Life as a Human on Cincy

I feel very positive about Over-the-Rhine and Cincinnati in general today. With this fantastic, bright sunny weather, preparing for all our Spring activities like soccer, gardening and Opening Day Parade. And then meeting great new neighbors with childern yesterday, I just feel like a new day is dawning downtown.

And when you feel like this, it is good to get reinforcement from outsiders now and again. Yesterday, I read a piece in the "Life as a Human" site:

I loved Cincinnati and its people.... there were troubles in Cincinnati, but it also felt more alive in some way. Cincinnati is an edge place. It’s a meeting of red state and blue state, of urban and Appalachia, black culture and white culture, industry and environmentalism.

Everyone should visit Cincinnati. It’s an important touchstone for understanding the complexity, the challenges, and the hope of America. A perfect place to hone our elemental media, and practice En’owkin, the Okanagan concept that translates as “Please give me the viewpoint most opposite of mine so I can increase my wisdom.”

Northside Woman on Survivor Tonight

I heard Marisa Calihan on the radio this morning. She will be on Survivor tonight. She talked about how great Northside is and about living there while going to high school at SCPA and Purcell. She kept saying how great she thought Cincinnati was. I am not a big fan of the show, but listening to her made me want to watch and cheer her on.

Chicagoan Searches for Ed Hopper in Cincy

 

A Chicago writer visited Cincinnati (among 46 other cities) and asked people, "Do you feel Americans are isolated as Hopper portrayed us?" Some of what he reported from Cincy:

Hopper's painting here, Prospect Street, Gloucester, is a simple, wholesome street scene, quaint as Cincinnati. A row of sunlit houses stand on a street deserted except for a dark green car hunkered along the curb. Two church tops are visible on the horizon. A flesh-toned sidewalk runs before the houses beside the gray road along the bottom of the painting on which you seem to be standing to view the scene. A museum curator called the painting, "a distillation of the essential American residence street anywhere."

....Over-the-Rhine claimed to be the largest national historic district in the nation and to have a "turn-of-the-century" aura. It also retained that era's squalor...

..Nearby Findlay Market was advertised as an "authentic, European-styled open-air grocery" but felt more like a flea market...

(Patron at Kaldis:) "It's this whole idea about making a family-friendly city, and it's not, you know. It's a city. And that's sort of an oxymoron: a family-oriented city."

Another Visitor's Impressions of Cincinnati

A reporter from the Independent, Ireland stopped in Cincinnati last week to get a feel for Obama's chances. Not very deep reporting here, mostly talked to some taxi drivers and typed his pre-conceived notions:

..."As Ohio goes, so goes the nation.'' With its blend of black and white, rich and poor, industrial and agricultural, the state is a microcosm of America -- and Cincinnati and its surroundings are, in turn, fairly representative of the state.

On one side of the city you find Indian Hill, the third-most lucrative zip code in the US for Republican fundraisers, who recently brought in $2.5m there in a single night. Across town, it's a different story. Every other shop is boarded up. There are no nice lawns and no Stars and Stripes at the bottom of the garden, just rusty old cars.

... in the Cadillac Ranch bar on Vine Street. Many of the Democrats moaned about Obama's inexperience and his flip-flopping on policy, but what became clear after a few drinks was that the real issue -- as it had been for my acquaintance at the airport -- was his skin colour...

I did find at least one Obama supporter -- the taxi driver who took me out to the suburb of Northside the next morning...

...Probably my best insight into Ohio's floating voters came in Mount Adam, the most bohemian district of Cincinnati.

...how Ohio swings will depend on whether the first-time voters dreaming of "hope'' outnumber the closet bigots who say "nope''. Based on what I've seen, I'm going with "nope''.

A Vistitor's View of Cincy

I'm interested in how a visitor sees Cincinnati. This time, an Indianapolis native gives his perspective:

There is simply not a city in the Midwest apart from Chicago that has anything near the great assets of Cincy. It is an embarrassment of riches.
...
Drive around Cincinnati and you'll notice that much of the great architecture is in a shocking state of disrepair. While the buildings weren't wholesale cleared as part of the botched urban renewal movement, the city still has a sort of bombed out feel in many places.
...
it is interesting me that such an incredible place hasn't experienced one of America's great urban renaissances. I believe the potential is still there, albeit latent at the moment.

It just goes to show that ... cities are about people, not just buildings. All the great geography, architecture, etc. in the world isn't a sufficient condition to create a thriving, dynamic city.

...Many of the other great urban neighborhoods are best seen by car.

Tourists in Cincy

 

Many times when I am walking around downtown I will see people who are obviously tourists. This photo is of a young Japanese couple, snapping photos of the buildings. Sunday it seemed like there were a lot of people walking around taking pictures. It was sunny, but still pretty cold, so I was wondering what brings someone half-way around the world to Cincinnati on a cold January day?

Sometimes it is obviously a businessman, touring the city where he is on business, but not most of the time. This couple looked more like newlyweds than business partners. Were they here as part of a cross-US trip, stopping at various cities? I wonder what they think of this place.