By Matt Snedaker

Drawn off the street by a beat, from vices to voices reflecting life, real life in a 'nati that can be nasty when there's nowhere to go but you're growing fast.

The Hip Hop Youth Arts Center, under construction in the minds of a handful of local activists, will give young people more than a place to hang -- but that alone would be a good start.

Gavin Leonard, director of Over the Rhine Housing Network, remembers being 16, having nothing to do and "getting in trouble" with drugs and vandalism as a result.

"You don't wanna go to the coffee shop because it's lame and you have to pay for a cup of coffee you don't want to drink anyway," he says. Nor a bar, where you "pay to sit there, basically," and young people can't get in besides.

"When you're 15 through 18, you can't go anywhere, basically," Leonard says.

He's determined that, come next summer, that will change. The goal is essentially to create a positive and safe space for youth ages 14 to twentysomething.

"Hip Hop is sort of the catch," Leonard says.

People learn best from their experiences, and Hip Hop can provide the necessary bridge, he says.

"Growing up in Hip Hop culture, we feel it is imperative to provide opportunities that are relevant and come from experience," says a one-page summary written by Leonard and his collaborators. "Our programming will use DJ-ing, emceeing, break dancing and graffiti as its basis."

He thinks one thing the center will do is help prevent crime. It's not the most positive long-term goal, he says, but it's a necessary start.

"Let's be frank, man," Leonard says. "People are scared shitless of the young people in Over-the-Rhine."

Street cred
The organization fronting the project, Citizens Organizing Neighborhoods to Regain Our Liberation (CONTROL), also runs Cincinnati CopWatch.

"So far our work has focused on stopping a problem -- police brutality -- but we are most interested in creating a solution," says CONTROL literature.

Leonard drew the idea from The Spot, Denver's award-winning drop-in urban youth center. He and fellow CONTROL board member Dureka Bonds recently flew to Denver to attend the workshop, "How to Create Your Own Adolescent Focused Youth Center." The Spot's founder has also visited Cincinnati to consult. Similar centers nationwide have had great success, Leonard says.

He hopes to inspire young people to organize around issues facing their communities. Youth employment is a major issue, he says.

"I know entirely too many young people who sell drugs because they can't get a good job," he says.

Leonard, a 23-year-old white boy with bright blue eyes, has the street credibility to sell his idea. He recently bought a house just yards from where he works in Over-the-Rhine. Now he just needs the contacts -- and, of course, the money.

CONTROL has already raised several thousand dollars, but none of that will probably go toward rent, Leonard says. He's asking everyone he knows and meets for $20 and a list of 10 more people to hit up.

"If I can get 12 people in Cincinnati to give $1,000, I can run this place for a year," he says. "Shit, I'll put your name on the door."

He's not worrying about interior decoration.

"I wanna open it almost bare so young people themselves decide how to fill it when they come in," he says.

Once the project's in full swing, a music studio, so popular out West, tops Leonard's list of priorities. With modern recording technology, a studio would require only a small room and a "phat $5,000 computer."

"If someone gave us $10,000, we could build a recording studio immediately," he says.

Three spaces are under consideration, two in the semi-residential warehouse district of the West End, so no neighbors would be bothered by music, and one in Walnut Hills. The center must be accessible by bus. At first, it'll be open from 4 or 5 to 10 p.m. twice a week.

"The bottom line is, you gotta open your doors," Leonard says.

He plans to do that within six months.

The proposal electrified students at Clark Montessori School, according to Dani McClain, who teaches U.S. history to ninth- and 10th-graders there.

"The students he talked to were really fired up and excited about the idea of something like that being a resource here in Cincinnati," she says. "There are very few opportunities for young folks in Cincinnati to express themselves creatively in what they can expect to be a safe and nurturing creative environment."

Leonard says he asked 80 to 90 Clark students how many had once gone to after-school programs at community centers or boys and girls club. Nearly all raised hands.

Then he asked how many now consistently went any one place after school. Hardly a motion.

He asked how many would go to a Hip Hop youth center. Again most hands shot up.

Dan Becker, a junior at Clark, says he and his friends would go to a Hip Hop center. He's helping Leonard make contacts in different high schools.

"I think youth need an outlet, and I'm real into Hip Hop," Becker says. "I think it can be really empowering and a great outlet. There's not enough of that right now."

'The tool in their hands'
The center will be run on respect, not a lot of rules, according to Leonard.

"You go into a place and it says, 'No Drugs, No Alcohol' -- well, no shit," he says.

He'll allow the young people to regulate their space. If it means something to them, they'll preserve it without "adult" intervention.

"Young people aren't stupid," Leonard says.

The uninitiated "are scared to death of Hip Hop," he says, and fans sift through lyrics rife with braggadocio that doesn't reflect their own realities.

"A discussion is needed about Hip Hop for its own sake," he says.

McClain, a teacher, sees value in that.

"I think what this place can do is help young people realize that they don't have to be passive consumers of Hip Hop," she says.

They can create their own lyrics, beats and dances instead of blindly buying into what she calls the "dream world" presented by MTV.

Joshua Breitbart, director of Toledo-based Allied Media Projects -- fiscal sponsor for CONTROL -- says it's important to "have a space where young people in the community can see that Hip Hop music is not something that gets made in factories in a far-off place like Los Angeles. It's something you can do. It puts the tool to do that in people's hands."

That lesson can have other applications, according to Bonds. For example, youth might decide they want health programming at the center.

"Whatever the youth determine is important to their health, then that's what we'll do and that's what we'll focus on," Bonds says.

Hip Hop isn't just a music form, she says. It's a lifestyle. "It's peace, soul, lifestyle, culture," she says. It was started by the youth, and "we're the ones who primarily fuel it."

A center for youth that revolves around Hip Hop "is just one of the next logical and necessary steps in the evolution of Hip Hop and the phase or stage in our life as youth," she says.

At first, Bonds says there's no gauge to measure the success of such a center.

"Everything about life in general is a process of becoming," she says. "If we've never been there before, we don't have anything to compare it against."

Then she concedes she sees markers of the center's success: always growing, always changing and always meeting wants and needs.

Bonds throws out one last hook, consistent with the mission of the Hip Hop Youth Arts Center.

"We plan on opening in the summertime, so if anybody has any suggestions, anything they want to see, want to have, be a part of it or whatever, feel free," she says. ©