Dec 6-13, 2017
The Holiday Issue: ‘Tis the season for cozying up to warm drinks, roasting chestnuts, holiday theater and really delicious latkes
A Vegan Holiday Dinner?
I am not vegan. I tried to be, for one month. It was the grumpiest I have ever been in my life. The stipulations involved in the diet were constantly shocking, even though it is quite simple: Don’t eat any animal products or byproducts. But when you’re an hour into your Kroger shopping trip because…
Noodles and ’90s Nostalgia at Dope!
Move over Stranger Things-induced 1980s nostalgia, because the ’90s are where it’s at. You can keep your Eggo Waffles, just give me Power Rangers, Heath Ledger, AOL and glitter on every surface. Now that the kids who grew up crying while watching Dawson’s Creek are old enough to start their own businesses, it’s no surprise…
Love Trumps All in ‘Shape of Water’
When I saw The Shape of Water at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, it was easy to succumb so completely to the brilliant and lavishly rich spectacle composed by director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) that you could minimize the timely political message woven into the film — even though del Toro had…
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Like so many movies of late, Steven Soderbergh’s 2009 film The Girlfriend Experience has gotten the TV treatment, swapping adult film star Sasha Grey for indie darling Riley Keough. Where the film offered a straightforward look at the life of an experienced high-end escort, the series followed a law firm intern who tiptoes into the…
Whose Art Is It, Anyway?
An exhibition currently at the Cincinnati Skirball Museum explores artists’ relationships to Israel through the act of “re-arting” — or manipulating — each other’s work. Five artists from Cincinnati and five from Netanya, Israel collaborated on Re-Art: The Many Faces of Israel, an interactive exhibit that celebrates 70 years of Israeli independence. The country came into…
Activists push back against potential facility sale at public library board meeting
Opponents of a potential sale of a downtown Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County facility piled into the library board’s meeting today, continuing to press the library on what they say is a lack of public engagement around plans for the library’s downtown north building. At today's meeting, Public Library Board Secretary William Moran…
Robert Frank’s Long Road Trip to Fame
Along with Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Robert Frank’s The Americans is one of the great milestones of Beat Generation creative work. It’s a series of 83 photographs that Frank — a Swiss-born Jewish émigré to New York City — took during road trips across a disillusioning mid-1950s America adrift in…
Bengals Need Radical Newness
Gotta split the ticket this week, due to two stories that can’t be passed by. The Bengals’ season-long cratering is a gnat’s whisker from total collapse, and FC Cincinnati looks like an underdog to me in the most crucial battle of its young existence. First the Bengals, and first a disclaimer. Though it has gone…
Holiday-ish Local Music Events This Weekend in Northside
This weekend in Northside there’s a holiday feast of local music taking place — although in this case, the salad comes at the end and, really, the holiday tie-ins are more just in spirit (and, in the first case, name). • If you’re a Cincinnati music fan (particularly of the Punk variety, though various points…
Chabot back in the travel saddle
Ending an unusual yearlong hiatus from traveling abroad at taxpayer expense, U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot of Cincinnati resumed his globetrotting ways in August with a five-day trip to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia. Chabot, chairman of the House Small Business Committee, has tapped the federal travel spigot frequently during his 21-year stay in Congress.…
Minimum Gauge: An ownership group with questionable motives buys ‘LA Weekly,’ but a boycott movement is derailing its plans
HOT: Advertisers Boycott Hijacked Altweekly At CityBeat, we’re kinda big fans of our nation’s fine alweeklies (duh), so it’s been heartwarming to see the outpouring of support and outrage that comes each time one of our kindred-spirit publications is gutted or hijacked. In California, after longtime community voice LA Weekly was purchased by a group…
Neighborhood groups want to revitalize a former grocery store in the heart of Northside. Will the city chip in?
The faded white 15,000-square-foot former Save-A-Lot building just a block west of Northside’s bustling business district has been empty and boarded up for more than four years. But the neighborhood’s community development corporation, Northsiders Engaged in Sustainable Transformation, wants to change that. The group asked Cincinnati City Council Dec. 11 to chip in $515,000 so…
Artistic Antidote: Seether’s Shaun Morgan finds new focus and targets vapid celebrity culture on latest album
Shaun Morgan, frontman of Seether, sounds more content and enthused — and maybe even self-assured — than at any time since the early years of his group’s 15-year recording history. “The whole thing is I was in a really bad place for about 10 years, and I came out of that about a year and…
Sound Advice: Jennifer Nettles (Dec. 19)
Jennifer Nettles is quite possibly one of the most under appreciated female vocalists in Country music. That might sound crazy at first considering her success, but it’s true. As part of Sugarland, Nettles was well loved and much respected. Between the duo’s five studio albums, Sugarland managed to nab six Country Music Association Awards, five…
Sound Advice: Shooter Jennings with Jason Boland and Julie Roberts (Dec. 15)
It may have occurred to Shooter Jennings relatively early in life that it would be nearly impossible to fill his father’s musical shoes or emerge from that long cultural shadow without finding his own true identity first. Waylon Jennings was a Country music original, and his son has found myriad opportunities to exponentially expand that…
Sound Advice: The Steel Wheels (Dec. 14)
In their 13 years together, The Steel Wheels have risen to the pinnacle of the Americana and Bluegrass scenes with a sound that is drawn from tradition but crackles with contemporary passion and intensity. Like so many modern Bluegrass practitioners, guitarist Trent Wagler and bassist Brian Dickel started their musical journeys in Punk and Alternative…
Morning News: CPD officers likely violated Taser policy, experts say; new marijuana legalization effort coming
Good morning all. I hope your weekend was great. I spent mine at the art book fair in Northside, which I hope will become an annual thing. It was rad. But enough about books. It’s time for news. Two Cincinnati Police officers at the center of ongoing tension between the city and the police union…
The Other Side of ‘A Christmas Carol’
If you’ve seen the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park’s production of A Christmas Carol, you’ve probably been impressed. It’s a glorious, magical show. I’ve attended just about every year since 1991. But I recently saw it from behind the scenes. As impressive and entertaining as the holiday favorite can be for the audience, it’s equally…
STAGE DOOR: A Guide to Weekend Theater Choices
If it’s a holiday show you’re looking for, you have numerous choices, including a one-week engagement of A Christmas Story: The Musical, based on the now-classic 1983 movie about Ralphie yearning for a Red Ryder Carbine Action BB Gun. The movie’s charm is in its simple, understated narrative. Alas, there’s nothing understated about this adaptation,…
Morning News: Black Police Association casts vote of no confidence in FOP president; county won’t pay Bengals $2.6 million
Happy Friday, Cincy. Here’s some quick news to take us into the weekend. The police association representing black Cincinnati officers last night cast a unanimous vote of no confidence in Cincinnati’s Fraternal Order of Police President Dan Hils. That vote comes after increasing tension between Hils, city of Cincinnati officials and black officers. Last month,…
Company exec claims boss pursued, kissed, “grabbed” her
For more than a year, the human resources director of a Cincinnati company was kissed, “grabbed” and subjected to unwelcome pursuit by her new company president, the woman alleges in a lawsuit. The sexual harassment suit was filed in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court by Diane Sweeney, the HR director at Solidifi US Inc. in…
CAC Hosts Bulgarian Singer/Artist Ivo Dimchev
Ivo Dimchev comes to the Contemporary Arts Center on Wednesday almost an unknown here. Elsewhere, especially in Europe, the Bulgarian performance artist/singer/dancer/choreographer/photographer/visual artist/gay activist is renown. And actually, he does have his fans here. Dimchev's parents, as well as his sister and her family, live in Cincinnati. But he has only visited them once, for…
Morning News: will Murray run with Renacci?; a man Kim Davis turned away is challenging her in the 2018 election
Hello. Don’t look out your window, but there are snow flurries falling on downtown right now. Just ignore them and maybe they’ll go away. You probably saw the incessant news coverage about Cincinnati City Council’s vote to spend roughly $37 million on infrastructure for a proposed FC Cincinnati stadium. But which council members did FCC…
Cincinnati-filmed “The Public” to Open Santa Barbara Film Festival
Deadline.com reported today that the public, a film written and directed by Emelio Estevez (who also stars) and shot at Cincinnati's Main Library, will open the Santa Barbara International Film Festival on Jan. 31. Here is the film's first trailer, and the setting should look very familiar: Besides Estevez, the cast includes Alec Baldwin, Jena Malone,…
Walking the Walk
Over the course of two months last year, three pedestrians died after cars hit them on streets in various Cincinnati neighborhoods. On Nov. 26, 2016, 3-year-old Khloe Pitts died after a car hit her and sped away as her family left the Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo in Avondale. Less than three weeks…
Morning News: white nationalist proposes date for UC speech; Cincy state rep sponsors bill blocking workers’ comp for undocumented employees
Hello Cincy. It’s news time again. White nationalist Richard Spencer has requested to speak at the University of Cincinnati March 14, according to his lawyer. Spencer, an organizer of the deadly Unite the Right rally over the summer where an anti-racist protester was killed, threatened to sue UC, Ohio State University and other public universities…
