the states, I recommend Steinbeck’s, “Travels with Charley: In Search of America”, a dated book, but for nature lovers with humanistic values. A quote; “For how can one know color in perpetual green, and what good is warmth without cold to give it sweetness?”
Thanks for the comment. And the book suggestion… It’s on my list to read as I’m writing the Moneytripping book. 🙂
Also, you might want to check out my Utah post as that quote aligns with something a Mormon missionary said to me. Although applied to human life and poverty, which I don’t think it fits well with.
Dwolla is not signing up merchants because they have no consumer adoption. They only have government agencies and a few B2B clients compared to true processors. Any first-rate processor can do ACH processing for less than half of what Dwolla can do it for, and it doesn’t take ten days to get your money. I can get money faster taking checks! The author of this article is very narrow minded and does a crappy job of trying to portray Iowans in the same light.
The apparently newly “Americanized”, freshly, “Mormonized”, Sister Wong should be sent on a mission to San Francisco to convert some of the ladies of the evening to the righteous ways of God! Your writing style and travelogue is uniquely observant, comedic, political and critical of social situations in America and of Americans in our rapidly changing society. Traveling is a great way to experience people, life and technical and social infrastructure necessary to effect change. Your efforts are commendable. The book “Travels with Charley” is a book I read when I worked for Wells Fargo sometime in the early 80’s early late 90’s in the last century when I engineered and managed their high valued domestic and international wire transfer systems. During that era; and post Wells working with other banks and international consumer money transfers, I travelled extensively throughout the United States, in the Midwest, Southeast, Northwest, Southwest, Northeast, Hawaii, Alaska and Internationally, Mexico, Haiti, Jamaica, Karachi, Europe, Mideast, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, United Arab Emirates and found my opinions on religions, politics and social issues effected positively in manners based on observing how people lived in each of the countries visited. Needless to say, much in our country has value, although some in our country requires change, yet the changes made are ones travelogues such as Steinbecks and yours will make apparent. For readers of Steinbeck, his travelogue makes known through observations people he meets in a drive along a route through 32 states, enjoys much of the ride, natural settings, some of the people but isn’t entirely forgiving and impressed by some of the people he meets. For readers of your travelogue, it appears your observations will be succinct, smart, focused on more of the social and political aspects of the people you meet, yet in some ways the themes of your travelogues are similar. When you get a chance, read Steinbeck’s Travel’s with Charley. Charley is a dog by the way. You may want read the book after you write your book so as to allow it to influence your book. You wouldn’t want Steinbeck to get in the way of your style. Your style is very good.
Hi Sara,
I’m hopeful the author will allow my response as a prelude to her response given the focus on Dwolla. Your focusing on Dwolla’s processing capabilities in the article is mentioned as examples for lack of success for merchants and businesses primarily due to their inability to process merchants and businesses when consumers decide to use merchants’ and businesses new methods of processing. Consumer and business payments in the US are in modes of system infrastructure changes being made by companies and processes like Dwolla, ACH (Check21), Debit Payment Systems and Fed Faster Payments Initiatives. I believe the article’s intent isn’t meant to “sell” Dwolla’s services, its portraying Iowan’s as intelligent, enthusiastic and highly driven people geared towards wide minded goals. In the case of Dwolla specifically, Dwolla is succeeding with real time payments in partnership with a large bank not mentioned in this article, http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2015/04/10/why-wait-for-the-fed-bbva-compass-and-dwolla-do-real-time-payments/#2715e4857a0b31663bbf427e . Iowans are succeeding in their ventures and should be commended, not slighted for being portrayed as such.
Thanks Randy… I was actually a bit confused why Sarah thought I was portraying Iowans as narrow-minded since I think the article says exactly the opposite of that, although I guess I did take a jab at the Fox News contingent in the Midwest overall. But again, thanks for the support, especially that first comment!! 🙂
Detassel, go to the state fair and caucus… You forgot to mention we all milk cows too. Racial tensions hold high??? Religious morality holds sway over politics??? Wait, did you come through Iowa in the 50’s?
Iowa elected Obama in 2008 and 2012. If any of your article was true, this woulnt’t have happened based on our religious or our racial views. Hell, most of us still drive tractors and don’t have time to vote like dem city folk. We too busy detasseling corn and using dwolla to pay for blockbuster video tapes.
I’m sorry you felt this was offensive… I didn’t pull detassling, going to the state fair and the caucuses out of nowhere; that came right out of the mouth of an Iowan.
Also, while this is unlikely to help, I’m from Missouri (which I think was mentioned) so I understand these stereotypes very well. And I understand the culture in the Midwest. Yes, Iowa is a bit different, which was my point (that I guess I didn’t get across very well), because it’s one state removed from the Bible Belt and most of the racial tensions have been in Missouri and states farther south, but it still gets lumped in with those stereotypes. The point of the piece was that these places exceed most of the ill-informed expectations.