BOONE COUNTY, Ill. (WIFR) – Four stateline bars are moving on in a statewide online competition after thousands of votes pushed local businesses into the next round of voting.

The bracket-style competition, organized by Dive Bar Road Trip, started with 205 nominated bars across Illinois. Founder Chris Whillock says 6,301 votes came in during the opening round, narrowing the competition down to only 32.

Whillock says the competition helps mom and pop shops thrive.

“We all like the little bars. We want them to stay in business,” said Whillock. “It will bring people through the door.”

Representing the stateline in the next round are The Stumble Inn, Mortimer’s Roadhouse, Buchanan Street Pub and Stumpy’s Pub.

At the Stumble Inn in Capron, co-owner Bjorn Nebergall says making the top 32 puts a spotlight on his business, which people have been supporting for years.

“This place has been special for a long time,” said Nebergall. “It feels good. We kind of know where we stand in the community. We have a lot of good customers, a lot of loyal regulars that come in here.”

Nebergall says the food and staff are what make his bar stand out.

“It can be anywhere from a family environment during the day and more adult at night, but it’s definitely a welcoming place for people,” said Nebergall.

Just minutes away in Poplar Grove, Mortimer’s Roadhouse also secured a spot in the top 32. Manager Michelle Burke says she was excited to see that two other Boone County businesses made the list.

“Somebody once called us a diamond in the rough, that we are a hidden gem that most people don’t know, that it’s kind of scary on the outside, but once you get in, you feel right at home,” said Burke.

Burke says Mortimer’s has a lot to offer, like live music, karaoke and even sand volleyball.

In Belvidere, Buchanan Street Pub owner Brandy Reames says the competition helps bring most customers and business through the doors.

“I think that the exposure is absolutely amazing for all of the small businesses, whether it’s on social media or we can throw a party for it, it really gets our names out there,” said Reames.

Reames says many businesses have supported one another throughout the voting process.

“I don’t think it’s so much the competition as it’s just everybody rallying together. I know that there were a bunch of bars that I personally voted for. They voted for us and it’s just fun all the way around,” said Reames.

The next round of voting begins Saturday as bars compete for a place in the Sweet 16.

The Illinois championship round wraps up June 27 at 10 p.m. The winner will earn the title of Illinois Champion before advancing to the national competition next year.

To vote head to Dive Bar Road Trip’s Facebook Page.

Jeremy Busby is a writer and activist incarcerated in Texas.

A few days before my best friend’s execution date in 2006, prison administrators granted me one last chance to see him in a legal visit. We discussed his concerns about the humaneness of the lethal injection that would kill him. I will never forget his terrified look.

The day of his execution, I paced my cell hoping for the best. Without access to a telephone, my only method to monitor if or how my friend had died was through radio reports from members of the media who were allowed to witness his final breath.

News reports have historically allowed us as a society to monitor our government when it exercises its greatest power: ending a person’s life. But the state of Indiana has decided to inhibit that public access by banning members of the media from attending executions — unless the condemned person chooses to give a reporter a spot that could instead have gone to their relatives or friends. An appellate court upheld the ban this week. 

Prison officials in Indiana claim the media ban is mainly about respecting the dignity of the condemned person. But the idea that there could ever be dignity in state-sanctioned killing of a perfectly healthy human is ludicrous within itself. That would be the case even if executioners eschewed cruel and unusual methods. But they don’t, even when the media is watching. 

Angel Nieves Diaz continued moving for half an hour after receiving an injection of a drug that was supposed to paralyze him during a Florida execution. It took Arizona officials two hours to kill Joseph R. Wood. He had to be injected with 14 doses beyond the dose that was supposed to cause his death. 

Byron Black yelled, “It’s hurting so bad,” five minutes into a botched execution in Tennessee. John Marion Grant began convulsing and vomiting during his execution in Oklahoma. Prison officials had to enter the death chamber multiple times to wipe away and remove the vomit. The entire time, Grant was still breathing. Just last month, Tony Carruthers lay on a Tennessee gurney for more than hour moaning and bleeding as executioners struggled to find a vein. The execution was eventually called off by government officials.

These are only a few of the botched executions that lack “dignity.” This week, a federal appellate court upheld a decision blocking Alabama from using nitrogen gas to kill Jeffery Lee. Suffocating and asphyxiating on one’s own vomit seemed like a bridge too far. 

As a result of the barbarity of these events, it’s not far-fetched to wonder if Indiana officials have an ulterior motive. Perhaps the media ban has nothing to do with preserving the dignity of the condemned and is instead about obstructing government accountability and public oversight. 

Executions in this country were once highly public affairs. Often held in town squares, any member of the public could attend. In the 1830s, government officials began to enact laws that made executions private events. 

This was not because 19th century executioners were moved to protect the dignity of the condemned (who were disproportionately Black). It was an effort to halt a growing capital punishment abolitionist movement. A significant number of Americans found the public spectacle disgusting.

The same is occurring today. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, support for capital punishment in America has decreased from 80 percent in 1994 to 52 percent in 2026. This division necessitates transparency — otherwise, the only nongovernment actors able to tell the public the truth are dead.

The “dignity” playbook is a well-worn one that I know well as an incarcerated journalist. As a result of restrictions placed on media access to prisons, prisons have become unjustifiably cruel, less humane and more difficult to monitor. Restricting press freedom erodes human rights and constitutional safeguards and blinds the public to the kinds of cruelty and abuse depicted in HBO’s Oscar-nominated documentary “The Alabama Solution.” 

The film was made possible not because officials granted access to outside journalists, but because incarcerated people risked (and endured) severe punishment to document their reality with contraband phones. 

It’s not the first time surreptitious reporting methods revealed the real motives behind media restrictions. In 1906, a reporter in Minnesota ignored a ban on media executions and sneaked in to watch a condemned man spend 14 minutes gasping for air before he strangled to death because the rope used to hang him was too long – he hit the floor when dropped and needed to be raised back up. 

As appellate judge Candace Jackson-Akiwumi wrote in a dissenting opinion in the Indiana case, “A government exercises its greatest power when it ends a person’s life. As I see it, such severe and irreversible punishment on behalf of ‘the people’ must be observable to comply with the Constitution.”

Lifting the media ban is the only dignified thing Indiana can do, not only for the condemned but also for the people being asked to fund irreversible punishments.

The basic machinery of democracy, for all its flaws, can still produce good decisions when used in good faith.

Advertisement

• Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City and write at www.ourlibertiesweprize.com.

The news has felt best to avoid lately. It ranges from “discouraging” to “somehow real life, not the Onion.” And political news is the worst. Washington seems to be drawing from the movie “Idiocracy.” The Iowa Statehouse is no better. More voting restrictions. Less access to healthcare. Required propaganda at the University of Iowa. Another year of failing our schools and our youth. State finances aptly described as “a time bomb.”

These hot messes are real. They are also not the whole story. They are the sexy topics that stir controversy, satisfy donors, and get views. But underneath all the bold type, a shocking amount of work is happening with bipartisan support and following the “regular [legislative] order” that produces good decisions.

To give you a break from the daily doomscroll, here are some good things that happened this session. They remind us that the system can work outside big money and wedge issues.

Let’s start with slavery, euphemistically referred to as “human trafficking” these days. It’s second only to drug dealing in scale, but it’s rarely in the news. Iowa probably has a few hundred people enslaved at any given time. This year, Iowa passed several different bills addressing trafficking. Commercial drivers and child-protective services will be trained to recognize it. Victims now have a bill of rights and will be treated as victims, not as prostitutes, and Iowa is funding services for them. Prosecuting traffickers will be easier, and conviction will have more serious consequences. These are significant improvements.