Getting to Riverfest

Metro will not be offering their park-n-Ride express service to Riverfest this year. Metro has cited budget woes. That sucks. A friend of mine swore by that thing.
For years I went down just for the fireworks. I would ride my bicycle. I found a nice place south of Lytle Park & it was really easy to get in and out.
Because most everybody who drove was already there by the time the fireworks started and the downtown streets were closed, it was real easy riding through the downtown area & getting to the aforementioned spot at the last minute. Afterwards, since all the motorists were trying to leave at the same time and, hence, getting all locked up and, with the downtown streets closed, a cyclist could easily get a real head start on the motorists when leaving. Also, the vast majority of the people attending the event take the highways, so most of the city streets are fairly empty even when the motorist finally do get moving.
If you live within a few miles of the event, I strongly recommend this strategy.
It's green, too !

Metro routes serving popular destinations

Blogging Isn't Cool Supports Iggy Pop Mural

The Provost of Cincinnati has proposed on The Phony Coney Blog that a mural commemorating Iggy Pop & The 1970 Cincinnati Pop Festival held at Crosley Field.
Blogging Isn't Cool supports and seconds this idea. It would commemorate a musical era, an influential musician, Crosley Field, Cincinnati broadcasting & Cincinnati's peanut butter heritage.
Putting the mural somewhere visible from northbound I-75 would be doubly befitting as Mr Pop & his Stooges hail from sunny Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Yes.

Route 66

Janice Rule 1931-2003
In a previous post I gushed about my love affair with the old TV series, Route 66. It is interesting on a couple levels. For one thing, modern characters don't get much of a chance to say more than a couple lines & they tend to use a vocabulary & sentence structure dumbed down to a 6th grade level. Another thing, and this is probably because I am an old fart, is seeing so many old iconic modern actors performing so early in their careers. One of the coolest things about the show is that it was almost all filmed on location. It is just an amazing view of the world in 1960-64. And it actually was film ! ..in glorious black and white.
In one episode they bitch about these new freeways. "Whatever happened to the quaint little towns ?"
Anyway, when I see someone who intrigues me or whose name sounds vaguely familiar, I Google 'em.
To my surprise, one actress, who appeared several times, was a smokin' hot Norwood girl, Janice Rule.
Route 66 didn't have a great track record filming in Ohio. Cincinnati never made the cut. Cleveland did a few times. Kinsman made it but was called Amity & wasn't even in Ohio. Ohio 66 has some great documentation of the Route 66 episodes filmed here. Alas, nothing on Ms Rule or other actors who might have hailed from the Buckeye State.
To hell with Cruise & Hoffman, I want to see Milner & Maharis crossing the Clay Wade Bailey !
hm, maybe with computers.....

UPDATE: I didn't realize it when I posted this but Sep. 1, 1928 is George Maharis' birthday. Happy 81st, dude ! (belated but may not look like it (?).....)

Easy Rider, The Ride Back

The prequel to 1969's Easy Rider, Easy Rider, The Ride Back, should be in theaters by the end of the year. The movie is partially filmed in Springfield, the hometown of the film's maker and lead actor, Phil Pitzer.
Pitzer promises a killer soundtrack and, as the movie covers 3 decades from the 40s through the 60s, he certainly has some good material to choose from.
Over the weekend he was promoting the movie in Springfield where he was showing off the recreation of the American flag decorated Harley used in the original movie.

Noose Son story here.
Interview with Two Wheeled Thunder TV:

The Plot Thickens
Cincinnati's NAACP has voted to address the Ohio Ethics Commission about Cincinnati City Councilmember Chris Bortz' alleged conflict of interest regarding the streetcar proposal. They are claiming his employer, Towne Properties stands to make out like a rat if the streetcar is installed.
I think this is the first time I have heard them say the streetcar will be effective aa an economic stimulator. The local NAACP president has stated he thinks a better investment for the city would be speed bumps & handouts to particular developers who can't finish their projects.
On the NAACP website they list the properties they claim will make Bortz fabulously wealthy.

Suspect Properties in Red
yeah, another one of my BistroMaps...
People have stated that the development spurred by the streetcar will have an effect out to 3 blocks from the track. I think that's pretty optimistic. I would guess it would trail off at two.
On the map you can see the suspect properties are not all directly on the route and a few are actually in the third block range. You could probably argue that the route almost avoids the Garfield Place properties.
Now, these properties aren't all owned by Towne. Some are only managed by Towne.

A Property Manager
I don't know how much Towne will get out of this deal. It would depend on how their contracts are set up. If they only receive flat fees, it won't do them any good at all.
The advantage of the streetcar initiative over the funding of the sports stadia is that, while the sports facilities depended on the goodwill of the 2 sports franchise owners, the streetcar relies on a large number of more diverse, middle class entrepreneurs. Directly on the route there are about 500 properties owned by about 400 entities. Expanding out a block and adding cross streets you can probably add close to 1,000 more properties. Expand further & get even more.
The NAACP president has complained that the stadia & the current Banks project have shut out black developers and contractors because bids were for large projects that required large contractors with plenty of credit. He argued that by breaking the projects down into smaller projects the poorer black contractors would have a better chance to compete. Of course poorer white, latino & female contractors would also have a better chance, too.
The Development along the streetcar route will be driven by these exact same middle class contractors & developers.
The NAACP should be concentrating efforts on seminars and workshops educating and training it's constituency on how to form businesses, get loans, learn about real estate development, etc., so they can catch the wave and be a part of the revitalization of the core of our community. Instead they continue in a long march of bombastics, obstructionism & demanding hand outs.

Yes 1977
Not a clue.

thanks

In a previous post I postulated about bike lanes designed by hop head surveyors on acid or, worse, east side cyclists. All has been made clear now as about a half dozen fire hydrants have now been installed on a stretch of road that runs between a nature preserve and a cemetery.
Why ?
Could the city be planning on tearing down more greenspace to build more cookie cutter LEED certified housing ?
Is the city worried that a forest fire in Parker's Woods might cream Northside ?
Will the hydrants carry holy water to be used in the event of a zombie outbreak in Spring Grove Cemetery ?
My guess is that they were put in due to the intense lobbying of the Cincinnati Dog Walkers Union.

Passport to Springfield
yep. Finally happened. The Champion City has seceded from the US of A ! You will be required to show your papers at it's iron gates.
no, not really. It's a community / Wittenberg event arranged by a kid involved with Wittenberg’s Center for Civic and Urban Engagement to bring students together with Springfield organizations and businesses. It is meant to bridge the gap between students and the community and, maybe, to retain some of the students as future citizens.
In the past, students introduction to the city was frequently the neon sign on a prominently located church that blinked back and forth, "Jesus Saves / Sin Kills" in red and white, complete with crucifixes & lightning bolts. After that it was chance encounters in the cemetery or students picking fights with bikers at area bars. Things seem to have taken on a more genteel tone, here in the 21st century.

Noose Son story here.

Why Downtown & OTR Needs Streetcars

Over the Rhine was developed before we had cars. People weren't as spread out in their lifestyles back then. Christian Moerlein had a house with an office next door and a plant across the street. No 2 hour commutes for that boy. The guys who worked in his brewery & bottling plants all lived nearby and walked or took streetcars to and from work. The area was a mix of residential, retail, services, manufacturing & whatnot. Residents were a mix of workers & merchants, owners and renters.
Over time, for one reason or another, people left the area. As people began to buy cars and use them as a primary form of transportation, areas like OTR became lees and less attractive.
Today, people are getting into the idea of the old walkable neighborhoods. Well, without the stinky factories and with air conditioning, private bathrooms and laundry facilities. Younger people are not as interested in cars as my generation was.
To make the area viable again, we need to make it work the way it was designed to. A downtown Cincinnati without a streetcar is like a three legged race horse.
To make the OTR area work in a car-centric way would ruin it's appeal since you would need to tear down about half the buildings to build parking lots and parking garages. It would no longer be a walking neighborhood. The people who would revitalize the area would lose interest.
Will people still be interested in an area like OTR in the future ? In 50 - 100 years ? Dunno. Ray Bradbury wrote a story where everybody teleported everywhere. But people are interested now & we should ride the wave.

Selling a Streetcar System

Let's face it. Selling a streetcar system to voters is a PITA. How do you explain to the common Joe, in a soundbyte, economic development, perceived permanence, crime reduction through occupancy, complete streets, capital budgets v operating budgets ?
Do nothing opponents, whose arguments are shortsighted at best and bizarre to evil at the worst, have a lot easier job. They only have to lie, misdirect, ridicule, obfuscate - things that can always be done easily and in moments.
It is time to fight fire with fire. November is coming like a jail on wheels, folks, & I say it's time to use what's been the ultimate marketing tool since the dawn of man. damn straight - Pretty Girls ! And who should be a model for our streetcars ? Well since the cars are made in the Czech Republic, howzbout Czech model, Nella Miartusova ?

next ?
A jingle !

Joan Jett & The Blackhearts 1983
Joan Jett was a novelty in The Runaways, she was kinda cute & had an ok hit with I Love Rock-n-Roll. On a lark, I went to see her at Bogart's. I could not get anybody to go with me. I was laughed at and insulted. A co-worker told me he had met Jett once backstage at Bogart's. "She had absolutely no personality. She was like a fucking guy." he told me. Whatever, I went alone.
What I got was no novelty, no gimmicky, straight ahead, no nonsense, no bullshit, straight from the heart rock-n-roll. After that show, I vowed to evangelize her & see her every chance I could.
She's playing The Corn Palace on Friday. Anybody want to go ? It should freak out the squirrels for sure.

Zombie Outbreak in Fairborn !!

Brittney Skye in Grub Girl
Quick ! Somebody call the Bennet sisters !

Noose Son story here.

The Northside Post Office
Storefront, a large back workroom and an office are available for rent beginning September 1, 2009
call 542-0088

Emerson, Lake and Palmer - 1971
ELP had released their debut album a year earlier to popular success and critical acclaim. They were a progressive supergroup of sorts with Emerson from the jazz rock, Nice and Lake from the heavy prog rock band, King Crimson. They had just released their second album, Tarkus when this show came about.
My friends and I still couldn't drive, so the search was on for a driver. My oldest sister agreed to drive to Dayton's Hara Arena for a free ticket. We had pretty good seats in the first row on the side fairly near the stage but not so close as to have an obstructed view. Edgar Winter opened for the show and he was touring with Johnny Winter sideman and ex-McCoy, Rick Derringer. Derringer & the McCoys recorded Ohio's official rock song, Hang on Sloopy. Derringer also wrote Rock-n-Roll Hoochie Koo. How these guys got paired with Emerson, Lake and Palmer is beyond me.
It was a good show. Derringer was doing laybacks, Emerson was the Pete Townshend of keyboard. Through it all my sister sat & did her knitting like a good babysitter.
Afterwards, we went around back with a portable tape recorder to try to get an interview with ELP. They stopped to say hi to the assembled throng from their cab which they had crammed with as many girls as possible. They sped off to Dayton's finest hotel, I am sure.
While we were waiting for them to come out, however, Derringer spotted us and came over to ask if we wanted an interview. We said sure & he commenced to talk. He was a nice guy. We wondered if he was kinda desperate but then he wasn't much older than we were when he started his career in Ohio. Maybe he just wanted to help out some kids writing for their school paper.
Went home and dreamed about cruising around in a car smooshed with girls.....

Springfield Post Office Restoration Underway
Springfield's post office was built in the 30s and, surprise, was an Art Deco design. In utilitarian government fashion, a lot of the design elements were ignored and, in the 70s beautiful drop ceilings were installed covering up the upper portions of the rooms and hiding murals by Cincinnati artist, Herman Wessel. The Springfield Preservation Alliance knew about the murals depicting scenes of Springfield's industries of agriculture manufacturing and publishing. They considered moving and restoring them but figured it was cheaper ($78k) to just restore the post office including restoring the marble floor.
The Springfield post office is at 150 North Limestone Street (north end of downtown).

Noose Son story here.

MC5 North Baltimore - 1972
We went to see The Doors. Wrong day. Canned Heat & The MC5 were scheduled. Canned Heat had cancelled. Fleetwood Mac was brought in as a replacement. Fleetwood Mac went to Baltimore, Ohio instead of North Baltimore. 3 hour drive. They bailed. The MC5 played twice.
And people wonder how we survived without the internet.....

Neil Young - 1985
This concert was at the Gestapo Training Facility known as Riverbend. I think it might have been the first year they had a whole series of summer shows. You could still park across the street for free - probably the last year for that. I had gone to a company picnic earlier in the day near an AJ Jolly golf course in Kentucky ? The guys were playing football - I went off & caught a buzz with the girls. On Monday the guys were all limping around in agony. choices, choices....
I had made Dirty Rice - what Popeye's calls Cajun Rice. Popeye's made a good marketing decision on that one. Nobody would eat my rice at the picnic. I watched one lady pull all the chicken guts out of her rice before she ate it. maybe she was going to do some divination - I don't know. I left early with my crockpot of rice and headed to Riverbend where I parked in one of the aforementioned unpaved lots across the street.
Riverbend promoted bringing picnics and enjoying music "on the lawn".
bullshit
You couldn't bring drinks in and they searched your food. I don't think you could even take food out onto the lawn concert area. The way speakers were set up and the way the pavilion effectively blocked not only the view but the sound as well, made the lawn a completely useless place to enjoy a concert. So where was I sitting ?
Anyway, after awhile I walked up to the back of the pavilion to see and hear. I had no intention of rushing the pavilion but when one guy did and ABSOLUTELY EVERY SECURITY GOON went after him, about a half dozen of us looked at each other and calmly stepped over the railing and took seats.
That last part of the show was pretty rockin'
Afterwards I returned to my car & decided to wait a bit for traffic to thin out before I left. I commenced to eating handfuls of dirty rice. I was so impressed with my culinary work that I offered it to some of he other folks standing around waiting to leave.
Why in hell would people not stick their hands into a crockpot of some strange guy's rice that had flecks of black shit in it ? Beats me.

Cash for Clunkers ?

The 1965 Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe CSX2601 was sold at auction in Monterey, California for $ 7,250,000. This sets a record for the price paid for an American car. The car was part owned by a Springfield, OH car dealer that specializes in Corvettes and other sports cars. It was sold to a Cincinnati collector. So why didn't they just meet at a Frisch's in Dayton ? I am sure we will be seeing this car in Kroger parking lots (over by the cart corral) real soon.

Noose Son story here.

Why We Should Finish the Subway
This video is from the movie Kontroll filmed in the Budapest subway. It follows the lives of a team of ticket inspectors that, for some reason, gets into fights with other teams of ticket inspectors. No, it is not a documentary, although some Cincinnatians would probably believe it.

Fair Coverage
Channel 5 WLWT had a short article that was fairly positive. They gave most of the attention to a sign telling people gang colors and foul language would not be tolerated, tho.
Few reader comments. People who hadn't been to the fair hated it. Hated the location in Hell on Earth, Carthage. One person had actually gone and had a great time. Obviously a liberal Kool Aid drinker.
Channel 12 WKRC ran an article. They focused on the fair making making a great comeback & the participation of non-ruralites.
Couldn't find anything on WCPO's site. WXIX had hints but no bites, although I think I saw something on the air one night.
After the fair, the Enquirer ran a story about the attendance being up markedly. They also talked about how lame the turnout was compared to neighboring, more rural counties.
During the fair, the Enquirer's online coverage was a 9 picture slideshow. Woodstock got 10.
As much as I would like to condemn these guys, I'm finding nothing on the fair's website either. They have a search function that doesn't work. They ran the day's list of events on that day & not the day before.
Did the Hamilton County Fair crown a queen ? One of my highest ranking pages is this'n about the queen contestants for this year's Clark County Fair. Seems like the local media outlets would want the traffic on their commercial websites. Seems like the fair would want the interest. The demolition derbies were, apparently a crowd pleaser. How about a list of the winners ? Heck, if I am going to wreck my car for entertainment purposes, I want some recognition, dammit.
I guess, what I am getting at is that with no appreciation there is going to be a lack of participation and with a lack of participation there is going to be a lack of attendance.
To be fair, there was actually a lot of stuff going on all week- Mt Adams Music Festival, Reds games, Tours, Theater, Tennis and then all the usual stuff like King's Island, the Museums.....
yeah, life sucks around here to be sure.
oh well, here's to the Hamilton County Fair continuing to grow and bring people together to celebrate the things we do to live (like demolition derbies). I will shut up about county fairs til next year.

Sunday Past Blaster

This picture of The Phoenix Cafe ran in the Cincinnati Enquirer's Sunday magazine back in the 80s. The Phoenix had the bragging rights to being the only bar continually open since the repeal of Prohibition. They refused to serve women at the bar because it was unladylike. They had news clippings framed on the wall about Women's Rights protesters invading the cafe and crowding the bar in the 60s.
I have fond memories of The Phoenix. Sipping $1.00 longnecks. The little old man who threatened to kill me & dissolved into laughter when I told him, "ok".
I admired the Sex Pistol pink and green neon lights that framed the tinned ceiling and the woodwork that hadn't been touched in gok how many years.
With the opening of the Aranoff and the development of upscale condos in the area and the notion that we need mixed income residents to make an urban core "work", it wasn't surprising to see the low end Phoenix targeted for removal. Dealing with police requests, the Phoenix cut hours and called the police whenever they saw anything going down even if it was across the street and totally unrelated to the bar.
In liquor permit renewal hearings this cooperation & calls for service were cited as reasons to shut the place down. Actions by people in the vicinity of the bar when the bar was closed were cited as reasons to pull the bar's liquor license. This type of railroading was not unique to The Phoenix, in fact, it's pretty common. It left a bad taste in my mouth regarding The Phoenix, tho & I doubt I will ever go to the new Righteous Room that now resides in The Phoenix' corpse.
5chw4r7z visited and had a great time there. He has assured me the tin ceiling is still there. Apparently the Righteous management has no taste for timeless pink and green neon. I will assume they have adopted the crassness of the 21st century and now serve women at the bar. But I don't think they will be serving me. Well, maybe if I'm really drunk. wataminnit! - that's the only way I went to the Phoenix in the first place......

Jefferson Starship - 1975
I think the Jefferson Airplane had finally been put to rest for the first time by this time. The Starship had just released what was going to be their biggest album with top 40 hits like the sugary sappy "Miracles". The seeds for disaster were very present. The show was actually really good. The highlight was the band playing a major chunk of side 2 of Blows Against the Empire. It had become a kind of psychedelic space opera for the initiated.

7,000 gypsies swimming together
An offering to the sun in the name of the weather
Gonna Hijack
Hijack the startship....

Grace Slick could still sing, Paul Kantner still couldn't but he could play a driving rhythm guitar like a sonofabitch. Craig Chaquico was firmly in as a band member and Papa John was, well, Papa John.

Last Chance !
Today is your last chance to visit the Hamilton County Fair this year !
Riding Lawnmower Derby ! Robin Lacy & DeZydeco ! Critters ! Poo !
I still haven't found squat on a Fair Queen and given the lousy ass coverage of the fair in the local media, I doubt that I ever will.
Anyway, here's a shot from the Llama show at the Champaign County Fair...

Freddie and Carmen Hillman

Les Paul RIP

Les Paul was credited with all sorts of electronic innovations in music including over dubbing and the solid bodied guitar.
He was also a kick ass guitarist. His work has seriously been integral to the modern music scene. Born in 1915, he performed well into his 90s while suffering arthritis. Earlier in his life, an automobile accident fairly destroyed one of his arms. He had doctors set it so he could play his guitar. After playing with a host of musicians including Fred Waring (the guy who came up with the Waring Blender), he teamed up with singer mary Ford and created a pop sensation.
He is revered by, well, pretty much anybody who has picked up a guitar. He will be missed.
Here is the Wikipedia entry on the guy.
And if you are not inclined to read, here is a really short encapsulation of his life.

Baby, Don't Do It
The Who, Dayton Hara Arena 1971
The ad was in the Springfield News Sun. We all saw it. We hightailed it to the gift wrap department at Wren's Department Store to buy tickets from the little old bag (few years earlier it would have been my grandmother) working there. Tickets were $6.50. My sister told me I was getting ripped off. No rock concert should cost more than $4.00 !
The seats were about a third of the way back up on the left side. Back then different outlets got real tickets and different locations had better or worse seats. Later we would drive to Dayton and get tickets at Rikes or Hara for better seats, but then Ticketron/Master came along and added a little democracy to the process.
I digress.....
I forget how we got there. I think Pete drove that weird gold colored Oldsmobile ?
Walking across the parking lot (The Hara parking lot parties were pretty nuts) we spotted columns of police in riot gear. Ferreal, helmets, batons, clear plastic shields. Absolutely nothing happened, but it was kinda neat to see. Doubt the Dayton PD had much call to ever put the stuff on.
The Who were touring Who's Next. All those iconic songs like Baba O'Reilly, Behind Blue Eyes and, of course, Won't Get Fooled Again were all brand new at the time and absolutely blowing our teenaged minds.
During this tour, Townshend was asked when was the last time he had smashed a guitar. He relied, "Last night". He explained he had a contract with Gibson that stipulated free SGs as long as he smashed them. Kalamazoo sell out.....
From the first song, Love Ain't for Keeping, with it's first three chords thundering through the hockey arena through to the end, it was just glorious rock and roll. After Won't get Fooled Again, somebody in the audience called out, "Play some rock and roll !" Townshend asked, "Play some rock and roll ? What do you think THAT was ? Mantovani ?"
By the end of the show my friends & I were hoarse from singing along at the top of our lungs (nobody could hear, so what the heck ?) and our legs aching as we had Keith Mooned our legs with our fists the whole time.
We were happy boys.

Some folks from Antioch's WYSO recorded the concert and I believe that is where the bootleg recording of the show came from. It was released as a single and double vinyl disk edition. Not sure what all is on the double album, this is the setlist:

• Love Ain't for Keepin'
• Pure and Easy
• My Wife
• I Can't Explain
• Substitute
• Bargain
• Behind Blue Eyes
• Won't Get Fooled Again
• Don't Know Myself
• Baby Don't You Do It
• Pinball Wizard
• See Me, Feel Me
• My Generation
• Magic Bus
• Naked Eye

Hamilton County Fair Pics !
The Cincinnati Enquirer has posted 9 (count 'em) pictures from the 154th Hamilton County Fair which runs through Saturday.
Foul ! Ewes ! Flowers ! Horses ! Baby Chickies !
Hopefully, more to come - Go Enquirer! Go !
Pie Eating Contest Friday at 5 !
Gallery here.

Council Theatrics

Councilwoman Leslie Ghiz has an editorial in the Enqiurer's "Other Voices" section. In it she rails against other council members for not supporting big labor and for a committee passing legislation to the council allowing for the purchase and distribution of recycling bins.
She offers no solutions, however.
She cites the up front cost of the recycling bins but doesn't mention the impact they would have on the city's budget. You can find that info on council woman Quall's site, here.
While Quall's numbers don't add up to a break even figure & alternatives are not offered, her commentary does bring some clarity to the issue.
Ghiz just offers blame and unexplained numbers.
During Ghiz' successful campaign for office she held that council members are considered part time employees and should be compensated with part time pay. At this time of budgetary crisis, why isn't she putting this back on the table ? Why isn't she pushing for greater efficiency in the police department ?
All she appears to offer is grandstanding.

Hamilton County Fair !
On 8/8/09 the Enquirer ran a story about The Hamilton County Fair. In an earlier post I griped about the coverage of the fair in the Enquirer. This story, already stuck onto the nky.com pages describes the fair glowingly with words like, "struggles" & "dismal". The story prominently focuses on poor attendance and cites better attendance at other nearby fairs. The story tells us about a manure giveaway. We are reminded of "nearby gunfire and groups of unruly youths".
Of course the racism and optimism of the Cincinnati.com commenter is present:
From navrat," Why on earth would decent people want to take their kids to an event about agriculture,located in an area taken over by low life ,punks and thugs?"
From chillymost1 (referring to the one incident of gunfire), "Inside or Outside...gunplay is gunplay. I feel bad that we're losing this tradition, but once it is tainted by idiots firing guns...inside or out on Vine street...I don't feel safe there.".
and (continuing to obsess over the one time gunfire incident, "Im sure as heck not going there! .... make it into an Urban County fair with Uzis & Glocks and Phat Farm & Enyce clothes and boom cars with 26" wheels!"
There was a ray of hope from LetsAnnex, "A lot of hard work has gone into planning this Fair, and it is in poor taste to dismiss the work of hundreds.".
The Enquirer does mention sections of the fair being dedicated to green living and urban gardening, a new ride company, more carny game booths and a first ever parade. It also brings up fair organizers wanting to abandon the Hell on Earth that is Cincinnati. With coverage from the local paper like this, can't blame 'em.


Anyway, here's the details:
7801 Anthony Wayne Avenue
Tuesday-Friday: 3 PM-11 PM
rides start at 5 PM
Saturday: 11 AM-11 PM
rides start at 1 PM
$8 admission - $4 parking rides are included with admission.




Fiswrap Story here.

Crosby, Stills & Nash 1978
wow
I had no idea I had been to a CSN concert.

City Layoffs and Republican Bizarro World

Who would have thought the local Republicans would become the party of big labor ? It's not terribly surprising. Shortly after I moved here in the early 80s, I noticed the "conservatives" had a decidedly fascist streak.
In one of the worst global economic downturns, the city, suffering an extreme lack of tax revenue, decided to make across the board budget cuts. City Manager Dohoney directed department heads to propose what to cut. The labor unions were asked to make concessions. People were afeared of cuts in the fire and police departments. The Fire Department trimmed expenses and avoided the loss of personnel. The Police Union attempted a game of brinksmanship and has, so far, lost.
Now Republican candidates for mayor and council, challengers and incumbents are lining up behind the FOP. Kinda weird that the party of business and smaller, more efficient government is backing up what appears to be a bloated big labor type department that has duplicated resources and relies on union rules and not sound management rules to make changes.
I do have to recognize mayoral hopeful Wenstrup for his fairly proper use of the word decimate.
Republican Candidate Amy Murray, who twittered, "we must run efficient gvnt - managed competition would save $$" appears to back up the police union and not want to apply managed competition to the law enforcement agency.
It's impossible to make strategic layoffs in a completely unionized organization. I can't imagine how a business like, maybe, 5/3, would run under such conditions. The Republicans should be looking at outsourcing law enforcement to a private company like Blackwater/Xe. heck the president is even a hard core evangelical.
Even with that, a police department is largely reactionary. It can't do much to prevent crime except by just being there. People need to stop committing crimes. How do we go about that ? Municipal recreation facilities were proven to help in combatting juvenile delinquency in the 1920s. Rec centers are a good place for communities to congregate and organize civic projects. All of this stuff is only sustainable through taxes, tho. If kids are not making constructive use of recreational facilities then there's no need to have them. If the tax revenue is not there to keep them open, alternatives must be found. For meeting purposes, civic centers could be merged. Meetings and activities could be held in public schools and branch libraries. This would cut down on the duplication of management and maintenance of these facilities. this would also bring kids and adults together which could foster a greater sense of citizenship in the kids which might lead them away from juvenile delinquency (which would cut costs in law enforcement).
Increasing tax revenue to pay for public services like law enforcement is essential and utilizing our assets, like beautiful old architecture, a large riverfront, a university and medical complex is essential. Investing on a short-distance rail transit circulator option (street car) from the riverfront to UC makes perfect sense. It will empower developers of varying size to create business sites, condos and apartments. Entrepreneurs will be able to start or expand businesses to cater to the new residents. People will be able to live in a relatively small area with a great variety of locally owned businesses and services. The resultant re-population of the largely vacant Over the Rhine neighborhood would expand the tax base and dissipate crime.
Using infrastructure (at a time when construction costs are low - saving tax dollars) to empower entrepreneurship, lower crime and increase the tax base to pay for services appears to be anathema to a lot of our area Republicans, tho.
weird

And This is Going Out to All You COA Ters !

Flaw by Runt
I really like the idea of a watchdog group keeping track of the government's taxing and spending practices. It is something we as citizens need to do. I wish we had one in Cincinnati. I mean, an ethical, non-idological one that didn't involve itself with religionist groups like the CCV. One that was interested in civil rights. One that didn't regularly distort issues and resort to out and out lying and fear mongering.
yeah, I could go for that....

...and This Weekend in Historic Northside !
yeah, I know what you're thinking -
"C'mon Quimbob, we all know about the northside.net Community Calendar and the weekly eNewsletter, Bits & Pieces. We come here for your sage philosophy, insight and wisdom. We don't need to hear about all the cool stuff going on in Northside that makes our neighborhoods look like clusters of little houses made of ticky tacky !"
irregardless.....
Starting on Friday evening
An evening Walk in Buttercup Valley brought to you by Northside Greenspace.
meet at Stanford Avenue at 6:30
Saturday, beginning at 9 and lasting til 2, the CAIN Northside Neighborhood wide yard sale ! This year augmented by the College Hill/Northside Kiwanis setting up at Hoffner Park.
Later, at 9, take the Full Moon Tour at Spring grove Cemetery !
Sunday morning at 8 is the SpringLight 5k run/walk in Spring Grove Cemetery benefitting the Cincinnati Association for the Blind. Dunno if you can just spend the night....
If your tennies still have soles after that, you can take the Architreks walking tour starting at 11 at Sidewinder Coffees and Teas.
Hang around and do to the Village green Community festival and Potluck at the Gardens at the Village green (MOBO) at 5. You could win a goat.....

Judas Priest Cincinnati Gardens 1986
This was my farewell to my twenties show.
I was working third shift and headed down to Lazarus (or was it still Shillito's ?) to get my ticket the day the ticket sales started. I figured there would be a couple hundred people there. I guess the Priest's day had come and gone. There were about 15 people there, most of whom had spent the night. I got a ticket for the 4th row just left of center.
This was towards the end of my dope days with cocaine being about the last illegal recreational drug of choice. Fortified with beer, pot & coke, I headed to Cincinnati Gardens fashionably late. I really did not want to hear the opening act. I am not that big of a metal head. My timing was perfect. I got there right as the intermission started.
I frequently sat in other people's seats at concerts (squatting ?). People don't make it to shows or sit elsewhere with friends - I always relinquished when an owner arrived. So somebody was in my seat. ~no biggie~ I told him it was my seat. He informed me he didn't care. He informed me someone else was sitting in his seat & I should talk to him. Fortifried, I told him I didn't care about his seat. Getting nowhere, I talked to an usher. He couldn't do anything (They always seemed to be able to do something when I was the squatter). The usher referred me to the head usher. Nothing there. I approached a large burly SECURITY guy. nope - I was on my own. I thanked him and told him I would just have to beat the guy's ass. I returned to my seat and proceeded to engage in the yelling, cussing and posturing that usually precedes a fight. As this escalated, head usher and security guy finally intervened.
Turned out the asshole was not only a seat thief but a liar as well. His seat was, yep, right next to me, so I got to spend the rest of the evening sitting next to the butt head I had just been threatening to kill.
yay
The show was good. The guitarists could get some good interplay going. They had this one prop that was straight out of Spinal Tap. A robot looking thing with Christmas tree lights on it. It had 3 appendages that lifted the singer and 2 lead guitarists into the air. Rob Halford clearly did not want to get onto the thing. It was wobbling really bad.
After the show I bid my new friend adieu. He grunted at me and slunked away. I went on my way and broke the law a little more. The next day, I turned 30.

The Enquirer's Censors - Again
ok, this time I was censored for replying to a guy and saying that what he said wasn't true.
Cincinnati's black population is not 14.5%.
He had some percentages for racial makeup of the jail population but after that gem of a non statistic, why bother ?

The List
in case anybody is interested.....

Everybody Pays by Andrew Vachss
Live Through the 70s Johnny Winter compilation DVD
The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul
Zombie Strippers the unrated special edition DVD
Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell
Sonic Revolution - Celebration of the MC5 DVD
World of Ornament by David Batterham
Star Trek DS9 Season 3 DVD set
A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew by Jacob Weingreen
The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker edited by Matthew Diffee
The Haitian Vodou Handbook: Protocols for Riding with the Lwa by Kenaz Filan

Waylon Jennings Festival - Bellefontaine, Ohio 1979
This was an all day event at the Mad River Mountain Ski Resort. I have no idea who played. Some guy from the Band (Rick Danko ?) played. His set was interrupted by rain. When he returned to the stage, he was shit faced drunk.
Bellefontaine (pronounced bell-fountain) is, of course, the highest point in Ohio and home to the first concrete roadway in the country. Mad River fishing up there is also supposed to be good.
Honestly, I don't remember shit about this show.....

Jethro Tull - Cincinnati 1976
Tull came through Cincinnati & played at the crappy-ass Coliseum about once a year in the late summer early fall every year for awhile.In 1976 they released Too Old to Rock n Roll: Too Young to Die which was pretty much shit. Their concert was not dominated by it. Tull concerts were all pretty much the same. They were good & professional. Ian Anderson' banter between songs, Martin Barre's piercing lead guitar, John Evan's piano & antics all made for a fun evening. Wish they could have played at Music Hall, tho.

The Cramps - Jockey Club 1986
Pat was a pretty reserved person. 30 year old African American mother of 2, active in her church & kid's schools - that type. When she heard us excitedly planning to see The Cramps, it piqued her interest and she asked if she could join us because she had never been to a "rock show" and she had heard some interesting things about the venue in the news. We stared at her for awhile and said, uh, sure. Throw in a few freaks from The Champion City & we were off to Newport.
The Cramps were touring the soon to be released A Date With Elvis.
The Boondocks and, locals, The Reduced opened. I have no recollection of The Boondocks.
The Cramps took the stage. Ivy in high fashion harem attire & trademark orange Gretsch guitar and Lux in gold lamé from head to toe. Reverb on 11, the Cramps rocked.

Lux Interior
Lux had a couple bottles of wine. Maybe half of one made it down his throat - I mean the inside. The rest went all over the place. As the show progressed (regressed ?) through gems like The Garbage Man, Drug Train & Can Your Pussy Do The Dog ?, the gold lamé was steadily discarded to the point of gold lamé bikini briefs. At the end of the show Lux was convulsing on his side in a fetal position atop the PA speakers with the microphone in his mouth as he made not-too-human sounds to the song, Surfin' Bird. Nick, Ivy & whoever was playing bass just kept pounding away. It was a great show.
Pat never returned to The Jockey Club.

Images from The Jockey Club page

GBH & The Cro-Mags - Jockey Club 1986
I doubt that GBH (no idea what it stands for - Boston public radio ?) is anybody's favorite band but they are an energetic and fun punk band. Some of their songs are Slit Your Own Throat, City Baby Attacked by Rats, Drug Party in 526, Self Destruct.....
you get the idea
Anyways, they played with the Cro-Mags.
It was loud, fast and loud.

Clark County Fair Winners
Today is the last day of the 2009 Clark County Fair. The local Springfield News-Sun has run multiple articles about the annual event every day of the fair and a few leading up to the fair. They have a special section on their website that has links to all the articles and photo galleries. They have posted the winners of the various competitions from growing squash to raising pigs, baking cookies, arts and crafts, racing, tractor competitions, demolition derbies.....
They have interviewed the people who have won prizes, people involved with putting on the fair and just people attending the fair.
They ran this story about elderly people celebrating their long lived marriages.
Will we see any kind of reporting of the Hamilton County Fair from the Enquirer or any of the other media outlets that approaches this level of coverage ? I understand the material constraints of the print world and the time constraints of the broadcast world, but their online editions could handle such coverage easily. The News Sun promotes the accomplishments of these average folks and especially the kids at the fair. The paper introduces them to the greater community. Seems like every time the local Cincinnati media introduces a teenager to the community, the kid has shot somebody or fractured their skull with a rock or baseball bat. The most coverage of the HamCo Fair I ever saw was when some dumbass started firing a gun near the entrance of the fairgrounds.
the Hamilton County Fair is 8/11-15. Will Cincinnati's award winning media rise to the occasion of reporting and promoting it's community as well as the Springfield News-Sun ? Or will we need some blood ?
Congratulations to all the Clark County Fair winners and to everybody who participated. Glad I could know about you.

Noose Son story here

Springfield's Historic Design Guidelines to get Update

The Springfield Historic Landmarks Commission is going to re-evaluate and update their guidelines for historic design issues for the first time in 24 years.
This is being done due to the historic and environmental review prompted by the hospital project (the one that eliminated an entire neighborhood and part of another).
A meeting will be held to get input from the public 7/30.

Noose Son story here

Few years ago (Pete Delkus was the announcer), WCPO did one of those online/phone polls, nothing really scientific, they asked if people would be interested in living in the downtown area. The result was something like 5%. Above is a map that guestimates the WCPO viewing area. With cable it is probably larger but less tidy. The blue dot represents 5% of that area. The red dot represents about how big the downtown area is. I realize resident aren't laid out in an orderly grid but, hopefully, you get the idea.
People have argued that repopulating OTR and populating The Banks will be impossible because there are not enough people in the region to support the area. My bistro graphics prove that wrong. Toss in new residents (people are leaving Piqua and Springfield all the time) and filling the area up should be easy.
People argue that a car free lifestyle is impossible. Cincy Streetcar recently pointed out that almost half the residents currently along the route live car free. In the >3 mile long, 2 block wide path the streetcar will traverse, there is room for every type of service and shop a resident could need and with those businesses come jobs and oppourtunity for entrepreneurship. With a simple, convenient and efficient way to get around, the area would be very desirable.
Repopulating and revitalizing the city's basin is doable and necessary. The current blight in OTR damages the entire region. The empty streets make it a haven for vice crime. A streetcar is a vital factor in repopulating and revitalizing the area and changing from a drain on city resources to a contributing area of the city.

Summer Jam featuring The Allman Brothers Band, The Band & The Grateful Dead, Watkins Glen Speedway 1973
In the early 70s hitchhiking was a fairly normal thing. people didn't think too much about taking or giving rides to strangers. It was not at all like the culture of fear we live in nowadays. My pal & I planned to hitch up to this concert in the beautiful Finger Lake region of New York. My dad put the kibosh on that, tho, & bought me a bus ticket. My pal hitched. We made plans to meet at the Watkins Glen bus station. ~right~ The Watkins Glen bus station was a bench in a pretty little mountain town about 4 blocks long.
I shouldn't complain. My bus ride afforded me the chance to visit the Cleveland Bus Terminal for, like 6 hours overnight ! My dad's plan of keeping me safe was kinda tossed out the window when my keen teenage sense of self preservation kicked in and I took any pill any hippie boarding the bus gave me saying, "Hey man, you going to the concert ? Here try one of these !" My lunch in Buffalo is best not recounted.....
Amazingly, my friend popped out of a car within minutes of my arrival in Watkins Glen. We bought a 12 pack of Gennesee beer from a cop, hopped on a pick up truck full of hippies and went up to the race track.
There were about 150,000 tickets sold and it looked like everybody had made it.

We had an old canvas pup tent with no floor or screens. The posts were made out of wood. Since I was taking the bus I got the honors for transporting the heavy ass thing. Anyway, it was easy setting up, lotsa nice park like settings to choose from. We commenced to walking around and checking out the scene.

Lotta Freaks

We found a group of guys in a van who were selling pot out of trash bags. We looked at them and turned and looked at the troopers standing about 15 feet away, bought a bag of "medium grade" and went back to the tent to commence smoking it.
The next day we walked up to the concert site even though the concert wasn't til noon the next day. We were nerds. We liked looking at amps and PAs & junk. Anyway, as the story goes, Robbie Robertson asked to do a sound check. Sometime in the afternoon The Band did a soundcheck - it turned into a mini concert. The Allman Brothers Band followed with their soundcheck that was a bit longer with lots of extended jamming. Later, The Grateful Dead did a "soundcheck". Their soundcheck actually had an intermission. That soundcheck can be found here and a few other places.
The next day we got to the concert site in the late morning. Hot - no shade. Guy next to me took off his clothes and passed out. He was a pasty shade of white at the time. That didn't last. The Grateful Dead started out the show and played most of the afternoon. The Band took the stage next. Probably around 6 it clouded up which was nice, but then the clouds let loose and it rained like hell.

Wet Hippies
Organist Garth Hudson was the only holdout while the rest of the band made for cover. This is captured on the track, Too Wet to Work on the Band's Live at Watkins Glen album. When The Band resumed it was with a long organ intro to Chest Fever. The Allman Brothers took the stage later. They were promoting their first album since the death of guitarist Duane Allman, Brothers and Sisters, which was released, apparently, shortly after the concert. I swear I knew, at least, Ramblin' Man before I went up, tho. They delivered a solid show, their biggest since Duane's death and they came through in flying colors. After The Allman Brothers, various members of the bands came out on stage and jammed, switched off with others and jammed some more. We fell asleep that night to the sound of members of all the bands jamming. The last thing I heard was "The Mountain Jam" as I drifted off into slumberland.
The next day we dropped some windowpane we had brought with us. We walked up to the stage where we saw naked hippies sitting in the mud frantically drumming on plastic milk crates. I could have lived without that. Garbage everywhere. We found a broken jar of peanut butter (peanut butter jars used to be made out of glass). We did not eat any because we didn't know if there might be glass shards in it. We spotted some playing cards and started picking them up. We figured we could play cards later in the day if we could scrounge a whole deck. We wound up with about 250 cards but not a whole deck. We found a bank of temporary phones. My friend called his girlfriend. That's when we found out there were a few more than the expected 150,000 people at the concert.

About that time, a truckload of hippies drove by tossing out boxes of Little Debbie cakes. We could move pretty fast back then & grabbed a couple each. We attacked them mercilessly. Remember the aforementioned lunch in Buffalo ? This was the first I had eaten since then.
We decided to walk around the race track. It was a beautiful day. The sky was clearing from the rain the night before. Big beautiful puffy and hallucinatory clouds everywhere. Yet another truckload of hippies came careening up the track and stopped to offer us a ride. ok. As we flew along the race track we swerved a few times to dodge other hippies doing the same thing in the opposite direction. We got off the truck at the next stop. Apparently there were some collisions.
That night, after playing crazy eights with our 250 card not-a-deck, we went over to talk to some of our neighbors. We met these city boys from somewhere in New York. They were trying to build a fire. They would light some dried brush and as it flared up, they would drop this big ass log they found onto it and -surprise - it never lit. We built them a fire. They thought we were some kind of Ohio mountain men. We gave them the last of our 12 pack.
The next day we went back to the town in, yep, a truck full of hippies. My friend and I went our separate ways to the same place. This time he beat me by about 8 hours. I remember sitting at the back of the greyhound bus when an attractive well dressed young Canadian woman sat down next to me. I had not bathed or eaten real food in days. I had been living outside in the rain and the sun and the mud and the woods. She took it in stride. She knew where I had been. I was still embarrassed.
When I got home I don't know what I did first second or third but showering, eating and sleeping in clean sheets were all I cared about and I know I did all 3.

None of the images in this post are mine. Hell, I had no money for a camera back then, besides, I figured this was life forever at the time....
:-)
A great gallery by Grant Gouldon is here.

The soundcheck recording of the Grateful Dead can be found here.

More links:
Summer Jam 1973
Mitchell & Bonnie A pair of teens who disappeared somewhere along the line.
Hunter-Gatherer A view of the aftermath from the back seat of a station wagon with the fam.
Shakedown Stream

We Got a Queen !

Kati Stevens declared 2009 Clark County Fair Queen !

Noose Son story here/

The Influence of Anger
Reading the hate filled and angry bile in the Enquirer's comments sections has really baffled me. I watched Moyers Journal the other night and all was made clear. I don't listen to talk radio. Can't stand it. Air America was horrible. The local college show, Explore Cincinnati is ok - at least they don't yell and harrangue. I am too cheap to pay for Fox News and CNN on cable (I get "Lifeline" service from Time Warner) so I was unaware of what people like Glenn Beck, Mike Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Oreilly and that ilk were up to. It appears people are just picking up on these goons and aping their style of talking. It's kinda like teenage "wiggers" emulating the speech of popular rappers. Childish, to be sure, but when you look at the antics of the local right wingers on the COA T & HamCoGOP blogs, the old Whistleblower and the quotes from Tea Baggers, you can see you are not dealing with a very mature lot. When you see these people gaining political clout it can make you feel like you are living in a Lord of the Flies sorta world.
What Moyers points out is that people are acting on what the announcers defend as "entertainment". This is like my reader actually building a zombie shelter. I can't imagine that happening but hopefully, if he does, it will prove useful for him when his mother in law comes to stay.

PBS Moyers story, "Rage on the Airwaves", here

The Clark County Fair is Now Open

Springfield Noose Son Pic

The Clark County Fair is running through July 31 on South Charleston Pike just off I-70 in sunny Springfield, Ohio.
Goats, cows, pigs, horsies, tractors, queens, demolition derbies, cotton candy, waffles, ice cream, foot long hot dogs, rides, music - mmmmm.....

Browsers Are Free
Micro$oft has paid $2,390,000,000.00 in fines to European Union antitrust regulators so they could bundle their Windows-only Internet Exploder browser with their OS and not have any other browsers loaded on the computer. Browsers are free. You can load a million of 'em. You set one as a default & go. There are different add ons and plug ins for the various browsers - the browser that works best for you and has the features you need and renders pages to the best of your liking is the one you should use.
Fact is - they all render about the same except for Internet Exploder. Firefox has some great plug ins. It renders quickly and accurately but it is slow as hell to launch. Safari launches quickly, renders quickly and accurately but is lacking in quality add ons. Opera is a solid, quick browser and Chrome seems ok, although the interface of Chrome is bit radical. Would M$ spend >2B so people don't see what a piece of shit one of their software products is even though anyone with a third of a brain could already load another browser & test it for himself and see ?
IE defaults to the Bing search engine which gets M$ some ad revenue. $2B worth ? I am assuming IE lets you pick a default search engine other than Bing.
How much are Apple, Google, Mozilla & Opera going to charge M$ to distribute their browsers ? $2B ?
How much money is behind a bit of free software ?
To me, it's just a matter of A. displaying pages properly and then B. rendering quickly. The Web Standards Project has created the Acid Tests that see how well browsers handles html, css, javascript, SVG and other standard web junk. IE generally comes in last and Apple's Safari beta kinda thing browser, Webkit, tends to rate highest. What do people use ? They ain't using Safari.
What I'm seeing on this dumbass site -
Browsers:

• Chrome 3.2%
• IE 38.2%
• Mozilla/Firefox 39%
• Safari 13.2%

Operating Systems:

• Linux 2%
• MacOSX 21.2%
• WinVista 10.8%
• WinXP 55%

Worldwide, IE commands closer to 60% of the market share. Except - it's free. So is it really a market share ? I guess it is since M$ is fighting so hard to keep out competition (which, of course, stifles innovation).
Most people are lazy and just use what's on the computer when they buy it. I use Macs but the first version of Safari was crap so it took a few revisions before I started using it full time. It doesn't work well on some sites. Angie's List log in form won't work with Safari and the HamCo Auditor's site crashes it. Because of IEs broad use, web developers have to write pages wrong just so they work with IE. The average shmoe doesn't understand this and just assumes the page is wrong if it doesn't work with the browser he is using. Frankly, I would love to know how to make a form not work with particular browsers. Seems like the useless kind of knowledge I crave.
In the end, I don't understand either the EU or Micro$oft on this and I cannot believe the amount of money M$ is paying to promote the least competitive product in it's field. How about M$ dumping IE and just distribute Firefox with a search that defaults to Bing and give the U.S. gummint $2B to fix some bridges and sewers ? Everybody is better served, people get a better browser, M$ doesn't have to pour more money into that black hole of software development, IE, American money stays in America.....
I don't get it.

Yahoo/Reuters story here

Ohio HB 252 Requires Father's Consent for Abortion
Ohio Congressman John Adams has drafted legislation that would require a woman to get the permission of the man who impregnated her to abort the pregnancy. The bill is co-sponsored by 15 other men including the usual cadre of SW Ohio Republican idiots. While it gives the potential father veto rights, it does not impose any responsibility on these "men". I guess "conservatives" don't feel that rights carry responsibilities.
I have long thought the father should have such a right, but never without demanding that he pay the bills, provide health care, mental and physical, during and after the pregnancy, require he take the child after birth unconditionally and demand he pay for any lost wages the woman might incur. Since the paternity will have to be determined before the abortion can be done, demanding the father pay his share of that would be appropriate, too. Because it would be a state mandate, the government should provide the funds for paternity testing including tracking down recalcitrant fathers.
Pregnancy is a time sensitive issue and there seems to be no provision for a guy who does the impregnating to assume any responsibility if his mischievousness or procrastination in giving permission leads to the woman ultimately giving birth.
Not demanding any responsibility reflects poorly on the men promoting this legislation.
Without all these provisions it's just a bunch of guys saying, bitch, your cunt is mine - make me some babies.

COA T co-founder Tom Brinkman - Ohio's Answer to Harold Hill ?
Brinkman and a couple of his political fringe cohorts have banded together to make the political/legal case against gambling in Ohio in a move parallel with the Talibanish Ohio Roundtable group. One of his pals did work for the failed gubernatorial campaign of (sonofabitch) Ken Blackwell. Another is, theoretically, a member (president ?) of the right wing Buckeye Institute, an organization known for screwing up numbers and statistics as badly as COA T.
Brinkman has been trying to change state law so he can lobby for COA T (maybe shoulda thought about that while still in office instead of procuring grills for Alms Park). When he was in office, he wasted state money on admittedly pointless legislation that would have have forced young women to bear the fruit of incestuous rape. He has failed repeatedly to get the support of constituents in his congressional district who would rather have daggone Jean Schmidt. He was involved in overturning Cincinnati's gay rights protections which involved working with the Talibanish CCV and the illegal collection of ballot signatures.
While maybe not working directly with the religious extremists, we can easily surmise he is in league with them on this issue, too.
COA T's campaigning trademark is hysterical fear mongering laced with paronomasia & outright lies - similar to what we see Robert Preston doing in this scene from the cinematic version of the Music Man. What snake oil can we expect from their co-founder on the gambling issue ? Or will he and his "communications experts" just funnel that to the Ohio Roundtable group ?
-sigh-
Harold Hill was, in the end, redeemed. His heart having found true love with the local librarian and satisfying the citizens of the River City by actually conducting the promised youth band. Unfortunately, I doubt we can expect any turnaround from this particular rogue.

Cowtown Politics article here.

Where Are All the Queens ?
ok - Where are all the Hamilton County Fair Queen contestants ? For that matter, where's last year's winner ? They have the prize cabbages & potatoes.....
They have a new company providing rides.
But I want weepy teenage girls in gaudy poofy gowns, dammit !
learn, well, not a whole lot more here.
The HamCoAgSoc forum appears to be down. Considering all the negativity from the admins, I am not surprised.

Race Baiting Liberals Can't Handle the Truth

Maddow can't answer any of Buchanan's questions but argues in circles trying to bait Buchanan. His comments about the U.S. Military are off base as the military was segregated at the time of those battles and the soldiers, to this day, don't get to pick their battles. But, Maddow ignores history and seems to want the Supreme Court to be populated by lottery. Why she doesn't argue on gender or religious lines and solely on racial lines is mystifying, but, whatever.....
What's amazing is that the Buchanan haters have no problem with Sotomayor's racist and sexist comments about the superiority of Latin women over European American males.
Buchanan frequently has opinions on political strategies and frequently lauds the strategies of people he disagrees with. When he suggests the people opposed to Sotomayor bring up the affirmative action issue - he is discussing political strategy - PERIOD.
Affirmative action is in place to give people a good start. It is not to be used in the Supreme Court. We should not have quotas in that high office. Affirmative action DOES screw white males and gives us subpar results frequently. Buchanan is right on this.
As to Maddow's harping on the 108 out of 110 - you have to eliminate about half of those that came before the 20th century. She is playing with numbers and rhetoric and makes no valid point. Her refusal to answer Buchanan is feeble an intellectually dishonest. It's amazing that honest straightforward answers like Buchanan's are reviled while the backpedalling and squirming reasoning of these liberals is somehow acceptable.
Sotomayor backpedals (in circles).

Ohio Rocker Dies

Crain at the Apollo

Shig a Shag

A retired Springfield police officer, Jimmy Crain was recently laid to rest. He started his professional career as a musician, however, hopping onto the Rock-nRoll bandwagon in the late 50s. He recorded for Springfield's Spangle Records.
Later he became a Springfield police officer, raised a family & participated in church, community and Masonry.
Cops and musicians actually have a lot in common (HAHA) in that they are both committed to making the public happy and their communities a better place to live. Hats off to Mr Crain for being a committed man (even if he did become a cop on a bet).

Noose Son story here

Will We Demand a Vote ?
The Cincinnati museum Center wants about $7 million/year for the next 5 years to do some repairs. They want to put it on the ballot this November but the Hamilton County subcommittee for the Tax Levy Review Committee said "no" and recommended a levy for half that amount.
I imagine the We Demand a Vote Crüe will be out collecting signatures to get this on the ballot any day now. The fact that the Tax Review Committee has unelected members on board should surely raise the eyebrows of the local NAACP & the Libertarian contingent of COA T and the ability to merely vote on the issue should get the über-democratic Green contingent fired up, too.
yeah, that'll happen.
I have no problem with the Museum Center, but they need to market themselves better and try to raise funds on their own first, before going to the taxpayers. They have a Donations page but it doesn't promote their sponsors too well & it doesn't say anything about needing cash for building repairs & improvements. There is no hype at all. I have no idea what their private solicitations for funds has produced.
You can rent the joint for private stuff. I attended a wedding there that was pretty cool. The guests had free rein of the local museum area. If you want to support the Museum Center, renting their facilities might be a good start. heck W sold a war there.....
It also seems kinda weird to tax Hamilton County property owners for what is, essentially a regional institution. Fund raisers and soliciting sponsors seems like the better approach to me.
But, hey, We Demand a Vote will probably be backing this all the way, so I am sure we will get a vote on this, anyway.
PTTP

NKY.com (?) article here.

Folks in Campbell County (that's in Kentucky) are having a farm tour Saturday, July 18 from 9A to 5P. This is a chance for all the city slickers to get out there and see where their food comes from. You will probably never eat again. That's cool, you can always go zombie & commence to eating people's brains & guts. There will be 16 farms participating and you MUST go to every single one !
Learn more at the Campbell Co Conservation District website.
home.fuse.net/campbellcd/farmtour.html which is done in frames, so if you need to see anything else on the site use this link
The brochure is here (PDF).

The Beat Farmers 1986
A friend of mine in San Diego alerted me to this band. They were big on the bar scene out there. They were, in fact, a perfect bar band. Unfortunately, they only got any national acclaim for a couple novelty songs sung by, as most novelty songs are, the drummer.
I was working third shift, so I was on best, -er- better behaviour that night which was hard because, as a bar band, they inspired massive drinking. I had to leave before they were through and one of the last songs I saw was one of their hits, "Happy Boy" where the drummer/singer came out from behind his kit and laid down on his back, hoisted a beer up with his feet and poured it onto his face (and a good part of the rest of his body) and sang the gargling part of the song.
With that, I dutifully headed off to work.

Enter, Cheese
Young's Jersey Dairy on route 68 just north of Yellow Springs has finally added cheese to the mix. Long known for their milk and ice cream, I am kinda puzzled why they weren't making cheese already. They don't seem interested in any crazy designer cheeses, opting, instead, for Cheddar, Jack & Colby. They have also set up a Twitter account so, I guess, we can expect hourly Twitter updates on the aging of the cheeses.

Noose Son story here.

Happy Bastille Day Everybody !

We want the rights and we don't care how
I am currently slogging through Juliette by the Marquis De Sade. I don't think I am gonna make it. Anyway, he was locked up in the Bastille prior to it's downfall and actually helped to incite some of the rioting that resulted in said downfall. He was transferred to an asylum shortly before the 14th. Thing is, he might have actually been highly respected if he had still been in the Bastille at the time. After Robspierre (sp? - Is that like a French version of PierreBob ?) was ousted, De Sade was freed and actually elected to office. Napoleon put the kibosh on that & De Sade spent the rest of his life in prison and asylums where he wrote plays that were performed by the inmates.
De Sade's writings, well, at least this'n are long and boring and the philosophy stuff is pretty much the kind of thing that high school and college kids debate today. Back in the late 1700s, tho, while he was pretty radical - he had a lot in common with what we were doing in the U.S. As an elected official who was a hard core sexual deviant, he had a lot in common with modern American politics, too. What's a revolution without general copulation, tho - yanno ?

Referendumania
In the last couple years we have had a spate of ballot initiatives, all modifying the city charter, that have come from 2 local organizations, COA T & the local chapter of the NAACP. When people complain about the deluge of ballot initiatives, the promoters claim the voters should have the right to decide these issues. Then, of course, they go about a campaign of misinformation & obsfucation to get the vote they want. This is obviously one of the things the opponents dislike. The fact that it's the same people, time after time, however has to lead one to wonder what their objective is. One must ask, "What's next ?".
While COA T claims to be a watchdog on taxation and government spending, most of the initiatives they have supported would result in greater spending. The Environmental Justice legislation the city council just enacted, that will result in greater city spending, cost local businesses more and generally heap more red tape into the mix with no real benefit to the community seems to have slipped right under their noses. And yet, they were opposed to using electronic traffic monitoring devices that would cut the cost of law enforcement.
The president of the local NAACP repeatedly cries that he is preventing the impending genocide of local African Americans. He is, from the looks of things, doing a good job. I certainly haven't noticed any mass graves of late.
It would appear that the major goal of these people is to be obstructionist. Their tactics are not much different than the revolutionary who maintains a steady stream of mischief & vandalism that occupies the local constabulary while the rebel forces gather just outside the town. A 5th column, if you will.
Where the obstructionism really shows up is in the effort to prevent the city from spinning off it's water works and forming a water district. The issue here is that the water works has more capacity than customers. Generally, COA T would refer to such a situation as a boondoggle and a case of government overspending. Again, they are inconsistent in their public reasoning. The state prevents the city from expanding it's service, but a separate water district could serve a greater customer base and expand the revenue stream of the city.
So, why not a state ballot initiative to lift the state's restrictions on the city ? Why the focus on obstructing the city ? COA T does consistently try to thwart the city from generating revenue. Why ?
The local NAACP president urged the city to break up contracts for city projects so smaller, African American owned contractors could bid on the jobs. The proposed street car plan would likely be one big project, but the chances for smaller businesses to refurbish and develop vacant properties along the route would be exactly the type of opportunity Mr Smitherman is asking for.
Cincinnati's African Americans tend to have lower than average incomes. They are more likely to walk or use mass transit. Having kids is expensive and seeing young African American mothers struggle with baby carriages on sidewalks and buses is a fairly common sight in Cincinnati. Why did the local NAACP oppose electronic traffic monitoring devices that would aid in the safety of these young women and their children trying to cross intersections ? Why do they oppose a mode of transportation that would improve these young mothers mobility ?
Over and over these groups are not acting consistently, logically nor in their publicly known constituents best interest.
Looking at the more public members of these organizations one could easily conclude that these people are merely unelectable, bitter and disgruntled wannabes. They seem to have an attitude similar to the street gangs that would prefer to keep their neighborhood in a state of squalor rather than let it be improved by someone who might diminish their authority. Is their goal to turn Cincinnati into a Port-au-Prince ? A Mogadishu ? Is their goal to destabilise the city so they can somehow take over ? Wasn't this Charles Manson's plan ?
While Smitherman's rants and COA T's garbled numbers can be comical, David Koresh or Jim Jones could have easily been laughed at one point in time, too.

Motorists Drive Around Dying Man
the Fishwrap reports that a guy was shot several times on the sidewalk along Reading Road in Avondale at rush hour. He fell into the street and the motorists just drove around him. That is, people didn't stop and try to protect him or help him. Presumably somebody called the police. They probably had to put their current conversation on hold to do so.
This is pretty much what we can expect in our car-centric society. Everybody just kinda glides along in their steel and glass bubbles, their controlled environments complete with 100 watt, 14 speaker stereo system and heated leather seats. Toss in a heaping helping of telephones, internet, streaming video, talk radio.....
The stuff going on outside just starts looking like a game projected onto the windshield of the car.
Over time, driving really starts to insulate you from the communities you live and work in. A lot of people on Reading at rush hour are probably just passing through anyway and don't care about the people living and dying there. They just drive by. Did they pause to at least Twitter, "HAH ! Dead as punk out in the street on Reading !".
I seriously wonder if the crime was reported to the police or if people just reported an obstruction in their commute.
Commenters on the Fishwrap website applaud the death as the guy had a police record. But how would they know he had a record if they were just driving by hoping to not get any blood on their car ? Did they take off their tin foil hats for a moment to listen to the voices ?
Dumbasses shoot each other over trivial BS all the time. This isn't really about them. this is an indictment of "the good people". You know, the ones with jobs, the ones who pay taxes, the ones who don't walk.

Fishwrap story here.

Layoffs at WCPO
The Fishwrap reports that local TV station WCPO is eliminating 5 jobs in a corporate consolidation effort. The jobs are in sales and graphics.
Perusing the illuminating Fishwrap comments it seems nobody can read as they all carry on about the talking heads that should be retained or canned. Never mind that those are not the jobs being cut....
Apparently the notion that the consolidation maybe could have been made in Cincinnati is completely lost on these nattering nabobs of negativity. Certainly, the fact that Cincinnati was NOT chosen to be the graphics hub should fill their black hearts with glee and fire up their contention that Cincinnati is Hell on Earth. Speaking of which, there's only 3 days left to pick the post apocalyptic movie that best represents Cincinnati.
Cincinnati has a very strong graphics / creative community and, if we were even in consideration for this consolidation, this might have been a coup for the town.

Fishwrap story (and crazy angry comments) here.

The Who 1980
I drove to this show in Lexington with Tom, Mark, Dan & Lynn. Mark and I rode bicycles back along Route 68. Tom drove my car back & dealt quite admirably with my muffler falling off.
We spent the night with one of Mark & Lynn's old neighbors and her husband who was working on his degree in geology. He was a rather serious young man but the night of the show he got a ticket and cut loose. Really loose. Like bachelor party loose. Before Mark & I left, he gave us a rundown on what we would be riding over - a crash course on the geology of the NKY & SWO Ohio River Valley. It was pretty fascinating. We promptly rode 100 miles in 100° heat smack dab into the middle of a dry county. Things improved when we got into Ohio. ah, breakfast beers in Xenia listening to King of the Road in some crappy little bar on the south end....
The concert was good. Kenny Jones was a good fit & I thought a lot more into doing his own thing at that point. I guess Daltrey disagreed. I had seen the Who several times and I really didn't care to see them - I liked their music & their jamming - I wanted to hear them. Everyone on the floor was standing on their seats staring at the band like zombies. I had gotten into the "punk way" and chose to dance like a madman. Didn't work standing on a folding chair. So I dismounted the chair and stood on the relatively empty floor. Now, for years security got unhinged with people standing on their chairs but they had fairly given up trying to stop people. What was weird at this show was the security guy who came up to me and grabbed me by my shoulders and shouted, "What's wrong with you ? Stand still on your chair like everybody else !".
Kentucky.....