May 24-31, 2017
Choose Your Own Adventure: 2017 Cincinnati Fringe Festival Returns with 41 offbeat shows
‘Raintree County’ in Danville
Where: Pioneer Playhouse, 840 Stanford Road, Danville, Ky., pioneerplayhouse.com Drive Time: 2 hour 15 minutes The fascination with American film history is such that the concept of “location vacations” — visiting places where movies were filmed — is gaining in popularity. A new book by Joey Green, called Vacation on Location, Midwest, has information on seeing such sites…
Morning News: Here’s the Tensing juror questionnaire; Driehaus creates commission to empower women; U.S. Supreme Court to hear Ohio voter purge case
Good morning, Cincinnati. Or, as we say in Trump’s America, “covfefe.” It could get more expensive to park near the University of Cincinnati soon. A city budget proposal to raise about $640,000 next year would boost parking rates uptown around UC’s campus from 50 cents to one dollar an hour. The same plan would boost…
Minimum Gauge: Pink Floyd fans shocked and outraged by poltical elements at Roger Waters’ concert
HOT: Roger Waters, Political?! Roger Waters kicked off his “Us + Them” tour recently and, as expected, the concert included a lot of political commentary. Well, “as expected” by anyone familiar with Waters and a big, important chunk of his Pink Floyd’s discography. Reports from the tour’s opening dates said that several audience members were…
Morning News: Tensing trial on hold; undocumented man makes immigration appointment, gets arrested; Ohio coroners struggling to keep up with overdoses
Good morning all. I hope your weekend was as long and fantastic as mine was. Let’s get to some news, shall we? The retrial for former UCPD officer Ray Tensing was supposed to continue today with a process known as voir dire, where attorneys on both sides question a pool of 180 potential jurors, who…
Judge allows controversial new defense witness in Tensing trial
Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Leslie Ghiz today ruled to allow testimony from defense witness Scott Roder in the retrial of former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing. Roder says he has worked as an expert doing forensic animation on more than 500 cases. But a federal judge last year faulted Roder for…
Stage Door: Wit, Wisdom and a Baseball Fantasy
In case you haven’t been paying attention, Memorial Day is Monday. That holiday typically marks the end of the season for many local theaters and the onset of summer programming on several Cincinnati stages. Still plugging along is Erma Bombeck: At Wit’s End, the entertaining one-woman show at the Cincinnati Playhouse about the Dayton-based newspaper…
Morning News: confederate flag shirt thrown out, new defense witness allowed in Tensing trial; Cranley releases budget proposal; Blue Ash bans medical marijuana
Good morning Cincy. It’s Friday. It’s finally not raining. Before you go bask in the sunshine and enjoy the upcoming holiday weekend, though, let’s get serious and talk some news. Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Leslie Ghiz today ruled that the T-shirt former UCPD officer Ray Tensing was wearing when he shot unarmed black…
Your Long Weekend To Do List (May 26-29)
FRIDAY 26 ONSTAGE: DON GIOVANNI The character of Don Juan as a sinful womanizer with a sparkle in his eye, a beautiful lady at his side and a seductive way with words that makes any woman swoon is well established in the arts. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote the famous opera Don…
Liberty and Elm Project Is a Concerning Precedent
Three years ago, when my wife Kathy and I decided to move out of our apartment in Hyde Park and buy a home in a more urban neighborhood, we looked at places in Covington, Northside, Columbia-Tusculum, downtown Cincinnati and Over-the-Rhine. But it was only in OTR, just moments after emerging from our car on Main…
Listermann’s New Hip(po) Beer
You've followed her every step of the way, from her premature birth to her first swimming lesson. Today, Fiona, the Cincinnati Zoo's celebrity baby hippo, is four months old, happy, healthy and continuing to steal hearts across the city — so much so that Listermann Brewing Co. has created a brand-new beer in her name.…
Protesters gather outside Sen. Portman’s office after CBO score shows millions could lose coverage under AHCA
A day after the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of a bill by GOP members of the U.S. House of Representatives replacing former President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, health care advocates and protesters gathered outside the downtown Cincinnati office of Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, asking him not to support the legislation. Portman…
Taste of Cincinnati Best of Taste Winners
The 39th-annual Taste of Cincinnati is slated to fill downtown with good eats and good music Saturday through Monday. The longest running free culinary fest in the nation, Taste will feature more than 100 delicious dishes and nearly nonstop musical performances all weekend The festival, which is expected to attract 500,000, will span four blocks…
Free Summer Music in the City’s Central District
By the time June rolls around next week, all of the free summer concert series in the major downtown outdoor spaces will be in full swing. Once again, this summer brings a wealth of free musical events, drawing largely from Greater Cincinnati’s deep talent pool, but also showcasing many national/touring artists. Here’s a quick and…
Morning News: Ghiz denies Tensing attorney’s request for dismissal; potential sites for FC Cincinnati stadium; ever body slammed a reporter?
Good morning all. Here’s some quick news today. Former University of Cincinnati police officer Ray Tensing’s attorneys won't prevail in a motion they filed yesterday seeking dismissal of the murder and manslaughter charges against. Tensing is on his second trial for the shooting death of unarmed motorist Sam DuBose during a routine traffic stop in…
What a Week! May 17-23
WEDNESDAY, MAY 17 The 70th-annual Cannes Film Festival kicked off this week, bringing Hollywood elite to the land of berets and baguettes to screen and promote upcoming films. This is the first year streaming-only movies like Netflix flicks were eligible, but apparently the Frenchies in charge immediately regretted that decision because they’ve already announced that…
‘The Americans’ evolves into a family drama
When watching this year’s premiere of the long-running KGB spy saga The Americans (Season Finale, 10 p.m. Tuesday, FX), it became immediately clear that this season would be delving into new territory, literally and figuratively. Season 5 finds Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell), Russian spies posing as married travel agents with two children…
Who’s Afraid of ‘The Lovers’?
Michael (Tracy Letts) and Mary (Debra Winger) have been married for decades, and the bluesy, sensual thrill is most definitely gone. Forget the look of love; these two can barely stand to look in one another’s direction. They get by solely through time spent with their respective lovers, Lucy (Melora Walters), a volatile dancer, and…
Michael Scheurer’s Keen Eye for Collage
From his early ink drawings to his bulbous-nosed paintings, his quirky girl portraits and sublime mixed-media collages, Michael Scheurer’s creative output has been marked by ingenuity, wit, detail and balance. Again and again, the Cincinnati native has proven he has the artist’s eye. “I’m always telling people, ‘Check that out. Look at this,’ ” Scheurer,…
Where to go for a summertime show
Wondering where to get your theater fix when several Cincinnati theaters go dark over the summer? The annual Cincinnati Fringe Festival, produced by Know Theatre, offers an avalanche of theatrical creativity to keep you occupied during early June. And the Over-the-Rhine company actually keeps at it during the summer, with a full-scale production of Marian:…
EMC Fills a grocery niche at Findlay Market
New York City has Dean & DeLuca, St. Louis has Straub’s and now Cincinnati has EMC — aka the Epicurean Mercantile Company — an urban gourmet grocery store that is both practical and beautiful enough to be called glamorous. Depending on your preferences and priorities, that may not matter much, but that’s where the practicality…
B&A Street Kitchen offers Southwestern-style comfort food, craft sodas and a bonus walk-up window
In April, B&A Street Kitchen quietly opened on Race Street, near Pleasantry and Taft’s Ale House. The menu consists of Mexican-influenced comfort food, everything from tacos and hot dogs on bolillo buns to 16 craft sodas on draft. From 8 a.m.-2:30 p.m. daily, B&A operates as a counter-order daytime diner, and after hours Thursday through…
Calling Out ‘Don Giovanni’ as a Rapist
The character of Don Juan as a sinful womanizer with a sparkle in his eye, a beautiful lady at his side and a seductive way with words that makes any woman swoon is well established in the arts. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote the famous opera Don Giovanni about him. It premiered in…
Over the Rhine’s Nowhere Else Festival Returns
This Memorial Day weekend, on rural farmland less than 50 miles east of Cincinnati, Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist of local music greats Over the Rhine will again present their Nowhere Else Festival, a celebration of some of the pair’s “favorite musicians, writers, photographers, painters, naturalists and foodies.” Last year’s event saw OTR fans from all…
The 2017 Cincinnati Fringe Festival returns with 41 offbeat shows
Attending Cincinnati’s annual Fringe Festival can be an arduous task. It’s fun, to be sure, but it can be a big challenge to identify which shows to see and navigate your way through during the 13 days of performances at 13 venues across Over-the-Rhine. Is it possible to see all of the 41 shows in…
Sound Advice: Legendary Shack Shakers with Jesse Dayton (May 25)
There is one band on the planet that can exist comfortably — or at all — at the center of a Venn diagram which impossibly includes Stephen King, Robert Plant, Jello Biafra, Billy Bob Thornton, Reverend Horton Heat, Marty Stuart, The Mute Comp Physical Theatre of Copenhagen, GEICO, The Far Side, The Jesus Lizard, The…
Sound Advice: Ann Wilson (May 26)
What a difference a year makes. Last summer, Heart released the gorgeous and textural Beautiful Broken, which cracked the Top 10 of Billboard’s Rock Albums chart, and then hit the road with Cheap Trick and Joan Jett as undercard support. On that tour, Ann Wilson’s husband allegedly assaulted Nancy Wilson’s twin sons for leaving the…
Sound Advice: City and Colour with Noah Gundersen (May 27)
Dallas Green is better known via his stage name, City and Colour. Green grew up in Saint Catharines, Ontario, Canada, which is about a 20-minute drive northwest of Niagara Falls. If his name sounds familiar, especially for baseball aficionados, it should — born in 1980, he was named for Philadelphia Phillies’ manager Dallas Green after…
As some Cincinnati residents face jail time over home repairs, the city searches for a fix
As it stands, Cincinnati residents can face steep consequences — big fines and even monitoring devices or stays in the Hamilton County jail — if their houses aren’t in order. Multiple Cincinnati residents face serious criminal penalties for property-related problems even as city officials say they’re trying to find solutions to ease the burdens posed…
Nashville band Sound & Shape updates bygone eras on its latest EP, ‘Peasants’
Vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Ryan Caudle doesn’t care for the term “Prog” when it comes to describing his Nashville-based quartet, Sound & Shape. And while a few of Caudle’s influences and elements of the band’s sonic fingerprint support the conclusion, albeit with the qualifying “Pop” suffix, he avoids strict classifications. “I never answer the question, ‘What kind of…
