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.

Yesterday was a beautiful day to canoe down the Mill Creek.

You might be asking yourself if there is ever a day that is warm enough, beautiful enough and worth- the-possible-health-risks enough to ever go within 10 feet of Cincinnati’s most notorious waterway. And you’d be right, or at least partially correct. But I am a reporter, I’m a little crazy and I must sacrifice myself for the readers of The Post and Report This! so that the truth can be known.

And the truth? It’s beautiful, it’s pretty clean and it’s a hidden gem among the mostly industrial wasteland that it meanders through.

We got in at the Mitchell Avenue exit of Interstate 75 and paddled – more than six miles – all the way down to the Mill Creek Pumping Station, next to Spinney Field in Lower Price Hill.

I saw lots of things yesterday I never thought I would see on the Mill Creek. For example, hundreds of carp spawning as far up as Northside. They were everywhere. A bird watcher in one canoe spotted 44 different species of birds, including Wood ducks, Mallard ducks, geese and several dozen goslings, herons, cardinals. We saw turtles, groundhogs, snakes swimming in the creek and lots of evidence of beavers who have chewed trees along the banks.

Sadly, there is a big pile of trash – so thick it could not be canoed through – near the mouth of the Mill Creek where it pours into the Ohio. Those photos are particularly amazing and disturbing. It also smelled awful from the dead animals floating in the water. The photos tell visually that part of the story, so check them out. But, keep in mind, that was a tiny sliver of an otherwise beautiful stream.

I’ll save some for my story, which I hope to have in the paper tomorrow. But, as the handshake photo formally demonstrates , I am now officially a member of the Mill Creek Yacht Club – t-shirt and all (that photo is the long-and-short of their official induction ceremony). Special thanks to Bruce Koehler, shaking my hand in the photo above, for inviting me on the trip.
NOTE: To see images from the trip, click on either photo to be taken to a set.

Fountain Square has been…been, a mess. The grand opening in October was – poet politicking aside – a wee bit early. Despite that, I understand the celebration was top-notch and the entertainment spectacular, a testament to what is likely to come (I was out of town that weekend).

In the days and weeks afterward, though, the number one comment heard about the Square wasn’t how wonderful it was that Saturday — but how empty it was afterward. There was no place to sit down, nothing to look at and the Fountain had been emptied and turned off and there was barely room to move with all the construction equipment.

But there is real good news to report today. This evening’s tree-lighting ceremony (beginning at 5 p.m.) will be on a Square that looks much more done that its October predecessor.

Though lots of construction still litters the perimeter, the Fountain is on, the garage is covered in a bright white epoxy that gives it a brand-new, fresh and vibrant look (it is quite amazing actually how nice the garage looks), the big, new ice rink is filled, frozen and ready to go. It appears today new lights are being installed. The two little tent-shelters located on the east and west sides of the rink are filled with snacks to be sold and skates to be rented.

There are also a couple of noteworthy additions in recent days/weeks:

• About 20 Bose speakers have been installed on the Square, attached to light poles. Thursday they were playing sound — live CNN — from the large-screen display television above Macy’s. The new speakers will be helpful hearing Mayor Mark Mallory’s comments at this evening’s ceremony. He pre-recorded an announcement because he will not be able to be there.
• Several “Pay Here Parking” machines are located throughout the complex, both on the Square at the garage elevators and below inside the garage. With the pay-on-foot system, parkers will get a ticket as they enter the garage, pay at a machine before returning to their car and feed the validated ticket into an automatic gate to exit.
• Valet parking. Entering the garage from Vine Street and there’s a valet parking attendant location and a valet office nearby.
• Though police officers on the Square said they were told the Fountain had been turned off for the winter, the fountain is on and looks gorgeous. Later, others said water was in the Fountain for the opening but had to be drained again to apply more water-proofing.
• Video cameras were attached to light poles on the Square in recent days.
• The Square closes. The hours are pretty convenient, but never has the Square had a closing time in its history. From 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. everyday the Square will be off-limits, except to those entering or leaving the parking garage.
• A police officer from the downtown services unit is now assigned to the Square around the clock, according to one stationed there.

Privately, city leaders said they were very disappointed in the decision to rush the re-opening of the Square, feeling that the unveiling the city was having wasn’t an unveiling at all – it was a showcase too early of too little and a fear the public would right off the Square before its vision was fully realized.

They also said the delay was likely not the fault of the Cincinnati Center City Development Corp., or 3CDC, but that of the construction company hired to do the work. But it was 3CDC’s choice to move forward on the opening.

This was done, in part, because entertainers scheduled to appear had to be booked several weeks in advance. A major band scheduled to appear in September — when the Square was originally set to open — could not make the October opening, said Bill Donabedian,3CDC’s Fountain Square managing director, in September.

Despite the assertions to the contrary in recent weeks, 3CDC officials never said in the many months leading up to the unveiling they intended the Square to be a rolling open in any presentations I attended. I have heard the presentation countless times in the past few years and that was never mentioned until, well, it appeared that an uncompleted Square was inevitable. Officials from the private-public partnership did often say, however, that landscaping would not be complete. Why? Some of the trees, shrubbery and flowers to be planted would not be well-suited to being put in the ground in the fall.

Bringing the Genius of Water fountain – one of the city’s most identifiable landmarks – secretly on Sept. 2 without alerting the media, the public, or, well, anyone was as poor a stunt as the black-clad, briefcase-carrying “actors” that accompanied it.

Donabedian told at least one reporter who caught wind of the plans that telling the public of the plans to bring the fountain back amounted to us “ruining everything.” He told the Enquirer’s Sara Pearce that that “we tell people too much in this town.”

Frankly, we do not tell them enough.

Donabedian’s not-so-well-thought-out reason? People need to get in the habit of being downtown so they just happen to see the big happenings. Not good.

The morning the story ran in The Post and the few days after, I received so many letters, e-mails and phone calls thanking me for letting them know the Fountain would be coming back it was bit overwhelming. People in Cincinnati like to be told what’s going on — and they like it especially when their prized treasure is on the move. Some said this would be last local history-making event they would get to see in their lifetime.

Today, they have another chance to see something great. I look forward to tonight’s event and many more to come. There’s a good feeling around the Square — between restaurants opening and just general activity and the discussion of many things planned for nearby — that the public may catch the fever and create downtown’s much-needed and highly-anticipated long-missing buzz.

I hope I’m right.