Tag Archives: Cincinnati Ohio

Taste of Memory

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I don’t have a dog. Don’t need one. I can eat my own homework. I went to three different events yesterday with the intent of including all three in this post. I’m still going to do that despite the sad fact that they will not be as well documented as I planned. However, before I can even start talking about the three planned activities, I have to tell of my arrival home at the end of the day.

I took quite a few pictures throughout the day and popped out the memory card containing most of them as soon as I reached home. One of the day’s events had been Taste of Cincinnati with 36 restaurants and 18 food trucks. There is no reason anyone would be even slightly hungry after attending such a gathering and I really wasn’t. Nonetheless, I grabbed a few snack crackers from an open box when I walked by it on the way to my laptop. I popped one into my mouth and munched it as I picked up the laptop and headed to the table. I popped in a second one but it didn’t munch so well. It failed to crumble on the first bite so I bit it again before realizing something was terribly wrong. As I juggled laptop, memory card, crackers, and some mail I’d retrieved from the mailbox, the memory card somehow ended up in the hand with the crackers and then in my mouth. Something in it had snapped on that second munch attempt. One bite equals 68,719,476,736 bytes.

My first thought after accepting that the pictures were gone was to post something canned this week. But I had taken some pictures with my phone and those survived. There were enough, I decided, to do a stripped-down version of the three-event post I had planned. Here goes.

Coffee With Tod got the day started at the American Sign Museum. This was the second Saturday morning that museum founder Tod Swormstedt spent sharing some of his knowledge with museum members. During the first one, he picked a few special signs and told about their history, owners, and acquisition. Today he spoke about how “Signs of the Times” magazine has been an inspiration for and something of a predecessor of the museum. “Signs of the Times” is a sign industry trade magazine that Tod’s family was involved with from its beginning and which they owned for most of its life. In the photo, Tod is holding a hardbound copy of the very first issue from 1906. The tenth anniversary of the museum’s move to this building will be celebrated next month with an open-to-all Signmaker’s Circus.

Next up was the Taste of Cincinnati which was first held in 1979 and is now the longest running culinary arts festival in the country. Like many festivals, this one did not happen in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID pandemic. As mentioned, 36 restaurants and 18 food trucks are participating in this year’s event. I took pictures of many of them and made sure to snap a photo of each one where I made a purchase. Those are all gone and the picture at left is out of sequence. It was taken after I’d done my eating and was ready to leave.

Before the festival is opened to the public, first, second, and third place offerings are picked in four categories. I limited my purchases to the four number ones. In the Soup/Salad/Side category, that was Bulgogi French Fries from YouYu. The Waygu Meatball from Council Oak Steak and Seafood placed first in the Appetizer category. Both were served from the same booth as the two restaurants are part of the Hard Rock Casino.

The only picture on my phone of the Entree winner was my failed attempt to get it and the Procter & Gamble towers in the same picture. I got half of the towers and the side of the container holding Alfio’s Veal Short Rib Ravioli. Pompilio’s Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cannoli won the Desert category and fared much better than the ravioli in the picture department.

Once I’d finished my selective sampling, I walked about a block from the festival and hopped on the streetcar to reach Washington Park. There a number of sculptures made entirely of Duck brand duct tape are on display. Named “Knock It Out of the Park”, the exhibit is all about baseball. I believe I took at least one photo of every sculpture but very few were on my phone.  

My First May Fest

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The oldest choral festival in North America will celebrate its 150th birthday next year. It came frightfully close to reaching that awesome landmark without me ever having been present at a single performance. Both it and I were spared what would have been a truly embarrassing occurrence by my attendance on Friday. I am speaking, of course, of Cincinnati’s May Festival which was first held in 1873.

The venue was Cincinnati’s Music Hall. The festival and building have an interesting and possibly unique relationship with the event actually being responsible for the existence of the structure. Before the May Festival became an annual event in 1967 it was generally held every other year. The first two were in 1873 and 1875. Both were held in a large building called Saengerfest Hall. Rain was a minor problem in 1873 and became a major one in 1875. It wasn’t that patrons got wet but that they could not hear the music during the brief time that it fell in 1873 or the much longer period of rainfall in 1875. Amplified by the tin roof of Saengerfest Hall, the rain forced the performance to be paused. It also gave rise to a project to construct the brick building that has been home to the festival since 1878.

Only one of this year’s four major performances fit into my schedule. It turned out to be probably the worst fit for my tastes. There are many things that divide the world’s population and one of them is opera. I am a member of the unappreciative group. But, even though it’s quite likely I would have enjoyed a different program more, there was much to enjoy in Friday’s performance. And I did. For one thing, I believe it was the first time I had ever watched a composer conduct his own composition. I guess John Adams conducting El Niño could be considered the black-tie version of a more-familiar-to-me performance by a singer-songwriter. As always, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra sounded superb and the 100+ voices of the May Festival Chorus sounded as wonderful as I’d hoped. The main chorus sat through long periods of inactivity then rose in unison to sing. Each of them held a copy of the libretto so that their risings had the appearance of a large flock of attacking seagulls. I found myself enjoying that more than I probably should have.

Before the concert, I walked a few blocks from Music Hall to enjoy another Cincinnati tradition. Scotti’s isn’t quite as old as the May Festival but it’s working on it. After studying the stuffed menu for some time, I went with Lasagna Ala Don Giovanni.

Fried or Roasted Daily

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I usually try rather hard to avoid chain restaurants but here’s one I went to less than a week after it opened. Not the chain — which opened in 2012 — but the latest link. Florida-based Ford’s Garage opened its first Ohio restaurant in the former LeBlond Machine Tool Company powerhouse in Norwood on Thursday, May 5. I stopped in the following Wednesday.

The first I became aware of the chain was when I read an announcement about this one being planned for Cincinnati. Of course, any restaurant featuring ‘burgers and beers has a good chance of catching my attention but it sounded like this place had a little more going for it. It is an official licensee of the Ford Motor Company which allows it to use the Ford name and logo and it uses Ford cars for decoration. It was obviously a place I was likely to visit eventually so I decided to do it sooner rather than later.

The 1917 powerhouse, which was most recently occupied by a Don Pablo’s, is accessorized to resemble an early service station. Gas pumps and a pair of Model A Fords stand near the entrance and there is a Model T and another Model A inside. The cars and the building are of similar vintage. A Library of Congress photo shows the building when it was younger.

The building’s high ceilings allow faux Fords to circulate around the restaurant on a simulated assembly line and a stationary Model A hangs over the bar. A penny-covered wall holds forty beer taps. As I was taking the picture of the taps, a restaurant employee told me there were 21,004 pennies on the wall. I have a suspicion he made that up on the spot but I’m not sure so I’m repeating it.

Of course, it takes more than decor to make a restaurant. There’s a lot more than hamburgers on the menu but that’s sort of their featured item so that’s what I ordered. This is the quite tasty Mushroom & (Tillamook) Swiss. A couple of other things in this picture deserve mention. One is the shop towel napkin inside the hose clamp. The second is the frost-covered surface beneath the West Sixth Porter. About eight years ago I saw a similar setup in a bar in Kingman, Arizona, and figured it would be in every watering hole in the country before I got home. But this is the only other one I’ve ever seen which is not much help at all to my reputation as a futurist.

Despite it being a chain with a plethora of gimmicks, I basically liked the place. The chain is fairly small with twenty stores in five states and the gimmicks are mostly harmless (the napkins) or cool (the cars). One gimmick, however, seemed a bit overly silly to me. I noticed the funnel behind the bar and had vague intentions of asking about it when I overheard one of the bartenders talking about it with a visiting friend. He flipped an unseen switch to open a valve in the transmission (He called it the crankcase.) that allowed some liquid to drop into the funnel and into a glass placed below it. He said it was for a drink called the “Oil Change” although I’ve found no such drink on the menu. As I said, it struck me as quite silly but who am I (a fan of Max & Erma’s double-breasted beer taps) to judge.

Our Shared Story at CMC

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Joseph Jonas is thought to be the first Jew to actually settle in Cincinnati. That was in 1817. In 1821, he was one of a handful of men who purchased land for a cemetery so Benjamin Leib’s deathbed request that he be buried as a Jew could be met. The creation of that cemetery, the Chestnut Street Cemetery, is recognized as the event that formally established the Jewish community in Cincinnati. It was renovated last year and its rededication on September 26, 2021, marked the official beginning of the Jewish Cincinnati Bicentennial.

But it wasn’t a visit to the cemetery that led to this post. It was the “Our Shared Story” exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center that led to a visit to the cemetery. In 1821 Cincinnati really was a frontier town and the Chestnut Street Cemetery was not just the first Jewish cemetery in the state but the first west of the Alleghenies. In 1824, K.K. Bene Israel was established. Now known as Rockdale Temple, it is the oldest Jewish congregation west of the Alleghenies. Cincinnati’s Jewish community experienced great growth and had significant impact on the religion in the U.S. with things like major support for Reform Judaism and the founding of Hebrew Union College. The exhibit tells of this influence but has even more examples of the impact Cincinnati Jews had on the world at large.

Quite a number of community and business leaders are recognized. This picture is of a wall where several of those business leaders are identified. Some of the businesses are Manischewitz, Frank’s, Fleischmann’s, and Frisch’s. I got a kick out of seeing a “Jewish Cowboy” promotional record put out by Manischewitz. I got an even bigger kick out of listening to it on YouTube.

As befitting a place that started professional baseball, one Jewish business found success in sporting goods. The Cincinnati Red Stockings began play in 1869, the P. Goldsmith Sons Company was founded in 1875, and a Jewish player named Lipman Pike joined the Reds in 1877. Of course, there are now Jewish players in every professional sport and Jewish fans too as this Bengals yarmulke shows.

Chestnut Street Cemetery is less than a mile from the museum. A double-sided plaque contains information about the cemetery and the two centuries of Jewish history. The information panel visible in the opening photo says that Benjamin Leib’s grave is unmarked but believed to be “in the back left corner”. I’m guessing that means it’s in the left rear of this picture.

Buddy, Can You Lend Me a Sign?

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When the American Sign Museum announced its “first-ever traveling exhibit” at the National Museum of the Air Force, I felt pretty confident that I would see it someday. I was less certain that I would see the signs the museum had loaned to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. Then, with almost no planning and a fair amount of luck, I saw both borrowed batches of brightness this week.

On Saturday, I learned that my previously made plans for the week had fallen through then almost immediately recalled an email about a museum member discount for the play featuring the loaned signs. I went to the CSC website looking for something later in the week but was surprised to find that a front-row seat was available for the next day (Easter Sunday) and that the performance was one followed by a Q&A with some of the performers. I snatched it up.

CSC’s production of The Comedy of Errors has a modern setting with the play’s Ephesus presented as a Las Vegas-like city. Wanting to add some Vegas-style glow to the stage and realizing that an outstanding repository of neon and such was just a few miles away, the CSC reached out to the ASM, and here (with permission and a phone camera) is the result. The play is hilarious and the cast is superb. In addition to the neon, modern touches include a number of songs to make it a sort of Shakespearean musical. All my roadie friends will be happy to learn that among those songs is a version of “Get Your Kicks on Route 66”. The production runs through April 30.

With some pictures of one set of borrowed signs in my pocket, it wasn’t long before I began thinking about a blog post on the subject, and almost immediately realized that any such post would benefit greatly by also including the other set of current loaners. On Tuesday, I headed to Dayton and, after breakfast at the nearby Hasty Tasty, the Air Force Museum.

Using the life of real sign maker William H. Hahn as inspiration, placards displayed with the signs tell the story of the fictional Joe Signman. On display are examples of the lightbulb, neon, and plastic signs Joe would have dealt with during his career.

My birthday has been the subject of a couple of recent blog posts so you might already be aware that the United States Air Force and I were established the very same year. I have about five months seniority on the Air Force and am all done celebrating. The museum, however, intends to talk up the big anniversary throughout the year. “The Signmaker’s Journey” will be there through October 10.

An Almost Easter Parade

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From the beginning, this blog has had a weekly post appearing on Sunday which means that a post has been published on each of the ten Easter holidays that the blog has existed. There have also been posts reporting on most Reds Opening Day Parades during that time. The two events are close but are usually at least a week apart so that there is no interference between the posts. This year a Major League Baseball owner-player dispute delayed the start of the season so that the Reds’ first home game and the associated parade occurred on Tuesday just five days before Easter. Interference has come to pass.

The first Easter post, in 2012, was really just a couple of paragraphs acknowledging the holiday. The 2013 post wasn’t much longer but was more interesting, IMO, with its mention of Eostre beer brewed by Howard Town Brewery. At the time, Eostre was listed on Howard’s website although none was actually available. Each year since then, I’ve checked the website hoping for a resurrection of the beer but instead have seen the beer’s name disappear completely. This year I searched the full internet for any mention of Eostre beer and discovered that at least four other breweries have made an Eostre beer over the years and that one apparently brewed some recently. Kent Brewery, in Birling, England, does not list the beer on its website but there are several recent check-ins of the brew on Untappd from pubs in the area. The connection between beer and Easter may not be as strong as the connection between beer and baseball but it does exist, and that’s enough, again IMO, to legitimize an Easter Sunday post about beer and baseball.

The beer-baseball connection is very strong. In fact, there is substantial evidence that baseball, as we know it, would not even exist without beer (See America’s Pastime Saved by Beer). Both were represented by more than one parade entry with an example of each shown here. The Cincinnati Vintage Base Ball Club plays the game by 1869 rules. Wiedemann Brewery was begun in 1870 and resurrected a few years ago. The splash of red at the left edge of the team photo comes from the better half of a well-dressed pair of nineteenth-century Reds fans. The national beer industry was represented in the parade right behind the Wiedemann wagon.

The powerful team pulling the Wiedemann entry were hardly the only horses in the parade. None, however, were better controlled than this pair.

Of course, an Opening Day Parade in Cincinnati would not be complete without fan organizations, precision drill teams, high school bands, and other musical groups. These photos are merely representative samples except for the drill team. As far as I know, the Wapakoneta Optimist Lawnmower Precision Drill Team is the only one of its kind.

And celebrities. A parade has to have celebrities. Former Reds’ All-Star shortstop Barry Larkin was the parade’s Grand Marshall, Channel 12 news anchor John Lomax is retiring at month’s end although I’m sure he won’t be disappearing, and the World’s Funkiest Reds Fans, Bootsy & Patti Collins, were bobbing to Little Willie John’s Fever blasting from the King Records float just in front of them.

Thanks, Findlay Market for another great parade.

Check out previous Opening Day Parade posts (2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019) and previous Easter posts (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021).

Science Behind Pixar

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The Science Behind Pixar exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center opened last October meaning I’ve had plenty of time to see it. There are two reasons that I waited until it had barely three weeks remaining before checking it out. The first is that I believe 2006’s Cars is the only Pixar movie I’ve actually seen in its entirety. The second is that I thought the exhibit was for kids only. Reason one is undeniable fact; reason two is pure nonsense.

The picture at left is of a divider in the exhibit. Some of the figures on it do look familiar to me because I’ve seen them in commercials or maybe in a movie that was playing somewhere I walked past. But I can’t connect any of them with movies or commercials they are in, and I sure don’t know their names. Characters are used to demonstrate different pieces of Pixar science, and I don’t doubt that knowing who they are would make things more fun — watching kids experiencing the exhibit proved that — but it’s not required.

The idea of a creative pipeline is central to Pixar’s operation. The steps that go from story and modeling to lighting and rendering are identified in an introductory movie and panels explaining them are arranged in a circle near the center of the exhibit.

The bulk of the exhibit space is filled with hands-on stations where kids and old men can pretend to participate in each of those pipeline steps in a variety of ways. I don’t know how many job openings Pixar expects over the next few years but I’m sure that, with this sort of recruitment tool, they will all be easily filled.

There are also a number of these smaller kiosks around with Pixar employees describing their jobs or how certain problems were solved. If neither the hands-on stuff nor the technical descriptions make you want a job at Pixar, maybe seeing the enthusiasm these employees have will do it.

Heck, after playing with some animation, lighting, and other pipeline steps, I was almost ready to ask about job openings myself. And I have no intention of ever working anywhere ever again. I am, of course, joking about this whole thing being a recruitment tool for Pixar — mostly. I am not joking at all about the exhibit showing how much fun and satisfaction there can be in science.

I attended The Science Behind Pixar on Friday, April 1. It is open through April 24.

Getting Springy in Cincy

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When spring arrived on Sunday morning, the only item on my calendar for Monday had nothing to do with the season. That quickly changed and I went to bed with a full day planned for the first full (i.e., 24 hour) day of spring. The annual butterfly show at Krohn Conservatory had just opened on Friday and I was happy to see that plenty of tickets remained for Monday. I grabbed one for the time slot with the most remaining which happened to be noon.

The Egyptian-styled columns near the entrance hint at this year’s “Butterflies of the Nile” theme. Last year I was the first of my group to enter the Butterfly Showroom so was able to snap a picture of the room with only plants, butterflies, and a single attendant. I wasn’t that lucky this year. Not only were there more people in the room when I entered but there would also be more throughout my time there. Attendance is limited to 100 per hour this year compared to 40 per hour in 2021.

As in previous years, I made no attempt to identify the butterflies but merely photographed them.

Unlike previous years, I did not see lots of sugar water dispensers. There has always been fresh fruit available to hungry flitterers but it seems to really be emphasized this year. Maybe that will help the butterflies keep their weight down as the show goes on.

Everyone is given a scratch and sniff card for use in attracting butterflies but clearly, not everyone needs it. This year I was one of those and had a hitchhiker for more than half of my time there. Several people mentioned it to keep the fellow from being prematurely flattened but a young girl was the first. I think that might be her hand slipping the card under the fence. It was her mother who took the picture of my passenger and I think I only stuttered slightly as I asked.

My next stop was in Ault Park to check on the cherry trees. Butterflies at Krohn have been a sign of spring only since 1996. Cherry blossoms at Ault go back to the 1930s when 1,000 Japanese weeping cherry trees were given to the city and planted in the park. In 2008, these were augmented by 121 Somei Yoshino trees.

Not all of the trees were in bloom on Monday but enough were to make my visit more than worthwhile. Plus, it’s quite obvious that more blooms are on the way.

The trees full of white and pink blossoms are certainly beautiful in their own right but they can sometimes be used as a backdrop for something even more beautiful.

 

The day’s third stop, and the item that was on the calendar first, was at Playhouse in the Park. The theater is in the middle of a $50 million expansion that includes a new main stage. Monday’s event was one of several aimed at raising the last million of the fifty. I’m not a big donor or even a season ticket holder but do usually attend one or two performances each year and am on some mailing list somewhere. I enjoyed getting the update and look forward to the opening of the new theater which is planned for March 2023.

Pi at Phi

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The Golden Ratio is represented by the Greek letter Phi (Φ). The ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter is represented by the Greek letter Pi (Π). The Fibonacci Sequence, where the sum of each consecutive pair of numbers equals the following number, is closely related to Phi. Mount Healthy’s Fibonacci Brewing takes its name from this sequence. The first three digits of Pi are 3.14. Because this looks like March 14 when written American style, that date has become known as Pi Day. Because Pi and pie are homophones, it naturally became popular to eat pie on Pi Day. At Fibonacci Brewing, great honor is bestowed on the person consuming an entire pie the fastest without using their hands. Yes, everything about this, starting with Phi and Pi, is irrational. But it sure is fun.

Betty Bollas, who owns Fibonacci Brewing along with her husband Bob, says the idea for the event came to her in a dream. The brewery held its first Pi Day celebration in 2018. Mark from Brink Brewing, the guy in the opening photo, won. He won again in 2019. He didn’t get a chance in 2020 because the event was canceled with just days to go. Ohio’s official COVID triggered shutdown of bars and restaurants occurred on March 15 but it was already obvious that a big gathering at that time would not be a great idea. The event did not even reach the planning stage in 2021 but it’s back for 2022 with a nice white table cloth and a line of boxes filled with North College Hill Bakery cherry pies.

I apologize for not knowing who’s who but I do know that Urban Artifact, Humble Monk, Higher Gravity, Marty’s Hops N Vines, and Brink are all represented and that the guy in the center is a last-minute volunteer from the crowd recruited to tackle an unassigned pie. One of these pictures was taken at 7:05 and the other at 7:06.

Andrew Desenberg, a.k.a. The Gnarly Gnome, MCed while two unidentified fans cheered on the competitors. I have to wonder just how much standing while eating helped Zane from Humble Monk munch his way to victory. His name will now be added to the Fibonacci-Pi trophy just like Indy 500 winners are added to the Borg-Warner trophy. The Borg-Warner is currently valued at $3.5 million. Give it time.

I did my own pie eating before and after the competition. The before part was at Mom’s Restaurant where I got the next to last piece of apple pie. The after part was at the brewery with a pie from Big Dog’s Pizza truck. I sat down for both, used my hands, ate slowly, and enjoyed every bite.

Bock Bock Goat

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Cincinnati’s Bockfest has fared relatively well during the pandemic. It slipped in just ahead of the big shutdown in 2020 and muddled through 2021 with a few venues and some coordinated at-home celebrations. I believe there was even a very short parade around Dunlap Cafe but I can’t find any record of it. For 2022, it’s back in all its glory including a full-size parade with staging at Arnold’s just as it should be. ERRATUM 10-Mar-2022: My memory of Dunlap Cafe staging a short substitute for a canceled parade was only partially correct. It did happen but it was for the 2021 Cincinnati Reds Opening Day Parade, not the Bockfest Parade,

Lenten fish fries suffered a bunch because of COVID but it looks like they will also be operating somewhat like normal this year. In the past, I have walked past the fish fry at Old St. Mary’s Church as I followed the parade. I’m going to try patronizing a fish fry every week this year and got things started by reaching downtown early enough to stop by St. Mary’s before the parade. I munched on the tasty sandwich as I continued on to Arnold’s.

At Arnold’s, I grabbed a Moerlein Bar Bender bock to wash down the sandwich as the parade was being organized — and I use the term loosely — in the street in front of the bar.

The parade began to move a few minutes ahead of the scheduled 6:00 PM start. Seeing Cincinnati legend Jim Tarbell near the front helped make things feel normal.

Of course, Jim wasn’t the only familiar and reassuring parade entry.

And there were plenty of new entries and old entries in new guises.

I always appreciate the touch of glamour that the Court of the Sausage Queen and the energetic dance troupes add.

The parade’s endpoint has been moved to Findley Market Playground from the closed Moerlein facility on Moore street. Despite the structure’s obvious lack of both bricks and mortar, it is still called Bock Hall rather than Bock Tent.

Perry Huntoon and his son were in town for the festival and we met up outside Bock Hall. After one Hudepohl Bock, we walked up the street to the slightly less crowded but at least as noisy Northern Row Brewery. Northern Row was actually serving their bock at a stand outside the big tent but, even though the brewery was rather full, the beer line was much shorter.

Rhinegeist Brewery is sort of just around the corner and Perry and Erik turned in there while I headed on to the car and home. I extended my Bockfest involvement just a little on Saturday with a visit to Fibonacci Brewing. That’s Honey Doppelbock on the counter. It is named after the goat with the splash of white on her head. I also tried Fiddlehead Maibock, named after the white goat. I guess Buttercup, the third goat, doesn’t have a beer named after her yet.