Hungry Bros. Food Truck (Profile)
A new food truck called Hungry Bros. has been satiating Cincinnatians with fried fruit pies and waffle fries since starting its engine on Opening Day. The truck is run by real-life brothers (not necessarily “bros”) PJ and Matt Neumann, along with their buddy Mike Mandell-Brown (yes, his father is the famed local plastic surgeon Dr. Mark Mandell-Brown,…
Sports: WWE Raw Live
If you like TV pro wrestling, this is probably pretty exciting. WWE superstars John Cena, Roman Reigns and Randy Orton will be taking on WWE World Heavyweight Champions Seth Rollins, Kane and Rusev in a live beatdown. An asterisk notes, “talent is subject to change,” so keep that in mind. But the event promises many…
Onstage: RAIN: A Tribute to The Beatles
“It’s so cool they found that Paul McCartney guy and his age doesn’t bother them,” said ignorant YouTube users after watching the music video for “Four Five Seconds” by Rihanna, featuring Kanye West and McCartney. I’m sorry, but what?! Before boy band sensations like One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer, there was The Beatles.…
Event: Clifton House Tour
Take your mom to peep in other people’s houses during the Clifton House Tour. Explore homes with special architectural features and historical stories as the gracious owners Clifton homes — from Italianate and Victorian to Midcentury Modern and English Tudor — invite strangers in to explore. 1-5 p.m. Sunday. $18; $22 day of at the…
Event: Rose Hill House Tour
The Cincinnati Preservation Association’s Spring House Tour explores six historic homes and a condo in the Belvedere building on Rose Hill Avenue in North Avondale. In the mid-1800s, wealthy merchants like Andrew Erkenbrecher, Samuel Pogue, Frank Herschede and Barney Kroger built beautiful homes on spacious lots. Today you can view historic homes ranging in date…
Event: People Working Cooperatively Repair Affair
Help improve the quality of life for your fellow neighbors by keeping their homes safe during People Working Cooperatively’s Repair Affair. In celebration of 40 years of service to the Tristate, the nonprofit is calling individuals, businesses and community groups to help repair 40 homes for low-income elderly or disabled residents. Home repair needs range…
Event: Floral Arranging Class at Fern Studio
What’s better than buying mom a floral arrangement for Mother’s Day? Making mom a floral arrangement for Mother’s Day. North College Hill’s curated home, design and plant shop Fern Studio hosts a fundamentals of floral arranging class, led by Patricia Duque Campos of Una Floral. Learn how to compose lush and loose arrangements with seasonal…
Art: Heirloom at Wave Pool
The Near*By curatorial collective, which has been making an impact on Cincinnati's visual arts scene with events that are conceptually imaginative and substantive in terms of ideas about art-making, presents Heirloom: an exhibition of objects from the childhood homes of artists at Wave Pool gallery. Four curators have each asked three different artists to choose…
Event: Wine Makers Live
Head to Fountain Square for two evenings of vino. Enjoy a variety of red, white and blended wines from across the region, accompanied by knowledgeable staff to help you navigate tasting selections. A wine list online, with wineries including Cupcake, Acronym, Mirassou and Moet, details what each will be serving. Includes live music from the…
Event: Appalachian Festival
The Appalachian Festival has come a long way from its first event decades ago in the basement of Music Hall. Back then the festival was a crafts exhibition developed by the Junior League of Cincinnati. Today, the 46th annual Appalachian Festival — presented by the Appalachian Community Development Association, a nonprofit promoting awareness and appreciation…
Onstage: Cincinnati Ballet Director’s Choice
The Cincinnati Ballet’s Director’s Choice program is a unique mixed-repertoire presentation with selections chosen specifically by ballet Artistic Director and CEO Victoria Morgan, including Yuri Possokhov's Classical Symphony, Edwaard Liang's Feast of the Gods and Trey McIntyre's Chasing Squirrel. "These three pieces are choreographic powerhouses,” says Morgan via the ballet’s website. “They exemplify the direction…
Music: Joshua Bell Returns
World-renowned violinist Joshua Bell returns to Cincinnati to perform Glazunov’s soulful "Violin Concerto," Tchaikovsky’s "Meditation" and Shostakovich’s "Symphony No. 11," which explores themes of the Russian Revolution of 1905, with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. He’s been called the “poet of the violin” and is a favorite of local audiences. Saturday’s performance features a “Classical Conversation,”…
Music: The Steel Wheels
Hailing from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and formed just over a decade ago, Americana quartet The Steel Wheels has drawn acclaim (and a growing fanbase) thanks to its dynamic blending of Folk, Bluegrass, Country, Soul and Gospel tradition with its own unique contemporary spin. Sometimes progressive, often beautiful, the band’s passionate, compelling sound…
Comedy: Paul Mecurio
Paul Mecurio, comedian and Emmy-winning former writer from The Daily Show, chose the name of his latest comedy CD, It’s Not Me, It’s the World, wisely. “I don’t relax, that’s what my wife says to me,” he says. “I get into a lot of confrontations in customer service situations. I almost got arrested on Amtrak…
Event: Drink & Draw at the CAC
If you need an excuse to drink amazing coffee — and perhaps make some art while you’re at it — the folks at Collective Espresso will give you a chance to do so Wednesday evening at their café in the renovated Contemporary Arts Center lobby. Collective CAC joins forces with the good people of OTR-based…
Onstage: Outside Mullingar
Count on John Patrick Shanley for compelling storytelling: His Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Doubt explored the power of innuendo; his Academy Award-winning movie Moonstruck was a romantic comedy. His play Outside Mullingar lands squarely between those extremes, connecting with his family’s roots in rural Ireland for a tale of identity, heritage and love. It’s sure to…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all! Here’s what’s up today. There’s a showdown coming. Some will win, some will lose and some will, well, probably be completely uninvolved but that’s beside the point. I’m talking about Cincinnati City Council’s continued fight over the Over-the-Rhine parking plan. Yesterday, a council committee passed a version of a plan that would charge…
Poet Aureate
There is an odd circularity in the work of Kevin Barnes. Back in 2005, of Montreal’s amazingly prolific and profoundly talented frontman was pursuing an Electronic/AfroBeat direction on The Sunlandic Twins and celebrating the arrival of his daughter Alabee. Ten years and five albums later, Alabee is a 10-year-old tween and Barnes and his wife…
MidPoint Music Festival Announces First Acts for 2015 Event
Cincinnati’s MidPoint Music Festival (owned and operated by CityBeat) recently announced that tickets for the late September festival were on sale, as well as a new date format (instead of Thursday-Saturday, 2015’s MPMF will take place Friday, Sept. 25-Sunday, Sept. 27). Now the first artists slated to appear at MPMF have been unveiled. The first…
Paul Mecurio: Life on the Street
Of all the comedians who have TV shows based on their lives, Paul Mecurio’s story would seem like a slam-dunk for any network. Now it seems, someone is ready to take a shot. “I’ve got a great showrunner and writer working on developing my life story,” says Mecurio, a former Wall Street lawyer-turned-comedian, from his…
Reel Redux: The Revenant
The most recent recipient of the Best Director Oscar, Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman), will have a new film for 2015 —The Revenant. This movie tells the true story of early-19th entury frontiersman Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio), who was mauled by a bear during a trapping expedition and is left for dead by his hunting partners…
Leftovers: What We Ate This Weekend
Anne Mitchell: What would you make for dinner if you opened your fridge and saw pork jowl, bee pollen, sorrel and ancient-grain bread? If you’re chef Nick Marckwald from Hen of the Woods, you’d make a panzella salad with bacon and French breakfast radishes, and a yogurt and bee pollen dressing. That’s just one of the…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all! Hope your weekend was grand and you did something fun to kick off bike month if you’re into that kind of thing. I am, and I spent some of my weekend biking — for a news story. You’ll find out more about that Wednesday though. Anyway, here’s what’s up in the news. After…
Perhaps Covedale’s ‘Sound of Music’ Could Have Been Better
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music is a classic show from late in the Golden Age of Broadway musicals, made all the more iconic its 1965 cinematic rendition starring Julie Andrews. Since that version had its 50th anniversary this year, perhaps I’m a little burned out on singing nuns and hills being alive. But…
Durang’s Comedy Has a Warm Heart Surrounded by Laughs
Critic's Pick Until Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Christopher Durang’s plays haven’t moved me. It’s not that I haven’t enjoyed his sarcastic, often cynical works such as Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You, The Marriage of Bette and Boo, Why Torture is Wrong and the People Who Love Them and lesser…
Call Board: Theater News
While other Cincinnati theaters hustle to get their seasons announced in order to ramp up subscription sales, Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati has built enough faith with its audiences that they'll start signing up sight unseen. Artistic Director Lynn Meyers tells regulars that they'll be pleased, and they take her at her word; she adds that if…
Pretending
This happened on one of those nice afternoons in April. I was leaving the Kenton County Library on Scott Boulevard in Covington, Kentucky and they were coming in. It didn’t take me long to figure out they were twins. No, they weren’t dressed the same, but they looked exactly alike — graying black hair, round…
Stage Door: Durang and One Dang Funny Dysfunctional Family
Christopher Durang's witty comedy Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike opened last night at the Cincinnati Playhouse. If that title makes you think of Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, well, that's part of the playwright's comic plan. But his script reassembles some of those wry comic elements with a few modern twists. The three characters…
Musicians Pay Tribute to Influential, Gone-to-Soon Singer/Songwriters
Tribute albums are typically divided into three categories. They’re either a) bankable artists covering high profile subjects (or, infrequently, famously known cult figures); b) cool/respected artists covering cool/respected artists; or c) some weird hybrid of the first two. Two recently released tributes fall squarely in the second category, with Avett Brothers frontman Seth Avett and…
Urban Artifact Now Open in Northside
Northside’s Urban Artifact Brewing opened its doors last week, hoping to push the envelope by displaying a finessed brand and aesthetic by reinvigorating old styles of beer and celebrating local artists of all genres. Residing in a renovated church, the brewery is collaborating with restaurant Meatball Kitchen and has big plans for the future as…
Your Weekend To Do List (5/1-5/3)
Stuff to do for athletes, aesthetes and people who love celebrating spring produce. FRIDAY Party pre-marathon with the FLYING PIG WEEKEND On your mark, get set and go to the 17th annual Flying Pig Marathon. Come and see thousands of runners and walkers of all skill levels take part in this beloved race (a Boston…
Morning News and Stuff
Good morning y’all. Like yesterday, I’m once again groggy this morning, but for different reasons that have everything to do with the news. So let’s talk about that. Last night a group of about 300 gathered outside the Hamilton County Courthouse to protest inequities in the nation’s justice system and to express solidarity with Baltimore,…
Rally in Solidarity with Baltimore Draws Hundreds
More than 300 gathered outside the Hamilton County Courthouse today to protest racial disparities in the justice system and express solidarity with Baltimore. More than a week of unrest has gripped that city after 25-year-old Freddie Gray died in police custody there April 18. Gray sustained severe spinal injuries while riding in a police van,…
‘The Salt of the Earth’ Held Over at Mariemont Theatre
Documentaries about photographers have the difficulty of making still photographs hold our interest in a medium that is about — obviously — moving pictures. The contemplation and meditation that successful still photographs elicit tend to get lost when your eyes and brain are trying to keep up with something traveling at 35 frames per second. It's like…
The Enquirer’s OTR Shooting Coverage Was a Huge Mess
A few years ago, a friend and I were walking down the street in Over-the-Rhine from Neons to somewhere north on Main Street — maybe MOTR, maybe our friend’s place at 13th and Clay, might have been heading back to a car. I’m not really sure — it’s been three or four years now since…
I Just Can’t Get Enough
James Franco is coming to Cincinnati two shoot not one but two films this May. The actor/filmmaker, who will always be Daniel Desario to me, will be working on two movies simultaneously: Goat, a frat hazing film based on the memoir King Kelly by Brad Land, and The Long Home, about bootlegger Dallas Harden, adapted…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey hey Cincy. So I’m a little groggy today after spending, oh, I don’t know, over three hours binge-watching the latest few episodes of Mad Men last night. This is unlike me — I don’t normally watch TV and shows about sad rich dudes aren’t usually my jam. But watching Don Draper, Pete Campbell (especially…
Cincinnati vs. The World
Cincinnatians along with others from Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana and Tennessee have taken the fight for same-sex marriage all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard arguments April 28 in a case that could overturn states’ gay marriage bans. Cincinnati + 1 Senate restaurant in Over-the-Rhine angered LGBT activists by offering a hotdog named after…
Worst Week Ever! April 28-May 5
Local University Comes Up with Exceptionally Stupid Research Idea, Courts Help to Stop It The University of Cincinnati and every other college in the country are out of touch with students’ needs and how money works. This is OK, since going to college is a societal notch post that peoples’ parents preach the importance of,…
Flirting with the Middle
Ohio Gov. John Kasich hasn’t formally joined the crowded 2016 GOP presidential nomination contest, but he’s done everything else to signal he’s interested in a bid for the nation’s highest office. Though he has a staunchly conservative record in Ohio, Kasich so far has portrayed himself as a less ideologically driven, more practical kind of…
Study: Closing Low-Performing Schools Improves Educational Outcomes
Closing down poorly performing schools — including charter schools — improves academic performance, a new study suggests. Research released April 28 by think tank and charter school sponsor the Thomas B. Fordham Institute found that students who changed schools because their school closed due to performance issues got an academic boost. The institute, with the…
Ohio House Passes Biggest Budget in State History
The Ohio House of Representatives passed a record-breaking two-year budget for the state April 22. The $131.6 billion proposed budget spends more than the state ever has, while taxing top-tier earners less than it has in the past three decades. The proposal would put Ohio’s top income tax rate below 5 percent for earners making…
Council Debates Parking Plan, Streetcar’s Effect on Festivals
Cincinnati City Council on April 22 again discussed proposed Over-the-Rhine parking plans, which have been bandied back and forth for months. During the discussion, council logged another chapter in the contentious debate about Cincinnati’s streetcar as Mayor John Cranley suggested his parking plan was necessary to pay for a funding gap for the transit project.…
B’more, Please Be More
Snapshot: In 1968, Baltimore, Maryland, erupted in violent looting, rioting and fires as police clashed with citizens in the city’s streets just as cops in Newark, N.J., and Cincinnati’s Avondale neighborhoods were doing the same. It was the start of America’s call-and-response. Snapshot: Early last week an NBC reporter walked alongside an 11-year-old black boy…
Morning News and Stuff
Good morning y’all. Here’s what’s happening today. Activist group Cincinnati Black Lives Matter tomorrow will hold an event in solidarity with Freddie Gray, who died in Baltimore police custody April 19, and those protesting his death. The group says it will meet at 6 p.m. outside the Hamilton County Courthouse. More than 400 people have…
Jay Z Stands Up to Tidal Haters
HOT: Jay Z Stands Up to Tidal Haters Things still don’t seem to be going too well for superstar-backed streaming service Tidal, with criticism from users and others (including artists) continuing, investor Kanye West yanking his promo tweets (he now appears to be back to promoting it though) and figurehead Jay Z taking to Twitter…
Gunn’s Range
When Wilco plays Taft Theatre on Tuesday, the opening act will be a singer/songwriter and guitarist whose textured, ethereal, slightly dazed and bluesy Rock sound is earning him comparisons to The War on Drugs and Kurt Vile. He is Steve Gunn, a now-Brooklyn, N.Y.-based Philadelphian who has actually been recording albums since 2007. But until…
Local Theater Creator Represents True Artistic Freedom
He’s easy to miss but not hard to recognize. With a flat cap that never seems to leave his head and a pair of khakis that usually complement a playfully logoed T-shirt, Paul Strickland seems average. He believes the world is trying desperately to make itself more and more boring, so he does what he…
Desert Dancer
In the midst of a governmental crackdown on dancing and a host of concerns involving Iran’s constant volatility on the political front, Afshin Ghaffarian (Reece Ritchie) bravely (some might argue foolishly) decides to start a dance company. Director Richard Raymond (producer and director of short films The First Day and The Bridge) and screenwriter Jon…
Adult Beginners
Sometimes it is fun to watch performers who are recognizable for their supporting work in mainstream projects to go full indie, seizing the opportunity to play leads in films that, in actuality, aren’t all that dissimilar to the bigger budget multiplex fare that tends to waste their talents. With Adult Beginners from director Ross Katz…
Wilder Celebrates Debut Release, Derby Day
Americana/Country group Wilder was formed last year by singer/songwriters Kelly Thomas and Randy Steffen after their previous projects had come to an end (Thomas’ Fabulous Pickups and Steffen’s Sleepin’ Dogs). Building into a full band and establishing a presence on the local club scene, Wilder is now set to release its debut EP with a…
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) managed, in the first installment of Marvel’s heroic team-up, to exert his sure-handed command of multiple characters and fast-paced witty repartee in the service of what ultimately was a light narrative punctuated with a few serviceable action set-pieces. The Avengers, after the build-up based on individual character’s movies, teased…
Wilco with Steve Gunn
Chicago has given us many things over the years. Awesome pizza. Billy Corgan. The Cubs, who will always do worse than the Reds. And each winter a chance to look at the weather report and not feel quite as downtrodden about “all the snow” that we get. Chicago’s greatest gift to the world, however, came…
Survival of the Averagest
I n most apocalyptic scenarios, we often imagine the lucky few to survive as being the toughest, hardest, most disciplined born leaders. Phil Miller is none of these things. As The Last Man on Earth (Season Finale, 9:30 p.m. Sunday, Fox), Phil (played to perfection by Will Forte) has to be one of the most…
Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project
The idea behind Jayme Stone’s all-star group, Lomax Project, is so brilliant it leads one to wonder why no one has thought of it before. Alan Lomax was the legendary song-catcher and in-the-field recorder who went out into rural areas, wrong sides of the tracks and the outskirts of America in the ’30s, ’40s and…
Filmmaker Alex Garland Humanizes the Machine
Preparing for a phone interview with Ex Machina writer-director Alex Garland (writer of 28 Days Later, Sunshine and Never Let Me Go), I found myself in a situation similar to that of the film’s protagonist Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), the nose-to-the grindstone programmer who wins the opportunity to spend a week at the private retreat of…
Peelander-Z with Sweet Ray Laurel and Twin Guns
Japanese music culture has always been adept at absorbing Western musical forms and translating them into familiar but distinctly new concepts. Shonen Knife may have begun as a de facto Ramones tribute, but the band has grown into a unique sonic entity that embraces all genres and reconfigures them into its own singular sound. Given…
BANDI Wear Creates an Alternative to Granny’s Fanny Pack
From necessity comes invention, and from the need to store everyday essentials in a convenient and stylish way came BANDI Wear. Locals Beth Koenig and Bev Vance Perrea were busy, on-the-go moms with active lifestyles who wanted a way to stash their phones, cash and keys without overloaded pockets, clunky purses and traditional bulky fanny…
Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers with Us Elevator
When I was getting into music as a teenager, I took a genealogical approach to discovery. If I liked a particular band, then presumably I’d like the bands its members had played with previously or would play with subsequently. If you applied that same connective logic to Nicki Bluhm & The Gramblers, you would a)…
Contemporary Arts Center Announces 2015-16 Shows
Mark Mothersbaugh and Robert Mapplethorpe are the marquee names for the Contemporary Arts Center’s 2015-16 exhibition season, which will feature four additional shows. It begins on Sept. 25 with an exhibit called Myopia that features the visual and musical work of Mothersbaugh, the Akron-born co-founder and singer of the Avant-Rock band Devo. Mothersbaugh attended Kent…
Christopher Durang’s Chekhovian Blender
Christopher Durang got an early start as a playwright. “When I was 8,” he told The Juilliard Journal (he teaches playwriting at the Juilliard School), “I announced to my mother I was going to write a play. It was my own two-page version of an I Love Lucy episode, and my class at Our Lady…
Past, Present, Future
B lah concrete no longer dominates the Contemporary Arts Center lobby. But, ironically, a gray palette defines one of two new exhibits coinciding with the redesign of the 12-year-old space. The other exhibit uses bright light to conceal and reveal. Together, the three undertakings reflect the challenging, ongoing need to embrace the past, present and…
