CityBeat | Aug. 8, 2018

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CINCINNATI’S NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY | AUG. 8–14, 2018 | FREE

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WHAT A WEEK! BY T.C. B R I T TO N

Scenes From the Ohio State Fair

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The Ohio State Fair closed out this weekend after a 12-day run in Columbus. You might remember the fair making headlines last year after a fatal ride malfunction left one dead and seven others injured. Shit was really messed up. Thankfully, there were no awful incidents this year. At least one attendee questioned ride safety in a Facebook video that shows a free-falling tower ride apparently getting stuck, but officials say it was functioning properly, and in general there was mostly fun news coming out of this year’s fair. Take, for instance, the world’s largest buckeye! Marsha’s Homemade Buckeyes of Perrysburg, Ohio created the gigantic chocolate-peanut butter treat, weighing in at the fair at 339 pounds (the previous record was 271). This bountiful buckeye was made with around 75 pounds of peanut butter, 75 pounds of margarine, 10 pounds of chocolate and 150 pounds of powdered sugar. If looking at a larger-than-life candy isn’t really your thing, there were a bunch of concerts this year, with acts including the Beach Boys, Reba McEntire, TLC, En Vogue, Styx and Cheap Trick, which all kind of seem like big names for a Midwestern state fair But the best and most quintessential aspect of this summer fest has to be the butter cow. An exhibit featuring a cow and calf sculpted from glorious golden butter first debuted in 1903 and has since become a permanent fixture of the fair. There’s always a cow present in the installation alongside other figures — Darth Vader, Furby and Neil Armstrong have all gotten the butter treatment over the years. It’s impressive yet silly, artistic yet low-brow, and so, so very “Ohio.” This year’s annual butter sculpture was particularly amazing because it paid

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This Week in Questionable Decisions… 1. At a rally in Tampa, Fla., Trump rationalized voter I.D. laws by comparing them to needing a photo identification to buy groceries, which…isn’t a thing, right? Proof that our president has never shopped for groceries. 2. America’s Sweetheart Alex Jones is counter-suing Sandy Hook parents

homage to Big one of the McNews best holiday It’s the 50th movies of anniversary all time: the of the Big ClevelandMac, which filmed A McDonald’s Christmas celebrated Story! The by releasexhibit feaing comtured Ralphie, memorative Randy and “MacCoins” — Flick with his real ones, not tongue stuck a new cryptoto a pole currency. (alongside And honestly, 50th anniversary of the Big Mac a requisite I think I’ve cow). Pretty PHOTO: GRZEGORZ CZ APSKI / SHUT TERSTOCK.COM only had much the best one Big Mac dairy-based art in my life. I installation since Brieyoncé, the Beyoncé don’t really get the hype. But if there’s one maternity shoot-inspired work sculpted thing that gets me back into that driveby David Bradley for last year’s E20 Cheese through (other than a moment of weakness Carving Championships in London. during a killer hangover) it’s McDonald’s Which is a thing! Monopoly. Launched in 1987, the game promSerial Farter in NYC ises prizes ranging from free fries and Folks in New York neighborhood Greendiscounted menu items to 1 million bucks wich Village are reporting multiple — and we ain’t talkin MacCoins. But even if encounters with a man who appears to you ate there several times a week during play fart sound effects as he walks by. Word Monopoly season and saved up all your on the street is some “straight-laced” looklittle peel-offs, the most you’re gonna walk ing college-aged white dude is perusing away with is an insulin intolerance and fatthe Village with a backpack concealing ter ass —I mean, have you ever met anyone some sort of fart machine. Witnesses say that won more than a McGriddle? Probably he’s definitely not actually cutting the not, unless you happen to know Jerome cheese because it’s so loud and always Jacobson, a former cop who scammed sounds the same. the contest for 12 years. Between all this Some wonder if it’s part of a social McDonald’s talk and a RIGGED scheme, experiment, a prank or even some kind of you know this story gives Donald Trump a kink thing. Inquiring minds (Read: me) boner. (Sorry.) want to know: Is there a smell? Does it The Daily Beast reported late last month count as crop-dusting if there’s no real gas on the fascinating tale that involves a web involved? If a man farts in the city and no of mobsters, drug traffickers, psychics, one smells it, does it have an odor? OK, I’ll strip club owners and a Mormon family, stop now. who collectively (and falsely) claimed $24

— who filed a defamation claim against Jones for, you know, saying their kid’s death was a hoax — for $100,000 in court fees. 3. A stand-in on the set of a new Seth Rogen movie was out in blackface for a scene. Even worse, this is apparently a more common practice than you’d think. 4. Blac Chyna’s 19-year-old boyfriend refers to himself as her “oldest son.” 5. Vampire Weekend kicked off their Lollapalooza set by playing their song “A-Punk.” Three times. In a row. 6. Virginia House Democratic candidate

million from McDonald’s Monopoly over more than a decade, and how it all led to an FBI investigation called Operation “Final Answer.” Upon reading, it was clear to me that this story had movie potential. Matt Damon and Ben Affleck agree. Within days of learning about the scam, the cinematic duo were attached to a project about the Monopoly scandal, beating out bidders that reportedly included Kevin Hart, Steve Carell and Robert Downey, Jr. Affleck will direct and Damon is set to star. No word yet on whether anyone wants to make a film about the Canadian pregnant woman who was served cleaning solution instead of the latte she ordered at Micky D’s last week…

Shark Safe After Abduction

Who steals a shark? Honestly! (I love to keep my content fresh and current, so I hope you enjoyed the reference to 1997’s Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery.) A 16-inch horn shark named Helen is safe and sound now after being abducted from the San Antonio Aquarium last week. Three people snatched poor Helen from one of those open shark touch pools (like what Newport Aquarium has, where you can pet sea creatures with two fingers) and disguised her as a baby in a stroller! One of the suspects caught a guilty conscience (or saw the damning surveillance video footage) and confessed to the caper. The shark was rescued from his house and he was arrested while the other two suspects also face charges. I’m just curious how committed they were to the baby cover-up. Are we talking like Weekend at Bernie’s-level fakery? Did they put Helen in a onesie and give her a bottle? The idea of a shark named Helen is funny, but a shark named Helen sucking on a pacifier is pure gold. Contact T.C. Britton: letters@citybeat.com

Leslie Cockburn claimed that her opponent, Republican Denver Riggleman, is a “devotee of Bigfoot erotica.” What, like it’s a bad thing?

9. Is there such thing as being too green? Yes. The Centers for Disease Control apparently felt the need to remind folks not to reuse condoms.

7. Michael Douglas’ teen daughter told Town & Country that she once thought her father was a professional pancake maker. I’m more shocked by the idea that she thought pancake maker was an actual career than that she had no idea her dad is a famous actor.

10. “Florida Man” strikes again! Sunshine state resident Robby Stratton was caught on video at a Jacksonville liquor store holding an alligator and chasing customers around with it. He later told reporters that he had no memory of the incident or any idea where the gator came from.

8. Two senior citizens duked it out over free cheese samples at a South Carolina Costco.

11. Steven Seagal has been appointed as Russia’s special representative to the U.S. in an effort to improve relations between the two countries.


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NEWS

Charter Change Big political battles lurk under proposed amendments to the city’s charter BY N I C K SWA R T S EL L

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nhappy with the way city elections and government work? In November, you’ll get a chance to change that. Cincinnati City Council Aug. 1 voted through a raft of potential changes to the city’s charter that will need voter approval in November. Those amendments could have big implications for the way local elections are held, how council governs and even the next mayoral election. One amendment would limit campaign contributions from LLCs to bring them in line with individual contribution limits. Another would set staggered terms for council starting in 2021 — including a provision that would relegate the four lowest vote-getters on council to a two-year term starting that year. Those council members would run again in 2023 for a four-year term. A separate choice for voters in November would set all of council on two-year terms, a move that supporters say would hold them more accountable to voters. Yet another provision would allow council to discuss city business in closed, executive session — an option allowed by Ohio law and standard in many municipal governments, but one that detractors say will decrease government transparency. All of the proposals have political dimensions, as you might imagine. The move to limit LLC contributions, first championed by councilman Chris Seelbach, comes after controversy surrounding those donations in the last election. Generally, individual donors are limited to $1,100 contributions per candidate in city elections. However, there is a

City Hall PH OTO: NIC K SWARTSELL

loophole that allows donors to contribute to candidates multiple times via limited liability corporations. Mayor John Cranley received roughly $260,000 in contributions via this route in the 2017 mayoral election, and his opponent, former councilwoman Yvette Simpson, received $30,000. Councilman Wendell Young, a Simpson supporter, and attorney Don Mooney filed a complaint with the Cincinnati Elections Commission over those contributions to Cranley’s campaign last year. The commission upheld the practice, citing a 2005 advisory permitting the practice. Young challenged that decision in court. Council approved putting the issue to voters 8-1, with councilman Jeff Pastor dissenting. Politics also plays a role in the amendments for council terms that has been

proposed. Council passed the two-year term option unanimously and the fouryear staggered terms 7-2. But as you might expect, council members are somewhat divided over which they would rather see, with conservativeleaning members supporting two-year terms and Democrats generally in favor of staggered four-year terms. If voters manage to pass both, the one with the most votes will go into effect. Look for those dueling term length amendments to be a flashpoint in the future. Cincinnati City Council had twoyear terms dating back to 1927, but in 2013 took up a charter amendment suggested by then-city councilwoman Laure Quinlivan to move council to four-year terms. Voters passed that amendment, called Issue 4, by roughly 51 percent.

“We are the only major city in Ohio that still has two-year terms for its leaders, and the cities that we compete with are also moving to four-year terms, including Louisville and as far as St. Louis, Minneapolis, Denver and Atlanta,” Quinlivan said about her proposal at the time. There are political implications behind the two options. Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman has pushed for two-year terms, even starting a petition drive this spring to get them on the ballot. He says the shorter tenure will force council members to be more responsive and available to constituents. Smitherman is also rumored to be mulling a run for mayor in 2021, the same year the amendment would kick in. CONTINUES ON PAGE 09


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CITY DESK

Far-Right Candidate Sneaks onto Progressive Party’s Ballot in Ohio BY N I C K SWA R T S EL L

More Money Coming for Western Hills Viaduct Replacement BY N I C K SWA R T S EL L

If you’re a fan of understatement, Jim Condit, Jr. has what you might call non-mainstream political beliefs. He’s posted 9/11-truther statements on his Facebook page and website, likes to rail about a global “Jewish shadow government” and has asserted that the death toll historians cite for the Holocaust has been highly inflated. And if you live in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes the suburbs east of Cincinnati, you’ll see Condit as the Green Party choice for the U.S. House of Representatives come November — right next to Republican incumbent Brad Wenstrup and his challenger Democrat Jill Schiller. Condit managed to get on the ballot as the progressive party’s candidate. Condit grabbed enough votes in this year’s primary election to get on the ballot as the selfdescribed progressive party’s candidate. He’s not exactly thrilled about running under the Green Party’s banner, he says, but chose to because it’s his only path to get in front of voters.

“It is not necessary to believe in the murderous and/or some of the silly sections of the Green Party Platform — of any other party when running for office on a particular party label,” Condit wrote in an April Facebook comment. “But the Green Party goes futher (sic), in a total squishy liberal mind meltdown — and explicitly says in its 2000 Party Platorm (sic), never rescinded, that no one at the state or local level is required to believe ANY of the Green Party Platform. A ‘get out of jail’ free card, as it were. Don’t worry, Green Party members, I won’t be bringing up the Green Party any more than I have to. As I’m told Kermie the Frog says, ‘It isn’t easy being Green.’” Some of Condit’s ideas fit in with garden-variety conservatives — he’s been a pro-life activist since he was 19 — but hardly seem congruous with the pro-choice Green Party. Others are far more fringe. He’s promoted theories that Jewish people played a role in 9/11 and that Israel was actually

responsible for gas attacks experts agree were committed by Syrian dictator Bashar alAssad last year. The White Oak resident has written about and shared others’ writing on these beliefs on his Facebook page and his website, TargetFreedomUSA.com. Condit is also known to have connections with James Kolenich, a suburban Cincinnati attorney who has represented white nationalists charged in last year’s deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. and who espouses beliefs that whites should reclaim America from

immigrants, Jews and minorities. Condit reportedly suggested to Kolenich that he represent the Unite the Right planners. The Southern Poverty Law Center has written about Condit and his fringe beliefs, bluntly calling him an “anti-Semite.” Condit applied a similar CONTINUES ON PAGE 09

Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District P H O T O : N AT I O N A L AT L A S

Supporters, Skeptics Emerge for Drug Sentencing Reform Amendment BY N I C K SWA R T S EL L

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Ohio voters will get to decide in November on a constitutional amendment that would reduce penalties for non-violent drug crimes. The ballot initiative, called Issue 1, has already won some high-profile supporters.

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But while lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they support its overall aims, some Republicans question whether a constitutional amendment is the way to achieve those goals. Supporters gathered more than 305,000 valid signatures from voters across the state to land the Neighborhood Safety, Drug Treatment, and Rehabilitation Amendment on the ballot. The proposal seeks to reduce Ohio’s prison population by reclassifying nonviolent fourthand fifth-degree felony drug possession or use crimes as first-degree misdemeanors. The amendment would make the maximum penalty for such

crimes 180 days in jail and a $1,000 fine, and first and second offenses would be punishable by probation only. It would also direct the state to give half a day’s credit up to 25 percent of an inmate’s sentence for each day of rehab or educational work completed.

Commission. That commission found that Ohio’s drug possession incarcerations have increased by a third. The firstterm Democrat says the ballot initiative is the right approach to rolling back those increases and reducing the number of people in the state’s prison system.

The changes to sentencing classifications would be retroactive, meaning those who were imprisoned under the old rules would be eligible for release.

State Rep. Bill Seitz, also of Cincinnati, says he’s supportive of the effort’s overall goal, but that legislation, not an amendment, is the best way to deal with the issue. That’s a sentiment other Republicans in the General Assembly share. Many feel that sentencing reform is necessary, but worry about locking something so specific into the state’s constitution.

Under the proposal, the incarceration cost savings netted by the early release of those inmates would be funneled back into drug treatment programs and other rehabilitation efforts. A number of Democrat state lawmakers have applauded the measure. Cincinnati-based State Sen. Cecil Thomas is a member of the Ohio General Assembly’s Criminal Sentencing

The ballot initiative could play into November’s gubernatorial race. Democrat candidate Richard Cordray has signaled his support for the effort, while his Republican opponent, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine,

has so far been mum on the plan. Cordray says he “wholeheartedly” supports Issue 1 because it rolls together several worthy aims — reducing taxpayer expenditures on incarceration, increasing chances for inmates to gain rehabilitation and combating Ohio’s opiate epidemic. “In Ohio, we incarcerate too many people who are in desperate need of treatment for addiction — not jail time,” Corday wrote in a recent statement. “And we know those charged and imprisoned for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately people of color. I firmly believe that it is immoral for Ohioans to lose a chance at having a future because of addiction or because their disease is being treated as a crime instead of the public health issue that it really is.”

Efforts to replace the crumbling Western Hills Viaduct are a little closer to reality after Hamilton County scored a $5 million grant toward a new structure spanning the Mill Creek Valley. The Hamilton County Engineer’s office applied for the funding under the Local Bridge Replacement program, which is administered by the County Engineers Association of Ohio. The money is the first funding that will go to actual construction of the bridge and will be used to build the ramps to a new viaduct. Local governments must supply a $1.25 million match for the funding. The money comes as Cincinnati and Hamilton County struggle to come up with the funding necessary for the estimated $335 million project. The more than half-mile-long bridge opened in 1932 and engineers say it is now nearing the end of its lifespan. Experts say it is still safe, though last year the lower deck of the bridge was shut down temporarily after debris fell on a car from its upper span. So far, the city has drawn up a plan to issue debt worth $33 million toward a local match for a replacement bridge and the Hamilton County Commission approved another $33 million raised through a $5 automobile license plate fee, but federal dollars will likely be necessary to complete the project. The federal government has awarded $18 million for right-of-way acquisition and planning, though earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Transportation rejected an application by the city and county for an extra $15 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants. All told, the city and county have applied for 13 grants to fund the project. It has won three of those grants, including the Local Bridge Replacement funding. Two grant requests totaling $11.6 million are still pending with the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana Regional Council of Governments and the U.S. Department of Transportation. At the current rate, engineers expect the new viaduct to be finished by 2027.


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outgoing U.S. Rep. John Boehner in Ohio’s 8th Congressional District. The Green Party wanted nothing to do with him, however. “Jim Condit Jr., who is using the Green Party Of Ohio’s ballot line for a run for the 8th Ohio Congressional District, is within his legal means to use the Green Party’s ballot line,” the party said in a statement. “He gathered the necessary signatures and is appearing on the ballot. The Green Party of Ohio State Central Committee wants our supporters to know that his on-line and in-person statements reveal that not only does he not support the Green Party’s 10 Key Values, but that he also supports positions that are in direct contradiction to those values. The Ohio Green Party has disavowed Mr. Condit. He does not have our endorsement nor support. We ask our members and supporters to refrain from casting a vote for him.” Condit finished last in the June special election, netting 607 out of more than 28,000 votes cast. The Butler County Board of Elections ruled he was ineligible to run on the Green Party ballot line in the following November election because he had voted in the 2016 Republican primary.

Smitherman says council as it stands now is dysfunctional, citing battles over the ouster of former Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black by Mayor John Cranley. Council did not immediately approve Black’s dismissal, instead spending weeks this spring trying to get to the bottom of the dispute between the two strong personalities. “What we’ve seen since the last election is tremendous dysfunction,” Smitherman said in the aftermath of that fight, pinning the blame for the unprecedented stalemate on his fellow council members. Others, however, disagree with Smitherman’s assessment of the problem. “The dysfunction comes from the way the mayor conducted himself with regard to the charter, with regard to Harry Black and with regard to several other high-profile incidents,” Young said at the time. “As far as I can tell, council members appear to be getting along quite well among themselves.” Council members and Smitherman allies Amy Murray and Pastor voted against the staggered four-year terms. Murray argued that because it would have only four or five candidates up for election at any given time, it would make it much harder for Republicans to get on council.

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council struggled to find a solution to the aforementioned dramatic impasse between Cranley and then-City Manager Black. Currently, council members may meet one-on-one or in small groups with the city’s legal representation behind closed doors, but any quorum of council must meet and deliberate legal issues in a noticed public meeting. The amendment would change that. “I’m always amazed at the continual effort to push for secret government,” Cranley said in a meeting. Democrat council members pushed back on that assertion, however, saying the amendment will simply bring council in line with practices allowed under state law that many other municipal lawmaking bodies observe. After the meeting, Cranley signaled he would veto the executive session amendment. Council could override that veto with six votes at its next meeting in September. Voters will decide in November on those charter amendments and potentially others, including a move that would raise the city’s admissions tax for entertainment venues to raise money for human services funding.

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OCTOBER 8-14, 2018

Republicans Murray and Pastor finished eighth and ninth in the 2017 election, respectively, while conservative-leaning independent Smitherman finished fifth. In the event Smitherman ran for and won the mayor’s perch, the staggered terms would likely make it more difficult for his conservative allies to take spots on council. Murray is term-limited in 2021, likely making it even more difficult for conservatives to win spots in a staggered field next election. Murray called the staggered four-year terms “gerrymandering,” though Democrats on council disagreed. Despite a clear preference, Smitherman voted for both amendment options in last week’s council meeting. “I’m going to vote ‘yes’ as a statement,” Smitherman said of the staggered terms amendment. “It’s not a ‘yes’ of agreement. It’s a ‘yes’ to put the issue on the ballot before voters.” The executive session proposal council is putting before voters also got some pushback — this time from Mayor John Cranley, who called it a “secret government amendment.” Ohio law allows city councils to meet in closed, executive session to discuss certain legal issues and other sensitive topics. The city’s charter, however, currently forbids the practice. That was relevant this spring, when

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family ties in the age of ICE BY NICK SWARTSELL

IMMIGRANTS LEAN ON FAMILY AND ACTIVISTS AS ICE RAMPS UP DETENTIONS AND DEPORTATIONS IN GREATER CINCINNATI

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ellow Sunday afternoon sunlight streams through the sliding glass door of a small, two-bedroom apartment in a sprawling complex called the Willows of Springdale, falling on a group sitting in a circle of folding chairs and green padded seats arranged in the unit’s living room. The room is mostly bare, save for a whiteboard propped up on an easel and signs with common phrases and names for items spelled out in English and Spanish. The hum of people speaking the latter fills the space, volleying back and forth between the fast, flowing tones of a handful of residents who immigrated here from Guatemala and Honduras and the slower, more deliberate cadence of volunteers. On one couch, a woman from Honduras in a shortsleeved orange sweater cradles a baby. Her husband was deported just weeks ago, and she has come looking for help feeding the child. Next to her, a group of men from Guatemala sit, their shirts tucked in, their hair neatly combed and gelled. One named Domingo is looking for help with the difficulties he’s having enrolling his nephew in school. Another, Bartolo, is here because he fears deportation. Across from them, in a folding chair, another woman holds a young boy on her lap. He flops languidly, asleep, as she struggles to keep him upright. The neatly-dressed men across from her get up off the couch and motion for her to lay the child down. He sleeps peacefully there for the rest of the meeting — a weekly gathering of the Centro Comunitario de Los Willows, a group that has of late worked overtime to connect the complex’s immigrants with all manner of help in a very uncertain, difficult time.

Some come for rides to local churches with food pantries. Others come for English language classes, or to speak with immigration rights advocates about issues related to deportation, or passports or enrolling their children in school. At a recent meeting, one woman originally from Guatemala named Erma came with her young daughter, who had spilled soup and burned herself. Erma didn’t have a car to go to the emergency room. A volunteer took her and her child there immediately. The volunteers at the center run the gamut: members of various faith communities, longtime local immigration activists, young adults in sneakers from Cincinnati’s chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, people who immigrated themselves long ago who have advanced Spanish skills and can interpret and engage deeply with the families at the Willows. The unassuming complex, and others like it in Greater Cincinnati, have found themselves in recent months at the eye of a national political storm around immigration — one that has had a number of spillover effects on immigrant families. Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been staking out local apartment complexes like the Willows with large numbers of immigrants living in them and detaining undocumented people as they leave for work, attorneys for separated families say. In one recent case, both the mother and father of three children were apprehended at the Willows. The children, the youngest of whom is 4, came home to missing parents. They are now in the care of neighbors as they await their parents’ fate.

THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE New policies by the administration of President

Donald Trump that have led to the separation of migrant children and their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border continue to make big headlines, and large workplace raids in Ohio have also grabbed national attention. Those raids resulted in the arrest of hundreds of immigrants at various meat packing and garden work sites in Massillon, Salem, Sandusky and Norwalk, Ohio. That last raid, in June, scooped up 114 workers who nonprofit aid organizations estimate have 200 children. The Department of Homeland Security says many of those immigrants have forged documents and are working illegally. The department believes the workplaces in question may have knowingly hired the immigrants anyway. “Unlawful employment is one of the key magnets drawing illegal aliens across our borders,” said Steve Francis, Homeland Security Investigations special agent in charge of Michigan and Ohio, in a statement following a June 19 raid on a meat-packing plant in Salem. While workplace raids and family separation at the border have caught national attention, there has been little reported about the actions of ICE agents in places like the suburbs of Cincinnati, where children are also sometimes left behind when immigrants are detained. Advocates for immigrants have zeroed in on a small, low-slung ICE facility in Blue Ash, which they believe agents involved in recent arrests are using as a base of operations. Activists have held protests at the obscure site in recent weeks, hoping to draw attention to its existence and the separation of families ICE has overseen. Some of the parents separated from their children CONTINUES ON PAGE 12


A woman and her young daughter sit at a help center for immigrants in suburban Cincinnati shortly before returning to Guatemala. PH OTO: NIC K SWARTSELL

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were actively seeking asylum when they were picked up. “Many are fleeing gangs, extortion, random violence,” says Nancy Sullivan, immigrant activist and director of Cincinnati-based nonprofit Transformations CDC. “They present themselves as asylum seekers at the border, which the Geneva Convention allows them to do. Families with daughters fear they will be kidnapped, raped and trafficked. Their sons are often brutally forced into gangs — it’s ‘join us or die.’ These are not people with criminal records. There is no judicial warrant for their arrest. And the children — what happens to them? When they come home, they have no idea where their parents have gone, potentially no means of support.”

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VISITATIONS VIA VIDEO When Jose was 5, he witnessed a brutal massacre at

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Rio Lempa, a river on the border of Honduras and neighboring El Salvador. Eyewitness accounts from aid workers, doctors and others say troops from both countries, including Salvadoran forces in a helicopter, reportedly shot and killed dozens of refugees crossing the river’s 75 feet of fast-flowing water to escape a civil war between the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government and leftist guerillas. Another 10 to 15 children drowned in the river during the incident, eyewitness accounts suggest. Jose escaped harm in the massacre and grew up to work in a farmer’s cooperative in Honduras. But that wasn’t the end of the hardships he faced. Now, more than a year after fleeing to suburban Cincinnati, he has new challenges to worry about — including separation from his young son when he was recently detained by ICE. “I have a 7-year-old boy, and I didn’t want him being harmed,” he says of his reasons for seeking asylum in the U.S. “I feared for him. That’s why I decided to come here.” Honduras, along with neighboring El Salvador and Guatemala, have among the highest murder rates in the world, according to 2016 United Nations data. The violence is part of a long history of instability in the region — including a series of political shakeups in which the United States played a part as it propped up governments in those countries that sometimes turned corrupt or dictatorial. Against the backdrop of crime and political instability, daily life is hard. The mostly impoverished farmers working in Jose’s cooperative had a number of clashes with larger landowners and the Honduran government and lived in constant fear of reprisal. “We were being threatened by the police and the guards that guard nearby landowners,” he says. “If they couldn’t get to you, they would sometimes threaten and kill your family.” Jose recalls times where he would come home to find some of his fellow farmers killed. Those

Activists with signs stand outside of an ICE facility in Blue Ash PH OTO: NIC K SWARTSELL

incidents steeled his determination to save himself and his son. A little more than a year ago, they made the difficult journey to the United States to try for asylum and escape the death threats and violence they had experienced. But that wasn’t the end of the worry. Recently, Jose was detained and sent to the Butler County Jail’s 200-cell wing that houses immigrants awaiting potential deportation. Jose says he was detained after his ankle monitor malfunctioned and he visited the Blue Ash ICE facility to check in. While in jail, he saw his son just once a week via a black and white TV monitor, he says. He spent roughly a month detained there, fearing that he would be deported and that he would not be able to support his son or see him again. In some cases, if there are no other caretakers, ICE will release a parent — tethered to an ankle monitor like Jose’s — to look after their child or children as their case progresses. “In the context of any enforcement action, ICE utilizes prosecutorial discretion on cases involving humanitarian concerns, such as health or family considerations,” ICE said in its statement on the aforementioned Salem raids. Other times, however, children are left in the care of family, friends or neighbors. That has implications for their mental health, some child therapists say. Sarah Madrigal de Fernandez is a therapist at Cincinnati Public Schools who has worked mostly with unaccompanied immigrants for the past four years. “I don’t think it’s entirely necessary to have an expert tell you how traumatic it is for children to be forcibly separated from their parents,” she says. “But there is a lot of science about how it affects brain chemicals and how trauma effects development. What it boils down to is, these kids struggle. They don’t feel safe because they don’t know if their parents will be home when they get there. They don’t feel safe because where they come from isn’t safe. They spend a lot of time looking over their shoulders.” Children struggling with the loss of a parent to deportation often don’t have many places they can turn. “There isn’t really funding for mental healthcare

for this population,” she says. “They don’t have the access. There aren’t the resources available to hire the people needed to deal with the trauma.”

AAdvocates PLACEareFOR HELP trying to fill in the gaps, helping to

care for the families of individuals who have found themselves picked up by ICE. In Springdale, that task has fallen to volunteers with Centro Comunitario de Los Willows who work out of a community center in a small apartment. The Springdale Health Department founded the center in 2015 after a high-profile murder at the apartments. Officials took a public health approach to addressing issues there, and, in return for helping the owners get the buildings’ occupancy rate up to near-full, they were allowed use of a first-floor unit tucked away in one of the buildings in the middle of the complex. The center has played a big role in the community since — helping, with nonprofit and corporate partners, to coordinate response to a fire at the complex in the summer of 2017, marshaling donations for a playground built there the same year and holding a sports-themed summer camp for kids living at the complex and elsewhere. Springdale Health Commissioner Matt Clayton says the department’s role in the center is about facilitating collaborations and bringing public health services to places where people need them, instead of simply sitting and waiting for people to make their way to them. He stresses that the department’s services are for everyone. But places like the Willows are where needs are greatest. In 2016, about 85 percent of residents at the Willows were Hispanic, though that dropped somewhat in the last year. Many of those residents were experiencing poverty. Ninety-six percent of students attending the elementary school next door are below the poverty line. According to Census data, Hispanic households in the Springdale area have a median household income roughly $20,000 a year less than their white counterparts, and the average life expectancy for a


A June ICE raid in Salem, Ohio apprehended 146 undocumented immigrants at a meat-packing plant PHOTO: PROVIDED BY ICE

so visible in the day-to-day lives of the people I work with here. I really appreciate the family structure and the family strength I’ve seen in the residents there, though. They’re so concerned with their families, and with bringing up kids with good values. I’ve seen them take in children whose parents have been detained. A neighbor is almost always there to look after the children.” There are other challenges volunteers like Dulovich must contend with. One of the more vexing lately is making sure students are able to enroll in nearby schools when their parents have been deported, are still in their home countries, or simply can’t prove they have a permanent address because they’re sharing an apartment with others to save money. “I’m seeing the possibility of kids not being enrolled,” she says. “We’ve gathered up about eight volunteers who are willing to teach kids who aren’t able to enroll in school. We don’t know how it’s going to work out, or if it will be needed — I hope it isn’t — but we have to be ready for that.” For some who have been separated from loved ones by the deportations, the help from advocates is a blessing — but not enough to keep them afloat.

Editor’s note: For safety reasons, we have withheld the full names of sources who asked that they not be printed.

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Centro Comunitario with burns, is sitting with her friend Aselda in a small room usually set aside for

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LEAVING HOME Erma, the mother who brought her daughter to

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Hispanic individual there trails a white person’s by eight and a half years. It was clear, Clayton says, that the Willows was a place where the department could make a difference. “In the course of our community health assessment, we determined that we had significant poverty and opportunity for improvement in certain communities,” he says, referring to a study the department undertook to determine areas where it could be of most use. “We saw this great opportunity to make an impact at the Willows.” The health department doesn’t run Centro Comunitario de Los Willows — it’s just one of a number of groups working out of the space run by volunteers of all stripes. Elaine Dulovich is a pharmacy tech by trade. She was looking for volunteer opportunities a year ago when a friend told her about Centro Comunitario, and, eager for a chance to work on her own Spanish language skills, she signed on to teach English classes to children there. She’s loved that part of the job, helping students from ages 3 to 17 with basic language skills as well as fun tasks like gardening. But there is another dimension to the work at the center. Dulovich came just months before deportations started among residents of the complex. She’s seen the toll it has taken on families. “It makes me sick to my stomach,” she says. “It’s

children at the Willows Center. Both wear glowing pink blouses and worried looks. With them are two volunteers helping the two mothers work out a long trip that will take them back to Guatemala, likely for good. The five-day bus trip will cost about $900 for each of them. That’s not counting Erma’s three children and Aselda’s two — all U.S. citizens. “I’ve been here for four and a half years,” Aselda says. “I love the United States. There are a lot of kind people here who have tried to help us. But I’m not a U.S. resident, and getting documents is very challenging. I probably have to leave, and I don’t think I’ll come back.” Both Erma and Aselda have seen their husbands deported in the last four months. Erma’s husband was driving to work when he was stopped by ICE, detained, and eventually kicked out of the country. Aselda’s spouse was picked up at the Willows itself. Without their partners, the two say, it is simply too difficult to stay in the United States. “I feel very sad,” Erma says. “He was our breadwinner. It’s very, very hard, with three children by myself, to afford rent and food and utilities. I have no income.” Erma left Guatemala for the United States 13 years ago to escape crushing poverty and instability, and has lived at the Willows for more than a decade. By the Guatemalan government’s own measures, the share of the country’s population living in poverty grew from 51 percent in 2009 to almost 60 percent in 2014. When she got to the U.S., Erma worked until she had her baby a year ago — but her husband’s job was enough for the family to eke out an existence. Now, with him gone, she is finding it impossible to do all the things she needs to do to be a good mother — avoid deportation and potential separation from her children and afford food and rent and utilities without the government assistance she isn’t qualified for. The only choice, she feels, is to go back to Guatemala, where the family can at least be together. It will be difficult for her children, she says, who have only ever known the U.S. “I’m not sure what it’s going to be like,” she says. “I don’t know how it will be. It’s unknown. Emotionally, it could be very hard for the kids.” Others are struggling to stay. But even with the help of attorneys and advocates, the future is tenuous for people like Jose, who was eventually released from Butler County Jail on $7,500 bond. That meant he was reunited with his son and can take care of him for now. But it’s unclear what the future will hold. “We came here not to cause any trouble or do anything bad,” he says of himself and his son. “We just want an opportunity.”

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STUFF TO DO

Ongoing Shows VISUAL ART: Mark de Jong: Swing House Contemporary Arts Center, Downtown (through Sept. 3)

Demolition derby at the Hamilton County Fair PHOTO: PROVIDED

WEDNESDAY 08

ONSTAGE: Whisper House at Know Theatre is a haunting musical ghost story. See review on page 22.

ART: View a collection of works by Lebanonborn Modernist industrial designer Russel Wright at the Harmon Museum & Art Gallery. See feature on page 20. EVENT: Sugar Rush CityBeat’s annual sugar smorgasbord is back at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Feel like a kid in a candy store as you sample sweets — pastries, pies, donuts, chocolate, candy and more — from local bakeries and other saccharine vendors including Graeter’s, Holtman’s Donuts, Nothing Bundt Cake, Duck Donuts, the BonBonerie, Maribelle Cakery and more. Tickets include unlimited samples. This event is all ages. 5:308:30 p.m. Wednesday. $20. Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Drive, Mount Adams, sugarrushcincy.com. — MAIJA ZUMMO

FRIDAY 10

FILM: Labyrinth in Eden Park with Jake Speed & The Freddies Summer is winding down and there are only so many free movies in the park you

can catch before football season rolls back around. This time, the Goblin King will grace the screen at Seasongood Pavilion in a showing of the classic ’80s Jim Henson/George Lucas fantasy film, Labyrinth. Secure your spot and enjoy pre-show tunes courtesy of Jake Speed & The Freddies, one of Cincy’s resident vagabond Bluegrass Folk groups. Fireside Pizza will serve slices to keep your hunger at bay while you “dance magic, dance” to sounds of David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King. 7-11 p.m. Friday. Free. Seasongood Pavilion, 950 Eden Park Drive, Mount Adams, facebook.com/ mtadamscinemainthecity. — SAMI STEWART COMEDY: Nate Bargatze “I like to think of myself as a storyteller, but in joke form,” says comedian Nate Bargatze. The son of a successful magician, Bargatze’s first foray into comedy was via improv with a friend. The format wasn’t for him, but

he soon discovered standup. These days, he covers topics ranging from travel to science. “I don’t believe in science,” he says. “I don’t understand it, so it’s easier to just not believe it.” He gives an example of why he feels this way. “I read where they said cockroaches are 350 million years old. Are they? Or do you know that I don’t know how to go figure that out?” Bargatze has logged numerous appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Conan, and his fanbase includes fellow comics Marc Maron and Jim Gaffigan. 7:30 and 10 p.m. Friday; 7 and 10 p.m. Saturday. $20$50. Funny Bone Liberty, 7518 Bales St., Liberty Township, liberty.funnybone. com. — P.F. WILSON MUSIC: Bellwether Music Festival The Bellwether Music Fest is an Alternative Rock/Pop fest that encourages camping in the great outdoors (à CONTINUES ON PAGE 16

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MUSIC: Jon Spencer The first third of brilliant writer/director Edgar Wright’s 2017 film Baby Driver is superb, thanks mostly to the tone-setting opening car chase scene soundtracked by The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s mid-’90s classic “Bellbottoms.” As an introduction to (or reminder of) Spencer’s full-throttle, re-urbanized Blues Rock detonations, the adrenaline-juicing coolness of that scene was perfection. Spencer’s career is far from limited to the Blues Explosion’s peak years. His innovative explorations of the sleazier, seedier side of

Noise and Garage Rock with his ’80s band Pussy Galore paved a yellow brick road for offshoots like Boss Hog (his group with wife Cristina Martinez) and Royal Trux, not to mention a legion of other groups formed by Pussy Galore devotees. Spencer’s current tour is in advance of a new solo album, Spencer Sings the Hits!, which is due this fall on In the Red Records. When Spencer comes to Cincinnati he’ll be joined by a pair of local acts that have certainly been touched in some way by Spencer’s vastly underappreciated influence — All Seeing Eyes and Stallone N’ Roses. 8 p.m. Friday. $15; $18 day of show. Woodward Theater, 1404 Main St., Over-the-Rhine, woodwardtheater.com. — MIKE BREEN

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FILM: Star Wars: The Last Jedi at Washington Park As part of the Summer Cinema Series, Washington Park is screening Star Wars: The Last Jedi. But this night is about more than just the movie: The Cincinnati Pops “Jedi Quartet” will perform a special preview of the orchestra’s upcoming Star Wars: A New Hope concert, the Cincinnati Comic Expo will don cosplay for meet and greets and the 501st Legion (an international fan organization that wears screen-accurate replicas of Star Wars costumes and armor to different events) will host and judge a costume contest. Bring enough

snacks to feed a wookiee (but the concession stand will be open, with beer, if you forget), wear your best galaxy get-up and may the force be with you. 9-11 p.m. Wednesday. Free. Washington Park, 1230 Elm St., Overthe-Rhine, facebook.com/ washingtonparkotr. — LIZZY SCHMITT

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EVENT: Hamilton County Fair Rev your engines and get your 4-H club ready: the 163rd-annual Hamilton County Fair is back with a midway full of rides and games, livestock displays, arts and crafts exhibits, carnival food, giant tomatoes and all the rest of the wholesome county antics you’d expect. Things kick off Wednesday night with a celebrity demolition derby at 7:30 p.m., with non-celebrity demolition derbies throughout the rest of the week, plus micro wrestling on Friday and a rodeo on Sunday. Wander the grounds to find other activities like a petting zoo, circus acts, live music

and blue ribbon displays in the exhibition halls. 4-11 p.m. Wednesday-Friday; 11 a.m.11 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Sunday. $3 admission Wednesday; $7 admission all other days; $5 parking per car. Hamilton County Fairgrounds, 7700 Vine St., Carthage, hamiltoncountyfair.com. — MAIJA ZUMMO

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FROM PAGE 15

PHOTO: MIKKI SCHAFFNER PHOTOGRAPHY

FRIDAY 10

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ONSTAGE: Dreamgirls Dreamed of becoming a Pop star? It’s not as easy as it might seem, as evidenced by this behind-the-scenes look at the music industry of the 1960s. It’s the story of The Dreams, a Motownstyled Rhythm & Blues group that might remind you of The Supremes. The singers start out as friends, but their relationships go downhill as their success takes off. The 1981 Broadway hit (six Tony Awards) became a hit 2006 movie featuring Jennifer Hudson and Jamie Foxx. Local actor Torie Wiggins is directing this production. “Her brilliant sense of storytelling will make this show really pop and connect with audiences,” says Maggie Perrino, the Carnegie’s theater director. Through August 26. $30; $27 members; $23 students. The Carnegie, 1028 Scott Blvd., Covington, thecarnegie.com. — RICK PENDER

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la Bonnaroo) at the home of the Ohio Renaissance Festival in Waynesville. The inaugural fest — the latest endeavor of Bill Donabedian, who also founded Cincinnati’s MidPoint Music Festival and Bunbury Music Festival — features AltRock headliners including The Flaming Lips and MGMT, as well as pioneers of the genre like Echo & the Bunnymen and the Psychedelic Furs, plus strong-drawing bands like Dr. Dog, Whitney

and Local Natives. For more info, see Sound Advice on page 30. Noon-11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. $65 single day; $112.50 two-day; $229 two-day VIP; additional fees for camping and parking permits. Renaissance Park, 10542 E. State Route 73, Waynesville, bellwetherfest.com. — MIKE BREEN EVENT: Perseid Meteor Shower at Fernald Preserve Head to the Fernald Preserve Visitors Center in Hamilton for a prime view of the Perseid Meteor Shower. The 2018 shower takes place from July 17 to Aug. 24, as the earth passes through the debris path of the Swift-Tuttle comet. Skygazers may see the most action during the overnight on Aug. 12 and early morning of Aug. 13, but you can still see plenty of the meteor shower before and after that, including during this special viewing. The Cincinnati Astronomical Society will be at Fernald to discuss the ins and outs of the shower and they’ll also have telescopes on hand for guests to view Jupiter, Saturn and Mars. The event is open to the public. Bring a chair or blanket to sit on, snacks and a relaxing attitude to just chill

out and stare at the night sky while the universe provides the entertainment. 10 p.m.-1 a.m. Friday. Free. Fernald Preserve Visitors Center, 7400 Willey Road, Hamilton, 513-648-3330, lm.doe.gov/ fernald. — MAIJA ZUMMO

SATURDAY 11

MUSIC: TajMo: The Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’ Band brings masterful Blues to the Taft Theatre. See sound Advice on page 30. EVENT: Cincinnati Leather 2018 The first Mr. Cincinnati Leather was awarded his title in 2012 at the downtown bar On Broadway, where the competition was founded by bar owner Randy Bridges. On Broadway has since closed, but Cincinnati Leather lives on as an annual celebration, showcasing Cincinnati’s leather community (a sexy subculture that uses leather clothing for erotic play). In some ways it’s just like a beauty pageant — competitors entertain the crowd, show off their best outfits and give tear-jerking speeches. In other ways, well, let’s just say that “evening wear” has an entirely different meaning here. Instead of elegant gowns, these guys are strapped up in their absolute best leather get-ups. Cheer on Mr. Cincinnati Leather hopefuls as they show off for the judges and compete for that oh-so-coveted title.


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For ages 21 and up. 8 p.m.-1 a.m. Saturday. $10; $100 VIP. The Woodward Theater, 1404 Main St., Over-theRhine, cincinnatileather.com. — MORGAN ZUMBIEL EVENT: The O.F.F. Market This friendly neighborhood market offers the perfect opportunity to try specialty food and craft beer while shopping for goods from a selection of independent small businesses, artists and farmers. All the vendors at The O.F.F. Market (aka Oakley Fancy Flea Market) are from the surrounding regions and have a variety of items for sale such as jewelry, pottery, textiles, art and more. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturday. Free admission. MadTree Brewing, 3301 Madison Road, Oakley, theoffmarket.org. — LIZZY SCHMITT

MUSIC: David Byrne brings his American Utopia tour to PNC Pavilion. See interview on page 28.

MUSIC: Chicago quartet Ganser brings erratic New Wave Post Punk to the Northside Yacht Club. See Sound Advice on page 31.

YOUR WEEKEND TO DO LIST: LOCAL.CITYBEAT.COM

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SUNDAY 12

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EVENT: 2018 Queen City Black Comix Day The Midwest Black Speculative Fiction Alliance presents the third-annual Black Comix Day to highlight the region’s comic artists, illustrators and stars. Guests include cosplayer Matt “Sebastian” Hexx, artist Chad Taylor, digital artist Cydnee Burch, Jay B. Kalagayan of MeSseD comics and more. Listen, learn and ask questions at this event. 1-5 p.m. Saturday. Free. Pleasant Ridge Library, 6233 Ridge Road, Pleasant Ridge, facebook.com/ midwestbsfa. — MAIJA ZUMMO

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SPORTS: Western & Southern Open It’s tennis season and the Western & Southern Open is one of the last big events before the end of summer. This century-old tradition is the nation’s oldest professional tennis tournament held in its city of origin. Qualifying games begin on Saturday and advance to the finals on Aug. 19. Men’s and women’s competitions feature top-ranking 2018 player entry lists with names like Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal, Simona Halep and Roger Federer. Along with

tennis, the venue has a food court with local bites, a wine garden, champagne bar, souvenir stands and even a family zone with games for kids. Through Aug. 19. $12-$110. Lindner Family Tennis Center, 5460 Courseview Drive, Mason, wsopen.com. — SAMI STEWART

EVENT: 1940s Day Some people long to have been born in a different era, seeing it through rose-colored lenses and sometimes forgetting about the realities of decades past. Luckily, we have things like 1940s Day, so we can swing dance with our honey and wear fun vintage clothes without dealing with things like, you know, World War II, polio or the struggle for civil rights. Just for a day, the Cincinnati Museum Center is turning back time at Lunken Airport. Check out a vintage car and plane show, shop from vendors like Casablanca Vintage, strut your stuff in the costume contest, check out historic displays, take a group photo to commemorate the passing of Naomi Parker Fraley aka Rosie the Riveter and of course, dance your way through the decade to Swing, Big Band and Andrews Sisters-style music all day long. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. $10 adult; $5 child; free for veterans and Museum Center members. Lunken Airport, 262 Wilmer Ave, East End, cincymuseumcenter.org. — MORGAN ZUMBIEL

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ARTS & CULTURE

A Revolution in Opera After concluding its successful season, Cincinnati Opera plans more new works that challenge the very definition of the art form BY S T E V EN R O S EN

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Cincinnati Opera’s production of As One PHOTO: PROVIDED

of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, Cincinnati Opera is having WordPlay Cincy and the Music Resource Center collaborate on a new work based on observations and experiences of young women ages 11-17. (The librettist working with WordPlay will be author Sheila Williams; the composer working with Music Resource Center is William Menefield.) “In my work with the kids from WordPlay on this project, I don’t even tell them, ‘You’re writing an opera,’ ” Küchle says. “I want to avoid them gravitating to a specific idea, a concept, that will send them in an aesthetic direction that will be harmful for the project.” Behind CO Next is a belief that, while operatic masterpieces should survive, there needs to be new works that use different forms to address challenging times. “I think topics that have some sort of societal consequence, that are timely, make very good subject matter,” Küchle says. He adds that these have a social agenda but not a political one. “What we’re going for is a humanist agenda,” he says. “We’re not trying to influence public policy directly. We’re not trying to influence elections. We’re trying to influence empathy and awareness of certain conditions in current society.” For more on the Cincinnati Opera, visit cincinnatiopera.org.

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It marked the second year that the Opera has presented such a scaled-down production — “I like to call them ‘pieces,’ ” Küchle says — as part of its five-year CO Next: Diverse Voices initiative. “We’ve made a deliberate choice that this cycle (of new works) be in the here and now and be an analysis of current contemporary American society,” he says. While there is an economic driver to producing “smaller” new works, it is not a retreat. Cincinnati Opera has expanded its schedule to present them, and uses venues other than the 2,388-seat Springer to stage them. It also finds that the audiences it’s trying to reach as it seeks diversity accept these as opera. “You see the faces of people directly in front of you,” Küchle says. “The immediacy of the performance is very compelling.” Coming up in the CO Next series are two more announced new works, both commissions, with a third still in the planning process. Next year brings Blind Injustice, based on the work of the Ohio Innocence Project in exonerating wronglyjailed people. Using a book by University of Cincinnati law professor Mark Godsey, it features the stories of six exonerees and will be composed by Scott Davenport Richards with a libretto by David Cote. It will use an orchestra of 12 musicians, no more than 12 principal singers, plus members of the Young Professionals Choral Collective. In 2020, to mark the 100th anniversary

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sketches depicting the stereotypical Wagnerian “lady in the breastplate.” “Even potential audience members who have never seen an opera already have a preconceived notion of what it might be — and then also determine it’s not for them, for whatever reason,” Küchle says. “That is the real problem we have to combat. The term ‘opera’ is full of preconceived ideas that are not necessarily correct.” So one thing driving the surge in new works, then, is a desire for connection to modern culture. Another Brick had it — it was a grand-scale, high-tech, operatic adaptation of Pink Floyd’s classic Rock & Roll album The Wall. But operas like that, so far, are rare. Relevancy also means that a new work has important contemporary subject matter, one that can be presented in ways other than traditional spectacle. In that regard, the success of As One may be even more indicative of the change than Another Brick. Featuring just two singers — a man and a woman — and with its music played by a string quartet rather than an orchestra, it told the poetic, accessible story of a transgender woman’s journey to self-realization in just one act. Cincinnati Opera added 25 seats to Wilks Studio’s 200 seats to accommodate demand. (The 2014 opera was conceived and composed by Laura Kaminsky with a libretto by Mark Campbell and Kimberly Reed.)

A U G U S T 8 – 1 4 , 2 0 18

ecause Cincinnati Opera’s recent U.S. premiere of Another Brick in the Wall brought in a number of people associated with North American opera companies, it used the occasion to present a lunchtime panel discussion on new works. Besides the grand-scale Another Brick, the Opera was also presenting another recently composed, or “new,” work at the same time: the intimate As One in Music Hall’s small Wilks Studio. As invited guests listened at Music Hall’s Taft Suite, Marcus Küchle, Cincinnati Opera’s director of artistic operations and new works, revealed some startling statistics about the changing nature of opera in the United States: In the 2010-11 season, 15 percent of all productions were new works — 9 percent of those were composed between 1950 and century’s end; 6 percent were 21st-century creations. But for the current 2018-19 season (which includes Cincinnati Opera’s just-concluded summer season), 27 percent of all the productions were new works, with 18 percent of them having been created in this century. “That’s a very significant increase in the production of new works,” he told the audience. “This is a level that keeps the art form well. It needs an influx of new works.” Something is happening here and we’re just realizing what it is — opera is becoming one of our most progressive forms of the performing arts. Opera companies increasingly are searching for new audiences by equating contemporary works with relevancy. And they’re finding success. Cincinnati Opera reports its 2018 season, which had five productions, was its highest-grossing ever. And Another Brick, which had five performances at Music Hall’s Springer Auditorium, was the highest grossing production ever. In a follow-up telephone interview, Küchle spoke at length about why this trend was building, and what it means for opera. In some regards, he says, the art form has to find new audiences. But it is fighting against the fact that many have a negative view formed by their exposure to childhood cartoons and TV comedy

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VISUAL ART

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Lebanon Honors Hometown Hero and Designer Russel Wright BY ER I N C O U C H

Considering how renowned this region is for its ceramics history — the Cincinnati Art Museum has a sizeable collection of Rookwood Pottery — more people should know about a hidden gem of an exhibit at the Harmon Museum & Art Gallery in Lebanon, Ohio. It features the timeless work of the world-famous industrial designer Russel Wright, who was born and bred in this small city just 30 miles north of Cincinnati. The museum, which was established in 1940 by the Warren County Historical Society, has a carefully curated, sizeable permanent collection of Wright’s tableware, barware and furniture. This includes vintage pieces from his colorful American Modern earthenware dinnerware collection, considered the best selling in history. The exhibit features tableware from both Wright’s American American Modern pitchers from the Manitoga/Russel Wright Design Center Modern and Iroquois Casual China; his Art PHOTO: MASCA Deco-inspired unstained hard rock maple furniture; historical documents and newspaper clippings pertaining to his come back. Russel Wright in his lifetime life; commemorative stamps of Wright’s did not live long enough to see his style of flatware from the U.S. Postal Service’s 2011 beautiful serving pieces come back into Pioneers of American Industrial Design great popularity, but 10 to 15 years after his series; and the quirky choice of a carddeath — boom, there it is.” board painting believed to be Wright’s Wright certainly built up an extensive earliest known work. While the exhibit résumé. Born in 1904, he studied at the is displayed continually, the selection — Art Academy of Cincinnati with esteemed largely acquired from donors — is rotated Covington painter Frank Duveneck before monthly. There are about 80 pieces on even receiving his high school diploma. display and for every one, there are roughly After studying at Princeton University, he seven to 10 in storage. moved to New York City and worked in At first blush, a common visual theme set design under theatrical and industrial Russel Wright for the pieces at the Harmon Museum designer Norman Bel Geddes. He also comes to mind: curvilinear, organic garnered inspiration from nature when PH OTO: © YO US U F K AR S H shapes. Tableware with rounded edges summering in upstate New York. and teardrop-like lines adorn the display After marrying Mary Small Einstein, a case — a nature-inspired design indicadesigner and sculptor, in 1927, they started tive to Wright’s work. This design carries a Manhattan studio. American Modern “He was probably the first to have on through each piece in the exhibit, from dinnerware was introduced in 1939 and personality-based merchandise,” says the charming soft-colored dinnerware quickly became a must-have for homeJohn Zimkus, the Harmon’s historian and to exquisite glassware and brushed makers in the 1940s and the ’50s; the styles director of education. “He really did make aluminum. What makes the Harmon started moving quickly from department a mark as an industrial designer. Before collection special, says exhibit curator store shelves and onto dining room tables. there was Martha Stewart, Tommy Hilfiger Michael Coyan, is that the diverse pieces Amid the current revival in Modernism, or Ralph Lauren, Russel Wright’s name on from throughout his career prove its select pieces are still being manufactured, things sold.” timelessness. and there’s a healthy market for originals. Wright’s legacy continues. The Russel “Kenneth Clark, the great art historian, Wright was based in New York until his Wright Design Center operates Manisaid that, ‘Art must use the language of death in 1976. What made him a household toga, his Modernist home and studio in the day,’ ” Coyan says. “We know that lanname was the unprecedented commercialGarrison, N.Y., and it’s a tourist attraction. guages are never fully ever dead and styles ization of his work. Zimkus says Wright’s local connection and

the museum’s exhibit should be a source of pride in Lebanon, where his childhood home still stands, as well as in Cincinnati. “Great art doesn’t have to take place or be created somewhere else,” he says. “Influential people are from all over and southwest Ohio — Lebanon and Cincinnati — has made its mark on the world of art. This is simply a reflection of that.” The Harmon Museum & Art Gallery is located at 105 S. Broadway, Lebanon. More information: harmonmuseumohio.org.


LIT

Beatlemania Still Inspires Cincinnati Cartoonist Carol Tyler

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Illustration from Fab4 Mania P H O T O : C O U R T E S Y O F F A N TA G R A P H I C S

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person. I found that in them — the pure joy of being and creating.”

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fun and excitement of that time,” Tyler says. “I didn’t have any drama at 13. It was a very different time. My world was very small. And then The Beatles appeared.” When asked if surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are aware of Fab4 Mania, Tyler seems to transform back to her 13-year-old self. “I would love for them to see it because the screaming girls must have seemed like one big mass,” Tyler says. “But this is just one girl, and I wonder how that would be for them to see how boring and normal and excited we were. I’ve thought about what I would say if by some fluke they contacted me and said (she employs a faux English accent), ‘Oh, Carol, this is some fabulous work. You’re so cheeky. I love it!’ ” The Beatles opened Tyler’s heart and mind to a previously unknown world — an opening that still inspires her life and work to this day. “I am always reaching for the best I can do,” Tyler says. “I try to be innovative. I go deep with my content but it’s never dour or a downer. It’s always an affirmation of what’s possible in a situation or with a

A U G U S T 8 – 1 4 , 2 0 18

The Beatles changed everything. It’s hard to imagine today, more than a half century later, the impact the four working-class Liverpool lads had on an entire generation that was there to experience Beatlemania in real time. Acclaimed Cincinnati-based cartoonist Carol Tyler was one of the millions forever altered by The Beatles’ now-iconic 1964 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. The reverberations of that moment were deep and lasting, infecting those who witnessed it in ways not seen before. Or since. “In The Beatles, I found something that really struck me as authentic,” Tyler says about that time. “There was no denying it. I felt shifted within, and I could stand firm with that. I wasn’t going to be told, ‘This is no good. Turn that stuff off.’ No! I knew it was good. They were mine.” Tyler’s latest graphic novel, Fab4 Mania: A Beatles Obsession and the Concert of a Lifetime, grew out of a small book she made at age 13 — then called 37 Minutes of Madness! — about seeing the foursome live in 1965. It’s a fascinating and intimate portrait of one girl’s perspective at a time when music and culture were changing radically. Tyler’s trademark pen-and-ink illustrations accentuate her handwritten story — a narrative that focuses on the weeks leading up to and including The Beatles’ appearance at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, which was about an hour south of where the author grew up with her family in Fox Lake, Ill. “It’s difficult when you’re the youngest child in a very busy family that has issues with unresolved trauma and stress,” Tyler says of her home life at the time. “I came to know through the years that my dad had PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) from the military. My mother had unresolved grief from the trauma of losing her first child.” Tyler channeled the strained relationship with her father into her acclaimed magnum opus, You’ll Never Know, a threevolume first-person account (published between 2009-2012) that doesn’t shy away from tough, emotionally piercing material. A slightly tweaked version of the trilogy, renamed Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father — A Daughter’s Memoir, was reissued by her longtime publisher Fantagraphics in 2015. It was the capper to a decades-long road from being an underappreciated chronicler of “female stories” — she was often labeled the “wife of Justin Green,” himself a heralded underground cartoonist — to a singular artist in her own right. While some might see Fab4 Mania as trivial in light of Soldier’s Heart, that’s in part what Tyler intended. “Some reviewer said that, ‘This book lacks the depth of Tyler’s earlier work.’ I was like, ‘Yay!’ It’s not supposed to be about depth. It’s supposed to be about the

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ONSTAGE

‘Whisper House’ is a Musical Ghost Story BY H A R PER L EE

CRITIC’S PICK

Know Theatre’s 2018-19 season opens with Whisper House, a spooky and wonderfully satisfying AltRock chamber musical. With music and lyrics by the Tony-winning composer of Spring Awakening, Duncan Sheik, and book/ lyrics by Kyle Jarrow, the Tony-nominated L tor R: Cary Davenport, Brant Russell and Erin Ward bookwriter of the musical SpongeBob PHOTO: MIKKI SCHAFFNER PHOTOGRAPHY Squarepants, Whisper House is a heartbreaker, toe tapper and scary good time. accompanied by a strong band and Russell In December 1941, Japan attacked the on guitar. United States naval base at Pearl Harbor. In some respects, Whisper House is Shocked and furious, the U.S. immedisimply a good old-fashioned ghost story: ately declared war on Japan. Within a few A sad child comes to stay with a curmudmonths, President Franklin Delano Roosgeonly and reclusive family member evelt issued an executive order authorizing living in a haunted house. Director Daniel the internment of Japanese-Americans; Winters, together with scenic and lighting more than 100,000 were forced from their designer Andrew Hungerford and costume homes and incarcerated. designer Noelle Johnston, make the most Set after Pearl Harbor and just before of the story’s bankable ghost story eleFDR’s executive order, Whisper House ments. Johnston has dressed Davenport picks up with 11-year-old Christopher, and Ward in the sea-spoiled party clothes played by Andrew Ramos. Christopher has their ghosts died in, and Hungerford’s lost both of his parents: his father’s fighter lighthouse, under a film of sea salt, is plane was shot down over the Pacific and surrounded by darkness yet glows with an his mother, overcome with grief, was comeerie, otherworldly light. mitted to an asylum. In its finest moments the show investiAlone, Christopher is sent to stay with gates loneliness, forgiveness and courage. his father’s estranged sister, Aunt Lily, Winters successfully conjures a menacing played by Kelly Mengelkoch. A salty atmosphere, balancing the fear factor with spinster with dark secrets, Lily ekes out a the show’s soft heart. Lily, though lonely living on the rocky coast of Maine where, and heartbroken, is kind and Mengelkoch with the help of Yasuhiro, played by Adam renders her with warmth and spirit. Like Tran, she manages a rickety old lighthouse his aunt, Christopher is himself lonely and and bickers with the local law enforceheartbroken. Ramos’ portrayal is truly poiment, played by Brant Russell. Though Lily gnant: a scared little boy with a stiff upper insists that nothing in the lighthouse goes lip and good intentions, determined to be bump in the night, Christopher feels the an adult as soon as possible. Nephew and presence of two bitter ghosts, played by aunt struggle to understand each other Erin Ward and Cary Davenport. When Lily across years of pain and loss, but the conreads in the paper that Yasuhiro must relonection between Mengelkoch and Ramos cate to an internment camp, she entreats is genuine, familiar and sweet. a combative and confused Christopher to Tran’s Yasuhiro, Lily’s handyman help her hide him in the lighthouse, setting who lives with her at the lighthouse, is a off a life-altering chain of events. peaceful presence amid the ghosts’ furor, Originally released in 2009 as a concept the family’s tension and Russell’s spot-on album by Sheik, Whisper House grew blustery, bullying cop. The heat between strong stage legs. The Rock & Roll score is Lily and Yasuhiro is played with lovely a powerful backbone for the storyline and restraint, allowing the longing between frequently doubles as a moody soundscape, the characters to surface. just right for a piece set by a troubled sea. Well-sung, well-acted, creepily unnervThe ghosts that inhabit the lighthouse ing and appropriately substantive, Know’s are eternally angry about their untimely Whisper House is an entertaining blend end and haunt with merry malevolence, of haunting music and strong characters, taking dark delight in the bad news plagushining bright and hopeful against the ing the lighthouse’s corporeal inhabitdark. ants. As they roam the stage throughout Whisper House plays through Aug. 19 at much of the entire 90-minute production, Know Theatre (1120 Jackson St., OTR). Davenport and Ward are wonderful singTickets/info: knowtheatre.com. ers who perform most of the play’s songs,

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Complex Women Cut Deep in ‘Sharp Objects’ BY JAC K ER N

Like director Jean-Marc Vallée’s last mega miniseries Big Little Lies, gothic murder mystery Sharp Objects (9 p.m. Sundays, HBO), based on Gillian Flynn’s novel, centers on “complicated women” — characters whose stories are much more than meets the eye. Each episode peels back these layers like an onion, revealing bits of truth and misdirection. It is said that you can’t go home again, but that’s exactly what St. Louis newspaper journalist Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) must do when tragedy strikes her hometown of Wind Gap, Mo. A girl goes missing months after another has been brutally murdered, leading to grumblings about a serial killer. Camille’s editor — one of the few characters who genuinely seems to care about her well-being — cautiously assigns her to cover the story with the thought that as a native she can get inside information, but also that a visit home might do her good. Instead, it forces Camille to confront her current demons and the ghosts of her past.

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Heiress to a pig farm and slaughterhouse — the town’s main industry — Adora is the quintessential Southern belle who demands superficial perfection without much consideration for what matters below the surface. She seems embarrassed by Camille rather than concerned about her. Adora is vehemently opposed to Camille’s presence, and goes out of her way to stop her daughter from doing her job as she learns her family is more connected to the victims than Camille realized. Surrounded by a docile husband (Camille’s stepfather) and house staff, no one questions Adora’s sometimes ridiculous behavior. Then there’s Camille’s much younger half-sister, Amma (Eliza Scanlen), who plays a prim and proper, almost babyish role around her mother only to sneak out of the house as a whole new persona. She’s in her early teens, about the same age Camille was when she lost her sister, though she looks and acts much older. It seems like the sisters may share a lot in common, even if they barely know one another — Camille doesn’t even recognize her at first, so she’s clearly been out of the picture for years. There is something sinister about Amma, more than just a teen mean girl with a secret wild streak. She’s way too good at lying and making adults feel uncomfortable, and in such a small town where everyone knows each other’s business, it’s shocking that she’s been able to hide her short-shorts and hard partying from her L to R: Patricia Clarkson, Eliza Scanlen and Amy Adams overbearing mother. Small-town politics is a PHOTO: ANNE MARIE FOX / HBO major theme here, where And Camille has a lot of them. She’s an gossip, secrets and the idea of keeping up alcoholic with a history of self harm, as appearances are at play. Like many rural evidenced by scrawled, scarred words covcommunities, the folks of Wind Gap aren’t ering most of her body like graffiti. Sharp too keen on outsiders — even as a native, Objects’ title takes a literal turn when her Camille appears to fall into that category cutting is revealed, a subject handled with since she’s moved away. And it seems like much care and responsibility throughout she was an “other” even as a kid. Camille the series. There’s even a message regardhad “a reputation” growing up, but we still ing mental health and substance abuse don’t quite know the extent of it because resources after each episode. we, as viewers, are outsiders, too. We soon learn that death seems to These characters aren’t going to give follow Camille — or does she follow it? it up so easily to us. We must pay close As a child, she witnessed the death of her attention and be patient, because Sharp young half-sister Marian, something she Objects is a true slow burn. Halfway into clearly and understandably still struggles the season, there’s still more mystery than with today. More recently, she lost a young answers. But with such spot-on casting of friend while seeking help at a treatment its stars (Elizabeth Perkins, Chris Messina center. Now she’s coming face to face, and It’s Sophia Lillis as a young Camille sometimes literally, with a rash of dead round out the talent), it’s an intriguing girls. It’s certainly Adams’ darkest, rawest character study and fantastic commentary performance yet. on small towns and gender roles, if not a Even more triggering for Camille, fast-paced thriller. though, is reconnecting with her mother Contact Jac Kern: @jackern Adora (a pitch-perfect Patricia Clarkson).

Show Times

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21c Breakfast from Metropole PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

Gotta Goetta Bite

their menus, the dish is becoming an art form. Fresh out of a sizzling pan, a slab of goetta is perfectly crisp on the outside, with a savory gritcake-like interior. Eaters love the hearty crunch and the way bits of goetta meld with other flavors like eggs and potatoes. Alongside Cincinnati chili, goetta holds a special spot in our local hearts, even if it isn’t at the top of the list. If you haven’t gotten a chance to try it yet, back away from the meat case at the grocery store and try your first bite at one of the many eateries making it central to their menus. Here are some of the most innovative twists on the goetta tradition that might convince even skeptics to give it a try.

Seven uniquely Cincy takes on our beloved local pork-and-oats product

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A U G U S T 8 – 1 4 , 2 0 18

BY L AU R A L E AV I T T

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oetta is one of the humble local food products that Cincinnatians frequently share with first-time visitors. In Southwest Ohio, sausage makers have been combining oats, seasoning, beef and pork into a loaf since the 1800s. The dish was inspired by the German immigrants who settled in the area; they added grain to a mixture of meats to help stretch their pork and beef supply over multiple servings. No longer is goetta merely the historical side dish of choice for our pork-loving city: With so many Tri-State restaurants embracing the possibilities of goetta in

Goetta Grilled Cheese – Bellevue Bistro

An adventurous eater can find a wide array of goetta options on the menu at this small

breakfast and lunch eatery in picturesque Bellevue. Try it mixed into a breakfast bake with sweet potatoes, marshmallows and pecans — a wonderful melding of sugary sweetness with the meat — or with cheddar jack cheese and sautéed onions. However, goetta shines brightest on the goetta grilled cheese, straight out of the frying pan. Meiners Meats goetta is topped with a fried egg and cheddar jack and American cheeses on whole wheat toast. Let the gooey cheese string out of the sandwich while you look out onto Fairfield Avenue as you eat. 313 Fairfield Ave., Bellevue, Ky., bellevuebistro.com.

21c Breakfast – Metropole at 21c

In the pursuit of the perfect bite, ordering this breakfast or brunch dish at Metropole at 21c Museum Hotel might just gift you every flavor at once: spear a bit of over-easy egg with a crispy roasted potato, a charred tomato and a flaky edge of goetta. If this seems like too much fork-balancing for you, layer it all on the toast that comes with

the meal. The acid of the tomatoes makes this an exceptionally out-of-this-world combination. 609 Walnut St., Downtown, metropoleonwalnut.com.

Goetta Mac and Cheese Balls – Urban Grill on Main

Let’s face it: mac and cheese rolled in breadcrumbs and fried will always be a delicious food, and Urban Grill offers these balls alongside many other homey mainstays. This Newtown café, with its exposed wood beam décor, is a delightful place to sample the fried snack. Add savory nibbles of goetta in and among the cheesy cream sauce? Just a bonus. A restaurant that revels in the fact that “Bacon built this city!” is certainly a place to sample pork of all sorts. 6623 Main St., Newtown, urbangrillonmain.com.

Red Feather Omelet – Red Feather

This Oakley eatery is open for dinner Tuesday through Sunday, with a special brunch


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Goetta nachos from Colonial Cottage PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

menu on Sunday mornings. Among the omelet offerings is the Red Feather Omelet. Boursin — truly one of the lightest and loveliest of cheeses — is combined with cheddar and Eckerlin Meats’ goetta in an ooey-gooey, fluffy omelet. Red Feather focuses on just a few well-designed dishes with their brunch menu, and many of the items are labeled with the farms where they originated. The combination of eggs, cheese and goetta — all from places nearby — will remind you that local is truly delicious. 3200 Madison Road, Oakley, redfeatherkitchen.com.

this take on goetta. The sweet potato adds an unusually delightful flavor — like a little bit of maple syrup on your chicken and waffles. The pork-and-beef crispiness juxtaposes with the yielding starchy sweetness of sweet potatoes, all resulting in a surprisingly healthy and delicious brunch favorite. Red Roost Tavern lists just how nearby all of its food was grown or raised and dresses up this hash with a classy scallion chimichurri and roasted red peppers. Topped with a poached egg, every bite is a new adventure. 151 W. Fifth St., Downtown, hyatt.com.

Goetta Nachos – Colonial Cottage

The Washington Park Strada – Symphony Hotel and Restaurant

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When Sunday brunching Symphony-style at this boutique OTR hotel, you can sample the Washington Park Strada. Made with purple potatoes and a kick in the form of green chilies, this eggy casserole features goetta with some of its best companions: bacon, tomato, sourdough bread and sharp cheddar. Bacon has a different crunch than goetta, so you’ll be able to taste the distinction between the two different meats in every bite. The flavor of sourdough bread also adds depth to this rich dish. 210 W. 14th St., Over-the-Rhine, symphonyhotel.com.

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A farm-to-table restaurant inside downtown’s Hyatt hotel, Red Roost Tavern offers

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Goetta and Sweet Potato Hash – Red Roost Tavern

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Open since 1933, this home-cooked eatery offers friendly Southern-style service with a comfy diner atmosphere. There is an entire menu section devoted to goetta dishes, from a goetta Reuben with chips to a goetta burger, but the goetta nachos are a must. Swirls of nacho cheese and jalapeños bring out a different side of the goetta —the crumbly meat seems to hold up better than typical taco beef atop a pile of tortilla chips. The locals in Erlanger swear by all of the Colonial Cottage’s goetta iterations, but especially the nachos — and especially for breakfast. 3140 Dixie Highway, Erlanger, Ky., thecottagenky.com.

www.oliversdesserts.com

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THE DISH

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The Last Straw: What the War on Plastic Means for Businesses and Those with Disabilities BY M A D G E M A R I L

It’s rare that Americans band together against a common enemy all at once, but social media has a way of lighting fires where no one thought there was kindling. When a graphic video showcasing a team of people removing a plastic straw from a sea turtle’s nose, filmed in 2015 by marine biologist Christine Figgener, went viral this year, suddenly straws became taboo. Starbucks created plastic drinking lids to start eliminating its trademark green straws; Marriott announced a move to ban straws at 6,500 locations; and a #stopsucking antiplastic-straw campaign launched, with celebrity supporters like Neil Concern about global microplastic pollution has launched a debate about the necessity and impact of single-use plastic straws deGrasse Tyson and Tom Brady. PHOTO: STOCK The concern is that straws and other microto institute the policy after seeing the good for 100 cycles in our industrial plastics — basically little dishwasher. If you break that down per response they received by participating in potentially carcinogenic particles of plasuse, that’s less than a penny. With proper a plastic use awareness campaign at one of tic that won’t break down or biodegrade care and attention, it can save money in their Lexington, Ky. locations. — are polluting the ocean, injuring wildlife the long run and diminish your carbon “You don’t have to make a big investand entering our own bodies through the footprint.” ment to impact a big change,” Bostwick marine life we eat (fish eat plastics; we eat says when asked if she has any advice for fish). Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical other highly-trafficked spots looking to But the national conversation has downsize plastic usage. “Start simple by Garden become more nuanced as the days pass. only giving out plastic utensils and straws “We often hear, ‘It’s just one straw,’ but with Disability rights activists are speaking up when requested. We have found that not 7.4 billion people in the world, everyone about the fact that many disabled people as many people miss them as you initially using ‘just one straw’ has a huge impact,” rely on plastic straws in order to drink, and assume might.” says the Cincinnati Zoo’s advanced environmental activists are vocalizing inquiry program manager Jerran Orwig. that companies like Starbucks switching Boomtown Biscuits & Whiskey And it goes beyond harming wildlife from plastic straws to similarly single-use “From the beginning, we have utilized instantly, like what was on display in the plastic drinking lids isn’t that much of a National Sanitation Foundation-certified viral sea turtle video. difference. reusable straws,” says Boomtown propri“Single-use plastics are usually made So, what’s a Cincinnati business to do? etor PJ Neumann. (The National Sanitation out of petroleum and this kind of plastic We chatted with three different-sized local Foundation is a public health and safety doesn’t biodegrade. They break down into businesses — Goodfellas Pizzeria, Boomorganization.) “We did that in an attempt tiny particles that will either bind to other town Biscuits & Whiskey and the Cincinto eliminate our carbon footprint in the pollutants or leach toxic chemicals themnati Zoo & Botanical Garden — about environment, because of the ungodly selves into the water,” Orwig says. their straw policies and thoughts on the amount of straws that end up in landfills.” And it all comes back to us. national movement. Boomtown also composts nutritious “Microplastics can easily work their food waste and uses linens instead of paper Goodfellas Pizzeria way up the food chain, first consumed by napkins, with disposable straws on-hand While they have locations throughout the tiny plankton and accumulating in larger for to-go items — or upon request. Tri-State, Goodfellas is famous for being animals; meaning that the fish you buy at “There are plenty of individuals in this Over-the-Rhine’s late-night pizza spot. a grocery store or restaurant has a good city or who come into this city that need With drunk munchies comes loud, inebrichance of containing small pieces of plasstraws,” Neumann says. “My grandma had ated people that might not understand why tic in it, which is harmful to our health,” MS (multiple sclerosis), and she needed a they aren’t getting straws with their sodas. says the zoo’s sustainability specialist straw to drink a beverage. So, it’s so impor“Goodfellas is currently limiting straw Lauren McClure. tant to me to have it for people with physiusage by giving them on request only,” says While plastic straws are not banned at cal disabilities, or who just prefer a straw.” Jessica Bostwick of Goodfellas’ administhe zoo, they have been limited since 2010. Is it more expensive to offer reusable Only one item at the zoo comes with a tration. “We are passionate about the qualstraws rather than plastic straws? straw (a souvenir ICEE, with a hard-plastic ity of life for the animals that are impacted reusable straw). “It’s about $18 for 200 reusable straws,” by the irresponsible use of plastics.” “Plastic straws can provide a hazard to She says the restaurant was inspired Neumann says. “That’s 9 cents per straw,

the animals if they were to get into the exhibit,” says Jordan Miller, general manager for zoo food and beverage provider Service Systems Associates. “I believe it is important for us here at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden to practice what we preach and lead by example.” The zoo’s Base Camp Café made headlines in 2013 for being named the “greenest restaurant” in the country, as certified by the Green Restaurant Association. The zoo encourages guests to examine the way they interact with the environment while eating and drinking. And it’s not just about straws — though the zoo is happy to see the national conversation taking place. “We will continue to push the bar in educating our guests by changing the way we operate, (by) sourcing local foods and reducing our carbon footprint, reducing single-use plastic with bottled beverages, redesigning retail packaging to remove plastic and many more initiatives,” Miller says. McClure adds that the zoo’s solar panel set-up, cell phone recycling program, LED bulbs at the Festival of Lights and even Fiona’s clean rainwater pool all help contribute. “Through all of these efforts, not only has the Cincinnati Zoo saved millions of dollars to reinvest in more green initiatives, we have more importantly helped to decrease our impact on the environment,” she says. “Through education efforts, the 1.8 million guests that we see annually can come and learn about steps they can take to become better citizens of the earth.”


CLASSES & EVENTS WEDNESDAY 08

Sugar Rush — Calling all kids and kids at heart — or those with a really serious sweet tooth — CityBeat’s Sugar Rush is back at the Cincinnati Art Museum for an evening of sweets samples with donuts, pies, pastries, cookies, candy and more from area restaurants and vendors. Vote for your favorites. This event is allages. 5:30 p.m. $20. Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Drive, Mount Adams, citybeat.com.

Do Downtown Cincinnati Restaurant Week — Different downtown restaurants are offering prix-fixe menus through Aug. 12. Restaurants include Zula, We Olive, Scotti’s, The Presidents Room, Ruth’s Chris and more. Through Aug. 12. Prices vary. Find menus and details at dodowntowncincinnati.com.

THURSDAY 09

Sauce Workshop — Learn how to liven up your weeknight dinners with two of the most common French “mother sauces” and another global sauce and how to build them into something new. Class includes wine, beer or a non-alcoholic drink. 6-9 p.m. $75. Findlay Kitchen, 1719 Elm St., Overthe-Rhine, tablespooncookingco.com.

FRIDAY 10

Homemade Pie Baking Contest — Brink Brewing Co. hosts a pie baking contest. Sixty contestants can compete to win recognition for the best sweet pie. All pies must be homemade — including the crust. Judges will decide on the winner base on appearance, texture and taste. Noon-5 p.m. Free. Brink Brewing Co., 5905 Hamilton Ave., College Hill, brinkbrewing.com/ pie-contest-1. Das Uber Oktoberfest Launch — Christian Moerlein kicks off Oktoberfest season with the launch of Das Uber Fest Lager. Drink the beer in 1-liter glass boots ($8) and eat authentic German fare. There will also be a stein-holding competition and $1 off for anyone dressed in their best Oktoberfest attire. 5-9 p.m. Free admission. Christian Moerlein Brewing Co., 1621 Moore St., Overthe-Rhine, facebook.com/ christianmoerlein.

SUNDAY 12

Farm to Table Dinner at Coppin’s — Coppin’s third annual farm-to-table dinner features a Mediterranean theme, plus live music and unique raffle baskets. Ingredients from each dish will be sourced from the Covington Farmers Market. 5-8 p.m. $35 advance; $45 day-of. Coppin’s at Hotel Covington, 638 Madison Ave., Covington, hotelcovington.com.

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NIVERSARY

TUESDAY 14

The Office-Themed Trivia Night — Test your knowledge of The Office with this free, themed trivia night on Fountain Square. There will be drink specials and gift card prizes. Teams can consist of no more than eight people. 7-9 p.m. Free admission. Fountain Square, Fifth and Vine streets, Downtown, myfountainsquare.com.

The Versatile Summer Tomato — Learn how to turn a bountiful tomato harvest into dishes like phyllo pizza, tomato and zucchini gratin and a toasted corn, cherry tomato and edamame salad. 6-8:30 p.m. $55. The Cooking School at Jungle Jim’s, 5440 Dixie Highway, Fairfield, junglejims.com. Burgers, Fries + Milkshakes — Learn how to make these fast food favorites at home. Make burgers, fries and milkshakes from scratch while listening to American tunes and enjoying a wine, beer or non-alcoholic drink. 6-9 p.m. $75. Findlay Kitchen, 1719 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine, tablespooncookingco.com. Taft’s Beer 4 Dinner: Summer BBQ — This fourcourse beer dinner features smoked turkey wings, barbecue ramen, smoked pork loin, pulled tri-tip beef, smoked sausage and sides like baked beans, crispy polenta and watermeloncucumber salad. Each course will be paired with a Taft’s Ale House beer. 7-11 p.m. $55. Taft’s Brewing Company Brewpourium & Apizza, 4831 Spring Grove Ave., Northside, taftsalehouse.com.

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Higher Gravity Birthday Party + Bottle Release — Higher Gravity turns one with a special Urban Artifact collaboration bottle release and keg tapping, beermosa brunch featuring Melt Revival and other specialty

Insights Lecture: Speaking Easy about Giggle Water — At the Cincinnati Museum Center’s 1940s Day at Lunken Airport, mixologist Molly Wellmann leads this lecture about drinking in Cincinnati before, during and after Prohibition. Lecture is free with admission to the event. 1-2 p.m. $10; $5 child; free for members and veterans. Lunken Airport, 262 Wilmer Ave., East End, cincymuseum.org.

MONDAY 13

Taco Bingo Featuring Tacos Locos — Every Monday, the Overlook Lodge hosts taco bingo with a free taco from Tacos Locos with your first drink purchase. 7 p.m. Free admission. Overlook Lodge: A Rustic Watering Hole, 6083 Montgomery Road, Pleasant Ridge, thatshiningbar.com.

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SATURDAY 11

keg tappings on the hour, every hour. 10 a.m.-1 a.m. Free admission. Higher Gravity, 4106 Hamilton Ave., Northside, facebook.com/ highergravity.

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The Original Findlay Market Tour — Learn about Ohio’s oldest public market while taking a tour and enjoying samples and small bites from five specialty merchants. 11 a.m. Friday; 3 p.m. Saturday. $20; $5 wine tasting. Leaves from the information desk at Findlay Market, 1801 Race St., Over-the-Rhine, cincinnatifoodtours.com.

Most classes and events require registration and classes frequently sell out.

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MUSIC

Living in the Movement David Byrne once again imaginatively tinkers with rhythms and words on his latest album, American Utopia BY S T E V EN R O S EN

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n one of his past tours, David Byrne surprisingly and ecstatically covered Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me).” The result, not unexpectedly, turned the audience into a dancing mass. The former Talking Heads frontman’s current album, American Utopia, begins with his song “I Dance Like This,” so it’s not unreasonable to expect Byrne is out to accomplish the same thing on his current tour. But like everything in Byrne’s long and distinguished career, it’s not that simple. “There’s weirder things going on there,” Byrne says. “I Dance Like This” isn’t a straightforward dance tune. It starts with sedate, introspective piano chords, and then Byrne’s searching voice sings mysteriously idiosyncratic and puzzling lyrics to a gentle melody: “In another dimension/Like the clothes that you wear/A mighty, mighty battle/Sprouting illegal hair/A fitness consultant/In the negative zone/Wandering the city/Looking for a home.” The song then suddenly shifts, firing up a robotic Devo-like beat so Byrne can ominously drone, “I dance like this/Because it feels so damned good/If I could dance better/Well, you know that I would.” It’s clear the song has something intellectual and sociological to say about the reasons for the existence of dancing. But you can indeed also dance to it, just as people are doing to many of the American Utopia songs Byrne is performing on his current tour. “We gradually, especially in Latin America, are getting the crowd to dance more,” Byrne says. “It’s kind of a hilarious thing to watch.” Of course, just as he did for Talking Heads’ landmark Stop Making Sense tour, that dancing might be because Byrne has assembled a band that can superbly play driving, multi-layered rhythms. “It’s a very large band; including me, it’s 12 people,” Byrne says. “In order to get the sound of the percussion, it requires six drummers. North Americans think of it in terms of drum lines. The rest is pretty conventional — guitar, bass, keyboards and singer, that’s me. Other than the keyboards, the rest of those people are mobile. I play guitar every once in a while, but not very often. I think having been on road, we’ve pretty much cohered as a band.” That can put listeners more at ease,

physically, while their brains tackle lyrically challenging American Utopia songs like “Dog’s Mind,” where “dogs in our own paradise in a theme park all our own” don’t seem to care about a hungover judge attending a speech by the president. Or there’s “Everyday Is a Miracle,” which tries to puncture our human-centric way of looking at the world: “A cockroach might eat Mona Lisa/The Pope don’t mean shit to a dog/And elephants don’t read newspapers/And the kiss of a chicken is hot.” “It’s a way of seeing the commonplace with fresh eyes, and then it’s also an amusing way of saying our point of view is not the only way of looking at the world,” Byrne explains of some of the album’s animal-referencing songs. “To other critters, the world looks very different. And who’s to say that our (view) is better or more perfect?” On the current tour, the shows are not exclusively American Utopia songs, but rather a survey of his whole career. “We’re doing a handful of those songs, some Talking Heads songs, songs from collaborations and solo albums, some cover songs,” Byrne says. He reveals he’ll be covering a Janelle Monáe song in Cincinnati; he has done her “Hell You Talmbout” at other tour dates. Byrne is a unique and deep thinker about music (read his 2012 book How Music Works for further evidence) and the arts in general. That makes sense, given he’s also a visual artist who attended the Rhode Island School of Design and, in addition to achieving fame with the accessibly avant-garde Talking Heads, has worked on music projects with Brian Eno, Robert Wilson, Fatboy Slim, St. Vincent and many others. So his thoughts on music’s special powers are valuable — and give insight on why his compositions can sometimes disguise rather than superficially complement what he’s singing. “Music has this ability to simultaneously contain ideas and yet at the same time be very uplifting and emotional,” Byrne says. “It’s harder to do that in other forms. It can be a skeptical or analytical idea, but then be an emotionally energetic and uplifting song.” “You can’t do that in a book the same way,” he adds. “Even in a movie, you can’t do it without intercutting — you can’t do it simultaneously. It’s probably because the rhythm, the melody and the sensations

David Byrne PH OTO: J O DY R O G AC

affect us in a very visceral way.” A song from American Utopia that might at first seem to be an expression of unbridled joy, but actually is spikier than that, is “Everybody’s Coming to My House.” Byrne saw it as an expression of anxiety. “In the past, I’ve found that socially uncomfortable,” he says. “The idea of lots of people coming to my house is possibly terrifying. But there’s a video where a choir in Detroit sings it, and their rendition completely changed the song. It was welcoming — ‘Come over everybody, come to my house, we’re all in same house.’ So that’s there in song, but I wasn’t aware of it when I wrote it.” If there’s one song on American Utopia that really packs a wallop, it’s “Bullet.” It starts out coldly clinical about an unpleasant subject, like something Lou Reed might have done. But then it gets seductively more personal, without ever being melodramatic about it: “The bullet went

into him/Through his heart with thoughts of you/Where your kisses he inhaled/The lies and truth.” “It’s from the point of view of the bullet, itself,” Byrne says. “It starts off as a kind of clever idea, but as it goes on it has more emotional weight.” One can’t help but see this as a plea for gun control, which Byrne has supported in his journals at davidbyrne.com. But, as ever with Byrne, it isn’t that cut and dry. “There isn’t any one song I have that deals with specific policies,” he says. “They take a wider view. My assumption is to let the emotional weight of the song kind of resonate, and then (someone) might possibly take a different view of policies out there. But I’m not advocating a specific policy. A song might not be the way to do that.” David Byrne performs Sunday at Riverbend’s PNC Pavilion with Benjamin Clementine. Tickets/info: riverbend.org.


SPILL IT

MINIMUM GAUGE

Wussy Cancels U.S. Tour Dates BY M I K E B R EEN

BY M I K E B R EE N

Heavy Escape

Wussy PHOTO: JOHN ERHARDT

Cincy Blues Fest Returns to Sawyer Point

SAM LEWIS (NASHVILLE)

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A Warped Farewell

The last notes played at the final show on the last-ever Vans Warped Tour were by surprise guests Pennywise, a promise fest founder Kevin Lyman said he made years ago. But at the show on Aug. 5 in West Palm Beach, Fla., the most striking image came from guitarist Jordan Buckley of metallers Every Time I Die, who stood center stage after his band finished its set and continued to riff solo for several minutes as the road crew dismantled the stage around him.

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Vampire Weekend’s Viral Comeback

Indie Pop faves Vampire Weekend have been silent as of late, but they more than made up for it over Lollapalooza weekend. During its headlining set, the band broke music news by revealing that its anticipated fourth album is finished, then reportedly played several of the new LP tracks at an after-Lolla Vampire Weekend club show — not live, but through singer Ezra Koenig’s phone, which he ran through the club’s P.A. system. The band also made sure to ensure some viral traction: Vampire Weekend opened its Lolla show by playing its biggest song, “A-Punk,” three times in a row without explanation, then offered a bass-solo cover of the Seinfeld theme song, which was promptly turned into a meme.

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Contact Mike Breen: mbreen@citybeat.com.

WED 8

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On June 3, the Cincy Blues Society hosted its 19th-annual Cincy Blues Challenge, an all-day live “play-off” competition at Germania Park that featured more than 20 area Blues acts. The event determines who will perform at the Cincy Blues Fest, with the top winners going on to rep the Cincy Blues Society at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis the following year. The “band” winner at this year’s local challenge was Johnny Fink and the Intrusion, a veteran Cincinnati group that also won in 2015. The band’s frontman was the “solo/duo” winner of 2016’s Cincy Blues Challenge and that same year, Johnny Fink and the Intrusion won the Dayton Blues Society’s own challenge. The Dayton and Cincinnati contests allow artists from around the region to compete. Case in point: the duo Lil Red & The Rooster, from near Columbus, Ohio, won “solo/duo” honors at this year’s Cincy Blues Challenge. The challenge winners will appear alongside several other Blues acts from Greater Cincinnati and beyond at the Cincy Blues Fest, which returns Saturday (Aug. 11) to Sawyer Point, where it has been held since 1994. For the 2018 edition, the festival is returning to the single-day format of its very first year, after 23 years as a two-day festival. Fink and Co. play the Blues Fest mainstage alongside other local groups like Ralph and the Rhythm Hounds, Leroy Ellington’s Sacred Hearts, Noah Wotherspoon Band and Chuck Brisbin & the Tuna Project. Internationally renowned Blues/Rock/Roots artist Delbert McClinton headlines the main stage. The Blues Fest’s popular Arches Boogie Piano Stage is back again this year, spotlighting Boogie Woogie pianists from across the planet, including Cincy’s own Ricky Nye and Ben Levin. Advanced tickets for the 2018 Cincy Blues Fest are available at cincybluesfest.org/tickets for $25. Music begins Saturday at 2:45 p.m.

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With every new album by the Cincinnati Rock band Wussy, word of mouth and critical praise have helped expand its notoriety more widely. The ever-increasing attention has inflated the now-internationallybeloved band’s fanbase, this past year resulting in a big uptick in touring thanks to the quintet’s latest stellar release, What Heaven is Like. But after coming off a string of dates in Europe earlier this year, health issues have necessitated the cancellation of a trio of upcoming shows in major U.S. cities. Under the advice of doctors, imminent Wussy appearances in Boston, Chicago and New York City have been called off due to singer/songwriter/guitarist Chuck Cleaver’s back injury, which he says creates “debilitating numbness combined with periods of white hot pain.” Cleaver is undergoing physical therapy in hopes of avoiding surgery and says the band is going to try to reschedule the shows as soon as possible. Wussy shared a note from Cleaver about the cancellations on social media. “In the nearly 18 years that Wussy has been around I can count on one hand the shows we’ve had to call off. You just play, regardless of the circumstances,” Cleaver wrote. “Unfortunately, my back is a goner. The medical term for it is lower lumbar spinal stenosis. What it means in my case is that I’ve got two discs that are out of alignment and they’re pinching off two fairly major nerves, so that from my lower spine, along my hips and down through my legs to my toes I’m experiencing debilitating numbness combined with periods of white hot pain. Easily one of the most unpleasant things I’ve ever experienced.” “Two different doctors have advised me to get off the road so we’ve had to cancel our August and September dates in Brooklyn, Boston and Chicago, so I can do physical therapy to try to avoid an operation if at all possible,” he continued. “Canceling these shows is truly heartbreaking for me but I’m hoping that in the long run it means that I can continue to travel and do what we do.”

Besides that goat flash-mob that infested a Boise suburb, the other feel-good summertime story to emerge this week took place in Germany, where two elderly men’s very big adventure came to an end at an unexpected locale. The men had “escaped” their nursing home and made their way to a huge Heavy Metal music festival in Wacken, Germany, which featured performers like Cannibal Corpse, Children of Bodom, Judas Priest and Sepultura. Police reportedly found the men on fest grounds at 3 a.m. on the Friday night of the event. A police spokesperson said they appeared to have enjoyed themselves at the festival, but it’s still unclear if attending was their intention or how they ended up at the concert. But don’t worry, it will all be revealed in the inevitable motion picture starring Christopher Plummer and Michael Caine.

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SOUND ADVICE Echo & the Bunnymen PHOTO: BUNNYMEN.COM

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SAV E T H E DAT E!

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t i c k e t s ava i l a b l e at c i t y b e at. c o m

Echo & the Bunnymen, The Flaming Lips and more at Bellwether Music Festival

Saturday • Renaissance Park (Waynesville, Ohio)

This weekend’s Bellwether Music Festival brings some of today’s hottest Alternative bands to Waynesville, Ohio, about 45 miles northeast of Cincinnati. Friday’s lineup is topped by contemporary favorites like Local Natives and MGMT, but on Saturday, the event features a pair of bands whose influence on Modern Rock is large but sometimes overlooked. I know this because of the impact Saturday’s headliners had on the development of my musical tastes. In the span of just over a year in the late ’80s, I saw for the first time the final two artists to take the Bellwether stage: Echo & the Bunnymen and The Flaming Lips. Echo & the Bunnymen were already legends in the U.K. and in certain circles in the States — including among my weirdo teenage pals — when, in January 1988, they came to Millett Hall in Oxford, Ohio, where I’d just seen fellow “College Rock” group R.E.M. four months earlier. I’d recently fallen under the spell of the epic romantic swoon of albums like Ocean Rain and had worked my way back to earlier Post Punk classics like “The Cutter” thanks to the band’s 1985 Songs to Learn & Sing greatest hits LP. That album and the inclusion of its only new song, “Bring on the Dancing Horses,” in the 1986 film Pretty in Pink’s soundtrack (alongside The Psychedelic Furs, who perform just prior to E&TBM at Bellwether) set the stage for the Bunnymen’s biggest U.S. commercial success. The success of the group’s eponymous 1987 album and its single “Lips Like Sugar”

enabled them to draw a fairly large crowd to the Miami University campus in 1988, where the band played a short but engaging show during which riveting frontman Ian McCulloch mused about the absence of sorority girls. The group fell apart shortly after, but I was already a fan for life. The Bunnymen — anchored by McCulloch and guitar hero Will Sergeant — have been back together for nearly 20 years and still draw big crowds and critical acclaim for their subsequent new-era records. Saturday’s Bellwether headliners The Flaming Lips played the first show I ever saw at the original Southgate House in Newport, Ky. According to sources online, it was Jan. 1, 1989, as the nascent Oklahoma group was fostering its reputation in underground music. The band was psychedelic and weird, but in a much different way than they are now. Though the Lips’ trippy orchestral arrangements wouldn’t arrive for another decade, the slanted Pop idiosyncrasies were evident, swirled among disorienting and engulfingly loud guitar noise. Even then, the Lips knew how to make an impression in concert, though back in 1989, they did it by filling the Southgate’s ballroom with thick, soupy fog that was punctuated by beams and flickers of impossibly bright white lights. Those blinding elements mixed with the internalorgans-shifting volume created an audio-sensory-overload experience quite different than the colorful, surrealistic one presented today — though still in the same P.T. Barnum-meets-Timothy Leary spirit. Thirty years later, Echo & the Bunnymen and The Flaming Lips aren’t big on the touring circuit solely due to nostalgia — they’re both still incredible live performers who’ve remained relevant by continuing to make new music that isn’t simply retreading their past reputations. (Mike Breen)


Ganser PHOTO: KIRSTEN MICCOLI

litany of Southern Soul menu essentials and Taj Mahal’s baritone testifying about dreaming of Clarksdale. For a surprising and inventive cover of The Who’s “Squeeze Box,” both men trade lines back and forth as the song blooms with tinges of Reggae and Tex-Mex accordion. The inimitable Joe Walsh plays guitar on the refreshing Pete Townshend tune, while Bonnie Raitt checks in on a few other album tracks, including TajMo’s version of John Mayer’s “Waiting On the World to Change.” (Gregory Gaston)

Ganser with Complainer and Stella

Sunday • Northside Yacht Club

Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’ PHOTO: PROVIDED

TajMo: The Taj Mahal & Keb’ Mo’ Band Saturday • Taft Theatre

Cincy blu es fest aUGUST 11, 2018

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sAWYER sAWYER pOINT pOINT 2:30 PM - mIDNIGHT $25

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

It’s not often that two Blues-guitar-playing masters like Taj Mahal and Keb’ Mo’ befriend each other and make an album that compellingly combines all of their ample strengths. Longtime friends, the two veterans did just that with TajMo, a 2017 collection of joyful mid-tempo songs and eclectic covers that won the 2018 Best Contemporary Blues Album Grammy. An under-sung but classic artist, Taj Mahal started his career recording in the late ’60s with Ry Cooder and has since zigzagged through almost every African Roots music iteration — from Calypso to Zydeco, with many Folk/Blues arrangements in between. Keb’ Mo’, a multiGrammy winner and a generation younger than Taj, utilizes an elegant, fingerpicking guitar style and plays a slicker, more contemporary Blues than his partner. Possibly because Keb’ Mo’ wrote the majority of the songs, TajMo seems more reflective of his sensibility, with its fullband, polished dynamic. The opening “Don’t Leave Me Here” ambles out of the Mississippi Delta, with funky Blues harp played by Billy Branch, a mouthwatering

Listen to the members of Ganser talk about their creative process and you’d swear you were speaking to alchemists. There’s a unique mysticism hidden in the Chicago Post Punk quartet’s stoic exterior. “Sometimes there isn’t the right thing to say. Throwing language in a blender is the only option,” bassist/vocalist Alicia Gaines writes in Ganser’s bio. “Looking through randomness like tea leaves, you find meaning in it eventually and work with that.” Listen to the band’s debut LP, appropriately titled Odd Talk, while scrolling through the lyrics typed up on its Bandcamp page and you’ll feel like a medium yourself, piecing through long lists of short, abstract phrases while attempting to construct a holistic meaning from the mess. What do you make of a sequence like “realize nothing/bruised knees/salt and vinegar”? The sour, parched feeling your tongue gets after eating overly acidic potato chips? Swirling shades of black and blue? Let these syllables simmer in a vat of astringent Goth Rock riffage and frenetic Punk percussion and give it another taste. Ganser’s spoken-word poetry conveys meaning through the residue it leaves behind: dreamlike and jarring. “There’s this point where the feelings you’ve let fester below the surface start to grow legs and gain autonomy,” says Nadia Garofalo (keys/vocals) in the same bio. Despite avant-garde ambitions, the band is more than capable of giving the Punk masses what they want: fast-paced, mosh-able nuggets that flirt with emotional transparency. The droning “Aubergine” is the best of these, channeling the gloom of The Cure’s early work while keeping the distortion cranked to the maximum. Danceable, the track is a lyrical challenge to the listener: “Stay if you’ll find me/You’ll never find me.” (Jude Noel)

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LISTINGS

CityBeat’s music listings are free. Send info to Mike Breen at mbreen@citybeat.com. Listings are subject to change. See CityBeat.com for full music listings and all club locations. H is CityBeat staff’s stamp of approval.

WEDNESDAY 08

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CAFFÈ VIVACE–Blue Wisp Big Band. 8 p.m. Big Band Jazz.

FOUNTAIN SQUARE–Reggae Wednesdays with Indika. 7 p.m. Reggae. Free. KNOTTY PINE–Dallas Moore. 10 p.m. Country. Free. MERITAGE–Sonny Moorman. 7 p.m. Blues. Free. MOTR PUB–Sam Lewis. 10 p.m. Rock/Roots/Various. Free.

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MADISON LIVE–The Convalescence and Accursed Creator. 7 p.m. Death Metal/Deathcore. $10, $13 day of show.

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SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (LOUNGE)– Lost Coast with Moonshine & Wine and Chelsea Ford and The Trouble. 9:30 p.m. Americana/Various. Free. STANLEY’S PUB–Reverend Justin Hylton and Samantha Tieger. 9 p.m. Singer/Songwriter. Free.

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URBAN ARTIFACT– Heavy Hinges with Fun Ugly Cool Kids. 8 p.m. Rock/ Various.

THURSDAY 09

20TH CENTURY THEATER–Rod Clemmons & Dan Kenneth. 8 p.m. R&B. $20.

A U G U S T 8 – 1 4 , 2 0 18

THE MAD FROG–THWAP Thursdays. 6 p.m. DJ/Electronic/Dance. Cover.

NORTHSIDE YACHT CLUB–Lindseys and The Waterheads. 9 p.m. Rock.

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THE LISTING LOON– Trippers and Askers with Rachel Mousie and Maggy. 9:30 p.m. Indie Pop/ Various.

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RIVERBEND MUSIC CENTER–Jeff Beck and Paul Rodgers with Ann Wilson and Deborah Bonham. 6:30 p.m. Rock. $25-$350.

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

H

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NORTHSIDE TAVERN– Wax Mistress, Sun Mother and Bloom. 9 p.m. Indie Rock. Free.

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KNOTTY PINE–Kenny Cowden. 9 p.m. Acoustic. Free.

ARNOLD’S BAR AND GRILL–Dottie Warner and Ricky Nye. 7:30 p.m. Jazz. Free. CAFFÈ VIVACE–George Simon Organ Trio. 6 p.m. Jazz. COMMON ROOTS–Open Mic. 8 p.m. Various. Free.

MOTR PUB–Tristen with Molly Sullivan. 10 p.m. Indie Rock. Free.

SCHWARTZ’S POINT JAZZ & ACOUSTIC CLUB– Mandy Gaines with Jordan Pollard and Matt McCoy. 8 p.m. Jazz. Cover. STANLEY’S PUB–Baccano, Skyfoot and Eric Wurzelbacher Trio. 10 p.m. Jam/ Rock. Cover.

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URBAN ARTIFACT– Dead Man String Band, The Mobros and Andrew Wood. 9 p.m. Rock/Roots/ Various.

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WASHINGTON PARK– Buffalo Wabs & The Price Hill Hustle. 7 p.m. Americana. Free.

WASHINGTON PLATFORM SALOON & RESTAURANT– Jazz at Dusk. 5:30 p.m. Jazz. $10 (food/drink minimum).

FRIDAY 10

ARNOLD’S BAR AND GRILL–Lagniappe. 9 p.m. Cajun. Free. BLIND LEMON–Will and Olivia. 9 p.m. Acoustic. Free. BLUE NOTE HARRISON–C The Gray. 6 p.m. Rap. $20. BOGART’S–Whitechapel. 8 p.m. Rock. $20.

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COMMON ROOTS– Danbient. 9 p.m. Electronic. Free.

CROW’S NEST– Will Payne Harrison. 10 p.m. Americana. Free.

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FOUNTAIN SQUARE– Reverend Horton Heat with Wayne “the Train” Hancock and Lincoln Durham. 7 p.m. Rock/Roots/ Rockabilly/Various. Free. THE GREENWICH–“Just Friends” Friday with Kathy Wade featuring Julie Spangler. 9 p.m. Jazz. $10. JAG’S STEAK AND SEAFOOD–3 Piece Revival. 9 p.m. Rock. $5. JERZEES PUB & GRUB– Pandora Effect. 9 p.m. Rock. JOSEPH BETH BOOKSELLERS–The Ron Purdon Quintet. 7 p.m. Jazz. Free KNOTTY PINE–Final Order. 10 p.m. Rock. Cover.

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MADISON LIVE–Iles Family Music Benefit with The Restless Leg String Band, The Cliftones, Strange Mechanics, Maritime Law, Hot Brown Smackdown and Hickory Robot. 5:30 p.m. Rock/Reggae/Roots/Various. $12, $15 day of show.

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MADISON THEATER– Telehope (release show) with Moonbeau and Daniel In Stereo. 8 p.m. AltPop. $10, $15 day of show. MANSION HILL TAVERN– Blues Therapy. 9 p.m. Blues. Cover. MARTY’S HOPS & VINES– Over Easy. 9 p.m. Soft Rock. Free.

FOUNTAIN SQUARE–Salsa on the Square with Latin Beat All Stars. 7 p.m. Latin/ Salsa/Dance/Various. Free.

CAFFÈ VIVACE–Emmaline Campbell Group. 8:30 p.m. Jazz.

MOTR PUB–The Candescents. 10 p.m. Rock. Free.

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H

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THE GREENWICH–ICJ Fundraiser with Mimi Jones & The Black Madonna. 9 p.m. Jazz. $5.

THE COMET–Parlor Voice, Knotts and Captain Careless. 10 p.m. Indie/ Post Punk/Various. Free.

NORTHSIDE TAVERN– The Dummy Ups, Toon Town and Real Low Minds. 10 p.m. Rock. Free.

Desert Dwellers play Octave Friday (Aug. 10) PHOTO: JOSEPH RUNGE

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OCTAVE–Desert Dwellers. 9 p.m. Dub/ Electronic/World. $20, $25 day of show.

STANLEY’S PUB–Vintage Pistol and Ohio Valley Salvage. 10 p.m. Jam/Psych. Cover.

PLAIN FOLK CAFE–Kyle English and the Mason Brothers. 7:30 p.m. Various. Free.

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RICK’S TAVERN–Bourbon Road. 10 p.m. Country. $5. RIVERBEND MUSIC CENTER–Chicago and REO Speedwagon with Michael Tolcher. 7 p.m. Rock. $29.50-$129.50. SCHWARTZ’S POINT JAZZ & ACOUSTIC CLUB–Justin Dawsons Group. 8:30 p.m. Jazz. Cover. SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (LOUNGE)– Towne. 9:30 p.m. Rock/ Roots/Various. Free.

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SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (REVIVAL ROOM)–Tommy Womack. 7 p.m. Americana/Rock/Various. $18, $20 day of show.

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SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (REVIVAL ROOM)–Mike Ingram: A Berfday Celebration! featuring John Walsh, Hellcat Matt, New Architects, Butt and more. 10 p.m. Rock/Punk/ Various. $5, $8 day of show.

URBAN ARTIFACT– Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless Benefit featuring Mara Moon, Eugenius, Self Surgery, J Dorsey Band, Nancy Paraskevopolous and more. 7 p.m. Various. $5 suggested donation. WASHINGTON PARK–Friday Flow with Keith Robinson. 7 p.m. R&B. Free. WASHINGTON PLATFORM SALOON & RESTAURANT–Marc Wolfly Group. 9 p.m. Jazz. $10 (food/drink minimum).

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WOODWARD THEATER–Jon Spencer with All Seeing Eyes and Stallone N Roses. 8 p.m. Rock/Blues. $15, $18 day of show.

SATURDAY 11

ARNOLD’S BAR AND GRILL–The Hot Magnolias. 8 p.m. Jazz/Funk/New Orleans. Free. BLIND LEMON–Sal and Joya. 9 p.m. Acoustic. Free. CAFFÈ VIVACE–Faux Frenchmen. 8:30 p.m. Jazz.

THE COMET–Future Virgins, Evening Standards, Frontier Folk Nebraska and The Virginia Creepers. 10 p.m. Rock/Various. Free. CROW’S NEST–Allen Talbott. 10 p.m. Americana. Free. FOUNTAIN SQUARE– WEBN Fireworks Countdown Party with STP2 and Mascots. 7 p.m. Rock/Stone Temple Pilots tribute. Free. THE GREENWICH–Radio Black. 7 p.m. Soul/R&B/Pop/ Various. $10.

H

HUFFMAN PARK– Blues & BBQ Summer Concert Series with Chandler Carter. 6 p.m. Blues/ Pop/Soul.

JAG’S STEAK AND SEAFOOD–2-4 Flinching. 9 p.m. Rock/Dance/Various. $5. KNOTTY PINE–Naked Karate Girls. 10 p.m. Rock/ Pop/Dance. Cover. MACADU’S–Ambush. 9 p.m. Rock. Free. MADISON LIVE–Local Summer Showcase with National Barks, The Thrifters, Here Come Here and Sun Delay. 8:30 p.m. AltRock. $10, $12 day of show.


PUZZLE MANSION HILL TAVERN– Prestige Grease. 9 p.m. Blues. Cover.

& Keb’ Mo’ Band with Jontavious Willis. 8 p.m. Blues/ Roots. $39.50-$63.50.

MARTY’S HOPS & VINES– Rockin’ George LaVigne. 9 p.m. Acoustic. Free.

H

H

MOTR PUB–Static Falls with Sleepcrawler. 10 p.m. Indie Rock. Free. PLAIN FOLK CAFE–DeadCentric. 7:30 p.m. Rock/ Roots/Graetful Dead. Free.

H

PNC PAVILION AT RIVERBEND–JJ Grey & Mofro and Blackberry Smoke with J. Roddy Walston & The Business. 6:30 p.m. Rock/Roots/Various. $23.50-$63. RICK’S TAVERN–3 Piece Revival. 10 p.m. Rock/Various. $5.

H

SAWYER POINT– Cincy Blues Fest with Delbert McLinton, Noah Wotherspoon, Johnny Fink and the Intrustion and much more. 2:30 p.m. Blues. $25.

SCHWARTZ’S POINT JAZZ & ACOUSTIC CLUB–Eric Lechliter Quartet. 8:30 p.m. Jazz. Cover. SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (LOUNGE)–Jake Book with The Old Souls String Band. 9:30 p.m. Bluegrass/Americana. Free. SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (REVIVAL ROOM)–Angela Perley & The Howlin’ Moons. 9 p.m. Roots/Americana/Rock. $10, $12 day of show.

H

THE STADIUM BAR AND GRILLE–Trailer Park Floosies. 9 p.m. Rock/Pop/ Dance/Country/Rap/Various

CAFFĂˆ VIVACE–Ben Tweet Trio. 2 p.m. Jazz. LATITUDES BAR & BISTRO–Blue Birds Band. 8 p.m. R&B/Rock. Free. MANSION HILL TAVERN– Open Blues Jam with Deb Olinger. 6 p.m. Blues. Free.

H

MOTR PUB–The Hazytones, Cult of Sorrow and Carian. 8 p.m. Stoner Rock. Free. NORTHSIDE TAVERN– Classical Revolution. 8 p.m. Casual Classical. Free.

H

PNC PAVILION AT RIVERBEND–David Byrne with Benjamin Clementine. 8 p.m. Alt/Rock/Pop/ Various. $35-$175. STANLEY’S PUB–Stanley’s Open Jam. 8 p.m. Various. Free. URBAN ARTIFACT–Lines in the Sky and ForestFox. 9:30 p.m. Alt/Rock/ Progressive. Free.

MONDAY 13

PACHINKO–Open Mic. 9 p.m. Various. Free. URBAN ARTIFACT–Clyde Mcgee with Raw Velvet and Season Sleep. 7 p.m. Rock.

TUESDAY 14

5 Positive terminal 10 Comfy shoes 14 Juan’s yesterday 15 Stud horses

27 Flat pancake

20 Cold War threat

CAFFĂˆ VIVACE–Mandy Gaines & Wayne Yeager. 7:30 p.m. Jazz.

18 One who always takes things the wrong way

24 Nutty Thanksgiving side dish

17 Do followers

23 Sweet spread

22 “But let’s consider,� initially

16 Motorcycle brand named after a Russian mountain range

BLIND LEMON–Nick Tuttle. 8:30 p.m. Acoustic. Free.

NORTHSIDE TAVERN– Northside Jazz Ensemble. 10 p.m. Jazz. Free.

29 Party hack

30 Mumbai-toKolkata dir.

31 Left the harbor 32 Make the switch?

PACHINKO–Acoustic Tuesdays. 9 p.m. Acoustic/ Various. Free.

34 “Lips ___ Movin� (Meghan Trainor song)

STANLEY’S PUB– Handmade Moments with Twig & Leaf. 10 p.m. Americana. Cover.

H

36 Brian who said “It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.�

URBAN ARTIFACT–Urban Artifact Open Jam Session 2: The Search For More Honey. 8 p.m. Various. Free.

37 Boxes that stick out of certain frames in the summer, and a hint to this puzzle 41 Smell from a diaper genie

65 Eye feature 66 Epically awful

31 “Where The Wild Things Are� author

67 Penny

33 Pied ___ (“Silicon Valley� startup)

68 Messy sandwich

35 Fleeced mama

69 Follows closely 70 Ship ropes

38 Tough guy Chuck

DOWN

39 Liable to offend

50 Game show hosted by Kevin Hart 53 Biblical guy with a ladder 54 Document Cloud company

1 Drinks all over town

40 Opener for a guest

55 Number of days that a solar year differs from a lunar year

2 Part that gets penciled

44 “Personally speaking,...�

58 Colombian green 61 Dinner invitation?

3 Used protection?

45 And they’re off

42 Go kaput

4 Makes a few edits

46 Safe haven

5 Throw out there

Sy Smith – Aug. 24, The Greenwich

43 Barbecue skewer

47 Made an effort

6 Soccer shutout

62 Turning down word

Ace Hood – Sept. 11, Urban Artifact

46 Tar’s back

48Mortarboard dangler

63 Deg. for a calculus expert

Obie Trice – Sept. 12, Urban Artifact

49 Gentle touch

Future Sounds

The Devil Wears Prada – Oct. 10, Bogart’s

THE GREENWICH–Baron Von Ohlen & the Flying Circus Big Band. 7:30 p.m. Big Band Jazz. $5.

Morning Teleportation – Oct. 25, Southgate House Revival

MANSION HILL TAVERN–Acoustic Jam with John Redell and Friends. 8 p.m.

O.A.R. – Nov. 15, Taft Theatre

Deafheaven/DIIV – Nov. 7, Taft Theatre Ballroom Justin Courtney Pierre – Nov. 13, 20th Century Theater Donna the Buffalo – Nov. 17, Ludlow Garage Silverstein – Dec. 12, Bogart’s

SEE CITYBEAT.COM FOR FULL MUSIC LISTINGS AND ALL CLUB LOCATIONS.

51 It’s home to roughly 16% of the Earth’s population: Abbr. 52 “Don’t Pass Me By� singer 53 Beat author who came up with the tiles for “Howl� and “Naked Lunch� 56 Jrs. and srs.

7 Cookies that come in lemon and birthday cake flavors 8 Pool measurement 9 ___ perpetua 10 Silent 11 Gum relief brand 12 Classic filled hors d’oeuvre 13 Covered with ooze

57 Device you can use with an Apple Pencil

19 “Let me!,� melodramatically

59 Performance with recitative

21 Hwy. that goes by Dumbo

60 Almost as good as the best

25 Rice bowl option

64 “Smack That� rapper

26 Flying start 28 Scenes of unrest

L AST WEEK’S ANSWERS:

$ % & % 1 2 ) $ 7 2 2 7 6 + $ 0 6 ( $ ( 0 < 5 1 ( 0 2 : $ 1 * 1 6 7 5 2 & 5 $ 0 5 ( 9 ( 8 1 ( 0 ' 6

. / $ 0 , 1 / * < 1 2 $ 2 5 7 . ( 6 6 $ / , 1 2 ' $ / , 7 + ( / ( $ '

$ 1 ( 7 5 8 3 $ ( 7 7 , 1 6 3 $ * + ( 7 ' 1 $ , / ( $ 5 6 $ 6 7 < 7 + 2 3 + 8 6 + $ 6 + 2 * 8 1 , 7 1 * ' 2 8 + $ , 6 7 '

' 2 * , 7

2 5 2 1 2

& ( 1 7 6

7 5 , ( 5

$ = 8 5 (

< $ 0 6

9 ( 5 2 / , $ 0 3

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

H

TAFT THEATRE– TajMo: The Taj Mahal

SUNDAY 12

MOTR PUB–Chris from Space and Dead Man String Band. 9 p.m. Rock/Various. Free.

AC R O S S

1 Thing that goes through loops

|

STANLEY’S PUB–$pare Change, The Kno Nothings and Dead Humor. 10 p.m. Psych/Blues. Cover.

WASHINGTON PLATFORM SALOON & RESTAURANT–Options Jazz Trio. 9 p.m. Jazz. $10 (food/drink minimum).

H

MEMORIAL HALL– Jazz at the Memo: The Music of Lennie Tristano featuring Mike Darrah, Peter Gemus, Josh Kline and Tony Franklin. 7 p.m. Jazz. $8.

BY B R E N DA N E M M E T T Q U I G L E Y

A U G U S T 8 – 1 4 , 2 0 18

SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL (SANCTUARY)–Friday Giants, Heart Means More, A Liar’s Eyes and Don’t Call Me Punk. 8 p.m. Rock/Various. $10, $12 day of show.

URBAN ARTIFACT– Siegelord, The Mound Builders, Weed Demon, Casino Warrior and Funeral Moon. 8 p.m. Metal. $5.

Acoustic. Free.

Chill Out

33


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WWW.DA Y TONBU RGERWEEK .COM

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

| A U G U S T 8 – 1 4 , 2 0 18


CLASSIFIEDS LEGAL NOTICES Extra Space Storage will hold a public auction at the location indicated: 525 W 35th St, Covington, KY 41015 on Tuesday August 21, 2018 at 1:30 PM. Unit 02204 Unit 04419 Unit 02209 Unit 02317 Unit 03228 Unit 04122 Unit 03328 Unit 02208 Unit 03316 Unit 02302 Unit 03253 Unit 03247 Unit 03324 Unit 03330 Unit 05136 Unit 02232 Unit 02119 Unit 03132 Unit 04127 Unit 03129 Unit 03338 Unit 03323 Unit 07102 Unit 02503

storagetreasures.com. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the above referenced facility in order to complete the transaction. Extra Space Storage may refuse any bid and may rescind any purchase up until the winning bidder takes possession of the personal property. Extra Space Storage hold a public auction at the location indicated: 2526 Ritchie Ave Crescent Springs, KY 41017, August 21st 2018 at 11:30AM Unit 404

The auction will be listed and advertised on

The auction will be listed and advertised on www.storagetreasures. com. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the above referenced facility in order to complete the transaction. Extra Space Storage may refuse any bid and may rescind

any purchase up until the winning bidder takes possession of the personal property. Notice is hereby given that Extra Space Storage will sell at public auction at the storage facility listed below: 5970 Centennial Circle, Florence, KY 41042, August 21st, 2018 at 10:30 am Unit 645 Unit 312 Unit 326 Unit 555 Unit 741 Unit 624 The auction will be listed and advertised on www.storagetreasures. com. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the above referenced facility in order to complete the transaction. Extra Space Storage may refuse any bid and may rescind any purchase up until the winning bidder takes possession of the personal property. Extra Space Storage hold a public auction at the location indicated:

PAID IN ADVANCE!

2900 Crescent Springs Rd Erlanger, KY 41017 on August 21, 2018 at 11:00 AM

Unit 2702 Unit 176 Unit 84 Unit 2544

Unit 339 Unit 292 Unit 224 Unit 556 Unit 1118 Unit 338 Unit 440 Unit 320 Unit 1150 Unit 555

The auction will be listed and advertised on www.storagetreasures. com. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the above referenced facility in order to complete the transaction. Extra Space Storage may refuse any bid and may rescind any purchase up until the winning bidder takes possession of the personal property.

The auction will be listed and advertised on www.storagetreasures. com. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the above referenced facility in order to complete the transaction. Extra Space Storage may refuse any bid and may rescind any purchase up until the winning bidder takes possession of the personal property. Extra Space Storage hold a public auction at the location indicated: 8080 Steilen Dr. Florence, KY 41042 on August 21, 2018 at 10:00 AM Unit 712 Unit 2135 Unit 2122

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CityBeat needs contractors to deliver CityBeat every Wednesday between 9am and 3pm. Qualified candidates must have appropriate vehicle, insurance for that vehicle and understand that they are contracted to deliver that route every Wednesday. CityBeat drivers are paid per stop and make $14.00 to $16.00 per hr. after fuel expense. Please reply by email and leave your day and evening phone numbers. Please reply by email only. Phone calls will not be accepted. sferguson@citybeat.com

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MAD ISON

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