1. Loose Meat Is Way More Delicious Than It Sounds
Around lunchtime in the Quad Cities, you’ll find people craving sandwiches with ground beef, mustard, and dill pickles—but they aren’t hamburgers. The meat isn’t pattied, so they’re called loose meat sandwiches and they’re a Maid-Rite staple.
2. Don’t Knock Taco Pizza Until You Try It
In Quad Cities, there’s an unusual type of pizza that’s a local favorite—taco pizza. It’s topped with lots of cheese, hot sauce, lettuce, beef, refried beans, and tortilla chips.
3. In Fact, Quad Citians Do All Their Pizzas A Little Different Here
It’s not just taco pizza that sets the Quad Cities apart—in this part of the world pizza has spicier tomato sauce, the toppings are under the cheese, and the pizza isn’t cut into slices, but strips.
4. The Best Live Music Is Played In Barns
Bring your blankets, coolers, and lawn chairs because if you really want to see a great concert, it’s being run by the Codfish Hollow Barnstormers in an old barn.
5. People From The Quad Cities Could Go Brewery Hopping All Day Long
With so many great breweries in Quad Cities—from Front Street Brewery to Great River Brewery to the Bent River Brewing Company and more—you’ll never, ever go thirsty.
6. You’ve Never Been To A Ballpark Like This One
You can barely focus on the baseball game with everything there is to do at Modern Woodman Park. From the zipline, tiki bar with hot tub, and a lounge—it’s practically a theme park.
7. There’s A Whole 17 Days Of Fun In September
The majority of September is dedicated to East West Riverfest, a cultural celebration of the Quad Cities heritage—which of course means everything from motorsport races to poetry readings to live music concerts.
8. It’s Not Christmas Until The Festival Of Trees
It’s not the Christmas season in the Quad Cities until the Festival of Trees begins. There’s a holiday parade, you can sit on Santa’s lap, and of course, there are hundreds of Christmas trees, all lit up in twinkling lights for the holiday.
9. Green And Yellow Aren’t Just Colors, They’re A Way Of Life
John Deere was born in the Quad Cities, and it pays homage to everything the company brought the area with the John Deere World Headquarters and a museum, called the John Deere Pavillion.
10. No, That Isn’t A Kayak Traffic Jam
Though they haven’t yet broken the record, that won’t stop Quad Cities locals from trying. Every year at the Floatzilla, a paddlesports festival on the Mississippi River, water sports lovers try to break the world record for biggest raft of canoes and kayaks.
11. The Bandits Are The Good Guys In Quad Cities
Get the idea of masked thieves out of your head. These Bandits are local heroes in Quad Cities. The minor league baseball team Quad Cities River Bandits draws huge crowds to Modern Woodmen Park in Davenport.
12. Whitey’s Has The Best Ice Cream Around
Just ask anyone in Quad Cities—you can’t find a better summertime (or really, anytime) treat than Whitey’s ice cream.
13. When You Get All Hot And Sweaty, There’s One Place To Cool Off
Rock Island’s Whitewater Junction is the go-to cool-off spot in the sweaty summer months—especially if you have little kiddos.
14. Don’t Be Fooled By The Misnomer
Quad Cities is actually five, not four, cities on the Mississippi River: Davenport and Bettendorf in Iowa, and Rock Island, Moline, and East Moline in Illinois.
15. Quad Cities Locals Love Their Mallards
These mallards don’t swim on the water, they skate on top of it. The Quad City Mallards hockey team bring their dedicated fans to Moline to scream on to the home games.
16. Don’t Mess With Rock Island
Rock Island is notorious for housing the largest government-owned weapons manufacturer in the whole country, the Rock Island Arsenal. But it’s not all work there, the arsenal hosts loads of events through the year.
17. The Quad City Symphony Is Better Than Your Symphony
When it’s been around since 1916, you know that it has to be good. The Quad City Symphony Orchestra is an icon out here.
18. People From The Quad Cities Are All Jazzed Up
Between the Davenport Mississippi Valley Blues Festival and the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Festival, jazz is for sure a part of the culture of the Quad Cities.
19. The Show’s In The Air In East Moline
All eyes are on the sky when September rolls around, because that means it’s the Quad Cities Balloon Festival in East Moline.
20. If You Love Music, You Love Daytrotter
No, it’s not the latest band, but the absolute must-visit website Daytrotter will help you find your favorite band. Quad City’s favorite music destination has helped the careers of the Fleet Foxes, The National, and The Lumineers.
21. Pro Golfers Have A Love-Hate Relationship With Quad Cities
The John Deere Classic in the PGA tournament is played in East Moline and it’s a tough course, so the the best professional golfers in the world come to play—like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
Did we miss anything? Tell us what you have to explain to out-of-towners about the Quad Cities in the comments below!
