City: COAST Squanders Taxpayer Money
Cincinnati’s solicitor says an anti-tax group is wasting taxpayer money by filing a federal lawsuit against the city without first contacting its Law Department to resolve the alleged violations outside of court.—- In an e-mail sent to Chris Finney, an attorney who represents the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), City Solicitor John…
Live Review: Irene Moon at Art Damage
Good ol’ Art Damage Lodge opened up its doors last Friday to its regular crowd of chin-scratching art buffs, alcoholic hipsters and crusty noise mongrels, who filed into a hot, sticky room and plopped down on hot, sticky couches to get their fix of some hot, sticky, live experimental muse-sick. —- The headlining act, performance…
Events: Friends of the Public Library Book Sale
Talk about “friends” with benefits. The Friends of the Public Library, a nonprofit organization that sponsors numerous reading initiatives for children and adults and helps to purchase new reading material for Cincinnati’s public libraries, is hosting its 37th Annual Book Sale. The sale will showcase more than 80,000 used books, CDs, DVDs and more, and…
Preview: Cemetery Golf
Writer-performer Jim Loucks adapted recollections of his Southern Christian childhood into a multi-character, 75-minute drama requiring one actor and one bench. Jim, the 10-year-old storyteller, is as much fiction as biography. According to producer-wife Deb Loucks, Golf “sharply criticizes fundamentalist Christianity but from a humanist point of view.” Not any sort of satire, it examines…
Preview: Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Losers of the Night
Lyle Benjamin, artistic director of Queen City Off Broadway, is restaging this hit production from Chicago, calling it the “perfect show when you drink, look French and despair.” Songwriter Brel is the master of cool melancholy, and this 80-minute show offers 21 of his songs, 14 of which have never before been translated in English.…
Preview: Villainy
From Iago to Salieri, theater has given us a roster of villains who, despite their evil, remain oddly compelling. For that reason, This Ain’t Real Theatre Company set out to explore the concept of villainy. What does it mean today? What did it mean for Shakespeare? Co-founder Justin L. Baldwin worked for Kentucky Shakespeare Festival…
Preview: The Secrets Project
"Keeping secrets affects our identities and our self-awareness,” says director-coordinator Lindsey Barlag. The 60-minute Secrets Project was group-written by several Miami University students then nailed down into a performance script that “explores our humanity through secrets.” Five women and two men will do the revealing and exploring in Cincinnati. In improvisation workshops, group members revealed…
Preview: Travel
“I used to be afraid of heights,” admits Jeremy Millsaps of the aerial dance troupe Jamming Talent Productions, creator of last year’s Strawberry Pie. In Travel, his feet never touch the ground. “I just focus on what’s in my hand,” whether it’s a hoop, trapeze or length of silk (fabric burns, not falls, are his…
Preview: Assholes and Aureoles
They’d finally had it. Diane Kondrat and Karen Irwin, theater vets from Bloomington, Ind., got sick of seeing all the funny parts go to men. Collaborating with playwright Eric Pfeffinger, they took matters into their own hands. As its colorful title would imply, the piece aims to tear down societal taboos and reexamine why we…
Preview: Empire of Feathers
It’s a bummer growing up. “We get to an age where we think we have to become adults and put the toys away,” says Karim Muasher of Giant Bird, an internationally touring three-man troupe whose members ignored that impulse. Empire of Feathers is an epic adventure in an alternate universe, crafted from the junk we…
Art: Visual Fringe
The Cincinnati Fringe Festival has been diligently working to make its Visual Fringe component an important part of the overall festival experience. For this year, the Visual Fringe Selection Committee (chaired by Matt Steffen) received applications from 30 artists and chose seven to display their work at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, near the festival…
Preview: It Might Be Okay
Daring to define the myth and meaning of being a modern American is daunting enough using the more standard instruments of language or paint. This CCM-based dance theater collective presents stories and physical imagery that reflect what it means to be young and alive in the United States in 2009. Originally developed as a response…
Preview: The 4 Food Groups
With a dinner party of four people, four food groups and four scenes of true stories relating to sexuality, the performance possibilities intrigue. Are they couples or friends or something else? The four scenes even suggest sex: The Intro, The Prospect, The Climax and The Morning After. Originally created at the 11th hour — i.e.,…
Preview: April Fools
The four fools of Four Humors Theater’s April Fools are Fringe veterans, in this country and in Canada, with multiple appearances since the company was formed in 2005. Last year they won the Cincy Fringe Producer’s Pick with Mortem Capiendum. This year Four Humors’ stated quest is laughter, and it seems likely that not only…
Preview: The Gayer Show
The Gayer Show is a narrative, autobiographical theater piece presented by Fringe regulars Les Kurkendall and Dan Burnitt. The play takes an original slant on the issues concerning gay life because the two men are 20 years apart and their sensibilities are often stretched by this generation gap. The performance highlights the problems of coming…
Preview: Painted
What’s one day you’ll never forget? A person who changed everything? A color you’ll carry forever? Painted, by Cincinnati-based White Beard Productions, blends interviews and fiction, text and movement, theater and visual art. “It’s about what makes us who we are,” says Kendall Karg, one of the performers who go through pints of washable pigment…
Preview: KAZ/m
Performance Gallery is the only company that has taken part in all six Cincinnati Fringes. It's assembled a script here with multiple characters and layered storylines to follow the reverberations and repercussions of a suicide and how it shreds the veneer of safe and effective communication. “How open and honest can you be?” they ask,…
Preview: Terrorism of Everyday Life
Forget terrorism as a global threat. This show shines a light on close-to-home stuff through music, standup comedy and social commentary from a guy who’s seen a lot as a journeyman musician and close observer of the human race. Ed Hamell regularly tours his one-man show, Hamell on Trial, but has taken part in only…
Preview: 7 (x1) Samurai
Kurosawa’s classic film Seven Samurai is three hours of banditry, heroics and slaughter. David Gaines, who clowns with Big Apple Circus, gets the tale told and the slaughtering done in an hour — using two masks and one costume while playing 40-plus samurai, peasants and bandits and infusing generous amounts of Merrie Melodies comedy. “I…
Preview: Sex, Dreams and Self Control
This solo performance by Kevin Thornton has strictly autobiographical roots. It fuses music, spoken word and standup comedy into personal revelation. The show concerns a young man being groomed as an evangelical minister, who suddenly comes to the terrifying discovery of his true sexual nature. Critics have found this rite-of-passage tale to be both bold…
Events: MidPoint’s Indie Summer
All good things must end, as the MidPoint Indie Summer series unfortunately comes to a close Friday night. Local singer-songwriter Kim Taylor has the honor of closing out the season, playing at 9 p.m. But be sure to arrive early to catch Kiss Me Everlasting (7 p.m.) and Me or the Moon (8 p.m.). Beer,…
Music: Lokua Kanza
Rape is a difficult subject to think about, much less talk about. Lokua Kanza sings about it. A prolific singer/songwriter and one of the most accomplished Congolese recording artists, Kanza is currently collaborating with the Wacongo Dance Company and Africa Yetu, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting African culture, to put together a benefit show to…
Events: Fringe Festival Kick-off Party
Start this year's Fringe Festival off right with the CityBeat/Fringe Official Kick-off party held at the Art Academy and Know Theatre. There's going to be free food from Mixx Ultra Lounge and Venice on Vine, plus wine tastings from City Cellars, Christian Moerlein specials and live entertainment from local band ECLIPSE! Fringe festivities start tonight…
Preview: Where Drunk Men Go: A Poem With Music
Taken from Richard Hague's collection Alive in Hard Country, this sequence of poems circles around the many sides of addiction, echoed by deep strains of Bluegrass and Gospel. Rather than center on the customary reactions of shame or blame, this award-winning poet presents the many shards of a life lived wrong with a kind of…
Art: SOS Art
Art can be aesthetical, conceptual and traditional, and once a year it gets angry, loud, political and joyous — all under one roof. SOS ART returns for its seventh year with more than 200 visual artists, literary artists, musicians, performers and school children participating in the six-day event. Creator Saad Ghosn has a track record…
Is Anybody There? (Review)
John Crowley’s coming-of-age black comedy rides on the talents of Michael Caine as Clarence, a senile retired magician who takes up residence in an English seaside nursing home run by a married couple with a son, Edward (Son of Rambow’s Bill Milner), who is fascinated by the death that surrounds him. Caine, now 76, gives…
Preview: Brother Bailey’s Pageant of Moral Superiority & Creation Science Island Jamboree
Writer-director Brad Cupples says he and Ornamental Messiah Productions use comedy to “wake people up” about Creationism, which he calls “an abomination to common sense.” Imagine, he says, a wacky 1960s beach-blanket-bingo movie. Binky and Simone must ace a science project or spend summer in the lab instead of on the sand. Creationist Brother Bailey,…
Preview: Cinema Fantastique
Eagle to Squirrel Variety Hour is no stranger to Cincy Fringe, having performed the ear-popping Soul Verses a year ago. The uniqueness of this group resides in its combination of genres, including Electronic music, Hip Hop, Jazz and spoken word. Its political earnestness is offset by its anarchic sense of humor. In the tradition of…
Preview: No Stranger Than Home
World traveler and Minneapolis writer Katherine Glover compiles her multicultural life experiences into this one-woman piece. The fringe festival veteran says it’s only after stumbling into any number of awkward moments out in the world that one can appreciate a nice slice of humble pie. “No matter how much you’ve traveled, no matter how much…
Onstage: A Chorus Line
I saw this legendary show on its first national tour back in 1977. I was as poor as could be and had to scrape together a bucket of spare change to afford tickets. I worried that I’d wasted what precious little money I had — until the curtain went up. And when it came down,…
Preview: A Perfectly Wonderful Evening
Literary legend tells of an evening in June 1964 when Groucho Marx dined at the home of poet T.S. Eliot. The pairing seems unlikely, unless you consider that both men were famous for keeping their fans and followers guessing after the secret word. And while no one will ever know what the minds behind J.…
Onstage: Josh Blue
As if Josh Blue weren’t busy enough doing stand-up comedy and playing soccer for the U.S. paralympic team, about a year ago he became a father. He couldn't be happier. “He’s a little guy,” Blue says of his son, “but he’s growing by leaps and bounds.” Being a dad has limited his appearances, but he…
Preview: Four Wishes
Riches. Stature. Immortality. A better aim. In Four Wishes, a Native American fable retold by Gunstwork Puppet Mask Theatre of Boulder, Colo., four Abenaki tribesmen journey to the island of the great Gluskabe, who grants one wish to each. “It’s a very, very simple story,” says Michael Gunst, the show’s creator and solo performer. “It…
Preview: Body Language II: Phys. Ed.
Remember phys ed? True Body Project does and gives us this show as follow-up to last year’s Fringe fave, Body Language: A Radical Truth, which ranged upstairs and downstairs in the old School for Creative and Performing Arts. As before, this production features actors and nonactors and gives the participants and those of us attending…
Preview: Gravesongs
American playwright Robert Anderson once said, “Death ends a life but not a relationship.” Written by local playwright Sarah Underwood, Gravesongs will be performed by the five women who have constituted this year’s intern company at Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati. Underwood has worked all season long with the actors in training and intern/director Liz Maxwell…
Preview: The Edge
During the 23 years since Cincinnati actor Amy Warner first saw The Edge in Edinburgh, Scotland, she’s learned what it means to be on the edge: the edge of fear, of forgiveness, of a relationship that could fly — or crash and burn. “Empathy maybe grows, as a person gets older,” Warner says. In The…
Events: World Wide Wednesdays
Anyone who complains live music is dead in Cincinnati hasn’t been to Fountain Square in the summer. A diverse and exciting musical menu is presented just about every day of the week. This year, Fountain Square is adding international music to the mix. They will be featuring outstanding and often undiscovered local groups performing music…
Preview: The Success Show
Motivating yourself to success in an economic boom is easy. Doing it during a recession takes real focus and self-delusional determination. This pseudo-seminar with faux business guru Denny Martin takes the principles of success to new depths as PowerPoint presentations prove pointless and powerless, group exercises go wrong and all the things you learned in…
Music: Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura is a bit like a liquor-filled chocolate; something that at first seems dark and sweet but very quickly reveals a pungent center with a potent kick. The band was assembled in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1996 by vocalist/guitarist Tracyanne Campbell, percussionist/vocalist John Henderson and bassist Gavin Dunbar and gained some notoriety with their early…
Preview: Bibliography of Love
Virginia Woolf’s sweeping novel, Orlando, has been referred to as the longest love letter in history. It’s also the inspiration behind Jan Street Dance Theatre’s Bibliography of Love, a multi-faceted exploration of gender transformations of the past and present — of the Bloomsbury Group and of the quintet of performers. Artistic Director Christopher Gilbert says…
Art: Paper Mountain at the Contemporary Arts Center
I sometimes wonder if dubbing the Contemporary Arts Center's top floor The UnMuseum doesn’t give the misleading impression that the art there is somehow less important, less involved with art history than on the other floors. In most cases, the rotating exhibitions in this interactive, family-friendly environment are doubly interesting for the way that serious…
Event: Summerfair
Enjoy arts and crafts? Well this is the perfect opportunity to see and purchase the works of 323 artists from across the country and Canada. Come out and enjoy the 42nd Summerfair held at Cincinnati’s historic Coney Island. It’s a three-day event, full of entertainment, art and fun. This event has a little something for…
Preview: Incredulity
It wouldn’t be a Fringe without some improv, arguably the fringiest of all theatrical endeavors. Performers have no script to act as their safety net. They put themselves out there, and producer Dave Powell is quick to point out that they can and do occasionally fail. Don’t believe it? Don’t be so incredulous, he says.…
Preview: Guns and Chickens
CCM acting professor k. Jenny Jones and 20 of her students have put together a good old-fashioned story. Actor Taylor Scruggs says, “We wanted to create something to reflect the Chekovian acting method which we’re learning in class.” (Micha Chekov, a legendary acting teacher, was the nephew of playwright Anton.) “But it’s not a class…
Preview: Call Me
Whoa — you thought this was 2009, right? Call Me, an interdisciplinary production using your own cell phone, might shake that conviction. DIY Productions, which last year provided a surprising self-conducted Over-the-Rhine tour with Inner: City, has cooked up a new way to rattle your expectations. The Fringe and the OTR neighborhood itself are part…
Preview: Free at Last and Confused in the Land of Good & Evil
Choreographer-director Diana Ford blends song, dance, poetry, videotape, projected images and music in a 90-minute collage of sound and movement that examines problems in contemporary society. Five dancers and a poet participate live. Viewers, Ford says, will find the work reflective of their personal concerns about prejudice, abuse, domestic violence and environmental issues: “They’ll feel…
Greenest Man Alive
I really want everyone to know that I’m going green, but it’s hard to do! I don’t really invite people over to my house so they can’t see my garden, compost flies or my gray water system. I don’t have a Toyota Prius. I don’t even have a car. So no one sees that I…
Monday Fashion Inspiration
Cincinnati is slowly becoming more progressive, both economically and politically. And because economics and politics have historically been reflected through fashion and style, it’s important to pay attention to both not only understand your culture, but the world around you as well. Take the proposal of public transportation, the street car, for example. Or Cincinnati’s…
Friday Movie Roundup: Crazy Like Mike?
Who better to explore the life of Mike Tyson than James Toback? The two are mirror images in many ways. The 64-year-old director of such highly personal, often indulgent films as Fingers (1978), The Pick-up Artist (1987), Two Girls and a Guy (1997) and Black and White (1999) is a noted lothario (despite resembling a…
Local CD Review: Slow Blind Corners’ ‘New Places’
Bellevue-based three-piece Slow Blind Corners kicks up a pleasant, upbeat racket of shambolic, ’60s-styled Pop on their debut CD, New Places. The songs follow a pretty simple formula: acoustic guitars, bass and drums provide the backbeat for vocal harmonies, psychedelic-era-Beatles-informed electric riffing and the occasional bubbling synth line, which all run wild on top of…
Last One
When staff writers leave CityBeat they have, in the past, had an opportunity to publish a “so long” piece. It’s usually done as a column or a first-person commentary. My last piece for CityBeat will be a review of a new book that looks at the current U.S. slave market.—- Human trafficking is a topic…
Terminator: Salvation (Review)
The Terminator franchise is haunted by a certain set of dreams, and I don’t mean those of punch lines from the unstoppable villain (turned father-figure and savior in later reel-life installments and ideologue-busting governor in the real). No, the best moments in the narratives come via memories and dreamscapes of a burned-out future where humans…
Jarvis Cocker, The Oxygen Ponies, Chuck Mead and John Vanderslice
Man, this is shaping up to be an excellent year for music. As we approach the halfway point of 2009, I’m amazed at the quality of tuneage that’s been released so far this year. My only regret is that I can’t cover all of them, but I will continue to tilt at musical windmills nonetheless.…
Tyson (Review)
Mike Tyson is a fascinating figure, tender and incisive one minute, brutal and animalistic the next. The guy is a bipolar mess of neurosis, the result of a broken home and a childhood marked by humiliation and violence. And has there ever been a voice as mismatched to the body from which it emanates than…
Stage Door: Marry Me a Little, May Festival and Fringe Pregame
The holiday weekend is not when most people think about theater-going, but I can recommend a good choice or two if you prefer being indoors to celebrating the kick-off of summer: The Cincinnati Playhouse's production of Marry Me a Little is a quick entertainment (only a bit more than an hour long), a good choice…
Southgate Open Mic with Billy Catfish and Friends
The open mic in the Southgate House's Junie's Lounge was recently voted best open mic in town by the readers of CityBeat in our "Best of Cincinnati" issue. Saturday night at 9 p.m., several of the rotating hosts from the every-Monday-night event (Billy Catfish, Kinsey Rose, Mike Kuntz and Ryan Malott) will team together for…
CityBeat Podcast 7: Homeless in Cincinnati
This episode of the CityBeat Podcast features voices from the Cincinnati Drop Inn Center in Over-the-Rhine. Drop Inn Center staff members Pat Clifford and Kenny Havens discuss their work, providing shelter and restoring dignity to homeless men and women. (Read the related CityBeat news story here.) Suscribe to our podcast in iTunes or use our…
Wild Tambourinist Meets the Pomegranates
The Pomegranates hit a groove so deep at this past year’s South By Southwest that they managed to turn an average audience member into a flamboyant, sweaty, tambourine-wielding maniac. Here’s the evidence:—- Pretty impressive … maybe this guy had some prior experience. In either case, he's clearly proved himself. I'm thinking the Poms should look…
Tasting, Tweeting and Tributing
This weekend, as is Memorial Day weekend tradition ’round these parts, the Taste of Cincinnati brings good grub and music to the streets of downtown (Fifth Street, between Race and Broadway, to be exact). Original local bands like Marshwiggles, The Swarthy Band, The Chocolate Horse, the Tracy Walker Band and The Fairmount Girls will perform…
Jason Wells (Profile)
OK, get this: Some guy was on the top floor of a giant skyscraper, looking through a dirty window. He eventually got depressed and decided to jump through it. He fell all the way to the end. He didn’t die. Why didn’t he die? (Insert hard thinking.) Give up? Well, he was a window-washer, and…
Tea Parties Not Perfect, but…
As someone who has taken part in the local Tea Parties, I would like to respond to Kevin Osborne’s criticisms of the “angry white conservatives” who take part in these events (“Smearing Socialism,” issue of May 6). I might be the wrong man to do so, however, since I’m a Libertarian. Much of Osborne’s critiques…
Pepper’s Decision Starts a Scramble
Ever since David Pepper finally confirmed last week what CityBeat first reported online in mid-March — that the prominent local Democrat will run for Ohio Auditor next year — speculation has run rampant about who will campaign for the seat he’s vacating on the Hamilton County Commission. There’s little doubt that it’s an important race.…
Ending Us vs. Them
For some homeless people, “three hots, a cot and some assistance” won’t get them off the streets and into permanent housing, according to Pat Clifford, executive director of the Drop Inn Center. Cincinnatians understand that, and he believes that’s what really inspired the Homeless to Homes report produced by the Cincinnati/Hamilton County Continuum of Care…
Party Like It’s 1999
There is no spoon. Maybe there was prior to 1999. But that was before everything changed. During the summer of 1999, humanity suddenly had a choice between the red pill and the blue pill. We learned the first (and second) rule of fight club. We saw dead people. We filed that TPS report. Yes, we…
Another Seven Days of College Tax and Legal Weed
WEDNESDAY MAY 13 There’s only one American demographic that’s been only mildly affected by the recent recession and credit crunches, and that’s college students — they’ve actually benefited lately from the drop in gas prices and Domino’s deciding to sell two pizzas in one box. That’s all about to change for students in Providence, R.I.,…
Dale Watson with Chris Scruggs
Somewhere along the line, someone decided that Country music should be defined by big hats and arena pyrotechnics and a 12-piece band and a light show. That may be entertainment with a hillbilly chaser but it ain’t Country, Bubba. If you’re looking for honest to God Country music the way it was intended to be,…
Not Just for Indian Summer
As the weather warms and sun starts to show itself a little more frequently, we tend to cook on the grill a lot: from burgers and shrimp kabobs to pork loin and rib eyes. And while we certainly continue to drink wine through the summer, we find many more whites and rosés on the table.…
Dexateens with The Features
For the past 11 years, the Dexateens have been amassing fans and wowing critics with their unique blend of Southern arena Rock, homespun Folk lyricism, Gospel harmonies and contemporary Garage Rock sensibilities. The Tuscaloosa, Ala., quintet has been produced by Punk avatar Tim Kerr and Southern Rock icon-in-waiting Patterson Hood and has earned wildly favorable…
Fringe Festival Loosens Us Up
If Greater Cincinnati is a conservative region filled with tight-ass people, the Cincy Fringe Festival is a laxative. It loosens us up, gets things moving a little better and smoother. Maybe the Fringe Festival is fiber in our otherwise meat-and-potatoes cultural diet. The annual event helps balance out the rest of our stodgy, by-the-book year.…
BriTunes, Music Mags and A Collab Squashed
[HOT] NEWS ANCHOR/INDIE ROCK HIPSTER Until now, we always thought that the most interesting and mysterious thing about network TV news anchors was the possibility that they don’t wear pants when they’re on the air. Turns out, newscasters are just regular people (admittedly with super-human hair) and some even have good taste in music. NBC…
Music: Eat Sugar
If you were to place a bet as to what local band will be the next to follow the likes of Bad Veins, Pomegranates and Daniel Martin Moore into the ranks of “nationally acclaimed” Cincinnati area artists, putting your money on Electro/Indie foursome Eat Sugar is a pretty safe wager. One listen to the band’s…
Back to the Beginning
We’ve gotten so jaded about the hackneyed, hyperactive “franchise films” that Hollywood floods us with each summer — X-Men Origins: Wolverine, anyone? — that we fail to recognize when the movie business comes up with a good new idea. It has. Even while the usually uninspired sequels, prequels and flat-out remakes continue to get made…
Sixth Annual Cincy Fringe Festival Takes Flight
In less than a week the Cincinnati Fringe Festival will kick off its sixth annual celebration of offbeat theater and other art forms. Not every city has a Fringe Festival, and occasionally people ask why we have one. The quick response is similar to the one sometimes offered as to why a city needs an…
Skanking With Duppy A’Jamba
After parking my car on Washington Avenue in Newport, I get out and start walking north toward the river. Only a few steps from my car, still 30 yards shy of the door to the Crazy Fox Saloon, I hear a deep, dark Dub Reggae groove slinking through the nighttime air like lazy smoke with…
Sugary Goodness
If you were to place a bet as to what local band will be the next to follow the likes of Bad Veins, Pomegranates and Daniel Martin Moore into the ranks of “nationally acclaimed” Cincinnati area artists, putting your money on Electro/Indie foursome Eat Sugar is a pretty safe wager. One listen to the band’s…
Drive-By Art in Brighton
Because opening a new art gallery is timely and costly, especially if few people come in to buy or even visit, entrepreneurs have been looking for alternatives on the Internet. This, too, has problems. “In the great ocean of the Internet, any one Web site gets lost unless you can do a lot of advertising,”…
Playing with Abstraction
The body of work on display in Semantics Gallery is, at first sight, as inexplicable as the show’s title suggests: She Keeps It In Play/They Don’t Know What To Call It. As abstract paintings, drawings and sculptures, the works leave much to the imagination but they don’t entirely defy explanation. Curator Matt Morris (also a…
Music: Maurice Mattei
Veteran singer/songwriter Maurice Mattei and his band The Tempers celebrate the release of their new CD, Mauled, this Saturday at The Redmoor in Mt. Lookout. The show will feature an opening set by local Surf Rock band Don’t Fear the Reverb. The cleverly-titled Mauled is the full-band version of Mattei’s acoustic project, Kenwood Towne Center,…
Let’s Not Make Another Mistake
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 from the beginning. And that stinks. We’re a town full of treasures built or founded or opened…
Halfway There
I was half asleep on the couch the other night when something struck me: I’m the human equivalent of a soft-serve “twist” cone. I jumped slightly at this realization — nothing makes me sit bolt upright, mind you. I’m a twist cone: a safe mix of vanilla and chocolate. I was the third child born…
Blind Moose (Review)
Over the course of about eight months I watched almost every episode of the ’90s television series Northern Exposure. I was obsessed. That might explain why I recently felt so at home in a booth at The Blind Moose. Though it has a different feel than the Brick, the popular restaurant and bar on the…
Dear Sports Fans: You’re Missing Some Great Playoff Hockey. Love, the NHL
As even the most popular sports are reliant on long-standing rivalries and some sort of competitive continuity, one can imagine how the National Hockey League struggles in its ever lingering bid for mass appeal. That’s the first idea to pop up when noting that the last five Stanley Cup Finals have featured 10 different teams.…
Nelson Slater Is One Step Beyond
We meet at a café on a rainy Friday afternoon across the street from a trans-dimensional space/time portal at the base of two ancient pyramids. Each of these structures, as it was explained to me, were three times larger than the ones built by the Egyptians. These same pyramids are part of a larger sub-surface…
CAM Announces 2009-2010 Exhibition Season
The Cincinnati Art Museum's 2009-2010 season will include several photography shows, all in 2010: Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980 (Feb. 13-May 9); local photographer Thomas Schiff's Las Vegas 360 (April 3-July 18): and Walker Evans: Decade by Decade (June 12-Sept. 5). —- Also scheduled are Roaring Tigers and Leaping Carp: Decoding the Symbolic Language…
