2025 “List”
In 2024, I started a new photo series. Dubbed “the list,” it consisted of images I’d purposefully sought to make based on a long running tab I had going. Essentially a docket of scribbles, screenshots, map coordinates, and reference images all detailing things I wanted to eventually get around to documenting.
By the end of 2024, I was really happy with the photographs I made, but the file in my phone called “potential things to shoot” seemingly never stops growing. So, in an effort to keep with it, here’s the 2025 edition—a post that I plan to regularly come back to and update throughout the year.
Last Updated: November 26, 2025
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Last Updated: November 26, 2025 —
March 31, 2025 Entries:
Cappel’s party supply store in Cincinnati during Winter Storm Blair.
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Shepard Fairey wheatpaste in the Over-The-Rhine neighborhood of Cincinnati.
In the fall of 2024, renowned artist Shepard Fairey debuted a mural with Cincinnati’s ArtWorks organization. Described as “…part of ArtWorks’ nonpartisan ‘Get Out the Vote’ project to inspire civic engagement,” the painting of a permanent mural was also accompanied by several of Fairey’s wheatpaste installations (which feature similar themes and messaging). In the days after their placement, just a few weeks before the 2024 US presidential election, several of the wheatpastes were vandalized. What remains of these pieces are simply scraps with the above example feeling particularly poignant.
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View from the The Mercantile Library, a downtown Cincinnati institution.
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Sawyer Point Stairs, Cincinnati:
April 15, 2025 Entry:
Mercantile Building Stairs, Cincinnati:
I shot the first photo on a random whim and ended up not liking the quality from my phone. Went back a few days later to make the second photograph with a real camera and ended up not liking the crop.
So, I walked the dog again a few hours later and photographed it once more:
Something about those stairs.
April 18, 2025 Entry:
Honestly, when it comes to the above photographs: I prefer the first composition, but that’s not what’s important here. Rather, it’s at this moment (2:11 a.m. on 4/18/25 (the day before I turn 36)) that I realized the 1999 song “Better Days (And the Bottom Drops Out) is by a group named Citizen King and not, in fact, by Sublime.
April 24, 2025 Entries:
8th St. Cincinnati.
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Cincinnati Streetcar:
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The hotel built around the same time as the now-demolished “sculpture park” I wrote about.
May 16, 2025 Entry:
This building/street in Cincinnati’s Clifton Heights neighborhood felt like a midwestern version of San Francisco.
June 29, 2025 Entries:
The ad on the side of this Cincinnati bus stop is saying: “I will survive.”
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For years while working and living in this neighborhood, this particular sign frame held a canvas advertisement for a gyro spot owned by a cantankerous gentleman named “Uncle Mo.” When Mo’s closed down, this tax service sign was revealed again. Via some quick googling, it seems that the family tax service business is no longer around, but is fondly remembered by its loyal customers..
July 1, 2025 Entry:
Unique series of road signs. West End, Cincinnati.
July 21, 2025 Entries:
4th & Main, Downtown Cincinnati:
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12th St. in OTR/Pendleton:
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Downtown Cincinnati’s Healthline Fitness Course:
I’ve been passing by these signs the last few years and eventually realized that they correspond with some structures a few blocks away.
Debuting in the mid-1980s, The Healthline Fitness Course was intended to be a series of self-guided exercise routes which would direct participants around various local attractions. I have a vague memory of one “exercise cluster” having existed at Sawyer Point, but as far as I know—the only station still remaining is the one seen below—sitting between the County Jail and the casino.
What’s notable about these signs are the landmarks they highlight, many of which are now long gone such as defunct department stores and the multipurpose stadium that was blown up in favor of two modern replacements.
Riverfront Stadium/Cinergy Field is highlighted at the bottom left. The former home of the Reds and Bengals was imploded in 2002 when new stadiums were constructed. Meanwhile, the “Coliseum” to the right still remains, but has changed names several times over the years.
I made these photographs this morning while walking the dog and kept thinking that I should really go for a run, but instead I’m sitting here watching 1987’s “The Running Man.” Close enough and this film is a classic.
August 5, 2025 Entry:
The world’s worst Dollar General awash in warm light. Downtown Cincinnati.
EDIT: Look closely to the right side of the right Dollar General logo and you can see a CVS label scar.
October 1, 2025 Entries:
Walnut Hills, Cincinnati:
Former “Tasty Bird” and “Titan Tax.”
I only had one lens on me at the time, but if you zoom in—there are several overlapping ghost signs for a former bowling alley:
Oddly similar to the second photograph posted earlier in this series.
The wall in the background once had this great ghost sign on it before white paint and canvas U-Haul ad showed up. I’ve never seen the “Taste of Motor City” open, but I hope to one day find out what the “more” is within the tag line of “Egg Rolls and More!”
This abandoned pizza place (seen both above and below), appears to have once been a local institution that shut its doors in 2012.
And speaking of former pizza places in Cincinnati…
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Cincinnati’s “Subway Restaurants:”
The following photographs of boarded up entrances depict businesses that once occupied a section of Downtown Cincinnati’s Walnut St. between 3rd and 4th Streets. I called them “subway* restaurants” because their entrances once sat on an incline which required visitors to enter via a set of stairs akin to a subway station (not that this city has one).
*not to be confused with this city’s abundance of Subway sandwich shops
For the last few years, one could look down into the remains of what had been a Snappy Tomato Pizza and a diner known as “The Squirrel” (formerly a “Red Squirrel” franchise). Of course, by the time I finally wandered over with a camera, the windows and entrances were boarded up. Neither restaurant was particularly notable, but they were the last of their kind—cheap, reliable eats in a neighborhood that now has fewer and fewer affordable options even at lunchtime on weekdays.
November 3, 2025 Entries:
8th & Main Streetcar Station, Cincinnati.
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Paulding Alley, Cincinnati.
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Walnut St, Cincinnati.
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Ogden Pl, Cincinnati.
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I unapologetically love this building on Cincinnati’s 3rd St.
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November 4, 2025 Entries:
This Fading Advertisement at the Corner of Vine & Elder, Cincinnati:
Complete with a Technique2012 piece:
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This Old Grippo’s Sign on Vine St, Cincinnati:
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Findlay St, Cincinnati.
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3rd St, Cincinnati.
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2nd St.
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November 26, 2025 Entry:
This is the last photograph I decided to check off the list. I’m not “done,” rather—I deleted everything else that was still on it. It all got to be too much. I mean, it wasn’t necessarily important in the grand scheme of things and it wasn’t always bearing on my mind, but I’d rather just not worry about it. I ended up getting a bunch of good stuff from “the list(s)” these last two years and I really like all of these photographs, but I think it’s time to move on. So, here’s the last frame I made in this series. Didn’t turn out how I was envisioning, but I really liked it nonetheless. Especially since it features those Cincinnati Subway-era concrete railings and this whole area will look vastly different in the next year, let alone the next ten.
West End, Cincinnati.
Last Updated: November 26, 2025
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Last Updated: November 26, 2025 —
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