Skillet tossing and funnel cake fever The strangest parties happen in Iowa's smallest towns By JULIE BARTON Illustration by David Fremont Beef Days. At first, just two words in a newspaper ad captivated me. Days of Beef. Were they akin to dog days, of which there were plenty in Iowa City, my new home, last summer? Not in the least. Beef Days was a festival in Solon, a small town 10 miles away. I moved to Iowa from San Francisco for graduate school, without considering the question of what I'd do with myself when I wasn't in class. The answer: very little. In the weeks leading up to Beef Days, I began to anticipate going to Solon with an excitement nothing short of perversity -- considering I'm a vegetarian. But somehow a festival seemed just the thing to relieve the soggy doldrums of a Midwestern summer. Finally, Beef Days arrived, and I managed to drag a couple of skeptical city-born friends along to Solon. There, on Main Street, under a sweltering sun, we found a scene of utter monotony. A paper-airplane toss, a rub-on tattoo booth, a few desultory rides --within minutes we'd exhausted the entertainment, and there was nothing left to do but eat.

Our writer gets sucked in by Iowa festival culture's siren song.