CityBeat | July 21-Aug. 3, 2021

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Cincinnati’s deep skate community breeds inspiration, entrepreneurship and a few thrown elbows by katrina eresman

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NEWS

Big cats at the Cincinnati Zoo soon will get a special COVID-19 vaccine.

P H OTO : L I SA H U B BA R D

Cincinnati Zoo Animals to Get Special COVID19 Vaccine An experimental, animals-only SARS-COV-2 vaccine is on the way to zoos around the country, including Cincinnati’s

BY M A I JA Z U M M O

A

merica fell short of U.S. President Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating 70% of its human population

against COVID-19 by July 4, but the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is getting ready to start a vaccination

program of its own — only this time, it’s for animals.

International animal health company Zoetis is donating more than 11,000 doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to nearly 70 zoos across America, and the Cincinnati Zoo is one of them, says the zoo’s director of animal health, Dr. Mark Campbell.

The special two-dose SARS-COV-2 vaccine, which has been approved for experimental use by the United States Department of Agriculture, will arrive at the Cincinnati Zoo later this summer. The first zoo residents to receive the vaccine will be those who have been found to be more susceptible to the virus, including big cats, gorillas and other mammals who have close

interactions with humans, according to the zoo.

The Oakland Zoo began vaccinating its high-risk animals — tigers, black bears, grizzly bears, mountain lions and ferrets — with the Zoetis vaccine on June 30 and all are “doing great post-vaccine,” Erin Harrison, a spokeswoman for the zoo, told CNN. The Zoetis coronavirus vaccine is specifically made for animals, not for humans.

“When the first dog was infected with COVID-19 in Hong Kong last year, we immediately began to work on a vaccine that could be used in domestic animals, and in eight months we completed our initial safety studies,” says CONTINUES ON PAGE 08

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Mahesh Kumar, senior vice president of Global Biologics at Zoetis. “While thankfully a COVID-19 vaccine is not needed in pets or livestock at this time, we are proud that our work can help zoo animals at risk of COVID-19.”

To prepare for the vaccine, Cincinnati Zoo care teams have been working with the animals to train them to voluntarily receive the shot.

“We’ve already started training some animals, such as gorillas, for voluntary injection training,” says David Orban, Cincinnati Zoo’s director of animal sciences. “This allows those animals to voluntarily participate in their own preventative health care and eliminates the risks associated with anesthesia.”

They use operant conditioning training — in this case, the animals do something the trainers need them to do, like receive a shot, and they get positive reinforcement.

“A big part of that training is to condition those animals to voluntarily accept a hand injection,” Campbell says. “And we use that frequently to administer normal vaccines that we have as part of the preventative medicine program we have here at the zoo.”

For example, Fiona the hippo has been trained for voluntary blood draws and the zoo’s giraffes have been trained to present their hooves for foot care.

“I think the biggest difference — and the same difference with people — is that this is a two-dose vaccination,” Campbell says. ‘It’s always much harder to get people to comply with the second

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dose of the vaccine, and it’s going to be equally as complicated for our animals to accept that vaccine.”

The order in which the animals will receive the vaccine has yet to be determined, and the zoo says it depends “on the status of animals’ injection training” when the doses arrive. And just like the human COVID vaccine, the Zoetis vaccine needs to be carefully stored and used within a certain expiration period.

“Our animal health team will have a carefully planned strategy mapped out once we get started,” Orban says.

“They have been in close contact with Zoetis and other zoos that have administered shots to their animals.”

The Cincinnati Zoo An orangutan trains for its upcoming COVID-19 injection at the Cincinnati Zoo. stepped up COVID P H O T O : C I N C I N N AT I Z O O V I D E O S T I L L precautions for its animals in April 2020 after a 4-year-old and the USDA said that the virus’ leap have recovered, but in some cases, like female Malayan tiger at the Bronx Zoo from zookeeper to big cat was the “first on mink farms, thousands of animals named Nadia tested positive for the case of its kind.” were killed to prevent the risk of a virus. Nadia’s sister, two Amur tigers At that time, the Cincinnati Zoo said COVID variant being transmitted to and three African lions at the zoo it was “proactively stepping up distanchumans. also developed symptoms of respiraing and safety measures in animal areas To help continue to keep its animals tory illness (they were not tested for and throughout the zoo.” safe while they await vaccination, the COVID because the zoo did not want Companion animals such as dogs Cincinnati Zoo is still requiring guests to risk putting them all under general and cats have contracted the virus, as to wear masks in places where there anesthesia). have gorillas, mink and other big cats, is close contact between humans and The Bronx Zoo said the animals were says the Centers for Disease Control animals, like at giraffe feedings or while infected by an asymptomatic caretaker, and Prevention (CDC). Many animals visiting the goats in the barnyard.

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CITY DESK

Cincinnati City Council Member Liz Keating’s Proposed Charter Amendment: Resign Before Running for Other Public Offices

BY A L L I S O N BA B K A

A Cincinnati City Council member says she wants to ensure that elected officials keep their attention on local needs while in office.

On July 13, interim council member Liz Keating stood in front of City Hall to announce her “Resign to Run” charter amendment. According to the proposal, Cincinnati’s mayor and council members would need to resign before running for another salaried, elected office.

Keating said that too many Cincinnati officials have viewed their local positions as a pit stop rather than an end point.

“For too long, City Hall has been a stepping stone to higher offices, to more

Feds Charge 16 People with Firearm Crimes as Cincinnati Grapples with Gun Violence

BY A L L I S O N BA B K A Vipal Patel, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio, has a message for people who own and use illegal guns: The feds are coming for you.

During a briefing July 8, Patel announced that 16 people living in Cincinnati have been arrested and charged with federal gun crimes. Of those, 15 had been previously convicted of felonies. All arrestees are ages 22 to 48 years old.

People who have been convicted of felonies are not permitted to have firearms, the law states. Those recently arrested are charged with illegal possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and could see 10 years in federal prison.

“We are committed to getting guns out of the hands of people who have already been convicted of violent crimes and are prohibited under federal law from owning, possessing or controlling firearms,” Patel said.

Some of those arrested also face federal

Cincinnati Rent Keeps Rising

BY A L L I S O N BA B K A The coronavirus pandemic just keeps on giving.

Median rental prices in Cincinnati continue to increase, with big year-over-year raises occurring in June, a new report from Realtor.com says. This comes after additional increases in May, which gave Cincinnati one of the highest rent escalations in the nation at the time.

In its July 15 report, Realtor.com notes that the Greater Cincinnati rental market

power, to greater glory,” Keating said.

“But Cincinnati isn’t a stepping stone. It’s a $1.4 billion enterprise. It’s a community with over 300,000 people.”

Keating said that the proposal would help curb the corruption that may occur as officials try to climb the political ladder and focus less upon their current duties.

“Once a council member or mayor files the documentation to begin fundraising for another office outside of the city, they are no longer eligible to serve for the city,” Keating said. “It results in an automatic, irrevocable resignation from office.”

“Resign to Run” would require resignation only if the campaign contribution

charges of trafficking fentanyl, heroin and cocaine, which could be worth up to 20 years in federal prison.

Cincinnati Police Chief Eliot Isaac, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Special Agent in Charge Alicia Jones joined Patel in the briefing, and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office and the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office have been working together, as well. This batch of arrests is the third wave of an ongoing collaboration to reduce Cincinnati’s gun violence.

“Since last September, more than 50 people now have found out the hard way that once you’ve been convicted of a felony or of certain misdemeanors and absent restoration of gun rights by the state, you are not allowed to own, possess, have, control a firearm of any type,” Patel said. “And not just firearms — body armor and even a bullet.”

limits for the new office are higher than the city’s.

“What we want to do is do what’s right for Cincinnati and the people of Cincinnati, and while you’re here serving in City Hall, you should be focused on City Hall,” she added.

Cincinnati City Council is on recess for the summer, and the council would not consider Keating’s proposal until its return. Cincinnati residents could vote on the proposal in November if city council passes it or if Keating collects enough valid local signatures to do so.

Cincinnati Councilwoman Liz Keating P H O T O : C I N C I N N AT I C I T Y C O U N C I L W E B S I T E

The latest round of federal arrests comes after a sustained spate of shootings and violence in Cincinnati, including a deadly July 4 shooting in Smale Riverfront Park that left the two teenaged shooters dead and several bystanders injured. As of press time, police had not yet recovered the firearms the teens had used.

In August, the Cincinnati Police Department plans to open a gun crime intelligence center to track firearms used in crimes, from their manufacturing date to their first sale to their different owners.

Isaac said the effort will be a collaboration with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, along with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s office, the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office, parole and probation officers and others.

“Why? Because where appropriate, the statutory penalties in federal court and the sentencing guidelines often are more severe than in state court,” Patel explained.

“The (guns) come from a multitude of places. They’re stolen from cars, they’re stolen from homes and businesses.

People purchase them legally, then pass them on to others who are prohibited persons,” Isaac said. “I’m certainly not an anti-gun person — obviously I’m a police officer, I’m a military veteran — but I also know that our country has produced more firearms and sold more firearms (in 2020) than any year on record.”

After previous federal arrests, local gun violence dropped significantly before climbing again, Patel said.

“More guns are being produced, more guns are being sold. That simply means that there are more guns available, and I

is No. 6 in the nation for year-over-year increases, up three spots from May. The overall median rent here is $1,200 per month, a 17.1% increase over June 2020 and a 4.4% increase since May.

the median rent increased over the last year in 44 of the 50 largest metro areas.

The national median currently sits at $1,575 per month, a 8.1% increase since June 2020. Nationally, the price of a two-bedroom apartment rose 10.2% over last year.

Patel said that the goal is to try felons who possess illegal firearms in federal court.

As they did in May, local rents increased for studios, one-bedroom apartments and two-bedroom apartments in June.

Last month, people in Greater Cincinnati paid $1,025 per month for a studio, $1,155 for one bedroom and $1,275 for two bedrooms. That equates to studios going up by 2.5% over the last year, single bedrooms by 12.7%, and doubles by a whopping 21.4%.

Realtor.com’s report says that in June,

In May, Realtor.com hypothesized that as the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs, both the rental and single-family housing markets are finding their footing and making up for lost time. But the situation likely will continue, harming lower-income residents the most.

“The surge we’re seeing in rental prices is likely to exacerbate the K-shaped,

think that is a big part of what we’re seeing,” the chief added.

During a briefing earlier in July, Cranley said that Cincinnati is not alone in experiencing an uptick in gun violence, especially during the coronavirus pandemic. Throughout Ohio, gun sales had increased in 2020, largely as opposition to COVID-19 health regulations. And Ohio is one of the worst states in the nation for gun safety laws, the Giffords Law Center reported earlier this year.

The Cincinnati Enquirer recently reported that gun violence during 2020 spiked in Cincinnati, but for the first half of 2021, the number of homicides was lower than in previous years.

Since July 9, the Cincinnati Police Department has added 20-25 mobile officers to weekend patrols throughout the summer to help quell the violence.

The officers are working volunteer overtime beyond their regular shifts, Emily Szink, the Cincinnati Police Department’s public information officer, told CityBeat. The summer street additions are highly mobile so they can watch populous areas and immediately respond to incidents.

This mobile squad is paid through the department’s regular overtime budget, and these additional officers do not reduce the number of staff already assigned to districts, Szink said.

or uneven, nature of the pandemic recovery in the U.S. Rents are rising at a faster pace than income, which is adding to the challenges faced by lower-income Americans as they struggle to recover from job losses and other hardships brought about by COVID,” said Realtor. com Chief Economist Danielle Hale.

“Looking forward, rents aren’t expected to slow unless we see a fundamental shift in the number of homes for sale and for rent.”

For its report, Realtor.com looked at rental data for apartment communities as well as private rentals in the country’s 50 largest metropolitan regions.

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CINCINNATI’S FAVORITE BURGER SINCE 1947

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Cincinnati’s deep skate community breeds inspiration, entrepreneurship and a few thrown elbows by katrina eresman

21+ SK ATE NIGHT AT THE PLACE CINCY // PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

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THE PLACE // PHOTO: BOLLINGER | 12 C I CINCY T Y B E AT. C O M HAILEY J U LY 2 0 2 1

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ver since a handful of videos went viral on social media, roller skating seems to be everywhere.

It’s hard to say exactly which post started it. There’s the TikTok of actress Ana Coto cruising on skates to music by J.Lo from last April, which had more than 14 million views by summer.

Then there are skaters like Berlin-based Oumi Janta, who posts her smooth jam-skating moves and whose Instagram account grew from around 60,000 followers to 951,000 followers in the last year.

And now roller skating is reaching audiences of every persuasion, appearing in ads, on the streets and trails, at the skate parks and stitched onto fast-fashion pieces.

But long before the social media algorithm started highlighting skate videos, Cincinnati has been home to thousands of passionate skaters who have been keeping the community of eight wheels alive, and — in the Black community — fighting for their right to enjoy it.

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THE PLACE CINCY // PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

THE PLACE CINCY // PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

On Thursday nights around 9 p.m., the parking lot at The Place Cincy in Colerain Township starts to fill up as skaters begin arriving for the skate night for people ages 30 and up — one of just two adult-only skate nights hosted at the roller rink (those 21 and older arrive on Wednesdays). Inside, a DJ spins old-school R&B, and a predominantly Black community of devoted skaters lace up their boots for a night on the floor.

The Place is owned by Brian Liette, whose parents bought the rink when he was 17 years old.

“My grandparents had a roller rink in Salina, Ohio — just a little farm town roller rink, and they bought that in 1950,” Liette says. “Mom and dad bought this in ’83. I literally grew up in a roller rink.”

restrictions on indoor events, he saw the need for a second adult skate night. Now, dozens of skaters come each week to skate at the only public rink within the Cincinnati city limits.

It’s normal, at least in the Cincinnati region, for rinks to run in the family. The Harper family opened its first rink — The Ritz in downtown Cincinnati — in 1965. Since then, three generations of Harpers have owned and operated multiple rinks around town. Three of them — Castle Skateland, Florence Fundome and Beechmont Rollarena — are still going strong.

“I’ve known a lot of these guys for years,” Liette says of his regular skaters. “A lot of the people on Thursday night I’ve known them, seriously, 20 years.”

Liette already had been hosting regular adult nights at The Place for the 21-and-up crowd, but when the pandemic forced capacity

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One of the regular Thursday night skaters is a woman named Brittney Smith, who studies history in the doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati and is working toward opening what will be Cincinnati’s first Black, woman-owned skating rink.

“I love history, and I love what skating rinks have meant to the Black community,” Smith

says. “Not just because Black joy and Black recreation matter, but because of what else it offers in terms of your health and your wellness.”

After studying, working, traveling abroad and devoting years to raising a family, Smith found an opportunity for self-care in skating.

“When I found skating, I just learned to breathe again,” Smith says. “I hadn’t breathed for a long time. I learned to sleep again.”

Smith recently finished the MORTAR program, a 15-week course that helps aspiring entrepreneurs prepare to launch their businesses, and is working carefully to develop the right strategy for her roller rink. When she opens her rink, she wants it to be in the heart of the city, and she wants it to tell a story.

“My rink is about history, too,” Smith says. “I’m thinking about a mural that helps explain...the evolution of skating and how it came to be that (the Black community) could even step foot in here.”

Smith plans for her rink to show the significance of skating rinks in the Civil Rights movement — one of the first sit-ins took place at White City Roller Rink in Chicago — and in other areas of Black history, such as Hip Hop culture. She also wants to emphasize how skating brings people together.

just decades ago. When recreational spaces were still segregated, white-only rinks forced Black people to find their own spaces. They built rinks in basements of churches or found spaces outside because they were denied the capital needed to start their own rink.

“You had this multi-purpose use concept,” Smith says. “We can’t open (a rink) because we can’t get to the banks, we can’t get access to the funds.”

A number of makeshift rinks like these remain around Cincinnati, each one a relic of segregation and a reminder of how important roller skating has been for the Black community throughout the years.

Even today, some rinks in America enforce rules that are born out of racism, like bans against fiberglass wheels or slick micro wheels that many Black skaters use in a certain style of skating. Although most local rinks say they don’t have rules like those, Smith still looks forward to opening her own space.

“What about inclusivity?” Smith asks. “What about learning to live and work together in harmony and appreciate everything and everybody? Thank god for people like Linda Rall (of Middletown Skateway) and Mike (Penrod) at Orbit (Fun Center in Huber Heights) and Brian (Liette) at The Place who understand.”

“The rink is a community center, you know. It’s for everybody, and it’s the one place where we can all come together on a single issue.

It’s not Congress,” Smith says with a laugh.

“We can all work together, and we can all just skate, and nothing else matters. We need those spaces.”

THE PLACE CINCY // PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

THE PLACE CINCY // PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

Although Smith has the option to lace up her skates and hit the rink floor with friends every week at The Place Cincy, this simple pleasure was unavailable to the Black community

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TONY KISSING’S FIRST TEAM // PHOTO: PROVIDED BY K ATHY KISSING

Kathy Kissing is another frequent attendee of the Thursday night skates at The Place. She is the daughter of Tony Kissing, a renowned roller speed skating coach who helped popularize the sport in Cincinnati. Two years ago, Tony Kissing was inducted into the Roller Skating Hall of Fame in Lincoln, Nebraska, for his time as a coach, during which he helped train almost 40 national champions.

“Speed skating, it was big,” Kathy Kissing says. “Everybody had a team.”

Kissing can’t remember a time when her dad wasn’t working with his speed skating teams.

While her dad was coaching, her mom was working at the rink.

“I probably crawled, and then had skates on when I was crawling, and learned how to walk and skate at the same time,” Kissing says, laughing.

When Kissing started competing at age 7, speed skating happened on quad skates — boots that have two wheels in the front and two in the back. Today, speed skaters use inline skates, where four wheels are lined up single file under each shoe.

“In the ’70s, they started turning it over to plastic wheels (instead of wood), which sort of slowed it down in some ways,” Kissing says.

“As the equipment sort of evolved, it became more of an inline sport.”

Kissing wasn’t as fond of speed skating on inlines, and at age 14, she gave it up. She graduated high school, went to college in New York and started a family. Years later, she

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received a call from her dad about a new local sports team that practiced on quad skates.

“They had a call out to start roller derby, and my dad called me and told me about it,” Kissing says. “I said, ‘Well dad, I'm 41. I don’t really know if I need to get involved,’ and he said, ‘You’re right, Kathy. You can’t do it,’ and he hung up on me. So of course I started up at the first practice.”

Kissing was one of the first skaters on the Cincinnati Rollergirls (CRG) team, along with Lauren Bishop, the team’s current owner. The CRG became the area’s first roller derby team in 2005. In 2011, Kissing and Bishop started the Cincinnati Junior Rollergirls for skaters ages 8-17.

Unlike Kissing, Bishop didn’t have any family to recruit her for roller skating sports. She caught wind of the budding team when another derby member read a post Bishop wrote about the AMC reality series Rollergirls for her pop culture blog with The Cincinnati Enquirer. The team invited Bishop to join, and she went for it.

“It really wasn’t until I became involved with roller derby that I felt like I found my people,” Bishop says. “Cincinnati feels like home now because of this thing I became involved in.”

In the early days, another one of Tony Kissing’s speed skaters came on to help coach the young roller derby team. Marcia Yager had started speed skating under his guidance as an early teen after losing her father.

She earned 15 national titles, skated downhill inline at the X-Games, and ultimately built a

“Honestly, I just really taught those girls how to skate,” Yager says. “It was really great to be able to help those girls find something new and different — a community they could belong to.”

Since its inception, a lot has changed for CRG. In the beginning, the league created home teams that played against one another in a casual setting. It was more for fun and less of a serious athletic pursuit. Bishop describes it as having a “Punk Rock, kind of DIY aesthetic” and recalls recruiting people in bars that looked the part, often approaching people that were tough, rockabilly and tattooed.

“They did a lot of partying and ate a lot of donuts and came to practice late,” Yager says. “If they wanted to get better, that just wasn’t going to work.”

In 2008, CRG had its first season as a member of the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association, the international governing body for flat track roller derby.

Both the A-team — known as the Black Sheep — and the B-team — the Violent Lambs — participate in inter-league bouts.

But back in 2006, some early members of CRG left to start their own league, Black-n-Bluegrass Roller Girls, in Northern Kentucky. Although the two leagues didn’t quite get along at first, coaches, players and priorities have

CINCINNATI ROLLERGIRLS // PHOTO: JEFFREY SEVIER

THE PLACE CINCY CIRCA 1973 // PHOTO: PROVIDED BY K ATHY KISSING

life prioritizing fitness and nutrition. That made Yager an obvious choice for building a strong team of skaters for CRG.

shifted over the years. The leagues began playing against one another once a year in a tradition dubbed the “Crosstown Knockdown.” This game continues to bring awareness to the two different local leagues and occurs in addition to their inter-league seasons.

“It just sort of evolved over the years into the much more competitive sport it is today,” Bishop says. “And then, you know, more actual athletes started joining.”

For its 2020 season — canceled due to the pandemic — CRG was set to play at Xavier’s Cintas Center after three seasons at Schmidt Memorial Fieldhouse, replacing the team’s previous home at the now-defunct Cincinnati Gardens. The team recently returned to practice for the first time since last year but hasn’t yet scheduled a return season. When it finally gets around to playing at Cintas Center, Bishop hopes that the team will inspire more sports fans to start following CRG “Cincinnati’s a sports town, obviously,” Bishop says. “We wanted to appeal to other sports fans but at the same time not be exactly like every other sport.

We wanted to, like, keep the (derby) names. We wanted to keep some of the things that made derby different and special, while at the same time be taken seriously as a sport.”

Roller derby isn’t the only athletic game played on eight wheels in this sportenthused region. In Evendale, Sports Plus organizes and hosts inline hockey leagues throughout the week for all ages and skill levels. Across the river, the Covington Street Hockey League plays at the rink in Barb Cook Park.

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THE PLACE CINCY // PHOTO: HAILEY BOLLINGER

INDOOR RINKS Beechmont Rollarena 3988 Commercial Blvd., Beechmont, beechmontrollarena.com Castle Skateland 980 Loveland Madeira Road, Loveland, castleskateland.com Florence Fundome 7864 Commerce Drive, Florence, florencefundome.com Middletown Skateway 2514 N. Verity Parkway, Middletown, skateway.com Orbit Fun Center 5001 Nebraska Ave., Huber Heights, orbitfuncenter.com The Place Cincy 3211 Lina Place, White Oak, theplacecincy.com At Castle Skateland in Loveland, skaters like David “Smitty” Smith are developing their physical skills in jam skating, a style that combines dance, gymnastics and lots of impressive footwork. Smitty grew up skating at Castle Skateland and has spent much of his life with eight wheels under his feet. He says he’s traveled for performances and competitions, plus he’s taught skaters worldwide over Zoom.

“I have some kids that I’ve been skating with since they were 5 or 6 years old,” Smitty says.

“Now they’re going into college, and they are sponsored by national companies and travel with me to events, and they teach their own classes.”

Dylan Morton is another sensationally talented skater that calls Castle Skateland his home rink.

Morton started skating when he was 10 and has skated with Smitty since the beginning.

“Growing up with a broken household, and having to move so many times as a young kid, I turned to skating to comfort,” Morton says. “(It) led me in a direction that I didn’t know was possible.”

Today, Morton is sponsored by Riedell, one of the leading manufacturers of roller skates. He does his own choreography and shares a lot of his moves on his Instagram account (@dylan__morton). Both Morton and Smitty (@smittyonskates) have strong followings on social media, the very platforms that have caused the latest craze in quad skating.

“I’ve been fighting for roller skating for pretty much my entire life,” Smitty says. “I knew skating was going to have its time around. I had no idea that a few girls on TikTok was what was going to make it happen.”

Although a single social media post like Coto’s viral TikTok leaves so much of the story of skating untold, the platform works well to bring awareness to community and history. Both things are a priority for Gabrielle Larkin, who started Cincinnati Skate Collective (CSC) last year. Larkin has skated with CRG since 2018.

“I noticed at the time that there were a lot of different people skating in different ways, but

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there was nothing tying them together,” Larkin says. “It kind of seemed like a lot of people were trying to find a community but there wasn’t any representation.”

CSC holds weekly meetups for quad skaters and inline skaters of all backgrounds at a range of locations, from skate parks to outdoor rinks to trails. Larkin shares events on social media and uses the platforms to help teach skaters about the history of skate culture.

“Trying to unite all sides of the skating world with an underlying respect and honor for the history, I think, is super important,” Larkin says.

CSC also has a Facebook group, where more than 600 skaters from the Cincinnati region share tips, videos and invitations to skate. The group is predominately white, but Larkin is working on making meetups more welcoming and accessible to skaters of all backgrounds and styles.

Her current mission is to revitalize the outdoor rink at Sawyer Point. This would include resurfacing the space to be smoother and more skateable for those who use smaller and harder wheels, which are common in the Black skate community.

“That kind of surface is more accessible and more skateable for people who are skating on those kinds of wheels,” Larkin says. “That‘s another reason why I really want that space to be resurfaced. I’ve been talking to a lot of Black skaters trying to figure out how we can kind of bridge that gap.”

In the last year and a half, roller skating has entered the collective conscience through social media, but Cincinnatians found themselves on eight wheels long before that. Now it’s about continuing to build safe, welcoming spaces for any and all who want to experience the joy of skating.

“It is a church, it is a movement,” Smith says. “It is about people, it is about love and unity. Especially in this climate we’re in now, politically, humanity just needs a space to breathe. The planet just needs a break. We can get it in the skating rink.”

OUTDOOR RINKS Riverfront Outdoor Rink 705 E. Pete Rose Way, Sawyer Point Park, Downtown, cincinnatiparks.com Warsaw Federal Skate Park 640 Evans St., Evans Recreation Area, Lower Price Hill

MEETUP GROUPS Cincinnati Skate Collective Follow @cincinnatiskatecollective on Instagram and Facebook for weekly meetups CIB Cincinnati Follow @CIBcincinnati for regular skate park meetups Girls & Queers Skate Takeover @sk8takeover

HOCKEY SportsPlus Inline Hockey 10765 Reading Road, Evendale, inline.me Covington Street Hockey covingtonstreethockeyleague.com, @cshlbubs

ROLLER DERBY Cincinnati Rollergirls cincinnatirollergirls.com Black-n-Bluegrass Roller Girls black-n-bluegrass.com

TREASURES FROM THE TAFT Now on View Assembled nearly 100 years ago, does the Taft’s collection hold relevance today?

Join us as we look at our city’s celebrated art collection through a 21st-century lens.

taftmuseum.org | #TaftHouse200

EXHIBITION SPONSOR

FOUNDATION SUPPORT PROVIDED BY

SEASON FUNDERS

OPER ATING SUPPORT

The H.B., E.W. and F.R. Luther Charitable Foundation, Fifth Third Bank and Narley L. Haley, Co-Trustees

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Paintings, Politics and the Monuments Men July 9–October 3, 2021 | Ticketed. Free for members.

This exhibition was organized with the generous support of the Harold C. Schott Foundation

Presented by:

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Additional support: Generously supported by: August A. Rendigs, Jr. Foundation, Charles Scott Riley III Foundation, Lee Carter Family Fund, Marnick Foundation, Jack and Joyce Steinman, The Wieler Family Foundation Crowds attending the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition Paintings from the Berlin Museums, March 17–April 25, 1948, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Gallery Archives

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ARTS & CULTURE

A walker passes near the Duke Energy complex’s “Electric Avenue” mural along Wasson Way P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY W A D E J O H N STO N

The Queen City Awaits Its CROWN Cincinnati’s 34-mile urban trail loop is one step closer to completion. All it needs is $2 million — and you can help by drinking local beer.

BY K AT I E G R I F F IT H

T

he Cincinnati Riding or Walking Network (CROWN) surpassed a major milestone in June when it secured $6 million of an $8 million goal to complete segments of a 34-mile mixed-use walking/biking path.

Led by Tri-State Trails (an initiative

of regional sustainability alliance Green Umbrella), Wasson Way, Ohio River Way and a public-private partnership, CROWN aims to connect over 100 miles of pre-existing and to-be-constructed trail systems while boosting economic development, improving transportation

options, stimulating businesses and promoting healthy activities.

CROWN launched in August 2020 and has broken a lot of ground since.

As it stands, 17 of the 34 miles are complete, five additional miles are completely funded and 12 miles await funding, says Tri-State Trails Director Wade Johnston. A number of public and private partnerships have come together to support CROWN, most notably United Dairy Farmers and Kroger Health (each contributing $1 million) and a capital campaign cabinet co-chaired by Wym and Jan Portman.

“We’ve been interested for decades in connecting people to the outdoors,” says Jan Portman. “Not only for physical, but mental health. We have dreamed about this kind of urban loop

in this city. It’s such a great idea; it connects with so many priorities for so many groups of people, like transportation. But I think most importantly, the CROWN is going to connect people to places that they care about and places that can improve their lives, like universities and grocery stores and parks and the arts and healthcare centers.”

Currently mid-construction with various segments complete and open for recreation, Cincinnati’s first urban trail loop will enclose and connect more than 50 communities — that’s more than 356,000 people, according to CROWN’s website.

It’s also notable that CROWN will serve as a “hub,” Johnston says, to

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access the Little Miami Scenic Trail, Ohio River Trail, Mill Creek Greenway, Wasson Way and Murray Path. It also will include downtown’s Smale Riverfront Park, which was named one of USA Today’s top 10 river walks in 2021, and Riverfront Commons in Northern Kentucky.

“The CROWN loop will take advantage of some of the great things in Cincinnati that are unique to the Midwest,” says Wym Portman. “We have a beautiful river, we are connecting to one of the best park systems in America, and we have arts and culture connections to the art museum and Cincinnati Ballet and more.”

As more segments begin to open for recreation, the benefits are revealing themselves. Jan and Wym Portman attribute the opening of a walk-up window at Busken Bakery along Wasson Way to the development of the trail, as well as a recently announced apartment project by PLK Communities LLC. “We call that ‘bikenomics,’ where we are seeing the economics of how much people care about trails and want to be close to them and are willing to support businesses along the way,” Jan Portman says.

At about $1.5 million per mile (excluding bridges or retaining walls) Tri-State Trails’ Johnston says CROWN is a $50 million project that will leverage $42 million in federal funding in addition to the $8 million target in private donations.

CROWN now needs to secure the remaining $2 million of that $8 million and has launched promotional programs such as July’s Ales for Trails to help.

In July, a visit to MadTree Brewing Company, Fifty West Brewing Company, Streetside Brewing, Listermann Brewing Trail House, Big Ash Brewing, Dead Low Brewing or North High Brewing Company can benefit CROWN. Each brewery — all located along existing and planned parts of the path — paid CROWN a fee to participate. Ales for Trails offers a Trail Hop Card (like a passport) that can be obtained at one of the breweries or downloaded on CROWN’s website. Buy a beer, get a stamp. Get stamps from all seven breweries by July 31 to get a free Ales for Trails T-shirt and a chance to win a grand prize raffle.

Johnston sees Ales for Trails as a part of CROWN’s goal coming to life, as it benefits both patrons and trail-adjacent businesses. He also notes countless coffee shops, ice cream parlors, restaurants and retail spots that exist on the path as possible participants in similar programs in the future.

“This is what I envision will be the first of many types of programs like this that celebrate what is connected by the trail,” he says. “One of the things I’ve thought about is how along the Ohio River Trail there’s like five different local barbecue joints like Montgomery Inn Boathouse or Eli’s BBQ.” He says it’s especially important that anyone can participate in these initiatives by walking or biking instead of driving, which positively impacts the environment as well as individual

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People explore Wasson Way near the I-71 overpass.

P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY W A D E J O H N S T O N

health.

“One of the coolest things about the trail network in my opinion is just seeing our city from a different perspective that you cannot see from your car,” Johnston says.

Part of the trail that’s currently walkable is the portion of Wasson Way from Marburg Avenue in Hyde Park to Montgomery Road at the edge of Xavier University’s campus. ArtWorks’ 300-foot mural “Electric Avenue” dances along a portion of the path on the Duke Energy complex beside Montgomery Road. It colorfully celebrates sustainability, energy, movement and nature and was unveiled in summer 2020.

While parts of the trail will highlight recreation, others — like the connection to the Uptown Innovation Corridor when Wasson Way is fully complete — highlight one of CROWN’s most pivotal benefits: equitable transportation options.

“The connection to Uptown is going to touch Avondale, Evanston, Walnut Hills, and it’s going to link the trail into the Uptown Innovation Corridor, and that to me is a game changer,” Johnston says. “Because all of a sudden, the trail will connect to our region’s second

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Skateboarders glide down a Wasson Way trail.

P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY W A D E J O H N S T O N

largest employment hub, and you have all these densely populated residential areas along Wasson Way that are now going to be connected to the hospitals and the university and all the job opportunities in that area.”

Specifically, according to Wasson Way’s website, 83,000 residents can benefit from this specific segment of CROWN plus gain walkable access to the 70 shops and restaurants in Rookwood. As of press time, three of the six phases of Wasson Way are finished, with phases four and five (1.25 miles, beginning at Marburg Avenue and ending at Old Red Bank Road) scheduled

to be completed by winter and phase six (0.8 miles, beginning at Woodburn Avenue and ending at Blair Court) by 2024.

The goal is to have the trail completed by 2025.

“There are all kinds of destinations along the trail that are a part of our park system and all these different business districts that will be close by to the trail network,” says Johnston. “It’s such a cool way to celebrate the history and culture of our city.”

To learn more about CROWN’s progress or to donate, visit crowncincinnati.org.

CLASSICAL

Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra Offers Up Summermusik Concert Series ‘Under the Stars’

BY A N N E A R E N ST E I N

Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra’s summer festival Summermusik returns from pandemic shutdown beginning Aug. 6, with performances running through Aug. 20 at outdoor venues throughout the city.

Nicknamed “Summermusik Under the Stars,” mainstage concerts featuring the full CCO take place at Eden Park’s Seasongood Pavilion. Coney Island’s Moonlite Pavilion hosts the afternoon chamber series, as well as one of the hugely popular Chamber Crawls — basically Classical music plus cocktails. Other Chamber Crawls take place at the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden and Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park & Museum.

Cellist Sujari Britt and violinist Caroline Goulding, both alumnae of the popular NPR and PBS series From the Top!, head a roster of soloists that includes CCO principals.

Seating is limited in each venue, masks are optional and concerts are shortened with no intermission.

As of press time, several events are nearly sold out and CCO music director Eckart Preu isn’t surprised. Speaking on Zoom from his home in Spokane, Washington, Preu radiates anticipation for the season that reflects his responses to re-emerging from semiisolation. The program lineup spotlights women as composers and performing artists as well as music’s therapeutic potential.

“We are coming out of this pandemic (as) changed people and we all need music therapy,” Preu says. “I asked myself, what is music that matters?

What role can music play in healing?”

“Beethoven and Tchaikovsky were my prime suspects,” he adds. “Beethoven was the first to put himself in the center of his compositions, and Tchaikovsky especially worked through his mental turmoil through music.”

The mainstage concert on Aug. 6, “Mindful Music,” explores creative responses to mental challenges. It features Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 4,” written in the midst of devastating hearing loss, as well as Tchaikovsky’s “Variations on a Rococo Theme,” with cello phenom Britt. The concert opener is “Lyric for Strings” by George Walker, a prolific composer and the first Black musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for composition in 1996.

The theme of music as an outlet for emotional struggles continues on Aug. 8 with “Restorative Strings” at Coney Island’s Moonlite Pavilion. In addition to excerpts from chamber works by Smetana, Beethoven and Hummel, cellist Britt performs the world premiere of her composition “No One’s Driving,”

Caroline Goulding

Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra Music Director Eckart Preu

P H OTO : JA M I E J U N G

P H OTO : P H I L I P G RO S H O N G

and Preu will be the pianist for Nico Muhly’s “Allen & Lucien.”

Britt offered her piece to Preu, who was already planning to highlight women composers throughout the Summermusik season.

Summermusik boasts another world premiere: British composer Lilian Elkington’s “Romance, Op. 1” on Aug. 15 at Coney Island.

“She was totally unknown because she stopped composing when her daughter was born in 1926 and her husband threw out all her music after she died in 1946,” Preu says. “Her four surviving compositions were discovered by chance in a secondhand bookstore and a musicologist who arranged these scores offered me this piece.”

Preu adds that it is a “ beautiful work, extremely well-crafted.”

“After centuries of neglect, we have decades of discovery ahead of us and it’s exciting,” he says. “We need to perform this music, encourage publication and recordings so that there’s wider access.”

Women rule both as composers and performers for that Aug. 15 concert, titled “Her Voice.” In addition to Elkington, composers include University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music alumna Jennifer Jolley, Reena Esmail, Elena Kats-Chernin, Shelley Washington and Gabriela Lena Frank.

Instrumental soloists are Rebecca Andres on flute; Celeste Golden Boyer and Sujean Kim on violin; Heidi Yenni on viola d’amore; and trumpeter Ashley Hall.

Preu notes that the composers come from “very different backgrounds” and their musical languages are unique.

“Reena Esmail is Indian-American and her work incorporates Hindi music that has nothing in common with Western styles. Elena Kats-Chernin’s music is really edgy, but then she takes Bach’s music and combines it with her own language.”

Summermusik’s final mainstage concert on Aug. 20 continues to highlight

women with three CCO premieres of works by Esmail, Gabriella Smith and Jessie Montgomery, whose composition “Banner” opened the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s 2020-21 virtual season “I like her language,” Preu says. “She’s very subtle and very inventive.

‘Starburst’ is short, small and extremely well-crafted, perfect as an opener and it’s already been widely performed.”

The final work is Mozart’s “Turkish” fifth violin concerto with violinist Caroline Goulding, who at 29 has performed with major orchestras and garnered a Grammy nomination.

Preu welcomes the opportunity to perform outdoors, noting that there will be some amplification for sound enhancement. Even more important is the special sense of community.

“The atmosphere is more casual, and your senses reach out more to take everything in, from the music to the surroundings, which really enhances that community feeling.”

Seating options range from pods of benches and low folding chairs at Seasongood Pavilion and the Cincinnati Zoo’s Wings of Wonder Theater to distanced folding chairs at other venues.

Many of the Chamber Crawl events — like the tribute to The Beatles at Coney Island on Aug. 10 — are nearly full as of press time; the CCO even added seats to some shows.

And yes, music lovers can picnic.

There will be food trucks at Seasongood Pavilion; beverages including red and white wine will be available. Bring your own cooler, but no outside alcoholic beverages are permitted. Beverages will be sold at Coney Island and Pyramid Hill.

There are rain dates for events in

Sujari Britt P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY T H E C C O

non-covered venues. Preu says the heat is less of a concern than rain.

“Even indoors, there’s a lot of heat from onstage lighting, so we’re used to that. And the musicians constantly adjust to each other like a living organism, whether it’s intonation, an entrance or dynamics, inside or outside,” he says.

Preu — also the music director for the Long Beach Symphony in California and the Portland Symphony in Maine — is excited about returning to Cincinnati and being on the podium. He’s also looking forward to accompanying many of the chamber works on piano.

“Playing (music) with your musicians deepens our relationship and helps us get to know each other better,” he says.

“It’s also an opportunity for our audiences to see another side of me.”

Above all is the delight in performing for live audiences.

“Recordings are great but the emotional magic really happens when you’re with other people,” he says. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

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Summermusik takes place Aug. 6-20. For more information or tickets, visit ccocincinnati.org.

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The Oscar Oscar Station Station The at Jungle Jungle Jim’s Jim’s Fairfield Fairfield at

WRISTBANDS AVAILABLE AVAILABLE WRISTBANDS AT THE THE DOOR DOOR AT Jungle Jim's will be following CDC recommended guidelines for this event.

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FOOD & DRINK

Bohemian pilsner from Wiedemann’s Fine Beer P H OTO : P ROV I D E D

Local Lagers Make Summer a Beer-eze Cincinnati brewers have a longstanding history with this quaffable German-style beer. Here are some favorites to try.

BY S E A N M . P E T E RS

L

ager is a very important style of beer in Cincinnati, both today and more than 150 years ago.

Go to a barbecue this summer and you’ll likely see an abundance of lagers in the cooler thanks to this beer’s lightbodied quaffability and often modest

alcohol content.

There are many variations of lager, but the brew’s defining feature is the fact that it spends more time in chilly fermentation than, say, an ale: while an ale needs three to five weeks to ferment, a lager is best after six to eight weeks.

That, in part, is one reason Cincinnati distinguished itself as a lager city in the mid-19th century. The Queen City is rife with lagering cellars constructed during that time and used to cool beer before the advent of refrigeration.

These underground tunnels and other historic beer sites can be viewed on guided tours of Cincinnati’s Brewing Heritage Trail, curated by local beer historian and author Michael Morgan.

His most recent book Cincinnati Beer is a historical love letter to the city’s ongoing reputation for producing some of the best beer in the country.

Morgan points to two reasons lager flowed more heartily from Cincinnati than from other beer hubs: first, a large influx of German immigrants (lager is a German beer), and, subsequently, their

brewers’ adherence to traditional German brewing practices.

“Immigration brought both consumer demand for German-style lagers as well as skilled brewers who knew how to produce it,” Morgan says. “Cincinnati was the first point on the ‘German Triangle’ that was composed of the cities of Cincinnati, St. Louis and Milwaukee.”

Morgan says Cincinnati brewers tended to remain more true to the Reinheitsgebot brewing purity law than other cities.

“This meant brewing with nothing but barley malt, yeast, hops and water,” he says. “Many consumers, particularly Germans, looked down on the use of rice, corn or other adjuncts as an adulteration of the beer. Cincinnati lagers were seen as more traditional, more

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pure, and enjoyed a good, global reputation as a result.”

Despite German connoisseurs’ purist opinions, one of the most prevalent pale lagers on the market, Bud Light, proudly advertises its use of rice in the brew to set it apart from the pack. If you typically drink Bud Light, there’s no shame in that, but there’s also no better time to try a few lagers from around town; there are now more options than ever.

“Just a few years ago, local craft lagers were a rarity,” Morgan says.

“Every brewery made some form of light-bodied blonde ale because they had to make a beer to serve Bud Lightdrinkers, but they usually did it begrudgingly, and those beers were made with ale yeast because it requires less fermentation time.”

“Wiedemann was one of the first locals to put a lot of effort and pride into making a great Bohemian pilsner,” he continues. “They succeeded, and I drink it a lot; but there has been a recent explosion in the number of breweries that are taking golden lagers seriously.”

Morgan also calls out West Side Brewing’s seasonal pilsner and Northern Row’s helles as being excellent examples (note: pilsners are lagers but not all lagers are pilsners).

If all this lager talk gave you a thirst, try these local favorites:

Wiedemann’s Fine Beer: Bohemian Special Brew The original Wiedemann recipes did not come with the trademark acquisition, meaning new owners Jon and Betsy Newberry had to work out their own approach to the brand’s beer when they opened their brewpub in 2018.

“I really wasn’t all that interested in the old recipes because people’s taste in beer has changed so much in the past 15 or 20 years. It’s a whole new ballgame and I didn’t want to just bring back the old Wiedemann,” says Jon. “It’s completely different, our recipe. The ingredients are much better. I’m not sure how they made it and what they put into it, although I drank plenty of the old stuff, no complaints there. I’d like to think that what we’ve got now is much more authentic to what George Wiedemann would have been making back around 1870.” 4811 Vine St., Saint Bernard, wiedemannsfinebeer.com.

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A case of Fifty West Brewing Company’s American Lager P H O T O : P R O V I D E D BY F I F T Y W E S T B R E W I N G C O M PA N Y

Northern Row Brewery and Distillery: Hustler Helles Head brewer Greg Larsen has been in the business for 27 years, starting right around the same time craft beer became a talking point in the industry. Now brewing in Northern Row’s recently opened taproom located in Christian Moerlein’s historic OTR icehouse and storage space on McMicken Avenue, Larsen’s helles is the brewery’s most prized commodity.

“I’ve been making lagers ever since I had my first craft lager, it’s been my love,” he says. “Helles is our best-selling beer, hands down. It’s approachable for everybody. The only thing not German is the water.” 111 W. McMicken Ave., Over-the-Rhine, northernrow.com.

West Side Brewing: Pilsner West Side’s seasonal summer pilsner is brewed with one malt variety and two kinds of hops. “A bright, strawyellow lager with a big white head, the delicately floral and spicy aroma of Hallertau Mittelfrueh hops combines with a light, crackery malt flavor to make an incredibly crisp, quaffable brew,” says the brewery. 3044 Harrison Ave., Westwood, westsidebrewing.com.

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Fifty West Brewing Company: American Lager In one of the most exciting local lager developments, Fifty West now sells 15-packs of American Lager for $14.99.

“Brewed with all German malts and cold fermenting lager yeast, this beer is a certified crispy-boy,” says Max Fram, vice president of strategy and operations at Fifty West. “Comes in at 4.5% ABV for a familiar weight to domestic light beer, but with a more pronounced cereal grain flavor. The big boys take shortcuts by using rice or corn syrups and lose some authentic beer flavor.”

At this price you can’t justify the purchase of Bud Light or any other “big boy” solely on financial grounds; this is a steal in comparison. 7605 Wooster Pike, Columbia Township, fiftywestbrew. com.

Rhinegeist Brewery: Cheetah This incredibly crushable, slightly hoppy lager is well named, because a cheetah will soon run out. That is to say, a six-pack of Cheetah goes down real easy.

“Cheetah is pilsner malt, with some sugar to lighten the body, and a touch of Cascade and Crystal hops for a very restrained amount of hop bitterness and aroma,” says Rom Wells, Rhinegeist’s social media rep. “We love the delicate citrus note provided by the Cascade hops paired with the more

traditional hop contribution from Crystal. Our Mexican lager yeast strain produces a nice lager character while letting the beauty of the pilsner malt shine bright in the beer.” 1910 Elm St., Over-the-Rhine, rhinegeist.com.

Braxton Brewing Co.: Garage Beer Braxton Brewing Co. started in a garage, so it’s fitting that its crowdpleasing lager wears that history on its can. While some garages might need to declutter this summer, Braxton’s Garage Beer is neat, clean and bubbly.

“By brewing it with only pilsner malt and Magnum hops, we’re able to bring it a crisp dry finish with medium-light body and moderate carbonation,” says Braxton’s co-founder and CEO Jake Rouse. “A light bitterness from the single Magnum hop addition makes this beer perfect for every occasion.” Multiple locations including 27 W. Seventh St., Covington, braxtonbrewing.com.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a domestic beer brewed by AnheuserBusch or any other major player in the industry, but it’s a shame to waste your immediate proximity to some of the best beer in the world right here in Cincinnati. Do yourself a favor and visit a local brewery, or pick up a six-pack (or 15-pack in Fifty West’s case, pun intended) from the grocery or liquor store. We live in a sea of hops and barley, so it’s best to swim hard and drink deep.

THE DISH

CinSoy Ferments Small-Batch, Local Soy Sauce on Cincinnati’s Brewing Heritage Trail

BY S E A N M . P E T E RS

Have you ever tasted local soy sauce?

Until CinSoy launched in 2020, chances are high you’d never seen any on store shelves.

That’s why CinSoy’s small-batch soy sauce caught my eye while I was shopping at Morsel & Nosh deli in Northside.

It’s a simple little glass bottle with a minimalist black-and-white screen print of seven hills — like Cincinnati’s — but the design evokes traditional Japanese woodblock prints. The bottle stood out because other types of local condiments are available all over town, but until now, soy sauce hadn’t been among them (based on my googling of “Ohio soy sauce”).

According to the United States Department of Agriculture’s 2020 Annual Bulletin, Ohio grows more soybeans than any other crop, with 4.87 million acres harvested in the state last year. Comparatively, corn, our state’s second-most prominent crop, saw only 3.55 million acres harvested.

There’s obviously a lot of soy around, although much of it is used as livestock feed and to replenish nitrogen levels in soil as a cover crop — not to make soy sauce.

CinSoy’s production facility is adjacent to the former Christian Moerlein Brewing Co. taproom in Over-theRhine, now occupied by the Cincinnati Beverage Company. On a recent visit, Sam Pellerito, CinSoy’s founder, welcomed me into the facility.

Warm air carried the fragrances of garlic, chili and caramel. “The Factory,” as Pellerito calls it, needs to stay warm; 78 degrees Fahrenheit is the ideal temperature to encourage healthy fermentation, which is the main process used in creating soy sauce.

“We’re on the Brewing Heritage Trail,” Pellerito says, referring to Over-theRhine’s series of guided tours and a free walking trail that explores, preserves and celebrates the city’s storied past as a beer-producing capital. “I just think it’s hilarious (because making soy sauce is one) of the oldest brewing processes in the world. I mean, brewing soy sauce is thousands of years old.”

On one side of the main room, there are plastic vats as large as hot tubs.

Inside are soupy, bubbling mounds of soybeans. The mash foams with the life of fermentation as Pellerito stirs a vat, and an intoxicating perfume breathes out. If he had told me it was beer, I would have believed him.

“A lot of the procedures that homebrewers end up doing is pretty much what we live every day,” says Kendall Holmes, the other half of CinSoy, who merged his previous endeavor, Cloud Food Labs, with the company earlier this year. “Brew. Sanitize. Transfer. All the stuff you do to homebrew, we’re doing on a much larger scale.”

The turnaround isn’t nearly as quick as beer, though. CinSoy’s sauce takes half a year to reach the depth of flavor Pellerito and Holmes aim for.

Bottles of CinSoy soy sauce P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

“Some soy sauces (age) for three years.

In Japan you’ve got four companies that are 450 to 500 years old and they’re still using the same equipment. They still have the same (cedar aging) barrels that they were using when their greatgreat-great-grandparents were making soy sauce,” Pellerito says. “It has a yeast, and that yeast is so super specific to soy sauce and the way that it makes soy sauce taste; they don’t add it to soy sauce, it’s just there.”

Holmes draws another beer comparison, saying that the flavor-imbued yeast in soy sauce is like the presence of Brettanomyces, a wild yeast that gives Belgian farmhouse ales, among others, an irreplaceable funkiness. It’s an ingredient that’s not always on the guest list, but is usually a welcome addition to the party.

Pellerito says he has that same yeast and that CinSoy is building its own yeast colony.

“Our latest batch of soy sauce has a piece of the very first soy sauce I ever made,” he says. “That’s how it lives.

That’s how it gets better. It gets better over time, really, because you’re adding that legacy of flavor.”

Pellerito earned a culinary degree from Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, and worked in esteemed kitchens in Australia and Wales. Later, he started making soy sauce in his basement as an experiment.

“As a small-batch producer, we’re still pretty consistent because we’re not changing a lot. We’re just using soybeans, koji (a starter substance made by combining a cultivated mold with rice

Sam Pellerito (left) and Kendall Holmes of CinSoy P H OTO : H A I L E Y B O L L I N G E R

and soybeans, which is vital to making soy sauce, sake and miso), wheat and salt water,” Pellerito says. “We’re not trying to recreate the wheel of soy sauce.”

CinSoy sources its beans from Covington, Ohio, a village about 90 minutes north of Cincinnati. The beans’ protein content is higher than average, which enables more flavor to be extracted during fermentation.

“When I go, there are trucks from Japan, trucks from China, trucks from Korea,” Pellerito says. “They’re all coming to get the soybeans because Ohio has the best soybeans in the world for making soy-based products.”

When it comes to soy-based products, sauce isn’t the only thing CinSoy offers. I also left The Factory with miso, tofu and a packet of soy sauce salt — a

crystalized transformation of CinSoy’s small-batch sauce.

The company also produces koji mustard, a wildly delicious and unique invention from Holmes. For those who like it hot, there’s chili crisp oil.

CinSoy also makes tamari, a cousin of soy sauce made from the liquid collected from the miso-making process — slightly thicker and less salty than conventional soy sauce, but capable of transforming dishes with its abundance of umami. For the DIYer, there’s even the “Make at Home Miso Kit,” which includes soybeans, CinSoy’s koji starter and everything needed to make your own batch of miso at home.

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Learn more about CinSoy and find out where you can buy products locally at cinsoyfoods.com.

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MUSIC

A video still from the A.M. Nice fundraising concert P H O T O : YO U T U B E

Rock ‘n’ Raise A.M. Nice and Phratry Records will stream a concert July 23 to benefit Southgate House Revival

BY W I L L I A M R I E S E N B E R G A N D M A I JA Z U M M O

A

t multiple points throughout 2020, it appeared that many local concert venues would be forced to close their doors for good.

Now, even as coronavirus restrictions have relaxed, these concert settings — especially independent venues — are struggling to recover from a year and a half with no live music revenue.

One such venue is the Southgate House Revival in Newport. The site that was once a 19th-century church now is beloved both by its performers and attendees for its intimate concert area.

The mainstage Sanctuary that boasts the church’s original pipe organ holds around 500 people.

For much of the COVID-19 pandemic, Southgate House Revival, a member of the National Independent Venue Association, had been able to host only limited-capacity crowds. It finally opened at full capacity on June 11.

“There is certainly a big sigh of relief, but I’m also still being very cautious,” says the venue’s general manager, Morrella Raleigh. “There are a lot of bands starting to tour again, which is great to see, but there are a fair amount of touring bands and local artists who are still hesitant, which is completely understandable.”

Despite this struggle, Raleigh told CityBeat in May she finds it necessary to stay positive.

“Small venues have always faced a lot of challenges, and I think in some ways, we were better prepared to handle this than some other businesses,” she said.

“It did serve as a big reminder that we all need to be flexible and work toward new ways of bringing live music to people.”

And now, local band A.M. Nice is highlighting the trait of flexibility that Raleigh mentioned to help Southgate House Revival get back on its feet.

This month, the Punk band and its label, Phratry Records, will stream a virtual concert from Southgate House Revival with all proceeds going to the concert venue.

“Morrella Raleigh and the staff at the Southgate House Revival have given so much to A.M. Nice, Phratry Records and countless others who, like us, work, live, create and experience music in this region,” says Jerry Dirr, head of Phratry Records and drummer for A.M. Nice. “Whether it’s allowing performers to try out new material on a weeknight open-mic, run whole-house shows, pairing local bands with national touring acts, or allowing countless loud, obnoxious, raucous noisy nights, the Southgate House Revival is a venue that has allowed so many to congregate, commiserate, create, glow and celebrate.”

In May, A.M. Nice filmed a special

30-minute set at Southgate House Revival, which will stream on Phratry’s YouTube channel at 9 p.m. July 23.

Adam Nice, lead vocalist for A.M. Nice, says the group is sharing the virtual concert as a thank you to the venue.

“We needed to make a video for a virtual festival we were participating in, so we brainstormed, ‘Well let’s do it at the Southgate House, as it’s one of our favorite venues in town, and try to see if we can get people to give a little back,’” Nice says. “This is a place that has helped us out so much…so we thought, ‘Let’s do something here to try and help them out.’”

In terms of what fans can expect from the show, Nice says the band is excited to premiere almost all of their new, unreleased songs that will be featured on an upcoming studio album.

He praises the virtual concert’s audio mixing as well as the high-quality video editing, and he expects viewers to be blown away by the character of the concert. “(Our) music is fast, it’s uptempo, it’s melodic, it’s really just high energy,” Nice says.

A.M. Nice released a two-song single in March, its fourth release since debuting in 2016. The group’s current full-length project is slated for release this fall on Phratry.

“We try to mix it up and not just play in one little genre. Our goal is always to make our record have some different types of things to capture every listener,” Nice says.

Donations to the Southgate House Revival can be made during or after the streamed concert through links to Venmo and PayPal. All proceeds will go to the venue.

“Our ask is if you would’ve gone out to one or two things at Southgate House over the past year and a half, please take the time to give that $5, $10, $20, whatever it is to them to give them this boost and (get them over this) last hurdle while things start to open up again,” says Nice.

“The Southgate House Revival, like all the great music venues in our town, is attempting to open shuttered doors and crawl out of the COVID darkness,” adds Dirr. “An occasional, limited-seating event or takeout orders are not enough to make up for the loss, and not enough of a thanks.”

Raleigh says the venue was recently notified it will receive a Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, part of the CARES Act funding. But she says Southgate House Revival wouldn’t be here without the support it has gotten from the music community.

“The generosity of musicians like A.M. Nice and Phratry Records, the folks at cincymusic.com and cincygroove.com and so many others who lent their talent and time to livestreams that benefitted us allowed us to literally keep the lights on during a very dark time,” she says. “I am very humbled and will be forever grateful that such great talents worked to help us survive. Independents are often forgotten during hard times, but our community definitely came to our rescue.”

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Watch the Southgate House Revival benefit concert at 9 p.m.

Friday, July 23 on the Phratry YouTube channel (bit.ly/3iigqlB).

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PUZZLE

CREATURE FEATURE

BY B R EN DA N EM M E T T Q UIG LE Y

5. Urban rds.

6. Federal Green Challenge org.

48. Vehemently opposed

6. Philosopher Zeno’s town

9. Character in “Face/Off”?

50. Dr. whose career started in the World Class Wreckin’ Cru

7. Commoners

52. Close to shut 55. Lyskamm or Finsteraarhorn, e.g.

17. Sign of aging

57. Accusation at the Globe

19. Graphics hosting site

59. Some Thanksgiving leftovers

20. “___ is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul, / And sings the tune without the words, / And never stops at all” (Emily Dickinson)

62. Superstar 65. Director Wright 66. What you might enter should you literally get 17-, 21-, 33-, 46-, and 59-Across

21. Old television attachments 23. “She ___ ANNOYING!”

68. Spa feature

25. Card in a smartphone

69. Deciduous tree

26. President of Mexico?

70. Benchmate of Brett and Amy

27. Reinking of Broadway

71. Coliseum athletes

29. Results of some ints.

72. 5K giveaway

31. Mr Know-it-all?

73. Staked

33. Ornamental architectural molding consisting of four radiating petals

DOWN

36. Theoretical destination

1. “St Matthew Passion” composer

40. Flounder’s bud

2. Do with a pick

41. Grok completely

3. Keeping others informed, as on a project

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13. Knight in chess, e.g.

22. “You can turn that alarm off now”

18. “The Lord of the Rings” hero

12. Dandruff

24. Hot 27. First man 28. Sushi seaweed 30. Players might pick one up

L AST PUZ ZLE’S ANSWERS:

49. [snort] “Sure thing, pal!”

52. Military demonstration

32. 1992 tennis gold medalist Marc

53. One of the twelve Tribes of Israel

34. Southern border town with a portmanteau name

54. Engage in cross words

35. Drunk’s noise 38. Long, hard journey 39. Partner of Porgy 42. Run (about) 45. “Pull up a chair” 47. Piece of hair

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10. Guacamole ingredient 11. Gunk in the pool

9. “M*A*S*H” star

37. “Unh unh unh!”

43. Background at the movies

46. Shooting marbles

16. Jeff Tweedy’s group

1. Juggler’s props

8. Show off

4. Home Depot rival

51. Signs off on

44. Flirty girls

15. S-Corp alternative

ACROSS

14. Stirring

56. “Us” director 58. Athenian at the Globe 60. Historian’s bailiwicks 61. Ready for anything 63. Strip barker 64. Pole position 67. ___ PreCheck

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