Random Photographs, Thoughts, and Tales | January - March 2025
Random photographs, thoughts, and tales acquired in the first quarter of this year that didn’t have a place in a larger story or post.
Also started a new “list” for 2025.
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Downtown Cincinnati.
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“Ya know, I like that we have seasons here!”
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“A Fun, Casual Joint:”
“How should we decorate our restaurant?”
“Just print your aunt’s Facebook page.”
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Central Parkway, Cincinnati.
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Cincinnati’s greatest restroom.
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Court Street Copyright Collage:
I‘ve been living and working in Downtown Cincinnati ever since the Kroger at Court and Walnut first opened. Located next to the corporation’s headquarters, both this store and the company’s signature office tower fittingly stand on the location of a historic public market. There’s a mural on the store’s wall that pays tribute to this with a display of photographs that showcase how the area has been a center of commerce over time. Despite having been a regular customer at this particular Kroger for years, I’d never noticed this collage until I happened to actually need a shopping cart one night.
The mural caught my attention for two reasons:
The lower left collage image which showed a circular “Court Street Marketplace” sign.
The center bottom collage image which showed the area as it appeared in the early 2010s.
The “Marketplace” sign in Image 1 was a remnant from a late 80s revitalization project. One, that by the early 2000’s, had fizzled out. It’s the kind of mundane, yet charming downtown Cincinnati detail that I always noticed when I was younger, but never thought to document. Had it not been for this mural, I might’ve completely forgotten about these signs and never known that I’d apparently taken them for granted. All this to say: I figured that Image 1 was from some old promotional brochure or tourism booklet. It just had a kind of classic, nostalgic look—a neat local history “find” that someone happened to slap up on the wall of a grocery store.
Image 2 was similar, but peculiar. Like Image 1, It also featured an example from that late 80s revitalization project (an aesthetic tribute to the historic market’s former bell tower that I passed every day for years and never thought to photograph), but it was visually “off.” Unlike the sepia-toned historic photographs and the high quality capture of the “Marketplace” sign, this photograph was clearly of a lower grade. It had all these strange glitches in the details, was poorly exposed, and the faces of the people who appeared in the composition were blurred. Overall: just a bad image that seemed out of place for a piece of corporate marketing.
Initially, I thought that maybe the image was an early example of digital “photo stitching,” something that even ten years ago could be fairly difficult to pull off if you weren’t patient. Or maybe it was just a screen grab from a security camera. Sure, it might’ve been difficult for some Kroger historian to find a picture from this particular time in Court St.’s life, but even if this was the only one available: why bother?
Mural details.
All in all, this just boiled down to a slightly humorous “thing” that I picked up on—not just as someone who’s from here and appreciates history, but also as someone with a career in photography and marketing. As I walked home, that image really stuck with me. I wanted to pull out my phone and check, but since I had used a cart earlier (which had inadvertently introduced me to the mural), I was now regretfully walking several blocks with a load of groceries that were absolutely, and absurdly, too heavy. As the plastic bags cut off the circulation in my fingers, though, my suspicion narrowed:
“They didn’t use a screenshot from Google Street View did they?”
They did.
Specifically, a screenshot of (approximately) 999 Walnut St. in April 2012.
I ended up sharing this whole semi-humorous happening on Instagram where a friend (we’ll call him “Randy”) would soon reply:
“Well lord knows they couldn’t use the July 2015 shot. It’s imperative that you be a good journalist and figure out why. Trust me when I say, nothing you’re doing right now is as important.”
- Randy
And there on Google Street View—in the same spot, but a different year—was Randy:
Gob’s wife.
When I decided to share this whole anecdote in on one of my “random” posts, I realized I didn’t actually know anything about the historic Court Street Market. Of course, a search would lead me to the wonderful Digging Cincinnati History work of Ann Senefeld. As I scrolled through her article on the market’s history, I noticed a funny coincidence: she had used the exact same screenshot from Google Street View.
“What was it with this particular view of Court Street?” I thought.
And as I scrolled to the next picture, another coincidence: that exact same photo of the “Court Street Marketplace” sign:
Screenshot of “Digging Cincinnati History.”
In her post, Ann had customarily credited the sources of the images she used and even the Google screenshot was appropriately acknowledged. As for the photograph of the “Marketplace” sign, that turned out to be her own photograph as indicated by a caption which reads: “2013, Digging Cincinnati History.”
What was supposed to just be a short story about how I learned my friend Randy had snuck a reference to “Arrested Development” into Google Street View had now become an odyssey of potential plagiarism. I figured I should reach out to Ann first, on the chance that maybe she and Kroger had an arrangement and that the company had properly acquired the rights to use her work.
So, Kroger, if you’re listening: please do the right thing and appropriately compensate Ann for her work.
She certainly deserves it.
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Sharonville, Ohio.
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Office building. The Village of Evendale, Ohio.
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Downtown Cincinnati.
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Cookie Monster:
According to my parents and a photo album in their basement: 35 years ago, I had a birthday cake themed to the popular Sesame Street character known as “Cookie Monster” (seen discarded in balloon form above). Allegedly, the aftermath of dealing with a toddler who’d consumed a fair amount of blue colored icing was “unpleasant.”
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The Shell Station of Liberty Street and its Flickr Vibes:
“Flickr vibes” being that neither of these frames are particularly poignant or meaningful, but if I logged into Flickr for the first time in years and uploaded them with a generic, straightforward name like “Liberty St. Shell Cincinnati Over the Rhine 2025” they’d be super interesting to someone like me in 15 years or so.
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Music Hall, Cincinnati.
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From the Mercantile Library’s Stairwell:
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9th St., Cincinnati.
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Bowen Alley, Cincinnati.
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This building as seen from Bowen Alley.
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The two best.
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Pendleton, Cincinnati.
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Catastrophizing Crime Fighting Canines at Chili’s:
My three-year-old nephew is a big fan of Paw Patrol. Although well-versed with the intrigue of Adventure Bay, he’s far from the only toddler following the heroics of four-legged first responders and the machinations of Mayor Humdinger. Unsurprisingly, a children’s show centered around animated dogs and fire trucks has captivated kids for well over a decade now. Every second of every day, those devoted disciples of Ryder grow older. Inching ever closer to not just adulthood, but perhaps one of its most potentially perilous pitfalls: nostalgia.
Their first realization will arrive in the form of tender, youthful memories as they begin to ask each other: “who didn’t love that show?” Then, Paw Patrol-branded clothing will be more commonly found in adult sizes—sold alongside collectible merchandise that, for a awhile, serves as thoughtful stocking stuffers and clever desk decorations. Eventually, 15 or 20 years will have gone by and the people will look to the producers. At last, the Paw Patrol prophecy has come to pass! A franchise is born.
The precocious pups of Gen-Alpha-days-gone-by will be re-imagined as gritty, live-action antiheroes who inhabit both a cinematic universe and its streaming service spin-offs. While Chase is on the case of milking something for all it’s worth, the whole endeavor will probably be entertaining enough. But after a few poorly-received sequels, a series of failed reboots, and the inevitable, natural decline of both quality and interest—the fans will cry out for mercy: “Put the Paw Patrol media empire to sleep, don’t let it suffer anymore!”
Those folks who once indulged in nostalgia—now older and weary of seeing things once casually enjoyed ground into cultural dust—might find themselves swimming in cynicism. Perhaps at a Chili’s around 2:00 p.m. on a Monday. Watching cable television and sipping Coors. Wondering if their three-year-old nephew’s favorite show will eventually fall into what seems to be an unyielding, manufactured cycle.
There are far worse places to be, though, and the boneless buffalo wings are actually pretty good.
Chili’s.
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Gano St.
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Wonderful neighbors.
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Discarded Bockfest Bra. Downtown Cincinnati
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The “terminal in Miami International Airport that kind of looks like the type of early-90s mall you’d seen on ‘America’s Most Wanted’ or ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’”
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7th St., Cincinnati.
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North Alley, Cincinnati.
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Someone has been leaving Pokemon cards all over the neighborhood.
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Ok, that’s what I got for now. Back with more stories soon. In the meantime, I also started another “list.”
Since 2007, the content of this website (and its former life as Queen City Discovery) has been a huge labor of love.
If you’ve enjoyed stories like The Ghost Ship, abandoned amusement parks, the Cincinnati Subway, Fading Ads, or others over the years—might you consider showing some support for future projects?
