Archives from 2009

Debate over greater voter input versus blocking economic development

Tags: News Feature, Model Group, COAST, Cincinnatians for Progress, Tom Brinkman

Hopefully this isn't goodbye. But with the way things are in this economy and in this world today, I'm being forced to take a break from this column. We hope it can come back in the fall. Meanwhile, I'll be putting my reporter’s hat back on and writing i

Tags: News Feature, Washington Park, Over-the-Rhine, journalism

Though I’ve technically never been homeless, I realize that like so many people I’m really just a paycheck or two or a major illness or some unforeseen catastrophe from being in some serious financial ut-oh. Giving up sometimes seems like a great idea. O

Tags: News Feature, free, homeless, many, people, some

I’m Joe Wessels, HSD. Yeah, that’s right, I have a high school diploma. I earned it in 1992 from Colerain High School. After graduation, I spent a fall cutting grass and shoveling frozen dirt from one pile to another at Maketewah Country Club.

The experiment is over. I’m not a suburban guy. It doesn’t totally surprise me. I grew up in the suburbs, but my heart is in the concrete and noise and combustible nature of an inner city — namely Cincinnati.

Tags: News Feature, cincinnati, city, just, want, live, washington

Let’s stop being a town of shoulda, woulda, coulda. With Cincinnati City Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz’s announcement May 19 that she no longer supports the city’s streetcar initiative, she joins Republican colleague Chris Monzel, who never liked the idea fro

Tags: News Feature, streetcar, cincinnati, about, local, little, could

I had an outside chance of wandering into a two-headed deer-cow hybrid that could fly. But I ventured onto the Fernald Preserve anyway. When I was growing up out in northwest Hamilton County, Fernald was like our own private Area 51 far away from Roswell

Tags: News Feature, Fernald, LEED

It seems young people are finally taking an interest in politics again. Ceair Baggett is 21 and a manager at Cincinnati Bell, overseeing some of their retail operations. He’s a graduate of Taft High School and Xavier University, lives in Mount Airy and o

Tags: News Feature, cincinnati, school, one, make, young

Lockland police officer Brandon Gehring shouldn’t be in the hospital right now. He was simply trying to do his job. Unfortunately, thanks to elected officials so damn proud of their ability not to spend money, Gehring wasn’t equipped with a two-way radio

Tags: News Feature, about, water, south, its

I joined about 200 politically-minded people at Xavier University April 15 to hear eight of the 12 living former Cincinnati mayors explain how the more things change the more they stay the same. Even former mayors of Cincinnati find that moving our city

Tags: News Feature, Cincinnati, Roxanne Qualls, Bobbie Sterne, Jerry Springer

To most, Interstate 74 is the highway that starts in Northside and works its way northwest through rural southeastern Indiana. It’s the best way to get to Indianapolis and cheap flights. From Indy, though, I-74 goes on to Davenport, Iowa, connecting to c

Tags: News Feature, about, highways, way, many, just

I've never completely understood why some people think that spending on social programs is "wasting money."Every detractor is armed and ready with some special story about how the system utterly and completely failed, taking their hard-earned tax money a

Tags: News Feature, City Council, budget, YWCA, social services

No one really knows what death feels like. If they did, they’d be dead. As a kid I remember looking out the back plate glass window into the backyard and telling my mother that the rays of sunshine poking through the clouds and hitting the valley below w

Tags: News Feature, back, one, even, had

Bob Herzog is the morning traffic guy on WKRC-TV, not a reporter per se. But he makes me — a print journalist hypercritical of all that TV attempts to call news — enjoy watching television. So much so that I wrote him an e-mail and told him as much and i

Progressive cities fare much better than the stodgy ones. And being stodgy typically breeds stifling behavior and uniformity antithetical to today’s urban dwellers and anyone else looking for a unique city-living experience. Boy, Cincinnati still rates p

Tags: News Feature, cincinnati, park, city

Maybe it’s the blank look on every one of their faces. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve never gone for the ladies with plastic high heels, the big soles and the leg warmers. But that’s exactly who and what was flirting with me last Saturday night at the Dej

Tags: News Feature, about, there, her, had

Thanks, Uncle Al, for all the great memories not only for me but for so many Cincinnatians here now, long gone and never forgotten. You're gone now, too, even though we've been missing you for almost 25 years. We'll try to hold on to the good memories. T

Tags: News Feature, WCPO, Cincinnati

Cincinnati City Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz has an idea: Let's elect our council members. Seems like a great idea, huh? Straight out of the Democracy 101 textbook. Problem is, most city council members are already elected and the alternative to the current

Tags: News Feature, John Cranley, City Council

Joe Herbert was grinning ear-to-ear Feb. 12 inside the Southeastern Indiana YMCA gymnasium in Batesville. He had about 50 people in a never-shortening line of admirers, all with either a Doritos promotional card with he and his brothers photo surrounded

Tags: News Feature, Super Bowl, Doritos

My recent attendance at a casual junior high school reunion might indicate to some that I'm a true Westsider. I would say it has more to do with me being a Facebooker. If you haven't checked your tweets on Twitter, friended your friends, updated your sta

Tags: News Feature, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter