My first night in Bloomington, Indiana – the small mid-western city I would call home for the next four years – I took a taxi downtown. When I visit a city I'm not familiar with, I'll take a long walk or maybe hop in a cab to get a sense of the place. Perhaps I'll ask the driver for a restaurant recommendation, or inquire about the local sports team, or absent-mindedly comment on the weather. But on that balmy June evening I had to find out what station my driver had tuned in; the music coming from the dashboard radio was a rather obscure country blues number. “Oh,” he said with a distinct sense of pride, “that's our community radio station, WFHB.” He went on to give me an abridged version of the station's turbulent history: the early fundraising and organizing difficulties; the fierce competition for available frequencies; the protracted licensing procedure; and the search for a permanent downtown location.

As luck or fate would have it, my destination – a newly opened restaurant called Positively Fourth Street – was located directly across the street from the radio station's future home: the old city firehouse.