Who Does Council Member Smitherman Represent ?
Cincinnati City Council Members Smitherman & Winburn called for a special council meeting to showboat discuss the streetcar project. There, Smitherman peppered City Manager Dohoney about all sorts of minutiae. Dohoney has been upfront & transparent about this project from day one. What is strange is Duke Energy's assertions of specifications & costs which appear to be a money grab. But Smitherman took their numbers as gospel while even questioning Mr Dohoney when he stated the overall cost would be 110. If Smitherman were really representing the citizens of Cincinnati it seems he would want to direct his questioning at Duke. Instead, his behavior at the meeting indicated he might be representing Duke or residents in Hamilton County outside the city. It's been suggested his roles in the local NAACP might be conflicting with his role as a member of city council. What else is he involved in? He certainly doesn't seem too interested in preventing the citizens of Cincinnati from getting fleeced.

Who is that Juggler in the Mural ?

Gus Sun

The mural being painted on the back of the old Regent Theater on Limestone street on the south side of Downtown Springfield with the acrobats and the prominent juggler memorializes Vaudeville promoter Gus Sun who had his offices adjacent to the theater.
Sun worked with the likes of Bpb Hope, the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers, W.C. Fields, Al Jolson, Will Rogers, George Burns, Bert Lahr, Sophie Tucker and Edgar Bergen. He booked entertainers touring through 273 theaters across the country in the 20s and 30s. Inthe 40s and 50s, with the end of Vaudeville (and the rise of movies and later TV) he managed bookings in county and state fairs. His home base was in the Champion City, Springfield, Ohio where he opened the city's first theater in 1904.
The faces at the lower part of the mural are of the Chakeres Bros who operated the old movie theaters of Springfield til 1992 and whose family still maintains a chain of theaters.

Read the Noose Son story here.
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Hamlet at the State

Springfield's StageWorks alternative community theater group will be presenting Hamlet 4/30-5/2 at the historic State Theater @ 19 South Fountain Avenue in the heart of downtown Springfield.

Noose Son story here