Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Films centering on teens dealing with terminal illnesses have come a long way in a relatively short time. Current young-adult audiences probably have no real memories of Nicholas Sparks’ A Walk to Remember, which featured Mandy Moore as a sheltered high school student with a year to live who attracts the attention of a hot…
Morning News and Stuff
Good morning all. Here’s what’s going on today in Cincinnati. If you were wondering what all the traffic was about downtown this morning (I was) this probably had something to do with it. The Hamilton County Courthouse was evacuated around 8:20 a.m. due to a suspicious suitcase that was flagged by bomb sniffing dogs there.…
Morning News and Stuff
Hello all. I hope your weekend was great and you got to spend some time soaking up the victorious vibes at the pride parade Saturday following Friday’s historic Supreme Court decision. It was indeed epic. But now it’s Monday, so let’s talk about news for a minute. You may have seen the news about Bree…
Salazar 2.0: Mita’s
My brother is a bellboy at the Cincinnatian Hotel, and when he turned 20 this past January, there was only one place he wanted to go for his birthday dinner: OTR’s Salazar. His obsession was well placed — the former executive chef at the Cincinnatian’s Palace Restaurant, Jose Salazar’s eponymous bistro serves up some of…
Summer Music Fests in the Great Indoors
When you think summer music festivals, you probably think about things like high-powered sunscreen, hydration and the chance that you might get drenched if a storm rolls through. But this weekend in Greater Cincinnati, there are three festival that spotlight our great music scene, and you won’t need an umbrella, SPF 500 or $8 bottles…
Morning News and Stuff
Goood morning y’all. I’m a bit bleary today, having spent yesterday on a bus to Columbus and back to watch the State Senate do its thang. More on that later, though. In somber news, today is the funeral for Sonny Kim, the 27-year Cincinnati Police Department veteran who was shot to death last week while…
Your Weekend To Do List (6/26-6/28)
FRIDAY PRIDE!!!! Kick off the weekend with the PRIDE PUB CRAWL Friday the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Obergefell vs. Hodges, a set of cases challenging same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. The court ruled in a 5-4 opinion that the equal protection clause of the constitution requires all states to…
Stage Door: Too Many Bosses, One Crusader and a Theater Party
Need a good laugh this weekend? Cincinnati Shakespeare has the show you want to see: One Man Two Guvnors, based on an 18th-century comedy, The Servant of Two Masters. It’s a riot of slapstick, fart jokes, pratfalls, lewd innuendo and more. Francis Henshaw (Matthew Lewis Johnson) is the hapless hero, trapped between jealous bosses and a crew…
Supreme Court Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage Nationwide
Just moments ago, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Obergefell vs. Hodges, a set of cases challenging same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. The court ruled in a 5-4 opinion that the equal protection clause of the constitution requires all states to grant marriage rights to same-sex couples. "The Fourteenth…
Your Weekend Playlist: Rainy Day Tunes
Since the forecast for this upcoming weekend screams “absolutely sucky,” instead of fighting it, go ahead and embrace the rain. Whether you’re allowing yourself some “me” time to sink into your own thoughts or are keeping your favorite human close to your side, slide your ass back into bed, pour yourself some tea and put…
Morning News and Stuff
Hello all. Here’s what’s up this morning in Cincinnati. Before I begin, I want to repurpose a joke I made on Twitter as a (not really) serious proposition. Someone should be allowed to sell beer at City Hall. Heck, they could brew it in the basement. Two words: REVENUE STREAM. Am I right? I say…
The Slippery Slope of Journalistic Ethics
Journalists live on a slippery slope when it come to ethics. I’ve never met a colleague who was an absolutist, saying they’d do what they know is right or good regardless of the consequences. And I’ve never met a colleague whose situational ethics were so sloppy that their response to likely consequences was “whatever.” Explicitly…
Onstage: Serials!
Know Theatre’s Tamara Winters is straightforward when asked why the Over-the-Rhine theater launched Serials! a year ago: “We wanted to give audiences a reason to keep coming back. We keep bringing it back because it’s working!” Late last summer, Serials! featured scripts by five playwrights delivered in 15-minute installments across five alternating Monday evenings. Know,…
Music: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
The fun-loving hippies that make up Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are coming to The Shoe. If you like good music and are great at ignoring band politics, you should definitely check ’em out. Just do yourself a favor and don’t land at the barricade. From the moment the group burst onto the scene…
Music: Punch Brothers
When describing concerts, — especially those of the Bluegrass variety — many would probably use words like “loud” and “rowdy.” Much more rare is a Bluegrass show that has the power to bring a hush over the crowd. The Punch Brothers create that kind of experience, with lilting melodies that bring the listener to new…
Eats: Gadabout Doughnuts at the O.F.F. Market
Cincinnati is filled with artisan bakers, so what’s one more? At Oakley Fancy Flea Market (O.F.F. Market) on May 30, Karina Rice debuted her handcrafted donuts under the moniker Gadabout Doughnuts, a term meaning “a person who flits about in social activity.” The market was a success, and it marked the beginning of Gadabout making…
Music: Tedeschi Trucks Band with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, both individually and as a unit, are musicians about whom words can barely do justice. Something of a power duo, Tedeschi and Trucks have been slaying it onstage separately for decades. With every member bringing strong, varied influences and serious commitment, the band is as hot as ever and only…
Music: Heartless Bastards
From the very start, Heartless Bastards made it clear they weren’t interested in reinventing the Blues/Classic Rock wheel, just riding it as far and as fast as humanly possible without ever forgetting how they got where they were going and where they came from in the first place, musically and geographically. Wennerstrom was never aiming…
Art: The Vesper Project
In Latin, “vesper” means “evening star” or, more commonly, just “evening” — a junction of night and day. Although it refers to a surname in the Contemporary Arts Center’s new exhibit from Titus Kaphar, The Vesper Project, the word feels right at home. Polarities coexist at every turn in The Vesper Project, a culmination of…
Event: Pop Up Drag Brunch
Help turn the Queen City into Drag Queen City while getting your brunch game on. You can celebrate Cincinnati Pride and your appetite at 21c Museum Hotel’s Metropole restaurant during Pop Up Drag Brunch, an event that includes cocktails from mixologist Catherine Manabat, a brunch prepared by chef Jared Bennett and, of course, live performances…
Event: Future Science
What happens when you put science and cooking together? Well, Breaking Bad, but also Future Science’s upcoming show, “Food.” A group of “scientists,” who also happen to be local comedians Andy Gasper, Karl Spaeth, Chris Weir and Logan Lautzenheiser, will discuss the present and future of food in their variously themed monthly live comedy show…
Event: Garlic Festival
Garlic: It’s not just for scaring away vampires. This bulb, a cousin to the onion, has been in both culinary and medicinal use for thousands of years, and is a staple in Asian and Mediterranean diets. The annual Greensleeves Garlic Festival lets you sample 20 varieties of garlic during a day-long event with live music,…
Event: MainStrasse Village Bazaar
This outdoor marketplace is an antique- and art-lover’s dream, filled with vintage treasures and repurposed items such as furniture, home goods and décor, architectural elements, jewelry, clothing, collectibles, etc. Spend the afternoon browsing Sixth Street and check out every unique item vendors have to offer. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday. Free. Sixth Street, Covington, Ky., mainstrasse.org.
Event: Panegyri Greek Festival
If you’re a fan of cult-classic My Big Fat Greek Wedding (and who isn’t?), then get yourself to Holy Trinity-St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church for their annual Panegyri Greek Festival. This Queen City favorite features bouzouki music, traditional Greek dancers (where visitors are encouraged to join in on group dances!), rides, a Greek culture exhibit,…
Event: WestFest
Harrison Avenue transforms into the West Side’s biggest street party for the 14th year in a row. An estimated 30,000 people will fill the block, featuring two separate stages for live local music, as well as beer booths, snow cone stands and grub from local eateries such as N.Y.P.D. Pizza, Maury’s Tiny Cove, Big Dog…
Event: OTR Beerfest: CANival
Washington Park hosts the inaugural Over-the-Rhine brew festival dedicated solely to cans — OTR Beerfest: CANival. It’s a celebration of canned craft beer (no glass bottles here) and features more than 100 different varieties from breweries all over the country, including locals. There will entertainment on stage all day, food trucks lining 14th Street, and…
Art: Area Art Show at Middletown Arts Center
The Middletown Arts Center (MAC), which offers art education opportunities for the community via more than 150 annual class offerings as well as gallery exhibitions, presents the opening reception and awards ceremony for their annual Area Art Show. The exhibition features work by local artists in watercolor, oil, acrylic, drawing and mixed media, with a…
Music: Radiohead: The Bends Tribute Show
Radiohead’s 1997 album, OK Computer, is considered a classic by critics and fans alike, while post-OK albums like Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows are hailed for their progressive experimentalism. But in 1995, after garnering attention with the hit “Creep” and before breaking wide with OK Computer, Radiohead released one of the more underappreciated…
Art: Jonah Bokaer
Jonah Bokaer will present a 30-minute performance piece called Study for Occupant at the Contemporary Arts Center in connection with the museum’s current Daniel Arsham exhibit, Remember the Future. Bokaer will move about Arsham’s work, including the immense and seemingly petrified pile of old media devices that Arsham has created. The two men first collaborated…
Comedy: Tom Rhodes
Comedian Tom Rhodes is truly a citizen of the world. “I have had everything in storage for the last nine years,” he says. “Last year, I spent five months in Europe, a month in Asia and six months relentlessly playing all over North America.” Rhodes’ foray into international work started in the U.K., but blossomed…
Event: CityBeat Pride Outing
CityBeat is taking over Horseshoe Casino’s Diamond Lounge with drag queens, DJs and donations for Lighthouse Youth Services and Strategies to End Homelessness’ LGBTQ+ youth homelessness-prevention initiative, Safe and Supported. Enjoy music by DJ Fuseamania, DJ Jess the Ripper and drag performances from host Jessica Dimon, plus Chasity Marie, Khloe Dimon, Aaliyah Milian, Harlee Rainz…
Literary: Margo Taft Stever & Hong Shen
In 2012, Margo Taft Stever and Hong Shen (with co-author James Taft Stever) published Looking East: William Howard Taft and the 1905 U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Asia: The Photographs of Harry Fowler Woods in Chinese. The book documents a trip organized by President Theodore Roosevelt’s then-Secretary of War (and Cincinnati native) William Howard Taft, which…
Event: Food Truckin’ for Josh Cares
Spend your lunch hour on Fountain Square raising funds for Josh Cares, an organization dedicated to providing companionship and support to hospitalized children and their families. Food Truckin’ for Josh Cares brings more than 15 area food trucks to the Square, including C’est Cheese, Hungry Bros., Red Sesame, Urban Grill and more to feed you…
Promising British Sci-Fi Lands Stateside
In the not-so-distant future, artificial intelligence is created to help out those who created it — aka us, people. They schedule our meetings, adjust our thermostats and secure our homes. Maybe they take the shape of people, clean our bathrooms and watch our children. Inevitably they become our friends, confidants and, perhaps, our lovers or…
Perspective — Not Paradise — is Lost in ‘Escobar’
Earlier this year, in McFarland, USA (from director Niki Caro) —featuring Kevin Costner as Jim White, the reluctant yet devoted coach of a cross-country team in a small migrant community in California — we experienced life through the eyes and situation of White and his resilient all-American family. White is the stereotypical highly principled coach,…
History Refuses to Repeat Itself in Titus Kaphar’s CAC Exhibit
In Latin, “vesper” means “evening star” or, more commonly, just “evening” — a junction of night and day. Although it refers to a surname in the Contemporary Arts Center’s new exhibit from Titus Kaphar, The Vesper Project, the word feels right at home. Polarities coexist at every turn in The Vesper Project, a culmination of…
‘Morning Star’ Rising
Tuesday is the long-anticipated opening of Morning Star, Cincinnati Opera’s first world premiere in more than 50 years. When the lights go up in the School for Creative and Performing Arts’ Corbett Theater, it will mark the culmination of an odyssey spanning more than 15 years for composer Ricky Ian Gordon and his librettist William…
A Big Bowl of ‘Serials!’ at Know
Know Theatre’s Tamara Winters is straightforward when asked why the Over-the-Rhine theater launched Serials! a year ago: “We wanted to give audiences a reason to keep coming back. We keep bringing it back because it’s working!” Late last summer, Serials! featured scripts by five playwrights delivered in 15-minute installments across five alternating Monday evenings. Know,…
City Desk June 24-30
Cincinnati Police Officer Sonny Kim Killed in the Line of Duty The Cincinnati Police Department on June 19 lost its first officer in the line of duty since 2000. Cincinnati police officer Sonny Kim, 48, was shot and killed by a gunman in Madisonville as he responded to a 911 call about a man with…
Public Fight
A group calling itself the Cincinnati Educational Justice Coalition packed 60 people into a small conference room at the West End YMCA June 18 to discuss solutions to a long-standing issue — the stubborn gap separating low-income Cincinnati students from their more well-off peers. The coalition started in late 2013 and is made up of…
Larry Gross (1954-2015)
Longtime CityBeat staffer and columnist Larry Gross passed away on Monday, June 15 at the age of 61. Best known in these pages as the author of the long-running “Living Out Loud” column, Larry started at CityBeat during the 1990s as an accountant. He happily played the part of the curmudgeon over the years —…
Larry Gross: Charles Bukowski, Neat
Larry Gross was a friend to many at CityBeat, an innovative and thoughtful author and longtime supporter of independent media. He died of a heart attack on Monday, June 15, 2015. He was 61. Find a collection of remembrances from friends and colleagues originally published in CityBeat here. He puckered his wet pink lips in…
Pride Week Calendar
WEDNESDAY 24 Cincinnati Pride and Summer Cinema at Washington Park — Washington Park’s free weekly summer movie nights continue with a screening of beloved high school comedy Mean Girls. Guests are welcome to bring lawn chairs, blankets and picnic grub. And remember: On Wednesdays we wear pink. 8:30 p.m. Free. Washington Park, 1230 Elm St,…
Ohio, Surrounding States Await Same-Sex Marriage Ruling
UPDATE, 06/26 10:15 am: The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. Read more here. Cincinnati is at the center of what may be the defining moment for same-sex marriage in America. Before the end of the month, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on Obergefell vs. Hodges, a series…
Is it OK to Say ‘Queer’?
“Queer ” means different things to different people, making it difficult to clearly define. It is not necessarily codified within the LGBTQ community — or within mainstream society for that matter — but it is evolving, as language does. When it comes down to it, using the word is all about context. Derived from a…
Leelah’s Legacy
It has been almost six months since the tragic death of Leelah Alcorn, the transgender 17-year-old who attained international attention for her death and accompanying suicide note on her Tumblr page — which has sincebeen deleted upon her parents’ request. Reading it, the note was also a plea that yearned for a national conversation about…
This Week’s Dining Events
WEDNESDAY 24 Food Truckin' for Josh Cares — Spend your lunch hour on Fountain Square raising funds for Josh Cares, an organization dedicated to providing companionship and support to hospitalized children and their families. The third annual Food Truckin’ for Josh Cares brings more than 15 area food trucks to the Square, including C’est Cheese,…
Swift Smack Down, Swift Response
HOT: Swift Smack Down, Swift Response Last year, Pop hitmaker Taylor Swift pulled her music from Spotify, saying she didn’t feel it “fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists and creators.” Outside of some online begging for her to stay, the streaming service did little in response to Swift’s (and many others’) complaints about low per-stream…
Queer City Spotlight: Safe and Supported
Almost a year and a half ago, the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) invited Cincinnati’s Hamilton County and Houston, Texas’ Harris County to participate in a pilot initiative to end LGBTQ youth homelessness. Lighthouse Youth Services and Strategies to End Homelessness accepted the invitation here in Cincy and created Safe and…
A Year of Queer
W hen it comes to the LGBTQ+ community, this past year has been just as controversial as this issue’s theme — “A Year of Queer” — might seem. Like our title, the past year challenged societal norms and opinions about traditionally unknown or taboo subjects. For the queer community, it has been a year of…
Sound Advice: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros with The Bright Light Social Hour and Letts
The fun-loving hippies that make up Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are coming to The Shoe. If you like good music and are great at ignoring band politics, you should definitely check ’em out. Just do yourself a favor and don’t land at the barricade. From the moment the group burst onto the scene…
Sound Advice: Punch Brothers with Béla Fleck and Abigail Washburn
When describing concerts, — especially those of the Bluegrass variety — many would probably use words like “loud” and “rowdy.” Much more rare is a Bluegrass show that has the power to bring a hush over the crowd. The Punch Brothers create that kind of experience, with lilting melodies that bring the listener to new…
Sound Advice: Tedeschi Trucks Band with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings and Doyle Bramhall II
Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, both individually and as a unit, are musicians about whom words can barely do justice. Something of a power duo, Tedeschi and Trucks have been slaying it onstage separately for decades. Trucks — nephew of Allman Brothers’ founding drummer Butch Trucks —started playing guitar at age 9 and made his…
Sound Advice: Heartless Bastards with Craig Finn
I have two enduring memories of singer Erika Wennerstrom and Heartless Bastards. The first unfolded in 2005 when I experienced the band’s live power for the first time at Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest festival. The Bastards, then still a trio and based in Cincinnati, took the outdoor stage at Austin’s late Club de Ville…
Dan Karlsberg’s Brilliant Love Letter to ’Nati Jazz
Cincinnati’s Jazz scene took a hit last year when one of its longstanding and more popular venues, the Blue Wisp Jazz Club, closed. But if you think the Wisp’s closure marked the death of Jazz in Cincinnati, you are underestimating not only the endurance of the city’s great Jazz musicians, but also Jazz itself. It…
Ms. Dynamite
M uch has changed for Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings since the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based retro Soul/Funk band played the (old) Southgate House in Newport, Ky. in 2010. The venue’s ballroom was packed tight, and you could tell this band was on the verge of becoming far more than a club-sized attraction. Five years on, and…
Cooking with Cauliflower
While talking to my mother this past week, she informed me that all of the cauliflower in her garden was coming in at the same time and she was scrambling to find ways to quickly cook and preserve it. She was going to bake some of it into casseroles to freeze, and some of it…
Gadabout Doughnuts (Feature)
Cincinnati is filled with artisan bakers, so what’s one more? At Oakley Fancy Flea Market (O.F.F. Market) on May 30, Karina Rice debuted her handcrafted donuts under the moniker Gadabout Doughnuts, a term meaning “a person who flits about in social activity.” The market was a success, and it marked the beginning of Gadabout making…
Heart for the People
S ummer has returned, with languid days, dripping ice cream cones and sweaty car rides, flip-flops and sunscreen and a marathon of art fairs and block parties. In fact, summer seems fit to burst with art festivals, enough to fill every weekend. One such festival is Art on Vine, which returns to Fountain Square July…
