Monthly Archives: February 2022

Big Heads on Parade

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This is one of those embarrassing moments when I experience something for the first time that has been going on for years right under my nose and is so cool I should have been attending regularly.  It’s the Mainstrasse Mardi Gras Parade in Covington, Kentucky. I’ve heard of Mardi Gras in Covington and possibly even heard there was a parade but I don’t remember. What I do remember is news reports about inebriated revelers trashing yards and peeing in bushes. It didn’t sound like a place I wanted to be. But this year I read about the parade with participants wearing gigantic papier-mâché heads and that very much sounded like something I wanted to see.

I reached the staging area with enough time to snap pictures of some of the big heads before they covered smaller heads.

Then got pictures of a few of those heads in place but not yet marching. I really don’t know just when this first began. One person I asked said, “At least ten years.” Another thought it started “around 2000”. I overheard someone telling a friend, “The last time I came down for this was twenty years ago”. I imagine I’ll eventually find something online that tells me, but not yet.

There were plenty of normal-sized heads in the parade and everybody was clearly having a lot of fun.

But it was the big heads that had gotten my attention and set the parade apart.

Most of the Mainstrasse restaurants and bars were fairly full before the parade started and became downright packed when it ended. Many had doormen posted to keep occupancy to legal levels. I moved away from the center of the festivities until I found a bar that was busy but not overcrowded and had one beer before heading home. I’ve absolutely nothing against partying in the streets for Mardi Gras but I’m too old and the street’s too cold.   

Book Review
Lost Cincinnati Concert Venues
Steven Rosen

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This book brought back some memories, corrected others, and filled in gaps I didn’t even know I had. And I was only here for the last quarter of the covered period. For the years before I moved to Cincinnati, it confirmed some rumors and filled in some blanks. Its author, Steven Rosen, has done an awful lot of writing both as an employee (Cincinnati Enquirer, Denver Post) and as a freelancer (NY Times, LA Times, Cincinnati Magazine, etc.). He is currently serving as Contributing Visual Arts Editor for Cincinnati CityBeat as well as continuing to freelance. With a resume like that, it’s surprising to learn that this is Rosen’s first book.

True to its title, the book is organized by the venues where concerts took place, but venues only matter because of the events they host, and those events are what is really at the heart of Lost Cincinnati Concert Venues of the ’50s and ’60s. The two venues in the subtitle are great examples. The Surf Club operated at the beginning of the 1960s and became known for hosting comedians like Lenny Bruce, Dick Gregory, Henny Youngman, and Phyllis Diller; musicians such as Sarah Vaughan, Peter, Paul, & Mary, and Julius La Rosa; and acts like The Smothers Brothers and Homer & Jethro who were a bit of both. Ludlow Garage rose at the end of the decade with performances by Alice Cooper, the Allman Brothers, Santana, the Kinks, and a whole bunch more. People may or may not remember that the Surf Club had taxidermied swordfish on the walls or that the Ludlow Garage had some really big chairs, but remembering where you saw Phyllis Diller or the Allman Brothers is a certainty.

Cincinnati is a border town with some Kentucky venues as accessible to residents as many in Cincinnati itself. Rosen’s first chapter is, in fact, titled “Northern Kentucky”. He acknowledges the Beverly Hills and Lookout House showrooms but seems to feel that their notoriety has brought them enough attention. He focuses on some lesser-known places like the Sportsman’s Club (where the Drifters once performed), the Copa Club (Miles Davis, Sam Cooke, and more), and Stagman’s Flamingo Dance Club (Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, et. al.).

Rosen describes and locates the venues then fleshes them out with tales of the acts that played there and the people who owned and managed them. In the case of the northern Kentucky clubs, ownership might have a little organized crime involved and Rosen discusses that too.

There is also a chapter on “Downtown Cincinnati” (Living Room, Albee Theater) and one called “Neighborhoods and Beyond”. There are lots of neighborhoods in Cincinnati and Rosen doesn’t get to all of them but here’s a sampling of the neighborhood-venue-performer combinations he does get to: Walnut Hills, New Cotton Club, Aretha Franklin; Eastern Avenue, Vet’s Inn, Albert Washington; Western Hills, Hawaiian Gardens, Lonnie Mack.

Some venues get their own chapters. In addition to the subtitle’s Surf Club and Ludlow Garage, there’s Cincinnati Gardens, Seven Cities, Babe Bakers, Hyde Park-Mount Lookout Teen Center, and Black Dome. Gene Autry played the Gardens long before that Everly Brothers headlined show with Rodgers, Holly, Anka, Cochran, et.al., and in the years that followed, the Stones, Beatles, James Brown, Bob Dylan, and just about everybody else played there.

One act and one event also get their own chapters. The act, not surprisingly, is the Beatles who played Cincinnati twice; once at Cincinnati Gardens and once at Crosley Field. The event is the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of June 13, 1970. It was also held at Crosley Field and Rosen uses the chapter to mention that the Ohio Valley Jazz Festival took place there from 1964 to 1970. With acts like Traffic, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, and Bob Seger, the Pop Festival was a major event and Rosen can certainly be forgiven for stretching the ’50s and ’60s by a few months. Back in those days, people apparently sometimes brought pineapple upside-down cake and peanut butter to concerts giving fans something to remember Alice Cooper (cake) and Iggy Pop (peanut butter) by.

Rosen used some of his own memories in this book and combed through a lot of local papers and other publications. He also contacted many of the others who were actually there. Jim Tarbell, of Hyde Park Center and Ludlow Garage fame, provided the forward. He also provides a telling comment about loss at the end of the ’60s. Reflecting on rock becoming big business, he says, “It was baptism by fire to realize how quickly the whole scene changed from peace and love to money.”

Even though it’s not exactly about peace and love and money, the book’s final sentence does make a thoughtful observation on the loss of a major Cincinnati concert venue. “Crosley Field is now lost but is still dearly missed by fans of both Cincinnati baseball and Iggy Pop.”

Lost Cincinnati Concert Venues of the ’50s and ’60s: From the Surf Club to Ludlow Garage, Steven Rosen, The History Press (Jan 10, 2022), 6 x 9 inches, 176 pages, ISBN 978-1467147217

Available multiple places including Arcadia Publishing (History Press) but I suggest going straight to the guy who wrote it: StevenRosen.net.

Trip Peek #115
Trip #47
Natchez Christmas

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This picture is from my 2006 Natchez Christmas trip. It shows the gilded hand atop the steeple of the First Presbyterian Church in Port Gibson, MS, that mimicks a gesture the church’s founder and first pastor often used in his sermons. The photograph was made while traveling north on the Natchez Trace Parkway after spending Christmas in Natchez, MS. On the way south, I’d spent a night in Clarksdale, MS. My northbound route followed the parkway all the way to its terminus near Nashville, TN, but I slipped off to visit things like the Vicksburg National Military Park, Elvis’ birthplace in Tupelo, and this flying finger of faith in Port Gibson.

Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.

Loveland Hearts Afire

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Loveland didn’t start out as a land of love and romance. A store owner named James Loveland supplied its name. But it has worked hard to justify its “Sweetheart of Ohio” nickname with things like its Valentine Re-mailing Program. This year it cranked things up a notch with Hearts Afire Weekend. Activities like a date auction, speed dating, and pet adoption filled the pre-Valentine’s Day weekend but for me, the attraction was the ice carving display.

I photographed nearly all of the twenty-some carvings but am including just a few of my favorites. With the local pro footballers playing in the big game on Valentine’s Day Eve, you knew that there would be a tiger or two in the mix.

Maybe the carving of a frog was inspired by the legend of the Loveland Frog. Maybe not.

There was dancing in the street with Premier Tumbling and Dance instigating, and inside City Hall, the King and Queen of Hearts greeted shoppers headed to Heartland Market.

I grabbed photos of the raw materials and tools waiting in front of city hall for the ice carving demonstrations.

Then returned a little later to watch some of those demos.

I didn’t stick around for the fireworks but did take advantage of a wonderful opportunity to look at love from both sides.

On With the Snow/Show

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I did something pretty stupid this week and this is my confession. Some of the nasty weather running around the country came to my neighborhood. On Wednesday, the National Weather Service issued a winter storm warning for southwest Ohio that would begin at midnight and remain in effect until 7:00 AM Friday. At just about the midpoint of that thirty-one-hour period, I set off on a hundred-mile drive to Dayton and back.

Nearly four months ago, when one February day seemed as good as any other, I purchased a ticket to see Hamilton at the Schuster Center in Dayton, Ohio. On Thursday, as various alerts and other weather-related stories popped up, I thought the show might be canceled and took a look at the theater website where I found this banner displayed. The small print says, “All performances will go on as scheduled unless there is a Level 3 Snow Emergency in Montgomery County, Ohio.” Since purchasing the ticket, I had received a few emails with advice on parking and restaurants and some other details about attending the performance including one that arrived at noon on Thursday. Read about Ohio’s three levels of snow emergencies here.

Normal driving time to the theater would be under an hour but I knew that would not now be the case. I figured I should leave about 5:00 for the 7:30 show. About 4:20, I called the theater looking for real-time human confirmation that the show would go on. After sixteen minutes on hold, a recording asked me to leave a message for a callback. The callback came about fifteen minutes later but I somehow missed it. The caller left voicemail that didn’t show up on my phone until I was in the theater. Cell phones can really act funny and sometimes mine seems funnier than most. Answering the call or learning of the message earlier wouldn’t have actually made a difference since the message just reaffirmed the banner on the website.

So this is where the stupid begins. In spite of seeing roughly four inches of snow at my garage door and knowing that the streets at my condominium hadn’t been touched, I thought the expressways might be better. When I saw that they weren’t, I should have turned around but instead, I turned on a Dayton (actually Yellow Springs) station thinking the expressways at my destination might be better. Hearing that a section of I-75 (which I was headed to) in Dayton was closed was another nudge toward reversing course but I didn’t. The closure had been announced earlier and by the time I actually reached the expressway, there was an announcement that it had reopened through Dayton. However, all exits into downtown were blocked. I did not turn around then, either.

Montgomery County went to a Level 2 Snow Emergency around 5:30. Images of the show being canceled just as I arrived began to form in my head but instead of turning around, I placed another call to the theater. This time I eventually reached a person who told me that the show had not been canceled but that they were now offering refunds to anyone choosing not to attend. Even though I was now past the halfway point, I probably should have headed home but nope.

Some downtown exits, including the one I planned to take, were indeed blocked but there were others open. I passed the theater and pulled into the parking garage. There was to be an $8.00 charge for parking but the attendant waved everybody in from behind a handwritten “FREE PARKING” sign.

This is my view from the front row of the lower balcony. It was a fantastic location for visuals but maybe not so good for audio. I really do wish I had made some effort to familiarize myself with the lyrics beforehand. There were multiple reasons for me not understanding every word including my relatively ancient ears. That my bum hearing played a role was supported by the fact that people near me reacted to some lines I didn’t understand at all. On the other hand, at intermission (after Washington has become President) a person a few seats away asked if the war was over. Nonetheless, I take full responsibility for not following some of the details. I went away quite impressed with the performance and even more impressed with the creativity behind it.

Snow was still falling when the play let out but it was very light. The streets didn’t look much different than when I arrived. Inside the garage, some of the snow that I had picked up on the way had fallen off but I was confident that I could get those wheel wells packed again in almost no time.

There was a line of cars exiting the garage but by the time I was a block or two away, the streets were looking pretty empty. The expressways were fairly empty too. They weren’t entirely deserted but the traffic was sparse and slow and everybody stayed in their own lane — as far as I know.

Although I didn’t actually see it until Friday morning, this message was emailed about a quarter to 6:00 on Thursday. A similar message was posted to Facebook and the website, presumedly about the same time.