Alan, Kenny, Joe, originally uploaded by hjoew.

Alan, Kenny and I went to Colerain High School together, class of 1992. Back then we were all very much involved in the Colerain (now Clippard) YMCA’s Leaders Club, a volunteer service group for teenagers.

Being in Leaders Club and the many friends I made and re-made during that time made a huge impact on my life. The group of about 25 people - of about which 10 were very active - were some of my closest friends in high school.

We traveled each summer to the YMCA’s Blue Ridge Leaders School in Black Mountain, North Carolina for a week where we partook in everything from learning to be a lifeguard to gymnastics to garnering a deeper spirituality.

It may sound completely corny, but sitting on the steps of Lee Hall (the main building at Blue Ridge) looking out at the Black Mountains and listening to James Taylor sing “In My Mind I’m Going to Carolina” over a loudspeaker really can get a kid to thinking. Lots of tears were shed by lots of people. I think my Leaders Club experience would be similar to the many others who have also participated in this group.

I made lifelong friends out of this group. Though Alan (pictured here) and I have been friends since we met in kindergarten, I would have to say (and I don’t know if you would agree, Alan, or not) that our experience in Leaders Club solidified our friendship for life. We learned a lot about growing up, each other and how to get along during those times. I’m so glad I did.

So, last week when I went to meet Alan on Fountain Square he was standing next to the fountain talking to a guy who I barely recognized at first. But as I got closer I realized it was Kenny, the guy I had so much fun with back in Leaders Club but had lost touch with probably 15 or more years ago. I was truly happy to see him and gave him a huge hug.

We chatted for awhile. He told me he read my columns in CityBeat and had seen the blog and other stuff. We exchanged e-mail addresses and phone numbers and plan to keep in touch.

Whatever comes next - whether we rekindle old friendships or are just happy we ran into each other again - it is so nice to harken back to the old days and reminisce with old friends.

One standing joke came back immediately. We had a diverse group back then. Our old joke was that when we all hung out it was like the United Nations meeting in Colerain. It was nice to meet again.

In fact, thanks to the social networking phenomenon sweeping the nation (uh, the world), I have been reacquainted with loads of people from the Y and other places that I, frankly, doubted I’d ever hear from again. And that’s wonderful!

I don’t know how many teenagers had experiences like that, but my guess would few. I wish for everyone who wants an opportunity like I had, so one day, you can have those UN meetings, too.

In this week’s CityBeat column, I break news about Over-the-Rhine’s Kaldi’s Coffeehouse being asked to vacate the premises for six weeks so an elevator can be installed through their kitchen.

When finished, it would make preparing food in the tiny kitchen a real challenge, but a nice addition for delivering large quanities of food quickly and efficiently to the building’s upper floors. Some chefs dream of a dumbwaiter like this, I’m told. They just want it when and where they want it, if you catch my drift. In the meantime, owner Jeremy Thompson wants to know where all the groovies are going to get their drink on.

Read it about it here.

This week’s CityBeat column is about Bill Brown’s Surveillance Camera Tour he gave Sunday to a mixed-age, mixed-race group of 18 people. I was told about the tour by a neighbor who found it on Brown’s Web page by accident, she said. It seemed interesting - and it was.

My neighbor also wrote a blog entry about the tour, of which Brown apparently took some no offense, having written is own summary of the tour.

Note: I do not “dawn” a coat and tie; I “don” it. Ooops.

Back in January, my girlfriend and I were the victims of an attempted robbery in Over-the-Rhine near my home. I wrote about it in my weekly CityBeat column.

It was a horribly devastating thing to have happen to us. We’re both very supportive of downtown and Over-the-Rhine and want nothing more than for those neighborhoods (and the entire city) to flourish. I’ve been living in OTR for nearly four years; for five she’s been a paramedic working downtown and in OTR caring for the sick and injured.

Needless to say, the gun and the kid who held it - who first just approached the car and asked us for the time - shook us both to the core. It breaks my heart how one incident can rattle the easiness I’ve felt down here since shortly after I moved from Oakley in 2004. It’s made me question things I don’t want to question. And as much as I hoped the feelings would subside, they have only slightly.

After the incident I did what a reporter does: I requested the dispatch communications, 911 tapes, dispatch and police reports.

Listening to them gives me chills. Around the corner from where the incident happened there were two fire units wrapping up a call. We drove to them and turns out she knows them (and I had met a few of them before, too). One of them put a call out on the radio that a firefighter had a gun pulled on them. Of course she was off-duty and I was with her, but those words broadcast over the radio sent , it seems, every police and fire unit in the city to us.

Seeing police car after fire truck and after bike cop after firefighter after police officer come to our aid was an amazing feeling. And despite their efforts, the asshole who ruined a, perhaps, ungrounded feeling of relative safety I had in my neighborhood, was never caught.

You can listen to the radio dispatch tape below. The 911 call, frankly, was too embarrassing to post and had little information on it. That’s because we gave most of the details about what happened to the officers who responded to the scene and didn’t end up telling the 911 operator. The call  recording basically is she and I not really listening to the dispatcher ask questions about what happened (we were distracted), while I string a number of curse words together to describe the feelings I had about just having a gun pulled on me. In other words, not much to hear.

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(I have edited the tape down to about six minutes from about 18 minutes. I basically deleted dead air time to make the tape shorter.)

In my column in this week’s CityBeat, I comment on an issue that has been buggin’ the heck out of me (and quite a few others) for some time. That’s the lack of alternate transportation options - bike, scooter or just ease of walking (especially when you live in the urban center) - available to folks living in this region.

To learn more, check out the column.

Ron, Suzanne and Joe at Lavomatic, originally uploaded by hjoew.

Ron (left) invited Suzanne (Fountain Square events manager, whom I’d never met) and I for an impromptu lunch at Over-the-Rhine’s newest eatery, Lavomatic (a Jean-Robert de Cavel production). And it was wonderful. The food was super delicious, the conversation was great and it seemed half of Cincinnati was also having lunch there with us. I love days like that!

These two nice Boy Scouts just sold me an $8 can of caramel corn. And I’m happy about that? Sure, why not. They were very courteous and were very persuasive. I even let them keep the $2 change I was owed.

They were stationed outside of the firehouse on Hyde Park Square, next to where I just had my hair cut. I told them I’d post this, so, hey guys!

God,

Save me from your well-intended followers. I believe they do not mean harm and actually have in mind just the opposite, but the giving away food stuff on the sidewalks around Washington Park has got to stop. Ditto that for the obnoxious make-my-ears-bleed religious music and drawn-out conversion sermons that pierce the walls of my apartment on many given weekend days, as long as you keep the weather warm enough.

You (and maybe those I’m talking about, too) would not want someone setting up 3-foot high speakers to blare music all day, so loud you cannot even think, into your home. Same goes for cluttering the public’s sidewalk with tables of food and volunteers to serve it and a couple hundred people waiting in line. They always leave a mess – just like they did today – of over-flowing garbage cans, food dropped on the sidewalk that is never fully cleaned up. Today even a full garbage bag was left sitting in the grass. That’s even though they promised otherwise.

Maybe you could force the hand of a collective City Council to pass a city ordinance banning such activity. But, no wait. Stop. That would infringe on their First Amendment rights. Lord, you know how much I love the First Amendment. Please don’t do that. Let’s think of something else all together.

Thanks for listening. You’re so good at that.

-Joe

Some would say I am getting exactly what I opted for when I moved to Race Street along Washington Park from Oakley more than three years ago. I would say phooey. Taking responsibility for your own behavior and building community can happen anywhere – even in Over-the-Rhine. Hey, this is the center of our region. It’s the best place to start, I think.

The good people from Vineyard Community Church in Springdale – who sponsored Saturday’s feast of pulled meat sandwiches with Montgomery Inn Barbecue sauce, cookies and muffins, red-ripe apples and lemonade – thought I was out of line for even bringing up the concern.

I approached Tom, according to his name tag, who is apparently a biker (based on his black leather vest), to tell him my thoughts. I was not happy, but I think I was courteous in making my points. We just don’t need this type of help, I told him. I told him why, too. He listened to me then walked away with out saying a peep.

Then another woman - who walked away before I could get her name after she gave me a tongue-lashing - told me I was doing “biased journalism” (I do live here, after all) and asked me what I did to contribute to the community. She also told me to take a photo of her picking up trash - which I never saw her do. To answer her question, I told her I live here, for starters.

“Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “That was your choice.”

Wow. Man, I was kind of stupefied. Sorry? My choice? Well, yeah, but what’s that supposed to mean? You’re the one with the army of people from the suburbs ready to dirty up my neighborhood with pork scraps, spilled barbecue sauce, plastic forks and overfilled garbage cans. As for what I do for the community, at that moment I was wearing a WAIF-FM hat and a Flying Pig Marathon volunteer t-shirt. You might not want to get into a what-do-you-do-for-your-community square-off with me. Just sayin’.

But I digress, and I think she was missing the point. It’s not so much about the garbage or the feeding people or your religious views. I cannot think of anything more noble than what the Vineyard volunteers were doing, it was just a little misguided (same for the music folks, too). I doubt any of those folks here today would be too happy with me if I did the same thing across the street from their home.

Here’s an idea: Instead, as I started to suggest the walk-away woman, pair up with the Drop Inn Center – just a half-block away from where Vineyard set up today.

Not a good idea, apparently. The unidentified woman told me there was no room at the Drop Inn Center. I think she actually lied to me. This might be a little unfair, but I phoned the Center’s executive director, Pat Clifford, right after she and I spoke. I have never volunteered there (I should), but Clifford said that was not the case. There was room. Plus, the Cincinnati Fire Department had just made a run there minutes before during the lunch hour. A paramedic told me the place was nearly empty.

Lots of room at the Inn – almost no one ate there today. They were serving hot dogs and potato chips for lunch, I was told. Turns out the typical diners at the Drop Inn were out in the park eating pulled meat sandwiches. Clifford said no outside groups sponsored Saturday’s lunch at the Drop Inn Center. But setting up sponsorship, i.e. volunteering, is easy. Contact the volunteer coordinator for future events. It would have been better to serve your food inside at the Drop Inn Center. They could even help you clean up.

Rules at the Drop Inn Center dictate that religious material cannot be handed out by volunteers, but Vineyard was not even doing that on the public sidewalk across from my home.

A short time after you left I also ran into Steve - my friend from ASG who always reminds me that I am the one who taught him what a blog is every time I see him - who said his church (there are about a half-dozen in the blocks that surround Washington Park, including two right along the park on Race Street near where lunch was being served by Vineyard) serves brunches for free every Sunday. Maybe you could use their church as a base instead of the sidewalk.

Park Board regulations now say giving away food in the park is not permitted. So, the many groups that come down here doing this sort of thing skirt the spirit of the rule and rely on the letter of it, opting to set up shop on the sidewalks around the park instead.
When I arrived home around 11:30 a.m. to the sight of the Vineyard volunteers, I could not find a satisfactory place to park. One of church’s vans was taking up part of two spaces, one of which was the only place quasi-available. I squeezed in anyway. A typical Saturday means loads of available parking spaces. Not today - and not against the law, either, but frustrating nonetheless. Plus, the sidewalk was crowded with people, so much so that it made it hard to walk by.

It’s not that I have a problem, per se, with anyone, religious or otherwise, coming down and feeding people. But there are already people doing this in the neighborhood on a regular schedule. Why not pair up with people who know the neighborhood and what is going on? Come down and learn a bit about what’s going on and most importantly be courteous to the people who live here everyday.

By the way, I went down and had a Vineyard lunch. The food was pretty good, actually. But when I got to the Montgomery Inn Sauce person, he was out. So, I ran up to my apartment and brought down two bottles I just happened to have in my pantry. The volunteers were very grateful (as were, I suspect, some of the hungry takers). I’m glad I could help out. After all, they were already here, had some hungry people waiting. Can’t make them leave, even if I wanted them to. Just hope next time they - whether it be handing out food or playing loud music - will be more courteous and think more about those who call this place home before they do their good work.

My column in today’s Post is not about politics or politicians. To some, it might not even be news.

The horrors that go on outside my Over-the-Rhine home windows would be shocking to many, but to me and so many others they either have become or always have been a part of life in this neighborhood. It’s life and I chose to be here, around it. It’s not that I like this stuff - I don’t - but it reminds that life is different for all of us in so many good and bad ways. That’s the part I enjoy being a part of.

Among the historical buildings and cultural institutions, life happens right here, right there and over yonder with hardly anyone noticing except the police, the social workers, the many agencies that help down here.

But 10 feet below me and across Race Street Friday morning laid a woman not moving. Her friend, tripping on heroin, smacking her with a 2-foot long twig and saying incoherent things. She was obviously scared and panicking.

The two park benches next to each other near the 13th & Race streets entrance of the Washington Park - the ones that have at least one person sitting on them (usually it’s full, no room to sit down) from 7 a.m. until at least 10 p.m. every single day of the year - has a bunch of people cackling, talking and carrying on around and on it. No different than just about any other day.

But it gets quiet for a second. One stops and pulls out his cell phone and dials 9-1-1. “Dwayne,” the dispatcher tells me, when I pick up my phone next to me and I make the same call. I did not see him on the phone. He beat my call my a few seconds, the dispatcher tells me.

The dispatcher stays on the phone with me to make sure the sirens we are both now hearing are going to the incident we are talking about and I am calling to report. Too often calls like this - of someone not moving, likely an overdose - come into the city’s dispatch center, high atop “Mount Slushmore” in Price Hill, at the same time about different incidents. Let’s be sure that’s not the case this time, she tells me.

From there the column pretty much picks up the rest of the story. I did not see the woman move at all while she was laying on the ground or in the intervening seconds before the paramedics lifted her up, put her on a stretcher, loaded her into the ambulance or the few minutes after that before they left to take her to the hospital.

I will be checking on her this week and looking to expand upon this article in The Post in coming editions.

For months now a deal to move Cincinnati’s award-winning School for Creative and Performing Arts to the parking lot between the Central Parkway YMCA and Media Bridges in Over-the-Rhine has been touch and go. Though few have talked about it publicly, sources have told me everything from it’s a done deal to it would never happen.

I tended to believe that it would happen eventually (call it a hunch), but maybe in some modified version. Even when there was a groundbreaking and unveiling of a “coming soon” sign at the corner of Elm Street and Central Parkway in February depicting what the new building would look like, I knew there were still some major hurdles to jump over.

One of them - aside from some major funding issues - was what to do with the Drop Inn Center’s holding firm on not giving up the transitional housing it owns at the corner of 12th and Elm streets. Drop Inn’s managing director, Pat Clifford, told me about a year ago that no one had contacted him about the buildings after initial talks had stalled and he figured they had re-drawn plans to work around the Drop Inn’s properties. No longer so, as I report in today’s Post.

So, in another exciting sign that things are really starting to happen in Over-the-Rhine, it appears the Cincinnati Public Schools and those who have worked tirelessly to make this happen got their wish, Drop Inn got a viable alternative to their current situation and we might get a school on that property - and with all its intended splendor - sooner than we thought. Just need a few more deep pockets, which I’m sure is hiding among the city’s (not necessarily the city government’s) proverbial seat cushions.
Things just seem to be happening everywhere down here. Makes me very happy. Now, I’m going to go check out my pals new stores on Vine Street in the Gateway Quarter. I was on vacation and missed all their openings. Time to go make it up…