CityBeat | Nov. 22, 2017 by Cincinnati CityBeat

CINCINNATIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S NEWS AND ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY | NOV. 22-28, 2017 | FREE

A CITY

MADE NEW

TH E N E W D E A L LE F T LO C A L L A N DM A R K S A N D A COMPLICATED, INCREASINGLY RELEVANT LEGACY BY N I C K S WA R T S E L L | PAG E 14

Saturday TaftTheatre.org

1/27

On Sale NOW!

EDITOR IN CHIEF Da nny Cross CRE ATIVE DIRECTOR Jennifer Hoffm an MANAGING Editor M ai ja Zummo

VOL. 23 | ISSUE 52 ON THE COVER: Columbia Pa rk way / Photo: Courtesy universit y of Cincinnati, Archives and R are Book Library

MUSIC EDITOR Mik e Breen ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Ste ven Rosen STAFF WRITERS James McNair, Nick Swa rt sell PHOTOGR APHER /DESIGNER H aile y Bollinger CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Theater: Rick Pender Film: t t stern-enzi CONTRIBUTING WRITERS A nne A renstein, Case y A rnold, Brian Bak er, Jeff Be y er, Jack Brenn a n, Stephen Novotni, Brian Cross, Hayle y Day, Jane Durrell, Jason Ga rga no, Austin Gayle, McK enzie Gr a h am, K atie Holocher, Ben L. K aufm an, Deirdre K ay e, John J. K elly, John L ask er, Ha rper Lee, MACKENZIE MANLEY, M adge M a ril, Anne Mitchell, Pam a Mitchell, Ta mer a Lenz Muente, M a rk Painter, Se an Pe ters, Rodger Pille, Ga rin Pirnia, Selena Reder, Ilene Ross, K athy Schwa rt z, M a ria Seda-Reeder, Le yl a Shokoohe, Brenn a Smith, Isa ac Thorn, K athy Valin, K athy Y. Wilson, P.F. Wilson EDITORIAL INTERNS Alison Ba x ter, Erin Couch, K ennedy Ponder CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGR APHERS Scot t Dit tgen, Phil Heidenreich, Khoi Nguy en, Brit tany Thornton, Catie Viox PHOTOGR APHY INTERNS K ellie Colem an, Mesa Serik ali

C it y B eat. com | n o v. 1 5 – 2 1, 2 0 1 7

VOICES 04 NEWS 11 cover story 14 STUFF TO DO 21 ARTS & CULTURE 24 FOOD & DRINK 31 MUSIC 34 CLASSIFIEDS 39

CITYBEAT | 811 R ace St., Fif th Floor, Cincinnati, OH 4 5202 Phone: 513-665- 4700 | Fa x: 513-665- 4 368 | cit y be at.com Printed on Recycled Paper with Soy-Based Inks please recycle THIS NE WSPAPER! THANKS :)

PUBLISHER Tony Fr ank ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Josh Schuler SALES ACCOUNT MANAGERS Cory Hodge, Dan R adank, Neil White deal breaker K a ne Kitchen Office Administrator Sam antha Johnston E VENT DIRECTOR Allie M a rtin E VENT & SALES COORDINATOR Cha nell K a rr Marketing & E vent Team Hannah French, Danielle Hale, Rya n Henges, Courtne y Hoelle, Elle L allo, Hale y Molone y, Meg Schot t, A m anda Wat t, Chelse a Zoeck lein CIRCUL ATION MANAGER Ste ve Ferguson DISTRIBUTION TE AM Rick Ca rrol, Dennis Conover, Ashle y Davis, Doug Drenn an, Jerry Ennis, Terrence E va ns, L awrence E. Hoover III, Lori Morgan, Joan Powers, Tom Sand, Micha el Swango SouthComm Chief Financial Officer Bob M ahone y Chief Operating Officer Bl air Johnson E XECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT M a rk Ba rtel Vice President Of Production Operations Curt Pordes

© 2017 | CityBeat is a registered trademark of CityBeat Communications, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission. CityBeat covers news, public issues, arts and entertainment of interest to readers in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. The views expressed in these pages do not necessarily represent those of the publishers. One copy per person of the current issue is free; additional copies, including back issues up to one year, are available at our offices for $1 each. Subscriptions: $70 for six months, $130 for one year (delivered via first–class mail). Advertising Deadline: Display advertising, 12 p.m. Wednesday before publication; Classified advertising, 5 p.m. Thursday before publication. Warehousing Services: Harris Motor Express, 4261 Crawford Street, Cincinnati, OH 45223.

Vice President of Content/COMMUNICATION Patrick R ains DIRECTOR OF HUMAN RESOURCES Beck y Turner Creative Director He ather Pierce Graphic Designers Amy Gomol jak, A bbie Le ali, Liz Loe wenstein, Mel a nie M ays

n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

513-748-1708

www.513auctions.com

LETTERS

2300 E. Kemper Rd, Unit B4

Cincinnati,Ohio 45241

Strong Soccer Opinions

DO yOU havE stUff yOU DOn’t want? DOwnsizing? MOving OR DEaling with an EstatE?

Consign with us and we do the work for you! Join our auction family and find things that you can’t live without! Hundreds of new and vintage items are featured in our weekly auction. All bids start at only $1 with NO buyer’s premium. Local pickup available in Sharonville.

NOW REOPENED

Tohi

Cincinnati’s Only Hemp Spa, Tea House, and Boutique Massage • Facials • Waxing • detox Sauna Mani/pedi • tea House • Smoothie Bar • Hemp Boutique

942 HatcH St. • Mt adaMS 513-421-8644 • toHiSpa.coM

David Kestler: Th is damn city needs to do what is right. It’s a win-win for the city and county. Don’t expect the county leadership to do anything right. All they ever do is make a joke of anything that comes before them. Go with the mayor’s plan. Aaron Brettschneider: I want all of my season tickets refunded if they move to Newport. I will not support a KY team. And I know of at least around 100 other season ticket owners who will also demand refunds. Th is is FC Cincy, not FC Northern KY. Let the welfare state set up its own team. It would be fun to have a close rivalry since the Crew is probably moving to Austin. Comments posted at Facebook.com/CincinnatiCityBeat in response to Nov. 17 post, “Soccer stadium battle reaches fever pitch”

Hooray for Larry David Curb has fi nally started to gather steam in Season 9. The opening episodes were rather unsteady, and the “Fatwa” arc isn’t quite overwhelming (as hoped), but it’s getting there. And if there isn’t a Season 10, there may be a movie. Comment posted at citybeat.com in response to “‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Hasn’t Missed a Beat,” issue of Nov. 15

Powerful, Important Work

CONTACT US ONLINE CityBeat.com FACEBOOK @CincinnatiCityBeat TWITTER @CityBeatCincy @CityBeat_Eats @CityBeatMusic INSTAGRAM @CityBeatCincy SNAPCHAT @CityBeatCincy VOICEMAIL 513-665-4700 SNAIL MAIL 811 Race St., Fifth Floor Cincinnati, OH 45202 EMAIL Feedback/Letters/ Info/Questions: letters@citybeat.com News tips: nswartsell@citybeat.com Music Listings: mbreen@citybeat.com Event Listings: calendar@citybeat.com Dining News/Events: eats@citybeat.com Advertise: sales@citybeat.com Billing: billing@citybeat.com

meg_whit_rump: @allyhermes Hey let’s go check out this exhibit when you’re home next week. @natbish too.

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

N O V. 1 5 – 2 1, 2 0 1 7

allyhermes: @meg_whit_rump Yes!!!!!

Comments posted at Instagram.com/CityBeatCincy in response to Nov. 19 post, “The Future is Female opened Saturday at the 21c Museum Hotel.”

Staff: first initial of first name followed by last name@citybeat.com

UPCOMING EVENTS Dec. 06 Bourbon & Bacon New Riff Distillery, Newport, KY

n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

WANTS YOU TO

WIN STUFF!

KAMASI WASHINGTON NOVEMBER 28 TAFT THEATER Visit CityBeat.com/win-stuff to enter for a chance to win tickets to this upcoming show!

is giving away Bengals tickets to the

The L argesT seLecTion of hemp on The pL aneT Join us at the following location where you can enter for your chance to win. Tickets will be given away that night on location. Tickets include entry into the game on the Miller Lite Who Dey Deck as well as complimentary beverages and food. #itsmillertime

Miller Lite Who Dey Deck Giveaway Location:

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

norThsiDe 4179 Hamilton Ave. 513-569-0420 o’BrYonViLLe 2034 Madison Rd. 513-871-HEMP

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

sharonViLLe 11353 Lebanon Rd. 513-524-HEMP

www.hemptations.com

DaYTon 548 Wilmington Ave. 937-991-1015

h e m p, Va p e & s m o k e h a B e r D a s h e r Y

Wednesday, 11/22 O’Bryon’s Bar & Grill

8-9:15pm

1998 Madison Rd Cincinnati, OH 45208 Win Tickets to the 11/26 Bengals vs Browns game on the Miller Lite Who Dey Deck!

What A Week! BY T.C. B R I T TO N

Cards Against Humanity Saves America

Earlier this year, naughty party game Cards Against Humanity released a special expansion pack “For Her,” which besides mocking unnecessary women-targeted products helped raise money for EMILY’s list, an organization that works to get pro-choice Democratic women elected to office (and judging by the recent election results across the country, it seems to be working). Ahead of Black Friday, CAH announced its latest promotion, which aims to prevent Donald Trump from building The Wall. The game company bought up land along the U.S.Mexico border and hired lawyers to protect it in the event of the controversial wall’s construction. For $15, people could buy a piece of that land and get a number of “America-saving surprises” mailed to them in December, including a map of the land, some new cards and a statement of the company’s promise to fight the border wall. It sold out the first day of the promotion. They should seriously change their name to Cards For Humanity, because these people may be our last hope, especially as Trump renews calls for the wall after a U.S. border patrol agent died in Texas.

demigod. He inspired music, movies and other art, including this season of American Horror Story. Followers and fans wrote to and visited him in prison throughout his sentence. He was engaged to a 26-year-old just back in 2014, but it turned out she just wanted to exhibit his body as a tourist attraction after his death, so they never made it official. He lived to be 83 years old and would probably be

American Music Awards

R.I.P. Warped Tour

Manson Out

And in actual death news, infamous killer and cult leader Charles Manson died Sunday of natural causes. Manson was serving a life sentence at California State Prison and had been pretty sick for about a year. Despite the gruesome murders he orchestrated, the countless other lives he ruined and that unfortunate swastika face tat, Manson remained a pop culture

Dark-humored card games, America’s only hope PHOTO: CARDS AGAINST HUMANIT Y

absolutely tickled by the amount of media coverage his sick ass is getting beyond the grave, including in this column. Sorry!

Serena Williams’ Rich Person Wedding

Tennis champion and overall icon Serena Williams married Reddit co-founder and baby daddy Alexis Ohanian in New Orleans this week in what was truly a convention for beautiful, successful people. The event had a Beauty and the Beast theme (do adults who are really into Disney freak anyone else out?) and was held in NOLA’s Contemporary Arts Center. In lieu of cheap centerpieces for guests to smuggle, each table came with a replica trophy from one of Williams’ many championship titles.

Every year I have to be reminded that the American Music Awards are a thing, and that happened Sunday night when the show aired. Here are the highlights: • Christina Aguilera performed a tribute to The Bodyguard for the 25th anniversary of the film... complete with an interactive Whitney Houston hologram. • Fellow queen Diana Ross was honored with a lifetime achievement award, joined by her famous family including daughter, actress and AMAs host Tracee Ellis Ross and her grandchildren. Barack and Michelle Obama even sent a sweet message for the Supreme. • P!nk sang R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts” with Kelly Clarkson and rappelled down the facade of L.A.’s JW Marriott Hotel alongside aerial dancers. • Selena Gomez’s performance had her looking like a car crash victim in lingerie, which is edgy I guess? • Fellow Disney alumna Demi Lovato performed “Sorry Not Sorry” as mean tweets from her haters scrolled across the screen. • Nick Jonas performed among groping, disembodied hands, which might be a little tone deaf? • For some reason, Shark Tank stars Mark Cuban, Kevin O’Leary and Daymond John announced the Alternative Rock award, which went to Linkin Park (whose frontman, Chester Bennington, died earlier this year). What could have been a sweet and somber moment was interrupted by a chatty Cuban who wouldn’t let the group speak as it accepted the trophy. • And while it seemed like a girl power-y night, only nine of 28 artist categories included women nominees, and three of those were women-centered categories. The show tried to divert from that fact by having everyone talk about how women RAWK, but it was the men who swept the awards in the end. Contact T.C. Britton: letters@citybeat.com

This Week in Questionable Decisions… 1. Conservative group Turning Point USA shared a poster addressing “liberal snowflakes” with an image of the most triggered snowflake of them all, Tomi Lahren. 2. Donald Trump tweeted his condolences for the wrong mass shooting in an apparent copy-paste situation gone wrong. 3. Problematic movie alert! Brie Larson stars as a white savior in India in a film that’s seriously called Basmati Blues. 4. Jordan Peele’s terrific and terrifying film on race, Get Out, is in the running for the Golden Globes, but it has been placed in the Best Comedy or Musical category. 5. A city outside Atlanta Thursday hosted a networking event called, “Come Meet a Black Person.” 6. Blake Shelton is People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive. The world begs to differ. 7. A fake reporter going by the possibly racist moniker Bernie Bernstein and claiming to be with the Washington Post was supposedly calling people in Alabama offering to pay in exchange for dirt on Roy Moore. 8. Want to give up entirely this Thanksgiving? Try Pringles’ turkey dinner-flavored chips, now in mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, creamed corn, green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese, pumpkin pie and, of course, turkey flavors. 9. Macklemore said he uses a naked Justin Bieber painting to “delay” his orgasms. 10. Lena Dunham, who recently tweeted about how women don’t lie about rape, dismissed the rape allegations against a Girls writer, saying it must be “one of the 3 percent of assault cases that are misreported every year.”

n o v. 1 5 – 2 1, 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

Summer Rock festival and rite of passage for many a teen music lover, the Warped Tour will take its final run in 2018. Founder Kevin Lyman announced this week that the fest, launched in 1995 with bands including No Doubt and Sublime, will make one last crosscountry tour ahead of its 25th anniversary, hinting that there will be some kind of smaller-scale celebration in 2019. Local fans can enjoy the final Cincinnati stop on July 18. Warped Tour ignited the rise of Pop-Punk and Emo bands, highlighted extreme sports like BMX and skateboarding and served as a sort of musical summer camp for misfit kids. Because if you didn’t sneak cigarettes and break in your Converse skanking to Reel Big Fish at Warped Tour, were you ever even 15?

Boom, bitch. Her dress and bouquet alone clocked in at an estimated $3.5 million. Guests included Beyoncé, Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Ciara, Kim Kardashian West, New Edition and Bell Biv DeVoe. Can you imagine being one of the five normals in attendance? It’s bad enough to be single at a fabulous wedding, but to be reminded that you’re a mere mortal among gods would be overwhelming.

SPORTS!

C i t y B e at. c o m | n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Read us on your phone instead of talking to your friends at brunch.

THE ALL-NEW

.com

Major Pro Sports Still Lack Inclusivity BY JAC K B R EN N A N

The world looked bright to progressives in November of 2014. Obama was rolling in year six of eight, shaping policies at all levels for a more just and caring nation, and there was particularly good momentum in gay rights. Centuries-old bigotry seemed amazingly on the run as same-sex marriage initiatives sprouted and found some success in states across America. Even Alabama was soon to wobble, with its own Prague Spring of courtordered gay nuptials in early 2015. Hot damn, LGBTQ people and their loved ones and friends, partying in the park in Birmingham and Montgomery! Twenty years earlier, you’d have given Martians a better chance of pulling that off. Ohio wasn’t budging, to its stolid discredit, but heck, we were only eight months away from seeing the Supreme Court handle the issue for Buckeyes and everyone else by legalizing same-sex marriage across the country. And so it was that on Nov. 19, 2014, when openly gay basketball player Jason Collins announced his retirement after 13 NBA seasons, he could do it with a message that warmed and cheered us. Collins had become a progressive hero in early 2014, playing the final 22 games of his career 735 after coming out. He was an eight-minute-per-game reserve on the back nine of his tenure, but he became the first “out” player in any of the four major U.S. team sports. And short as his exposure was, it had all just gone so well. Fans had cheered, league executives and coaches offered praise and teammates had accepted him without a ripple, exposing the canard that an openly gay player would cause unacceptable unease in a men’s pro locker room. His Brooklyn Nets went 10-2 in the first 12 games after he signed as a free agent. Thus, when Collins proclaimed in his retirement announcement, “It shows how far we’ve come,” we nodded like bobbleheads and believed, expecting much more very soon. But now, three years later, the progressive cause finds itself set back on many fronts, and the emergence of gay players is at a dead stop in the four major sports. Collins, in fact, remains the only player to do what he did in the NBA, NFL, NHL or major league baseball. He came out with the words, “If I had my way, someone else would have already done this.” But his own action has not cracked wide the path for others. The NFL St. Louis Rams did draft an openly gay player in spring of 2014, defensive end Michael Sam, and Sam played in the ’14 preseason with no noticeable disruption to his team. But he was released in final cuts and never played in a regular-season game. I reached Collins by phone this week and asked him for his reaction to his still-singular status. He paused a moment before speaking.

“My reaction to that is that I’m upset. No, a better word is just ‘disappointed’ that no other players in the four leagues have stepped forward. But I am even more determined to help create an environment where those athletes do feel comfortable stepping forward.” But what about “those athletes?” One can speculate that there must be well more than 100, based roughly on the four leagues’ total roster spots and a Gallup estimate that 3.8 percent of people identify as gay. Does Collins for a fact know of some? “The simple answer,” he said, pausing, “is yes. They might not have told me, but they’ve told someone that I know and trust. The answer to your question is yes.” Collins remains employed by the NBA as an “NBA Cares Ambassador.” It’s a community relations type of post, and one of his duties is giving a presentation each year to NBA rookies. “We talk to them about things like language in the locker room,” he said. “We try to increase their awareness with respect to LGBT issues.” It’s an example of how the four leagues, and most of their franchises, are supportive of mild efforts to “change the culture.” The NFL reacted to the Michael Sam situation by proclaiming itself a “football meritocracy,” where sexual identity would not hinder one’s chances for success. The Bengals, during my tenure as public relations director, developed a similar statement. The Reds’ recent promotional schedules have included a “Pride Night,” and hockey has declared in conjunction with its players’ association that “the official policy of the NHL is one of inclusion on the ice, in our locker rooms and in the stands.” During my time with the Bengals, three players came across my radar at different times as the subject of significant insider scuttlebutt about being gay. In one case, I know from personal discussions that top club management was very aware. I never personally discussed these cases with any players, but it’s inconceivable to me this never reached the roster as a whole. And I was pleasantly surprised to observe that each of the allegedly closeted trio seemed fully accepted at all times in the traditional solidarity of teammates. When one of them had off-field legal issues, unrelated to sexual identity, leading to some controversial reporting by a local TV station, several players reacted with near-rage at station personnel and demanded to me that the station be kicked out of the locker room. In 23 years as PR director, I never saw a more angry reaction to media in defense of a teammate.

But still, we’re stuck at 1) Collins and 2) Nobody Else. For thoughts on this from an active Big Four player, I sought out a Bengal who I judge to be among the more thoughtful and free-speaking members of the team. And to use Collins’ word, I found his comments “disappointing.” He was willing to speak only if I agreed not to use his name, and his words were a hodgepodge of attempted inclusiveness mixed with ancient fears. There was this: “I can take a guess at why — just fear of people’s reaction and in general society, not just sports. What your loved ones may or may not think. And the next fear is how teammates may or may not receive you. It’s something everyone doesn’t accept, even though we’re more accepting than at some time before, and

“We are all losers until the day a gay Bengals player can put his husband’s photo in his locker.” it’s still not to where everybody feels comfortable with it. And in sports, ever since we’ve been little, we’ve been told to ‘eliminate distractions.’ ” And this: “I don’t think it would affect my play. Once the game starts, everyone has to have a single focus. But what it could affect is the dynamics of the locker room, the closeness and connection. The brotherhood type of mentality. It would be different in the showers. You may say it shouldn’t be. I hear you, I understand that. But no one likes the idea of potentially being sexualized, of being ‘checked out.’ I’m not saying it’s right or wrong, but people are not comfortable with it.” Thanks for the offering, anonymous Bengals pal, but I’m saying it is wrong. You may think you’re being protective of some special bond, but the fact is we are all losers until the day a gay Bengals player can put his husband’s photo in his locker and talk about the romantic dinner they had on their anniversary. Until a Red’s husband can join other players’ loved ones in the family area at the game. Until, even, the day Bengals’ boyfriends are welcomed without a single eye-roll at the luncheon Marvin Lewis hosts every September for players’ “significant others.” In other words — until gays can play pro sports and live authentic lives, just like the straight guys do. Contact Jack Brennan: letters@ citybeat.com

n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

c ar

fo r$

ir e

for

v ou ch e r f or $

e squ

• 13 r i de p a s s

n’

sel

$20

y • $40 vou ch

u ro

• re

0 $1

c c in

Now featuring deals from:

r for

$ 25

• $ 40 vo ucher

$ for

Facebook/ T w i T Ter: perkopoL is

r$ Je

lg i

CINCINNATI.ALTPERKS.COM

C i t y B e at. c o m | N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Log into our website for the full list:

p aolo: a Mo d

s Ta of

ler

• $10 0 v o

• go w co e s te r n Ta

NEWS

Fever Pitch With most of the cards on the table, the fight over FC Cincinnati’s stadium is just starting By N I C K SWA R T S E L L

Rendering of the proposed FC Cincinnati stadium P H O T O : P ro v i d e d b y F C C incinnati

existing tax increment financing districts in Oakley. TIFs capture property tax revenue increases related to development. Another $7.3 million would come from the city’s 2015 sale of the Blue Ash Airport. The plan would also rely on proceeds from the city’s portion of the Hamilton County hotel tax up to $1.5 million a year and up to a total of $20 million for as long as 30 years. That fund brings in varying amounts of money every year, sometimes less than $1.5 million. “That will be a risk that FCC will have to take,” Cranley said of possible shortfalls. “The city would not guarantee the $1.5 million.” Hamilton County Commissioners have offered up as much as $15 million for a parking garage, albeit reluctantly. They’d rather see FCC pursue an MLS bid involving use of Paul Brown Stadium, but the team has demurred, citing the league’s stipulation that it must be able to control revenue and scheduling at an expansion team venue. That money would probably only cover a 1,000-car garage, which would leave FCC needing an exemption from a city rule requiring one parking space for every five seats at a stadium. Another benefit offered to FCC: The stadium and land would be property tax exempt under Cranley’s proposal because of the involvement of the Port of Greater

Cincinnati Development Authority. That’s raised opponents’ hackles. “Don’t underestimate how expensive of a sweetheart deal to the billionaires this is,” Bill Capell of No More Stadium Taxes, an anti-stadium group, tweeted last week. “Several million per year of taxes they get to avoid paying.” The team’s dozen owners have given more than $50,000 to county commissioners in recent years, campaign finance filings reveal. And in 2017, several owners and their families gave big to Cranley’s reelection campaign. Carl Lindner III, who leads the ownership team, gave the individual limit of $1,100 during the primary and again in the general election. Overall, the tight-knit Lindner family, which runs United Dairy Farmers, gave more than $15,000 to Cranley in 2017. Chris Lindner, another FCC owner, also gave Cranley the individual limit in the primary and general elections. Other owners, including Great American Insurance Senior Vice President David L. Thompson and petroleum entrepreneur Steve Hightower, have also given the individual limit. All told, owners gave Cranley more than $15,000 in 2017, according to all records available so far. (Another postelection campaign finance report is due in December.) Their families gave much more. What will the more than $50 million in

public money on offer to FCC get taxpayers? It’s unclear. The team has been a powerhouse when it comes to drawing people to games, outpacing every other team in the second-tier United Soccer League by almost 10,000 fans last season. Winning a major league franchise would surely buttress that momentum. But economists tend to doubt the fiscal benefits of stadiums for the general public. “If you ever had a consensus in economics, this would be it,” Temple University sports economist Michael Leeds told NPR’s Marketplace in 2015. “There is no impact.” Stadiums mostly employ low-wage workers other than the small group of players themselves, who often live outside the cities they’re playing in. Stadiums rarely, if ever, have the predicted boosts to tourism and other local economic activity that boosters tout, according to economists. “In every case, the conclusions are the same. A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment,” economists for the Brookings Institute wrote the year after Cincinnati’s last stadium deal, a Hamilton County sales tax increase that is still paying for Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ball Park.

O ct. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

he $200 million plan for a soccer stadium in Oakley funded entirely by FC Cincinnati is out. The team’s request for $75 million in infrastructure help from the city of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, and counter-offers from both governments, are in. But the fight over another major stadium in Cincinnati is far from over. Questions remain about whether the roughly $52 million on offer from the city and county will be enough for FC Cincinnati and whether the city’s portion is too much for Cincinnati City Council, which must approve the spending at the end of this month. Meanwhile, the team continues to mull Newport as a location for the stadium it says it needs to compete for a Major League Soccer franchise. The application for that franchise — with a stadium plan — is due Dec. 14. Then there’s the bigger question opponents of the deal are asking. Is the public money spent on infrastructure for the private project worth it? Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley says the stadium will spur the local economy, and boosters say another major league sports team would be a huge boon to the region. “I’m willing to promise that thousands of jobs will follow this public infrastructure when completed,” Cranley said at a Nov. 17 news conference. “FCC is part of our city’s renaissance, and it’s an amazing opportunity to expand this big-league city from two major professional franchises to three — the Reds, the Bengals and FCC.” But experts disagree on the economic impacts of sports stadiums, and it’s worth considering that FCC’s owners, who stand to benefit from the public spending, are big donors to local political campaigns. Cranley dealt the last of the major cards left to be played in the ongoing stadium drama Nov. 17 when he proposed $36.8 million in spending on infrastructure around the stadium site to support FC Cincinnati’s plan for a 21,000 seat stadium on the former CastFab site near Oakley Station. The city-funded work around the site could include expanding Vandercar Way and Madison Road to five lanes near the stadium and building a five-lane loop around the stadium site. That would make the site more car-friendly and most likely less walkable. Cranley wants to pull the money from three sources, including $9.5 million from

11 CONTINUES ON PAGE 13

Wyoming’s Fall From GOP Domination By JA M ES M c N A I R

One of the historic fortresses of Republican support in Hamilton County — the city of Wyoming — looks more and more like a Democratic stronghold. Wyoming, with a population of about 8,500, isn’t a large suburb, but its median family income of $103,089 far exceeds the county’s $64,683. It was such a dependably Republican quarter that 56 percent of its voters supported Bob Dole in Bill Clinton’s landslide win in 1996. Presidential candidates named Bush were 4-for-4 in Wyoming elections. Fast forward to 2017, and Wyoming — the boyhood home of Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper — has pivoted sharply leftward. After twice voting for Barack Obama, the city gave 61 percent of its votes to Hillary Clinton in 2016. And in a more recent twist, four of the seven winners in the Nov. 7 City Council election are Democrats. Not that Wyomingites knew they were ushering in a Democratic majority. Unlike Cincinnati, Wyoming’s City Council election is nonpartisan. Candidates don’t run as Republicans or Democrats. They run on issues. “The city of Wyoming has always been nonpartisan, and we’ve always tried to keep it that way,” says Vice Mayor Al Delgado, a Democrat who won a second two-year term. He says he would feel “very

Presidential Election Results, 1992-2016 70 60 Percentage of Vote

city desk

50 40 30 20

Republican Democrat

10 1992

1996

2000

2004

2008

Wyoming Hamilton County

2012

2016

The city of Wyoming has shifted toward Democratic candidates even faster than Hamilton County. S O U R C E : H amilton C ount y B oard of E lections

uncomfortable” with a council tackling issues along party lines. Still, for a traditionally Republican city to elect four people who happen to be Democrats was eventful enough for Hamilton County Democratic Party Executive

Director Caleb Faux to cite as further proof of the county’s political turn. “There’s been a demographic change in that part of the county,” he says. “In the 2016 elections, when you got to the high-income areas that were the bastion

of Republican strength over the years, like Madeira, Montgomery, Indian Hill, Terrace Park and Wyoming, a lot of people shifted into the Clinton column.” Joining Delgado in Wyoming’s new Democratic “majority” will be incumbent James O’Reilly and newcomers Thaddeus Hoffmeister and Sarah Stankorb Taylor. They, too, don’t plan to wave party flags at council meetings. “Residents I met with during the course of the campaign repeatedly told me that they wanted to elect members who would work to make sure that Wyoming stays Wyoming,” says Hoffmeister, a University of Dayton law professor whose family moved from Washington, D.C., nine years ago. “I believe that voters in Wyoming came out not to vote for a Democratic majority or maintain a Republican majority, but to vote for candidates who spoke to their concerns and provided a vision for moving forward,” he says. Taylor, a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Cincinnati Magazine, says a controversial Council resolution in April pointed to a need for a greater connection with residents. One month after Ohio expanded the right to carry concealed weapons into certain public buildings, the Wyoming CONTINUES ON PAGE 13

Activists Sound Alarms About State of Police Reforms

C i t y B e at. c o m | N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

By N I C K SWA R T S EL L

Police accountability activists say efforts to reinvigorate Cincinnati’s historic Collaborative Agreement are in an “emergency” state following dustups between the union that represents police officers and the city over the role of the Citizen Complaint Authority, an independent board created to investigate allegations of police misconduct. The Black United Front’s Iris Roley and Rev. Damon Lynch III, who helped fight for the Collaborative following the 2001 police shooting of unarmed black 19-yearold Timothy Thomas in Over-the-Rhine, held a meeting Nov. 15 at New Prospect Baptist Church in Roselawn. They’re sounding alarms about the rocky road refresh efforts launched earlier this year have taken and the overall health of the historic agreement originally overseen by

the U.S. Department of Justice between the Cincinnati Police Department, the city and racial justice advocates. Other high-profile leaders, including representatives from the NAACP, Sentinels Police Union President Eddie Hawkins and CPD Chief Eliot Isaac, also attended the meeting. It came just a day after a second town hall meeting Nov. 14 about the refresh efforts put on by the city. Other topics attendees voiced concerns about: displacement of black residents from quickly-developing neighborhoods and the lack of economic opportunities many minorities face. But the immediate impetus for the gathering was more specific. Earlier this year, the Fraternal Order of Police voted to exit refresh efforts after Cincinnati Police Detective Shannon Heine was criticized by

Hamilton County Prosecutors and police reform activists during the Ray Tensing Trial. The union later voted to rejoin the effort, but not before serious tension emerged. Then, last month, FOP President Dan Hils moved to keep two officers accused of excessive force and racial profiling from having to testify before the Citizens Complaint Authority. A judge upheld his request, and the officers haven’t testified before the police accountability group. When news came out about that action earlier this month, Roley and Lynch began circulating calls for the community meeting. The officers’ accuser was undergoing a criminal trial at that time for allegedly assaulting one of the officers, and Hils said he didn’t want the CCA to interfere with that. City Manager

Harry Black stepped into the fray with a late-night phone call Oct. 27 telling Hils to back off of his request or risk the involvement of the U.S. Department of Justice. Hils called that a threat and, following the mayoral election, released a recording he made of that phone call. “It was a dangerous precedent to try to get around that part of the Collaborative,” Roley told attendees at the Nov. 15 emergency meeting in Roselawn about Hils’ move. All of this has led to serious concern from black leaders about the state of the Collaborative. The drama comes at a time when community surveys show distrust in police is still high in the black community, and as racial tensions in general are high. “The federal government is not your friend anymore,” NAACP Legal

Defense Fund Senior Counsel Monique Dixon told attendees, pointing to divisive statements and efforts to weaken police accountability policies by President Donald Trump and U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Also hanging in the background: the fact that big racial disparities remain in the arrests CPD makes. Use of force by CPD has dropped nearly 70 percent in the past 15 years. But disparities in arrests and police shootings have proven stubborn. Seventyseven percent of felony arrestees were black in 2014 — the same as 2001. And since 2010, 28 black individuals have been involved in officer-involved shootings, while seven white individuals have been involved in similar incidents. The city’s population is 46 percent black.

“We are 45 percent black in the city, and we’re arresting 67 percent adults who are black for misdemeanors and felonies,” civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein said at the Nov. 14 town hall meeting. “So what is that? Are we going to be satisfied by saying ‘blacks commit more crimes’ or are we going to dig deeper to find out why that is? Because in the old days we were policing the black community more severely than the white community. So what we wanted in the refresh is to dig deeper and figure out whether we can get to the bottom of these numbers. “We have a ton of work to do. We’re here because everyone who ran for council said they believe in the Collaborative. Both mayoral candidates said they believe in the Collaborative. The FOP has voted to come back to the Collaborative.”

WYOMING FROM PAGE 12

Council resolved to adopt the measure locally. A large group of citizens complained, saying they weren’t adequately notified of the proposal. Council repealed its resolution in May. “I felt blindsided, and many voters I talked to felt the same way,” Taylor says. “That one issue became emblematic of a broader concern: lack of transparency and communication. Sure, the concealed carry issue came up at a committee meeting and was published in a pdf in the Council agenda linked on the city’s website. But most residents aren’t in the habit of regularly checking in there and clicking through pdfs. The city needs to adapt and change how it communicates.” Wyoming’s public opposition to expanding gun rights perhaps serves as an indicator of where residents stand on other issues that divide liberals and conservatives — and the political parties. Democrats are happy to have more suburban voters in their camp. “Wyoming is a great example of a Cincinnati suburb that just a few decades ago would have been Republican but is now reliably blue,” Pepper says. “Swing areas like Wyoming becoming blue is one reason Hamilton County has moved in the same direction. The Trump brand of Republican politics is only accelerating what is already a clear trend in the suburbs.”

FCC FROM PAGE 11

FCC General Manager Jeff Berding was involved in promoting that deal, considered by many national observers to be one of the worst in the country for taxpayers. Cranley, Berding and other boosters point out this deal is different. The team is paying for the stadium, and the site in Oakley is largely undeveloped and inaccessible. It will need development and infrastructure regardless of what project goes there. But critics say not all development and infrastructure are the same, and other projects would need less public investment. Cranley’s proposal might face some opposition from Cincinnati City Council. Council will probably first consider it at a Budget and Finance Committee meeting at the end of the month. “Why do they want a new stadium? Because the value of the team increases exponentially if they are accepted into Major League Soccer,” City Councilman Chris Seelbach wrote in a statement just before Cranley’s announcement. “And if they get the tax-payer funded stadium and into the MLS, guess what that does? Makes wealthy white guys more wealthy. No thanks.” Seelbach, a Democrat, is so far the only council member to come out and say he’ll vote against Cranley’s deal. Council members Amy Murray and Kevin Flynn are leaning yes. Others are still mulling the numbers.

O c t. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

C i t y B e at. c o m | N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

A C ity

Made N ew

Th e N e w Deal left local l andm arks and a com plicated, increa si n gly relevant legacy B y N I C K S WA R T S E L L

G r e a t e r C i n c i n n a t i ’ s l o o m i n g i n f r as t r u c t u r e n e e d s — the Brent Spence Bridge,

C o l u m b i a P a r k w ay u nd e r c o n s t r u c t i o n i n 19 3 8 P H O T O : C o u rtes y Uni v ersit y o f C incinnati , A rchi v es an d R are B ooks L ibrar y

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

Western Hills Viaduct, millions of dollars in deferred maintenance in the city’s parks, and more — have been a hot topic over the past decade. As the region and the nation as a whole mull everything from how to replace bridges to sprucing up public parks, it’s worthwhile to look back at one of the nation’s largest and most wide-reaching investments in public works 80 years ago. The Works Progress Administration and other New Deal programs instituted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s left an indelible mark on the region, giving us a major parkway just east of downtown Cincinnati, an entire town just north of the city, a landmark urban forest and iconic architecture in parks across the city. The New Deal was a response to the worst economic depression in the nation’s history, brought about by the 1929 stock market crash. As such, it was primarily a jobs program meant to put people back to work, including thousands of otherwise unemployed Cincinnatians. And it was successful by that count — New Deal programs employed more than 8 million people, including thousands in Cincinnati, during the Great Depression. But its legacy has lasted much longer than a few years of gainful employment. Efforts under the New Deal started in the early 1930s but really took off with the creation of the Works Progress Administration in 1935. The federal government pumped millions into local economies with buildings and other stimulus projects. As it did, it created physical embodiments of the ideologies of the time, a worldview that was at once both collective and deeply segregated. “All of this spending represents a moment in time dealing with an emergency, but also represent what peoples’ thoughts were on what housing should look like, what roads should look like, what parks should look like, what

post offices should look like,” says David Stradling, a University of Cincinnati history professor. “We created, all of a sudden, in a big burst, a world that has that sleek modern look to it.” Those efforts went beyond roads and bridges. New Deal programs funded some of the nation’s first public housing projects, new experiments in urban planning and a gamut of cultural production from artists, writers, photographers and more. Not everything about the New Deal was admirable. Those housing projects were segregated when they were built. Indeed, most New Deal programs were created first and foremost to help white men over other groups struggling with the Depression. Though some blacks — mostly Civilian Conservation Corps members — were employed by FDR’s programs in Cincinnati and about 1,000 female tailors received work through the programs repairing damaged clothing for the poor, for the most part the programs were highly segregated by race and gender. “That’s absolutely a theme of the New Deal that follows common practice at the time — to help whites first, to help men first,” Stradling says. “It was even more lopsided gender-wise than it was race-wise. It gives you a sense of what their priorities were — who they thought should get back on their feet first.” It wouldn’t be the last time the federal government stepped in with big plans and big money, says Anne Delano Steinert, director of the Over-the-Rhine Museum and a historian who researches the New Deal. Highway construction and urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s also made a huge, not-always-positive impact. But the New Deal represents a uniquely pivotal moment that left high water marks all across Greater Cincinnati. Despite its legacy of segregation, New Deal programs gave us durable monuments to public investment that thousands of Cincinnatians still use and enjoy today.

C L O C K W I S E F R O M t o p L E F T: C o l u m b i a P a r k w ay t o d ay / P H O T O : n ick sw a r t sell | C o l u m b i a P a r k w ay u n d e r c o n s t R u c t i o n / P H O T O s : C o u r t es y U n i v ersi t y of C i n ci n n a t i , Archi v e S A n d R a re B ooks L ibr a r y

C i t y B e at. c o m | N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Co lum bia Pa r k way

One of Cincinnati’s largest and most recognizable roads is a product of the New Deal. Though U.S. Route 50 east of downtown predates the Depression — drawn on roughly its current route through eastern Ohio into West Virginia in 1926 — the program’s Public Works Administration built the grand, elevated Columbia Parkway that carries Route 50 through Cincinnati throughout the late 1930s. The riverside highway’s Art Deco retaining walls and abandoned staircases, which the city sealed in the early 2000s, are a vestige of the project and the era. It now carries an average of 18,000 cars a day, according to data from the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana Regional Council of Governments. “That part of Columbia Parkway that we think of as iconic, that’s a New Deal project,” Stradling says. “For a lot of it, they weren’t even working on existing road. They were blazing through the steep hillside (where Mount Adams and other neighborhoods are). They’re moving a lot of earth.” The project eliminated a number of existing roads and structures in the area north of the river but south of the hills where Mount Adams and other neighborhoods are. You can still see the remnants of some of those streets today in the short stubs that run up from the Parkway. The Parkway’s origins illustrate a common phenomenon for New Deal projects — the thoroughfare was part of a 1920s plan for Cincinnati’s parkways that long predated the federal program.

C L O C K W I S E F R O M L E F T: W P A S h e l t e r i n M o u n t A i r y F o r e s t | S t o n e W P A M a r k e r i n b u r n e t w o o d s | B u r n e t W o o d s T r a i l s i d e Na t u r e c e n t e r P H O T O s : n ick sw a rtsell

“That’s not unusual for the New Deal altogether,” Stradling says. “If you’re wanting to spend money, what are the projects? You don’t sit down in a room and start imagining things. You go out and say, ‘What have we been trying to build?’ ”

Mo u nt A i ry Fo r est

Pa r k s A rc h itec tu r e Work on Cincinnati’s parks wasn’t confined to Mount Airy. If you’re an avid Cincinnati park-goer, chances are you’ve enjoyed work funded by the New Deal and carried out by laborers for the Public Works Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps or other federal programs of the era. In total, New Deal workers built about half of Cincinnati Parks’ 135 existing structures. Burnet Woods’ beautiful fieldstone Trail Side Nature Museum and the whimsical concrete slide next to it in the heart of the park are two examples. You can easily see the

signature workers left behind — a stone and concrete wall with “WPA 1940” etched into it. You can also find evidence of the New Deal in Eden Park’s stone stairways and its public pool house perched atop a hill next to the Playhouse in the Park. Mt. Echo’s iconic picnic shelter is another prominent New Deal construction. California Nature Preserve, which was established in 1938, gives East Siders a lovely place to bird watch and hike courtesy the WPA. Many of these projects were already on the city’s wish list prior to the Great Depression. The New Deal, however, provided the money and the manpower to make them happen. The city and Cincinnati Parks likely had wide discretion on what to build and where. “Sometimes, it wasn’t just the discrete projects,” Stradling says of New Deal spending. “Sometimes, municipalities got a lump grant and they could use it how they wanted. It’s possible the Park Board got money and decided how to spend it.”

G r e e n h i ll s One of the New Deal’s most ambitious efforts anywhere in the nation took place just a few miles north of Cincinnati. Greenhills was one of only three so-called “green belt towns” across the country built by the federal Farm Resettlement Agency during the Depression. Greenhills was meant to be the ideal modern community designed for city dwellers with limited means seeking to escape the noise and grit of urban areas. Its gleaming white buildings and lush green space offered a respite for working class families hit hard by tough economic times.

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

Like Columbia Parkway, the vision for Mount Airy Forest itself predates the New Deal. Famed park planner George Kessler drew up plans for the first municipal reforesting effort in the country in 1907 and the city began planting it in 1911. But the urban forest received a very significant boost under FDR’s programs. In partnership with the National Park Service and the Cincinnati Park Board, members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) built the majority of the shelters, stair sets, dams and other structures in the park and performed much-needed erosion prevention work. They also planted more than one million seedlings and saplings. Other programs, including the Civil Works Administration and the Works Progress Administration, also chipped in work at the forest. New Deal work in Mount Airy was so extensive that CCC workers lived on-site in long bungalows, one of which still stands today in an offlimits part of the park. Elsewhere in the country, the CCC was a mostly rural program. That wasn’t the only element of New Deal work in Mount Airy that was unusual. The first CCC crew to arrive to work on the park in 1935 was a group of 20 young black men. Their first task, completed in a few weeks, was to construct the camp they were to live in. Most of the

subsequent CCC crews — who eventually put in a cumulative 50,000 days of work on the park — were black. That was an anomaly for New Deal programs. “It’s a reflection of the segregated federal government at the time,” UC’s Stradling says of the dearth of black workers in the program, noting that the fact the effort was happening in a city with a significant black population probably influenced the demographics of the workers in Mount Airy. “It’s not very typical for CCCs to actually be in the city.” The work the CCC did was often backbreaking — another reason the program’s organizers might have taken on black workers. “The work in Mount Airy Forest was incredibly hard, busting open boulders and things,” Steinert says. “It was the kind of work that other people maybe didn’t want to do.” Today, Mount Airy Forest is the city’s largest park, stretching almost 1,500 acres. Cincinnatians have those Civilian Conservation Corps workers to thank for many of its trees, shelters and stairways.

C i t y B e at. c o m | N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

C L O C K W I S E F R O M L E F T: G r e e n h i l l s i n 19 3 8 | G r e e n h i l l s Li b r a r y / P H O T O s : L i b r a r y of C o n g ress I n d i a n C r e e k W a s t e W a t e r T r e a t m e n t P l a n t / P H O T O : n ick sw a rtsell

The federal government enlisted the help of prominent architects and urban planners to draw up designs for Greenhills and carefully picked the residents who were to live there from families in Greater Cincinnati. “There were all these community functions that were really designed to support this idea of collaboration and community living,” says OTR Museum’s Steinert, who researches Greenhills as a University of Cincinnati Ph.D. candidate. She also has other ties to the grand New Deal experiment: Her grandparents were among its original inhabitants. “They were this young, married couple with a baby,” Steinert says of her grandparents. “(The federal government) recruited people like that from all over the Greater Cincinnati area. They moved in starting in 1938, and they really did build that community they were handpicked to build.” The center of town featured a towering school building that doubled as a community center. It also boasted a number of collective endeavors that were novel at the time: a cooperative grocery store, one of the nation’s first credit unions and the like. Steinert says that the community functioned well, forging deep ties between neighbors. When the federal government pulled out in 1943, many residents bought their homes under generous financing terms, and their descendants continue to live there today. But like many New Deal projects, there was a dark downside. Greenhills was strictly segregated. “What they did is they really engineered who was going to live there,” Steinert says. “There was this idea, this false dichotomy, that there were deserving poor, and that’s who you were trying to provide this for. The

bummer is, that was something that was only available to these hand-picked white families. So it really was an idyllic, dreamy childhood my dad had. But he had it at the expense of other children who couldn’t have it.”

Wate r & S e w e r I m prov e m e nts One major, if under-documented, contribution New Deal programs made to Cincinnati has probably been right under your feet, though you wouldn’t know it. The Works Progress Administration made a number of improvements to the city’s sewer and water infrastructure, installing and updating piping in various locations across the city. In many cases, documentation doesn’t show exactly where the work was done, but does show plenty of money and manpower spent modernizing these vital functions. “There still were lots of parts of the city that were either rural when they were built or were old and didn’t have sewers when they were planned,” Stradling says. “There wasn’t a whole lot of new housing construction going on, so it was mostly about retrofitting areas that never had sewers, trying to replace septic systems, which, once you get a certain amount of density, become very problematic.” At least one major vestige of the work New Deal programs did for the region’s water infrastructure remains: a large water treatment facility west of the city limits. The WPA constructed the Indian Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant in North Bend in 1935. After some upgrades through the years, it currently processes more than 1 million gallons of wastewater a day as part of the Metropolitan Sewer District.

Pu bli c A rt Beyond brick, mortar and piping, New Deal programs funded numerous creative projects throughout Greater Cincinnati. Sadly, of the hundreds of murals painted, plays written and performed, photographs taken and other creative endeavors launched by efforts to employ artists and writers during the Depression, most are lost today. A few remain, however, including a pair of murals commissioned by the Federal Art Project at Lunken Airport by artist William Harry Gothard. When you walk into the airport’s lobby, you’re greeted on the left by a two-story mural of a man weighed down by a giant stone symbolizing gravity. On the right, another mural depicts a man soaring through the air above a stylized Cincinnati cityscape — a tribute to the rush of flight. Murals like these were common additions to New Deal projects during the era. The effort — public funding of art and other creative pursuits — was a radical concept worth remembering, historians say. “It wasn’t just that people with shovels needed to get digging,” Stradling says of New Deal efforts. “It was thinking of art as kind of a necessary part of society. It wasn’t an afterthought. They’re commissioning music and putting on theater and paying people to write books. I think that’s a remarkable thing to contemplate.” Stradling mentions one of the more well-known remnants of the New Deal’s creative efforts in Cincinnati: the WPA guide to the city published in 1943. The thick, nearly 600-page volume captures the region’s major attractions as well as some more obscure points of interest, preserving in great detail the city near its peak in terms of population and economic clout.

C L O C K W I S E F R O M L E F T: M u r a l a t L u n k e n A i r p o r t | M o u n t A d a m s P o o l h o u s e / P H O T O s : n ick sw a rtsell P o s t e r f o r C i n c i n n a t i W P A C o n c e r t / P H O T O : L i b r a r y of C o n g ress

“The government hired journalists and historians and all kinds of people to write all this,” he says. “That’s really fascinating.”

A f te r m ath

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

If the urgency of the Depression ushered programs like the Works Progress Administration into being, political pushback and the urgency of World War 2 ushered them out. The New Deal itself as a sweeping package of efforts was over by 1938 after it became unpopular with many in Congress. But the WPA and some other programs held on until 1943, when other employment was more robust and lawmakers diverted funding toward the war effort. Many local New Deal efforts major and minor have been lost to history. The city’s first housing projects, New Dealfunded Laurel Homes and Lincoln Courts in the West End, have since been torn down. Of the hundreds of murals painted in the city for the WPA, only a few remain. There were notable examples in schools in the West End and in the community building at Greenhills. The former were lost when the schools themselves were torn down, often during urban renewal. The latter succumbed to shifting tastes and a coat of white paint. “In design, things have a life where they’re trendy and beautiful and modern and everyone loves them,” Steinert says. “Then they fall into an era where people don’t respect them and think they’re old and dated. During that low moment for New Deal stuff, Cincinnati lost a whole bunch of great WPA murals.” Many of the ideas embodied by New Deal programs went the same way. Construction of the federal highway system in the years following World War 2 made once-bold experiments like Greenhills seem quaint and obsolete.

Highways represented another giant effort by the federal government — albeit one that seemed to pull communities apart, out into nebulous, privately developed suburbs. Other federal pushes for infrastructure and public works also illustrate big shifts away from New Deal ideas as big government projects have become deeply unfashionable politically. Stimulus packages proposed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama in the aftermath of the Great Recession a decade ago were much more limited in scope and size, but still drew a firestorm of criticism from those worried about government spending. Locally, one of the biggest and most visible products of those stimulus efforts — the Cincinnati streetcar, partially paid for with millions in federal funds meant to stimulate the economy — has been a lightning rod for political controversy. In the current political climate, it may be that it’s simply harder for America to agree to build things together. Today, ideas for fixing the nation’s infrastructure problems are much more likely to involve public-private partnerships or outright ownership of infrastructure by private, for-profit companies. Even these, however, can have a hard time getting off the ground — one only has to look toward the Brent Spence Bridge for an illustration. That’s a marked departure from the collectivist, government-can-do spirit embodied by the New Deal. An example: In June this year, President Donald Trump held a much-promoted news conference on Cincinnati’s riverfront to announce his $1 trillion plan for the nation’s infrastructure. Trump pitched a plan to leverage $200 billion in federal money to try and stoke much more in private infrastructure investment. The idea is currently stalled in Congress, however, with no foreseeable implementation date.

C i t y B e at. c o m | N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Cincinnati Art Museum; 126825.pdf

STUFF TO DO

Cranberry Punch Recipe Nothing cuts the initial awkward tension of an extended-family gathering quite like a little injection of alcohol (or a lot of it, depending on how heavy you pour). And this Thanksgiving punch recipe, provided by Northside Yacht Club owner/bartender Stuart MacKenzie, is not only seasonally appropriate (there’s cranberry!), it also includes hip ingredients (rosé cider!) and enough vodka to loosen everyone up. It also forces you to interact with loved ones, because if you want another glass, you have to go back to the communal punch bowl.

C R AedNtoBmaEkeRyouRr YunmarrS Aied UuncCle EstaDrt

s. Gu ara nte mo me nt it tou che s his lip tal kin g abo ut Trump the IE T MACKENZ AR PHOTO: STU

1/2 lite r vod ka t Bubble s • 6 can s Rhi neg eis ros e- cid er rry jui ce • 1/4 lite r cra nbe

•

1/4 lite r lim e jui ce sec • 1/4 lite r tri ple han dfu l of and els whe e • Lim we rs for flo us isc hib dri ed l gar nis h in the pun ch bow

•

sw eet , ether and taste. If it’sanitoo l. ma Sti r all ing red ientswhtog you , ka vod of just use that ole lit er

WEDNESDAY 22

ART: Take a road trip to Columbus’ Wexner Center to see Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life. See review on page 24. ONSTAGE: Cincy Shakes’ The Adventures of Tom Sawyer revels in the fun of childhood. See review on page 25.

HOLIDAY: WinterFest Kings Island is staying open a little later this season to ring in the holidays. The park

is reviving its old-fashioned WinterFest wonderland after a 12-year hiatus, complete with festive food and drinks, special holiday shows and ice skating underneath a Christmas tree-bedecked Eiffel Tower. In addition to select rides remaining open — including KI’s newest, the ’80s-themed Mystic Timbers coaster — the event includes an artisan village that features 30 local makers and crafters. Through Dec. 30. Tickets start at $25. Kings Island, 6300 Kings Island Drive, Mason, visitkingsisland.com. — EMILY BEGLEY EVENT: Plaid Friday Hike With endless Black Friday ads peddling useless wares from big-box stores and the mall running constantly on TV, it seems like the only way to escape Christmas capitalism is by retreating to the stark wilderness. Luckily, you’re not alone in this

ONSTAGE: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, Over-the-Rhine (through Dec. 9) VISUAL ART: The Future is Female at 21c Museum Hotel, Downtown (through September 2018)

sentiment. Slap on a flannel and protest the shopping mayhem with this five-mile Plaid Friday Hike that will surely be a much more wholesome experience than getting trampled at Walmart for a Nintendo Switch. The third-annual jaunt begins at Lydia’s on Ludlow in Clifton and winds through the parks and streets of Cincinnati for a hybrid urban/wilderness hike that might make you swear off Black Friday shenanigans for good. 10

a.m.-12:30 p.m. Friday. $5 adults; free 12 and under. Lydia’s on Ludlow, 329 Ludlow Ave., Clifton, imagoearth. org. — ERIN COUCH COMEDY: Mark Chalifoux “I try to take off a big chunk of October and November so I can be home,” says Cincinnati-based comedian Mark Chalifoux. “My oldest plays soccer and I don’t want to miss all the games. I’ve only had to miss one or two, which is nice.” Though he will talk a bit about his parenting skills onstage, he’s always been careful about not being pigeonholed. “I’ve never wanted to fall into that trap because I remember right after I had my first kid, a few other comics in New York, where I was living, were having kids and they said, ‘We should do a Dad’s of Comedy Tour,’” he says. “And it sounded like CONTINUES ON PAGE 22

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

HOLIDAY: Cincideutsch Christkindlmarkt The sixth-annual Cincideutsch Christkindlmarkt adds a bit of Bavarian whimsy to Fountain Square with a festive outdoor shopping destination modeled after a traditional German Christmas market. Along with goods from local artisans and crafters, there will be German fare and glühwein — hot, spiced red wine that’s ubiquitous at European holiday markets — plus the annual twinkling Macy’s Christmas tree on the square. Weekends through Dec. 9. Free admission. Fountain Square, Fifth and Vine streets, Downtown, cincideutsch. com. — MAIJA ZUMMO

EVENT: Art After Dark: Transforming Fashion Kick off the weekend early at Art After Dark. This installation of the after-hours party at the Art Museum is themed around the current Iris van Herpen: Transforming Fashion exhibit. Get free access to the haute and high-tech sculptural garment display, with bonus couture cocktails,

HOLIDAY: Fountain Square Ice Rink The ice rink is back on Fountain Square. Grab your skates (or rent some there) and bundle up for a night of fun with your friends and family. Keep yourself energized with hot chocolate and other snacks at the concession stand (including alcohol!). Through Feb. 19. $6 admission; $4 skate rental. Fountain Square, Fifth and Vine streets, Downtown, myfountainsquare.com. — KENNEDY PONDER

FRIDAY 24

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

ART: Photographer David Yarrow’s raw and remote images of wildlife are on display at the Miller Gallery. Read a review on page 27.

food for purchase from the Terrace Café and collaborative performances from DJ Mowgli, dance group Pones, Steve Kemple and Electronic band Black Signal. Come dressed to impress. 5-9 p.m. Wednesday. Free. Cincinnati Art Museum, 953 Eden Park Drive, Mount Adams, cincinnatiartmuseum.org. — MAIJA ZUMMO

Ongoing Shows

FROM PAGE 21

.COM

CinCinnati, OHiO 800-344-5216

9967 PRinCEtOn GLEnDaLE RD 1 MiLE nORtH OF tRi-COUntY MaLL

513-874-3700

SErvEr UNiFormS iN SToCK

Full Back Black Vests............$24.95 Shirts, black or white...........$19.95 Bow Tie, black........................$3.95 Long Tie, black F-I-H..............$7.95 Long Tie, black banded..........$9.95 Waist Apron, black.................$4.95 Bistro Apron, black or white..$7.95

SERVING UP S AV I NGS SINCE 1994

EmbroidEry AvAilAblE

the most dreadful thing I can imagine.” His upcoming run at Go Bananas will be his first foray into building a new hour, which he plans to record at the club in the spring. Through Sunday. $8-$14. Go Bananas, 8410 Market Place Lane, Montgomery, gobananascomedy. com. — P.F. WILSON

SATURDAY 25

ONSTAGE: Neverwhere Neil Gaiman is a contemporary literary machine, churning out short fiction, comic books, graphic novels, audio theater and films. He often converts one genre into another. That’s what happened with Neverwhere, simultaneously a TV miniseries in England and a 1996 novel. Gaiman subsequently revised it at least twice, and now the tale of a young London businessman who slips through the cracks in reality and lands in the sinister labyrinth of “London Below” has been adapted into a stage play by Robert Kauzlaric. With monsters and angels beneath our feet, it’s a beloved tale of adventure, heartache and

human nature. Through Dec. 17. $25. Know Theatre, 1120 Jackson St., Over-theRhine, knowtheatre.com. — RICK PENDER MUSIC: Straight No Chaser If you like your A capella on the rocks, this tour is for you. Straight No Chaser’s “The Speakeasy Tour” stops at the Aronoff on Saturday for a little Pop, Indie and holiday music. This nine-person all-male group’s end-of-year local show has become somewhat of a seasonal tradition. 8 p.m. Saturday. $39.50-$79.50. Aronoff Center, 650 Walnut St., Downtown, cincinnatiarts. org. — MAIJA ZUMMO HOLIDAY: Holiday Artisan Market Shop local at the Holiday Artisan Market, which makes it easy to find one-of-a-kind gifts made by people around the Tristate. Vendors and artists will have booths selling specially made gifts including ink drawings, woodcuts, pillows, teapots, bottles and more. 1-6 p.m. $5. The Carnegie, 1028 Scott St., Covington, Ky., facebook.com/thecarnegie. — ALISON BAXTER

HOLIDAY: Holiday Toy Trains at the BehringerCrawford Museum Unleash your inner locomotive lover at the 26th-annual Holiday Toy Trains display at the Behringer-Crawford Museum. Wonder at more than 250 feet of model train tracks, vintage Lionel and Plasticville trains, Thomas the Tank Engine and a plethora of guest-activated displays. On Sundays between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you and the kids can enjoy a visit from Santa and a reading of the Christmas classic and ode to trains, The Polar Express, while you sip on cocoa. Holiday garb and cozy PJs encouraged. Through Jan. 14. $9 adults; $8 seniors; $5 children. BehringerCrawford Museum, 1600 Montague Road, Covington, Ky., bcmuseum.org. — ERIN COUCH

SUNDAY 26

MUSIC: Columbus’ Swarming Branch heads to MOTR Pub. See Sound Advice on page 36.

EVENT: Over-the-Rhine Museum History Harvest The Over-the-Rhine

FRIDAY 24

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

ART: Purple Dreams: Surreality in the X, Y & Z at Bunk Spot Pendleton’s Bunk Spot, one of Cincinnati’s newest gallery spaces, has been hosting some interesting exhibitions since they opened less than a year ago. On Friday, there will be an opening reception for Purple Dreams: Surreality in the X, Y & Z, an exhibit of digitally based surrealist landscapes. It features the work of Alan Brown, a Cincinnati-based 25-year veteran commercial photographer and computer illustrator; LA-based multimedia artist Paul Rosas; and Ben Brown, one of Bunk Spot’s coordinators who has created a body of work situating headless sculptural forms against backdrops of buffed graffiti in urban spaces. Opening reception 7-11 p.m. Friday. Through Dec. 8. Free. Bunk Spot, 544 E. 12th St., Pendleton, facebook.com/bunknews. — MARIA SEDA-REEDER

22 PHOTO: “ BEING THERE” BY AL AN BROWN

PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

SATURDAY 25

EVENT: Swing House Open House Mark deJong’s Swing House in Camp Washington is swiftly becoming the city’s most notable large-scale art installation/architectural makeover of the still-young new century, even though comparably few have seen it yet. For several years, deJong has been transforming the three-floor, shotgunstyle domicile by almost completely opening it up — no stairs, no rooms with walls, no additional floors — and installing a 30-foot-long swing with ropes secured to an iron beam across the ceiling. Now he’s celebrating the almost completion with open houses on Saturday and Sunday — and again on December 2-3 and 9-10 — so people can see the progress he’s made on the interior and exterior and with installing art in the basement. This is preparation for his big Contemporary Arts Center exhibition opening next year. Noon-4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Free. Swing House, 1373 Avon Place, Camp Washington. — STEVEN ROSEN

MONDAY 27

MUSIC: Garage/Punk/Pop duo Diet Cig plays Woodward Theater. See Sound Advice on page 36.

TUESDAY 28

MUSIC: Kamasi Washington transcends the Jazz genre with his live show at the Taft Theatre. See Sound Advice on page 37.

Walnut Street + 16-BitBar.com

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

YOUR WEEKEND TO DO LIST: LOCAL.CITYBEAT.COM

MUSIC: Curley & Magill With musical résumés that draw from their diverse professional and culture experiences, young musicians Dave Curley and Andrew Finn Magill have teamed for a two-week tour. An Irish native, Curley is a renowned singer and multi-instrumentalist (not to mention champion step dancer) who has worked with, among

many other artists, members of Clannad and Mumford & Sons and is a key member of the popular traditional Irish music group SLIDE. Magill also plays a variety of instruments — though he is best known as a fiddler well versed in Irish stylings, his musical explorations have journeyed into Jazz, Folk and Bluegrass, as well as Brazilian and African music. It should be fascinating to hear where the two musicians’ collaboration takes them — while their roots are well-established, their boundaries are intriguingly unknown. 7 p.m. Tuesday. $18; $20 day of. Irish Heritage Center of Greater Cincinnati, 3905 Eastern Ave., Columbia Tusculum, irishcenterofcincinnati.com. — MIKE BREEN

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Museum is a project helmed by a board of historians, preservationists, educators, developers and more with the goal of converting a historic tenement into a museum to showcase the history and community of OTR. During the History Harvest in the People’s Liberty building on Sunday, the museum is seeking stories and documents related to their mission, anything from receipts and photos to letters and menus. There will be historians on site to answer questions and listen to and record information in an informal setting. Digital scanning will take place upstairs as will interviews for an oral history project. Snacks provided. 9 a.m.2 p.m. Sunday. Free admission. People’s Liberty, 1805 Elm St., Over-theRhine, otrmuseum.org. — MAIJA ZUMMO

ARTS & CULTURE

Searching for Identity Cindy Sherman’s movieinspired photographs at the Wexner Center examine the male gaze BY M A R I A S EDA - R EED ER

C i t y B e at. c o m | n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

losing out a calendar year in which every artist featured at the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University is a woman, Cindy Sherman: Imitation of Life — on view through the end of the year — surveys the internationally acclaimed photographer’s career-long interest in movie culture. The show, which features more than 100 images by Sherman, is curated by Philipp Kaiser and organized by The Broad museum in Los Angeles. It is arranged mostly chronologically, beginning with her Untitled Film Stills series from the late 1970s. The exhibition title is a reference to filmmaker Douglas Sirk’s 1959 melodrama, which deals with highly emotional struggles of identity. The title also signals the importance of cinema in Sherman’s own image making. Throughout her career, Sherman has underscored the concept that the male gaze is responsible for much of cinema’s objectification of women. When seen in the context of current revelations about some of Hollywood’s heaviest hitters being abusers of women, her work is still wholly contemporary. Her manipulation, mimesis, aping and reflection of the film industry’s particular visual language are evidence of its ongoing sexual brutality, which we are now uncovering as women in the industry (and out of it) continue to step forward to name their abusers. In a recent essay on “Hollywood’s Canon of Creeps,” the co-chief film critic for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis, wrote, “The history of cinema is also a history of the exploitation of women.” Sherman’s many loaded images and series on view at the Wexner mine this historical legacy. Sherman has made her career on both sides of the camera, simultaneously photographing herself and posing as her own model since she was in college. The conceptual photographer (and film director) made her name initially with the aforementioned Untitled Film Stills (16 out of 69 are on view in this exhibition), which showcase Sherman posing in black-and-white and performing a kind of raw vulnerability that suggests the potential for violence and implicates the viewer as a complicit voyeur. Throughout her work, Sherman has subverted the objectification inherent in centerfolds, replaced advertising materials

Cindy Sherman’s 1981 “Untitled #92,” from the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection P H O T O : C ourtesy o f the artist a n d metro pictures , n ew yor k

with her own face, experimented with green screen as a film cliché, used her own aging as a way to develop new characters and investigated historical portrait painting. Just one of many pieces in Imitation of Life that illustrates Sherman’s willingness to engage the male gaze, “Untitled Film Still #34” features the model awkwardly reclining on a bed, wearing only a loosely buttoned white dress-shirt and visible underwear, ostensibly lost in thought. Sherman’s unnatural pose and the contrived scene look more like manifestations of a male fantasy than the behavior of a self-possessed woman in the privacy of her room. Though she is her own model, the pieces are never portraits of Sherman herself — although the artist routinely acknowledges her connection to the genre. Instead, they read like visual character studies. Using her own body as a canvas to communicate emotionally charged narratives, the artist uses wigs, makeup, prosthetics, props, background and costume — all of them trappings of the performance of femininity — to create flesh-and-blood portraits of clichéd feminine typologies. The show does offer some of her lesserknown pieces, such as the series Untitled #499-510, made in 1977 as a tribute to curator Linda L. Cathcart. These 12 simple black-and-white portraits resemble riffs on the work of the French photographer

Claude Cahun, who was doing much the same thing as Sherman but at a time when few probably understood or had the appropriate words to explain the work. For example, all of Cahun’s photos (made from the late 1920s into the 1950s) that feature the artist as model are titled as self portraits, despite the fact that Cahun is clearly imitating characters — from a muscled and tattooed weightlifter in 1927’s “Self Portrait” to similarly titled image from 1932 in which the photographer convincingly poses as a little girl fast asleep in her wardrobe. But whereas the conceptually based photographs of Cahun feature the artist embodying diverse personae, so many of Sherman’s characters seem like a one-track story. Conventionally attractive (or at least attempting to be) and posed for easy consumption, her characters rarely challenge our expectations of women and overwhelmingly invite the viewer to pass judgment about their age, wealth and morality. “Untitled #92” from the Centerfolds series is a perfect example. In this horizontal chromogenic color print, Sherman looks wild-eyed and panicked. Full-color and larger in scale than many of the other pieces in the show, “Untitled #92” demonstrates why many speculate that the subjects of the Centerfolds series all look like victims of violence, because the women in them appear to be reeling from recent trauma. (Sherman

refuses to explain much of the work.) Sherman’s theatrically contrived scenes from Film Stills seem specific in their references to an archetypal character in film. But her dozen photos in Untitled #499-510 resist being classified that way. One is drawn to these images perhaps because they are neither slick nor polished. And this is where Sherman’s work gets most interesting — not when she is regurgitating the explicitly vulnerable women of the film industry, but rather when she is alluding to the fact that there are real people involved in making us believe in the magical mystery world of the movies. The New York Times’ Dargis says in her essay, “Cinema has long served as a vehicle for male onanism, a space in which male fantasies about sexual power over women are expressed on screen and enacted behind the camera.” Sherman’s work reveals in sharp detail the many manifestations of that abuse upon the backs of women. That’s important, if not by now overly familiar. But she also hints in Untitled #499-510 that she knows there are more nuanced stories begging to be told. Cindy Sherman: Imitation if Life is on view at the Wexner Center for the Arts on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus through Dec. 31. More info: wexarts.org.

CURTAIN CALL

27 Years of Live Stand-Up Comedy in Cincinnati!

‘Tom Sawyer’ and the Joy of Childhood BY R I C K PEN D ER

CRITIC’S PICK

Show Times

Wed / Thur / Sun 8:00 - 18+ Friday 7:30 & 10:00 - 18+ Saturday 7:30 & 10:00 - 21+ Mark Chalifoux

Rober t Hawkins

November 24 - 26

Nov. 30 - Dec. 3

Just 15 minutes from downtown in Mongtomery! 3 Pool Tables • Large Patio

Next Door to Go Bananas

Cheap Drinks Fridays - DJ Diamond Saturdays - Live Band

W W W.GOBANANASCOMEDY.COM 8410 Market Place Ln.

513.984.9288

Like us on Facebook

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

| C I T Y B E AT. C O M

In case you needed a reminder that the For a whiff of adolescent romance, DavCincinnati Shakespeare Company doesn’t enport is matched with Caitlin McWethy deal exclusively with plays by the Bard, as Becky Thatcher. Tom does his best to you’ll find a story by another literary giant impress her, but he’s easily distracted by presently onstage at the company’s new his adventures with Huck. Over-the-Rhine theater: Mark Twain’s McWethy blends some girlishness with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It’s the first an occasionally mischievous streak of time the company has undertaken a work strength. Their story arc in the second act by the great American novelist. The result, reveals another element of growing up staged by Sara Clark, is both satisfying and that’s threaded into Eason’s script. entertaining. But ultimately this production is about Clark was first exposed to Tom and Huckreveling in the fun of childhood, with a leberry Finn’s adventures at age 9 when her strong dose of nostalgic storytelling. fourth-grade teacher read the novel to her It’s enhanced by designer Shannon Roband her classmates. “It’s quite a joy to be working with it again,” Clark says. “Laura Eason’s adaptation really leans into the storytelling. The actors are all narrators, and Twain’s slightly ironic narrator voice is present throughout the show.” Most actors play several roles. As Tom, actor Cary Davenport is the only performer with a singular role. His partner in adventure is Kyle Brumley as Huck, and they adeptly act as kids without descending into coy silliness. Clark said she first thought of DavenCary Davenport and Caitlin McWethy in Tom Sawyer port, who has acted with PHOTO: MIKKI SCHAFFNER PHOTOGRAPHY Cincy Shakes for five seasons, when she read the script. She stressed the importance of not ert’s basic but highly adaptable set that has play-acting, urging the actors to seek the things popping up in surprising ways. A honesty of every moment. “There’s a level few flat panels are flipped up to denote the of seriousness with which kids take things, cemetery. Other items are unfolded from following the rules of play,” she says. the stage floor, such as chairs and tables Clark mentions that the new theater has in a schoolroom with an officious teacher enabled a longer rehearsal period. “We or the church with a long-winded minister. don’t have to maximize every second and (Christopher Jordan Salazar plays both we have more flexibility for attention to roles and serves as the show’s villain, detail,” she says. “We used it for more conInjun Joe.) The flexible design enables versations about play and childhood.” the show to move swiftly from scene to When rehearsals began, Clark asked scene; it’s about two hours, including an the actors to answer a question: “What did intermission. you love to do when you were 10?” They Placing the show in its time and locale discovered a lot of common ground, espeare evocative sound effects and especially cially stories about playing games. “Every Americana/Bluegrass musical interludes rehearsal started with a theater game that carry the narrative along and set for 10 minutes,” she says. “An element of moods that quickly shift from hilarity to play was essential to the story and that got solemnity and from fear to fun. Sound everyone into the mood.” designer Douglas J. Borntrager deserves Davenport readily picked up on this, special praise for supporting the producClark adds, saying he delivers “a lovely, tion’s tonal shifts. goofy, fun-loving performance.” Playwright Eason has another adapDavenport also manages to show tation, Huck Finn, based on Twain’s how Tom is evolving from an adventureAdventures of Huckleberry Finn. Given the seeking, devil-may-care kid into a more success of this production, I suspect we responsible young man. When he and might find more adventures in a future Huck witness a serious crime, they are the Cincinnati Shakespeare season. only ones who can ensure that a murder The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is onstage is not pinned on an innocent man. They at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company wrestle mightily with doing the right thing, (1195 Elm St., OTR) through Dec. 9. Tickets and despite the risks, Tom stands up in and more info: cincyshakes.com. court and tells the truth.

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

CULTURE

Encouraging Racial Diversity in Yoga BY K AT I E G R I FFI T H

Common portrayals and some local between material and spiritual wealth. In classes may have you picturing the typical the church, light through the numerous yoga practitioner as someone of a specific stained glass windows floods the room economic class or even skin color. But with shades of red and blue as smoke from a young social enterprise called Heal ’n the sage settles mid-air. Shelton chooses Build is challenging these notions and fosmusic to play while some write silently and tering community development by offering others sway, conjuring peace and gratitude. yoga and mindfulness practices aimed at Since its inception this past spring, Heal the people mainstream yoga forgets. ’n Build has used “non-traditional” spaces in The number of yoga participants in various neighborhoods to facilitate its purAmerica has increased by 80 percent pose of diversifying yoga and mindfulness since 2012, according to the 2016 Yoga in practices. Shelton, Humphries and other America Study. While this statistic might teachers host pop-up and scheduled classes seem like an overall triumph for yogis, for adults and children. Plans for headquarHeal ’n Build co-founders Alexander Shelton and Jasmine Humphries are less concerned with the numbers and more concerned with the demographic. “Westernized yoga is whitewashed,” Shelton says. “And it does attract predominately white women and, now, white men that have the access and the money to pay for the practice and to sustain the practice.” In order to get people of color involved in yoga, Shelton says, it is important for them to see they would not be racially isoAlexander Shelton leads a Namastay Woke yoga class. lated in a class and that the P H O T O : K AT I E G R I F F I T H practice space is comfortable and approachable. Shelton defines the term “violence” in a ters are in the making, but Shelton says their way that includes passive acts of omission. movement will always be in motion. “The people that you exclude, the people “We like non-traditional spaces for nonthat you don’t even think about, (are traditional yoga bodies,” Humphries says. victims of) a form of violence,” he says. “So “I really like to use community spaces I think a lot of those (yoga) spaces are viowhere people already are, like rec centers lent for people of color because they don’t or old church sanctuaries that maybe see themselves reflected in the teacher or aren’t traditional yoga studios.” in the room. For white people, that’s not Local nonprofits and charities allow something they go into the class with. They Heal ’n Build to provide pay-what-you-can don’t think of themselves as their race, programs and offer props such as yoga they think of themselves as the individual.” mats through grants and donations. Most Shelton employs Heal ’n Build’s flagship recently, Heal ’n Build was awarded a $1,500 yoga class, Namastay Woke, to recruit grant by Interact for Health, a local foundapeople of color and create an accessible tion that strives to improve Cincinnatians’ environment for people to practice. It is a health. “Alexander is a great fit as he is a weekly installment in the church of Gabriblack male,” says Meriden Peters, the founel’s Place, an Avondale community center. dation’s mental/emotional well-being proClasses are open to everyone, although gram officer. “But additionally his passion geared toward the black community. and skill set came highly recommended.” “ ‘Namaste’ means the light within me Shelton’s plan for the grant is to sponsor salutes the light that’s within you. And a yearlong class dedicated to healing, a then ‘stay woke’ is a black conscious movebroad theme that can be applied to many ment,” Shelton says. “And so we can try to individual’s needs. achieve spiritual enlightenment and still “What I would hope to do is put myself be conscious of the social structures that out of business one day,” he says. “Because we are trying to dismantle.” people take these mindfulness tools into Inspired by the idea of social justice, their heart and they practice and share wellness and self-care, the Saturday class with other people.” begins with a writing prompt while the Find more information about Heal ’n room is cleansed with sage and incense. Build and upcoming classes at facebook. “What are you grateful for?” Shelton com/healnbuild. asks, placing emphasis on the difference

VISUAL ART

David Yarrow’s ‘Just Do It’ Photography BY K AT H Y S C H WA R T Z

n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

David Yarrow points out an unexpected an escape. This May, one of his prints sold detail in “78 Degrees North,” his remarkat auction for $75,000. Through his associaable fine art photograph of a polar bear tion with a conservation charity, he now retreating into Norway’s icy wilderness. counts Prince William among his friends. That rear paw pad looks just like Nike’s Though he’s become a prolific photogswoosh. With one picture, Europe’s toprapher, spending about 95 days a year on selling wildlife photographer sums up location, Yarrow doesn’t consider his time his personal narrative in stark black-andaway from his two children to be truly white: Just do it. fruitful unless he meets his goal of what he That doesn’t mean the London-based considers “four good pictures” annually. Yarrow is reckless as he travels to raw, “I’m a sponge to everything I’ve got remote locations to engage with animals, wrong,” Yarrow says. In an age that’s clutindigenous peoples and surreal storytelltered with content, he’s afraid of putting ing. He’s just relentless about getting the out what he calls pulp fact — pictures that perfect, “pin-sharp” image. Yarrow’s immersive pursuits can be serene and scary, as evidenced by the eight photos in his introductory exhibit at Hyde Park’s Miller Gallery. (He’ll be returning for FotoFocus in October 2018.) There’s a peaceful picture of a stag in his Scottish homeland, but also a looming image from Zambia of a protective mother hippo and calf who appear to be the lesscuddly cousins of Bibi and Fiona from the Cincinnati Zoo. The in-your-face portrait, taken from a boat, is titled “No Nearer.” “The Wolf of Main Street” Yarrow shuns teleP H O T O : D a v i d Ya r r ow photo equipment, believing photographers should impose themselves on a situation. He don’t tell a story or capture an animal’s shoots from the ground up and up close. soul. The polar bear photo is what he terms When Yarrow is not lying in grasses with a “KENNEDY DEAD” image, akin to a bangrizzlies or wading into the Nile with a ner headline that grabs and doesn’t let go. handheld Nikon and wide-angle lens, he In addition to being relentless, Yarrow uses a remote control that still keeps him uses three other “R-words” to describe in proximity. He’s broken the rules by what separates him from the pack. He shooting into the light, and he’s broken researches animals’ predictive behavior a tooth while tracking an elephant in and finds guides who can provide access. Kenya. But he doesn’t seem as worried He employs a reductive approach, nearly about his safety as he is about making an always shooting in black-and-white to ordinary photo. stand out in a noisy world. And he strives “I have a fear of the mundane,” Yarrow for relevance, drawing attention to habisays in an interview at the recent Miller tats. But not wanting to be pigeonholed opening. as a wildlife photographer, he traveled to Even a staged shot like “The Wolf North Korea this summer and hopes to of Main Street,” taken in a saloon in return to the hot spot soon for a portrait of Montana, carries risk. The barkeep and Kim Jong-un. patrons act nonchalant, but Yarrow Yarrow also has his eye on an urban shares in his text that the canine strolling jungle: Chicago. The town provides the the length of bar had its eyes focused on a perfect canvas for telling the American chicken that the photographer was wearDream, he believes. He envisions “a ing around his neck. visual double-take that smacks of Yarrow’s career as a self-taught phograndeur, scale and beauty,” featuring tographer began when he took an iconic animals and architecture. picture of soccer star Diego Maradona at In a city famous for Bears, Bulls and the 1986 World Cup for The Times of LonMichael Jordan, trust Yarrow to be the don. An Olympics assignment followed. photog rapher to just do it, and do it right. But family expectations steered Yarrow to David Yarrow’s photos are on view the financial world after college, and he through Jan. 13, 2018, at Miller Gallery, became a multimillionaire hedge-fund 2715 Erie Ave., Hyde Park. More info: manager. When his marriage ended 13 millergallery.com. years ago, he returned to photography as

FILM

is giving away Bengals tickets to the

Join us at the following location where you can enter for your chance to win. Tickets will be given away that night on location. Tickets include entry into the game on the Miller Lite Who Dey Deck as well as complimentary beverages and food. #itsmillertime

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Miller Lite Who Dey Deck Giveaway Location:

Thursday, 11/30 Mount Lookout Tavern

8:30pm

3209 Linwood Avenue Cincinnati, OH 45226 Win Tickets to the 12/4 Bengals vs Steelers game on the Miller Lite Who Dey Deck!

The Struggle for Justice in ‘Three Billboards’ BY T T S T ER N - EN ZI

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Misunsettled black police officer who begins souri, the new release from British writerto take out his frustrations on the prividirector Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, leged community he’s sworn to protect, Seven Psychopaths), perfectly captures and Dee Rees’ Mudbound, about two famithe mood of our current cultural reality. lies — one black, one white — locked in the It does so by dropping us into a highly eternal quagmire of race in America. charged situation right as the flames start In the end, I could only return to the to heat things up. idea that there is nothing black and Mildred (Frances McDormand), a white about this complex issue. That steely mother grieving the loss of her is what gives Three Billboards such a daughter (an unsolved murder), has necessary role in this ongoing discussion. completely lost patience and faith in McDonagh, as is his style, sprinkles in the local authorities. But she’s far from darkly comic flourishes that feel like he’s surrendering to hopelessness. She seizes jabbing our sensitive spots. Th is makes for upon a plan to force Sheriff Willoughby recognizable but quite painful truths. (Woody Harrelson) and his ragtag team of deputies, led by the dim-witted but obstinate Dixon (Sam Rockwell), into action. Mildred purchases three billboards on the road into town and displays a scathing and quite personal message, a raw plea for justice for her girl. It matters little to her that the town is so small that everyone will have an immediate and confl icted response to her bold verbal assault. She and everyone in the community knows that Willoughby has done the best he could Frances McDormand is the angry mother of a murder victim. with the resources availP H O T O : M E R R I C K M O R T O N / © T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y F O X F I L M C O R P. able to him. Willoughby is also dealing with his own personal crisis, which renders him decidAnd McDormand is just the right edly sympathetic, even next to Mildred’s performer to bring this world of hurt to unimaginable loss. life. She is immersed in Mildred’s own botThe cultural and political landscape of tomless grief, yet she is also able to imply a our world dwarfs the small-town insularglimmer of humor in the infi nite sadness ity of Ebbing, but social media and the that has descended upon her character. ravenous 24-hour news-cycle create the This fi lm faces up to the harsh reality of same kind of fevered immediacy nationMildred’s predicament. McDonagh digs ally whenever a crime or outrage occurs. deeper and deeper with the assistance of So we can relate to what we’re seeing. a talented and fearless cast, who work like Mildred, if asked, would defi nitely canaries in a coalmine to explore the tough forego talk of mere justice; she’s hell-bent ideas of his original screenplay. on revenge of the Old Testament sort and Rockwell is another key standout in it is plain that she would have no qualms the cast. As the deputy stuck in a dangerat all if she had to dispense it herself. She’s ous state of arrested development that myopic to the point that she fails to see allows him to wield his badge and power how her quest might have an impact on indiscriminately, Rockwell never allows Robbie (Lucas Hedges), her surviving his character to become simply an object teenage son, who has to go to school every for us to hate or pity, which would have day in a town reminded constantly of his been so easy. family’s loss. His Dixon hits rock bottom right before During the screening of this fi lm that I our eyes and honestly acknowledges his caught at the Toronto International Film many faults. The next step, the truly hard Festival, I found myself wondering what work, belongs not to this character, but to justice looks like. At the time, in midus. We must decide how we feel about him September, I was still focused on police and his transformation. It is a performance shootings of unarmed black men and that U-turns from the typically oddball to a white nationalist rallies. Festival entries place of humanist redemption. like this were directly questioning the The fi lm presents justice as a moving evolving state of justice without offering target and dares us to actively pursue it en easy answers. There was also Black Cop, route to a greater good. (Opens Wednesday from writer-director Cory Bowles, about an at the Esquire Theatre.) (R) Grade: A

‘Mr. Robot’: Real Life or Fantasy? BY JAC K ER N

n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

While attempting to distill the confusing a separate entity working alongside Elliot. complexities of Mr. Robot (10 p.m. WednesBy Season 2, Mr. Robot began acting more days, USA) down to digestible size, Queen’s independently while Elliot believed he was epic ballad “Bohemian Rhapsody” comes to sleeping, resulting in Elliot blacking out for mind. Rami Malek, who stars as Elliot in this days at a time as he becomes less and less hacker-centered psychological drama, has aware of Mr. Robot’s ulterior moves. And taken on the daunting role of Freddie Merwhile Slater is still present this season, for cury in the long-awaited Queen biopic, due the first time the audience gets to witness in theaters next Christmas. Between Malek’s what characters see when Mr. Robot takes acting chops, as evidenced by his awardover — the social-anxiety-ridden Elliot winning performance in Mr. Robot, and the suddenly adopts the confidence and swagproduction photos of him as Mercury, he ger of Mr. Robot. It’s a complex role that seems suited to fill those very big shoes. But Malek nails. the song could also act as a soundtrack to “Can’t do this to me baby; just gotta get this series, particularly this third season. right out of here” “Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?” This is a question Elliot and the audience must frequently ask themselves throughout the show. Elliot has dissociative identity disorder, meaning that at any moment, unbeknownst to him, a different personality can take over, leaving Elliot with no memory of what happens during that time. In order to make up for this “lost time,” his brain fills in the blanks, skewing his view on reality. In past seasons, the truth has been revealed Rami Malek as Elliot in the current season of Mr. Robot in a major twist, which by P H O T O : co u rte s y o f US A net w ork now fans are anticipating for Season 3. In Season 1, the plot was turned on its head Fight As the Rock sequence of “Rhapsody” Club-style when we learned that hacktivist kicks in, Mr. Robot has effectively taken mastermind Mr. Robot (Christian Slater) full control. He’s the one singing now, so was actually Elliot’s dad, who died years to speak. Despite Elliot’s best attempts ago — he’s just a fantasy, and everything to undo the damage that he himself has he’d done was actually the work of Elliot. caused while under the influence of his In Season 2, the whole time we were led to alternate personality, Mr. Robot is strong. believe Elliot was living with his mother, He will not be held down and, as we he was really in jail. And while there have learned in last week’s episode, he has an been some significant plot turns and appetite for serious destruction. surprises, more than halfway through this As the song slows down and Mr. Robot season there’s yet to be a big “things are disappears, Elliot returns, lonely and not as they seem” reveal. depressed. “Nothing really matters” “Mama, just killed a man” indeed. Instead of addressing his mother, Elliot Queen changed the idea of what a Pop/ frequently breaks the fourth wall, speaking Rock song could be with “Rhapsody” directly to the audience. However, being an — the bizarre lyrics, obscure references unreliable narrator, we cannot always take and operatic elements all somehow work what he says, does or sees at face value. This together to create a universally beloved part of the song acts as a confession, and song. And while you can’t really compare at this point Elliot is definitely responsible the two, Mr. Robot continually breaks new for chaos and even death. He tries to make ground and redefines what a TV show can amends this season by stopping the sinister do, from its realistic depictions of both work of his alter-ego, who essentially wants mental illness and cyberwarfare to its to destroy mass property and debt records dynamic women characters and cinematic held by conglomerate E Corp. But, as Elliot risk taking. These elements were on full soon finds out, once something has been display in a recent episode that appeared put into motion it cannot be undone — one as one continuous 45-minute shot as of this season’s themes. protestors attacked E Corp. An anarchist “I see a little silhouetto of a man” rhapsody, perhaps? This represents the emergence of Mr. Contact Jac Kern: @jackern Robot. In the first season, we saw him as

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

| N O V. 2 2 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

FOOD & DRINK

Cute and Classic Crustables Cincinnati’s newest specialty pie shop offers traditional and adventurous flavors in personal portions BY L AU R EN M O R E T TO

Teeny’s boubon pecan, sweet potato and rosemary caramel apple pies. PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

The book was published in 2014, the same year she introduced D.C. to her business, Teeny Pies. After relocating to Cincinnati with her husband (who grew up here), Morris says it’s been exciting to earn her place among the city’s pie people by proving she can tackle traditional recipes along with more innovative, unique flavors like rosemary caramel apple or bourbon bacon pecan. “I had all these grand ideas of an everchanging menu, and it’s been fun sort of scaling down to what people really like while also challenging their more adventurous side,” she says. “Over the course of the spring and the summer, people have gotten way more adventurous and they trust us a lot more.” Both mini and 9-inch pies ($6-$26) are available at Morris’ weekly Findlay Market and Northside Farmers Market stands, though pre-ordering online is encouraged for the latter. And specialty pre-orders can even incorporate a range of whimsical crust designs, such as a cutout of Hillary Clinton’s face or the Cincinnati skyline. The day my family visited Morris’ stand at Findlay Market, she was offering a selection of chocolate oatmeal, sweet potato and apple crumb pies. As someone whose eyes are bigger than their stomach, I ordered one of each to enjoy with a coffee I’d picked up earlier in

the morning. My family and I found a table outside and laid out our spoils. I put mine in the center as if I had intentions of sharing, then opted to start with a classic: sweet potato. The filling was smooth, creamy and buttery and had a mild, slightly nutty whole wheat crust. Unlike some recipes, it didn’t mask the natural flavor of the vegetable with sugar, but allowed the potato to shine with a fresh, minimalist approach. It felt light as a feather in my stomach; and, thinking back to all the carb-induced naps after Thanksgiving dinners of time’s past, would be a delicate encore to a dense feast. Next, my sister and I fenced with our forks to get to the chocolate oatmeal. Going in, I wasn’t sure what to expect from it, as my pie experiences thus far mostly centered around fruit filling. But it was thick and hearty and immediately reminded me of a granola bar in a pie form. Morris told me later that she enjoys taking her favorite meals, in this case oatmeal, and transforming them into recipes for her bakery. Notes of cinnamon brought the treat into the fall season. Cold, it was a tasty snack. But I think heating it up in the oven would really bring out its decadence. I saved the most anticipated for last:

apple crumb. Diced sweet and tart apples were housed within a whole wheat crust and topped with a crumbly mixture of sugar and spices. It didn’t have that heavy, congealed syrup that holds some fruit pies together. Instead, it depended on its crisp, fresh ingredients to round out the recipe. Morris says all of the apples used in her pies come from Backyard Orchard, a fruit business that offers local, low-spray produce. My trip to Teeny Pies took me out of my comfort zone in the best way possible. I dug into traditional flavors and tried some new ones I wouldn’t have normally gravitated toward in the past. While the 9-inch pies are perfect to bring to holiday dinners, the miniature ones can be added to stockings on the mantle, given as hostess gifts or even enjoyed solo in a portion that’s just enough. Though, you might have to stop yourself from eating more. Teeny Pies can be found at Findlay Market on Saturday and Sunday and at the Northside Farmers Market on Wednesday. For more information or to order pies, visit teenypies.com.

Find more restaurant NEWS AND reviews at CityBeat.com/food-drink

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C i t y B e at. c o m

’ve always been a devoted fan of pie. On birthdays, I turn my nose up at anything else. And on Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can be found at the dining table with one eye frantically staring at the counter while my grandma’s cherry-apple pie cools. So visiting a local bakery dedicated to the dish was just one step in my pilgrimage toward pie enlightenment. Teeny Pies opened in Cincinnati in early 2017. The moniker is taken from the name of owner Teeny Morris and is also a play on her company’s size (tiny; she’s her only employee) and her menu, which features individual small-scale pies. The petite fare is inspired by her childhood, when her mother would give her an arsenal of miniature tools — rolling pins and pans scaled down to her size — to bake alongside her. But to find the true origin of Teeny Pies, one must start with the “Tour of Pie.” Morris was living in Chicago and working as an actress when she could no longer ignore the praise she was receiving from friends about her pie recipes or her inner desire to bake full time. With no speciality shops in the area dedicated to pie, she decided she needed to go elsewhere to gain more baking and business experience. Morris searched for female bakers across the country with successful business models to replicate and volunteered her time for a month at each location, stopping at pie shops in cities including Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston, to name a few. “I wanted women specifically who were good at their jobs and had the confidence and the wherewithal to open their own successful bakeries,” she says. For lodging, she’d reach out to friends or family of friends who lived in the area, paying rent in baked goods. While learning the ropes, Morris was approached by Workman Publishing in New York about writing a cookbook. She started working on Teeny’s Tour of Pies the last six months of her journey, then moved to Washington D.C. and took another six months to finalize her recipes.

THE DISH

Voted BEST INDIAN for 16 Years

Dinner 5 off 2ndEntree

$ 00

$5 Off Carryout Entree. Good Only at Ambar India. Only 2 Coupons Per Party, Per Table. Expires 12/22/17

3 off

$ 00

2nd Lunch Entree

$3 Off Carryout Entree. Good Only at Ambar India. Only 2 Coupons Per Party, Per Table. Expires 12/22/17

350 Ludlow Ave • 513-281-7000 Additional Parking Available in Clifton Business Lot (next to Clifton Market)

fe aturing all local dr afts cr aft beer menu nk y’s original bourbon bar

fo od s pecia l s Monday-Thursday $7 burgers $8 flatbread PiZZ as

liv e m us i c november 24 aMy McFarland

Hand-Crafted Pecan Pie bonbonerie.com

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

november 25 Kevin Fox

(859) 5 81-3 0 65 p o m pi li o s .co m 6 0 0 wa s h i n g to n av e . n e w p o r t, k y

Hawaiian-Inspired Poke Lands in OTR BY AU S T I N G AY L E

Already fitted with nearly every type of brother at his side, Kilbacak put together a cuisine, ranging from barbecue and pizza schedule to take advantage of his time in to Japanese fusion, Over-the-Rhine is addthe Aloha State, with surf sessions stacked ing a hula skirt to its arsenal. Poke Hut Fish on top of hikes and hula dances. With time & Tea Bar, a Hawaiian-inspired seafood at a premium, the trio sought out fast-casual spot specializing in poke bowls and burnative cuisine in between waves, a search ritos, hosted its soft opening last week. that ultimately led them to Hawaiian poke. Poke (pronounced POE-KAY) is already Kilbacak and friends stumbled upon a available in the neighborhood in small shack serving fresh poke bowls. The three doses (see: Quan Hapa, Kaze), but no then took their findings to a vacant liferestaurant has pushed it to the forefront of guard house to enjoy their food within arm’s its menu like Poke Hut. Owners Sally Lin reach of crashing waves and the sunset. and her fiancé Baret Kilbacak hope to feed Hoping to recreate this beachside expethe Queen City’s budding desire for the rience at home, Kilbacak called on a family trendy dish. friend, Ryan Ye, to help him and Lin bring “I think it’s perfect for Cincinnati,” Lin Poke Hut to fruition. says. “OTR is such a vibrant community, so I’m surprised that it doesn’t have much poke yet.” Publications like Business Insider and Bloomberg (and Huff Po and People), have recognized the highprotein, customizable bowl as the biggest fastcasual food trend this year. A quick search of #pokebowl on Instagram and you will uncover celebrities posting photos of their poke, recipes for how to make your own and foodblogger snaps galore. For Poke Hut, Lin and Build your own bowls and burritos at Poke Hut. Kilbacak are pulling from the beaches of Hawaii and PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER California to transform the traditional poke model into something more modern. Most recently a sushi and seafood spe“In its most traditional form, poke is just cialist in New York, Ye moved to Cincinnati fish, usually tuna, simply marinated in to become Poke Hut’s manager and chef. scallions, onions and soy sauce, served Previously, he has followed his passion for over a bed of rice,” Lin says. “The way we’re the kitchen across the country, going from doing it is more of a fusion poke, similar to Alabama to Philadelphia and several stops what you see in California, where there’s in between to continue to refi ne his craft. a lot more topping options and different “I learned a lot about raw fish and the proteins.” restaurant business,” Ye says. “I learned Poke Hut offers its fair share of raw fish how to keep fish the most fresh. That’s the favorites (spicy tuna, scallops, salmon) in most important thing about this kind of addition to cooked chicken, pork, beef and restaurant, keeping the ingredients the shrimp, with tofu and veggies for vegetarmost fresh.” ians. Start with a base for your bowl or In addition to its comestibles, Poke Hut burrito, like sushi rice or zucchini noodles, pairs its food with a range of bubble and then add a protein, pick a sauce (sweet milk teas (an Asian-inspired beverage; Lin’s miso, spicy yuzu, shoyu sesame, etc.) and family is from China) and specialty drinks. top it with items ranging from radish and “One of my favorites is the strawberry pineapple to hot Cheetos and masago. matcha latte,” Lin says. “It’s going to be a Aligning with busy go-getters dining on a green bubble tea with strawberry purée, so budget, Poke Hut offers its signature bowls that’s going to be really refreshing.” and “Pokirritos” for just $9.50, with buildAnd Lin has made sure to pump in as your-options topping out at around $15. much Hawaii into the restaurant as pos“It’s great for OTR because there are a sible. The televisions run a live stream of lot of really good food options here, but waves crashing onto a Hawaiian beach they’re not fast-casual,” Lin says. “You while tropical, easy-going music plays over have to spend hours if you want to go the speakers. somewhere and eat. It always turns into a PokeHut Fish & Tea Bar is located at whole evening ordeal.” 1509 Race St., Over-the-Rhine. Find more Co-owner Kilbacak first had poke on a info at pokehutusa.com. trip to Hawaii. With a close friend and his

CLASSES & EVENTS THURSDAY 23

Thanksgiving at Coppin’s— Enjoy a Southern-style Turkey Day buffet at Coppin’s. Menu highlights include free-range turkey with gravy and cranberry chutney, sweet potato and parsnip casserole with oat marshmallow streusel, and bourbon pecan pie. RSVP to 866-501-1700. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. $55 adults; $45 seniors; $18 kids under 12. Hotel Covington, 638 Madison Ave, Covington, Ky., hotelcovington.com/dining/ coppins. Fall Feast — The goal of this Give Back Cincinnati event is to “change our community for the better through celebration, connection and the passion to serve others.” One of the largest Thanksgiving meals in the area, it also includes free coats, free haircuts, free flu shots, a free health clinic, big-screen TVs to watch the Thanksgiving Day Parade/ football and more. 9 a.m. doors open; feast 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Free. Duke Energy Convention Center, 525 Elm St., Downtown, fallfeast.org/ fallfeast-event. Feed the Hungry and Homeless at Le’s Pho and Sandwiches — Le’s will be serving a hot turkey dinner for anyone in need or anyone spending Thanksgiving away from their families. Contact Huyen Bui (either message her online or stop into the restaurant) if you would like to donate food or time. 11 a.m.-2 p.m. 3 E. Court St., Downtown, searchable on Facebook.

Thanksgiving at La Petite France — This Frenchinspired Thanksgiving buffet features a traditional turkey feast with all the trimmings, plus unique dining options including frog legs Provençal, escargots and mushroom, baked ham in champagne, vegetable ratatouille, pâté maison and plenty of international cheeses. RSVP to 513733-81383. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. $34.95 adults; $15.95 children 5-12. La Petite France, 3177 Glendale-Milford Road, Evendale, lapetitefrance.biz. Thanksgiving at Metropole at 21c — Includes a familystyle prix fixe menu featuring an Elwood Stock Farm roasted turkey with rutabaga, charred cranberry relish and natural jus. An a la carte menu will also be available. RSVP to 513-578-6660. 2-8 p.m. $54 prix fixe. Metropole, 609 Walnut St., Downtown, metropoleonwalnut.com. Thanksgiving at Parkers Blue Ash Tavern — This annual Thanksgiving Day buffet features creative and traditional dishes including hearth-roasted turkey, slowroasted prime rib, “Grandma’s Traditional Dressing,” tavern mac and cheese, green bean casserole, a seafood bar and homemade desserts. RSVP to 513-891-8300. Noon-7 p.m. $42 adults; $20 kids 5-10; free 4 and younger. 4200 Cooper Road, Blue Ash, parkersblueash.com.

Thanksgiving at Prime — Thanksgiving lunch and dinner! The brunch buffet kicks things off at 10:30 a.m.

FRIDAY 24

Black Friday Brews — Head to Brink for the release of several dark specialty beers. 1 p.m.-midnight. Free admission. Brink Brewing Co., 5905 Hamilton Ave., College Hill, brinkbrewing.com. Fall Bourbon Dinner Cruise — Take in the changing fall leaves from the deck of a BB Riverboat. The evening includes a dinner buffet and a selection of Kentucky bourbon. 7:30-10 p.m. sailing time. $60 adults; $40 children; $27 adults sightseeing only; $18 children sightseeing only. BB Riverboats, 101 Riverboat Row, Newport, Ky., bbriverboats.com.

Stocking StufferS  HoSteSS giftS corporate / employee giftS  party favorS favoriteS for family & friendS

(513) 531-5196 Oakley Square Montgomery Sq. Shopping Center www.aglamesis.com

Schneider’s Since 1939 Try Our Delicious Opera Creams, Our Most Popular Candy, a Greater Cincinnati Specialty! Made With Pure, Rich Cream to Tantalize the Taste Buds and to Create the Ultimate Creams. Other Specialties Include Fudges, Caramels, Cordial Cherries, Pecan Caramelettes, and SO MUCH MORE! Homemade Candies & Ice Cream

The Best Gift Choice for Your Friends, Employees & Clients!

Opera Cream Our Specialty

420 Fairfield Ave • Bellevue, KY Just East of 471 Bridge & Newport Levee on Rt 8 859-431-3545 • www.schneiderscandies.com

SATURDAY 25

Intro to Macaron Baking — Macaron Bar hosts this class to teach the basics of macaron making. Over the course of three hours, you’ll learn the best tips and tricks for making successful macarons, how to bake the cookie shells and how to make the bakery’s most popular fillings. 10 a.m.-1 p.m. $95. Macaron Bar, 1206 Main St., Over-theRhine, macaron-bar.com. Wild Herbs for First Aid with Abby Artemisia — Many of today’s medicines are synthesized from naturally occurring chemicals in wild plants. Work with wild herbs to make your own therapeutic and toning formulas with tips and tricks for safely and ethically harvesting and making your own first aid remedies. 2-4 p.m. $20 members; $29 non-members. Krippendorf Lodge, Cincinnati Nature Center, 4949 Tealtown Road, Milford, cincynature.org.

NEW LOCATION

NOW OPEN

Sun-Thurs 11am - 9pm Fri-Sat 11am - 11pm 4 1 7 2 H a m i l t o n av e C i n C i n n at i o H , 4 5 2 2 3

513-978-0619

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

Thanksgiving at Presidents Room — A celebration of food and gratitude that includes the restaurant’s most popular fall menu items and a traditional turkey dinner, plus live music. RSVP at OpenTable. 11 a.m.-7 p.m. Prices vary. The Presidents Room, 812 Race St., Downtown, thepresidentsrm.com.

with a carving station, mac and cheese, assorted quiche, apple-sausage cornbread stuffing, Grippo’s pretzelcrusted brownies and more. A plated dinner follows at 3 p.m. (in addition to the regular dinner menu) with turkey, ham, stuffing, mash, cranberry sauce, green beans and mac and cheese. RSVP at OpenTable or 513-5790720. Buffet: 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m.; $39. Dinner: Starts at 3 p.m.; $35. 580 Walnut St., Downtown, bit.ly/2jocNQm.

Holidays making people smile

Junker’s Thanksgiving Chinese Buffet — Grab some Szechuan veggies and General Tso’s chicken and

skip the bland turkey. Food is free if you’re a drinking/paying/tipping customer. 8:30 p.m.-1 a.m. Free. Junker’s Tavern, 4156 Langland Ave., Northside, facebook.com/ northsidecincy.

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Thanksgiving at Golden Lamb — A multi-course menu featuring a starter relish platter and a second course of salad, onion soup or cottage cheese followed by a third course of oven-roasted turkey breast, carved tenderloin beef or local mushroom ravioli. Desserts range from pumpkin pie to Shaker sugar pie. RSVP to 513-932-5065. $26.95-$35.95 adults; $14.95 kids. 27 S. Broadway St., Lebanon, goldenlamb.com.

yys Over 100 years of aipp H a d l Happy o

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

MUSIC

An Outsider Out of the Shadows Despite not fitting any Country or Americana stereotypes, Tyler Childers is finally attracting some industry spotlight BY G R EG O RY G AS TO N

C i t y B e at. c o m | n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

n beautiful but hardscrabble Eastern Kentucky, among the coal mines, hollows and opioids, a certain kind of mountain music reigns supreme. Along with Kentucky native Sturgill Simpson, one of its greatest emissaries is Tyler Childers, a young, new artist who blends Bluegrass with a hard Country edge to celebrate Appalachia’s soul. Nestled in the timber-lined hills of coal country lies Lawrence County, Ky., where Childers grew up, not too far from Butcher Hollow, the birthplace of Country music’s queen, Loretta Lynn. Like Lynn, Childers’ father worked in the coal industry his whole life. Now 27 years old, Childers was weaned on Hank Williams, Ricky Skaggs (another local Kentucky boy who made good) and Drive-By Truckers, an unlikely trio of influences that shaped much of the early music Childers made with his band, The Foodstamps. Last summer, Childers released his first full-length album with label distribution, Purgatory. Since then, he’s been selling out clubs across the country thanks to the album’s strong critical reception and well-earned grassroots following, particularly in Kentucky, Ohio and Tennessee. (Childers’ frequent appearances in Greater Cincinnati certainly had something to do with his upcoming back-to-back shows at the Southgate selling out well in advance). With its clutch of great songs, Childers’ livewire tenor rasp and a raw urgency, Purgatory instantly became one of the contenders for Roots Record of the Year. It doesn’t hurt that Sturgill Simpson, one of AltCountry’s brightest stars, co-produced the album (Simpson’s first outside production effort) with David Ferguson, Johnny Cash’s former sound engineer. By phone before a recent show in Lawrence, Kan., Childers talked about what has and hasn’t changed with his newfound success. “Well, I’m getting more likes on Facebook now,” he says with a chuckle.” Like his music, there’s no gloss or varnish in Childers’ voice, just a puregrain, unadulterated throaty yelp that he’s perfected over the years “I grew up listening to Hank, singing ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues’ and trying to get my whine down or my hiccup — that yodel of sorts,” he says. “I listened to a lot of

Ricky Skaggs’ Country stuff. That’s kind of the sound I’m looking for — enough grass to make it blue, but just as much Honky Tonk, like bar-band Country.” Every cut on Purgatory swaggers, with rousing outlaw anthems like “Whitehouse Road” ringing out. Childers’ lyrics are consistently quote-worthy: “Get me drinking that moonshine/Get me higher than the grocery bill/Take my troubles to the highwall/We been sniffing that cocaine/Ain’t nothing better when the wind cuts cold/ Lord it’s a mighty hard livin’/But a damn good feelin’ to run these roads.” Other key phrases of his — such as “fierce abandon” from “I Swear (To God)” — capture the feral, ecstatic quality in Childers’ voice and music. An irreverent fervor shrouds the songs on Purgatory, and whether in pursuit of love, drugs or an open road, his characters revel in letting loose and following their own counsel, consequences be damned. This is not the check-cashing Country music played on radio today, but a much more soulful, dangerous variety. It’s part of a fugitive lineage that sometimes includes echoes of Waylon Jennings, Steve Earle and Simpson himself — each an iconoclast with singular voices. But Childers is also open to other genres, as evidenced during recent shows by a solo acoustic version of Pink Floyd’s “Time.” Ironically, Childers says he learned how to sing with such intensity in a sacred place. “I’ve grown up in church and Gospel music was a big thing — and Bluegrass — but I just think of that music my buddies and I listened to growing up in the hills, it was as meshed together as what people now call Americana,” he says. “We just played whatever we could get ahold of. If we were at a party and we had a banjo, a mandolin and guitar or 10 guitars, that’s what we played that night. “I’m chasing a feeling more than a sound and I try to reflect that in my turns of phrases. Growing up in church, people would get up and sing, and the conviction reflected in their vocals; I try to carry that in my sound.” Childers doesn’t fit any Country or Roots musician stereotypes. Even his liner notes and album dedication run far outside of Nashville boundaries, as he casually tosses off quotes from unexpected foundational influences like iconic

Tyler Childers P H O T O : D a v i d mcc l i ster

Beat writer Jack Kerouac. “My mom dropped me off at a bookstore in eighth grade and I picked up this book, and it said on the back, ‘Sex, Jazz and drugs,’ and I was like, ‘Cool, I want to read this one,” Childers says of his introduction to Kerouac. “And I have made a point of trying to reread it every year. I think what stuck with me (as far as) my obsession with Kerouac was just the stream of consciousness, the ‘say what you mean and mean what you say.’ If you’re trying to write genuinely and you have to think too hard on it, then it isn’t too genuine now is it? That’s what I’ve always tried to do in all my life experiences and writing about it, it’s like, ‘Well, how’s that make you feel?’ ” “Universal Sound,” Purgatory’s penultimate song, unveils Childers’ philosophical yen and cosmic yearning, another

renegade trait (and one he shares with his friend and producer Simpson). Compellingly, ’60s mystic visionary Ram Dass is another big inspiration. “East Kentucky, Baptist good ol’ boy, eighth grade and I was reading these books by this guy who was raised Catholic but created his own personal belief system with Catholicism meshed together with Buddhism,” Childers says of his discovery of Dass. “(It) turned me on early to the idea of taking an honest assessment of your heart and if it doesn’t jive with the culture around you, then maybe the culture could be wrong.” Tyler Childers plays sold-out shows Nov. 30 and Dec. 1 at Southgate House Revival. More info: southgatehouse.com.

SPILL IT

That’s a Wrap: The 2017 CEAs BY M I K E B R EEN

On Nov. 19, members of the Greater CinAltRock band Sylmar, who backed singer/ cinnati music community packed Memorial MC Audley for a dynamic, genre-crossing Hall in Over-the-Rhine to celebrate 20 years set, and transcendent, harmony-rich Altof the Cincinnati Entertainment Awards, Folk greats Young Heirlooms. as well as (and most importantly) some of New Artist of the Year nominees Carrithe best local music acts of 2016 and 2017. ers opened their mesmerizing set with a It was a great night full of love for not haunting tribute to Tom Petty. The band’s only Cincinnati musicians, but also those performance also gave a nod to a couple who support them. Northern Kentucky’s of groups with Cincinnati roots that have beloved radio outlet WNKU, a dedicated gone on to huge international success. and longtime supporter of local music, was Sitting in with the band as a specialsurprised with a special “Best Cincinnati guest rhythm section were The National Ambassador” CEA, after ceasing operations drummer Bryan Devendorf and Afghan earlier this year due to Northern Kentucky Whigs bassist John Curley, whose bands University selling it off. each released one of the best albums There were numerous excellent performances by CEA nominees and other local artists throughout the show. After nominees and fans packed into the venue via the red carpet — where The Fairmount Girls were once again on hand to size up revelers for the Fashion Trashies, with awards given out later at the after party — The Hiders, one of the most creatively consistent and consistently great Cincinnati bands, kicked off the CEAs with a three-song set. The band likely picked up a lot of new Noah Smith accepting the Singer/Songwriter CEA fans, as did the performers who followed, including PHOTO: CHUCK LOF TICE

2017 CEA Winners:

1345 main st motrpub.com

Fox News Says Kiss Off

KISS bassist Gene Simmons recently caused a ruckus while visiting Fox News (he was also to appear on the Fox Business Network). While at Fox HQ, Simmons reportedly defended and joked about Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual assaults, while also ripping his shirt open and yelling, “Hey chicks, sue me” after barging in on a staff meeting. The network banned him for life as a result. Simmons later offered a weak apology (he’s sorry if he “unintentionally offended” anyone) but said reports of his behavior were “highly exaggerated and misleading,” which rings about as authentic as President Trump bragging about how deeply humble he is. What’s the greater badge of honor — getting banned from Fox News, or banning Rock & Roll’s most detestable figures?

Rockin’ Space

Forty years ago, NASA launched a pair of gold-plated phonographic records full of spoken messages and an array of earthly music into deep space (the “Voyager Golden Record” was recently issued as a box set). Those crafts — currently billions of miles from Earth — are getting some help in their efforts to communicate to extraterrestrials what life on Earth is/was like. In honor of its 25th anniversary, Spain’s Sónar Electronic music festival sent a radio transmission with curated clips of music by artists like Modeselektor and Jean-Michel Jarre to an “exoplanet” with a climate believed to be conducive to life. A second transmission is slated for April.

wed 22

ernie johnson from detroit

thu 23

escape the family plan! open at 7pm

fri 24

coastal club northbound

s at 25

the lovers

sun 26

swarming branch future science: sketch comedy

mon 27

tba

tue 28

word of mouth: open poetry writer’s night w/ lucas

free live music open for lunch

1404 main st (513) 345-7981

Dumb Patriot

11 /24

11 /25

psychodots annual thanksgiving show

dawg yawp homecoming show/live video shoot

11 /26 a madcap christmas carol 11 /27

diet cig sammi lanzetta, vanity creeps

buy tickets at motr or woodwardtheater.com

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

In an attempt to capitalize on the misguided backlash against NFL players expressing their opinion by not standing for the national anthem, a Country music “star” released a ridiculous song that was met with widespread ridicule. As many pointed out, Neal McCoy’s “Take a Knee, My Ass” is hilariously titled (unintentionally), seeming to suggest it’s a song about anal knee sex (which is fi ne — don’t kink-shame). Someone must’ve pointed that out to McCoy, but instead of retitling the track, a clunky parenthetical — “(I Won’t Take a Knee)” — was deemed sufficient. It seemed impossible that someone would one day put out a song so panderingly patriotic, it makes Toby Keith’s post-9/11 “Courtesy Of The Red, White And Blue (The Angry American)” come off like the 21st century’s “This Land is Your Land,” but here we are.

Contact Mike Breen: mbreen@citybeat.com

BY M I K E B R EE N

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Bluegrass: Rumpke Mountain Boys Country: 90 Proof Twang Folk/Americana: The Tillers World Music/Reggae: Elementree Livity Project Rock: Mad Anthony Metal/Hardcore/Hard Rock: Lift the Medium Singer/Songwriter: Noah Smith Indie/Alternative: The Yugos Punk: Lipstick Fiction Blues: Noah Wotherspoon R&B/Funk/Soul: BLVCK Seeds Jazz: Blue Wisp Big Band Hip Hop: SPEED Walton Electronic: Moonbeau Best Live Act: SPEED Walton Best Music Video: Wonky Tonk – “Four Letter Word” Album Of The Year: Dawg Yawp – Dawg Yawp New Artist Of the Year: Joesph Artist Of The Year: Dawg Yawp

of 2017 (Sleep Well Beast and In Spades, respectively). Judging from the jaw-dropped response of the audience, Neo Soul powerhouse Lauren Eylise was the biggest revelatory moment of the night, while Synth Pop group Moonbeau brought its joyous dance party to the CEAs. Decked out in a sweet patterned suit that looked like an explosion at an ’80s music-video graphic design office, singer/guitarist Christian Gough accepted both Moonbeau’s CEA in the Electronic category and the Indie/Alternative award for his other band, The Yugos, while setting up to perform. The night ended with WNKU’s Aaron Sharpe and Liz Felix accepting the Best Cincinnati Ambassador award and being serenaded with a rocked-up version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” by This Pine Box, one of many area groups that benefited from the exposure WNKU provided. A band of young students from the School of Rock outpost in Mason, Ohio showed that the future of local music is in good hands, closing out the CEAs with joyful versions of the Talking Heads’ classics “This Must Be the Place” and “Burning Down the House.” Visit citybeat.com for more on this year’s event, inluding video of the entire show.

MINIMUM GAUGE

SOUND ADVICE On a single listen, Surreal Number might seem off putting, if not nearly impenetrable, but like an initially disorienting ride on a particularly circuitous rollercoaster, repeated exposure ultimately leads to fervent expectation for the next experience — and the next and next. (Brian Baker)

Swarming Branch P H O T O : r ya n m i l l e r

Swarming Branch

C i t y B e at. c o m | nov. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

WE’RE HUNGRY!

SEND RESTAURANT TIPS, NEWS AND PRESS RELEASES TO EATS@CITYBEAT.COM

Sunday • MOTR Pub The Columbus, Ohio music scene is a lot like our own in that there is an abundance of great bands in the area but there isn’t a representative sound tying them all together. That scene’s diversity is exemplified throughout the latest Swarming Branch full-length, Surreal Number, released last spring on Northern Kentucky’s SofaBurn Records. It is the band’s first collection of new material since 2013’s acclaimed and beautifully erratic Classic Glass. Just as no single sound characterizes the city of Columbus, Swarming Branch is equally determined to maintain their uniquely unclassifiable sonic profile on Surreal Number. Frontman Andrew Graham has explained that the album’s title refers to a mathematical system that includes real numbers and infinite and infinitesimal numbers, which is a good description of an album that features an encyclopedic range of styles. Graham himself shifts his vocal stance from Ray Davies’ dance hall days to Mike Scott’s laconic passion in the Waterboys to Jonathan Richman’s naïve smirk in the service of wonderfully obtuse lyricism that channels Brian Eno, David Byrne and Marc Bolan. Meanwhile, vocalist/guitarist Graham and the band, including longtime studio keyboardist Dane Terry and producer Rob Barbato on bass, feints and jabs with a soundtrack that conjures up visions of acid-tinged Folk Disco, Pop-pasted New Wave, 8-bit Synth Pop, pinwheeling carnival Rock, Gospel Glam and anything else that might erupt from the bubbling sonic cauldron in which they mix up their whimsical musical medications. For Surreal Number, Swarming Branch steered away from the single-minded experimentalism of its earlier output — the aforementioned Classic Glass and 2010’s Andrew Graham’s Good Word, as well as music dating back to when the group went by the name RTFO Bandwagon — to create actual songs featuring the group’s crackedprism refraction of structure, genre and historical context.

Diet Cig PHOTO: Daniel Dorsa

Diet Cig with Sammi Lanzetta and Vanity Creeps

Monday • Woodward Theater Three years ago, budding vocalist/guitarist Alex Luciano walked up to Earl Boykins drummer Noah Bowman and asked him for a lighter in the middle of the band’s house-show set. Intrigued by Luciano’s passion and refreshing lack of calculated ambition, Bowman proposed that they should attempt to write together, leading to the new project opening for Earl Boykins. Luciano thought that was the extent of her involvement with Bowman, until he called to let her know he’d secured studio time to record a few of their Garage/Punk/ Pop songs. The resulting five-song EP, Over Easy, was the first volley in Diet Cig’s improbable success story. Through a regimen of constant touring, Diet Cig built a fiercely loyal fan base that eagerly devoured Over Easy and the band’s follow-up 7-inch release, “Sleep Talk”/”Dinner Date.” That slight but potent catalog attracted the attention of Frenchkiss Records honcho Syd Butler, who signed the duo for a debut full-length, the short but compelling Swear I’m Good at This, which was released last April to rave reviews. The significant difference between Diet Cig’s initial releases and latest album is that its earliest songs were also Luciano’s first attempts at songwriting, which she did alone in the creative vacuum of her bedroom, while the songs on Swear I’m Good at This are more collaborative between Bowman and Luciano. The other obvious difference is that Luciano has become a better guitarist in the crucible of hundreds of shows, and the already strong chemistry

859.431.2201

111 E 6th St Newport, KY 41071

Future Sounds

live MusiC

Exhumed – Dec. 3, Northside Yacht Club Milo – Dec. 14, Urban Artifact St. Vincent – Jan. 11, Taft Theatre Los Lobos – Jan. 25, Memorial Hall Aimee Mann – Jan. 26, Madison Theater Davy Knowles – Jan. 26, Southgate House Revival Blues Traveler – Feb. 16, Bogart’s Valerie June – Feb. 21, Memorial Hall I’m With Her – March 5, Memorial Hall

Kamasi Washington

The Mountain Goats – April 12, Woodward Theater

PHOTO: JAMIE-JAMES MEDINA

no Cover

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE SOUTHGATE HOUSE LOUNGE OR TICKETFLY.COM

Wednesday 11/22

11/22 Get Stuffed On LOcaL MuSic: fROntieR fOLK neBRaSKa, KRYStaL PeteRSOn & tHe Queen citY Band, 500 MiLeS tO MeMPHiS, WiLdeR, LOSt cOaSt, JeSS LaMB and tHe factORY, VeROnica GRiM & tHe HeaVY HeaRtS, We’Re WitcHeS!, tHe RattLetRaPS, tHe GROVe, tHe tuRnStiLeS, JiMS, MOOnBOW, nOaH SMitH, caMP SuGaR, LiSaK & ROWe, StitcHeS & SeaMS

CLOSED: Happy Thanksgiving!

11/24 funKSGiVinG WitH fReeKBaSS; RicKY nYe inc. 11/25 SMOKe HeaLeR RecORd ReLeaSe PaRtY, tHe WHiSKeY SHaMBLeS, LOVecRuSH 88; tHe ReVeRend PeYtOn’S BiG daMn Band, JOe’S tRucK StOP; KeitH JOneS & tHe MaKeSHiftS, dannY dean 11/26 dOnna LeiSt MeMORiaL fundRaiSeR: tHe Medicine Men, WaRSaW faLcOnS, RicKY nYe & tHe Red HOtS; tHe faBuLOuS BYuRd BRainS ReuniOn / 7” ReLeaSe PaRtY, We aRe SnaPdRaGOn 11/29 nOaH SMitH - nOV aRtiSt in ReSidence

between her and Bowman has grown immeasurably over the past year. Even with the more deliberate approach that Luciano and Bowman are taking with writing and recording, the pair’s focus remains firmly focused on having the best possible time. And even as Luciano’s lyrics become more reflective and revealing — on “Barf Day” she sings, “I just wanna have ice cream on my birthday/Blow out candles and wish all my pain away” — there is little doubt that the enthusiasm, energy and joy that characterizes every Diet Cig show is as authentic as a Tennessee accent and as infectious as a baby’s laugh. Take a big, healthy drag off of Diet Cig and prepare for the time of your punk-ass life. (BB)

Kamasi Washington with Moonchild

W W W . S O U TH G A TE H O U S E.COM

Thursday 11/23 Friday 11/24

The Steve Schmidt Trio w/ Trumpeter Eric Lechliter 8-12

saTurday 11/25 The Steve Schmidt Trio w/ Vocalist/Trumpeter Dan Radank 8-12

CoCktails

fireplaCes

Wed. - Fri. open @ 4pm | Sat. open @ 6pm 125 West Fourth st. | CinCinnati, ohio 45202

www.BromwellsHarthLounge.com

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

| C I T Y B E AT. C O M

Tuesday • Taft Theatre To quantify Kamasi Washington’s music as “Jazz” is almost a disservice. Washington most definitely quacks like a Jazz duck, but his walk encompasses the stuttering rhythms of Hip Hop, the perfect bombast of Fusion and the frenetic pacing of Indie Rock, all within the general context of Jazz. Comparisons to John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme are both appropriate and woefully inadequate; like David S. Pumpkins, Washington’s sprawling 3-disc introduction to the wider world, 2015’s The Epic, is its own thing. Washington did not suddenly spring from the head of Zeus two years ago as the fully formed savior of Jazz. The Los Angeles native graduated from Hamilton High School’s Academy of Music and Performing Art, winning the John Coltrane

Music Competition in his last year there. He enrolled in the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology, where he played with faculty members Gerald Wilson, Kenny Burrell and Billy Higgins before going pro. Early 2000s session-work credits include Ryan Adams’ Gold and Blackberry Belle by Greg Dulli’s Twilight Singers. After an album with the Young Jazz Giants, Washington self-released his debut, 2005’s Live at 5th Street Dick’s, followed by The Proclamation in 2007 and Light of the World in 2008. During this period he also played with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra and did sessions with Herbie Hancock, Stanley Clarke, Snoop Dogg, George Duke, Nas, Harvey Mason, Raphael Saadiq and many others. In 2015, Washington appeared on Kendrick Lamar’s landmark Hip Hop album, To Pimp a Butterfly, playing sax and arranging strings. Not long after Butterfly’s release, Washington dropped The Epic to almost universal acclaim. The album peaked at No. 3 on Billboard’s Jazz chart and earned a spot on a number of year-end best-of lists, with reviewers nearly breathless in their praise of Washington’s evolutionary and populist creation. His Harmony of Difference EP came out in September, offering a much more brief but potent follow-up to The Epic, featuring compositions that were woven together in a suite written for an exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Biennial 2017. The release is further evidence that, while Washington fits perfectly into Jazz’s historical lineage, he also deftly transcends the genre and is bound for legendary status within the broader framework of music as a whole. (BB)

The Burning Caravan 8-11

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 22

20th Century Theater Thanksgiving Eve Food Drive with Carriers, Soften and Aaron Collins. 8 p.m. Indie Rock/Roots/Various. $10.

Arnold’s Bar and Grill - The Tillers. 5 p.m. Folk. Free.

Bogart’s – ’90s Grunge Night with Hollow: A Tribute To Alice In Chains, STP2, Seven Circle Sunrise, Dirty Frank and Lift The Medium. 8 p.m. Grunge. $12. BrewRiver GastroPub - Old Green Eyes & Bbg. 9 p.m. Jazz. Free. Jim and Jack’s on the River - Bobby McClendon. 9 p.m. Country Knotty Pine - Under The Sun. 10 p.m. Rock/ Alternative The Liberty Inn - Stagger Lee. 7 p.m. Acoustic. Free. Mansion Hill Tavern Johnny Fink & The Intrusion. 9 p.m. Blues. $4. McCauley’s Pub - K.J. Summerville. 7 p.m. Acoustic. Free. MOTR Pub - Ernie Johnson From Detroit. 9:30 p.m. Afrobeat/Funk/ Jazz. Free.

Northside Tavern - Us, Today, Lung and When Particles Collide. 10 p.m. Indie/Alternative/Various. Free.

Octave - Octave’s “Gobble Wobble” with Aytika, Timepeace and Fursur. 8 p.m. Electronic/ Experimental/DJ/Various. $20 (food/four drinks Included).

C i t y B e at. c o m | n o v. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

Plain Folk Café Hickory Robot. 7:30 p.m. Bluegrass/Americana. Free.

Rick’s Tavern - Top This Band. 10 p.m. R&B. $5. Urban Artifact - Blue Wisp Big Band. 8:30 p.m. Big Band Jazz. $10.

Thursday 23

Common Roots - Open Mic. 8 p.m. Various. Free.

Knotty Pine - Chalis. 10 p.m. Rock/Pop/Blues/ Various. Free.

Friday 24

Arnold’s Bar and Grill Chelsea Ford and The Trouble. 9 p.m. Folk/ Americana. Free. Bromwell’s Härth Lounge Eric Lechliter with The Steve Schmidt Trio. 8 p.m. Jazz. Free. College Hill Coffee Co. Dave Hawkins. 7:30 p.m. Folk. Free. The Comet - Xzela and Luna Bruja (album release show) with Blvck Seeds and Toph. 10 p.m. Hip Hop/Spoken Word/Various. Free.

The Greenwich - Sonny Moorman & Final Friday Blues with Johnny Neel. 8 p.m. Blues. $10. Jag’s Steak and Seafood - Pete Dressman & Soul Unified Nation. 9 p.m. Rock/ Various. $5. Jim and Jack’s on the River - Danny Frazier. 9 p.m. Country. Free. Knotty Pine - Final Order. 10 p.m. Rock. Cover. Live! at the Ludlow Garage - Christmas with The Celts. 8 p.m. Celtic/ Holiday. $25-$50.

Mansion Hill Tavern Chuck Brisbin & The Tuna Project. 9 p.m. Blues. $4. Marty’s Hops & Vines - Doug Kreitzer. 9 p.m. Acoustic. Free.

Plain Folk Café - Kevin Fox. 7:30 p.m. Acoustic. Free. The Redmoor - Soul Pocket. 9 p.m. Dance/Pop/R&B. $10. Rick’s Tavern - Roadtrip. 10 p.m. Rock/Pop/Various. $5. Rohs Street Café - The Transcendents. 8 p.m. Jazz. Silverton Café - Full Circle. 9 p.m. Rock. Free. Southgate House Revival (Lounge) Ricky Nye Inc. 9:30 p.m. Blues/Boogie Woogie. Free.

Southgate House Revival (Sanctuary) Funksgiving with Freekbass. 8 p.m. Funk/Various. $12, $15 day of show.

Urban Artifact - Natural Resources Defense Council Benefit with Dynamite Thunderpunch, Siren Suit, Disaster Class, Actual Italians and Grave Clothes. 8 p.m. Rock/Various. $5. Woodward Theater psychodots with Baoku. 8 p.m. Pop/Rock. $15, $18 day of show.

York Street Café Jazzopolis. 7 p.m. Jazz Fusion.

Saturday 25

20th Century Theater Smoooth. 7 p.m. R&B. Aronoff Center For The Arts - Straight No Chaser. 8 p.m. A Cappella. $39.50-$79.50.

Bogart’s - The Ragbirds. 8 p.m. Roots/Americana/Jam/ Various. $10.

Jag’s Steak and Seafood - My Sister Sarah. 9 p.m. Rock/Pop/Dance/Various. $5. Jim and Jack’s On The River - Deuces Wild. 9 p.m. Country. Free. Knotty Pine - 90 Proof Twang. 10 p.m. Country/ Rock. Cover.

Live! at the Ludlow Garage - Kory Caudill and Friends. 8 p.m. Singer/Songwriter. $15-$25. Madison Live - Danger Monkey (release show) with Blank State and R.I.N.D. 8 p.m. Rock. $8, $10 day of show.

Madison Theater - ThirdAnnual Double D Give Back Bash with Doghouse and The Drysdales. 8 p.m. Rock. $10, $15 day of show. Mansion Hill Tavern Prestige Grease. 9 p.m. Blues. $3. Marty’s Hops & Vines - Jason Erickson. 9 p.m. Various. Free. McCauley’s Pub - Pandora Project. 9 p.m. Rock. Free. The Mockbee - Queen City Soul Club with DJ Bryan A Dilsizian and DJ Grover. 10 p.m. Funk/Soul/Dance. Free. MOTR Pub - Royal Holland. 10 p.m. Indie Folk/Indie Rock. Free.

Northside Tavern - “Beat Faction”. 10 p.m. Alt/Dance/ DJ. Free. Northside Yacht Club Valid X Jaws That Bite, Off The Meat Rack, Beta Max, Haskell and Cody Kody. 9 p.m. Hip Hop.

(release show) with The Whiskey Shambles and Lovecrush 88. 8 p.m. Rock/ Various. $5. Southgate House Revival (Sanctuary) - Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band with Joe’s Truck Stop. 9 p.m. Roots/Various. $18, $20 day of show. Talon Tavern - Sonny Moorman Group. 9 p.m. Blues. Thompson House - Joe Ellis’ Loaded Up with Mix Fox, Gavyn Noble, Aprina and More. 7 p.m. Hip Hop. $10. Urban Artifact - Natural Resources Defense Council Benefit with Suck The Honey, Umin, Slow Glows, Sheldon R. Belcher and Toon Town. 8 p.m. Various. $5.

The Venue Cincinnati Trailer Park Floosies. 9:30 p.m. Dance/Pop/Rock/ Country/Various. Cover. Woodward Theater Dawg Yawp (Tiny Desk Tour Homecoming Show and Live Video Shoot). 8 p.m. Pop/Rock/Folk/Various. $12, $14 day of show.

York Street Café - Vernon Mcintyre’s Appalachian Grass. 8 p.m. Bluegrass. $5.

Sunday 26

Madison Live - Chandler Carter, Jaybee Lamahj, Allen4president and Isai Morales. 8 p.m. Hip Hop/R&B. $10.

Southgate House Revival (Sanctuary) - Donna Leist Memorial Fundraiser featuring The Medicine Men, Warsaw Falcons and Ricky Nye & The Red Hots. 3 p.m. Blues/ Various. $10.

Urban Artifact Conditional Critical, Lucis Absentia, Split The Abyss and Nithing. 7:30 p.m. Metal. $5.

Monday 27

The Greenwich - Baron Von Ohlen & The Flying Circus Big Band. 7:30 p.m. Jazz. $5 (or two canned-good donations for the FreeStore Foodbank). Incline Lounge At The Celestial - Tom Schneider. 6 p.m. Jazz. Free. Knotty Pine - Pete DeNuzio. 9 p.m. Acoustic. Free. The Mockbee - Oh Jam! presents Off Tha Block Mondays with Hosts Stallitix, Goodword, DJ Noah I Mean, Chestah T, Gift Of Gabi, Christian, Toph and Preston Bell Charles III. 10 p.m. Hip Hop. Free. Muggbees Bar & Grill Karaoke DJ. 8 p.m. Various. Free. Northside Tavern - The Qtet. 9:30 p.m. Various. Free. Woodward Theater Diet Cig with Sammi Lanzetta and Vanity Creeps. 8 p.m. $13, $15 day of show.

Tuesday 28

Mansion Hill Tavern - Open Blues Jam with Jimmy D. Rogers. 6 p.m. Blues. Free.

Arnold’s Bar and Grill Diamond Jim Dews. 7 p.m. Blues. Free.

Plain Folk Café - Missy Werner Band. 7:30 p.m. Bluegrass. Free.

MOTR Pub - Swarming Branch. 8 p.m. Indie Rock/ Various. Free.

College Hill Coffee Co. Ricky Nye. 7:30 p.m. Blues/ Boogie Woogie. Free.

Rick’s Tavern - Dangerous Jim and The Slims. 10 p.m. Rock/Various. $5.

Northside Tavern - The Tillers. 10 p.m. Folk/ Americana. Free.

Northside Tavern Tonefarmer, Darlene and Static Falls. 10 p.m. Indie/ Alternative/Rock/Pop. Free.

Eastgate Brew & View Encore Duo. 6:30 p.m. Acoustic Classic Rock/ Americana. Free.

Silverton Café - Balderdash. 9 p.m. Various. Free.

Sonny’s All Blues Lounge Blues Jam Session featuring Sonny’s All Blues Band. 8 p.m. Blues. Free.

Octave - Oh Kee Pa, Restless Leg String Band and Chris Houser. 8:30 p.m. Phish Tribute/Jam/ Bluegrass/Jamgrass/ Various. Cover.

The Greenwich - Radio Black. 8 p.m. Various. $10.

The Mockbee - DMVU, Chuck Diesel, Aytiko and Program. 9 p.m. Edm/ Dubstep. $10-$15. MOTR Pub - Coastal Club with Northbound. 10 p.m. Indie Rock/Pop. Free.

H H

Bromwell’s Härth Lounge Dan Radank with The Steve Schmidt Trio. 8 p.m. Free. Cincinnatian Hotel - Philip Paul Trio. 7 p.m. Jazz. Free.

Southgate House Revival (Lounge) - Keith Jones & The Makeshifts with Danny Dean. 9:30 p.m. Free. Southgate House Revival (Revival Room) - Smoke Healer

Southgate House Revival (Lounge) - The Fabulous Byurd Brains Reunion (Release Show). 3 p.m. Rock/Various. Free.

Irish Heritage Center - Dave Curley & Finn Magill. 7 p.m. Irish/Folk/ Celtic/Various. $18, $20 day of show.

Stanley’s Pub - Trashgrass Tuesday featuring members of Rumpke Mt. Boys. 9 p.m. Bluegrass. Cover. Taft Theatre - Kamasi Washington with Moonchild. 7 p.m. Jazz. $32.50-$42.50.

PUZZLE

Blue’s Clues

CLASSIFIEDS

By B rendan E mmett Q ui g le y

Ac r o s s

EMPLOYMENT Ameritas in Cincinnati, OH seeks Sr. Data Mgt. Dvlpr; fax resume to 402-467-7169 quoting job #SDMD17 PAID IN ADVANCE! Make $1000 A Week Mailing Brochures From Home! No Experience Required. Helping home workers since 2001! Genuine Opportunity. Start Immediately! www. AdvancedMailing.net HEALTH PREGNANT? CONSIDERING ADOPTION? Call us first. Living expenses, housing, medical, and continued support afterwards. Choose adoptive family of your choice. Call 24/7. 877-362-2401

59. Pump stuff 60. “Playwright of the Midwest” 61. Riotous state 62. Pump stuff 63. Country where you can spend kips 64. Some mowers Down

1. Blows chunks 2. Megaconglomerate of the “Mr. Robot” universe 3. Being tried, in law 4. Tripoli resident is a master chef? 5. Pulls a fast one on 6. Saluting word 7. Late September babies concealed one strong craving? 8. Comes to 9. Tour date 10. Like roads that are hard to pass on 11. Purposely defame a Cuban boy? 12. Chutzpah 13. Puts on 19. Madame Boothe Luce’s sex drive?

21. “Allow me” 27. Trade expo 29. “Actually,” initially 30. What may follow you 31. Tomorrow’s dinner ... and, cryptically, a hint to this puzzle’s theme 33. Baby ___ 34. Dean Baquet’s paper: Abbr. 35. Big name in body wash 38. Defense agcy. that tracks Santa on 12/24

41. Bog down 45. Takes one’s turn 46. Process, as sugar 47. Brazilian state whose capital is Salvador 50. “We’ll deal with this tomorrow” 51. Entertain 52. They’re just what the doctor ordered 53. Male-only 57. Stranded stuff 58. Ben Carson’s agcy.

MAKE THE CALL TO START GETTING CLEAN TODAY. Free 24/7 Helpline for alcohol & drug addiction treatment. Get help! It is time to take your life back! Call Now: 855-732-4139

855-620-9426. John C. Heath, Attorney at Law, PLLC, dba Lexington Law Firm. Dish Network-Satellite Television Services Now Over 190 channels for ONLY $49.99/ mo! HBO-FREE for one year, FREE Installation, FREE Streaming, FREE HD. Add Internet for $14.95 a month. 1-800-373-6508 Adult RELAXING BODY RUB Discreet. Experienced. Mon - Fri, 10am-8pm; Sat-Sun, 12pm-5pm. No blocked calls or text messages. (513) 4780278 by appt. Livelinks - Chat Lines. Flirt, chat and date! Talk to sexy real singles in your area. Call now! 1-844-359-5773

PENIS ENLARGEMENT PUMP. Get Stronger & Harder Erections Immediately. Gain 1-3 Inches Permanently & Safely. Guaranteed Results. FDA Licensed. Free Brochure: 1-800-354-3944 www.DrJoelKaplan.com MISC. Denied Credit?? Work to Repair Your Credit Report With The Trusted Leader in Credit Repair. Call Lexington Law for a FREE credit report summary & credit repair consultation.

L AST WEEK’S ANSWERS:

nov. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7 | C ity B eat. com

1. Ultimate matters 7. Spanish lake 11. Drop it! 14. It begins after the second intermission 15. “Checkmate, sucker!” 16. Unicorn’s coming-out day: Abbr. 17. Thief 18. Bread container in a deli 20. Wears around the edges 21. Really bother 22. Mortgages, e.g. 23. Weight watcher of children’s rhymes 24. “Rubyfruit Jungle” author Rita ___ Brown 25. Can-do 26. Easy-to-do 28. “Hurt” band, briefly 29. Crumbly white stuff 32. Camel dropping 33. Site of Mohammed’s tomb 36. Tar : ___ :: feather : pluma 37. Turner page-turner 39. Black stone 40. Publisher seen wearing a captain’s hat and a bathrobe 42. BDSM role 43. Shower affection (on) 44. “Noir Alley” channel 45. Capital of Zimbabwe 47. Ignoramus 48. Steely Dan album that comic Phil Hartman did the art for 49. Razzle dazzle 53. Drink in 54. AstroTurf alternative 55. Moth’s lure 56. Religious book split into surahs 58. Time off

Read us on your phone when you’re at the bar by yourself. the all-new

CItYBeat.COM

thelodgeky.com

1404 main st (513) 345-7981 1404 main st (513) 345-7981

C I T Y B E AT. C O M

N O V. 2 2 – 2 8 , 2 0 1 7

the Woodward theater thank You Happy Hour!

An evening in celebration of the Woodward’s winning campaign to restore our marquee

5pm, FridaY december 1st Featuring $2 pints of Rhinegeist draft from 5-9pm

NIGHT GARDEN RECORDING STUDIO

Seamless integration of the best digital gear and classics from the analog era including 2” 24 track. Wide variety of classic microphones, mic pre-amps, hardware effects and dynamics, many popular plug-ins and accurate synchronization between DAW and 2” 24 track. Large live room and 3 isolation rooms. All for an unbelievable rate. Event/Show sound, lighting and video production services available as well. Call or email Steve for additional info and gear list; (513) 368-7770 or (513) 729-2786 or sferguson. productions@gmail.com.

DISSOLVE YOUR MARRIAGE

Dissolution: An amicable end to marriage. Easier on your heart. Easier on your wallet. Starting at $500 plus court costs. 12 Hour Turnaround.

810 Sycamore St. 4th Fl, Cincinnati, OH 45202

513.651.9666

513-476-2365

DELIVERY CONTRACTORS NEEDED

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

lawn care | clean-up stump removal