Jan 18-25, 2017
Bonding Over a Blizzard: Thunder-Sky exhibit recalls the winter of ’78 — stories of resilience, community and fun
Minimum Gauge: New radio format targets coveted ‘Latina strippers Of Tampa Bay’ demographic
HOT: Teasing Strippers A new, very narrowly focused radio format launched recently in Florida… but it didn’t last too long. Calling itself “The Official Station For Latina Strippers Of Tampa Bay,” a channel called “El Booty” went live on the 106.9 FM frequency with a playlist featuring hyped, dancer-friendly Hip Hop. But the launch only…
Morning News: Jeffy Ruby offers reward for Withrow vandalism info; Ohio troopers at Standing Rock “undercover” in uniform; West Chester official rebuked for Facebook post
Hello Cincy. Let’s talk news for a minute, shall we? A vandal or vandals spray-painted racist graffiti on Withrow High School, it was caught on video and someone out there knows who did it. Local restaurant magnate Jeff Ruby is betting that that potential informant likes steak and football and is willing to tell all…
Analyzing This Year’s Academy Award Nominations
One of the first comments on my Twitter feed that caught my attention regarding the Academy Award nominations this morning expressed a decided lack of surprise at the nine films in the Best Picture category. As a Toronto International Film Festival attendee, I suppose I should agree, since the nominations fully support its claim as…
Morning News: Video footage shows suspected Withrow vandal; state funds could help viaduct replacement; West Chester official: “Back to the asylum.”
Good morning all. Here’s some quick news today. Officials have released a 10-second video clip showing the suspect who spray-painted swastikas, racial slurs and “Trump” on the campus of Withrow High School in Hyde Park. The masked white man is holding what appears to be a spray paint can in the video, which was captured…
Morning News: Women’s march draws thousands; Withrow High School vandalized with racist graffiti; ACA repeal would cost 1 million Ohioans healthcare
Good morning all. It was a busy weekend in Cincy with tons of news, so let’s get to it. Thousands of Cincinnatians gathered Saturday at Washington Park to protest the inauguration of President Donald Trump, which took place Friday. The rally and march that followed were local iterations of the Women’s March on Washington, which…
Stage Door: A big splash or a quick dip in the dating pool?
Lots of good theater to choose from this weekend. I’ll give you the scoop on two I’ve seen so far this week. If you like a show that’s big and splashy, The Little Mermaid will be right up your alley — or should I say “sea lane.” That’s the kind of punning humor that’s in…
Your Weekend To Do List (Jan. 20-22)
FRIDAY 20 DANCE: POWER GOES On Friday and Saturday (inauguration weekend), Chicago-based dance company The Seldoms will be performing Power Goes at the Aronoff Center for the Arts’ Jarson-Kaplan Theater. Founding Artist Director Carrie Hanson’s interpretation of the way 36th president Lyndon B. Johnson exhibited power — physical and mental — will be portrayed through…
Prosecutor Deters grants himself four more years of part-time duty
Less than two months after voters renewed his job as Hamilton County prosecuting attorney, Joe Deters renewed his status as a part-time public official. Deters, 59, began moonlighting in 2009 through lucrative affiliations with law firms that have earned him at least $2 million in salary and lawsuit settlements. Because he practices law on the…
LISTEN: The Yugos’ “Steve French” from forthcoming album ‘Weighing the Heart’
Next Friday (Jan. 27), the great-and-always-getting-better Indie Rock band The Yugos play Over-the-Rhine’s Woodward Theater to celebrate with their hometown fans. The Cincinnati group’s Weighing the Heart, its third full-length, will get a national release on March 10 through Old Flame Records, an established indie imprint now based in Cincy. But local fans will be…
Morning News: Councilman threatens to fire streetcar contractor Trapeze; residents continue fight against Duke Pipeline; companies fall short on job creation after state tax credits
Good morning all. Here’s a quick news update. Trapeze, the company that provides the real-time displays for the streetcar, is on thin ice with city officials. Following a rough meeting with the board of the Southern Ohio Regional Transit Authority earlier this week, Trapeze went before Cincinnati City Council’s Major Transportation Committee yesterday. There, Councilman…
When Chesley firm attorneys went on a pizza run, they drove in style
We at CityBeat subject ourselves to reading large quantities of dry and sleep-inducing court documents to find material worthy of your perusing pleasure. Such was the case as we dove into the seemingly infinite piles of pleadings in the legal battle to force ex-lawyer Stan Chesley to honor a $42 million civil judgment against him…
Faith communities join sanctuary movement in Cincinnati
Local faith leaders are signing on to a movement that seeks to provide legal protection, shelter and other aid for undocumented immigrants and other vulnerable groups. The movement comes as president-elect Donald Trump has promised waves of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, Muslim registries and bans on refugees from countries suffering from terrorism. Organizers with…
Fascism’s Progeny
Calling someone a “Nazi” or “racist” usually precludes further conversation. Not so, “fascist.” What passes for political debate has become so debased that “fascist” has entered our mainstream reporting. Inauguration isn’t going to stop it. Leftists call conservatives “fascists.” Conservatives call liberals “fascists.” That suggests that Americans only know that “fascist” a foreign word…
What a Week! Jan. 11-17
WEDNESDAY, JAN. 11 Members of the media flooded into Trump Tower Wednesday to have Donald Trump yell “fake news!” at them for an hour. It was Trump’s first press conference as president-elect, his first ever since July and probably the first time piss play has been alluded to by a future commander in chief in…
VICELAND reinvents foodie TV
It’s been almost a year since VICE media debuted its TV component VICELAND, and what could have been a one-season wonder continues to evolve and improve with each new series. The channel has programming dedicated to drug culture, travel, comedy and race — sometimes all in a single show — but it’s the collection of…
‘Paterson’ finds the poetry in everyday life
The great American modernist poet William Carlos Williams hovers over the new Jim Jarmusch film Paterson like a gentle guardian angel, somehow clearly visible. A spirit of love, one rooted in the brilliant simplicity of the everyday, suffuses each and every frame of this film. It’s heard in the lyric observations of the central character, a…
Completing Shakespeare’s ‘Game of Thrones’
In Shakespeare’s early days as a playwright, the late 1580s and early 1590s, he was just a century or so beyond the tumult of the “Wars of the Roses.” That’s the term for the civil conflicts resulting when competing cousins from two royal branches descended from previous kings — the House of York took as…
President Trump? What a Joke!
To mark the Friday inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president, comedians in 30 cities across the country will perform shows under the banner What a Joke this weekend. Cincinnati comedians will take the stage Thursday night at the Woodward Theater for a show hosted by area comics Mark Chalifoux and Karl Spaeth. Also on the…
Dancing with LBJ during inauguration weekend
“I’m a little bit of a Johnson freak.” That’s Carrie Hanson, founding artistic director of Chicago-based dance company The Seldoms, and she’s talking about Lyndon Baines Johnson, our 36th president (counting Grover Cleveland twice, because he had two non-consecutive terms). A stranger subject for a modern dance production I’m not sure I’ve found, but with…
A new comic book series reveals an alien world in Cincinnati sewers
Deep in the bowels of the Metropolitan Sewer District, a young woman in a baggy MSD uniform wades through knee-deep water, a small rat perched on her shoulder. A light on her hard hat illuminates a massive worm-like creature in front of her, fangs bared on each of its four otherwise featureless heads. With thousands…
Loving the Cov
Between historic MainStrasse Village, a plethora of international restaurants and chefs who focus on regional cuisine, Covington has been teasing us to dine across the river more than ever recently — and it has absolutely nothing to do with long waits at Over-the-Rhine hotspots. In fact, recent comparisons between the two dining destinations are apt:…
Chef Mark Bodenstein transforms the avant-garde NuVo into Piccolo Casa, a more approachable pasta-centric parlor
Chef Mark Bodenstein has a knack for selecting familiar ingredients and preparing them in somewhat unusual ways to create flavor combinations that transcend the sum of their parts. Or he adds vegetables you’ve barely heard of to a side or entrée, resulting in your tablemates passing the dish around in a game of “Guess what…
Sound Advice: Brothers Osborne with LANco (Jan. 20)
For a band that has seemingly come out of nowhere, Country act Brothers Osborne certainly has a whole lot of somewhere behind them. Guitarist John and vocalist T.J. Osborne began their musical exploits in the mid-’90s while still high school students in their native Maryland, playing covers and originals in various outfits. The originals of…
Sound Advice: LuxDeluxe with Moonbeau (Jan. 21)
LuxDeluxe is from Northampton, Mass., but the band doesn’t much sound like the various outfits that have given the town its reputation as an underground hot bed (an aesthetic best exemplified by longtime scene anchors Dinosaur Jr.). The five guys in LuxDeluxe, all in their early 20s, make straightforward Rock & Roll that draws equally…
Sound Advice: Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls with Murder By Death, Arkells and Will Varley (Jan. 21)
The title of Frank Turner’s most recent album, Positive Songs for Negative People, could be needlepointed into a sampler to exemplify his personal and professional philosophy. Through six albums with the Sleeping Souls, his gifted and almost supernaturally talented backing band, Turner has used his energetic Folk Punk style to bear witness to some of…
Devin Burgess, Xela find collaborative magic
On Jan. 13, two of Cincinnati’s more unique and talented up-and-comers teamed up to put out the compelling 10-track release celestialove. Hip Hop MC/producer Devin Burgess and singer/songwriter Alexandra Constable — who performs under the name Xela (now Xzela; see update below) — create something special on their hypnotic and entrancing collaborative effort. Despite being in…
Minimum Gauge: Inuaguration events in D.C. continue to play musical chairs
HOT: Party Poopers Broadway legend Jennifer Holliday canceled her appearance at a “welcome” concert in Washington D.C. tied to Donald Trump’s star-deficient presidential inauguration, citing feedback from her “beloved LGBT community" (later it was revealed that she also received death threats). And a Bruce Springsteen tribute band booked to play an inaugural event backed out…
A new Thunder-Sky exhibit recalls the Blizzard of ’78
“I think there’s just a nostalgia for snow,” Thunder-Sky, Inc. co-founder Keith Banner says. It’s a simple enough explanation for the creative response to a simple-sounding show — Thunder-Snow: Artists Remember the Blizzard of 1978. Yes, the Northside gallery’s exhibit includes some pretty paintings of winter wonderlands. But there’s much more that is unexpected. Banner’s…
Morning News: Richardson challenges Cranley, Simpson to debate; Metro needs $1 billion; UC, Miami face fed investigation
Good morning all. Here’s some news going on around town right now. Cincinnati mayoral candidate Rob Richardson Jr. wants to debate his opponents, Mayor John Cranley and Councilwoman Yvette Simpson, and he’d like to do it multiple times. Cranley and Simpson’s response: Bring it. Expect at least one, but probably multiple, events between the three…
A proposed full-time county housing court could be one step toward better protecting tenants
For 42 years, Albert Hawkins has lived in the Alms apartment building in Walnut Hills, watching it deteriorate. “This was really a nice place,” he says of the former hotel built in 1929. From the building’s half-lit community room, he points to the spot outside a set of side doors where a pool once stood,…
