The Quad-City Times - News, Sports and more from the Quad Cities region or Iowa and Illinois

You are not logged in.
Login

Log in to qctimes.com
Email:
Password:
Remember my information.
Register
Quadsville
Site Help

The fun begins now: Bix launches 10-day Q-C party

Font Size:

By Times staff | Thursday, July 24, 2008 11:22 PM CDT | () comments

Happy, lilting melodies of Bix Beiderbecke-era jazz already are filling the The Col Ballroom and later today, the Davenport Clarion Hotel, Danceland and — a first — the riverfront Modern Woodmen Park. Touring bands following Bix’s nomadic lead converge on the cornet player’s hometown, along with legions of traveling fans.

Next comes the Wells Fargo Street Fest tonight and Saturday with local performers Jordan Danielson, Ellis Kell, Wicked Liz and many others with new approaches to the Quad-Cities’ deep music legacy launched by Bix.

Then come the feet — thousands of them — on a Quad-City Times Bix 7 course through the heart of Davenport. Fun, fitness and intense competition occur side by side in a throng led by the world’s best distance runners. They spill exhausted and ecstatic into our parking lot for the Quad-Cities’ most raucous morning party.

This year, the feet are followed by thousands of wheels winding up another newspaper’s fitness party. RAGBRAI riders wrap up their week-long trans-Iowa ride in LeClaire, a lovely riverfront town prepped and polished to show off its truly amazing downtown renaissance.

The cyclists are followed by the softballers. Young women athletes ages 13 to 18 from 130 teams converge on Moline’s Greenvalley Sports Complex for a week-long regional tournament.

Close behind comes the Mississippi Valley Fair, the granddaddy of all Quad-City events packing the West Locust Street fairgrounds for six days beginning Tuesday.

Quad-City Convention and Visitors Bureau director Joe Taylor sees it this way: 100,000 Bix Weekend participants, including 15,000 runners and walkers, 15,000 RAGBRAI riders and 10,000 to 20,000 supporters. Another 4,000 visitors arrive for the softball tournament.

Count on the fair to bring in more than 30,000 each day.

Add in a spectacular 10-day forecast with mostly sunny days, temperatures no higher than 85, and no rain expected in at least six of those days.

Don’t be content to just read about it in the Quad-City Times and qctimes.com. Count yourself among those enjoying the Quad-Cities’ biggest party week.

Starting now.