Spring is near
Originally uploaded by hjoew
The tree outside my apartment window is about to burst with spring
beauty. This makes me very happy.
Spring is near
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Category Archives: City Living
On Segway tour of Cincinnati
Facebook Lexicon and “Cincinnati”
The Facebook Lexicon is a searhable application tracks the usage of terms used in Facebook on group, profile and wall pages. It’s an endlessly fascinating way to take a bird’s eye view of what people are talking about – and, frankly, what they are not.
Because of Facebook’s global scope, I think it’s hard to be able to get a true measure of what local people think. But, with our overall obsession with what the world thinks of Cincinnati, it’s a interesting way to see when exactly people talk about Cincinnati.
Here’s the chart for Facebook and the word “Cincinnati” for 2008.
Using the Facebook Lexicon, the word "Cincinnati," Jan to Dec 2008
What exactly gets people talking about Cincinnati? I’m not sure. My memory is not that good. But maybe a look back at news coverage will give us an idea why there is a spike, for example, in early- to mid-March? Or big drops in mid-December? Or how can we better take advantage of the interest in Cincinnati during the warmer months of the year?
There has also been much said about Obama’s superior utilization of the Internet, but more specially new media, during the campaign. And that’s obvious with another feature of the Lexicon, comparative searches (up to five terms possible). I searched for “Obama” and “McCain” and zoomed into 2008.
If, presumably, McCain did not about this and he did, would he or his campaign staff worked harder to embrace new media?
There is not enough data to do the search I would really like to do: “Driehaus” and “Chabot.” No surprise, I am a big proponent of social media and politics. But surprisingly, there is still quite a bit of resistance to it.
There are loads of other possible searches. I have done a few others like “election” and “Cincinnati”; “boring” and “Cincinnati”; “fun” and “Cincinnati”; “streetcar,” “useful route” and “Cincinnati” – with not enough data present to render results. But I bet in the future there will be and this will be a great and very useful feature. What other searches would you do?
Please poo/pee in the bathroom
When I first moved to Over-the-Rhine in 2004, the building next to ours on Race Street in Cincinnati, the one at 13th and Race streets, was akin to tenement housing with, if I recall correctly, around 40 single-room “apartments” that shared a bathroom on each floor. I never went inside because of the sounds I heard outside from next door. Let’s say I was a lot curious, but even more afraid.
Then, came the Model Group, which gutted the place, and with the help of tax credits and other assistance, remodeled the inside into 20ish “town home” income-sensitive apartments that ranged from two to three bedrooms apiece. The place changed dramatically from a flophouse to a place where families lived. After the noisy remodeling job (progress does come at a price – in my case, peace and quiet), I went on the opening day tour. Wow. It was great inside.
The few years after the remodeling job it has remained (my recollection ending when I moved to Mount Washington in September 2008), relatively the same. Few police calls (I noticed only a few) and relative quiet, aside from the occaisional loud stereo. About a year before I moved I began to notice the front entrance had become a hang-out for wh0-knows-who, but it stayed much better than it was.
All this jibber jabber is all a roundabout way of saying that mixed socio-economic backgrounds do co-exsist peacefully in Over-the-Rhine and its a pattern that should continue until the whole giant-sized neighborhood is reformed. Having a nice place to live, something most people I know take for granted, is a small thing with a big impact on those who know nothing better. That’s why when a friend, who happens to enter a lot of Cincinnati public housing and tells me most of them are pretty dodgy at best, sent me this photo from the inside of one of them. If people are using the outside of the places that they live – or their guests, visitors or neighbors are doing it – something ain’t working. A sign like the one below ought to be a clear sign that the model might be a bit broken…
I wonder how many people were peeing under the sign while they were reading this? Or, read it and then thought, “Hey, you know, I really should pee outside, go in my apartment and pee or knock on a door and see if anyone will let me pee in their apartment instead?” Probably a lot.
United Nations meets on Fountain Square
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.
The Kaldi’s dilemma
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.
Smile. Someone or something is watching.
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.
The hold-up tapes
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.
(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.)
Being more eco-friendly in the transpo department-o
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.
Lavomatic lunch
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!