Sep 28 – Oct 5, 2016
Not Fading Away: 2016 FotoFocus Biennial features lens-based art exhibits offering works of long-lasting value
Seeing the first wave of FotoFocus shows
(Editor’s note – As part of CityBeat’s coverage of the many exhibitions and activities that comprise the October-long FotoFocus Biennial, art writers Maria Seda-Reeder and Kathy Schwartz will be contributing online stories about their experiences attending events. Seda-Reeder will be writing during the first two weeks of October; Schwartz the last two. Here is the…
The fine art of photographing factories
FotoFocus Biennial 2016, which is now underway, has as a basic tenet that photography is a fine-art form — that its practitioners are free to do something more than document conventionally photogenic or interesting things. In some instances, that freedom has taken the direction of using the lens and developing/printing process as tools to create…
Authorities say the heroin epidemic won’t stop until more addiction treatment is available
Ohio is fighting a killer with unprecedented power and reach. Overdoses involving heroin and stronger, deadlier additives like fentanyl and carfentanil continue to occur at crisis levels, especially in Greater Cincinnati, and local and state leaders are scrambling to find strategies to stop them. That has led to a number of anti-overdose efforts here in…
Morning News: Cranley’s State of the City recap; VP debate left fact-checkers sweating
Good morning all. We’re going to focus on two political talk-a-thons this morning, so buckle up for some fact-checking. First, Mayor John Cranley last night gave the annual State of the City address, where he reviewed the past year and outlined his plans for the final year of his four-year term. Despite an impending race…
Minimum Gauge: Animal Collective plays show for two young fans after all-ages mixup
HOT: Animal Collective Is for the Children Avant Garde Indie rockers Animal Collective prefer to play all-ages venues while on tour. So the members were bummed when they found out at the last minute that a show in Edmonton, Canada was only open to fans 18 and up. The band unsuccessfully tried to find a…
MPMF 2016: Day Two – The Day After Yesterday
Although Friday’s (Sept. 23) opening night had gotten off to a somewhat rocky start, the S.S. MidPoint Music Festival righted itself relatively quickly and sailed into history as the inaugural outdoor event it seems destined to be from this point on. Although I was initially hesitant about this concept, I think I'm getting used to…
Morning News: Will Cincy do away with Columbus Day?; streetcar crowding causing fiscal battle; Kaine vs. Pence tonight
Good morning all. Here’s a brief news rundown. Breaking news: Cincinnati’s streetcar is the subject of a heated back and forth about money and politics. Yes, I’m shocked, too. Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black and the Southwest Ohio Regional Transit Authority have exchanged some slightly testy letters over how fast the transit loop is running…
Ohio looks to schedule executions after three-year pause
Three years after its last execution took 26 minutes and resulted in snorting and gasping from a condemned inmate, Ohio in January will resume putting people to death with a new three-drug cocktail. The state will use a mixture of the drugs midazolam, rocuronium bromide and potassium chloride, Ohio Attorney Generals office representative Thomas Madden…
Wenstrup shells out $1 million for new digs in D.C.
With a third term looking like a shoo-in, Ohio Congressman Brad Wenstrup has decided to make his stay in Washington, D.C., a little more comfortable. In his latest personal financial disclosure statement filed with the U.S. House of Representatives, Wenstrup lists a new asset: a home in the District of Columbia. Wenstrup, a Republican, still…
Morning News: National clown hysteria comes to Cincy area; controversy slows city manager review process; 1 million in Ohio won’t get absentee ballot applications
Good morning all. I hope your weekend was great. Some friends and I went camping somewhere in the Indiana hinterlands. Oh hey, here’s something terrifying — Friday night, we got lost in a small town where the roads didn’t match up with Google Maps. As fog rolled through the narrow streets and between the small,…
Critic’s Pick: ‘Disgraced’ clashes contemporary opinions, making for strong drama
Almost from its first moment, Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play puts audiences on alert that differences of opinion will become extreme. Amir Kapoor (Barzin Akhavan), an aggressive mergers and acquisitions attorney of Pakistani descent, poses for his thoroughly American wife, Emily (Bethany Jillard), an up-and-coming painter. Sitting in their sleek Manhattan apartment, he wears a…
Stage Door: Everything’s Alive — the hills, a fractious dinner party and toxic waste
Thanks to some beautifully conceived scenic elements — resonant churches, glowing mountains and glittering cityscapes — a touring production of The Sound of Music at the Aronoff Center looks great, and it has a fine set of child actors to play the von Trapp family children. They sing like angels, and they handle this production’s…
Morning News: Streetcar to run late for Bengals game; Kasich still doesn’t like Donald Trump; how should voters weigh Strickland’s economic record?
Hello all. Here’s a little bit of news as we head toward the end of the week. If you’re heading downtown to watch the Bengals take on the Dolphins tonight, you’ll be able to take advantage of later hours for the streetcar, presumably because it’s very difficult and dangerous to cry and drive at the…
Your Weekend To Do List (Sept. 30-Oct. 2)
FRIDAY 30 EVENT: THE PORKOPOLIS PIG & WHISKEY FESTIVAL CityBeat hosts the second-annual Porkopolis Pig & Whiskey Festival, a two-day smorgasbord offering the best bacon, bourbon and bites, plus live music and more at Washington Park. Favorite barbecue joints like Eli’s, Huit, Pit to Plate and Velvet Smoke will be serving up unique and meaty…
What a Week! Sept. 21-27
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 21 America is reeling after yet another national tragedy. One of the millennium’s first celebrity couple portmanteaus (lest we forget Bennifer) and the bane of Jennifer Aniston’s (fans’) existence, Brangelina is no more. Angelina Jolie filed for divorce from Brad Pitt early this week, pulling the plug on their two-year marriage/12-year relationship, citing…
Live from New York, it’s Season 42
Saturday Night Live (Season Premiere, 11:30 p.m. Saturday, NBC) is an American institution. Going into its 42nd season this week, the sketch comedy show has become one of the longest-running network television programs in the country. Of course, SNL is one of those shows that’s never as good as it used to be, whether you’re…
‘Katwe’ is a different kind of sports film
Disney’s Queen of Katwe is a winning international tale about an uneducated Ugandan girl trying to support her family who wanders into a chess club and discovers she has an innate talent and passion for the game. That might just prove to be her escape. Queen of Katwe refreshingly goes against the grain of many…
Taft Theatre brings CSO’s sound to life
The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s season opened at the Taft Theatre this month, and the two performances I attended were outstanding. The theater — a temporary home for the CSO during Music Hall’s renovation — has great acoustics, and the CSO is playing better than ever there. The featured artists — Emanuel Ax and Hilary Hahn…
The Sounds of Musicals at the Aronoff
Although it’s called “Broadway in Cincinnati,” the touring productions presented at the downtown Aronoff Center for the Arts might be more accurately labeled as “Broadway Musicals in Cincinnati.” The series seldom offers dramatic plays, and only occasionally presents shows that step beyond musical theater. There’s a reason: Musicals sell tickets, and audiences flock to see…
Not seeing is believing in ‘Blind Cinema’
Britt Hatzius is interested in the limits and power of language. From Wednesday through Saturday, she will explore that subject at The Carnegie in a performance/film project called Blind Cinema. Designed to investigate what happens when children help the sightless visualize what they can’t see, the program is the start of the Contemporary Arts Center’s…
Pumpkin, Pints and Parties
As we launch headlong into fall, the Oktoberfests keep coming — and so do the autumnal craft beers — as area breweries use football, fall and Halloween as excuses to serve and brew more beer. New Beers • Rhinegeist recently tapped Gummybomb, a reddish pale ale containing peach and grapefruit notes with Amarillo and Mosaic…
You Can Have It All at Howl at the Moon/Splitsville
Earlier this year, I was discussing apartment shopping with my father and we were going through a laundry list of what an ideal new apartment had to have: a washing machine, preferably two floors, a guest room, green space. Making these requests of the landlord gods was laughable and I doubted we’d ever be able…
The 2016 FotoFocus Biennial offers works of long-lasting value
Tom Schiff, co-founder of October’s FotoFocus Biennial as well as a longtime photo collector and photographer, was amazed to recently read that 1.8 billion — yes, billion — photographs are uploaded and shared on social media every day. Considering that he and James Crump (then a Cincinnati Art Museum curator) started FotoFocus in 2012 so…
MPMF 2016: Day One – The Dawn of the Outdoor Era
My first official act of 2016's MidPoint Music Festival was something I had never done for any of my previous MPMF excursions. I spent five minutes lathering my increasingly expansive forehead, rapidly descending face and wobbly wings with sunscreen. MidPoint has always taken place in the early evening and vampiric night so Old Sol was…
Sound Advice: moe. (Sept. 29)
Over a quarter century ago, a group of musical friends in Buffalo, N.Y. created a swinging assemblage they dubbed Five Guys Named Moe, taking the name from the classic swingin’ Louis Jordan song. The band eventually shifted to a Frank Zappa-meets-Grateful Dead style and, after realizing many other groups were using its original moniker, the…
Sound Advice: Ana Popovic (Sept. 28)
Like Bonnie Raitt, Susan Tedeschi and a host of other gender-myth-busting talents, Ana Popovic obliterates the three-word suffix “for a girl” from a sentence that begins, “She plays great guitar…” For the past two decades, Popovic has applied her estimable performing and writing gifts to variations of the Blues, folding in elements of Rock, Funk,…
Sound Advice: Tuelo with Enemy Planes (Sept. 28)
When South African native Tuelo Minah moved from her homeland to Connecticut in 2004, she had no intention of becoming a professional singer and songwriter. In fact, she says she never really sang when in South Africa and wasn’t aware of the secret talent she had within her. Hearing Minah (who performs with her band…
Morning News: Streetcar bugs still being worked out; Taft’s Ale House expanding; Board of Health debating health commissioner appointment
Hello all. Here’s a brief news update for ya. Have you waited more than a few minutes for a streetcar or had trouble paying with a credit card? The Cincinnati Bell Connector continues to see strong ridership numbers, but there are some definite bugs to work out in the streetcar system. Cincinnati City Council’s Transportation…
Minimum Gauge: New emojis let you express your inner GG Allin
HOT: What Would GG Text? You know how there are times when you want to text someone that you feel like defecating in public and bashing your head in with a microphone until it bleeds, but you just don’t have time to type all of that out? Now, thanks to a new set of GG…
Are tax credits funding much of Ohio’s affordable housing development continuing residential segregation?
For decades, housing advocates, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and various state agencies have worked to break up the stubborn economic and racial residential segregation found in many American neighborhoods. Increasingly, that effort has come through the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program (LIHTC), which aims to incentivize private developers to build…
Spill It: King Records Month comes to an end with pair of live music events
September was designated King Records Month in Cincinnati, and numerous events throughout the area (from lectures and radio specials to concerts, film screenings and more) celebrated the legacy of the locally based record label that changed popular music beginning in the early ’40s. As September comes to an end, King Month winds down with a…
Cincinnati’s Plastic Ants set to raise profile exponentially with new ‘Imperial Phase’ album
Plastic Ants has been around in one form or another for the past six years, dropping an EP and two full-length albums in that time, including the quartet’s imminent sophomore disc, Imperial Phase. The band, a perfect balance of local music luminaries and virtual unknowns, doesn’t play out with much regularity due to scheduling issues;…
