Event: Best of Cincinnati Party
Join CityBeat in a fabulous celebration of everything that makes the Tristate awesome at the Best of Cincinnati Party, featuring a rich combination of delicious food and drink from more than 40 local vendors, including Django Western Taco, Mynt, 1215 Wine Bar & Coffee Lab, Nada and Coffee Emporium. No party is complete without a…
Event: The Cincinnati Gorilla Run
This Sunday don’t be surprised to find downtown resembling a scene from Planet of the Apes. Hundreds of runners dressed as our endangered primate relatives will be participating in the Cincinnati Gorilla Run 5K presented by The Gorilla Glue Company, which aims to raise money for the Mountain Gorilla Conservation Fund. Gorillas found in the…
Event: Easter Bunny Express
All aboard for family adventure on the Easter Bunny Express. Take a ride on a historic train to LM&M Junction for a special visit with the Easter Bunny and Farmer Brown, where kids can partake in an Easter egg hunt. Bags will be provided and children can take photos with the Easter Bunny. 10 a.m.,…
Class: How to Build a Rain Barrel
Spring is slowly showing itself as the winter and its accursed snow melt away. As you plan to plant petunias, sunflowers, vegetables and more, consider the task of watering and the best practices to save money, go green and store water for a hot summer so your plants (and your wallet) won’t suffer. The Civic…
Art: POP-UP CINCY Concept Camp
POP-UP CINCY, a monthly pop-up organization founded by local artist and designer Catherine Richards, invites creative thinkers and makers to participate in the second Concept Camp at an unused storefront in Corryville. Participants will brainstorm with peers from various sectors about effective ways to take their ideas from concept to completion in this one-day event.…
Event: Over the Moon Vintage Market
Rustic vases, crocheted tops, paint-chipped mirror frames and more will flood the Over the Moon Vintage Market this weekend. Shop a variety of vendors as you peruse various booth displays for vintage and urban goods, including primitives, furniture, garden items, artisan jewelry and unique feminine and bohemian style clothing. 4-9 p.m. Friday; 9 a.m.-4 p.m.…
Event: 29th Annual Oyster Festival
Washington Platform’s annual Oyster Festival returns with more than 40 items and oyster combinations, including fried oyster tacos, smoked oyster salad and oyster-stuffed jalapenos prepared by award-winning chef and owner Jon Diebold. The event encourages cash donations in exchange for fun games and contests (with prizes). All event and contest proceeds benefit the St. Francis…
Literary: Chris Grabenstein
Chris Grabenstein has successfully shifted from a career in advertising and the occasional stand-up gig to become a best-selling author of books for both adults and children, the latter of which have won the Agatha Award four times. The Buffalo, N.Y., native’s latest offering for youngsters is the just-published The Island of Dr. Libris, the…
Onstage: Cirque Mechanics
The Cincinnati Pops presents Cirque Mechanics, an innovative show featuring aerialists, trapeze artists and contortionists performing alongside orchestral favorites from composers like Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Copland, Ravel and more. In a press release, conductor John Morris Russell describes it as a mix between Cirque du Soleil and the steampunk scene, with a huge titanium infrastructure placed…
Music: Sebadoh
Influential Indie Rock band Sebadoh began in 1986 as an outlet for Dinosaur Jr. bassist Lou Barlow, who showed a keen lo-fi, experimental sensibility early on but also proved himself to be a compelling songwriter. After leaving Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh evolved into one of the best bands of the era, with Barlow’s emotionally honest and…
Comedy: D.C. Benny
Like his peers Jimmy Shubert and Rocky LaPorte, D.C. Benny is a talented veteran comic who received a nice boost by competing on last season’s Last Comic Standing. Well-known in the New York and L.A. comedy scenes, Benny has also written and performed extensively for various TV projects. He also functions as the producer and…
Onstage: Buzzer
Tracey Scott Wilson, whose recent play Buzzer is at Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, once said in an interview, “The biggest issue we have in this country is race, and it’s an issue that Americans don’t talk about much.” The 48-year-old playwright, originally from New Jersey, has been doing her part to foster more dialogue. Buzzer,…
Film: Moon Dust
Detroit-based painter Scott Reeder’s new Moon Dust is a sci-fi feature film with a one-and-a-half-hour running time. Moon Dust is about the denizens of a run-down tourist resort on the moon (called Moon World) who struggle to maintain enthusiasm at a time when the hip, wealthier travelers have all gone to Mars. With its deadpan…
Onstage: Peter and the Starcatcher
In Rick Elice’s loopy script (based on Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson’s novel about Peter Pan’s backstory), wordplay abounds, sometimes blowing by faster than the typhoon that comes upon ships on the way to Rundoon with three orphan boys to be sold into slavery. But this ensemble cast can manage wind speed as they narrate…
Onstage: The Marvelous Wonderettes
When I attended the Covedale Center’s production of The Marvelous Wonderettes at a Sunday matinee, there were no young people in attendance. The show’s nostalgic score — girl-themed Pop tunes from the late 1950s and early ’60s (pre-Beatles) — has a nostalgic draw for people who grew up with them. Many in the audience responded to…
Onstage: Detroit ’67
Detroit ’67, making its regional premiere at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati this month, is not something to smile about — but it might be possible to feel good about the “tryin’,” even though 48 years later the backdrop of this story feels eerily familiar, perhaps leading us to ask if America will ever rise above such…
Art: Roe Ethridge Lecture
FotoFocus brings Postmodern photographer Roe Ethridge to the Cincinnati Art Museum for a visiting artist series lecture. Ethridge’s photography creates visual discourse on the nature of art and commercial photography by orchestrating visual fugues inspired by media culture, adapting, replicating and recombining images to create subversive still-lifes, portraits and landscapes, like bowls of moldy fruit…
Art: Artists and Authors Unite
Sunday is the last day to see the Artists and Authors Unite exhibit in the Cincinnati Room of downtown’s Main Library. This exhibit features examples of the literary classics that George Macy’s Limited Editions Club began publishing in 1929. These editions featured original signed illustrations by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Norman Rockwell and others. One example…
Ray’s Music Exchange Returns, “Rays” Stick Around
One of Cincinnati’s best groups from the late ’90s/early ’00s, Ray’s Music Exchange, is returning to the stage this weekend for its fourth annual reunion show. The band, which crafted a wide-ranging sound that incorporated everything from Jazz and Rock to Electronic, World music and beyond, performs at Over-the-Rhine's Woodward Theater this Saturday at 9…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all. News has happened. Here it is. First, let’s get this out of the way. I don’t watch football. Ever. But that doesn’t mean YOU don’t watch football. Or maybe someone you know? And heck, maybe you want to watch games that take place in the stadium you are paying for as a Hamilton…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all. Hope you had a good weekend and are recovering from whatever NCAA tournament festivities you may have attended. Yeah, yeah, Xavier won. UC lost. The Dayton Flyers pulled out an upset over Providence Friday only to lose to the Sooners last night. Depending on who you were rooting for, you’re probably either nursing…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all, it’s news time on this glorious, if rainy, Friday. Let’s go. It truly is Ohio against the world right now, at least when it comes to March Madness (which, if you’re anything like some of my friends, truly is your entire existence at this moment in time). The University of Cincinnati beat Purdue…
Stage Door: Memory Lane and Beyond
I took a trip to my senior year in high school when I attended the opening of Detroit '67 by Dominique Morisseau at Ensemble Theatre Cincinnati on Wednesday. It's set in Detroit during that city's 1967 "race riots," but they are the backdrop for a family drama: Sister and brother Chelle and Lank are trying…
Detroit ’67 (Review)
Sly, a character in Dominique Morisseau’s new play, Detroit ’67, says, “You wanna believe stuff can happen that’ll make you smile. You wanna dream … and even if the dream don’t work out … even if it don’t last … at least you felt real good tryin’.” The “stuff” that happens in Detroit ’67, making…
I Just Can’t Get Enough
Eccentric millionaire type Robert Durst — not the Limp Bizkit one, AP — has been arrested in New Orleans amidst gun charges and a separate investigation of his involvement in the 2000 death of his friend Susan Berman. If you’re reading this like, “Get that hard news out of my pop culture roundup!” you clearly…
Reel Redux: Ghostbusters and the Potential Cinematic Universe
In the first installment of "Reel Redux" I brought up the upcoming Ghosbusters reboot, so I figured I’d talk about it more in this edition. I don’t think I need to remind you about what Ghostbusters is, right? Well, for the five of you who don’t know the plot, here’s a summary: The titular group…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey all! Working from home is usually great, unless you're working from home because you're waiting for the tow truck to come for your dear old car, which has finally given up the ghost. A moment of silence, please. Anyone selling a cheap, reliable BMW for someone on a journalist's salary? Thought not. Anyway, on…
Wild Tales
Writer-director Damián Szifrón’s Academy Award nominee (Best Foreign Language Film) Wild Tales bursts onto screens in the region this weekend with its eclectic patchwork of six short stories featuring distressed characters finding unique ways to emerge from crises. Based solely on the trailer, it would appear that there are “wild” tonal shifts — from thriller…
It Follows
Following (pun intended) on the heels of writer-director Jennifer Kent’s mesmerizing horror reinvention The Babadook comes another relative multi-hyphenate newbie David Robert Mitchell with his sly take on the unrelenting things that hound unsuspecting teens on the big screen. It Follows subverts the typical playbook, though, twisting the powerful allure of sexuality and the morality…
Insurgent
While she’s not exactly a girl on fire, Beatrice “Tris” Prior (Shailene Woodley) finds herself waking from a series of fiery dreams, teeming with dead family members and friends accusing her unforgivable sins. “Our blood is on your hands,” they tell her and she hitches this psychological cross upon her thin shoulders and soldiers on.…
Music: Vince Gill & Friends
Although Vince Gill is not yet 60, he is already in the Country Music Hall of Fame. Known as a singer with many No. 1 hits over the years, he is considered a musician’s musician and his varied schedule proves it. Gill is a world-class guitarist who collaborates on occasion with other top artists, plays…
Local Swingers Bring A&E Back to Cincinnati
TV network A&E must really like Cincinnati: There’s a show about Nick and Drew Lachey’s sports bar venture in the works; numerous local police have been featured on The First 48; and who could forget Rowhouse Showdown? CityBeat described the sketchy Price Hill-based home renovation show on A&E’s FYI channel as a “hot mess” in…
The Evolution of a Shooter: Pierre Morel and ‘The Gunman’
Movie taglines boast new productions being “From the director of Taken” or “From the cinematographer of The Transporter,” but how many people truly know the name of this mystery moviemaker? Pierre Morel acquired a degree of fame for his association with the Luc Besson film factory, where he cut his teeth as part of the…
Ballet’s Powerful ‘Mozart’s Requiem’ Takes the Stage Again
Cincinnati Ballet’s most recent production, the frothy Alice (in Wonderland), boasted the largest paid attendance in the company’s history of subscription series productions. This weekend, Artistic Director Victoria Morgan contrasts another potential blockbuster, Adam Hougland’s full-length Mozart’s Requiem. It’s set to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s powerful “Requiem Mass in D Minor,” composed just before (and some…
Stage or Screen?
I had a conversation recently with someone who loves going to the movies but seldom heads to the theater. She asked why she should consider changing her habits. I had to think about this, because I spend a lot more time in theaters than cinemas. But I love both, and there’s surely common ground —…
Society Reborn
P assion almost led Mount Healthy native Latria Roberts to flee Cincinnati for a life in the big(ger) city — somewhere like Los Angeles or New York. But that passion, combined with a desire to give back to her hometown, ultimately kept Roberts here and is now breathing life back into what she hopes will…
Cincinnati vs. The World 3.18.15
Facebook has clarified its rules on what types of posts it bans or does not ban and why. For the first time, the website is explicitly banning revenge porn or content promoting sexual violence and exploitation. Posts that “shame private individuals” or encourage suicide and eating disorders are also prohibited. World +1 Cincinnati City Council…
Marijuana Legalization Effort Moves Forward
A controversial effort to legalize the growth and sale of marijuana is one step closer to the November ballot. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine on March 13 approved ResponsibleOhio’s ballot summary language, or the description of its proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize pot but restrict growth to 10 sites owned by the group’s investors…
Proposal: Give Mount Auburn Park $5 Million Revamp
Two members of Cincinnati City Council would like to spend $9 million to revamp a 20-acre park in Mount Auburn while also improving the surrounding area, especially along nearby Auburn Avenue. Inwood Park sits along Vine Street on the western edge of the neighborhood between uptown and Over-the-Rhine. Councilmen Charlie Winburn and Chris Seelbach would…
Deeper Issues
L ast August, the police shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri sent ripples far beyond the St. Louis suburb, sparking numerous protests across the country. The ongoing tensions — Brown was black and the police officer who killed him was white — had a particular resonance in Cincinnati, which saw three days…
Morning News and Stuff
Hey Cincy! It’s news time. The city of Cincinnati will forgive all but $100,000 of the nearly $300,000 Mahogany’s owner Liz Rogers owes the city for her defunct restaurant, which closed its location at The Banks last September. City Manager Harry Black proposed the plan, which would require Rogers to make $800 monthly payments, in…
Regional Teams in the NCAA Tournament
NOTE: The first round of the NCAA Tournament is called the second round because of play-in games Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s weird but that's just how things are now. Kentucky Wildcats (No. 1 seed; 34-0, 18-0 SEC) No. 1 seed vs. winner of Manhattan/Hampton 9:40 p.m. Thursday Kentucky’s quest to become the first team since…
Peak Performance
O n Sunday evening, after the NCAA Selection Committee revealed the first three tournament regions with no sign of Xavier’s name, the Musketeers started to sweat. “For a second there, I was hoping they’d expand the tournament so we could be the (69th) team called,” Xavier coach Chris Mack joked. “There was tension in the…
Defying the Odds
T here was no telling which way the University of Cincinnati basketball program would lean after Mick Cronin announced a leave of absence from the team he has coached for the past nine years to deal with an unruptured brain aneurysm. Would the Bearcats continue to lean forward as they looked to continue their early-season…
New Café Opens Inside Library’s Main Branch
Today, the terms library and café are as synonymous as wireless and Internet or smart and phone. When Starbucks partnered with Barnes & Noble in 1993, book repositories, like libraries, turned from hushed, food-prohibited reading sanctuaries to today’s food-friendly collaboratives. The main branch of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County went more than…
Son of a Preacher Man (Review)
W hat passes for “good” fried chicken in this town always baffles me. Maybe I’m spoiled by remembering the delicious birds that my mother and grandmother — Georgia farm girls — put on the table just about every week during my childhood. Here in 21st century Cincinnati, people rave about Hitching Post or The Eagle,…
Booster Shot
Vi nce Gill is no stranger to Cincinnati. The first time I interviewed him in 2006, he recognized the 513 area code in my phone number and knew it covered the Queen City. When I called him last week to talk with him again, the first thing he says is, “How is life up there…
Galactic with The Record Company
New Orleans is of course known for its musical history and for producing funky jams amidst the joyous chaos of the city. Galactic has been a part of the Crescent City groove machinery for almost two decades now. The horn-driven band has always been open minded when it comes to joining forces with other artists…
Red with Islander, 3 Years Hollow and Seven Circle Sunrise
Since its 2004 formation, Red has had a rather chameleonic presence. The Nashville, Tenn., outfit has exhibited a variety of related but distinct musical facets, shifting from Alternative Rock to straight Hard Rock to Post Grunge to the hybridized Metal of its just-released Of Beauty and Rage, all in the service of a subtle but…
Drive-By Truckers with Eric Church
Drive-By Truckers’ 10th studio album, 2014’s English Oceans, finds the prolific Georgia-bred Roots rockers rolling down the same dusty highway that has made them one of the singular acts of the last 15 years — twang-infested, Skynyrd-esque guitars, modest yet affecting vocals and lyrics that illuminate the lives of everyday Southerners. Yet it’s not long…
Goodbye June with Mamadrones
There’s a distinctively rootsy Americana vibe that snakes its way through the Hard Rock volume of Goodbye June, like a lazy southern river. But even when the Nashville, Tenn.-based quintet charts an acoustic course, the powerful sound it generates could raise a blister on a crocodile’s ass. You could refer to it as Led Tractor…
Music: Galactic with The Record Company
New Orleans is of course known for its musical history and for producing funky jams amidst the joyous chaos of the city. Galactic has been a part of the Crescent City groove machinery for almost two decades now. The horn-driven band has always been open minded when it comes to joining forces with other artists…
Music: Red with Islander, 3 Years Hollow and Seven Circle Sunrise
Since its 2004 formation, Red has had a rather chameleonic presence. The Nashville, Tenn., outfit has exhibited a variety of related but distinct musical facets, shifting from Alternative Rock to straight Hard Rock to Post Grunge to the hybridized Metal of its just-released Of Beauty and Rage, all in the service of a subtle but…
Beats V. Spotify, The Payment Round
HOT: Beats V. Spotify, The Payment Round Since Apple acquired the Beats Music streaming music service last year, there have been a lot of comparisons between the service vs. Spotify. For the artist, Beats may have a leg up on Spotify, something that will likely translate into good PR for the Apple-run company. Independent musician…
Music: Drive-By Truckers with Eric Church
Drive-By Truckers’ 10th studio album, 2014’s English Oceans, finds the prolific Georgia-bred Roots rockers rolling down the same dusty highway that has made them one of the singular acts of the last 15 years — twang-infested, Skynyrd-esque guitars, modest yet affecting vocals and lyrics that illuminate the lives of everyday Southerners. Yet it’s not long…
Music: Goodbye June with Mamadrones
There’s a distinctively rootsy Americana vibe that snakes its way through the Hard Rock volume of Goodbye June, like a lazy southern river. But even when the Nashville, Tenn.-based quintet charts an acoustic course, the powerful sound it generates could raise a blister on a crocodile’s ass. You could refer to it as Led Tractor…
The Happy Maladies Showcase Collaborations with ‘Must Love Cats’
The Happy Maladies may share their instrumental make-up with a typical Bluegrass band (mandolin, banjo, violin, acoustic guitar, stand-up bass), but the anything-but-typical Indie Chamber Folk foursome has an expansive palette of influences that merges a wide range of styles, resulting in a compellingly unique sound. Fans of the recent MusicNOW festival’s progressive programming who…
Comedy That Rocks
Jeremy Essig may or may not be recording a CD at Go Bananas this week. “I don’t know if they know about it,” he says, laughing, “I just sort of decided. I had a spot open up and [Go Bananas] had a week open, so I picked it up. I was planning on recording whenever…
You Can’t Always Get What You Want
Sometime during the run-up to the 2008 election when then-Senator Barack Obama and then-Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton were in a Battle Royale for the Democratic presidential nod, someone here in Cincinnati had the brilliant idea to have an all-call for political posters. As I recall, it was a multi-gallery event. Artists of all stripes designed…
