Cincinnati Magazine - July 2020 Edition

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Y O UR C EN TER F OR I NS P I RAT I ON

WELCOME BACK! A Message From Jim Downton Executive Director, Sharonville Convention Center Beginning June 1st, the Sharonville Convention Center will re-open our doors and begin hosting events of 300 persons or less. With over 68,000 square feet of event space and 18 independent rooms, we have the flexibility and social distancing space required to host your banquet or event within the guidelines provided by the Ohio Department of Health’s Responsible Restart Ohio for Banquet & Catering Facilities and Services.

We are committed to prioritizing the health and safety of our clients, attendees and staff. For a complete detailed listing of these mandatory guidelines and recommended best practices for your event, please visit our website at www. sharonvilleconventioncenter.com.

Remember, when visiting we ask all our guests to use the recommended prevention practices for COVID-19 outlined by the Ohio Department of Health: ࠮ When not feeling well, stay at home ࠮ Wear a face mask ࠮ Practice Social Distancing of at least 6 feet from others ࠮ Wash hands often with water and soap We understand your concerns for the health and safety of yourself and your guests and have implemented many additional recommended best practices to assist you during your visit. ࠮ Daily health checks, including temperature assessments of all our staff ࠮ All staff to wear face masks ࠮ Providing hand sanitizing stations at all entrances, complete with COVID-19 prevention postings. ࠮ Improved air filtration within our HVAC system ࠮ High volume of signage reminding our guests of social distancing requirements ࠮ Utilization of barriers in high volume areas ࠮ Daily frequent cleaning and disinfecting of high touch surfaces and areas While we can’t eliminate all risks associated with the spread of COVID-19, we will do our best to minimize these risks. We look forward to seeing you soon.

Contact Lisa Hodge to reserve your date 513.326.6465 • lhodge@cityofsharonville.com 11355 Chester Road • Cincinnati, OH 45246 www.sharonvilleconventioncenter.com

See Where It Takes You

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73

380

$11.4 million

Graduates

Acceptances

Scholarships & Grants Awarded

Congratulations Class of 2020 Matthew Adkins Ashutosh Annapantula Alexander Arnold Katherine Ashwell Neil Badlani William Beyreis Jay Bhati Melissa Bornovali Anna Bowers Kaitlin Briggs Elizabeth Brock Kathleen Brock Sabrina Buechly Brian Butler

Catherine Collett Ammar D’Ambrosio Natalie de Beer Peanut Edmonson John Flynn Boyang Gan Ethan Glosby Amanda Graff Austin Grewell Dylan Hacker Elena Hamall C. William Horton Ethan Howard Lila Isett James Johnston

Andrew Kaminski Eashwar Kantemneni Leila Khan Cristabel Kleiner Duncan Laird Yize Liu Miles Longevin Jaecar Ly Kamila Mahmud Simon Manzler Oliver McClean Riley Michalski Anika Minocha Terry Moorman Jr. David Morales, II

Elizabeth Morris Anushka Nair Sylvia Nica Joshua Nixon Matthew O’Brien Alexia Otchere Manav Patel Jordan Perry Ethan Reisenfeld Lillian Reisenfeld Lawson Renie Cader Rowe Abigail Smith William Sommer Weiming Song

Benjamin Stacy II Delaney Stapp A. Raphael Thompson Renee Twyford Joely Virzi Alexandra Vredeveld Brennen Walker Keane Warner Alicia Weingartner Tate Wendel Noah Wise Bo Xiang Jiamiao Yao Zihao Zhang

Colleges and Programs The University of Arizona Belmont University University of California, Davis (2) University of California, Irvine University of California, San Diego Case Western Reserve University University of Cincinnati (13) Colgate University University of Colorado Boulder Columbia University Dartmouth College University of Dayton (4) Denison University DePaul University Drew University

Elon University Gettysburg College High Point University University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Indiana University Bloomington Loyola University Chicago (2) McMaster University (Canada) Miami University (3) University of Michigan (3) Middlebury College Morehead State University New York University Northern Kentucky University Ohio Dominican University The Ohio State University (4)

#WEARECOUNTRYDAY CountryDay.net

Purdue University (2) Rice University Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (2) Seton Hall University Sewanee: The University of the South University of Southern California The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Universiteit van Amsterdam (Netherlands) University of Vermont Virginia Military Institute Wellesley College West Virginia University William and Mary Williams College Xavier University (2)

F E AT U R E S J U LY 2 02 0

HIGH WATER DOWNTOWN, SEEN FROM COVINGTON DURING THE 1937 FLOOD, PHOTOGRAPHED BY ALFRED BAUERMEISTER.

P.

40

WEATHERING THE STORM

We look back to see how Cincinnatians of the past made it through their dark days, and then we look to the leaders of today’s efforts to move forward. One thing is clear: We will get through this together.

1,000 FEET FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD P. 58

THE BOYS OF SUMMER 1858

BY JOHN STOWELL

BY JOHN ERARDI AND LARRY PHILLIPS

Two of Matt Brennan’s attempts to summit Mt. Everest ended in disappointment, and the pandemic shut down his third try this spring.But he’s determined that this is not the end of his story.

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY AARON DUESING

P. 62

We think we know all about the origins of baseball in Cincinnati. But deeper research indicates the game appeared here years earlier than we suspected, and in a surprise location.

J U LY 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 5

Do what you can to shop local first.

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Shop safely. Follow our local health guidelines and respect others around you.

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14 / CONTRIBUTORS 14 / LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

FRONTLINES

FOOD NEWS

19 / DISPATCH

20 / SPEAK EASY Curtis Sittenfeld reimagines Hillary in Rodham

20 / PUBLIC ART ArtWorks offers Jump Start grants CITY NEWS

22 / STYLE COUNSEL Dee Stone is sassy-chic

24 / REAL ESTATE A renovated beauty in East Walnut Hills

26 / HOMEGROWN Bringing the ’90s back with Longfurbs

28 / DR. KNOW Your QC questions answered

COLUMNS

32 / WELCOME TO MIDDLEHOOD An ode to what matters during a pandemic

98 / HIGH SPIRITS

Decoding our civic DNA, from history to politics to personalities.

Low-cal summer beers

100 / DINING GUIDE Greater Cincinnati restaurants: A selective list

BY JUDI KETTELER

36 / LIVING IN CIN The cabin fever chronicles

BY J AY G I L B E R T

112 / CINCY OBSCURA Cincinnati Art Museum’s new Art Climb

BY KATIE COBURN

ON THE COVER

illustration by JAMES BILLITER

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In-depth stories exploring local issues and people.

Local restaurants reopen

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LISTEN TO LEARN MORE On this month’s episode, we dive behind the scenes of how Cincinnati is bouncing back, plus other stories and events we’re excited to share.

Subscribe and listen on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. It’s free!

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I M AG E S BY: ( T O P) CO U R T E S Y J U N E N E W M A N /CO M E Y & S H E PA R D R E A LT O R S / (M I D D L E ) CO U R T E S Y B O B BY D I D D L E / (B O T T O M) A A R O N M . CO N WAY

COVID-19 openings, closings, and pivots.

Cincinnati Public Radio’s anniversaries

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PAGE 75 SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

SENIOR LIV ING A New Normal How one senior living community is keeping its residents safe and engaged during the coronavirus pandemic. —Shannon Smith

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*LIVING HE ALTH Y IN CINCINNATI

MID THE ONGOING struggles of the coronavirus pandemic, senior living communities are facing unprecedented challenges maintaining the physical and mental health of their residents.

To protect seniors, who are most at risk of suffering complications resulting from COVID-19, Ohio and Kentucky stay-at-home orders have barred families from visiting face-to-face with their loved ones in care facilities. In an effort to keep spirits up and give families peace of mind, care workers at the New England Club are finding new ways to keep their residents engaged with safe-distance activities like concerts and window visits.

Family members have been able to interact with their loved ones by

sitting outside the windows of their care facilities and talking to them over FaceTime. Most families have been cooperative and understanding of these new protocols, says Tracy Sanborn, sales leader at the New England Club. “The families are happy their loved one is here and that they are safe,” she says. “They know this is the kind of thing we are prepared for.”

The New England Club has hosted a variety of social activities like hallway bingo, butterfly shows, costume parties, and more. On Easter, residents enjoyed a hunt for Easter baskets throughout the building and musical performances from their rooms.

With physical interactions being restricted, the facility started a telegram system for residents to exchange handwritten messages with

one another via care workers to stay in contact with friends in different parts of the building while maintaining a social distance. Staff members are keeping the residents informed of current events with recently established daily news announcements, inserting much-needed levity with jokes, photos, and a “good news” section to boost morale.

During this time of uncertainty, care workers have worked tirelessly to ensure the well-being of their patients.

They recognize that meaningful interactions help ensure senior citizens are staying healthy not only physically, but mentally.

“We are making the most of a hard situation,” Sanborn says. “Our residents and staff have been very understanding and appreciative.”

J U LY 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 7 5

Senior Living We take a look at how local senior living communities are dealing with the challenges brought on by COVID-19. Plus, our senior living community directory helps you make sense of the many choices available to older adults in our area.

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CONTRIBUTORS

JOHN ERARDI AND LARRY PHILLIPS

WE’RE ONLY HALFWAY THROUGH, BUT 2020 IS ALREADY A YEAR FOR THE AGES. Cincinnati and the nation are struggling with the worst pandemic in 100 years, the sharpest economic downturn since the Great Depression, and scenes of protest and violence straight out of the 1960s. Simultaneously.

It can feel like a bleak time, like all of the levers of power are aligned against the average person, particularly those on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder. In the rush to reopen, are we making people, especially those in service jobs, choose between employment and health? When will our children be back at school? Will our restaurants, arts venues, sports teams, neighborhood businesses, and community gatherings—a huge part of our economy and our humanity— return to some sense of normal? Lots of questions, and not many answers.

But there’s hope. There’s always hope, if you open your heart. I’m not talking about unrealistic hope in a magic pill that “makes Cincinnati great again” and transports us back to an idyllic pre-pandemic time. Life wasn’t perfect before COVID-19, remember—most of the challenges, divisions, and inequities brought to light by the virus, the job losses, and George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis have been raging for a while.

I mean hope based on previous experience dealing with tragedy and healing a community.

In this month’s cover story, “Weathering the Storm” (page 40), we examine five times in Cincinnati’s history that a natural, manmade, or health disaster brought the region to its knees. We were stunned by devastation, struggled to find appropriate responses, disagreed over how to proceed, and occasionally let things backslide—but we eventually found a way forward. And often we made long-term improvements to shape a better city.

We don’t know what the rest of 2020 will bring, but we do know where we’ve been as a community and how we overcame previous bleak times together. The storm clouds did eventually pass, and the sun came back out. Maybe that’s wishful thinking on my part, but I don’t know a better option right now.

J O H N F OX

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

1 4 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

ILLUSTR ATIO N BY L A R S LEE TA RU

For sports writer John Erardi and historian Larry Phillips, baseball bridges Cincinnati’s past and present. In “The Boys of Summer 1858” (page 62), they show how the city’s first baseball players lived alongside the Underground Railroad.

To Phillips, this example of “people doing the right thing” represents the best of Cincinnati then and now.

“That’s the moral of the story,” Erardi says. “If you just hang with it and bring your best game every day, you can get through it.”

JOHN FLEISCHMAN More than 4,000 miles away, John Fleischman offers a unique view of the pandemic from his apartment near Bergamo, Italy. In “Locked Down in Lombardy,” (page 48) the Cincinnati writer narrates life in Italy’s COVID-19 epicenter and plans for the future, which include a flight home. In a world filled with uncertainty, he only has one prediction: “My next three-way will be take-out.”

JAMES BILLITER Hometown artist James Billiter uses a modern approach in capturing our city’s vibrant culture and past. “For me, it’s important to use printmaking when producing pieces,” Billiter says of the skill he learned from his mother. His cover image, “Queen City Love,” symbolizes our strong bonds and showcases his love for our city. “My hope is to create a positive energy and respect for our neighbors and ourselves,” he says.

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CURTIS SITTENFELD REIMAGINES RODHAM P. 20

SASSY-CHIC AND TRENDY P. 22

LONGFURBS BRING BACK THE ’90S P. 26

KEEPING THE “PUBLIC” IN LOCAL RADIO

Milestone birthdays mark the stations’ popularity.

LEYLA SHOKOOHE

E

ACH OF THE THREE STATIONS

co m p r i s i n g C i n c i n n a t i Public Radio celebrates a milestone anniversary this year.

WMUB (founded at Miami University) went on the air in 1950, and WGUC (launched by the University of Cincinnati) debuted in 1960, both predating National Public Radio; WVXU (originated at Xavier University) followed in 1970. Tune in today, and you’ll find organized, cohesive programming: WMUB is a repeater station of WVXU, an NPR news affiliate, while WGUC is all classical music all the time.

Before Cincinnati Public Radio came into existence, though, the stations were wildly divergent. A turn of the dial could yield anything from Car Talk on WGUC to polka on WVXU. Then WGUC formed the Cincinnati Classical Public Radio nonprofit in 1994 and purchased WVXU in 2005.

“The strategic plan we devised with the board was that we’d like CONTINUED ON P. 20

ILLUSTR ATIO N BY B E LIN DA KO U

J U LY 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 1 9

DISPATCH

PUBLIC ART

MAKING ART WORK

Known for hiring teenage apprentices to paint murals, ArtWorks looks different this year. New CEO Colleen Houston launched the Jump Start program to award $5,000 grants to five projects using art to connect people.

“It just follows our creative enterprise mission to empower individual artists,” she says.

2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

SPEAK EASY

WHAT IF...

The new novel by bestselling author and Cincinnati native Curtis Sittenfeld, Rodham, imagines what would have happened if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton.

Sittenfeld discusses how family connections helped her gain political insight and how the pandemic has impacted her writing.

What inspired you to write Rodham? In early 2016, an editor at Esquire asked if I’d like to write a short story from the perspective of Hillary Clinton accepting the Democratic nomination for president. I didn’t think I had anything to add to the analysis of her that’s been underway for almost 30 years, and I wasn’t interested in examining what the American people think of Hillary. But, to my surprise, I was very interested in examining what Hillary thinks of the American people.

Did your brother, City Councilmember P.G. Sittenfeld, help you learn about the campaign trail? I texted P.G. many, many times during the three years I was writing to ask him big and small questions.

For instance: If a senator attended a fancy political/cultural forum or festival in 1996-ish, which staff would go along?

Did writing Rodham change your view of what female candidates face? Doing research helped me see patterns in female candidates’ experiences rather than viewing certain moments or stories as isolated or singular. For instance, Rebecca Traister points out in her book Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women’s Anger that female candidates are often shown in photos with their mouths open, as if they’re yelling.

Or there’s a widely reported story about Hillary once being told to cover her cleavage on the Senate floor, but almost all female senators have been chided in this way.

What has writing been like for you during this pandemic? I’ve heard a lot of writers say it turns out they’ve been unwittingly social distancing for years, and I fall into this camp.

Like many people, I feel some combination of grateful to be with my family, anxious, and stir-crazy. I’ve been writing essays more than fiction and getting distracted more than writing anything, but I always eventually return to fiction.

—J U D I K E T T E L E R READ A LONGER CONVERSATION WITH CURTIS AT CINCINNATIMAGAZINE.COM

PH OTO G R A PH S BY J O N ATH A N W I LLI S

ILLUSTR ATIO N BY Z AC H A RY G H A D E RI / PH OTO G R A PH BY A N D RE W H O U S TO N

news of the day. She’s acutely aware of to, if the situation ever develthe intimacy of her job. “It’s a very peroped, operate two independent, sonal medium,” she says. “They let you distinct broadcast services to cover into their homes and their showers and the city of Cincinnati,” says Richard their bedrooms and while they’re eatEiswerth, the organization’s president ing breakfast, and you’re a part of their and general manager since 1998. “One would allow WGUC to return to its roots morning.” as a full-time fine arts station, and the For Cincinnati Public Radio, servother would address the responsibility ing those listeners and the community we felt we had to news and information. is paramount. Daily local talk program It was quite by coincidence that Xavier Cincinnati Edition injected energy into called us.” the format when Michael Monks beXavier University worked with brocame host in 2019. The company also kers to secure a new owner for produces the Looking Up 91.7 FM. National religious podcast, cohosted by the broadcasters came forward, Cincinnati Observatory’s but the local proposal won Dean Regas, and offers indie Cincinnati Public out. Car Talk and All Things rock formats Radio Artifact Radio’s new downtown building Considered moved up the dial and Inhailer Radio on HD plan includes public digital signals. to WVXU, and the umbrella podcast booths, a Cincinnati Public Radio organization became simply performance studio, has secured a development Cincinnati Public Radio. In and a café. agreement for a new down2009, it assumed operationtown location directly across from City al costs and programming duties for WMUB, while Miami continues to hold Hall at Ninth and Plum streets. “We the license. want to incorporate what our branding Today’s WVXU consists largely talks about, which suggests we bring the ‘public’ into public radio,” says Eiswerth. of NPR programming from across the COVID-19 has put the planned capination and the world, but the people tal campaign into what Eiswerth calls a behind the station are uniquely Cin“quiet” phase, and public celebrations cinnati. The voices greeting listenof the respective station anniversaries ers every day are household favorites, none more so than Morning Edition host are on hold. But the stations keep opand longtime news director Maryanne erating, with only about a dozen people Zeleznik. A graduate of Miami Univerin the building at a time. “We do have a sity, she worked at WMUB as a student very engaged audience right now,” says and joined WVXU after 20 years with Zeleznik. “People are appreciative of the coverage we’ve been doing through the former public station WNKU. Every morning from 5 to 10 a.m., Zeleznik the pandemic and that we’ve been there greets listeners, filling them in on the for them.”

STYLE COUNSEL

Dee Stone OCCUPATION: Executive Director, Forest Hills Foundation for Education; Anderson Township Trustee STYLE: Always trendy Describe your style. When I lived in San Francisco, this guy told me, Oh, your style is sassy-chic, and I was like, OK, I guess that’s what it is then. So that’s how it’s been described to me. What does sassychic look like? I always try to do either big accessories or some little twist that makes it a little different from everybody else. A lot of my outfits start with either a really patterned or colorful pair of pants coupled with black. Or I start with black pants coupled with a colorful shirt. After college, you worked as a lawyer for IBM before becoming the publisher of a San Francisco–based fashion magazine. What influenced this career change? I’ve always been interested in fashion and fashion magazines. It’s an inherited gene apparently. My mother was always the best-dressed mom. We would go to any event and she was always totally pulled together, and my grandmother was the same way. Our style is that we’re always following the trends. If [the color of the season] were purple, my mom would be wearing a purple suit long before anyone else in my town would be wearing something purple. I grew up seeing that, and it just became second nature for me. You frequent Snooty Fox for vintage and consignment pieces.

Where else do you shop to stay on trend? What I try to do now—just because I have a pretty interesting collection of clothes—is shop my closet. I have plenty of accessories and clothes. I don’t really need anything new. The only thing I always need something new for is shoes. If you have the right pair of shoes, anything can look in style. Any tips for crafting the perfect outfit? Play dress-up! It’s good to try [an outfit] ahead of time, and it’s a great rainy Sunday afternoon activity. Also, a full-length mirror is your best friend; you’ve got to look head to toe. — K A T I E C O B U R N

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SAVE THE DATE! CINCINNATI GIVES 2020 CHALLENGE NOVEMBER 30–DECEMBER 10

ON THE MARKET

ADDRESS: 1949 MADISON RD., EAST WALNUT HILLS LISTING PRICE: $1,950,000

SERENITY NOW

THE KEY WORD FOR THIS IMPECCABLE RENOVATION IS RESTRAINT —

because often what you keep is more important than what you change. For this six-bedroom stucco manse in the East Walnut Hills Historic District, that looks like original plaster moldings, accordion French doors, and light fixtures. The finest of these historic features are the twin first-floor bay windows: They hug the dining room and formal living room, and are trimmed with radiator-concealing wooden benches. (There are new windows throughout except for these and scores of other original leaded glass windows.)

These details exist in comfy harmony with newer amenities like a three-car garage, an irrigation system that keeps landscaping perky during the summer, and LED exterior lighting.

And then there’s the luxe kitchen that looks like it could have been original—if they’d had Sub-Zero fridges back in 1911, when this home was built. The high-end appliances and roomy custom cabinetry, however, are dead giveaways (the good kind) of a contemporary treatment.

The result is an exquisite historic home that’s 2 4 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

livable and even cozy. The master suite exemplifies this vibe, with a beautifully appointed bathroom and second-floor balcony accessible through French doors, plus two walk-in closets. The master bath itself sports a double sink, soaking tub, heated floors, steam shower, and access to one of the closets.

There are more over-the-top amenities inside: a full English pub–style wet bar in the basement with custom millwork, copper ceilings, and an adjacent family room; a live edge single slab black oak kitchen table with seating for four; and a stylish-butfunctional laundry room. But it’s the exterior that steals the show. Head out back for a firstfloor veranda and a terraced yard with a river valley view (and seasonal views of the actual river), all overlooking a pergola-covered patio with a fireplace, plus a wooden play structure.

And, despite the Madison Road address, you can enjoy a surprisingly peaceful front yard, which is protected from noise by the most thoughtful additions of them all: A circular driveway and a bank of traffic-blocking trees.

P H OTO G R A P H S CO U R T E S Y J U N E N E W M A N/CO M E Y & SH EPA R D R E A LTO R S

A TASTEFUL RESTORATION HELPS THIS HISTORIC EAST WALNUT HILLS HOME SHINE. — A M Y B R O W N L E E

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HOMEGROWN

TOY STORY

LONGFURBS GIVES A CRAFTY UPDATE TO A '90S ICON. — A M Y B R O W N L E E

Y

1

YOU’VE EITHER LOVED A FURBY, LOATHED

a Furby, or just now learned the word Furby.

For local artist Bobby Diddle, the infamous late-’90s animatronic owl has been a lifelong love. “When I was a kid I was obsessed with them,” Diddle says. “I had a baby blue one, I had a cheetah one, a graduation one, an angel one. I had all of them.”

She wasn’t alone: Tens of millions of Furbies sold in just their first years on the market, largely because the creatures were programmed with their own kind of artificial intelligence—a then-novel technology, especially in toys. Out of the box, they would twitch their ears and beaks and speak their own cheeky “Furbish” language, and then, in an uncanny twist, would “learn” the language spoken around them. Pairs would “talk” to each other. People with Furbies viewed them with simultaneous awe and alarm, and toys were never the same. “It’s kind of a cult object,” Diddle says. “It’s like having a piece of history.”

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2

3

Nineties nostalgia is indeed a whole scene on the internet, attracting collectors and enthusiasts alike. Diddle, took her interest and made it her art with Longfurbs, her collection of Furbies, which she converts to have long necks and bodies, and then shares their images on Instagram. “It’s a very niche group with a very deep connection to them,” she says. That niche group, at least on Instagram, is up to 26,500 followers, part of a loyal web audience that breathlessly awaits the next Longfurbs release; they currently go for hundreds of dollars each on eBay. Diddle’s process to create Longfurbs is more complicated than it looks: The School of Creative and Performing Arts grad starts with a theme, and looks for LONG FURBS a personality that fits 1: Four in tulips. the Furby. “I com2: Ben with a croissant.

3: Besties! pletely scrap it, remove the skin, take the faceplate off, and then hand-sew everything. It takes around three days,” she says. “I connect the body, which is just a sock with stuffing.” Diddle dresses them, usually in Build-a-Bear clothes (“They fit perfectly”). Finally, part of the fun of making—and presumably owning—Longfurbs is posing them in lifelike environments, drinking a cocktail or eating fried chicken.

Since September 2018, Diddle has sold some two dozen Longfurbs, and isn’t stopping any time soon, as it perfectly blends her vocation and avocation. “I’ve always been a huge fan of birds and creepiness and the ’90s,” she says. “It’s an amalgamation of all those things.”

INSTAGRAM: @LONGFURBS

P H OPT HO OG TROAGP RHAS PCHOSU BR YT EJSOYN BA OT HB BA YN DWI IDLDL LI SE

POWERED BY

E30520.030

Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, weekday afternoon deejay on 92.5 FM The Fox. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities at drknow@cincinnati magazine.com

DR. KNOW

walks and traffic lights. You’d think that Americans would at least remember we’re urban enough to have launched dozens of turkeys from a helicopter.

It’s as easy to list a city’s shortcomings as it is to list its benefits; staring at only one column is a false choice. Even as we struggle with painful circumstances in 2020, Cincinnatians revere our many beautiful venues and generous residents.

We can only posit that a discontent with one’s surroundings may say less about the surroundings and more about the discontentee.

You are invited to decide whether or not this overheard sentiment is productive: Cincinnati may have a lot of big-city problems like crime and traffic congestion and failing infrastructure, but let’s not forget that at the same time there’s nothing here to do.

Q+ A

I swear I remember a TV news story from the late 1980s about Pete Rose getting a speeding ticket on Pete Rose Way. He was even interviewed, joking about it. But I can’t find anyone else who remembers this, and my Google searches come up empty. Can you get me some kind of authoritative answer? —MY BET ON BASEBALL DEAR BET:

I moved west from Cincinnati many years ago. Whenever I return for a visit, everyone badmouths this town! I’m shocked at the low regard Cincinnatians have for their own city; I think it has the best traits of big and small towns. Why such negativity about such a wonderful place?

What’s up with this attitude?

—NASTY NATIS

DEAR NASTY:

We normally bypass submissions of philosophical Jerry Seinfeld-ish questions, but such passion deserves a response. Your story is a little surprising, because the Queen City usually gets its insults from afar.

A native New Yorker once sincerely asked us if Cincinnati had side-

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We shall attempt to assuage your anguish by launching the Doctor’s mighty Contacts app. Our first stop is with Jerry Springer, who anchored Cincinnati’s local TV news during the period in question.

Today’s Judge Springer says he cannot recall such an incident, and, as we all know, he has a sensitive memory when it comes to misdemeanors.

Our next source might know more about Peter Edward Rose than does Pete himself: Dennis “Wildman” Walker, former WEBN-FM sports savant. Through all of Pete’s travails, Wildman’s support has never wavered; his son, you should know, is named Peter Edward Walker. Wildman’s Contacts app includes Pete himself, so he bettered the Doctor and went straight to the source. Pete texted back that no, he ILLUSTR ATIO N S BY L A R S LEE TA RU

was never pulled over, but in 1988 he did receive a parking ticket on the street bearing his name for parking his Porsche by an expired meter at Flanagan’s Landing. That’s probably the light-hearted news story you saw. If Pete confesses 20 years from now that he actually did something far more serious, we’ll let you know.

I saw Madonna at the Cincinnati Gardens in 1985, and the opening act couldn’t have been more incompatible: the Beastie Boys!

Nobody had a fully fun night. I wonder now which Cincinnati concert had the worst-ever mismatch of headliner with opener. There must have been some awful ones.

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—WOULD YOU STAND UP AND WALK OUT ON ME DEAR WALK OUT:

Others may be slowly emerging from quarantine, but you have just sentenced the Doctor to endless solitary confinement. A full accounting is impossible, but randomly checking through hundreds of shows has revealed these top candidates for concert incongruity: The Who and Herman’s Hermits.

That is, emerging British rockers The Who opening for the declining British teenyboppers Herman’s Hermits in 1967, both bands out of place at Music Hall anyway. There’s sex-rocker Rod Stewart at Riverfront Coliseum in 1977 paired with the mushy love-song oatmeal of Air Supply. But first prize for musical incompatibility must go to the Grateful Dead at the U.C. Fieldhouse in 1970, warmed up by the Lemon Pipers. In fairness to the Oxford-based Pipers, their one-hit-wonder “Green Tambourine” was a song forced upon them by their record company, forever tarring them as a bubblegum band. Still, an audience mostly on hand to see the Grateful Dead might have preferred the Beastie Boys.

Regardless of musical style, however, every performer’s nightmare was to be partnered with the Cincinnati Gardens. That place was built for hockey games, and concerts there always sounded like one.

Is it painful?

No. You will only feel a slight cooling on your toes during the procedure.

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What are the possible side effects?

No significant side effects have been reported.

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When can I resume normal activity?

You may resume normal activity immediately following treatment. There is no downtime.

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Before

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J U LY 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 2 9

WE LCO ME TO MIDDLEHOOD

BY JUDI KETTELER

Poetry and Pandemics

ALL WE KNOW ON EARTH, AND ALL WE NEED TO KNOW: THIS TOO SHALL PASS. IN 1819, ENGLISH POET JOHN KEATS WROTE A SERIES OF ODES CELEBRATING SUCH THINGS as a nightingale, the goddess Psyche, autumn, and—most famously—a Grecian urn. Two years later, at age 25, he died from tuberculosis, a pandemic that caused one-fourth of the deaths across Europe in the 19th century. One hundred years after that, the Spanish Flu ripped through the world, killing 50 million people. And here we are—eerily, almost exactly 100 years again—in the middle of another pandemic.

All I can think to do is write an ode. To what, of course, is the question. What do I want to celebrate, pay respect to, or just remember about this strange time?

If I’m being practical, it should be an ode to Fortnite, a game my 11-year-old son has played a lot these past months. A highly social kid, he was the person in the house I thought 3 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

I’d have to worry about the most with the upheaval of everyday life. But here he is, living the dream. He has stayed in close touch with his friends via the game and earned his way into tournaments he wouldn’t have been able to with school getting in the way.

He was playing a tournament based in Egypt the other morning. Or evening. I can’t remember, because time is so silly now.

I catch bits and pieces of my son’s conversations with friends about skins, maps, squads, and arena mode versus creative mode. I don’t understand most of it, but I do understand that he comes to the dinner table happy.

I SHOULD WRITE AN ODE TO THE PEOPLE delivering and picking up all the things— to the delivery drivers, the waste collectors, and the “essential workers” who have kept the most basic parts of society running. I would want to express my thanks to those stocking shelves, scanning groceries, and loading trucks, because I am deeply thankful. But it wouldn’t be very authentic if I didn’t acknowledge my privilege in being able to stay home, and how this pandemic has been a story about privilege as much as anything else. My job is writing content, and nothing about my job became any riskier or, in fact, changed much at all. How does one express that mix of guilt and gratefulness?

Love poems are notoriously hard to write, so I suspect an ode to my husband would come off as cheesy. But if I were to write one, I would thank him for being the masked grocery shopper, for giving me a great meal to look forward to every day and for helping the kids with their math. I would tell him how much I appreciated his attempts to keep them out of my home office during Zoom, Slack, Skype, Google Meet, and FaceTime meetings with clients, and that he can stand down because the world has now decided that kid interruption is adorable.

It would be nice to write an ode to the homemade signs lining Miami Avenue that I run by every day. They were made by members of the Madeira Hope Squad, a group of high school students focused on raising awareness about mental health and suicide prevention. Simple ones that say “You Matter” have been around town for a while, but a bunch of new ones showed up recently, with messages like “Life Is Tough, ILLUSTR ATIO N BY J U LI A Y E LLOW

Proud to support and recognize all front line workers everywhere!

Bimbo Bakeries USA will be donating to Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation offering hunger relief grants and resources to communities through their Emergency COVID-19 Response Fund.

ŠBimbo Bakeries USA, Inc. All rights reserved.

WELCOME TO MIDDLEHOOD But So Are You” and “The Tide Will Turn.”

Our community lost a young soul to suicide around this time last year, and I worry so much about the effect the pandemic is having on our children. Not the little ones so much, because they’re probably getting

placed learning was certainly not what they signed up for. My ode would have to specifically call out Mrs. Naegeli and Mrs. Jansen for the texts, videos, e-mails, and FaceTime calls. You checked up on my daughter daily, complimented her on her YouTube videos,

AN ODE TO THOSE WORKING IN THE COVID-19 UNITS OF HOSPITALS: I THINK ABOUT YOUR GRIT AND ENDURANCE, FEAR AND EXHAUSTION. I CAN’T FIX IT, BUT I SEE YOU. extra cuddles—but the teens trying to find their way. My ode, I’m guessing, would be not so much to the signs but to the idea of staying present to both the hope and the pain of young people.

On that note, so many odes to educators need to be written, from kindergarten teachers to dissertation directors. Teachers thrive in the classroom, so I know this dis-

and asked her about her trampolines. (Idea: Write an ode to trampolines.) Without a doubt, the two of you got my scared and stressed daughter through the last months of fourth grade intact.

If I truly want to borrow from Keats, I should write an ode to a deity. I would choose Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, often called the goddess of storytelling. To

all those who have told their stories about this virus, I am here to listen, whether the story uplifts or destroys me. From the hopeful stories of people who spent weeks on ventilators and recovered to the anguished stories of people who lost spouses, parents, friends, jobs, businesses, and desperately needed services for children.

Also an ode to the people working in the COVID-19 units of hospitals, faces bruised from masks, walking the line between life and death every day—thoughts of you find me when I peel my quilt back and tuck into bed each night. I think about your grit and endurance, but also your fear and exhaustion. I can’t fix any of it, but I see you.

OTHER TIMES, I THINK MY ODE SHOULD really be to something ridiculous, like the Twitter account Animals Being Jerks (@meananimals). Short videos of asshole cats, goats with an attitude, sloppy raccoons, and dogs that will do anything for you to just love them please are the only

To the generous donors and volunteers helping us serve older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic...

Major supporters:

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Council on Aging thanks YOU! Council on Aging’s mission is to enhance lives by assisting people to remain independent through a range of quality services.

Connect with us: (800) 252-0155 | www.help4seniors.org

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PH OTO G R A PH BY J O N ATH A N W I LLI S

things that consistently had me wiping tears of laughter from my eyes. A monkey dancing in a splash pool has a role to play when the world is flooded with grief.

It could be an interesting exercise in bipartisanship to write an ode to my governor, Mike DeWine, who I did not vote for but am grateful to have had as a leader. Thank you, sir, for surrounding yourself with people of science. When all of this is over, I would like to invite you over for coffee, so that I can hug you and then set you straight about your other political positions.

But if I’m going to dedicate my ode to a person, how could I not write one to my mom? She’s one of the most resilient ladies I know, and damn funny, too. She was born in 1935 in the middle of the Great Depression, and she came of age during World War II. She raised seven children, buried an adult son in 2009, and lost my dad seven years ago. Even now, whenever I ask her about a particularly difficult time in her life and how she got through it, her answer is always

along the lines of, It’s just what we did. And here she is, doing yet another difficult thing, getting through isolation by surrounding herself with NPR and her books and her sewing machine and kind of FaceTime (she doesn’t understand how to hold the iPad, so we mostly just see the top of her head).

Oh, I almost forgot the trampoline ode. We have four of them in our backyard, which seems like the right amount because we’re weird and like to do lots of flips. Though I saw everyone’s magnificent Facebook posts about socially distanced family outings, I couldn’t deal with trying to take my kids on hikes. Instead, we’ve been riding it out on our trampolines. My love of acrobatics has never felt more important than now because, no matter what lockdowns are in place, you are truly free upside-down in the air.

Ultimately, though, if I had to pick my own Grecian urn-type ode subject, I’d choose the little pink stuffed alpaca that sits in my collection of desk tchotchkes. I

bought her last year at the Madeira Farmers Market. She caught my eye because she reminded me of a day seven years before when I was at a festival in Bellevue where there were alpacas. My kids were petting them and laughing, and as I took pictures of the scene an unspeakable melancholy swelled in me.

I knew I should be happy, but with two toddlers, a dad who was dying, a confusing marriage, and a career I was trying to rebuild after a recession, I was seized with apprehension and a sense of not being able to stay above the waves. So on that day last year, when I found myself again in front of an alpaca farmer peddling crafts—but this time feeling content after having made it through that difficult season of life—the pink alpaca said to me, See, Judi, things don’t stay stuck forever.

Now, as I look upon her eyes made of thread and her hint of a smile, I feel as astonished as Keats must have felt contemplating the urn and all that it represented for him.

And I think, Yes, this too shall pass.

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J U LY 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 3 5

LIVING IN CIN

BY JAY GILBERT

The Pathogen Less Traveled A CINCINNATI JOURNEY, AT HOME. I HAVE THIS OLD SOFT-SIDED BRIEFCASE THAT PREDATES TODAY’S ERA OF BODY APPENDages we call “devices.” It contains a modern padded wide pocket for my laptop, but also undisturbed compartments that would fascinate an archaeologist. While it’s no longer the possession I’d be most frightened to lose, the briefcase still accompanies me daily just about everywhere. Now, however, “everywhere” has come to mean “nowhere,” and my briefcase has grown dusty. It’s the little things, they always say, that trigger your awareness of bigger ones.

Yes, here comes your 100th-or-so version of My Cincinnati Home Imprisonment, so let’s make it fun, shall we? This annoying literary genre did not exist when the year began, and if we’re lucky it will disappear by year’s end. Things are, after all, loosening up. If Cincinnati can stay curfew-free, keeps practicing safe habits, and doesn’t mainline Lysol, maybe this 3 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

will be the last Cabin Fever Chronicle you read. Let’s hope so.

Mary and I have, thankfully, escaped terminal boredom at home. She has not counted every brick on our Mid-Century Modern living room wall, and I haven’t stared like a savant at the bathroom floor to note the repeating tile pattern. Hell, I did that years ago when we first moved in. The odd things people joke about doing when they’re insanely bored are pretty much the things I do anyway, and I am grateful for Mary’s patience with me.

She and I weathered each other pretty well. When the data from this housebound era emerges, it will include the inevitable spike in divorces (and murder), but we won’t be listed in there. We adjusted.

P H O T O G R A P H BY A A R O N M . CO N WAY

LIVING IN CIN HERE ARE THINGS YOU LEARN WHEN you’re always at home: • Unlike at work, a toilet does not automatically flush itself as you walk away.

• Functioning WiFi is more vital than hot water. Than anything, actually.

• Dirty dishes mate overnight and produce litters of baby dishes.

• A toilet that doesn’t flush itself also does not put the seat down itself.

• Honesty is not always the best policy.

Hide your favorite snacks.

At this point, please allow me to introduce you to a new acronym: “AWGTP.” It stands for As we go to press, and it’s a reminder of how frighteningly fast things are changing. Prepare to see it repeatedly, as it accompanies every passage below that might be laughingly outdated by the time these words see print.

Here’s a good example: I still have my job (AWGTP). I’m one of the lucky ones whose employment survives thanks to some technological hocus pocus. From my basement, I continue to appear on the radio weekday afternoons exactly as I have for decades, pretending to listen along with you to your favorite classic rock songs. Hey, the job requires that illusion. There’s more preparation and chores happening while the music plays than you know, and believe me, no matter how much you complain about radio song repetition, a disc jockey is forced to hear it exponentially more times than you. So give me a break if I turn down the volume and take a pass on buying my 20,000th stairway to heaven.

All this could change tomorrow. Others whose jobs were rock solid six months ago are suddenly unemployed, and it’s entirely possible I’ll have joined them by the time you’re reading this story. Right now, however, my broadcast work is essential. The Department of Homeland Security decrees it so, via an official document in my car’s glove compartment. At first I didn’t really need it, because Cincinnati never had a true lockdown. Then came the postGeorge-Floyd disturbances, and suddenly I had to justify being out at certain times and places. Well, AWGTP. Thanks to a long-ignored stash of painting accessories we found in the base3 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

ment, Mary and I were early adopters of face masks. I hereby declare that as they are replaced, however, I shall never wear a face mask displaying my favorite slogan, song lyric, or brand. Much of my career has been spent creating commercials, so I have no desire to become one. Fashion masks also create the danger of my walking near a person who has lost their grasp of what is real versus what is virtual, and who might try to “Delete Ad” me.

I make light of my situation, but some things have had weight. Remember those stories from March about Americans in Europe, all suddenly trying to get out, the airports in chaos? Mary was there. She and a friend had gone to Paris on vacation but wisely cut their trip short when things started to crack, and they missed the madness by hours. If that doesn’t seem so bad, consider this other memory shared by them and by me: Mary and her friend had also been in Paris five years ago on the night that terrorists attacked across the city. As word of those attacks broke here, I was doing my Cincinnati radio show and had to maintain my cheery persona, not knowing if they were dead or alive, for about 40 minutes. So this year when Paris seemed to be turning on them again, it wasn’t just a problem, it was a flashback.

I’ve got two kids, both grown. My daughter lives in New York City, my son in California. The daughter (along with husband and two kids) has plenty of provisions, is connected with online schooling, and figures that staying put in a familiar environment is best. I’m not crazy about the four of them being there on the 40th floor, but so far, so good (AWGTP).

The son, right around the time Mary was bugging out of Paris, worried that all U.S. travel might shut down, so he packed up his car and drove back to Cincinnati. He’s hired himself as errand boy for The Vulnerable Generation. Dear God, is that what we’ll become known as?

FOR MANY AROUND US, IT’S BAD. REALLY bad. Joblessness, fear, sickness, death, flames, looting. To varying degrees, everyone’s ordinary life continues to get tossed around in a rancid salad that nobody ordered. I know a Cincinnati family with a dad who’s thousands of miles away, hav-

ing flown in February to his tiny Spanish hometown for a visit with his elderly parents. AWGTP, he’s still stuck there. Variations of this situation—and worse—are everywhere.

I’m lucky, and I know it. You will never see a Madonna-like cringeworthy video from me, doing something like singing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Well, maybe you will, except these will be the lyrics: Imagine one huge mansion With a celebrity Preaching to the public Singing this song off-key Imagine all their privilege Talking down to you Oo-oo, oo-oo They may say that they’re just like us But they’re not like me and you I hope someday they’ll use their money To maybe go and buy a clue I try not to worry. It doesn’t always work, but here’s a story that helps me, and maybe it will help you. A guy told me about the night he was driving home on a curvy wooded stretch of Salem Road in Mt. Washington. He was deeply worried about several personal problems that seemed to be going wrong at once. Suddenly, a deer jumped directly in front of him, and an hour later he was in a hospital bed—banged up pretty bad, but far more fortunate than the deer or the car. He went home a few days later, during which all the problems distressing him that night on Salem Road pretty much worked themselves out. He’d wasted a lot of time and energy agonizing over concerns that had evaporated. But not for one second, he realized, had he ever worried about crashing into a deer and landing in the hospital.

What, me worry? Why? AWGTP, I have not been diagnosed with the virus, nor has anyone in my inner circle. Nobody I know has died from it. Maybe it’s my good luck, or maybe it just reflects the fact that I don’t get close to many people.

How are you? I hope you’re OK. I hope our city remains OK, and I hope on many levels that we’ll all shake hands again soon.

EVEN BUTTER LOVERS

LOVE IT

BLUEBERRY OAT MUFFINS WITH CINNAMON OAT CRUMBLE PREP TIME: 20 MINUTES

COOK TIME: 25 MINUTES

MUFFINS: 1 cup whole rolled oats (not instant) 1 cup oat milk 1½ cups all purpose flour 2 tsp. cinnamon 1¼ tsp. baking powder ¾ tsp. salt ½ tsp. baking soda

RECIPE SERVES: 12 SERVINGS CRUMBLE:

2 large eggs ²//³ cup packed light brown sugar ½ cup Country Crock® Plant Butter with Olive Oil Sticks, melted 1½ cups blueberries

½ ¹//³ ¹//³ ½ 4

cup packed light brown sugar cup whole rolled oats cup all purpose flour tsp. cinnamon Tbsp. Country Crock® Plant B utt er with Olive Oil Sticks, melted

DIRECTIONS

MUFFINS: Preheat oven to 425°F. Grease a 12-cup muffin pan.

Combine 1 cup oats and oat milk; let stand 20 minutes until liquid is partially absorbed.

Meanwhile, combine 1½ cups flour, 2 tsp. cinnamon, baking powder, salt and baking soda in medium bowl. In another bowl combine eggs, ²/³ cup brown sugar and ½ cup melted Country Crock® Plant Butter with Olive Oil Sticks. Stir oat mixture and egg mixture into flour mixture until just combined. Stir in blueberries. Divide batter evenly between prepared muffin cups.

CRUMBLE: Combine ½ cup brown sugar, ¹/³ cup oats, ¹/³ cup flour and ½ tsp. cinnamon. Stir in 4 Tbsp. melted Country Crock® Plant Butter with Olive Oil Sticks. Using hands, press mixture together to form crumbs. Sprinkle over muffins before baking. Bake 5 minutes. Keeping muffins in oven, reduce oven temperature to 350°F and continue baking for an additional 20 minutes or until muffins are baked through. Cool in pan 5 minutes. Run a sharp knife around muffin edges and transfer to wire rack to cool.

© 2020 Upfield

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What the hardships of the past can teach us about our present circumstances—and what we’re already doing to move through today’s challenges.

I L L U ST R AT I O N B Y J A M E S B I L L I T E R

It feels like the world has turned upside down. Closed schools, lost jobs, lifethreatening illness. What’s the right thing to do? Where will we go from here?

How will we get through this? To try and find answers, we looked to the past.

Cincinnatians have overcome riots, tornadoes, floods, and, yes, a pandemic.

Through it all, we carried on and bounced back. You’ll see similar resiliency everywhere today. In Italy, where writer John Fleischman experienced lockdown with his family. Here, where community leaders— and everyday people—are supporting each other, searching for their own ways forward, navigating a new world.

The Foul Stench of Corruption An 1884 riot burned down the Courthouse to protest a rigged murder trial, putting Cincinnati’s crooked political machine on notice. —GREG HAND

WITH THE MORGUE AT capacity, victims of Cincinnati’s 1884 Courthouse Riot lay in makeshift infirmaries and nearby drug stores, a grim tally of 56 dead and nearly 300 wounded. The Courthouse was a ruin, a century of legal records in ashes.

The spark that ignited three days of rage was a jury, almost certainly bought and paid for, that returned a verdict of manslaughter in a sensational homicide case for which abundant evidence, including a signed confession, clearly supported a judgment of premeditated murder. But Cincinnati’s

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anger had simmered for years before it exploded into violence and anarchy.

Since the Civil War, the foul stench of corruption had permeated City Hall and the Courthouse. So blatant was the disregard for law that the “ring” in charge of the local machine was bipartisan. Democrat John Roll McLean, publisher of The Enquirer, conspired with Republican attorney Thomas C. Campbell to feed on the public trough. Porkopolis reveled in the pork barrel.

I n eve ry e l e c t i o n , “floaters” voted early and often. Jurors lined up to exchange verdicts for

bribes or favors. The police department was stuffed with political featherbedders. Laws—notably those mandating that saloons close on Sunday—went unenforced. Murderers and rapists walked the streets.

It had been decades since a white man was hanged in Cincinnati.

On Christmas Eve 1883, William Berner, ne’er-dowell son of a German grocer, and his accomplice Joseph

Palmer, lusting for William Kirk’s bankroll, bludgeoned and then strangled the West End livery owner. Police had Berner’s confession and a string of witnesses, but his attorney, ringleader Campbell, had the jury in his pocket. Even the judge expressed disgust at the lenient verdict.

Music Hall was packed the night Berner was sentenced. Cincinnati’s leading citizens speechified in favor

of a measured yet forceful protest and for reforms to the criminal justice system.

But the audience howled for blood. As the standingroom throng of 10,000 angry men poured onto Elm Street, one cried out, “To the jail! Come on! Follow me and hang Berner!” The riot was on.

Just how bad was it? Ask the Fourth Regiment of the Ohio National Guard.

Called in to reinforce the beleaguered police and local militia, they took one look at the bloody melee, about-faced, and skedaddled back to Dayton.

Wave after wave of insurgents stormed the jail on Sycamore Street behind the Courthouse, each assault parried by the Sheriff, who called for reinforcements.

The riot alarm brought out thousands more spectators, many of whom joined in the frenzy. Overeager militia, ordered to fire over the mob, instead loosed volleys directly into the mass of humanity. Among the slaughtered were rioters and cops as well as other militia members.

The indiscriminate gunfire pushed the furious horde to greater heights of bloodlust. Gangs ransacked pawnshops and gun dealers, while deputized marshals shot innocent passersby and each other.

Skirmishers drizzled kerosene on piles of looted furniture at the Courthouse doors. The inferno lit the sky for miles around.

Far across the ocean, French novelist Victor Hugo saw amid the Courthouse flames the dawn of a new age. In a letter to Cincinnati’s Literary Club, Hugo announced, “The

rioters of Cincinnati inaugurated the era of glorious revolution; they were champions of justice; they were more than champions; they were heroes; they were more than heroes, they were men. The world says so, France says so—I say so.”

Within days the local Bar Association went to work revising problematic court procedures. Campbell was briefly disbarred.

A Committee of One Hundred demanded voting reform, and a Committee of Five Hundred assailed Sunday saloon sales. The police department reorganized under an inde-

pendent commission. The unlucky prisoners left in the jail faced the hangman rather than friendly juries.

U n f o r tu n ate ly, t h e riot’s longest-lasting impact was engineered by a young saloonkeeper named George Barnsdale Cox. Watching from the sidelines, he recognized a vacuum opening in the city’s power structure and made his move. Within four years, he earned the nickname of “Boss” Cox and controlled, for another 30 years, a political machine that eclipsed the old McLean-Campbell ring.

The excesses of his re-

gime inspired a plethora of opposition movements that mostly neutralized each other rather than reining in Cox. In 1924, attorney Murray Seasongood energized a coalition of reform parties, progressive crusaders, good government proponents, and the city’s elite to form the Charter Committee, which led citizens to approve a city manager system, honest elections, civil service hiring, and a slimmeddown city council. It took another generation, but the fire that had been lit in 1884 finally consumed Cincinnati’s political machines.

Cincinnati’s anger had simmered for years before it exploded in violence and anarchy.

P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y T H E C O L L E C T I O N O F T H E P U B L I C L I B R A R Y O F C I N C I N N A T I A N D H A M I LT O N C O U N T Y

The Big Sick The Spanish Flu pandemic shut down Cincinnati for three months, with later flare-ups, and killed nearly 1,700 adults and children. —LINDA VACCARIELLO

THE INFLUENZA PANDEMIC OF 1918–1919 WAS MONstrous. Estimates are that it infected a third of the world’s population, killing 50 million across the globe and 675,000 in the U.S. alone. It wiped out more troops and civilians than died in World War I. It was hard on the very young and the very old, of course, but in an odd twist it was deadly for robust 20- to 40-year-olds, too. A single statistic sums up the impact vividly: In one year, average life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by a decade.

The Spanish Flu, as it was called, has gotten short shrift in schoolbooks. The initial wave in the spring of 1918 seemed like the typical flu; people called it the “three-day fever.” A second wave, which made its way from the East Coast to Cincinnati in the fall, was another matter—a virulent, fast-acting respiratory assault.

The first diagnosed case here was on September 27, 1918: Mrs. George P. Topmiller, who’d recently visited her husband at Camp Lee in Virginia. Shortly after, General Hospital reported two more patients, both with military connections. It was a refrain that would be repeated again and again in the waning days of WWI, as the infection spread through troops in crowded U.S. training camps and accompanied them to Europe.

It spread fast here. There were only 16 known cases on October 2, and Cincinnati Health Officer Dr. William H. Peters assured the public there was no cause for “undue alarm.” A day later, the city recorded its first Spanish Flu death. Calm public assurances aside, Peters ordered hospitals to bar all visitors except in critical cases, and he and Mayor John Galvin assembled city authorities, school and medical representatives, and business interests to discuss the situation. On October 5, Peters closed theaters, movie houses, schools, churches, and Sunday schools. Courts were allowed to hear only the most serious cases, and employers were ordered to send sick workers home. Public and private gatherings were prohibited, but restaurants, soda fountains, pool halls, and bowling alleys remained open, and saloon patrons could carry out bottles.

Cases continued to rise in October, frustrating Peters, who banned burning leaves, believing that drifting smoke contributed to the spread. Hotels had to remove lobby furniture to discourage loitering, and dentists and barbers were told to mask up. The library destroyed books used by influenza victims; school principals were ordered to do the same. Stores largely remained open, though hours were limited. Citizens helped the sanitation department clean streets, and the Women’s City Club ran “penny lunch rooms” in empty public schools, feeding families when fathers were too sick to work and mothers too sick to care for their brood.

The work of Sr. Blandina Segale of the Sisters of Charity illustrates how relentlessly the infection bulldozed through young families. A diary entry for October 28, 1918, records that she went to take charge of one household’s orphans; the mother had just died at home, and the father succumbed in the hospital. An uncle came to make funeral arrangements, and by the time he returned home his own wife was dead.

As the month wore on, the community grew impatient.

The zoo and Queen City Club appealed to the Board of Health to be released from closure restrictions; churches pressed the case, too. But Peters (who himself fell ill in October) held firm, not lifting restrictions until Armistice Day, November 11. Then a sharp rise in cases among schoolchildren caused the Board of Health to re-close schools in December and ban children from stores, streetcars, and other public places.

That spike brought the threat of a second, more sweeping city lockdown. The restrictions didn’t happen, but the public wrangling over children, churches, stores, and saloons sounds familiar today.

Nearly 1,700 Cincinnatians died from influenza or the resulting pneumonia, including 122 preschool children—statistics that would have been much higher, historians say, if the city had delayed closures even by a few days. Those numbers, and the quotidian details of the city’s day-to-day struggle, are part of research undertaken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2006–2007. The project looked at 50 U.S. cities’ response to the Spanish Flu pandemic. The purpose was to figure out what non-pharmaceutical interventions—school closures, isolation and quarantines, and cancelled public gatherings—might be effective if the U.S. faced a 21st century disease without an effective vaccine.

How did Spanish Flu end here? Gradually. On January 5, 1919, Peters announced conditions had returned to normal.

Yet historical records show that the Board of Health fought flare-ups for months. Today we’d call that the New Normal.

P H O T O G R A P H S ( L E F T ) F R O M N A T I O N A L A R C H I V E S / ( R I G H T ) C O U R T E S Y T H E C O L L E C T I O N O F T H E P U B L I C L I B R A R Y O F C I N C I N N A T I A N D H A M I LT O N C O U N T Y

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A City Under Water The Ohio River was boss on Black Sunday in 1937, but we’ve never given up trying to tame it. —GREG HAND The Ohio River has been sloshing around these parts since mastodons trumpeted in the shadows of Pleistocene glaciers. Floods— like deer, catfish, and passenger pigeons—came with the territory.

By 1937, however, the territory was chock-full of residents dependent on mechanized systems for water, light, heat, transportation, and employment. The floods of 1884 and 1913 damaged enough of this infrastructure that authors of the 1925 city plan recommended several flood-control strategies.

Lots of discussion yielded little action over the next decade.

Then came January 24, 1937, now known as “Black Sunday.” On that single day everything that could go wrong went very, very wrong. The river had exceeded

P H OTO G R A P H S BY J O N AT H A N W I L L I S

flood stage for a week, yet still the waters rose and swamped every precautionary barrier. Floodwaters poured into the waterworks, into electrical generating stations, into telephone switches and gas lines. Railroad tracks submerged. The Mill Creek valley was a lake of fire, as a million gallons of gasoline dumped from upended storage tanks ignited when a trolley line snapped and sparked. More than 30 buildings burned to the waterline.

As the Ohio River overflowed, six inches of snow piled onto a paralyzed city. Temperatures dipped to 20 degrees. Much of the city shivered as gas pipes uprooted and coal piles soaked.

Factories as far inland as Hartwell were inaccessible and out of commission. Trains, unable to reach the city center, dropped passengers at suburban stations.

The city’s airport was useless.

Dayton and Cleveland delivered potable water by truck. Authorities limited electrical consumption to a radio, a refrigerator, and a single light bulb—if households had any electricity at all. So many telephone lines failed that only the city’s ham radio operators provided reliable communication.

To combat looting, the National Guard blocked access to most of downtown. The mayor closed all schools, theaters, and stores. The Great Flood of 1937 lasted 19 days and covered 15

percent of Cincinnati. Remarkably, only eight people died.

The city was still drying out when elected officials, corporate leaders, and citizen volunteers rallied to prevent a recurrence.

The 1925 plan was dusted off, the Army Corps of Engineers enlisted, and everyone rolled up their sleeves. Within two years, the broad outlines of a flood mitigation plan came into focus.

The Corps offered two proposals to prevent future floods: an array of projects to tame Mill Creek and a levee spanning the downtown riverfront. Over the objections of warehouse owners and produce dealers south of Third Street, the city rejected the levee in favor of a string

of flood-mitigating parks that continued to leave the riverfront businesses vulnerable. Today, Smale, Sawyer Point, Yeatman’s Cove, and the Serpentine Wall provide some cushion against the whims of the capricious river, and the warehouses have been replaced by stadiums and The Banks, which use multilevel parking garages as stilts to hoist themselves above the 1937 flood line. All that empty space is designed to absorb flooding with minimal damage. Kentucky happily accepted Corps-built levees and welcomed the Cincinnati/ Northern Kentucky International Airport as a replacement for “Sunken Lunken.”

The Mill Creek barrier dam runs unobtrusively for a mile and a half, adjacent to the Sixth Street Viaduct, centered on a massive watergate that slams shut whenever the Ohio River threatens. Although World War II slowed construction, the dam was dedicated on January 24, 1947, the 10th anniversary of Black Sunday. At the other end of the Valley, Winton Lake got its start as the West Fork of Mill Creek Lake, designed to retain excessive runoff before it overflowed downstream. Other Corps-created reservoirs are Harsha Lake in Clermont County and Caesar Creek Lake in Clinton County, which control flooding along the Little Miami River.

No subsequent floods have wreaked havoc on Cincinnati like Black Sunday did in 1937, but that doesn’t mean the mighty Ohio has stopped trying. Or that humans keep trying to outsmart Mother Nature.

When Life Blew Up The 1974 tornadoes forced updates to weather technology, storm warning systems, and federal disaster recovery. —LINDA VACCARIELLO In the spring of 1974, a ferocious weather system brutalized communities from Michigan to Mississippi, killing hundreds, injuring thousands, and laying down billions of dollars in damage. The U.S. Weather Service documented 148 tornados in 24 hours, labeling the phenomenon “The Super Outbreak.” Most people simply remember the catastrophe by the name of the southwestern Ohio town that saw the worst of it: the Xenia Tornado.

The storm hit before the disaster warning systems we take for granted today. Xenia didn’t even have sirens to wail. Cath-

rine Wilson recalls that someone told her mother a bad storm was coming. “Mom said it was a spring shower,” recalls Wilson, then 9. Just minutes later, at 4:40 p.m. on April 3, 1974, she and her mother and sister hunched together in the bathtub against the roar of the wind and the shriek of exploding windows and ripped-away roofs. “It seemed to last forever,” she says.

The F5 category tornado brought winds up to 250 miles an hour, bulldozing a half-mile-wide swath through Xenia. But the cataclysmic storm system wasn’t done. At 5:30 p.m. another F5 touched down near Rising Sun, Indiana, passed into Northern Kentucky and knocked out power at the National Weather Service (NWS) station at CVG. When it crossed the river and blasted into Sayler Park, virtually all communication was shut down. There were no fatalities there, a blessing that may be attributed in part to the fact that the Xenia disaster had put residents on high alert.

The Super Outbreak set in motion a host of changes to weather reporting, including outdoor warning sirens, emergency power backup, and wider use of radar at NWS stations. (CVG had radar back then, but Dayton didn’t.) The experience prompted the NWS to

adopt the F0–F5 Fujita scale as a standard for describing the severity of a tornado; it’s since been updated as the Enhanced Fujita Scale. Aerial photos of the Xenia debris fields and Cincinnatians’ snapshots of the Sayler Park funnel cloud helped scientists unravel what happened in the chaos. The storm demonstrated the critical need for research funding— research that ultimately led to the development of Doppler radar.

Thirty-three died in the Xenia storm, with countless injuries.

An estimated 180 businesses and 1,200 houses—including the Arrowhead subdivision where Wilson lived—were flattened, along with 10 churches, two elementary schools, and the junior high. In that pre-FEMA era, help came from the Ohio National Guard, Red Cross, and regional aid workers. HUD arrived to organize housing, and President Nixon made an unannounced visit just days after the tragedy.

By May, he’d signed amendments to the Disaster Relief Act of 1974 to include tornado recovery.

The adrenaline of crisis galvanized Xenia residents quickly.

There were “Xenia Lives” bumper stickers and a Spirit of ’74 Committee assembled to map the way forward, as city leaders made plans for residential and com-

mercial redevelopment. Some of the challenges they faced sound familiar to today’s pandemic experience: unemployment, closed schools, cancelled events, grief.

But rebuilding was a tangible goal, and Xenia rebuilt. “We’re a tough group,” says Xenia Mayor Sarah Mays. She wasn’t even born when the 1974 tornado hit, but she was around for the 2000 storm that killed one person, and now she’s seen her neighbors respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m genuinely proud of my community,” she says. “We know we can pull together.”

Another lifelong resident, Marsha Bayless, was a first grade teacher in 1974. She served as Xenia mayor from 2010 to 2017 and agrees that her community is resilient, but she cautions that a disaster doesn’t wipe out divisions. “This forced people to come together,” she says, but “it doesn’t really last, and that’s unfortunate.” A 1982 case study of Xenia’s recovery by the Disaster Research Center at Ohio State University documents conflicts over residential planning, urban renewal, rezoning, and racial and socioeconomic inequities— conflicts every municipality must navigate, writ large post-disaster.

Xenia’s nightmare landscape has long been cleaned up, but Mays notes that there are still reminders of the struggle to revive the city. But neither she nor Bayless faults their predecessors. “They did the best they could,” says Bayless. And Mays, coping with the uncertainties of the current health crisis, points out that hindsight will always be 20/20. “I’m sure that 30 or 40 years from now people will be saying, Why did they make that decision?”

P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E S Y ( T O P ) U N I T E D S T A T E S A I R F O R C E , W R I G H T- P A T T E R S O N A F B / ( R I G H T ) N A T I O N A L W E A T H E R S E R V I C E

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From the Ashes of Adversity The 2001 riots, followed by the 9/11 economic downturn, led to new reforms and long-needed development for a neglected neighborhood. —CEDRIC ROSE

WHEN CINCINNATI POLICE OFFICER STEPHEN ROACH shot and killed unarmed teenager Timothy Thomas in the early hours of April 7, 2001, long-simmering frustrations boiled over after years of African American men dying at police hands. Riots wracked Over-the-Rhine, Walnut Hills, Avondale, and other city neighborhoods over the following days, gutting small businesses and leaving communities shocked and broken. The ensuing boycott of the city and downtown businesses protesting police brutality brought cancellations by prominent touring performers, costing millions of dollars in lost revenue and tarnishing our national image. Then 9/11 happened, and Cincinnati shared in the economic slump the terrorist attacks visited on the travel and entertainment industries.

“It was just a rough year,” says Joe Tucker, owner of Tucker’s Restaurant, the beloved Over-the-Rhine cornerstone his family has run since 1946. Their front windows were smashed during the riots, and the ensuing loss of business almost did him and his wife Carla in. That same year, cancer took his brother. “We lost our house, our cars,” he says. “We lost everything.” Tucker’s return to normal took years, only to endure a shooting in the restaurant, then a fire. Yet even under COVID-19, as his and Carla’s temporarily carryout-only business gets a fraction of the traffic they used to, he’s a portrait in resilience. “I’m not a crybaby,” says Tucker.

“There’s a lot of people in worse shape than I am.”

The 2001 riots and ensuing recession were a rock bottom from which the city, Over-the-Rhine in particular, clawed its way back. The road to OTR’s recent renaissance hasn’t been smooth by any means, but the riots brought to bear a collective will needed to finally start making change. It united resolve across stakeholders who didn’t trust one another— corporate, political, activist, and community—and helped identify the disparities that create conflict and the need for P H OTO G R A P H BY A S S O C I AT E D P R E S S

targeted investment that counteracts long neglect.

A commission of business and community leaders was set up to address racial disparities with new educational and investment opportunities in overlooked communities. These included a chamber-backed Minority Business Accelerator, a $30 million investment by Procter & Gamble, and a private nonprofit Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation (3CDC), which was first led by then–P&G CEO A.G. Lafley.

Since then, 3CDC has been the engine of transformation that’s rejuvenated Washington Park, restored Music Hall and Memorial Hall, and rehabbed individual properties to allow entertainment and dining to bloom again along Race, Vine, Walnut, and Main streets. Interest surged in living near such attractions, and suddenly you couldn’t afford a new condo in a neighborhood long spurned by most Cincinnatians.

While economic development is essential, it’s empty unless residents feel safe and citizens heard. That was the M.O. behind the other major development birthed in turmoil, the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement. Federally mandated, it was written with input from some 3,500 community members and signed just over a year after Thomas’s death. At its core, the agreement worked to correct systemic racial profiling, put community members in police cruisers to ride along on patrol, and established a citizen complaint authority.

The Collaborative Agreement hasn’t always been popular, particularly with the police department, which tried unsuccessfully to renege. After it was voluntarily renewed in 2007 beyond its initial court-ordered term, by 2015 Cincinnati showed a 69 percent reduction in use-of-force incidents.

Relationships between police and communities of color still have miles to go, as George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis and the unrest that followed prove yet again, but the Collaborative Agreement has made progress here. A recent “refreshment” of the agreement continues to promote dialogue, training, and community problem-oriented policing—showing that comebacks can happen when you try, fail, and try and try again.

Both the Collaborative Agreement and OTR’s renaissance have had their share of critics, particularly long-time neighborhood residents who feel excluded from the redevelopment gold rush. Joe Tucker has seen adversity bring change that cuts both ways. He says he’s not comfortable offering al fresco dining this summer, as other OTR restaurants are. “Up here [north of Liberty Street], it seems like 3CDC just leaves everything dormant.” Try, fail, and try again.

Y WIFE, MARY, AND I ARE LOCKED DOWN IN OUR tiny apartment in Lombardy, the region in northern Italy that has been the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak in this country. We’ve been in self-isolation since February 24, when our daughter called us from her home in Treviglio, a small city east of Milan in the province of Bergamo. We were in Geneva, Switzerland, for the weekend.

Claire told us that the regional government had just invoked all sorts of emergency measures, locking down entire towns. A supermarket stampede was underway in Treviglio.

(Being Italians, they were clearing the shelves of pasta, prosciutto, and mineral water. In the land of the bidet, toilet paper was not a top essential.) “They may be closing the border,” she said. “You’d better get back here.”

Closing the Swiss border! Suddenly we were caught up in a World War II espionage movie. Mary and I hightailed it to the Geneva station and caught the night train through the Alps back to Milan’s central station, where the normally turbulent passenger concourse was eerily quiet. That’s when the coronavirus first burst through the background buzz of dismaying world events and became all too real for us.

Our daughter had come to Italy to study art history in college and basically never left. Now married with two kids, a husband who is an inspector in the state police, and a career in international luxury packaging sales, Claire lives about 14 miles south of the town of Bergamo. It used to be known to tourists as a charming medieval citadel city perched on the front range of the Alps—now it’s become a name of historic dread. In March alone, 4,500 people died of COVID-19 in the province. The municipal crematorium was so overwhelmed that Italian army trucks were called to carry bodies to facilities elsewhere. The infection graph has since flattened, but the name can still stop Cincinnati friends in their FaceTime tracks. Bergamo? Is that where .. . ?

Still, we love it here. After Mary and I retired, Claire found us a tiny apartment in the building next door, and for the last four years we’ve stayed here for roughly half the year and then back in Cincinnati for the other half. We have grandchildren in both places. Many Americans have the idea that Italy is a larger Disneyland, an enchanted land of history, art, and Prosecco. We live here in Real Italy, a place where grandkids have to be taken to the dentist, schools give too much homework, and everyone worries about the economy, now more than ever. Day-to-day life is remarkably like Real Ohio back in Cincinnati, but with better coffee.

We were supposed to fly home in early April, but we’re not sure when we’re going to arrive at CVG. Our most recent flights were scheduled for June 1. Nor are we sure what home will look like when we do. But we’ve been very safe here as anziani (oldsters) locked down in our two-room apartment.

Claire has done all our shopping now, parking it outside our door, ringing the bell, and then stepping back to a safe social distance. Sometimes our 13-year-old granddaughter came by to chat with us from the hallway. It was weird.

An old word came back to us with new meaning: pastime.

To make the days go round, we read e-books. We streamed exercise videos on YouTube. I CONTINUED ON PAGE 82

M

Locked Down in Lombardy WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE A CINCINNATI TIME TRAVELER IN COVID-19 ITALY. — JOHN FLEISCHMAN

I L LU S T R AT I O N BY Z AC H A R Y G H A D E R I

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MY PERSPECTIVE

JOHN CRANLEY Mayor, City of Cincinnati

I first got really concerned about the pandemic’s reach [on March 6] when Austin, Texas, cancelled South By Southwest, which is a huge economic engine for that city. It became clear right away that the budget surplus the City of Cincinnati was anticipating for 2020 was going to flip to a gigantic hole, and so from day one we focused simultaneously on public health and finances. We got city council’s authority to borrow up to $150 million if necessary to continue providing basic services.

We still don’t know if Congress is going to help us and other local governments before we have to pass our next budget, so that borrowing flexibility has been a godsend for us.

I was concerned early on about, you know, what if half the police department gets sick? What if all the waterworks employees get sick, how do we continue to provide clean water?

And while we were trying to get our bearings, City Manager Patrick Duhaney got ahead of everything and was already buying PPE for Cincinnati—and he didn’t have to fight other cities or states for it. There’s been incredible cooperation among Ohio’s seven biggest cities and Governor Mike DeWine. For the first month and a half the mayors had a call with the governor every day, weekends too, to share best practices, efforts, and experiences.

Going through the city worker furlough process was very emotional and difficult.

I’ve been touched with how they accepted the furloughs, which can really hit people’s pride. I got a text from a staffer who said he’d work for free, he just wanted to serve during this time. I have to say council has been really responsible, taking some tough votes to cut funding and save money that normally could have created a huge public fight. And

the public came through to follow the stay-at-home orders. Really, everyone has rallied together to salute the flag, so to speak.

As the process moves along with reopening, things are getting more polarized. There’s too much social media shaming of each other. I honestly think most people are trying their best, and we shouldn’t be so judgmental.

—AS TOLD TO JOHN FOX

“Going through the city worker furlough process was very emotional and difficult. I’ve been touched with how they accepted the furloughs, which can really hurt people’s pride.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY KRAMER

49

MY PERSPECTIVE

GARREN COLVIN President and CEO, St. Elizabeth Healthcare

A FEW YEARS AGO during the Ebola scare, we formed an Infectious Disease Response Team in case we were inundated, which we weren’t. We kept the team in place with pe-

riodic training, so when COVID-19 hit our radar, we pressed “go” and activated them. We dedicated one of our four Northern Kentucky facilities to be our COVID-19 center, Ft. Thomas. Our facilities people turned four wings of that hospital into isolation wards, reworking the air and heating flow to create totally independent systems.

I’m so impressed by the hard work of our 9,000 physicians and associates.

I would stop by Ft. Thomas to meet and talk with our staff, hoping to uplift them and show support—but they always uplifted me.

Their attitude going onto shifts and coming off of shifts was remarkable. I never missed a day of work in the office, nor has anyone on our leadership team. If we asked our associates to be on the front lines in our hospitals, I wanted us to be there too.

We’re excited to be one of 10 U.S. hospitals working on a clinical trial for a new COVID-19 drug treatment. We got involved because of our relationship with [Covington-based clinical research and consulting firm] CTI; we told them St. Elizabeth had the interest and the capacity to ramp up research quickly, which is the key with this virus. It’s a phase II trial, meaning smaller-scale, inhouse research. If successful, phase III will involve the general public.

Health care facilities across this region were the safest places for the public during the pandemic. Too many people died at home or got in bad shape at home because they were afraid to see their doctor or go to the hospital. It didn’t have to happen. We prepared for the worst case, which thankfully hasn’t happened, and we’re ready for a second COVID-19 spike in the coming months.

More than 80 percent of those who tested positive for COVID-19 showed only mild or no symptoms, so it’s hard to say how widespread it is in our communities right now.

—AS TOLD TO JOHN FOX

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY KRAMER

NEW RIFF DISTILLING

STANDARD TEXTILE

CINCINNATI BALLET WARDROBE DEPARTMENT

KNOWN FOR

Producing bourbon, rye, and gin

KNOWN FOR

Making linens for hotels and hospitals

KNOWN FOR

Sewing and mending tutus and other dance costumes

NOW DOING

Producing hand sanitizer and donating it to local first responders

NOW DOING

Making gowns, masks, and face shields for healthcare workers

NOW DOING

Sewing masks in partnership with nonprofit Sew Masks 4 Cincy

POLAR3D

LUMAWARE SAFETY

BUSINESS •AS • UNUSUAL Creating The Polar Cloud, an online platform to manage 3D printing

NOW DOING

3D printing masks in partnership with Cintrifuse and InfoTrust

DEAD LOW BREWING

—AMANDA BOYD WALTERS

PUBLIC LIBRARY OF CINCINNATI AND HAMILTON COUNTY

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KNOWN FOR

When the normal ways of working just don’t fit during a global pandemic, these local companies took a hard le turn—and kept going.

KNOWN FOR

Manufacturing photoluminescent exit signs

NOW DOING

Manufacturing acrylic ClearGuard sneeze-protective barriers

CINCINNATI REUSE CENTER

KNOWN FOR

Running a brewery and restaurant

KNOWN FOR

Circulating printed materials and providing community space

KNOWN FOR

Redistributing (at a discount) donated or surplus building materials

NOW DOING

Helping first responders who need a place to quarantine

NOW DOING

Circulating digital materials and providing virtual events

NOW DOING

Redistributing (for free) easel pads, paper, paint, and books to families

I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY Z AC H A R Y G H A D E R I

MY PERSPECTIVE

JOSE SALAZAR Chef-Owner, Goose + Elder, Mita’s, and Salazar

THE BIGGEST CHALlenge for us since closing in March has been the uncertainty in what lies ahead. Will we see another spike with the virus? Will we be able to reopen while keeping our staff and guests safe? Will people have confidence in us? Will we be perceived negatively because of some of the decisions we make? Will the money we have on hand sustain us through the first few months and beyond? You’d need to write a 500-page book and not a magazine article to tackle the multitude of unanswerable questions we all have right now.

Moving forward, we have to rethink how we do almost everything. We’ll have to add and subtract things from a business standpoint to try to remain relevant and make the businesses profitable.

We’re grateful to be have been a part of the LEE Initiative’s restaurant relief program at Mita’s, which gave us a chance to help our colleagues and provide a little relief and comfort during a time when there was obviously a lot of despair in our industry. We ended our involvement in late May so we could reopen our places on June 1. We served about 200 meals per night seven days a week starting on March

19 [approximately 14,000 total meals]. Funds came from public and corporate donations, and La Soupe and several of our food purveyors, including Sysco and Creation Gardens, donated food.

Restaurant people are fighters by nature, and we don’t easily succumb. When the order ticket printer in

“You’d need to write a 500-page book to tackle the multitude of unanswerable questions we all have right now.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY KRAMER

52

TODAY’S SPECIALS The pandemic has been especially hard on restaurants and the people who run them. Luckily, many folks within and outside the industry stepped up to help themselves and others.—KAILEIGH PEYTON

3CDC doubled the impact of gift card purchases from local businesses with its Cincy Card Connection initiative. Each gift card purchased, up to $500 per person, was matched with a gift card to a minority- or woman-owned business. Raising more than $250,000 in the first round, they continued with a second round and raised $650,000 total.

Closing altogether during the pandemic was not an option for Rachel Appenfelder, who purchased Over-the-Rhine’s Dunlap Café in January. She kept the party going with buzzworthy Adult Happy Meals (in the familiar-shaped kiddie box), complete with a burger, fries, and your choice of adult beverage (or a “pop, ’cause you’re on the clock,” as the menu said).

LaRosa’s knew the impact partial closure would have on its 4,000 employees, many of whom would encounter reduced hours and financial hardships. In April and May, the pizzeria parlayed its fundraising Buddy Card into the LaRosa’s Team Member Relief Fund. Through card purchases, cash donations, and dollar-for-dollar matching by the LaRosa family, the program raised more than $450,000, for its workers.

the kitchen won’t stop printing at 7 p.m. on a Saturday night, we dig deep and attack it one ticket at a time—and eventually we get through it by working together and pulling each other out of the weeds.

My motivation comes from knowing that I have my family, both at work I CO N S BY J E N K AWA N A R I

and home, to fight for. I will do everything in my power to try to get back to serving our devoted and supportive guests in a safe manner. We owe it to all the people who have sent their well wishes, bought gift cards, and donated to help keep us afloat.

—AS TOLD TO JOHN FOX

Ashley Heidt (event specialist) and Brent Oberholzer (bar director) of forthcoming Hyde Park eatery Dear Restaurant & Butchery were inspired by colleagues in other cities who were feeding frontline workers while putting restaurants to work. They wanted to do the same. Launching Feed the Frontlines Cincinnati in April, they raised $16,850 (as of May 22) to feed more than 1,000 healthcare workers at The Christ Hospital.

MY PERSPECTIVE

RENEE MAHAFFEY HARRIS President and CEO, Center for Closing the Health Gap

Our organization has been around for 16 years, working to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities in Greater Cincinnati. When someone asked Dr. Fauci why there are disparate COVID-19 incidences and outcomes among black people in the United States, he said, “How long do you have?” Because the factors that put us in this place are systemic and have been here for some time.

From the moment I heard

CONNECT FOUR

about the stay-at-home order, I reached out to organizations that serve the black community— the Urban League, the African American Chamber of Commerce, the NAACP, Councilmember JanMichele Kearney, and Roosevelt Walker, president of the Cincinnati Medical Association—and we came together to develop a website to provide trusted information on the pandemic. Things can be confusing when there’s conflicting information and when issues aren’t understood. We have weekly town hall meetings on Zoom and Facebook Live, with experts answering questions from members of the black community, and we do interviews with different experts on Radio One and in The Cincinnati Herald.

We’ve created a hotline for seniors in Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority buildings so they can find out where to get meals, masks, and answers to their questions.

In a time when staying apart is the safest thing to do, strengthening our bonds and supporting each other takes a little more effort. These individuals and organizations made that effort.

—AMANDA BOYD WALTERS

Traditional word-of-mouth communication can’t happen in this pandemic. To reach young people, we’re utilizing social media, using the mechanisms they use. TikTok is a new one to me, but we’ve just done one showing kids that, when you walk out a door, you grab a mask. When you see kids talking to other kids about wearing masks, that’s when activation happens.

We now have more than 30 organizations that have joined in, making sure they could be a part of this fight. I serve on the minority strike force for Governor DeWine, and he’s asked about some of the collaborative things we’re doing. There are many organizations serving marginalized populations in Cincinnati. The pandemic has shown that we must work together. That has to be what comes out of this. I’m optimistic it will happen. —AS TOLD TO LINDA

VACCARIELLO

XAVIER UNIVERSITY Faculty and staff personally called all 4,500-plus undergraduate students to answer their questions.

VIRTUAL BOOK CLUBS The Mercantile Library’s lively book discussions moved online to serve readers.

CAMP DELIVERY Wave Pool Gallery supported their neighbors—and our creative community—by distributing weekly food boxes that also contained an original piece of art.

COMET CONNECTOR BUS Mason City Schools sent a decorated bus (wearing a mask) to students’ homes to celebrate birthdays.

ZOO BLOOMS Following virtual tours of the zoo’s spring tradition, staff delivered blooms to nursing home residents and hospital workers.

PORCH POURS Creative agency Agar set up a virtual happy hour movement that went national, with a playlist, cocktail recipes, and a hashtag.

TRUCK BED SING-ALONG TOUR Music teacher Bryan McCartney took his show on the road across Northern Kentucky so neighbors could sing and dance at a safe distance.

CINCINNATI CARES The online volunteer connection helped businesses launched through MORTAR reach out to experts for virtual coaching.

THE DAD INITIATIVE INSTAGRAM PROM Tyran Stallings’s DAD Initiative helps kids learn life skills, and to support the class of 2020, he enlisted his son Tariq (DJ Riq) and put on a virtual prom.

THE CHILDREN’S THEATRE OF CINCINNATI Streaming past performances and offering week-long virtual camps, TCT continued to engage young audiences.

VIRTUAL STORYTIMES Local bookstores and libraries including Blue Manatee, Joseph-Beth, and PLCHC took to YouTube, Facebook Watch, and Instagram to read to our littles.

DING DONG DITCHING SENIOR BASKETS Florence mom Shauntae Godsey collected donations, packed up baskets of goodies, and dropped them off for nearly 1,000 Northern Kentucky high school graduates.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY KRAMER

54

STEPPING UP, TOGETHER

Lucca Workshop Lindsey Schweitzer, owner of OTR wood and paper decor shop Lucca Workshop, used her high-tech laser machinery to cut plastic mask relief clips that reduce stress on a person’s ears and neck while wearing a surgical mask. By the end of May, Schweitzer had already donated more than 2,500 to hospitals and stores across the country, with plans to donate up to 8,000. luccawork shop.com/mask-relief-clips

THESE LOCAL BUSINESS AND ORGANIZATION LEADERS WENT THE EXTRA MILE TO HELP THOSE AFFECTED

BY THE COVID-19 CRISIS. —KATIE COBURN

The Native One Anna Steffen,

Cincy Shirts Cincy Shirts

Cincinnati Art Museum

owner of the popular women’s boutique, turned to trusted Los Angeles–based clothing manufacturer HYFVE when COVID-19 forced her to close her OTR and Covington locations. Instead of placing a clothing order, she enlisted the vendor to source nonsurgical face masks, which Steffen then asked customers to “purchase” in small batches to be donated to local hospitals. In total, The Native One and its customers donated 5,200 masks. thenative one.com

launched a “Stay at Home” T-shirt collection featuring comical designs, with a portion of proceeds donated to local and regional efforts supporting those affected by the crisis. Our favorites include one depicting Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear as Mister Rogers with the slogan Mister Beshear’s Commonwealth, and another of Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Department of Health Director Amy Acton, M.D., M.P.H., posing with light sabers and Ohio Strikes Back. cincyshirts.com

Even though COVID-19 forced the Cincinnati Art Museum to close its doors, it didn’t stop the iconic institution from stepping up to help those affected by the crisis.

It donated its entire supply of personal protective equipment to local healthcare workers, including 1,700 pairs of gloves and 160 face masks that would have been used during its art preservation process. The museum also donated food from its café to local nonprofit La Soupe to feed families with food insecurity. cincinnatiartmuseum.org

$ Redtree Art Gallery & Coffee Shop The Oakley-

OTR Chamber of Commerce In addition to pay-

based art gallery-slash-coffee shop shifted its business platform to show appreciation for local essential workers. Through its Redtree Initiative, customers could buy a single coffee, a pot of coffee, a single pastry or cookie, or a dozen pastries or cookies, which Redtree then delivered to local first responders and frontline healthcare workers. redtreegallery.net

ing web developers to build online ordering capabilities and gift card applications for Over-the-Rhine businesses that didn’t already have them, the OTR Chamber of Commerce launched its Small Business Fund. With help from Main Street Ventures, Urban Sites, and Sycamore Capital, the chamber set a fund-raising goal of $500,000 to provide grants to help cover reopening costs for eligible small businesses in OTR and Pendleton. otrchamber.com

African American Chamber of Commerce and MORTAR The Greater

College Hill Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation With help from

Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky African American Chamber of Commerce and local entrepreneurship hub MORTAR teamed up to create the Minority Business Emergency Assistance Fund to help struggling black- and minority-owned business owners survive COVID-19, with financial support for payroll gaps, rent or mortgage payments, and other bills. african-american chamber.com, wearemortar.com

community donations to its “Alive and Thrive” fund-raising campaign, the College Hill CURC forgave April rent payments for all commercial tenants housed in properties the corporation fully owns. This included 14 small businesses located along Hamilton Avenue, such as College Hill Yoga, Enliven Nail Spa, Red Rose Jems Pizzeria, and College Hill Coffee Co. chcurc.com

I L LU S T R AT I O N S BY E M M A T H E I S

56

MY PERSPECTIVE

CHRISTOPHER MILLIGAN General Director and CEO, Cincinnati Opera

WE FACE MANY OF the same challenges as other organizations: uncertainty, abandoned plans, caring for a workforce of contract employees, and reimagining how we fulfill our mission under these circumstances. But performing arts organizations also have special challenges associated with social distancing: We can’t build sets. Our singers can’t rehearse or perform. Our audiences can’t gather. So, in the short term, we are innovating. Long term, we’re being patient and looking forward to our return to Music Hall in 2021.

This summer marks the company’s 100th anniversary. So, as you might imagine, we’ve been planning for more than two years for a big celebratory season. But Music Hall closed in mid-March, and our staff began working from home. We began daily crisis management team meetings to track developments, and pretty quickly we identified key decision dates for the fate of the season. When it became clear that we wouldn’t be able to start building sets or gathering people for rehearsals, we had to cancel the entire 2020 season. I think we all expected it, but the finality was heartbreaking.

Now we have several digital series going. One is called Apartment Arias, PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY KRAMER

which features singers who would have been part of our 2020 season performing from their homes all around the world. Though they’ll never compete with the live experience, the pieces offer an opportunity to get to know the singers in an authentic and intimate way—an interesting reimaging of opera. The company’s first live forays will likely feature nontraditional spaces, particularly outdoor venues.

Besides the opera’s supportive board and re-

sourceful staff, two other things have kept me going over the past few months.

The first is music. At least once a day I listen to something like the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or the aria “Nessun Dorma,” which remind me that we can triumph. The second is a question leaders will be asked months and years from now: What did you do to help during the 2020 pandemic? I know how I want to answer that.

—AS TOLD TO LINDA VACCARIELLO

TWICE MATT BRENNAN CAME AGONIZINGLY CLOSE TO THE SUMMIT OF MT. EVEREST. THE PANDEMIC SHUT DOWN HIS THIRD ATTEMPT. WILL HE GET THERE?

1,000 FEET

58

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANCESCO BONGIORNI

MATT BRENNAN SHOULD BE SITTING ON HIS PATIO RIGHT NOW, BEER IN ONE HAND AND CIGAR IN THE OTHER, REGALING FRIENDS WITH STORIES OF SNOW, ICE, AND TERROR. OF THE HOWLING WINDS, THE BOTTOMLESS DROPS, AND THE BLINDING SUNLIGHT. OF THE MAGNIFICENTLY MUSCULAR SHERPAS WHO SEEM TO SPRINT, RATHER THAN SCALE, THE WORLD’S TALLEST MOUNTAIN WHILE CARRYING 80 POUNDS OF GEAR.

60

But this is not the story of man standing on top of the world. It is, instead, a story of never-giveup grit and stubborn defiance of Murphy’s Law. Perhaps it’s a tale for our times.

hen I first interviewed Brennan in mid-February, the COVID-19 pandemic was primarily a worry in Asia. The first U.S. coronavirus death had already happened, but we didn’t know it. Brennan, CEO of Loveland Excavating and Paving, was clearly ready to begin his third attempt to climb Mt. Everest. Mentally ready. Physically ready. And calm, because he’d already tried twice and was forced to turn back. He knew what he was getting himself into.

His first attempt, in 2018, ended when he pulled a groin muscle at the Everest base camp, a makeshift tent city perched at 17,900 feet above sea level. “It

W

HE WAS TWO WEEKS AWAY FROM HIS THIRD TRY AT EVEREST WHEN NEPAL CANCELLED ALL 2020 CLIMBS.

caused a hernia, and I had a lot of swelling,” Brennan recalls, looking down as if trying to forget the pain and disillusionment. “I got up to 20,000 feet and was worried about going higher because my leg turned purple. I figured this was no place to be.”

His second attempt, last year, ended in a long rope line of climbers stuck in stratospheric gridlock just 1,000 feet short of the 29,035-foot summit.

The photos of that rock and ice bottleneck went viral, and the stalemated queues contributed to the deaths of several of the 12 mountaineers who died on Everest in 2019.

Brennan was two weeks away from leaving for the Himalayas on March 29 for his third attempt

when the host country, Nepal, cancelled the May climbing season. His heart was broken, but his head told him it was the right call.

With millions of people being infected with a raging virus and more than 100,000 dying here in the U.S., the disappointment of missing out on Everest—again— seemed best to keep to oneself.

he atmosphere above 26,000 feet is so thin that climbers need oxygen masks. As soon as Brennan took his first breath from the tank, he was on the clock. That’s why climbers call it The Death Zone. You don’t want to run out of oxygen going up—or coming down.

CO N T IN U E D O N PAGE 84

T

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INTO THIN AIR MATT BRENNAN (ABOVE) AND HIS 2019 TEAM CAMPING IN FRONT OF THE WESTERN CWM GLACIAL BASIN (LEFT) AND CLIMBING THE KHUMBU ICEFALL (TOP).

62

63

THE BIG PARTICIPATION SPORTS IN mid-19th century Cincinnati were town ball and the English game cricket. Not baseball.

Town ball had been played since the 1830s on fields set up in squares or rectangles, the rules circa 1858 being four

64

P H OTO G R A P H C O U R T E SY T H E C I N C I N N AT I H I S TO R I C A L S O C I E T Y / I L LU S T R AT I O N C O U R T E SY L I B R A R Y O F C O N G R E S S

In the late afternoon of Friday, July 23, 1858, a second set of horses was being added to an omnibus (horse-drawn streetcar) headed north out of downtown for a climb up what today is Reading Road. A group of men had arrived together for transportation to a sporting event.

They were leaving the Cincinnati riverfront basin, where 50 livery stables, 75 blacksmiths, 120 bakeries, and 750 grocers (and even more saloons) serviced 100,000 people crammed into a two-by-one-mile area.

It was the second most congested area of that size in the U.S. outside of Manhattan.

The men in that omnibus were bat-and-ball players headed for the first known “base ball” game in Cincinnati, on a playing field in East Walnut Hills. Their meeting turns on its head everything we thought we knew about the origins of baseball in this famous baseball city.

There isn’t a single west sider who believes that baseball began anywhere but on the west side. But that’s a myth.

Baseball in these parts began on the city’s east side.

The only reportage of that first game was in the Monday, July 26 edition of The Commercial Tribune, just above a more detailed story and the early equivalent of a box score for a game of town ball. “The [base ball] contest is said to have been an exciting and spirited affair,” the small news item offered, “but as we have not been furnished with the score, we cannot lay it before the curious….”

Well, today we finally lay it before the curious, all the dots we could unearth and connect. It’s a prequel story that preceded by 11 years the formation of the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, who established the city as the home of professional baseball.

This prequel involves a cricket field-turned-baseball diamond in the most unlikely of places, off Madison Pike between Hackberry Street and Woodburn Avenue, far from where the most popular of games, town ball, was played. It shares a moment in the city’s pre–Civil War history with the Underground Railroad. And it stars a previously uncredited pioneer and bridge to the famous Red Stockings, whom few have heard of since his death in 1912.

bases 60 feet apart, 10 to 14 players per side, four innings, outs made by batted balls caught in the air or by “soaking” a runner (hitting them with the ball), and scores coming by runners circling the bases. Cricket, in its most distilled form, had been played here well before that, probably as soon as four Englishmen got together somewhere on the first piece of flat ground above the Ohio River.

But, baseball—back then called “base ball,” long before it became the American game—was not played here in a formal sense until July 23, 1858. It said as much in The Commercial Tribune the day before that game: “A club has been formed and the first trial of skill will take place tomorrow up on East Walnut Hills. Several of the members have belonged to crack Eastern clubs.”

Lost to history are the names of the players in that first baseball game or any of the subsequent three contests later that summer. But almost certainly they were a blend of players from town ball and cricket. Cricket because, after all, they were using the cricket players’ field. And town ball because those players would have been most familiar with and interested in a new game that had become the rage on the East Coast.

The town ball players who would have tried their hand at baseball here that first year were likely led by Bom DeBeck, a transplant from New Jersey. He was prominent in town ball, having appeared in his first local box score in 1858 as the captain of his team. He’s the TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME CIVIL WAR–ERA CINCINNATI AND only town ball player known to NORTHERN KENTUCKY (LEFT), WITH THE have played baseball when it reROEBLING SUSPENSION BRIDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION, WAS A KEY LAUNCHING sumed here after the Civil War. SPOT FOR THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD AND THE GAME OF BASEBALL, WHICH Bodo Otto Morgan DeWOULD FIRST BE PLAYED IN EAST WALBeck—Bom to his friends— NUT HILLS (ABOVE).

was born on March 30, 1830, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, and arrived in Cincinnati at the age of 11. He attended old Woodward High School and College. By 1858 he was married with two children, and lived at the northwest corner of Fourth and Main—several blocks from the First Unitarian Church and Zion Baptist Church, both active participants in the Underground Railroad at the time.

It was an easy nine-block walk to the Seventh District School, where DeBeck was a teacher and later principal.

He was so intertwined with Cincinnati’s early baseball history that he likely would have played in one if not all four of that summer’s games. He had the time (late afternoons off as a teacher) and the inclination (almost certainly he had some familiarity with the game being played back home in New Jersey), and he had the connections within Cincinnati’s athletic community.

It was a hard one-mile climb of 300 feet elevation from the northeastern edge of downtown to McMillan Street, with a slight descent to Madison and Hackberry. Costing 10 cents, the omnibus trip was especially difficult in the 94-degree July heat. (“Steadily, systematically, and provokingly hot,” read that day’s weather in The Commercial Tribune.)

The field they were headed to was in the same block as St. Francis DeSales Chapel, a wooden structure just north of where the big church that replaced it is today. Across Madison Pike was the One Mile House, a rest stop for horse travelers, especially those coming out of downtown Cincinnati. A sketch of the cricket grounds appeared in The Penny Press in 1859, a year after the first baseball game there.

The impetus for this inaugural game almost certainly was a newly codified Laws of Base Ball pamphlet published in the winter of 1857–1858, with its dictate that a contest shall consist of nine innings, with three outs per half-inning; nine men to a side; and a field with 90 feet between four bases. The local crowd would have likely read the announceCONTINUED ON PAGE 88

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TREATING CANCER DURING

A PANDEMIC

WHEN COVID19 STRUCK CINCINNATI, LOCAL CANCER CARE CENTERS QUICKLY ADAPTED TO PROVIDE VULNERABLE PATIENTS WITH THE CARE THEY NEED.

T

he COVID-19 pandemic brought nearly every facet of American life to a grinding halt. But for oncologists and staff at local cancer care centers, the work hasn’t stopped. If anything, the virus has only further complicated a world that already deals with matters of life and death each day.

As stay-at-home orders are relaxed, cancer care teams field questions from patients who worry about what a public health crisis may mean for their treatment. Am I at an increased risk for infection? Should I cancel my medical appointments and stay home? What do I do if I get sick?

“It’s an extremely complicated environment for cancer patients,” says Syed Ahmad, M.D., co-director of the UC

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Cancer Institute. “They’re having to deal with a double burden—not only the diagnosis, but also the fear of possibly getting an infection and having complications.”

Uncertainty has forced quick innovation and difficult decisions. After all, a cancer diagnosis doesn’t wait for a pandemic to end. But Cincinnati’s hospitals are finding new ways to step up to the challenge and adapt to the rapidly shifting landscape of cancer care in the era of COVID-19.

UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGES A cancer patient’s experience often involves a complex web of medical professionals—a team that’s working with the patient from the moment of diagnosis. One patient alone may see a general

physician, an infusion nurse, a radiation therapist, a genetic counselor, a behavioral health specialist, and a nutritionist.

The list goes on.

“That’s part of cancer care,” says Mark Witte, executive director of the TriHealth Cancer Institute. “And that interaction is a component that we think is so vitally important in terms of how patients experience their care, who they come to know, and all of those elements. So how do we compensate for that experience that you have and the way that you’re treated during a very intense time?”

There’s no simple answer to that question. Many patients, Ahmad says, are concerned about weighing the risk of their cancer returning or progressing versus the possibility of getting sick.

They may worry that the very same drugs helping them stay alive are also suppressing their immune systems, heightening the risk for infection.

The sheer novelty of the virus makes it difficult to gauge just how dangerous it might be for cancer patients.

The World Health Organization estimates that about 1.4 percent of infected patients with no underlying conditions will die from COVID-19. For cancer patients, that rate jumps to about 7.6 percent. And early data suggest that patients with respiratory malignancies may be at even greater risk.

At local cancer care centers, it’s far from business as usual. Clinical trials have been suspended, and patients, typically accompanied by family members, are often attending appointments alone.

There’s no telling how long it might take for a return to some semblance of normalcy. Ahmad knows that, at least for the foreseeable future, the new reality will mean later nights and longer days than doctors may be used to.

“You can imagine that we’ve delayed a lot of cases. And we have a lot of patients in the queue... and we only have so many operating rooms and so many people working,” Ahmad says. “So now, the next challenge is going to be trying to get all these cases done, and then handle the new cases that are coming in. So it’s going to be quite interesting. And it’s going to require working outside the box.”

Photograph by Rido/Stock.Adobe.com

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HEALTH WATCH CANCER TREATMENT THE CHANGING FACE OF CANCER CARE Local cancer care centers are already working outside the box, exploring new ways to create a safe, supportive environment for patients.

At UC Cancer Center, precautions start at the front door. Temperature checks are mandatory for both doctors and patients. As of May, cancer patients were allowed to bring just one person with them to appointments. Social distancing guidelines are enforced the moment a patient sets foot in the waiting room.

In an effort to minimize the risk of infection, more providers have been turning to telehealth visits, saving in-person interactions only for patients who require lab testing or urgent physical exams that can’t be performed over a webcam.

“If you look at our clinics, half of those clinic visits are now telehealth visits and half are in-person,” Ahmad says.

“And the only ones that are in-person are people who ask or require the doctor to interact with the patient to examine the patient.”

The same rings true for James Maher,

a medical oncologist at TriHealth Cancer Institute who says telehealth visits count for at least a third of his recent appointments.

But telehealth isn’t always an option.

Sometimes, radiation, chemotherapy, and surgery simply can’t wait, meaning oncologists have to make decisions caseby-case, looking at each patient’s cancer individually to determine who can safely wait for a procedure.

“Often, they can be delayed,” says Brian Mannion, M.D., executive medical director of the oncology service line at The Christ Hospital. “And many of them have been delayed. But some of them cannot, and so we’re treating them on a case-by-case basis.”

“THE CITY HAS UNITED” Oncologists and other cancer care center staffers may not be as visible as other frontline workers whose bravery and sacrifice inspire so many in the face of a pandemic. But in a time of unprecedented uncertainty in the medical field, Witte likens his own cancer treatment staff to battlefield nurses and doctors

who put their own lives on the line to ensure the standard of patient care never wavered.

“We’re thinking so much about the frontline workers who are working in the ICU and on COVID units,” he says.

“But not thinking so much of the routine care that still has to happen.”

Doctors have found themselves drawing inspiration from their patients, and patients from their doctors. TriHealth Cancer Institute even saw its patient satisfaction scores rise in April—a testament, Witte says, to the way cancer centers have adapted to the new reality.

The road ahead is uncertain. Cancer care will undoubtedly look different in the coming days, months, and maybe even years. But when it comes to the standard of care at Cincinnati’s cancer centers, much remains the same.

“Inspiration is all around,” Ahmad says. “This city has united. Every hospital in the city has gone above and beyond to work together, talk to one another, and determine the best way forward. It’s about being unified and working for a common purpose—a common goal.”

STAYING SAFE

SCHEDULE TELEHEALTH APPOINTMENTS, IF POSSIBLE: Unless your upcoming

DON’T CANCEL YOUR CHECKUPS: “We don’t want people to go untreated or ignoring symptoms during this time that need to be addressed,” says Jenny Scott, executive director of The Christ Hospital’s oncology line. If you’re worried about how COVID-19 may impact your treatment plan, follow up with your doctor to determine the best course of action.

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appointment requires testing or a physical exam, ask your doctor about meeting over the phone or online.

Many local cancer centers are encouraging telehealth appointments in place of in-person visits and Medicare has temporarily expanded its coverage of telehealth services. Check with your health insurance provider to see if they’re doing the same.

WEAR A MASKBUT KNOW IT’S NO SUBSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL DISTANCING: Going out? Whether it’s for a trip to the grocery store or a walk around

town, The American Society of Clinical Oncology suggests both patients and clinicians follow the CDC’s general guidelines on mask usage, which recommends everyone wear a cloth face covering in public.

LIMIT YOUR VISITORS: Many cancer care centers are setting strict limits on who’s allowed to accompany patients to appointments. Consider doing the same. Follow your local health department’s social distancing guidelines and limit the number of people you come into contact with— it’s one of the most surefire ways to limit the spread of infection.

Photograph by Maria Sbytova/Stock.Adobe.com

LOCAL CANCER CARE SPECIALISTS OFFER FOUR WAYS YOU CAN LESSEN YOUR RISK OF INFECTION WHILE STAYING ON TOP OF YOUR HEALTH.

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F O R T H E U N I V E R S E O F YO U

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

HEALTH WATCH CANCER TREATMENT

TOP DOCTORS

Susan Feeney St. Elizabeth Cancer Care Edgewood, 1 Medical Village Dr., Edgewood, KY, 41017, (859) 301-2238

The physicians listed here appeared on the 2020 Cincinnati Magazine Top Doctors list.

To see the whole list, go to cincinnatimagazine.com/topdocs.

Jeffrey I. Grass OHC, 2960 Mack Rd., Suite 105, Fairfield, OH, 45014, (888) 649-4800

Corey James Hobbs

HEMATOLOGY AND ONCOLOGY

Irfan Firdaus, D.O.

Faisal Adhami

The Christ Hospital Physicians, 4460 Red Bank Expy., Suite 200, Cincinnati, OH, 45227, (513) 321-4333

TriHealth Cancer Institute, 110 N. Poplar St., Oxford, OH, 45056, (513) 853-1300

Mark T. Andolina TriHealth - Good Samaritan Infusion Center, 8240 Northcreek Dr., Suite 1100, Cincinnati, OH, 45236, (513) 853-1300

Manish S. Bhandari The Christ Hospital Physicians, 11140 Montgomery Rd., Suite 2300, Cincinnati, OH, 45249, (513) 564-8580

Lawrence Brennan St. Elizabeth Cancer Care Medical Oncology, 20 Medical Village Dr., Suite 200, Edgewood, KY, 41017, (859) 301-4000

Mahmoud Charif UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Floor 2, Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 475-8500

Rekha Chaudhary UC Health Physicians, 7675 Wellness Way, Suite 201, West Chester, OH, 45069, (513) 475-8500

Robert L. Cody The Christ Hospital Physicians, 4460 Red Bank Expy., Suite 200, Cincinnati, OH, 45227, (513) 321-4333

David James Draper TriHealth - Good Samaritan Infusion Center, 5520 Cheviot Rd., Suite D, Cincinnati, OH, 45247, (513) 853-1300

D. Randolph Drosick

Daniel Flora St. Elizabeth Physicians - Ft. Thomas Medical Oncology, 85 N. Grand Ave., Ft. Thomas, KY, 41075, (859) 572-3298

Douglas Flora St. Elizabeth Cancer Care Medical Oncology, 20 Medical Village Dr., Suite 200, Edgewood, KY, 41017, (859) 301-4000

Amie Jackson TriHealth - Good Samaritan Infusion Center, 5520 Cheviot Rd., Suite D, Cincinnati, OH, 45247, (513) 853-1300

Prasad R. Kudalkar OHC, 3050 Mack Rd., Suite 300, Fairfield, OH, 45014, (888) 649-4800

Evan Z. Lang OHC, 3050 Mack Rd., Suite 300, Fairfield, OH, 45014, (888) 649-4800

Tahir Latif UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Floor 2, Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 475-8500

Philip D. Leming The Christ Hospital - Cancer Center, 2139 Auburn Ave., D-Level, Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 321-4333

Kurt P. Leuenberger OHC, 3301 Mercy Health Blvd., Suite 100, Cincinnati, OH, 45211, (888) 649-4800

James F. Maher

OHC, 601 Ivy Gateway, Cincinnati, OH, 45245, (513) 751-2273

TriHealth - Good Samaritan Infusion Center, 5520 Cheviot Rd., Suite D, Cincinnati, OH, 45247, (513) 853-1300

James H. Essell

Gina Matacia

OHC, 4777 E. Galbraith Rd., Suite 320, Cincinnati, OH, 45236, (888) 649-4800

TriHealth - TCI Amb Treatment Center, 10506 Montgomery Rd.,

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Suite G106, Cincinnati, OH, 45242, (513) 853-1300

Olugbenga Olowokure UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Floor 2, Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 475-8500

Andrew J. Parchman TriHealth - Good Samaritan Infusion Center, 5520 Cheviot Rd., Suite D, Cincinnati, OH, 45247, (513) 853-1300

Suzanne M. Partridge OHC, 3301 Mercy Health Blvd., Suite 100, Cincinnati, OH, 45211, (888) 649-4800

Christy Sapp

TriHealth Cancer Institute - Clifton, 375 Dixmyth Ave., Cincinnati, OH, 45220, (513) 853-1300

Bradley Huth St. Elizabeth Cancer Care Edgewood, 1 Medical Village Dr., Edgewood, KY, 41017, (859) 301-2238

Jordan Kharofa UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 584-8956

Elizabeth H. Levick OHC, 4777 E. Galbraith Rd., Suite 320, Cincinnati, OH, 45236, (888) 649-4800

St. Elizabeth Cancer Care Medical Oncology, 20 Medical Village Dr., Suite 200, Edgewood, KY, 41017, (859) 301-4000

Teresa Meier

David M. Waterhouse

Marc R. Mosbacher

OHC, 4350 Malsbary Rd., Cincinnati, OH, 45242, (888) 649-4800

OHC, 601 Ivy Gateway, Cincinnati, OH, 45245, (888) 649-4800

Paula F. Weisenberger

Luke E. Pater

OHC, 3050 Mack Rd., Suite 300, Fairfield, OH, 45014, (888) 649-4800

UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 584-8956

Trisha Wise-Draper UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Floor 2, Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 475-8500

RADIATION ONCOLOGY William Barrett UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 584-8956

Lauren Castellini

UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 584-8956

Pratish H. Shah St. Elizabeth Cancer Care Edgewood, 1 Medical Village Dr., Edgewood, KY, 41017, (859) 301-2238

Joseph N. Shaughnessy OHC, 601 Ivy Gateway, Cincinnati, OH, 45245, (888) 649-4800

Michael Shehata

St. Elizabeth Cancer Care Edgewood, 1 Medical Village Dr., Edgewood, KY, 41017, (859) 301-2238

TriHealth Cancer Institute - Montgomery, 10550 Montgomery Rd., Suite 14, Cincinnati, OH, 45242, (513) 853-1300

Emily Daugherty

Vinita Takiar

UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 584-8956

UC Health Physicians, 234 Goodman St., Cincinnati, OH, 45219, (513) 584-8956

COMMUNITIES

Giving families peace of mind for more than 50 years We’re dedicated to helping older adults enjoy a well-rounded, fulfilling and active lifestyle in a faith-filled environment. Visit a Christian Village Community today to learn more.

Vibrant and Caring Life Plan Communities at MASON

411 Western Row Rd., Mason, OH 45040 (513) 398-1486

www.christianvillages.org

at MT. HEALTHY

8097 Hamilton Ave. Cincinnati, OH 45231 (513) 931-5000

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SENIOR LIV ING A New Normal How one senior living community is keeping its residents safe and engaged during the coronavirus pandemic. —Shannon Smith

Photograph by M.Dörr & M.Frommherz/Stock.Adobe.com

A

MID THE ONGOING struggles of the coronavirus pandemic, senior living communities are facing unprecedented challenges maintaining the physical and mental health of their residents.

To protect seniors, who are most at risk of suffering complications resulting from COVID-19, Ohio and Kentucky stay-at-home orders have barred families from visiting face-to-face with their loved ones in care facilities. In an effort to keep spirits up and give families peace of mind, care workers at the New England Club are finding new ways to keep their residents engaged with safe-distance activities like concerts and window visits.

Family members have been able to interact with their loved ones by

sitting outside the windows of their care facilities and talking to them over FaceTime. Most families have been cooperative and understanding of these new protocols, says Tracy Sanborn, sales leader at the New England Club. “The families are happy their loved one is here and that they are safe,” she says. “They know this is the kind of thing we are prepared for.”

The New England Club has hosted a variety of social activities like hallway bingo, butterfly shows, costume parties, and more. On Easter, residents enjoyed a hunt for Easter baskets throughout the building and musical performances from their rooms.

With physical interactions being restricted, the facility started a telegram system for residents to exchange handwritten messages with

one another via care workers to stay in contact with friends in different parts of the building while maintaining a social distance. Staff members are keeping the residents informed of current events with recently established daily news announcements, inserting much-needed levity with jokes, photos, and a “good news” section to boost morale.

During this time of uncertainty, care workers have worked tirelessly to ensure the well-being of their patients.

They recognize that meaningful interactions help ensure senior citizens are staying healthy not only physically, but mentally.

“We are making the most of a hard situation,” Sanborn says. “Our residents and staff have been very understanding and appreciative.”

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Staying Safe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists staying at home as one of the top ways for seniors to protect themselves from exposure to the virus.

Enacting social distancing and limiting seniors’ interaction with outside visitors or staff has been one of the most important measures to ensure safety, says Laura Lamb, the president and CEO of ERS. The retirement services provider encourages families and seniors to remain in contact using platforms like FaceTime or Zoom to allow seniors to interact with friends, family members, and other would-be visitors.

“A lot of people don’t believe seniors are tech savvy,” says Lamb. “Technology has been a great resource for both residents and families.”

ERS has instituted a number of precautions to protect its residents,

I

N I T S SEN IOR LI V I NG communities around Cincinnati, Episcopal Retirement Services (ERS) is ensuring that seniors can remain in contact with their loved ones during the coronavirus pandemic. The

including restricting visitor interaction.

The precautions seem to be working: Lamb says that, as of the end of April, ERS had not seen a single confirmed resident case of COVID-19 at its communities Deupree House and Marjorie P. Lee Retirement Community.

“We have restricted staff and visitors, and we now screen staff on every shift,” she says. Research indicates that at other retirement communities contractors and workers have, in some instances, introduced the virus to residents, so ERS closely monitors its staff and their interactions with seniors.

“We took a proactive and cautious approach,” says Lamb. “The CDC and the Ohio Department of Health have been amazing resources [of information].” —Brandon English

New England Club is unlike any other Senior Living Community in Cincinnati.

We are a more affordable lifestyle because we offer Independent Apartment Living with multiple on-site assisted care options for our residents and their families to be able to choose. Our residents schedule care “as needed,” so they can “age in place” and maintain their independence and financial freedom all in the comfort of their apartment home.

Our “all-inclusive, month to month” rent includes the following: - 3 Nutritious Chef-Prepared Meals Daily – Restaurant Style Dining - Emergency Response System Monitored 24/7 – GPS Technology - Complimentary Scheduled Transportation – Unlimited Per Year - Weekly Housekeeping and Linen Service – Complimentary Washers and Dryers - Full Calendar of Life-Enriching Activities, Events and Weekly Outings - Total Brain Health Weekly Program for the Mind, Body and Spirit!

- Travel & Stay Program - FREE and Unlimited to any of our 262 properties throughout the US - Pets Warmly Welcomed

We look forward to your visit!

8135 Beechmont Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45255

|

513-474-2582

Amenities Private Dining Room & Lounge / Weekly Classes - Painting, Creative Writing, Poetry, and more / Beauty Salon, Barber Shop and Nail Salon / Resident Operated Store / Fitness Center / Putting Green / Greenhouse

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All Inclusive Senior Living Affordably Price

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Photograph by Syda Productions/Adobe Stock

GOOD TO KNOW

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

SENIOR LIV ING COMMU NIT Y DIRECTORY

Review the listings below for senior living communities that meet your level-of-care needs. You’ll find campuses that offer independent living, assisted living, continuing care, skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation units, adult day programs, and more.

With contact information at your fingertips, we make it easy to request more information or to schedule a visit.

CEN TR A L CARRIAGE COURT OF KENWOOD 4650 E. GALBRAITH RD. CINCINNATI, OH 45236, (513) 904-4573, SENIORLIFESTYLE.COM Type of Facility: Assisted Living and Memory Care Total Units: 100; 41 Assisted Living, 59 Memory Care Average Age: 87 Total Staff: NP Offers a caring atmosphere, an active community, and a comfortable life for residents to age in place. Licensed nursing staff is available on site 24 hours a day.

Provides a secure memory care setting for residents with dementia. An Individual Service Plan guides staff in assisting residents.

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SEASONS RETIREMENT COMMUNITY 7300 DEARWESTER DR., CINCINNATI, OH 45236, (513) 984-9400, SENIORLIFESTYLE.COM Type of Facility: Independent Living, Continuum of Care on campus at Courtyard Total Units: 343; 216 Independent Living, 83 Assisted Living, 45 Nursing Average Age: 80 Total Staff: 250 (including Courtyard) Offers studios and one- and twobedroom apartments on a campus surrounded by lush greenery in the heart of Kenwood. Amenities include award-winning dining, live music, a fitness center and outdoor pool, a beauty salon and barbershop, a library, fitness classes, and more.

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and beautiful grounds, you’ll wonder why you didn’t move here sooner. It’s the best way to help your loved one stay as active and interested in life as possible when the body or mind begins growing older.

THE CHRISTIAN VILLAGE AT MASON 411 WESTERN ROW RD., MASON, OH 45040, (513) 398-1486, CHRISTIAN VILLAGES.ORG Type of Facility: Life Plan Community Independent Living, Assisted Living, Short-term Rehabilitation, Memory Support, Long-term Nursing Total Units: 379; 189 Garden Homes, 76 Assisted Living Garden Apts., 41 Memory Support Apts., 73 Skilled Nursing Beds Average Age: NP Total Staff: 185 The staff is dedicated to helping residents enjoy a fulfilling, joyful lifestyle in a relaxed, faith-filled community. The 85-acre lakeside campus features independent living Garden Homes and private rehabilitation suites. The staff’s approach to care is grounded in compassionate service and is built upon a multidimensional approach that we call “Service From the Heart.”

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COTTINGHAM RETIREMENT COMMUNITY 3995 COTTINGHAM DR., CINCINNATI, OH 45241, (513) 563-3600, COTT INGHAMRETIREMENTCOMMUNITY. COM Type of Facility: Continuing Care Retirement Community Total Units: 275 Average Age: 80 + Total Staff: 165 Cottingham is a nonprofit five-star-rated community offering all levels of care, including Independent Living, Assisted Living, Memory Care with family support, Skilled Nursing, Rehab, and Long-Term Care. Monthly rental fees: no endowments, no longterm contracts, just all-inclusive and worry-free leasing. 2018 Best of Senior Living Award and Deficiency-Free State Survey 2018. We welcome seniors ages 65 and older to our active community, where our mission is “Taking Care of You.”

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NORT H CEDAR VILLAGE SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 5467 CEDAR VILLAGE DR., MASON, OH 45040, (513) 754-3100, CEDAR VILLAGE.ORG Type of Facility: Retirement Community Total Units: 105 Independent/Assisted Living Apts., 25 Long-Term Memory Supports Beds, 87 Long-Term Care Beds, 50 Short-Term Rehab Beds Average Age: 85 Total Staff: 275 At Cedar Village, we live life to the fullest every day. With gourmet menu selections in our Garden Dining Room, a traditional Jewish-style deli, a robust activity schedule, off-campus activities, a library, resident computers, a pool,

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DEERFIELD SPRINGS RETIREMENT RESORT 3664 W. U.S. 22, LOVELAND, OH 45140, (513) 453-0017, DEERFIELD

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SPRINGSRETIREMENT.COM Type of Facility: Independent Living Total Units: 128 Apts., studio, one, two, and three bedrooms Average Age: 55+ Total Staff: 40+ Opening in fall 2019. With all-included services and amenities, Deerfield Springs will provide a wonderful lifestyle so residents can relax and thoroughly enjoy their retirement years in a luxurious, elegantly decorated community. Their prices represent a tremendous value.

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HILLSPRING OF SPRINGBORO HEALTH CARE CENTER AND REHABILITATION 325 E. CENTRAL AVE., SPRINGBORO, OH 45066, (937) 748-1100, CARE SPRING.COM Type of Facility: Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Total Units: 140 Skilled Nursing Beds Average Age: Varies based on level of care Total Staff: 220 An in-house team of licensed therapists, nurses, and caregivers offer care and services. The facility encompasses a residential area for patients with longer-term needs and a separate rehab center for individuals requiring short-term services. Features a Montessori school, recreational therapy room, chapel, and family guest room.

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THE LODGE NURSING AND REHAB CENTER 9370 UNION CEMETERY RD., LOVELAND, OH 45140, (513) 677-4900, LODGECARECENTER.COM Type of Facility: Skilled Nursing Facility, Hospice Care, Rehabilitation, Intermediate Care, Secured Dementia Unit Total Units: 120 Skilled Beds, 36 Alzheimer’s Units Average Age: 84 Total Staff: 156 Provides state-of-the-art rehabilitation for short and long-term, Long-Term Care, and Alzheimer’s Care. Entire, newly renovated building features private rooms with private bath and showers. Rated Four Stars by CMS and Top 100 by U.S. News & World Report. Preferred provider for most all major hospitals in Cincinnati. Accepts Medicare, Medicaid, and most major insurances.

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MERCY COMMUNITY AT WINTON WOODS 10290 MILL RD., CINCINNATI, OH

45231, (513) 825-9300, MERCY.COM

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ing Apts. for income-qualifying seniors, ages 62+ Total Units: 73 Average Age: 75 Total Staff: 2 On beautiful grounds in a former seminary, residents enjoy a peaceful community surrounded by stained-glass windows, tree-filled views, and friends.

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OHIO LIVING MOUNT PLEASANT 225 BRITTON LANE, MONROE, OH 45050, (513) 539-7391, OHIOLIVING. ORG Type of Facility: Continuing Care Retirement Community with independent ranch homes, condominiums, and apartments. Assisted Living, Alzheimer’s Care, Rehab Studios, and Long-term Nursing Care Total Units: 408; 246 Independent Living, 53 Assisted Living, 89 Nursing Beds, 20 Private Rehab Suites Average Age: 76 Total Staff: More than 350 Located in a beautiful setting close to shopping and medical services, this nonprofit, full continuum of care community offers more than 145 unique ranch homes with entrance fee and straight rental plans to meet almost any budget.

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THE SHERIDAN AT MASON 5373 MERTEN DR., MASON, OH 45040, (513) 466-8400, SENIORLIFE STYLE.COM/PROPERTY/OHIO/THESHERIDAN-AT-MASON Type of Facility: Assisted Living and Memory Care Total Units: 65 Assisted Living, 33 Memory Care Average Age: 79 Total Staff: NP Welcome to The Sheridan at Mason, the new, modern approach to senior living and care.

In our Mason community we provide Assisted Living and Memory Care in Mason, Ohio, with best-in-class care customized to meet the needs of each of our residents.

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STONEBRIDGE AT WINTON WOODS 10290 MILL RD., CINCINNATI, OH 45231, (513) 825-0460, STONE BRIDGEATWINTONWOODS.COM, MERCY.COM Type of Facility: Maintenance-free cottage living for ages 55+ Total Units: 76 Average Age: 74 Total Staff: 4 Step outside for a walk along the nearly 2,500-acre wooded, park-like setting.

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Offers two- and three-bedroom cottage styles with one- or two-car attached garage. Ideal pastoral retreat that’s minutes away from shopping, entertainment, golfing, health facilities, and other community resources.

Mass is held five days a week in the historic chapel at Mercy Community.

TWIN LAKES AT MONTGOMERY 9840 MONTGOMERY RD., MONTGOMERY, OH 45242, (513) 247-1300, LEC.ORG Type of Facility: Senior Living Communities Total Units: 354; 137 Villas, 6 Manor Homes, 140 Apts., 28 Assisted Living, 43 Nursing Beds Average Age: 78–88 Total Staff: 209 This Life Enriching Communities campus offers villa and apartment accommodations for independent lifestyles, assisted living, short-term rehab, and long-term nursing services with a commitment to whole-person well-being, all conveniently located in the heart of Montgomery.

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HYDE PARK HEALTH CENTER 4001 ROSSLYN DR., CINCINNATI, OH 45209, (513) 272-0600, HYDEPARKHEALTHCENTER.COM Type of Facility: Senior Care Retirement Community Total Units: 232; 42 Assisted Living, 190 Nursing Beds Average Age: NP Total Staff: NP Offers skilled rehabilitation, physical, speech, and occupational therapy; private rooms; one- and twobedroom assisted-living apartments; specialized dementia/Alzheimer’s assisted-living apartments and nursing care; assisted-living respite suite; executive chef-prepared dining; library; Abundant Activities program; chapel and chaplain; beauty salons; wellness spa, massage therapy, and acupuncture; transportation; pets allowed.

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MARJORIE P. LEE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY 3550 SHAW AVE., CINCINNATI, OH 45208, CONTACT KAREN CHRISTOPHER: (513) 533-5000, MARJORIE PLEE.COM Type of Facility: Continuous Care Total Units: 160 Average Age: 80+ Total Staff: 257 Offers all levels of care, including independent and assisted living, skilled nursing for short-stay rehab and long-term care, and Alzheimer’s and dementia support. Welcomes older adults of all faiths. Apartments offered on a monthly rental basis with no entrance fees or long-term contracts. Highly rated by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services. Accreditation CARF and CCAC.

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DEUPREE HOUSE 3939 ERIE AVE., CINCINNATI, OH 45208, CONTACT GINI TARR, (513) 561-4200, DEUPREEHOUSE.COM Type of Facility: Continuous Care Total Units: 145; 24 Private Rooms at Deupree Cottages Nursing Care Center Average Age: 80+ Total Staff: 125 Offers first-class amenities and services. Monthly rental apartments and entrance fee plans are available, along with Enriched Living options for those requiring some daily living assistance. Highly rated by the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services. Accreditation from CARF and CCAC.

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THE KENWOOD BY SENIOR STAR 5435 KENWOOD RD., CINCINNATI, OH 45227, (513) 561-9300, KEN WOODBYSENIORSTAR.COM Type of Facility: Active Living, Independent Living, Assisted Living, Memory Care, Nursing Care Total Units: 309; 24 Active Living, 183 Independent Living, 47 Assisted Living, 41 Memory Care, 14 Nursing Care Average Age: 55+ Total Staff: 200 Offers condolike rentals, plus monthly leases on apartments, featuring city views in a world-class atmosphere. Amenities include 24/7 maintenance and security, six dining venues, an indoor pool, climate-controlled underground parking, laundry rooms, a spa and salon, a wellness center, transportation, individually inspired programs, and optional add-on services.

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ST. THERESA– A DIVERSICARE TRANSITIONAL CARE COMMUNITY 7010 ROWAN HILL DR., CINCINNATI, OH 45227, (513) 271-7010, DIVERSI CARESTTHERESA.COM Type of Facility: Continuum of Care—Residential Care, Skilled Nursing, Rehabilitation, Dementia Unit Total Units: 169; 32 Independent Living, 38 Assisted Living, 99 Nursing Beds Average Age: 83 Total Staff: 120 Located off of Miami Road in Mariemont with views of the city. Provides apartments and rehabilitation services in a peaceful environment, as well as daily Mass, trips to stores, movies, and restaurants.

Offers an in-house beauty shop and boutique. Activities are available seven days a week.

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W EST BAYLEY 990 BAYLEY DR., CINCINNATI, OH

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45233, (513) 347-5500, BAYLEYLIFE. ORG Type of Facility: Continuing Care Retirement Community Total Units: 295; 78 Independent Cottages, 80 Assisted Living, 27 Assisted Living Memory Support, 110 Skilled Nursing Beds Average Age: Health Care: 83.7; Assisted Living: 87; Independent Living: 82.6 Total Staff: 380 Provides services for seniors through both residential and community programs. Inpatient and outpatient speech, occupational, and physical rehab services available.

Now offers nonmedical home services for seniors living on campus and in the community, promoting independence and healthy lifestyles.

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BERKELEY SQUARE RETIREMENT COMMUNITY 100 BERKELEY DR., HAMILTON, OH 45013, (513) 896-8080, DISCOVER COMMUNITY-FIRST.ORG Type of Facility: Continuing Care Retirement Community Total Units: 251; 139 Independent Living Homes, 18 Independent Living Apts., 44 Assisted Living Apts., 50 Licensed Nursing Beds Average Age: 79 Total Staff: 120 CMS Five Star–rated community. A beautiful 65acre campus featuring customized floor plans, The Coach House Tavern & Grille restaurant, Elements at the Square (an on-site fitness club), and The Carruthers Manor House. A Community First Solutions company.

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BRADFORD PLACE—A DIVERSICARE TRANSITIONAL CARE COMMUNITY 1302 MILLVILLE AVE., HAMILTON, OH 45013, (513) 867-4100, DIVER SICAREBRADFORDPLACE.COM Type of Facility: Continuum of Care—Residential Care (Independent and Assisted Living), Nursing Care, Skilled, Rehabilitation Care, Respite Care, Outpatient Therapy Total Units: 127; 42 Assisted Living, 85 Nursing Beds Average Age: 83 Total Staff: 100 full-time employees, 30 part-time Provides skilled care in a comfortable setting. Offers three meals daily, weekly housekeeping, flat linen/personal laundry services, paid utilities (except phone), weekly nondenominational church service, access to social services and registered dietitian, room maintenance, daily activities, monthly wellness checks, and beauty/barbershop access.

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THE CHRISTIAN VILLAGE AT MT. HEALTHY 8097 HAMILTON AVE., CINCINNATI, OH 45231, (513) 931-5000, CHRIST IANVILLAGES.ORG Type of Facility: Independent Living, Assisted Living, Assisted Living Memory Care,

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Skilled Nursing, and Rehabilitation Total Units: 102 Residential Living, 75 Nursing Beds Average Age: Varies Total Staff: 180 Provides integrated health services for older adults and offers a full range of social, cultural, spiritual, and creative opportunities. Nonprofit, faith-based community provides a full continuum of care and features private rehabilitation suites for short-term skilled nursing.

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DOVERWOOD VILLAGE 4195 HAMILTON-MASON RD., FAIRFIELD TOWNSHIP, OH 45011, (513) 868-2266, HILLANDALE.COM Type of Facility: Assisted Living, Dementia, Short-Term Physical Rehabilitation, Out-Patient Physical Therapy Services, Long-Term Skilled Nursing Total Units: NP Average Age: NP Total Staff: NP Doverwood is the neighborhood you and your loved ones have been looking for. We can restore patients to mobility in record time, and we work tirelessly to make your family members feel loved, appreciated and exquisitely take care of with 100 percent personalized attention.

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JAMESTOWNE INPATIENT & OUTPATIENT REHABILITATION 1371 MAIN ST., HAMILTON, OH 45013 (513) 785-4800, COMMUNITY-FIRST. ORG Type of Facility: Inpatient & Outpatient Therapy, Post-acute Rehabilitation Total Units: 42 Private Suites Average Age: NP Total Staff: NP State-of-the art facility features a 5,000-square-foot therapy gym and spacious, modern, quiet, and family-friendly private suites that facilitate quicker recoveries. Therapists deliver inpatient and outpatient speech, physical, and occupational therapy seven days a week. Offers a variety of specialized programs designed to speed recovery, including a Hydroworx Therapy pool— one of two in Butler County. A Community First Solutions Company.

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MAPLE KNOLL VILLAGE 11100 SPRINGFIELD PIKE, CINCINNATI, OH 45246, (513) 782-2717, MAPLEKNOLL.ORG Type of Facility: Continuing Care Retirement Community Total Units: 476; 143 Villas, 125 Apts., 63 Assisted Living, 145 Nursing Beds Average Age: 79 Total Staff: 498 Nonprofit community located on an updated, 54-acre campus filled with lots of green spaces. Vibrant activity schedule; located near major thoroughfares/attractions.

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MERCY HEALTH–WEST PARK 2950 W. PARK DR., CINCINNATI, OH

Retirement my way.

You’ve always lived life on your terms, so why stop now?

Twin Lakes senior living community empowers you to plan well for tomorrow while living well today. In between all of the exciting and entertaining opportunities to choose from, you’ll enjoy the comfort of a beautiful home, your choice of delicious dining selections, the freedom of maintenance-free living, and the ability to continue your active lifestyle.

Live life on your terms at Twin Lakes. Call 513-247-1300 today!

9840 Montgomery Road | Cincinnati, Ohio 45242 | LEC.org

A LIFE ENRICHING COMMUNITY The Choice in Wellness Lifestyle

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SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

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SANCTUARY POINTE NURSING & REHAB CENTER 11501 HAMILTON AVE., CINCINNATI, OH 45231, (513) 648-7000, SANCTUARYPOINTE.COM Type of Facility: Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center; Long-Term Care; Secured Dementia Unit; Inpatient and Outpatient Therapy Average Age: 84 Total Staff: 100 Conveniently located off I-275 and Hamilton Ave. Exit and only 5 minutes from Mercy Fairfield and 17 minutes from Mercy West Hospitals. All rooms are private rooms with private bath and showers, and the site has a state-of-the-art rehabilitation gym. Rated Four Stars by CMS. Accepts Medicare, Medicaid, and most major insurances. A preferred provider for TriHealth and Mercy Health Systems.

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TWIN TOWERS SENIOR LIVING COMMUNITY 5343 HAMILTON AVE., CINCINNATI, OH 45224, (513) 853-2000, LEC.ORG Type of Facility: Senior Living Communities Total Units: 456; 120 Apts., 128 Patio Homes, 77 Assisted Living, 30 Memory Support, 101 Nursing Beds Average Age: 78–84 Total Staff: 220 This Life Enriching Communities campus offers patio homes and apartments for independent lifestyles, assisted living, memorysupport assisted living, short-term rehab, and long-term nursing services with a commitment to whole-person well-being.

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WESTERN HILLS RETIREMENT VILLAGE & NURSING/REHAB CENTER 6210 CLEVES WARSAW PIKE, CINCINNATI, OH 45233, (513) 941-0099, WESTERNHILLSRV.COM Type of Facility: Full Continuum of Care: Independent Living, Independent Living Plus, Short-term Rehab featuring all private rooms, Assisted Living, Short-term Rehab (Skilled Nursing), Long-term (Intermediate Care), Respite, Alzheimer’s Unit, Hospice Care Total Units: 212;

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110 Dually Certified Beds, 13 Assisted Living Apts., 79 Independent Living Apts.

Average Age: 80–85 Total Staff: 268 Rated Five Stars by CMS and Top 100 by U.S. News & World Report since 2011.

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WESTOVER RETIREMENT COMMUNITY 855 STAHLHEBER RD., HAMILTON, OH 45013, (513) 896-8080, COMMU NITYFIRST.ORG Type of Facility: Continuing Care Retirement Community Total Units: 120; 20 Independent Living Homes, 14 Independent Living Apts., 44 Assisted Living Units, 53 Licensed Nursing Beds Average Age: 85 Total Staff: 143 A Community First Solutions company and CMS Five Star–rated community, Westover offers a spacious 11-acre residential campus with an on-site fitness club—Elements at the Bever—and intergenerational opportunities through Colonial Schools.

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SOU T H / NORT H ER N K EN T UCK Y BARRINGTON OF FT. THOMAS INDEPENDENT AND ASSISTED LIVING 940 HIGHLAND AVE., FT. THOMAS, KY 41075, (859) 572-0667, CARESPRING.COM Type of Facility: Independent and Assisted Living Apts.

Total Units: 110 Average Age: Varies based on level of care Total Staff: NA One- and two-bedroom apartments are available with fully equipped kitchens, plus washers and dryers.

Residents enjoy many amenities, including a fitness center managed by a full-time physical therapist, a cocktail bar, and chef-prepared meals in the dining room.

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CARMEL MANOR 300 PLAZA DR., COLD SPRING, KY 41075, (859) 781-5111, CARMEL MANOR.COM Type of Facility: Personal Care and Nursing Total Units: 130 Average Age: 87 Total Staff: 175 Recently renovated facility provides rehabilitative therapy, skilled care, skilled intermediate care, and memory care, along with personal care, IV therapy, TPN, and wound care. Offers daily Mass and engaging activities in a home-like atmosphere with a beautiful view overlooking the Ohio River.

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Nursing and Rehabilitation Total Units: 143 Average Age: NA Total Staff: 220 A destination for those needing rehabilitative or nursing-care services on a short-term or continuing basis. An in-house team of licensed therapists, nurses, and caregivers offer care and services. The facility encompasses a residential area for patients with longer-term needs and a separate rehab center for individuals requiring short-term services. Features an outpatient therapy center, Starbucks, recreation therapy room, chapel, and family guest room.

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COVINGTON LADIES HOME/ THE VICTORIAN AT RIVERSIDE 702 GARRARD ST., COVINGTON, KY 41011, (859) 431-6913, VICTORIAN ATRIVERSIDE.ORG Type of Facility: Personal Care (Assisted Living) Total Units: 25 Private Personal Care Rooms Average Age: 80 Total Staff: 27 Exclusively serves senior women by providing quality personal care in a community-based and homelike environment.

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FLORENCE PARK NURSING AND REHABILITATION CENTER 6975 BURLINGTON PIKE, FLORENCE, KY 41042, (513) 605-5000, HCMG. COM Type of Facility: Skilled and Intermediate Nursing Total Units: 150 Nursing Beds Average Age: NP Total Staff: 200 Provides 24-hour nursing care, including intermediate, skilled care, short-term rehabilitation, and respite stays. Physical, occupational, and speech therapies are available.

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HIGHLAND SPRING OF FT. THOMAS HEALTH CARE CENTER AND REHABILITATION 960 HIGHLAND AVE., FT. THOMAS, KY 41075, (859) 572-0660, CARE SPRING.COM Type of Facility: Skilled & Intermediate Nursing, Rehabilitation Total Units: 140 Nursing

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Beds Average Age: Varies based on level of care Total Staff: 220 An in-house team of licensed therapists, nurses, and caregivers offer care and services. The facility encompasses a residential area for patients with longer-term needs and a separate rehab center for individuals requiring short-term services. Features a Montessori school, recreational therapy room, chapel, and family guest room.

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MADONNA MANOR 2344 AMSTERDAM RD., VILLA HILLS, KY 41017, (859) 426-6400, HOMEISHERE.ORG Type of Facility: Full-service Retirement Community, Independent and Assisted Living, Memory Care, Short-term Inpatient Rehab, Outpatient Rehab also available, and Long-term Care Total Units: 136; 12 Independent Cottages, 40 Assisted Living, 24 Memory Care, 60 Rehab and Nursing Average Age: 80 Total Staff: 115 Madonna Manor, a Catholic Living Community, is Northern Kentucky’s only provider of person-centered care, honoring and respecting older adults and making their lives more fulfilled and meaningful. Accepts many managedcare insurance products.

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VILLASPRING OF ERLANGER HEALTH CARE CENTER AND REHABILITATION 630 VIOX DR., ERLANGER, KY 41018, (859) 727-6700, CARESPRING.COM Type of Facility: Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Total Units: 140 Nursing Beds Average Age: Varies based on level of care Total Staff: NP An in-house team of licensed therapists, nurses, and caregivers offer care and services. The facility encompasses a residential area for patients with longerterm needs and a separate rehab center for individuals requiring short-term services. Features a Montessori school, recreational therapy room, chapel, and family guest room.

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COLDSPRING OF CAMPBELL COUNTY TRANSITIONAL CARE CENTER 300 PLAZA DR., COLD SPRING, KY 41076, (859) 441-4600, CARESPRING. COM Type of Facility: Skilled

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Photograph by interstid/Stock.Adobe.com

45238, (513) 451-8900, MERCY.COM Type of Facility: Continuum of Care, Rehabilitation, Short-term and Long-term Care Nursing, Residential Care Total Units: 302; 3 Independent Apts., 174 Assisted Living, 125 Nursing Beds Average Age: 84 Total Staff: 180+ Serving the West Side community for more than 40 years, this community provides distinct short-term nursing and a rehabilitation unit with 30 private rooms. Offers 24-hour nursing care, daily Catholic Mass, recreational and medical transportation, and a beauty/barbershop on site.

OPEN LETTER FROM GREATER CINCINNATI HEALTH SYSTEMS & HOSPITALS: &ROODERUDWLRQ LV .H\ WR $GGUHVV &29Ζ' _ :HȇUH 5HDG\ WR &DUH IRU &RPPXQLW\ “We are all in this togetherâ€? has never been truer than it is right now. In Greater Cincinnati, this means a shared feeling RI VDFULČ´FH UHVLOLHQFH DQG HQGXUDQFH )RU RXU UHJLRQȇV PDMRU KHDOWK FDUH SURYLGHUV LW DOVR PHDQV RXU FRPPLWPHQW WR ZRUN WRJHWKHU WR VHUYH \RX Č‚ RXU FRPPXQLW\ Č‚ DQG WR FDUH IRU DOO SDWLHQWV IDPLOLHV DQG FLWL]HQV 2YHU RI RXU PHPEHU KRVSLWDOV DQG KHDOWK V\VWHPV DUH SOHGJLQJ SDUWQHUVKLS GXULQJ WKLV GLÉ?FXOW WLPH WR VHUYH RXU UHJLRQ DV ZH QDYLJDWH WKH XQSUHFHGHQWHG FKDOOHQJHV RI &29Ζ' 7KH +HDOWK &ROODERUDWLYH LV SURXG WR FRQYHQH PRUH WKDQ PHGLFDO DQG SXEOLF KHDOWK OHDGHUV LQ WHDPV LQ D XQLČ´HG FRPPDQG VWUXFWXUH WR UHVSRQG WR WKH &29Ζ' SDQGHPLF LQ FRRUGLQDWLRQ ZLWK RXU VWDWH DQG ORFDO OHDGHUVKLS 2XU VWUHQJWK LV LQ RXU VKDUHG PLVVLRQ WR SURWHFW OLYHV FDUH IRU WKH LOO DQG ZRUN WRJHWKHU WR IDFH WKLV YLUXV KHDG RQ XVLQJ RXU EHVW VFLHQWLVWV FOLQLFLDQV UHVRXUFHV DQG FROODERUDWLYH DSSURDFK 2XU KRVSLWDOV DUH RSHQ DQG KHUH IRU \RX LI \RX need medical care.

8QIRUWXQDWHO\ KHDOWK HPHUJHQFLHV LQFOXGLQJ SV\FKLDWULF HPHUJHQFLHV DQG DFFLGHQWV ZLOO VWLOO RFFXU GXULQJ WKHVH XQFHU WDLQ WLPHV Č&#x201A; DQG ZH KDYH H[SDQGHG VDIHW\ SUHFDXWLRQV WR SURYLGH VDIH TXDOLW\ FDUH LQ \RXU WLPH RI QHHG :H ZLOO UHPDLQ VWHDGIDVW LQ WKDW FRPPLWPHQW IRU WKH ZHHNV WR FRPH XQWLO WKH &29Î&#x2013;' WKUHDW KDV HDVHG IRU HYHU\RQH :H FDQQRW GR WKLV DORQH :H QHHG \RXU KHOS 7KLV LV QRW D WKUHDW WKDW FDQ EH WDFNOHG ZLWKLQ WKH ZDOOV RI D VLQJOH KRVSLWDO 6XFFHVV LV LQ RXU FROOHFWLYH KDQGV Č&#x201A; \RXUV DQG RXUV +HUH LV KRZ \RX FDQ KHOS â&#x20AC;˘ 3UHYHQW PLVLQIRUPDWLRQ 6KDUH LQIRUPDWLRQ IURP WUXVWHG VRXUFHV OLNH RXU KRVSLWDOV KHDOWK GHSDUWPHQWV DQG VWDWH OHDGHUVKLS â&#x20AC;˘ &RQWLQXH WR VWD\ DW KRPH DV PXFK DV SRVVLEOH DQG OLPLW QRQ IDPLO\ LQWHUDFWLRQV XQOHVV \RX KDYH D PHGLFDO LVVXH that needs attention. â&#x20AC;˘ :DVK \RXU KDQGV RIWHQ ZLWK VRDS DQG ZDWHU DQG XWLOL]H EHVW SUDFWLFHV IRU K\JLHQH â&#x20AC;˘ 3DUWLFLSDWH LQ UHVHDUFK RSSRUWXQLWLHV LI \RX KDYH &29Î&#x2013;' RU KDYH UHFRYHUHG IURP &29Î&#x2013;' <RXU SDUWLFLSDWLRQ FRXOG SRWHQWLDOO\ VDYH OLYHV 2XU KRVSLWDOV DQG KHDOWK V\VWHPV UHPDLQ GHYRWHG WR RXU UHJLRQ DQG ZH DUH SUHSDUHG WR FDUH IRU \RX DQG \RXU ORYHG RQHV LI \RX QHHG XV 7KLV LV ZKDW KDV DOORZHG XV DOO WR SOD\ D YLWDO SDUW LQ NHHSLQJ RXU IULHQGV DQG QHLJKERUV VDIH DQG in good health for decades. We will continue this mission through this crisis and beyond. We are far stronger working together as a community than we could ever be alone.

Sincerely,

The Health Collaborative | Craig Brammer, CEO in partnership with: Adams County Regional Medical Center, Alan Bird, CEO | Atrium Medical Center, Keith D. Bricking, MD, MBA, FAAEM, President | Beckett Springs, Neicole Knott, CEO | The Christ Hospital Health Network, Arturo Polizzi President & CEO | Cincinnati Childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hospital Medical Center, Michael Fisher, President & CEO | Clinton Memorial Hospital, Lance Beus, CEO | Fort Hamilton Hospital, Ron Connovich, President | Highland District Hospital, Randal P. Lennartz, CEO | Highpoint Health, Michael Schwebler President & CEO | Hoxworth Blood Center, Jose A. Cancelas, MD, PhD, Director & CEO | Lindner Center of HOPE, Paul Keck, MD, President & CEO | Margaret Mary Health, Timothy L. Putnam, DHA, President & CEO | Mercy Health â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cincinnati, Dave Fikse, President _ 0HUF\ +HDOWK Č&#x201A; 6SULQJČ´HOG Adam Groshans, President | Select Specialty Hospital â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cincinnati, Karan Patel, CEO | Shriners Hospitals for ChildrenÂŽ â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Cincinnati, Randall White, Hospital Administrator | St. Elizabeth Healthcare, Garren Colvin, President & CEO | Summit Behavioral Healthcare, Liz Banks, CEO | TriHealth, Mark Clement, President & CEO | UC Health, Richard Lofgren, MD, MPH, FACP, President & CEO

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 48

drew and painted. Mary studied for her written Italian driving license test, which is notorious for its complexity—there are said to be 3,000 possible questions, more than enough to last a pandemic or two. We burned through long stretches of Netflix. We attempted a massive jigsaw puzzle and gave up after four weeks.

Fortunately, we had a balcony where I could sit in spring sunshine and watch the world’s worst health crisis in a century unfold. It was strange how little there was to see. Chiefly, it was absence.

public workers, from the Polizia di Stato to the sanitation crews to the supermarket checkout clerks who risked infection daily. (Italian checkout clerks have always worked sitting down. Now they work from behind Plexiglas shields.)

My view of COVID-19 was reflected back from Cincinnati friends and family on video calls. In March, I felt I was shouting down a tunnel through time, my words echoing back from an Ohio still in a lost age called “Before the Virus Got Ugly.” It wasn’t that my Cincinnati folks didn’t believe me about the rituals of self-isolation, social distancing, and disinfecting doorknobs—they just couldn’t imagine what was coming to Cincinnati until it did. Now, we are in sync.

I look back on our February train ride south through the Alps and the night.

We had to change trains at Brig-Glis, a ski and tourist town in the Swiss canton of Valais. It’s in German-speaking

THE LOCAL POLICE ROLL SLOWLY THROUGH THE QUIET STREETS, BLARING A LOUDSPEAKER WARNING US TO STAY INSIDE OR RISK A FINE.

@CINCINNATIMAGAZINE 8 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

No knots of high school kids shuffling up from the station a few minutes before the bell, texting, shrieking, and smoking. No packs of moms, dads, and nonni (grandparents) herding little ones toward the elementary school. No pendolari, the weary train commuters to Milan who used to snap up all the parking outside our building by 7:15 a.m. There was very little traffic except for the local police rolling slowly through the quiet streets, blaring a loudspeaker warning us to stay inside or risk a fine.

Then there were ambulance sirens, heading for the large hospital on the outskirts of town that shifted operations almost entirely to COVID-19. The curve of infection has been sloping downward but there are still too many sirens for my ears. They remind me of the quiet courage of Italian medical staff who answered the sirens and who died in staggering numbers. The sirens also stood for the other

Switzerland and, on that chilly Sunday evening, was enthusiastically celebrating Fasnacht, the Swiss version of Mardi Gras. We had time to leave the station and walk uphill toward the town square and the sounds of oompah music. The square was packed. Children were hoisted on shoulders to see a clown band of women in elaborate stiff dresses and pancake white makeup, loudly playing folk tunes on red plastic band instruments backed by thunderous percussion. Only they weren’t all women, but mostly men in drag with fright wigs, trailing long gowns decked out in harlequin checks.

Was the coronavirus in Brig on Fasnacht? Probably. By the end of May, Swiss health authorities were reporting 1,898 cases of COVID-19 in that canton, with 105 deaths. In Brig, we listened unawares and then walked downhill to what became our last restaurant dinner and an extremely extended trip home.

1,000 FEET FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD CONTINUED FROM PAGE 61 TWICE MATT BRENNAN CAME AGONIZINGLY CLOSE TO THE SUMMIT OF MT. EVEREST. THE PANDEMIC SHUT DOWN HIS THIRD ATTEMPT. WILL HE GET THERE?

1,000 FEET

58

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANCESCO BONGIORNI

As he stood for hours in that stalled line in May 2019, legs burning from an awkward position on the ice, Brennan’s business mind went into gear. How much oxygen did he have? Not enough, especially after his sherpa had dropped one of his tanks down the Triangular Face. How tired was he? Bone tired, and there was nowhere to get off his feet. He had fallen well short of the recommended rest period at Camp 4 before starting out for the summit. How fast was the line moving? Inch by inch as the ascenders were mixing with the descenders on a narrow ridge ahead of him. He figured—and his fellow climbers agreed—that he was still four hours from the top. And that ridge up ahead? Drops of more than 8,000 feet on each side. It wasn’t a good place for tired legs or a foggy mind.

“I was pretty sure I could make it to the top, but I was also pretty sure somebody would have to carry me down,” says Brennan, the distaste still evident.“I didn’t want to be one of those guys where it was gonna take four others to get me down. That’s not how I wanted my experience to be.”

One of the guides could see Brennan was struggling. Together, as the wind swirled, they discussed his dwindling options. Brennan thought of his wife and two kids back home in Loveland. He didn’t want to die on that mountain. “I’m within 1,000 feet of the top of the world,” he says, almost in a whisper, “and I’m not afraid to say I just cried.” He turned his back to the dream and began to descend.

Back in Kathmandu, deflated and exhausted, Brennan decided he was done.

“The grind on your body, both during training and then on the climb, is just so tough,” he says. He figured he had spent four months in a tent over the last year backpacking and climbing other mountains, countless hours training in the gym 8 4 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

or on the Little Miami Bike Trail, and he’d now been away from home for two months trying to climb Everest.

Brennan had been climbing mountains all over the world for more than 20 years.

He thought about the holidays and birthdays he had missed. Everest, he decided, was just too much.

In Nepal’s capital, he spent some time reflecting on his trip and analyzing what went wrong. At first, he was simply happy to have made it off of Everest alive. Talking to his family, who had been following along online, gave him a lift. “And then,” he says, laughing, “I got mad.”

Why did an experienced sherpa mishandle his oxygen tank? Why did he climb so fast from Camp 2 to Camp 3, causing him to “bonk” in his climb to Camp 4 the next day? If he hadn’t been so tired and so slow, he would have gotten to Camp 4 hours earlier, affording him the rest time he so desperately needed. Why had May’s weather been so fierce that it cut the 2019 climbing season almost in half? Everyone was on the mountain at the same time, competing for the same confined space. Traffic moved faster on the Brent Spence Bridge at rush hour, even with one lane closed.

For a little while, Brennan fell into second-guessing his decision to abandon the climb. Then logic reasserted itself. “I’m thankful that I even had the ability to make that decision,” he admits. “You can get tired enough that you lose all sense of judgment, and that’s where you get into trouble. I’m thankful I never got to that point.”

WHEN HE ARRIVED BACK IN CINCINNATI in June 2019, Brennan wasn’t gung-ho to return to the Himalayas. The failure to summit had left him deflated, and he recognized how the long hours of training and the trips themselves had taken time from his family. How could he ask them to sacrifice again? And, at age 58, he wasn’t getting any younger.

Brennan has had an ongoing love affair with mountains since he was 14 and accompanied his sister on a church group visit out west. The Badlands and Mt. Rushmore intrigued him, but the Tetons blew him away. He gradually increased his skill level from hiking to backpacking to rockclimbing, and, not long after graduating

from UC, he started leading extremely challenging trips into the Rockies.

After turning 40, Brennan says he wanted a more demanding challenge. A friend turned him on to an alpine climbing class in Washington state that culminated in a two-day trek to the top of 14,411-foot Mt. Rainier, a difficult and dangerous sleeping volcano that’s truly the definition of fire and ice.

As Brennan’s group headed up the mountain, he knew he was where he was supposed to be. He drank in the majesty of the landscape, reveled in its demands on his body, and tensed to the dangers of every step. He was in the moment until his guide’s radio suddenly crackled. “He just yelled, We gotta go, we gotta go,” Brennan remembers, “so we started hauling ass up the Ingraham Wall and I thought, Geez, we’re going awfully fast.” The Ingraham Wall is a two-and-a-half-mile-long towering glacier and the site of Rainier’s worst mountaineering accident when, in 1981, an avalanche killed 11. Typically, climbers trudge carefully through the icefall.

Brennan and his team were the first on the scene where three climbers had fallen into a deep crevasse. One, the experienced guide who was also an ordained minister, was just pulling himself up, and Brennan could see his head pop up from below the ice cliff. The other two, an engaged couple planning to marry on Rainier’s summit, were dangling below on their rope line.

Brennan helped pull them up.

When the rescue helicopter arrived, Brennan assumed his group would continue its ascent. “I was mad as hell,” he says, now able to laugh about it. “They said our trip was over, and I thought, Like hell it is. I wasn’t the one who fell.” To add insult to injury, he discovered his expensive new down jacket had been ripped in the rescue.

Back at base camp, Brennan let the guide company know he wasn’t a satisfied customer. “And they said to me, Well, you can come back anytime, and we won’t charge you,” he recalls. “So, I said, Good, I’ll be back next weekend!” And he was. Brennan flew home to Cincinnati, worked a few days at his business, packed his bags, and returned to Seattle. On the following Saturday, he stood atop Mt. Rainier. The guide company even gave him a new down jacket.

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1,000 FEET FROM THE TOP OF THE WORLD “WELL, THAT’S MATT,” BRIAN CHERIPKO says of his Everest climbing buddy. “That’s a testament not so much to his physical strength as his mental strength, his fortitude, and his work ethic.” The CEO of a San Diego engineering consulting company, he met Brennan on the 2018 Everest trip. They became instant friends and confidants.

When he made it to the top, Cheripko says he felt a “sense of loss” that Brennan wasn’t there with him.

“We were hiking together from the Khumbu Icefall to Camp 1, and he was really struggling with his groin injury,” Cheripko remembers. “We talked about it, and it was just so sad when he realized he wasn’t going to make it.”

Cheripko has followed Brennan’s training regimen ever since, talking or texting with him regularly before the 2019 attempt and in the months leading up to the planned May 2020 expedition. “He works so hard,” says Cheripko. “We talk a lot about the mental game, pacing, and burn-

trained the last four months of 2019 anaerobically as Segger tracked his heart rate and pace from her home near Vancouver. They spoke by phone or texted almost daily, analyzing the crushing workout regimen and adjusting it occasionally to keep Brennan fresh and the rest of his life manageable. In the weeks leading up to his expected late March departure, Segger moved him to a more traditional aerobic training program to build up his long-term endurance. Brennan, she says, was ready.

“I was gutted,” Segger laments, describing the moment she read Brennan’s March e-mail. “I know what he put into his training, and to see that and then not being able to go?” She lets out a moan. “He was so prepared, but I am really impressed with how fast he’s regrouped and refocused.”

It’s his focus and his desire to get back on the trail that concerns Segger the most.

Brennan can’t continue training at the level he was when Nepal closed its 2020 climbing season. Seventeen hours a week

“MATT WAS SO PREPARED [FOR THIS YEAR’S CLIMB],” SAYS HIS TRAINER, JEN SEGGER, “BUT I AM REALLY IMPRESSED WITH HOW FAST HE’S REGROUPED AND REFOCUSED.” out. That’s what’s so hard about losing this trip. You’ve got to pace yourself, and he had.

Now he’ll have to start over.”

That’s Jen Segger’s worry, too. The veteran endurance coach from British Columbia might be described as Brennan’s secret weapon. After the 2019 attempt, Brennan decided he needed a new training strategy.

He was in great shape, but he’d been in a fog of fatigue at 26,000 feet. What he needed was someone to get him past that last wall.

He chose Segger and her specialty in anaerobic training.

Anaerobic training focuses on sudden bursts of energy. Your heart can be racing up to 165 beats a minute for two minutes as you intentionally overexert yourself with quick sprints. It leaves you gasping for air and with burning muscles, just like a mountain does. It also, over time, builds red blood cells, and a reserve bank of those come in handy at 26,000 feet. Brennan 8 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

and three days in a row of high intensity training wearing a weighted vest works well in the short term. Over a longer period, it breaks you down physically and mentally.

She talks passionately about the need to move Brennan’s state of mind back to what she calls “marathon thinking.” That’s especially important since he can’t make his next attempt until May 2022.

“My daughter is graduating from college next May, and I just won’t miss that,” says Brennan. “It’s a big deal in our family, and we’re really proud of her.”

In the meantime, he has other mountains to assault. Mont Blanc in the French Alps, Switzerland’s iconic Matterhorn, Pakistan’s Broad Peak, Alpamayo in the Andes, and Carstensz Pyramid in Indonesia are among the rocks in his above-the-clouds schedule. When Brennan finally stands atop Everest, if he does make it, he will join the most exclusive club of mountaineers

on the planet: scalers of the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. That, he says, will keep him going.

DEFLATED AS HE IS, BRENNAN DOESN’T consider this year’s cancelled trip to be strike three. He’s just on a different path and still at bat.

The charm of Kathmandu and the broad smiles of the sherpas beckon him. The allure and danger of the Khumbu Icefall with its shifting crevasses and walls of ice larger than a house thrill him. He looks forward to the glare of the sun off the snow, the deepening blue of the sky, and the crunch of his crampons. He is undaunted by the nighttime trek across the Western Cwm glacial basin and face of Mt. Lhotse. He thinks about that spot just below the Southeast Ridge, where it all ended last year, and how good it will feel to take the first step past it.

And then there’s the summit.

How will it feel? He might be surprised, says Cheripko, who reports there were the usual hugs, photos, and gazing at the majestic views of dozens of other formidable ice-capped peaks that shaped the wild landscape below him. It’s still all business, though, because more climbers have died descending than ascending. So, he admits, it wasn’t until a few hours later and out of the Death Zone that he could celebrate.

“Then it just hit me, and I was simply overwhelmed with emotion,” he recalls.

Three weeks after an e-mail ended his 2020 quest, Brennan and I speak over Zoom. He’s in Florida for some sun and family time, and his voice still bears the sting of disappointment.

But he’s undaunted, and we talk about this story and how it might look to a reader in July. Will it appear trivial when compared to the disruptions we’ve all experienced in our lives? Will it seem oblivious— or worse, disrespectful—to the pandemic’s brutal toll? Or will readers enjoy a story about fighters who pull themselves off the mat, who face adversity with audacity and don’t give up on their dreams?

I wish I could end the story with a triumphant Matt Brennan standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, bright sun shining off his Ray-Bans, eclipsed only by the smile on his face. I’m looking forward to adding that paragraph in two years.

B R I NG NAT U R E I N D O OR S w i t h V I R T U A L DAY CAMPS, PROGRAMS + ACTIVITIES

greatparks.org/virtualprograms

THE BOYS OF SUMMER 1858 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 65

ment of a trio of nationally publicized “All-Star Games” in Brooklyn, the first of which was scheduled for July 13. (It was rained out, a postponement reported as far away as Davenport, Iowa, and Charleston, South Carolina.) The first All-Star Game was played July 20 between New York City and Brooklyn (its own city at the time) in front of a paying crowd of between 4,000 and 10,000.

“The Underground Railroad in Operation,” “Passengers for the Underground Railroad,”“Escape of a Couple of Slaves,” and “The Underground,” among others.

Town ball player Benjamin Buckley, a 26-year-old Englishman who operated a feed store, frequented black abolitionist Kittie Doram’s dry goods shop a block away in Little Bucktown, in the lower West End near the river. Cricket club president William Coolidge lived a block and a half west of Eliza Potter, the biracial hairdresser to the city’s bluebloods who herself was later jailed in Louisville for counseling a slave on how to escape to freedom via the Underground Railroad. Four blocks from Potter’s house was the home of former slave and abolitionist Peter Fossett, who had been the property of Thomas Jefferson and cared for horses at Monticello.

AFTER THE FOUR GAMES WERE PLAYED IN JULY AND AUGUST 1858, THERE IS NO RECORD OF ADDITIONAL FORMAL BASEBALL BEING PLAYED IN CINCINNATI UNTIL THE SUMMER OF 1866.

AT THE TIME OF ITS INCEPTION IN 1858, “base ball” in Cincinnati was an unnoticed game in an underground (railroad) city.

The opposite is true today, when our twin representations of the national pastime, Great American Ball Park and the Reds Hall of Fame, stand side-by-side on the riverfront with the building that symbolizes arguably the noblest pursuit in our city’s history, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.

The city’s first baseball players lived and mixed with those supporting Underground Railroad activities in pre–Civil War Cincinnati. When placing on an 1858 map the residences of the cricket and town ball players and tracing the omnibus horse car’s route to East Walnut Hills, one quickly realizes how close these players and so many of their downtown neighbors were to antislavery operations that ran as an open secret. Every other week there was a story of some sort in the local newspapers about escaped slaves, usually through Cincinnati. Commercial Tribune headlines in 1857 and 1858 declared, 8 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

The omnibus ride that began at Fourth and Sycamore and ended in East Walnut Hills ran past fugitive harbors where the players would have known of or suspected Underground Railroad activities, including the Dumas House, Wesley Chapel, African Methodist Church, and Allen Chapel Temple. They would have passed the secondhand clothes shop of Joseph Kite, whose niece, the escaped Boone County slave Margaret Garner, had two years earlier killed her slave child in Kite’s home rather than allow the child’s return to servitude.

The episode became the subject of Toni Morrison’s acclaimed novel, Beloved.

In Walnut Hills, less than a mile from the cricket grounds/baseball field, was the former home of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

Everyone who played in those first baseball games would have been well aware of Stowe’s famous book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which had been published in 1852 and sold 300,000 copies in the first three months and 2 million by the end of 1857. Among the bat-and-ball players were two schoolteachers, including Bom DeBeck, who likely

would have discussed Stowe with their young students.

AFTER THE FOUR BASEBALL GAMES THAT were played in July and August 1858, there is no record of additional formal baseball being played in Cincinnati until the summer of 1866. The Commercial Tribune was especially attuned to chronicling the city’s sporting scene and likely wouldn’t have missed it. They certainly didn’t miss reporting on town ball games in which DeBeck played.

In the fall of 1864, the Union Cricket Club (UCC), under the direction of George Ellard, hired well-known New York City cricketeer Harry Wright to captain and coach their team for the 1865 season in new grounds at the foot of Richmond Street in the West End. It would be Wright’s final full season of cricket.

On September 2, 1866, the UCC merged into the newly formed Cincinnati Base Ball Club. Wright pulled double duty of sorts, under contract to UCC until November 1867 but allowed to play and manage the baseball club as well.

The Buckeye Base Ball club was also formed in the fall of 1866. DeBeck was elected to its membership committee, and his name appears regularly as a player in 1866 and 1867, meaning he played against many of the famous future Cincinnati Red Stockings. In fact, in that first Red Stockings game played on September 29, 1866, at UCC’s newly fenced-in grounds, DeBeck manned first base as the Buckeyes won 20–18. No doubt, the gregarious DeBeck would have had conversations at first base with Red Stockings pioneers Aaron Champion, William Johnson, Ellard, and Wright. Right place, right time for Harry Wright, but a little too late for DeBeck, then 36—when Wright needed a new first baseman for the Red Stockings, he plucked DeBeck’s 20-year-old Buckeye teammate Charlie Gould.

The sport that hadn’t caught on in 1858 blew up across Cincinnati after the Civil War. On Sunday, April 7, 1867, the first gloriously warm spring day in the Queen City, 200 teenaged boys from the West End and downtown spontaneously converged on the UCC cricket grounds to play baseball.

Although 12 wound up being arrested for

violating the peace of the Sabbath, it was in effect the first opening day in Cincinnati—a baseball parade of sorts in which the game itself served as Pied Piper.

It quickly became apparent that a bigger and better baseball field would be required, so the combined cricket and baseball clubs leased new land west of Lincoln Park, only a few blocks away. The first match there was played on July 4, 1867. That field, Union Grounds, is where the esplanade of the Museum Center at Union Terminal is today.

In 1868, future Red Stockings Charles Sweasy and Andy Leonard were enticed from DeBeck’s home state to play for his Buckeyes. Wright signed the duo to his team a year later and would soon launch its famous undefeated season as baseball’s first professional club.

DeBeck would play baseball in Cincinnati for another season and then focus on his work with local schools. At 68, he was named principal of the city’s Night School and later the superintendent. On Christmas Eve of that year, 1898, after locking up the school, DeBeck was on the way home when—crossing the Ninth Street Bridge over the canal—he was attacked by two highwaymen. He knocked the first to the ground and fought with the second, and both attackers ran away without securing anything from him.

In 1903, as part of a fund-raiser for the Cincinnati Gymnasium, 73-year-old DeBeck was part of a four-man tug-ofwar team competition against five other teams. He died on Sept. 9, 1912, from injuries sustained in a fall at his home.

In 2013, the Protoball.org website dedicated itself to telling the story of baseball’s earliest origins in newspaper snippet form. It unearthed Cincinnati’s first game here in 1858. Until now, however, no one had developed the story, and few knew about it.

Without the Union Cricket Club and one transplanted New Jersey town ball star, plus a borrowed east side playing field, it seems unlikely that the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869—the team that made baseball famous and raised the city’s profile considerably—would have had anywhere near such a profound impact.

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D NE

LOSANTI HITS THE MARK P. 92

LOCAL RESTAURANTS REOPEN—SAFELY P. 96

LOW-CAL SUMMER BEERS P. 98

TOP CHOP A frenched pork chop with braised kale, carrots, and mostarda from Overthe-Rhine’s Losanti.

PHOTOGRAPH BY JEREMY KRAMER

J U LY 2 0 2 0 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M 9 1

DINING OUT

STEAK-ING CLAIM

LOSANTI satisfies and builds on the success of the owners’ first restaurant. — A K S H A Y A H U J A

Y

OU GO INTO A STEAKHOUSE WITH PRETTY CLEAR EXPECTATIONS, AND LOSANTI, the second concept from Chef-Owner Anthony Sitek and the team behind Crown Republic Gastropub, meets them beautifully. It’s a bit more upscale than its sister restaurant, and it’s also more conservative in its offerings. This is crowd-pleasing fare with a firm grasp on essentials, and when there are little surprises, almost all of them work.

Some people online, I noticed, took offense at a warning on the menu: “Losanti is not responsible for appearance or taste of well-done steaks.” This could come off, I suppose, as snobbery. The actual experience of dining at Losanti, though, is thoroughly un-snobbish. Service is friendly and informal, and though the meal feels like a special occasion, prices and atmosphere are right for, say, a date, rather than a wedding anniversary. And the food is approachable without ever being ordinary.

Taking over the old Anchor OTR space by Washington Park, Losanti has been portioned into several small sections: a large square bar by the entrance that dominates the room and two intimate rooms off to either side, one with a portrait mural of a woman who I thought was Marlene Dietrich. Turns out that’s Rosie, inspired by co-owner Haley Nutter-Sitek, Chef Sitek’s wife. It’s fitting that the decor has a family connection, because that’s exactly the feeling the food gives off: homey, approachable, and with deep and familiar flavors.

Losanti bills itself as a “boutique steakhouse,” where the filet mignon, rib eye, and New York strip are cut to order for each table (there are a few available weights for each). Losanti must grind its own 9 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

FYI

Losanti 1401 Race St., Over-theRhine, (513) 246-4213, losantiotr.com Prices $5.95 (focaccia)–$79 (20-ounce filet mignon; cut weights may vary) Credit Cards All major The Takeaway Losanti exudes reliability, even as a young restaurant.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JEREMY KRAMER

THERE TO STAY (From left) The cozy front dining room at Losanti; prime rib eye with shrimp scampi; wedge salad with pancetta, iceburg lettuce, gorgonzola dolce, pickled onions, and a six-minute egg; Chef Anthony Sitek.

hamburger meat from the scraps to make the wonderfully tender burger, which ends up a falling-apart mess on the plate but is quite delicious. The steaks themselves are totally irreproachable. (I let the chef cook them medium-rare, so I wouldn’t have to be held responsible!) Everything was perfectly seasoned, cooked to precisely the right point, and with just the right touches on the side. Each steak comes with a head of garlic, mellowed after several hours of slow roasting, that can be squeezed out onto the meat as a flavorful paste. With a few spritzes of accompanying charred lemon, this is really all you need to savor your entrée.

The cocktails are standouts, especially the gem-like sage gimlet, a lovely green from the chartreuse, with an inspired sprinkle of ground black pepper on top: tart, spicy, and herbaceous in equal measure, it continues the Crown Republic bar’s winning streak.

Since Losanti is a more elegant kind of restaurant, the wine program still feels thin to me, with only a handful of options, but with cocktails this good I won’t complain too much.

The requisite steakhouse sides are also available, including mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and sweet corn, but Losanti makes each one a little special. Sweet and smoky caramelized onions are folded into the mashed potatoes, a nice dusting of truffles wakes up the mac and cheese, and the sweet corn—yes, totally out of season, but still good—is at least freshly cut off the cob and recalls elote with lime and chile powder. At first, I was craving more intense Mexican flavors in the corn, but when I spooned it onto the plate with the other items, I realized it would have overwhelmed

everything else. Someone here is thinking about balance. This is part of their grasp on essentials.

Only rarely does this balance get lost, sometimes between elements of certain dishes, and other times in the balance of light and heavy across a whole meal. Saffron, for me, is one of those dangerous ingredients like truffles—a dash too much and it utterly dominates a dish, as it did with the saffron cream on the orecchiette.

Soggy croutons that had soaked up too much salt and dressing marred the otherwise excellent flavor of the kale Caesar.

Also, if you don’t order carefully—and I definitely got too much—the richness of the dishes can feel like a burden instead of a treat. All of the desserts, from butter cake to brownie, desperately needed some fruit or an herbal note—anything other than more sweetness and cream.

Mostly, though, if you order thoughtfully and create your own balance, you will be satisfied. Entrées like the chicken paillard, with its lovely arugula salad and lemony lightness, refresh the palate in an otherwise rich meal. My advice: Seek out something green and varied to set off the rest of the food, like one of the fine salads or the excellent rock shrimp scampi, with its light, sour-and-spicy broth and a faint basil note from the herby spread on the bread.

Still, this is a steakhouse, so I suspect most people are coming prepared for a big meal. And that is exactly what they will get, for a price quite a bit less extravagant than our town’s other purveyors of fancy steak. Losanti is doing the big things right. As with Crown Republic, this place is simply solid, and gives off a not-going-anywhere feeling right from the start.

Editor’s Note: This review was written in February, prior to dine-in restaurant closures. Losanti reopened its dining room and patio for reservations only on May 21. Please call ahead to confirm hours and services.

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JULY 29–31 Pinecroft at Crosley Estate

BACK IN BUSINESS LOCAL RESTAURANTS REOPEN THEIR DINING ROOMS WITH NEW COVID-19 SAFETY PROCEDURES. — V I C T O R I A M O O R W O O D

As restaurants began to reopen, hand sanitizing stations, masked servers, and social distance–marked floors became the new dining-out norm. On May 15, Ohio restaurants put many of these practices into place as they opened their patios, followed by dining room service on May 21. Kentucky restaurants followed the next week.

“Even though it was hard because we were all doing something we had never done before, it was also really rewarding to have the guests cooperate and appreciate the safety measures,” says Jacob Wooten, general manager of BrewDog Cincinnati in Pendleton, of the outdoor opening.

While precautions like frequent handwashing and capacity limits are being enforced statewide, several local establishments are going above and beyond to keep their customers and staff safe. At Lebanon’s The Golden Lamb and its Black Horse Tavern, one of these additional measures included “stop and scrub” handwashing reminders for staff.

“Every 20 minutes, everybody stops what they’re doing, or takes a quick pause, and does a really good 20-second handwashing,” says general manager and operating partner Bill Kilimnik.

The historic inn and restaurant also requires staff members to take their temperatures before shifts and regularly clean high-touch surfaces using a “gold sticker” system. “Every two hours, we’ll call ‘gold dot’ and everybody stops for a second and

cleans the nearest gold dots within arms’ reach.”

Along with sanitizing tables and chairs after each use and staying aware of the health of their employees, Condado Tacos at The Banks has shifted its casual walk-in environment to reservation-only dining. “That’s been a big change,” says Chris Mendoza, manager of culture and hospitality.

“It’s very important... that we maintain an atmosphere where our guests feel safe, and our employees. With a reservation-only system, we can make sure we don’t have groups of guests gathered in front of the restaurant.”

Although reopening has been met with both anxiety and anticipation,

Wooten is hopeful after seeing his BrewDog staff implement the new safety measures and his guests readily cooperate—a combined effort that will need to continue to ensure best safety practices. The bar is using floor markers as a visual aid for social distancing, providing protective table screens if customers wish, and promoting contactless ordering with their app.

“This whole situation is new to all of us, whether we’re serving or attending the restaurant,” Wooten says. “It’s nice to see both staff and patrons working together again—hopefully that can be one positive thing that’s come out of this.”

Ready to dine out again? Call restaurants ahead of your visit to make a reservation or to check if walk-ins are OK. GOOD TO KNOW

9 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

P H OTO G R A P H S CO U R T E S Y ( TO P R I G H T, B OT TO M L E F T ) B R E W D O G / ( TO P L E F T ) T H E G O L D E N L A M B / (B OT TO M R I G H T ) CO N DA D O TACO S

OFF THE MENU

HIGH SPIRITS

MATHLETE With tropical fruit and citrus aromas and a light bitterness from Citra, Mosaic, and Azacca hops, the traditional characteristics are there in this crisp, dry IPA—but with only 115 guilt-free calories.

Rhinegeist Brewery, 1910 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 381-1367, rhinegeist.com 3

HOP FIT The name says a lot about this little 100-calorie IPA—it’s heavily hopped with Citra, Galaxy, and Mosaic, lending notes of citrus, pine, and stone fruit. Braxton Brewing Co., 27 W. Seventh St., Covington, (859) 261-5600, braxtonbrewing.com 2

QUENCHER This 100-calorie, light and fruity watermelon-lime ale adds hydrating electrolytes to the mix for a grown-up twist on Gatorade. Fifty West Brewing Co., 7668 Wooster Pike, Columbia Twp., (513) 834-8789, fiftywestbrew.com 1

RAMBLE ON Clocking in at 106 calories, this IPA balances hoppy bitterness with bright citrus (from Citra Incognito, Citra, and Pacifica hops and natural citrus) for a refreshing sip. MadTree Brewing, 3301 Madison Rd., Oakley, (513) 836-8733, madtreebrewing.com 4

LO-CAL PALE ALE These mild, easy-drinking pints (110 calories) from a new(ish) local brewery might be the perfect summer sip. HighGrain Brewing Co., 6860 Plainfield Rd., Silverton, (513) 791-7000, highgrainbrewing.com 5

LO-CAL LIBATIONS

et’s face it, the way 2020 started off was reason enough for a drink—or 500. So if you’re looking in the mirror right now at a well-fed beer gut . . . well, you’re not alone. While a beach bod might not be top of mind these days, it’s still a good time to reach for lower-calorie drinks than your go-to IPA or lager. Local brewers have heard your inner cry and concocted a batch of low-carb, low-cal beers that (unlike the “lite” beers of old) keep flavor front and center in their slim-friendly options. — R O D N E Y W I L S O N L

9 8 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

P H O T O G R A P H BY A A R O N M . CO N WAY

Summer Food Fest

Thursday, August 6, 6â&#x20AC;&#x201C;8 PM The Factory 1546 Knowlton St. Cincinnati, OH 45223

For more information, visit cincinnatimagazine.com/ ourevents

WHERE TO EAT NOW

AMERICAN 100 BARBECUE 102 CAJUN/CARIBBEAN 102 CHINESE 102 ECLECTIC 104 FRENCH 106 INDIAN 107 ITALIAN 107 MEDITERRANEAN 108 MEXICAN 108 STEAKS 110 THAI 110

DINING GUIDE CINCINNATI MAGAZINE’S

dining guide is compiled by our editors as a service to our readers.

The magazine accepts no advertising or other consideration in exchange for a restaurant listing.

The editors may add or delete restaurants based on their judgment.

Because of space limitations, all

of the guide’s restaurants may not be included. Many restaurants have changing seasonal menus; dishes listed here are examples of the type of cuisine available and may not be on the menu when you visit.

To update listings, e-mail: cmletters@cincinnati magazine.com

KEY: No checks unless specified.

AE American Express, DC Diners Club DS Discover, MC MasterCard, V Visa MCC Major credit cards: AE, MC, V $ = Under $15 $$$ = Up to $49 $$ = Up to $30 $$$$ = $50 and up Top 10

Named a Best Restaurant March 2020.

VIETNAMESE 110

AMERICAN

6440 Cincinnati Dayton Rd., Liberty Twp., (513) 644-9364, cozyscafeandpub.com. Dinner Tues–Sat, brunch Sat & Sun. $$$

BROWN DOG CAFÉ

CWC THE RESTAURANT

If you haven’t had a plate of Shawn McCoy’s design set in front of you, it’s about time. Many of the menu’s dishes show his knack for the plate as a palette. A trio of stout day boat diver scallops—exquisitely golden from pan searing—perch atop individual beds of uniformly diced butternut squash, fragments of boar bacon, and shavings of Brussels sprout. The eye for detail and contrasts of colors and textures belongs to someone who cares for food. 1000 Summit Place, Blue

Founded by the sister duo behind the culinary multimedia platform Cooking with Caitlin, this eatery makes comfort food feel a notch more au courant, imbuing a true family-friendly philosophy. Its burgers are topped with a generous ladle of gooey house-made cheddar sauce and served with hand-cut French fries that many a mother will filch from her offspring’s plate. Portions—and flavors—are generous, eliciting that feeling of being royally indulged. Similarly, every item on the Sunday brunch menu virtually dares you to go big or go home. Make a reservation for parties of more than four and plan to be spoiled rotten.

Then plan to take a lengthy nap. 1517 Springfield

Ash, (513) 794-1610, browndogcafe.com. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner Mon–Fri, brunch and dinner Sat, brunch Sun. MCC, DS. $$

CABANA ON THE RIVER Like a big outdoor picnic with a view of the serene hills of Kentucky and the Ohio River rolling by, this is one of those places west-siders would rather the rest of Cincinnati didn’t know about.

Its annual debut in late spring marks the official beginning of summer for many. People flock to the Cabana for good food prepared well: grilled mahi-mahi sandwiches, pork barbecue, steak on a stick, Angus beef burgers, Italian and steak hoagies, white chicken chili, and interesting salads. While some of the fare is familiar pub grub, nothing is sub-standard. Even potato chips are made in-house and seasoned with Cajun spices.

7445 Forbes Rd., Sayler Park, (513) 941-7442, cabanaontheriver.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $

COZY’S CAFÉ & PUB On a visit to England, Jan Collins discovered the “cozy” atmosphere of London restaurants built in historic houses. She brought that warm, comfortable feeling back to the United States in opening Cozy’s. Though the atmosphere in the restaurant is reminiscent of Collins’s London travels, the food remains proudly American. The produce in virtually every dish is fresh, seasonal, and flavorful.

The 12-hour pork shank stands out with its buttery grits and root vegetable hash, along with a portion of tender meat. And when it comes down to the classics, from the biscuits that open the meal to carrot cake at the end, Cozy’s does it right.

CREATIVE PIVOT

With a limited dining room footprint, Boomtown Biscuits & Whiskey had to rethink its poststay-at-home order reopening. Starting May 26, the Pendleton restaurant began a private dinner series—in addition to takeout of its standard menu—exploring Thai, Creole, and South American cuisine in five courses, prepared by Chef Christian Gill, with complementary wine and cocktails.

boomtownbiscuits andwhiskey.com

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Pke., Wyoming, (513) 407-3947, cwctherestaurant. com. Dinner Fri & Sat, brunch Sun. MCC. $

GREYHOUND TAVERN Back in the streetcar days, this roughly 100-yearold roadhouse was at the end of the Dixie Highway line, where the cars turned around to head north. The place was called the Dixie Tea Room then, and they served ice cream. The fried chicken came along in the 1930s, and they’re still dishing it up today. Families and regulars alike pile in on Mondays and Tuesdays for the fried chicken dinner. While the juicy (never greasy) chicken with its lightly seasoned, crisp coating is the star, the side dishes—homemade biscuits, cole slaw, green beans, mashed potatoes, and gravy—will make you ask for seconds. Call ahead no matter what night you choose: There’s bound to be a crowd. Not in the mood for chicken? Choose from steaks, seafood, sandwiches, and comfort food options that include meatloaf and a Kentucky Hot Brown. Or just try the onion rings. You’ll wonder where onions that big come from. 2500 Dixie Highway, Ft. Mitchell, (859) 331-3767, greyhound tavern.com. Lunch and dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC, DS. $$

MR. GENE’S DOGHOUSE Cumminsville is home to arguably the best hot chili cheese mett and chocolate malt in Greater Cincinnati. A family owned business that began as a simple hot dog stand more than 50 years

ago, Mr. Gene’s still attracts lines of loyal customers at its windows. Can’t stand the heat? Order the mild chili mett—more flavor, fewer BTUs. And if you still haven’t embraced Cincinnati-style coneys, try the Chicago-style hot dog with pickles, onions, relish, mustard, tomato, and celery salt; a barbecue sandwich; or wings (a sign proclaims “So hot they make the devil sweat”). Although the chocolate malt is the biggest seller, we love the $3.25 pineapple shake, made with real pineapple. 3703 Beekman St., South Cumminsville, (513) 541-7636, mrgenesdoghouse.com. Open Feb– Dec for lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. MC, V. $

OTTO’S Chef/owner Paul Weckman opened Otto’s, named after his father-in-law, with $300 worth of food and one employee—himself. Weckman’s food is soothing, satisfying, and occasionally, too much of a good thing. His tomato pie is beloved by lunch customers: Vine-ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and chopped green onions packed into a homemade pie shell, topped with a cheddar cheese spread, and baked until bubbly. Weckman’s straightforward preparations are best.

The shrimp and grits with sauteed shrimp spinach, mushrooms, Cajun beurre blanc atop a fried grit cake, short ribs braised in red wine and herbs, served over mashed potatoes with green beans and caramelized baby carrots that will bring you the comfort of a home-cooked meal. This is, at its heart, a neighborhood restaurant, a place with its own large, quirky family. 521 Main St., Covington, (859) 491-6678, ottosonmain.com.

Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

PUTZ’S CREAMY WHIP When your tongue touches the frozen white Nirvana on top of a Putz’s cone, every moment of every joy of every summer of your life is condensed into one simple swipe. It’s the sweetness, the creaminess, the cloud-like texture. I dare you to close your eyes, taste it, and not think of your first summer love, or getting invited to the new neighbor’s pool on the second day of August.

Putz’s coneys are also very popular. But it’s the simplicity of vanilla on a cone that has made this place. When I-74 was being built, the expressway would have landed three feet from Putz’s back door. As bizarre as this sounds, the U.S. DepartILLUSTR ATIO N BY EMM A THEIS

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ment of Transportation actually moved the freeway for Putz’s. They do that kind of thing for holy shrines. 2673 Putz Place, Westwood, (513) 681-8668, putzscreamywhip. com. Lunch and dinner seven days, seasonally. Cash. $

THE SCHOOLHOUSE RESTAURANT An old flag stands in one corner and pictures of Abe Lincoln and the first George W. hang on the wall of this Civil War–era schoolhouse. The daily menu of familiar Midwestern comfort fare is written in letter-perfect cursive on the original chalkboard. Once you order from a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to your high school lunch lady, the elevated lazy Susan in the center of the table begins to fill up with individual bowls and baskets of corn bread, slaw, salad, mashed potatoes, chicken gravy, and vegetables. The deal here is quantity. More mashed potatoes with your fried chicken? More corn bread with your baked ham? You don’t even have to raise your hand. 8031 Glendale-Milford Rd., Camp Dennison, (513) 831-5753, theschoolhousecinci nnati.com. Lunch Thurs & Fri, dinner Thurs–Sun. MCC, DS. $

PONTIAC BBQ

KNOTTY PINE ON THE BAYOU

Dan Wright’s BBQ dream comes to life in a honky-tonkish setting, delivering inexpensive barbecue that draws from multiple traditions—Kansas City, Memphis, and Texas— a few basic sides (bacon-and-pickled-jalapeño-topped white grits and a silky mac-and-cheese), and plenty of bourbon. Snack on fried pickles or smoked wings, then move on to brisket (both fatty and lean), pulled pork, and smoked-on-the-bone short ribs. This is ridiculously highquality comfort food at a friendly price point. 1403 Vine

The Pine serves some of the best Louisiana home-style food you’ll find this far north of New Orleans. Taste the fried catfish filets with their peppery crust, or the garlic sauteed shrimp with smoky greens on the side, and you’ll understand why it’s called soul food. Between March and June, it’s crawfish season. Get them boiled and heaped high on a platter or in a superb crawfish etouffee. But the rockin’ gumbo—a thick, murky brew of andouille sausage, chicken, and vegetables—serves the best roundhouse punch all year round. As soon as you inhale the bouquet and take that first bite, you realize why Cajun style food is considered a high art form and a serious pleasure. And you’ll start planning your return trip. 6302 Licking Pke.,

St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 579-8500, pontiacbbq.com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sun, brunch Sun. MCC. $$

WALT’S HITCHING POST A Northern Kentucky institution returns. Roughly 750 pounds of ribs per week are pit-fired in a small building in front of the restaurant, with a smaller dedicated smoker out back for brisket and chicken. Walt’s ribs begin with several hours in the smokehouse and then are quick-seared at the time of service. This hybrid method takes advantage of the leaner nature of the baby-back ribs they prefer to use. Each rib had a just-right tooth to it where soft flesh peeled away from the bone. One hidden treasure: Walt’s house-made tomato and garlic dressing. Slightly thicker than a vinaigrette yet unwilling to overwhelm a plate of greens, the two key elements play well together. 3300 Madison Pke., Ft. Wright, (859) 3602222, waltshitchingpost.com. Dinner seven days. MCC. $$

TUCKER’S RESTAURANT Joe Tucker has done a marvelous job of running a de facto Swiss Embassy in the volatile heart of Over-the-Rhine.

Joe is possibly Cincinnati’s premiere fry cook. He has the ability to make a turkey club magical, where you have to stop after each bite and let your mouth recover from the overwhelming conjugality of yum. Until you’ve tried it, you just wouldn’t think that a curried tuna salad sandwich could be a mystical experience. Tucker’s is surprisingly vegetarian friendly too, with Joe’s meatless twists on greasy-spoon standards. Nice to see that the magic the Tucker family has practiced at this place for more than 70 years is strong enough to weather the worst and that Tucker’s remains the friendliest little place on Vine.

1637 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 954-8920. Breakfast and lunch Tues–Sun. V, MC. $

THE WILDFLOWER CAFÉ Wildflower Café is not the sort of place that tries to wow anyone with feats of inventiveness. Its formula is simple but satisfying: lots of mostly local meat and produce, a menu that continuously changes with available ingredients, a nice selection of wine and beer, and well-made, homey food. The small, focused menu has a classic American quality (salads, steaks, burgers) with enough surprises to keep things interesting. Many of the dishes are designed with open spaces to be filled with whatever is available in the kitchen that day, an advantage of an unfussy style. You don’t go to Wildflower expecting a certain kind of perfection; you accept that your favorite dish from last time might be made differently tonight, or no longer available. Like the farmhouse that Wildflower occupies, the imperfections are part of the charm. 207 E. Main St., Mason, (513) 492-7514, wildflowergourmetcafe. com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sat. MCC. $$$

BARBECUE ELI’S BBQ Elias Leisring started building his pulled pork reputation under canopies at Findlay Market and Fountain Square in 2011. Leisring’s proper little ’cue shack along the river serves up ribs that are speaking-in-tongues good, some of the zazziest jalapeño cheese grits north of the Mason-Dixon line, and browned mashed potatoes that would make any short order cook diner-proud. The small no-frills restaurant—packed cheek-by-jowl most nights—feels like it’s been there a lifetime, with customers dropping vinyl on the turntable, dogs romping in the side yard, and picnic tables crowded with diners.

The hooch is bring-your-own, and the barbecue is bona fide. 3313 Riverside Dr., East End, (513) 533-1957, elis barbeque.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $

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CAJUN/ CARIBBEAN BREWRIVER CREOLE More than 800 miles from New Orleans, this may be as close as you can get to the real deal here in your own backyard. The menu fully leans into Chef Michael Shields’s penchant for cuisine from the Crescent City. His six years of training under NOLA’s own Emeril Lagasse comes through in a scratch kitchen menu that spans a range of the city’s classics. The enormous shrimp and oyster po’ boys—the former protein fried in a light and crispy beer batter and the latter in a hearty cornmeal breading—are served on fluffy French bread loaves and dressed with lightly spicy rémoulades. The jambalaya packs all the heat of a late summer day in the French Quarter without masking a hint of its satisfying flavors. Paired with a Sazerac and nightly live jazz, you may just feel tempted to start a second line. 4632 Eastern Ave., Linwood, (513) 861-2484, brewrivercreolekitchen.com. Dinner Tues–Sun, brunch & lunch Fri–Sun. MCC. $

DEE FELICE CAFÉ To call Dee Felice Café a jazz supper club would be too conventional. The atmosphere is decidedly casual. The music and menu are still true to the original spirit of Emidio Dante DeFelice, a drummer and bandleader who opened the restaurant in 1984 to create a jazz venue that he and his fellow musicians could relax in and enjoy a meal. It made sense to feature cuisine from the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans, and the Cajun and Creole dishes of southern Louisiana still dominate the menu, though there are a few Italian dishes, as well as steaks (the most consistently well-executed dishes on the menu) and salads. The joint is most definitely still jumpin’. 529 Main St., Covington, (859) 261-2365, deefelicecafe.com. Dinner Wed–Mon. MCC, DC, DS. $$

SWAMPWATER GRILL At first blush, this place is a dive where homesick Cajuns can find a good pile of jambalaya. But thoughtful details like draft Abita Root Beer and char-grilled Gulf Coast oysters on the half shell signal its ambition. Bayou standards like jambalaya, gumbo, and fried seafood also make an appearance. But the extensive menu also features amped up pub-style items for those who may be squeamish about crawfish tails (which can be added to just about anything on the menu). You’ll also find a roundup of oyster, shrimp, and catfish Po’Boys, as well as a selection of hardwoodsmoked meats. 3742 Kellogg Ave., East End, (513) 8347067, swampwatergrill.com. Lunch and dinner Wed–Sun, brunch Fri–Sun. MCC. $$

Cold Spring, (859) 781-2200, letseat.at/KnottyPine. Dinner Tues–Sun. MCC, DS. $$

CHINESE AMERASIA A sense of energetic fun defines this tiny Chinese spot with a robust beer list. The glossy paper menu depicts Master Chef Rich Chu as a “Kung Food” master fighting the evil fast-food villain with dishes like “fly rice,” “Brocco-Lee,” and “Big Bird’s Nest.” Freshness rules. Pot stickers, dumplings, and wontons are hand-shaped. The Dragon’s Breath wontons will invade your dreams. Seasoned ground pork, onion, and cilantro meatballs are wrapped in egg dough, wok simmered, and topped with thick, spicy red pepper sauce and fresh cilantro. Noodles are clearly Chef Chu’s specialty, with zonxon (a tangle of thin noodles, finely chopped pork, tofu, and mushrooms cloaked in spicy dark sauce and crowned with peanuts and cilantro) and Matt Chu’s Special (shaved rice noodle, fried chicken, and seasonal vegetables in gingery white sauce) topping the menu’s flavor charts.

521 Madison Ave., Covington, (859) 261-6121. Lunch Sun–Fri, dinner seven days. MCC. $

HOUSE OF SUN Take a gander at the authentic Chinese section of the menu.

There you’ll find a ballet of smoky, spicy sliced conch; thick handmade noodles soaking up rich, nostril-searing brown sauce; and crispy pork ears arranged like flower petals on the plate (think of fine Italian prosciutto). The popular American-Chinese chicken dishes are there, too, including General Tso, sweet and sour, and sesame chicken. 11955 Lebanon Rd., Sharonville, (513) 769-0888, houseofsuncincy. com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sun. DS, MC, V. $$

THE PACIFIC KITCHEN The monster of a menu can be dizzying. Ease in with some top-notch Korean Fried Chicken. These slightly bubbly, shatter-crisp wings are painted with a thin gochujang pepper sauce (a foil to the fat). It takes 24 hours to prep the Cantonese duck, between a honey-vinegar brine to dry the skin, a marinade of star anise, bean paste, and soy within the re-sealed cavity, and the crispy convection oven finish. Dolsot bibimbap had plenty of crispy rice at the bottom of the stone bowl, and the accompanying banchan were soothing yet flavorful, especially the strips of lightly pickled cucumber. Even dishes like a Malaysian goat stew resonated with rich, original flavors. 8300 Market Place Lane, Montgomery, (513) 898-1833, thepacific.kitchen. Lunch and dinner seven days; dim sum Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

RAYMOND’S HONG KONG CAFÉ It has all the elements of your typical neighborhood Chinese restaurant: Strip mall location. General Tso and kung pao chicken. Fortune cookies accompanying the bill.

The dragon decoration. But it is the nontraditional aspects of Raymond’s Hong Kong Café that allow it to stand apart. The menu goes beyond standard Chinese fare with dishes that range from Vietnamese (beef noodle soup) to American (crispy Cornish hen). The Portuguese-style baked chicken references Western European influences on Chinese cuisine with an assemblage of fried rice, peppers, carrots, broccoli, zucchini, and squash all simmering together in a creamy bath of yellow curry sauce. Deciding what to order is a challenge, but at least you won’t be disappointed. 11051 Clay Dr., Walton, (859) 485-2828.

Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $$

Matinée Musicale

CINCINNATI’S ORIGINAL CLASSICAL SOLO RECITAL SERIES! RE-SCHEDULED RECITALS

THE 2020–2021 108TH SEASON!

WINDSYNC

PENE PATI

WIND QUINTET

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Sun., October 11, 2020 Winner of the Concert Artists Guild and Fischoff National Competitions

Sun., August 9, 2020

RYAN SPEEDO GREEN

3 PM • Memorial Hall

CHRISTINA NAM

VIOLIN

Photo: Dario Acosta

First Prize winner Montserrat Caballé International Aria Competition

BASS-BARITONE

Sun., November 22, 2020 2018 Marian Anderson Vocal Prize Winner

MARTIN JAMES BARTLETT PIANO

Sun., February 7, 2021 2014 BBC Young Musician of the Year

Sun., September 20, 2020

3 PM • Memorial Hall

2019 National YoungArts Winner Attending Juilliard in Fall, 2020

NICOLE CABELL

ZLATOMIR FUNG CELLO

Sun., March 14, 2021 International Tchaikovsky Competition Cello Division First Prize Winner

Photo: Devon Cass

SOPRANO

Sun., January 31, 2021

3 PM • Memorial Hall

RACHEL BARTON PINE

VIOLIN

Fri., April 9, 2021 1992 Gold Medalist J.S. Bach International Violin Competition

Winner of the 2005 BBC Singer of the World Competition

Memorial Hall Box Office: 513-977-8838 MatineeMusicaleCincinnati.org Visit us on Facebook.

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SUZIE WONG’S ON MADISON A few items on the menu resemble those that were once served at Pacific Moon, such as laub gai and Vietnamese rolls, both variations of lettuce wraps. For the laub gai, browned peppery chicken soong (in Cantonese and Mandarin, referring to meat that is minced) is folded into leaf lettuce with stems of fresh cilantro and mint, red Serrano peppers, a squeeze of lime juice, and a drizzle of fish sauce. In the Vietnamese roll version, small cigar-sized rolls stuffed with chicken and shrimp are crisp fried and lettuce wrapped in the same manner. The Pan-Asian menu also includes Korean kalbi (tenderific beef ribs marinated and glazed in a sweet, dark, sesame soy sauce) and dolsat bibimbap, the hot stone bowl that’s a favorite around town. 1544 Madison Rd., East Walnut Hills, (513) 751-3333, suziewongs. com. Lunch Tues–Sat, dinner Tues–Sun. MCC, DS. $$

UNCLE YIP’S

Good s Plate

Long before sushi somehow un-disgusted itself to the Western World, China had houses of dim sum. Uncle Yip’s valiantly upholds that tradition in Evendale. This is a traditional dim sum house with all manner of exotic dumplings, including shark fin or beef tripe with ginger and onion.

As for the seafood part of the restaurant’s full name, Uncle Yip has most everything the sea has to offer, from lobster to mussels. The menu has more than 260 items, so you’ll find a range of favorites, from moo goo gai pan to rock salt frog legs. 10736 Reading Rd., Evendale, (513) 733-8484, uncleyips.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, discount for cash. $$

NEW BEGINNINGS

Just before he found himself out of a job when the restaurant he was cooking at permanently closed during COVID-19, Andrew Schlanser, along with his wife, Jamie, another industry veteran, went all in on their dreams of opening their own restaurant. The couple got to work in mid-March converting the former Cilantro space in Clifton Heights into their forthcoming Good Plates Eatery.

The campus-side restaurant serving sandwiches, salad, and soup is set to open this fall.

instagram.com/ goodplateseatery

ECLECTIC Top 10

ABIGAIL STREET

Most people who’ve eaten at Abigail Street have favorite dishes that they order every visit: the Moroccan spiced broccoli, for example, or the mussels charmoula, with its perfect balance of saffron, creaminess, and tomatoey acidity. Many of the new items on the menu have the same perfected feeling as these classics. Working within a loose framework of Middle Eastern and North African flavors, Abigail Street has never fallen into a routine that would sap its energy. New offerings like the duck leg confit, with spicy-sour harissa flavors, firm-tender butternut squash, and perfectly made couscous, feel just as accomplished as old favorites like the falafel, beautifully moist and crumbly with a bright parsley interior. The restaurant is always watching for what works and what will truly satisfy, ready to sacrifice the superficially interesting in favor of the essential. 1214 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 421-4040, abigailstreet. com. Dinner Tues–Sat. MCC, DS. $$ Top 10

BOCA

With its grand staircase, chandelier, and floor-to-ceiling draperies, Boca has an atmosphere of grandeur and refinement. There is a sense of drama not only in the decor but in everything it serves. In some dishes, there is a painterly sense of contrast and surprise, like violet-derived purple sugar beside the pain de Gênes (French almond cake). In others, there is a dramatic suspense, like the whole egg yolk quivering in the center of the Fassone tartare waiting to be broken. While staying mostly grounded in the fundamentals of Italian and French cuisine, Boca has an air of international sophistication that sets its food apart. The hamachi crudo, an old standby on the menu, takes Japanese flavors and gives them new dimensions with grapefruit suprêmes and slivers of shishito pepper. This is food of extraordinary creativity and flair. 114 E. Sixth St., downtown, (513) 542-2022, bocacinci nnati.com. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DS. $$$

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Top 10

BOUQUET RESTAURANT AND WINE BAR

Normally diners aren’t pleased when a restaurant runs out of something. At Bouquet, though, surprise changes to the menu are simply a sign of integrity. Chef-owner Stephen Williams is serious about using seasonal ingredients, and if the figs have run out or there is no more chicken from a local farm, so be it. The flavors at Bouquet are about doing justice to what’s available. Preparations are unfussy, complexity coming from within the vegetables and proteins themselves.

A tomato salad—wonderfully fresh and vibrant, so you know the tomatoes have just come off a nearby vine—is dressed with chopped shiso, a crimson herb that tastes like a mysterious combination of mint and cilantro. This determination to make something delicious out of what’s on hand, to embrace limitations, gives the food at Bouquet a rustic, soulful quality. 519 Main St., Covington, (859) 491-7777, bouquetrestaurant.com.

Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DS. $$

COMMONWEALTH BISTRO Everything from the old jukebox by the entrance to the sepia-toned rabbit-and-pheasant wallpaper exudes an appreciation for the antique. But rather than duplicating old recipes, Covington’s Commonwealth uses history as a springboard to create something elegant and original. Two dishes get at what makes this place special: biscuits and fried rabbit. Their biscuit, served with tart quince butter, is perfection—moist and flaky, without being coat-your-throat buttery or crumble-to-ash dry. The rabbit is crisp, light, and not at all greasy, with just the right touch of seasoning and a bright biz baz sauce, a cilantro and garlic sauce of Somali origin that tastes like a creamy salsa verde. Brunch offers the same sort of mashup, including salsa verde pork with pickled jalapeño grits made creamy with the yolk of a 75-degree egg and a smoky, spicy, not too salty Bloody Mary. 621 Main St., Covington, (859) 916-6719, commonwealthbistro. com. Dinner Tues–Sun, Brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

THE LITTLEFIELD Inside a modest 1,500 square-foot space on Spring Grove, just south of Hamilton Avenue, at least 70-odd bourbons behind the bar drive this little restaurant’s philosophy. The menu is meant to be limited, the better to support and celebrate the bottled flavors up front. There are surprises: a faint hint of curry powder deepens the moody cauliflower fritters; skewered golf-balls of mild, peppery ground lamb get a faint crust from the final sear. You’ll also want to order the smoked pork katsu. Panko crusted cutlets of pork, topped with tonkatsu sauce, served with sesame ginger slaw and kewpie mayo. The signature chicken and corn chowder is exactly what you need on a cold winter’s day. 3934 Spring Grove Ave., Northside, (513) 386-7570, littlefieldns.com. Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner seven days, brunch Sun. V, MC. $

Top 10

MITA’S

It’s fitting that chef Jose Salazar named this restaurant after his grandmother, because there is something deeply homey about the food at Mita’s. With a focus on Spanish tapas, it always feels, in the best possible way, like elevated home cooking. Its sophistication is modestly concealed. The flavors are bold and direct, whether the smoky depths of the chimichurri rojo on skewers of grilled chicken or the intensely bright sourness of the pozole verde.

In dishes like the mushroom soup, the chef hits every register: the acid of red piquillo peppers to balance the earthy mushrooms, the crisp fried leeks against the delicately creamy soup. But what mainly comes through is the warm-hearted affection a grandmother might have put into a meal for a beloved grandson. It’s the kind of big hug everyone needs from time to time. 501 Race

St., downtown, (513) 421-6482, mitas.co. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC. $$$ Top 10

ORCHIDS AT PALM COURT

Executive chef George Zappas is maintaining the proud traditions of Orchids with food that is wonderfully complex, diverse, and surprising. A dish of parsnip soup has a quinoa chip and apple butter, along with salty duck prosciutto, notes of smoke and spice from the espelette pepper at the base of the bowl, and a touch of acid that crept in on the roasted parsnip. In a few dazzling bites it all comes together like a highly technical piece of music. A Southeast Asian–inspired halibut dish, with its green curry paste, adobo, and peanut brittle, shows how Zappas can break out of the restaurant’s traditionally European comfort zone.

Aside from the food, part of the pleasure is simply being in the space, enjoying the jazz band, and watching the grace and assurance of the staff as they present the meal. 35 W. Fifth St., downtown, (513) 564-6465, orchidsatpalmcourt.com. Dinner seven days. MCC. $$$$

PLEASANTRY With only 40 seats inside, Daniel Souder and Joanna Kirkendall’s snug but spare OTR gem—they serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner like a true neighborhood spot—features an engaging wine program aimed at broadening your palate alongside small plates that are equally ambitious.

Classic technique and fresh produce anchor an approachable menu—“everything” biscuits with cured salmon, burgers, and chicken salad sandwiches are available at lunch, and the cauliflower with sambal is a comforting mash-up of a rich cauliflower-and-coconut-cream schmear topped with a head of sambal-roasted cauliflower, grapefruit segments, toasted cashews, and cilantro. This is not to say that the proteins aren’t something special. Traditionally a much less expensive cut, the small hanger steak was decidedly tender, served with braised cippolini onions and sauteed mushrooms. 118 W. 15th St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 381-1969, pleasantryotr.com.

Dinner Tues–Sat, brunch Fri–Sun. MCC. $

Top 10

PLEASE

It’s hard to describe the food at Please to a person who hasn’t been there, except that it’s like nothing else in Cincinnati.

Some of chef-owner Ryan Santos’s culinary experiments have been bizarre, some fascinating, and some simply delicious—and all of it emerges from a dining room–centered kitchen that seems like it belongs in a small apartment. Almost all of his risks hit their marks, from the frothy bay leaf–grapefruit mignonette on the oysters to the cedar-rosemary custard. What has made Please increasingly wonderful is a willingness, at times, to deliver something straightforward, like an outstanding course of rye gnocchi or a spicy green kale sauce with a lemony zing. That this weird and wonderful restaurant exists at all, and is actually thriving, is a compliment not just to Santos and his staff but to the city as a whole.

1405 Clay St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 405-8859, pleasecincinnati.com. Dinner Wed–Sat. MCC. $$$

RUTH’S PARKSIDE CAFÉ The spiritual successor of Mullane’s Parkside Café, Ruth’s brings back the vegetable-forward menu with a few concessions to contemporary tastes. Dinner options now include steaks and heavier, braised entrées. But the stir-fries, beans and rice, pasta, and the traditional option to add a protein to an entrée (tofu, tempeh, chicken, or local chorizo) for a $2 upcharge are all old standards. While dishes are generally hearty, they are rarely too rich, leaving room to freely consider dessert. There are a small selection of baked goods, including a gooey butter cake, homemade fruit pies, and Madisono’s Gelato.

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ground cherry). With its bustling bar and cheek-by-jowl tables, Salazar hums with energy at every meal. 1401

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Republic St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 621-7000, salazarcinci nnati.com. Lunch Thurs–Fri, dinner Mon–Sat, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$

THE VIEW AT SHIRES’ GARDEN

1550 Blue Rock St., Northside, (513) 542-7884, ruthscafe. com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner Mon–Sat. MCC. $$

The name of this restaurant demands that one question be answered first: So, how’s that view? Well, it’s impressive.

Especially if the weather cooperates and you can get a seat outside. The cocktail list tells you a lot about The View at Shires’ Garden. Some restaurants create a whole list of original drinks. Here, it’s the classics: things like the Sazerac and the old fashioned. The menu is full of genuinely seasonal dishes, like the spaghetti squash with a creamy pecorino Alfredo sauce. The Asian-inspired skin-on black cod in dashi broth gently flaked apart in a subtle, flavorful miso broth and was served with wontons of minced fish, each with a magical citrusy quality (from lemongrass) that elevated the whole dish and made it special. 309 Vine

SACRED BEAST Sacred Beast advertises itself as a kind of upscale diner, but the real gems are the oddball dishes that don’t quite fit the diner mold. The menu can be disorienting in its eclecticism: foie gras torchon is next to lobster poutine, and a king salmon is next to a diner breakfast and deviled eggs. Winners are scattered throughout the menu in every category. On the cocktail list, the Covington Iced Tea, a lemon and coffee concoction made with cold brew, San Pellegrino, and vodka is oddly satisfying. The service is good, and there is some flair about the place—including vintage touches, from the facsimile reel-to-reel audio system to the mostly classic cocktails—even within its rather chilly industrial design. In short, go for the late night grub; stay for the elegant, shareable twists on classic snacks. 1437 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 213-2864,

St., 10th Floor, downtown, (513) 407-7501, theviewatshires garden.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC. $$$

ZULA

sacredbeastdiner.com. Lunch, dinner, and late night seven days. MCC. $$

For a restaurant whose name loosely derives from an Israeli slang term for “hidden treasure,” it seems apt that a dish or two might sneak in and stun—like the mussels Marseilles, with its bouillabaisse-style broth, rich with saffron, tomato, and fennel. But Zula is no one-trick pony.

With a wood-fired oven on the premises, it’s incumbent on you to try the flatbreads. One zula is the eggplant option, where caramelized onions and marinated red bell peppers pair well with subtly sweet fontina. Not every bite at Zula is a game-changer, but one is all you need.

SALAZAR A freewheeling tour through Korean, Moroccan, Italian, and French flavors—and that’s just on one iteration of the ever-evolving menu. Salazar turns out fresh, wellbalanced dishes dotted with seasonal surprises: the cauliflower steak special (a Moroccan spiced, seared wedge of the cruciferous vegetable complemented by a strong hit of lemon), the chicken liver mousse (so good it deserves its own trophy), and the succulent chicken Milanese (with its musky, sweet-and-sour notes of

1400 Race St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 744-9852, zulabistro. com. Dinner Tues–Sat. MCC. $$

FRENCH CHEZ RENÉE FRENCH BISTROT Based on American stereotypes of French food—that it’s elaborate, elitist, and expensive—one might expect Chez Renee to fall on the chichi side. Instead, it’s elegant in an everyday way, operating on the principle that it is better to excel at simplicity than to badly execute something complicated. The formula is not complex: Simple ingredients, generally fresh and from nearby, prepared without much fuss. Asparagus is beautifully roasted and perfectly salted, and the quiche Lorraine (yes, the old standby) has a nice, firm texture, and a fine balance of bacon, mushrooms, and oignons (to quote the menu, which is a charming hodgepodge of French and English). This is solid, tasty food, both approachable and well executed.

It’s well on its way to becoming, as a good bistrot should be, a neighborhood institution. 233 Main St., Milford, (513) 428-0454, chezreneefrenchbistrot.com. Lunch and dinner Tues–Sat. MCC. $$

JEAN-ROBERT’S TABLE No other chef in town has as much presence as JeanRobert de Cavel, and no other restaurant is steeped in such a singular personality. Who else could conjure up a surf and turf tartare of steak and salmon, or try his hand at a luxurious “haute pocket” (a.k.a., a vol au vent), cramming obscene amounts of lobster and succotash into airy layers of buttery puff pastry? But these touches are more than mere outré Gallic insouciance. Always lurking in the background is a reverence for the classics: Filet mignon cooked so skillfully that the meat maintains that textbook tinge of sourness; frites so crisp that your burger blushes. De Cavel shows us how not to simply pay lip service to staid Old World traditions, but how to find vitalité in their modern antecedents. 713 Vine St., downtown,

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1 0 6 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

441 Vine Street | (513) 651-1442 SnapFitness.com/Cincinnati

LE BAR A BOEUF Jean-Robert de Cavelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s upscale alterna-burger-shack features bifteck hachĂŠ, ground beef patties that are a mainstay of French family dinners, according to de Cavel. His â&#x20AC;&#x153;Les Ground Meatâ&#x20AC;? is available in beef, Wagyu beef, bison, lamb, and ďŹ sh (a blend of albacore tuna and salmon). Portions are eight ounces, taller than a typical burger, and seared on the kitchenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s iron griddle. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s easy to turn many of the generously portioned appetizers into dinner. Pair the open-faced beef tongue â&#x20AC;&#x153;French Dipâ&#x20AC;? sandwich with a spinach salad and youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have one of the best choices in the house. Or go for mac-and-cheese. The lobster mac always sounds lush, but do consider the humble beef cheek version, enlivened by a touch of truffle oil, instead. 2200

Indian food in America is hard to judge, because whether coming from the kitchen of a takeout joint or from a nicer establishment, the food will rarely taste all that different. It will generally be some twist on Punjabi cuisine.

Bombay Brazier does it just right. Chef Rip Sidhu could serve his dal tadka in India, along with several other extraordinary dishes, and still do a roaring businessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and this is not something that can be said of most Indian establishments in America. Try the pappadi chaat, a common Indian street food rarely found on American menus, and you will see what sets this place apart. They do everything the way it is supposed to be done, from the dusting of kala namak (a pungent black rock salt) on the fried crisps to the mixture of tamarind and mint chutneys on the chopped onion, tomatoes, and chickpeasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;having this dish properly made is balm to the soul of a homesick immigrant, and fresh treasure for any American lover of this cuisine.

Order at the counter the way you might at a fast food joint, except the shakes come in mango and thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no super-sizing your mint lassi. The saag, full of cream in most northern Indian restaurants, is as intensely ďŹ&#x201A;avored as collard greens in the Deep Southâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;real Punjabi soul food. Tarka dal is spectacular here, the black lentils smoky from charred tomatoes and onions, and the pani puri, hollow fried shells into which you spoon a peppery cold broth, burst with tart cool crunch. Follow the spice with soothing ras malai, freshly made cheese simmered

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Cristian Pietosoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s second restaurant has all the bones of an upscale eatery, but the menu is infused with enough Italian soul to make nonna proud. In most instances, raving about a side of creamed corn wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t bode well for the rest of the menu. Here, that side dishâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;kernels swimming in a pool of truffle-laced heavy cream that demands sopping upâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is

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(513) 272-0192, atavolapizza.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC. $

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O DOCTORS E A EV SS S T B A eBross A M Jim D By

FC CINCINNATIâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RISE, BY THE NUMBERS

In 2011, Jared Wayne opened A Tavola Pizza with two friends just as OTR was blowing up. A Ferrara pizza oven was ordered from Italy; Wayne, a skilled woodworker, built custom tables; and the menu was ďŹ&#x201A;eshed in with trendy crowd-pleasers like charcuterie and craft cocktails.

Fast-forward three years. Brother Nick is now a co-owner, and the Waynes have opened a second pizzeria: A Tavola Madeira capitalizes on the menu from the Vine Street location, including the fresh and zesty asparagus, artichoke, and feta pizza on a Neapolitan crust; gooey mozzarellaďŹ lled arancini, or risotto fritters; and the unequaled Blue Oven English muffin eggplant sliders. Wash down your small plates with a glass of crisp and grassy Sannio falanghina or an ice-cold Peroni lager. Not ones to rest on their laurels, they also ďŹ re up a third Italian importâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an Italforni Bull Ovenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for their take on Roman-style pies (with a thinner, crispier crust). Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re deďŹ nitely going to need a bigger parking lot. 7022 Miami Ave., Madeira,

BRIJ MOHAN

Muthu â&#x20AC;&#x153;Kumarâ&#x20AC;? Muthiah serves traditional southern Indian and Indo-Chinese vegetarian cuisine, but with a sizable Orthodox Jewish community nearby, Muthia saw an opportunity: If he was going to cook vegetarian, why not also make it kosher? Muthiah prepares every itemâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; from the addictively crunchy gobhi Manchurian, a spicy Chinese cauliďŹ&#x201A;ower dish, to the lemon pickle, tamarind, and mint saucesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;entirely from scratch under the careful eye of Rabbi Michoel Stern. Always 80 percent vegan, the daily lunch buffet is 100 percent animal-product-free on Wednesdays. Tuck into a warm and savory channa masala

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A TAVOLA

7791 Cooper Rd., #5, Montgomery, (513) 794-0000, bom baybraziercincy.com. Dinner Monâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Sat. MCC. $$$

AMMAâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S KITCHEN

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769-4549, brijmohancincinnati.com. Lunch and dinner Tuesâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; Sun. MC, V, DC. $

(513) 821-2021, ammaskitchen.com. Lunch buffet seven days (all-vegan on Wed), dinner seven days. MC, V, DS. $

Victory Pkwy., East Walnut Hills, (513) 751-2333, barboeuf. com. Dinner Tuesâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Sat. MCC. $$

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in thick almond-ďŹ&#x201A;avored milk, cooled and sprinkled with crushed pistachios. 11259 Reading Rd., Sharonville, (513)

(spiced chickpeas) or malai kofta (vegetable dumplings in tomato sauce) from the curry menu. Or tear into a crispy, two-foot diameter dosa (chickpea ďŹ&#x201A;our crepe) stuffed with spiced onions and potatoes. 7633 Reading Rd., Roselawn,

(513) 621-4777, jeanroberttable.com. Lunch Monâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Fri, dinner Monâ&#x20AC;&#x201C;Sat. MCC, DS. $$

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evidence that each component prepared by chef de cuisine Stefano Carne is purpose-driven. The red wine–braised honeycomb tripe, which carries a warning label (“Don’t be scared!”), and the pappardelle with spiced cinghiale (wild boar) ragu are examples of the elevated, adventurous comfort food that Pietoso strives for. 3514 Erie Ave., East Hyde Park, (513) 818-8720, fornoosteri abar.com. Dinner Tues–Sun, brunch Sun. MCC. $$ Top 10

NICOLA’S

Nicola’s has entered a new era of exuberant creativity under the leadership of chef Jack Hemmer. You can still get the old Italian classics, and they’ll be as good as ever, but the rest of the menu has blossomed into a freewheeling tour of modern American cuisine. Any establishment paying this level of attention to detail—from the candied slice of blood orange on the mascarpone cheesecake to the staff’s wine knowledge—is going to put out special meals.

Rarely have humble insalate been so intricately delicious, between the perfectly nested ribbons of beets in the pickled beet salad or the balance of bitterness, funkiness, and creaminess in the endive and Gorgonzola salad. Order an old favorite, by all means, but make sure you try something new, too. 1420 Sycamore St., Pendleton, (513) 721-6200, nicolasotr.com. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DC, DS. $$$

PRIMAVISTA

ON THE MARKET

One of Fountain Square’s longest operating tenants, Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, which opened in 1996, announced it had shuttered permanently during COVID-19 restaurant closures.

Its Chattanooga, Tennessee-based parent company CraftWork Holdings filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 3 and rejected the option to renew its lease through 2026.

Real estate firm CBRE said in May it expected to fill the prime location quickly.

Besides offering the old world flavors of Italy, Primavista also serves up a specialty no other restaurant can match: a bird’s eye view of Cincinnati from the west side. The kitchen is equally comfortable with northern and southern regional specialties: a Venetian carpaccio of paper thin raw beef sparked by fruity olive oil; house-made fresh mozzarella stuffed with pesto and mushrooms; or artichoke hearts with snails and mushrooms in a creamy Gorgonzola sauce from Lombardy. Among the classics, nothing is more restorative than the pasta e fagioli, a hearty soup of cannellini, ditali pasta, and bacon.

Most of the pastas are cooked just a degree more mellow than al dente so that they soak up the fragrant tomato basil or satiny cream sauces. The fork-tender osso buco Milanese, with its marrowfilled center bone and salty-sweet brown sauce (marinara and lemon juice), is simply superb.

Desserts present further problems; you’ll be hard-pressed to decide between the house-made tiramisu or bread pudding with caramel sauce, marsala soaked raisins, and cream. 810 Matson Pl., Price Hill, (513) 251-6467, pvista.com. Dinner Tues–Sun. MCC, DC, DS. $$ Top 10

SOTTO

There are certain books and movies that you can read or watch over and over. Eating at Sotto is a similar experience: familiar, but so profound and satisfying that there is no reason to ever stop. Unlike other restaurants, where the techniques are often elaborate and unfamiliar, the magic at Sotto happens right in front of you, using ordinary elements and methods. When you taste the results, though, you realize that some mysterious transmutation has taken place. Penne with rapini and sausage comes in a buttery, lightly starchy broth with a kick of spice that you could go on eating forever. From the texture of the chicken liver mousse to the tart cherry sauce on the panna cotta, most of the food has some added element of soulfulness. 118 E. Sixth St., downtown, (513) 977-6886, sottocincinnati.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$$

VIA VITE Cristian Pietoso serves up crowd-pleasing entrées, including the Pietoso family Bolognese, over penne, right on Fountain Square. (Add in a golf-ball-sized veal meatball heavy with lemon zest, and it’s an over-the-top comforting main dish.) The same applies to the risotto, where a

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few small touches add sophistication. Carnaroli rice results in a glossier, starchier dish. A puree of asparagus turns the risotto an eye-popping green, and the poached lobster garnish creates a nice back-and-forth between vegetal and briny flavors. Braised lamb shank over polenta is comforting workhorse, and the flavorful Faroe Island salmon with butternut squash puree, caramelized Brussel sprouts and truffled brown butter balsamic vinaigrette. 520 Vine St., downtown, (513) 721-8483, viaviterestaurant.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC, DS. $$

daughter run the counter with efficient speed, and whether you’re having a crisp Greek salad with house-made dressing, triangles of spanikopita, or simply the best walnut and honey baklava this side of the Atlantic (often made by the Mrs.), they never miss a beat, turning more covers in their tiny deli on one Saturday afternoon than some restaurants do in an entire weekend. 5209 Glenway Ave., Price Hill, (513) 471-2100, sebastiansgyros.com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. Cash. $

SULTAN’S MEDITERRANEAN CUISINE

MEDITERRANEAN CAFÉ MEDITERRANEAN Chef-driven Middle Eastern cuisine leans heavily on Turkish tradition here. The baba ghanoush uses seared eggplant, which adds a pleasant smokiness to the final product. Börek is described as a “Turkish Egg Roll,” wrapping feta and fresh and dried herbs into phyllo dough, and frying it lightly to brittle flakiness. The pastry arrives atop a vivid cherry tomato marmalade, which adds a welcome dimension of barely sweet fruitiness. While there is a smooth, simple hummus on the menu, you should go for the classic sucuklu hummus, which is spiked with sujuk, a common beef sausage popular all over the Middle East. 3520 Erie Ave., East Hyde Park, (513) 8718714. Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner seven days. MCC. $$

FLOYD’S Sure, you can go here for the great baked kibbeh, a blend of delicately spiced ground lamb, pine nuts, and onions, stuffed inside a shell of ground lamb, lamb fat, and bulgur wheat. Or you could visit for the vegetarian moussaka with eggplant, onions, tomatoes, and cilantro. But you’d be missing out on Floyd’s famous tendercrisp spit-roasted chicken and lima beans with chopped parsley, garlic, and olive oil. Not all of the specialties are the real Lebanese deal, but we’ll keep ordering them anyway. 127 Calhoun St., Clifton Heights, (513) 221-2434, floydsofcincy. com. Lunch Tues–Fri, dinner Tues–Sat. MC, V. $

Top 10

PHOENICIAN TAVERNA

No matter how much restraint you go in with, meals at Phoenician Taverna quickly become feasts. There is just too much that’s good, and everything is meant to be shared. With fresh pita bread continuously arriving from the ovens, and a table of quickly multiplying meze (hummus, falafel, muhammara), there is a warmth and depth to the cooking that envelops you. With such traditional cuisine, you may think there isn’t much left to discover beyond simply executed classics prepared according to time-tested methods. But there are always new discoveries as the flavors mingle from plate to plate: the tabbouleh with the hummus, mixed with a touch of harissa, or the smoky baba ghanoush spooned onto falafel. Phoenician Taverna keeps taking these classics a little further. 7944 Mason Montgomery Rd., Mason, (513) 770-0027, phoeniciantaverna. com. Lunch Tues–Fri, dinner Tues–Sun. MCC. $$

SEBASTIAN’S When the wind is just right, you can smell the garlicky meat roasting from a mile away. Watch owner Alex Sebastian tend to the rotating wheels of beef and lamb, and you understand how Greek food has escaped the American tendency to appropriate foreign cuisines. Sebastian’s specializes in gyros, shaved off the stick, wrapped in thick griddle pita with onions and tomatoes, and served with cool tzatziki sauce. Alex’s wife and

The meze, a parade of small plates and appetizers—the refreshing yogurt dish with cucumber, mint, and garlic known as cacik, and its thicker cousin haydari, with chopped walnuts, dill, and garlic—is rounded out with flaky cheese or spinach boureks, falafels, soups, salads, and more, while baked casseroles or stuffed cabbage and eggplant dishes (dubbed “Ottoman specials”) augment the heavy focus on kebabs: chunks of lamb and beef on a vertical spit for the popular Doner kebab (a.k.a. Turkish gyro), peppery ground lamb for the Adana kebab, or cubed and marinated for the Shish kebab. 7305 Tyler’s Corner Dr., West Chester, (513) 847-1535, sultanscincin nati.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$

MEXICAN EL VALLE VERDE Guests with dietary issues, high anxiety, and no Spanish may take a pass, but for hardy souls, this taqueria delivers a memorable evening. Seafood dishes are the star here—ceviche tostadas, crisp corn tortillas piled high with pico de gallo, avocado, and lime-tastic bits of white fish, squid, and crab; the oversized goblet of cocktel campechano, with ample poached shrimp crammed into a Clamato-heavy gazpacho; and simmering sopa de marisco came with langoustines, mussels, crab legs, and an entire fish—enough to feed three. 6717 Vine St., Carthage, (513) 821-5400.

Lunch and dinner seven days. $

HABAÑERO It’s easy to find a cheap burrito place around a college campus, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one as consistently good as Habañero, with its flavors of Latin America and the Caribbean wrapped up in enormous packages. Fried tilapia, apricot-glazed chicken breast, hand-rubbed spiced flank steak, shredded pork tenderloin, or cinnamon-roasted squash are just some of the ingredients for Habañero’s signature burritos. All salsas are house-made, from the smoky tomato chipotle to the sweet-sounding mango jalapeño, which is hot enough to spark spontaneous combustion. 358 Ludlow Ave., Clifton, (513) 961-6800, habanerolatin.com. Lunch and dinner seven days.

MCC, DC, DS. $

NADA The brains behind Boca deliver authentic, contemporary, high-quality Mexican fare downtown.

You’ll find a concise menu, including tacos, salads and sides, large plates, and desserts. Tacos inspired by global cuisine include the Señor Mu Shu (Modelo and ginger braised pork) and fried avocado (chipotle bean purée). The anchoglazed pork shank with chili-roasted carrots comes with a papaya guajillo salad (order it for the table); dreamy mac-and-cheese looks harmless, but there’s just enough of a roasted poblano and jalapeño punch to have you reaching for another icy margarita. 600 Walnut St., downtown, (513) 721-6232, eatdrinknada.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner seven days, brunch Sat & Sun. MCC, DS. $$ ILLUSTR ATIO N BY EMM A THEIS

11430 GONDOLA ST., • SHARONVILLE (513) 206-8945 • JUNK-KING.COM

RECLAIM YOUR SPACE THIS SPRING WITH LOCALLY OWNED JUNK KING. “Our ultimate goal is to repurpose as many items as is viable, to give back to local charities, and keep waste out of the landfill.

We look first to donate and then recycle whatever we can after.”

– JACK BRENDAMOUR, CEO

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TAQUERIA CRUZ The menu at this four-table mom-and-pop welcomes you to “a little piece of Mexico.” The huaraches (spelled guarachis here), are flat troughs of thick, handmade fried masa dough the approximate shape and size of a shoeprint, mounded with beans and slivers of grilled beef or chili-red nubs of sausage, shredded lettuce, a crumble of queso fresco, and drizzle of cultured cream. Should you have an adventurous side, you can have your huarache topped with slippery tongue, goat meat, shredded chicken, or pork. There are stews, carne asada plates, and sopes— saucers of fried masa much like huaraches, only smaller.

518 Pike St., Covington, (859) 431-3859. Lunch and dinner seven days. Cash. $

TAQUERIA MERCADO On a Saturday night, Taqueria Mercado is a lively fiesta, with seemingly half of the local Hispanic community guzzling margaritas and cervezas, or carrying out sacks of burritos and carnitas tacos—pork tenderized by a long simmer, its edges frizzled and crispy. The Mercado’s strip mall interior, splashed with a large, colorful mural, is equally energetic: the bustling semi-open kitchen; a busy counter that handles a constant stream of take-out orders; a clamorous, convivial chatter in Spanish and English. Try camarones a la plancha, 12 chubby grilled shrimp tangled with grilled onions (be sure to specify if you like your onions well done). The starchiness of the rice absorbs the caramelized onion juice, offset by the crunch of lettuce, buttery slices of avocado, and the cool-hot pico de gallo. A shrimp quesadilla paired with one of their cheap and potent margaritas is worth the drive alone.

6507 Dixie Hwy., Fairfield, (513) 942-4943; 100 E. Eighth St., downtown, (513) 381-0678, tmercadocincy.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $

STEAKS CARLO & JOHNNY The stars of the menu are 12 delectable steaks that could sway the vegi-curious to recommit. Not sure which to choose? If you prefer brawny flavor over buttery texture, go for one of the three bone-in rib cuts. Or if it’s that melt-in-your-mouth experience that raises your serotonin levels, C&J features several tenderloin cuts, including the hard to find bone-in filet. There are the usual suspects of raw bar, seafood, pork chops, et al, if you’re interested in non-beef alternatives. 9769 Montgomery Rd., Montgomery, (513) 936-8600, jeffruby.com. Dinner seven days.

MCC. $$$$

JEFF RUBY’S Filled most nights with local scenesters and power brokers (and those who think they are), everything in this urban steakhouse is generous—from the portions to the expert service. White-jacketed waiters with floor-length aprons deliver two-fisted martinis and stacks of king crab legs, or mounds of greens dressed in thin vinaigrettes or thick, creamy emulsions. An occasional salmon or sea bass appears, and there’s a small but decent assortment of land fare. But most customers, even the willowy model types, inhale slabs of beef (dry aged USDA prime) like they’re dining in a crack house for carnivores. The best of these is Jeff Ruby’s Jewel, nearly a pound-and-a-half of bone-in rib eye. This is steak tailor-made for movers and shakers. 700 Walnut St., downtown, (513) 784-1200, jeffruby.com. Dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DC. $$$$

MORTON’S THE STEAKHOUSE No one has replicated the concept of an expensive boys’ club better than Morton’s. Amid the dark polished woods and white linen, the Riedel stemware and stupendous flower arrangements, assorted suits grapple with double

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cut filet mignons, 24 ounces of porterhouse, pink shiny slabs of prime rib, overflowing plates of salty Lyonnaise potatoes, or mammoth iceberg wedges frosted with thick blue cheese dressing. Jumbo is Morton’s decree: Oversized martini and wine glasses, ethereal towering lemon soufflés, roomy chairs, and tables large enough for a plate and a laptop. Even steaks billed as “slightly smaller” weigh in at 8 to 10 ounces. 441 Vine St., downtown, (513) 621-3111, mortons.com. Dinner seven days. MCC. $$$

TONY’S He is a captivating presence, Tony Ricci. Best known for his 30 years in fine dining—including the Jeff Ruby empire while managing the venerable Precinct—Ricci has built a life in the hospitality industry. Much of Tony’s menu is right out of a steakhouse playbook: jumbo shrimp and king crab legs from the raw bar; Caprese, Greek, and Caesar salads; sides of creamed spinach, mac-and-cheese, asparagus, and sautéed mushrooms; toppings of roasted garlic or Gorgonzola butters to accompany your center cut of filet mignon. There are boutique touches, though, that make it stand out—a garlic herb aioli with the calamari, steak tartare torch-kissed and topped with a poached egg, a superb rack of lamb rubbed with aromatic sumac and served with mint pesto. 12110 Montgomery Rd., Symmes Township, (513) 677-8669, tonysofcincinnati.com. Dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $$$$

THAI GREEN PAPAYA Inside this simple dining room, replete with soothing browns and greens and handsome, dark wood furniture, it takes time to sort through the many curries and chef’s specialties, not to mention the wide variety of sushi on the something-for-everyone menu. Have the staff—friendly, attentive, and knowledgeable—help you. When the food arrives, you’ll need only a deep inhale to know you made the right choice. The Green Papaya sushi rolls are as delicious as they look, with a manic swirl of spicy mayo and bits of crabstick and crispy tempura batter scattered atop the spicy tuna, mango, cream cheese, and shrimp tempura sushi—all rolled in a vivid green soybean wrap. 2942 Wasson Rd., Oakley, (513) 731-0107, greenpapayacincinnati. com. Lunch Mon–Sat, dinner seven days. MCC. $$

SUKHOTHAI Nestled in the nearly hidden Market Place Lane, this tiny restaurant isn’t exactly slick. A chalkboard lists the day’s specials, usually spicy dishes worthy of an adventurous diner. But if it’s noodle dishes and curries you’re after, Sukhothai’s pad kee mao—wide rice noodles stir-fried with basil—is the best around. Served slightly charred, the fresh and dried chilies provide enough heat to momentarily suspend your breath. Pad Thai has the right amount of crunch from peanuts, slivers of green onion, and mung sprouts to contrast with the slippery glass noodles, and a few squeezes of fresh lime juice give it a splendid tartness. The crispy tamarind duck is one of the best house specials, the meat almost spreadably soft under the papery skin and perfectly complemented by the sweet-tart bite of tamarind. 8102 Market Place Lane, Montgomery, (513) 794-0057, sukhothaicincy.com. Lunch Mon–Fri, dinner Mon–Sat. DS, MC, V. $

THAI NAMTIP Classic Thai comfort food on the west side from chef/ owner Tussanee Leach, who grew up with galangal on her tongue and sriracha sauce in her veins. Her curries reign: pale yellow sweetened with coconut milk and poured over tender chicken breast and chunks of boiled pineapple; red curry the color of new brick, tasting of earth at first bite, then the sharply verdant Thai basil leaves, followed by a distant heat. Tom Kha Gai soup defines the complex interplay of flavors in Thai food: astringent lemongrass gives way to pepper, then Makrut lime, shot through with the gingery, herbaceous galangal, all yielding to the taunting sweetness of coconut. Even the simple skewers of chicken satay with Thai peanut sauce are rough and honest, dulcified by honey and dirtied up by a smoky grill. 5461 North

Bend Rd., Monfort Heights, (513) 481-3360, thainamtip.com.

Lunch and dinner seven days. MC, V. $

WILD GINGER Wild Ginger Asian Bistro’s ability to satisfy a deep desire for Vietnamese and Thai fusion cuisine is evidenced by their signature Hee Ma roll—a fortress of seaweedwrapped rolls filled with shrimp tempura, asparagus, avocado, and topped with red tuna, pulled crab stick, tempura flakes, a bit of masago, scallions, and of course, spicy mayo. It’s tasty, even though the sweet fried floodwall of tempura and spicy mayo overpowered the tuna completely. The spicy pad char entrée was a solid seven out of 10: broccoli, carrots, cabbage, succulent red bell peppers, green beans, and beef, accented with basil and lime leaves in a peppercorn-and-chili brown sauce.

3655 Edwards Rd., Hyde Park, (513) 533-9500, wildginger cincy.com. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sun. MCC, DS. $$

VI ETNAM E S E PHO LANG THANG Owners Duy and Bao Nguyen and David Le have created a greatest hits playlist of Vietnamese cuisine: elegant, brothy pho made from poultry, beef, or vegan stocks poured over rice noodles and adrift with slices of onions, meats, or vegetables (the vegan pho chay is by far the most flavorful); fresh julienned vegetables, crunchy sprouts, and herbs served over vermicelli rice noodles (again, the vegan version, bun chay, is the standout); and bánh mì. Be sure to end with a cup of Vietnamese coffee, a devilish jolt of dark roast and sweetened condensed milk that should make canned energy drinks obsolete. 1828 Race St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 376-9177, pholangthang.com.

Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS, DC. $

QUAN HAPA The Nguyen brothers, Duy and Bao, along with partner David Le, have followed up on Pho Lang Thang’s success at Findlay Market by bursting onto the OTR scene with some of the boldest flavors in the city. A tuna ceviche makes use of the fiery sweetness of Malaysian sambal oelek and a banh mi steakburger gains crunch from pickled daikon and a side of Indonesian shrimp chips. Or try the okonomiyaki, a traditional Japanese pancake topped with a choice of bacon, prawns, or vegetables. The Vietnamese coffee, a complex, chicory-forward blend, is an ideal way to end the meal. 1331 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, (513) 421-7826, quanhapa.com. Lunch and dinner seven days. MCC, DS. $

SONG LONG The menu does have a substantial Chinese section, but make no mistake, the reason there’s a line at the door on weekend nights is the fine Vietnamese specialties cooked and served by the Le family. Begin with the goi cuon, the cold rolls of moistened rice paper wrapped around vermicelli noodles, julienned cucumbers, lettuce, cilantro, and mung bean sprouts. Or try the banh xeo, a plattersized pan-fried rice crepe folded over substantial nuggets of chicken and shrimp, mushrooms, and wilted mung sprouts. The phos, meal-sized soups eaten for breakfast, are good, but the pho dac biet is Song Long’s best. Crisptender vegetables, slices of beef, herbs, and scallions glide through the noodle-streaked broth. When you’re ordering your entrée, be careful: Mr. Le has a much heavier chili hand than Mrs. Le. Ask who is cooking and order accordingly if you don’t want your eyes to roll to the back of your head. 1737 Section Rd., Roselawn, (513) 351-7631, songlong.net. Lunch and dinner Mon–Sat. MCC, DC, DS. $ CINCINNATI MAGAZINE, (ISSN 0746-8 210), July 2020, Volume 53, Number 10.

Published monthly ($14.95 for 12 issues annually) at Carew Tower, 441 Vine St., Suite 200, Cincinnati, OH 45202-2039. (513) 421-4300. Copyright © 2020 by Cincinnati Magazine LLC, a subsidiary of Hour Media Group, 5750 New King Dr, Ste 100, Troy, MI 48098. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or reprinted without permission. Unsolicited manuscripts, photographs and artwork should be accompanied by SASE for return. The magazine cannot be held responsible for loss. For subscription orders, address changes or renewals, write to CINCINNATI MAGAZINE, 1965 E. Avis Dr., Madison Heights, MI 48071, or call 1-866-660-6247. Periodicals postage paid at Cincinnati, Ohio, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Please send forms 3579 to CINCINNATI MAGAZINE, 1965 E. Avis Dr., Madison Heights, MI 48071. If the Postal Service alerts us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year.

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Outdoor Gallery NOW YOU CAN WORK OUT and appreciate art simultaneously, thanks to the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Art Climb. They call it a “recreational art interaction.” We call it a “workout worth sweating for.” Starting from the sidewalk at the intersection of Gilbert Avenue and Eden Park Drive, several flights of steps and landings zigzag up nine stories of land, or about 450 feet, to the museum’s front parking lot. While the steps themselves are impressive by design (complete with lighting and security cameras!), the Art Climb is surrounded by immaculate landscaping, and, by the end of the year, actual works of art will be installed throughout. The first installation will feature three pieces from the Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park collection. It’s all a part of the museum’s multistep plan to give its grounds a facelift, grow its collection, and engage with surrounding neighborhoods. Last fall, the museum unveiled a new ADA-compliant front entrance, making it easier for visitors using wheelchairs, walkers, and strollers. Up next, the museum plans to upgrade its parking options and add more outdoor trails and art spaces. Until then, we suggest taking advantage of the city’s newest set of scenic steps. — K A T I E C O B U R N 1 1 2 C I N C I N N AT I M A G A Z I N E . C O M J U LY 2 0 2 0

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