The Mighty Motor City - Part 2: St. Agnes/Marty's of Uganda
It was the second stop of the day on our latest trip to Detroit, MI.
The Night That Covington Stood Still
"He came down to the scene like a captain coming to his ship," or something like that, is what I overheard one of the news reporters behind me saying while I stood with the crowd.
The Mighty Motor City - Part 1: Ferris Elementary
"Hide your 'whiteness,'" was a piece of advice uttered to me just before we crept through an open field that was once filled with kids enjoying their recess from school. "What? Really?" I replied to our guide.
It's So Cold in the D.
As I was driving on 75 North with Gozer, we joked about the homemade hip hop song and music video that became an internet sensation (and that this post is named after). One would hardly think that the monotone singing and offbeat lyrics are actually for a serious song about "T Baby's" deceased brother and infant son, hence why the "D (Detroit)" is "So Cold." Ironically for us though, the D would in fact be cold although in terms of temperature, not personal tragedy.
The Problem These Days is That Kids are Learning History Off The Walls of Applebees.
I feel my life is more in danger at the Kenwood Towne Centre on a weeknight than when I have an expensive camera around my neck in OTR and downtown at midnight.
An Atypical View at an Atypical Time: Great American Ballpark
A frustrating day - ready for baseball, so I took a walk around the ballpark. Different perspectives of the ballpark taken during a different time than when most people see it.
Fortune Cookie Prophecy Part 2: The Surf Cincinnati Abandoned Miniature Golf Classic
The prophecy of a "delightful journey" laid out by the fortune cookie in Part 1 had so far come true when Gozer and I explored the remains of forgotten Lancaster Street earlier in the day.
Fortune Cookie Prophecy Part 1: Lancaster St.
I didn't have much around my apartment for breakfast. Some Grippo's BBQ chips, frozen corn dogs, lemonade and two fortune cookies was about all there was. A small cookie made of flour, sugar, vanilla and oil with a message inside it seemed like a good thing to eat. I don't usually put any faith in the "fortunes" found within these takeout accompanying deserts, but since Gozer and I were about to go exploring, this one seemed like a good sign.
Monster Trucks at the Gardens
January might as well have been "Monster Truck Month" in Cincinnati. For three weekends straight, the Cincinnati market was saturated with three different touring circuits of over-sized pickup trucks that drive around and crush cars. Last week there as an event at the US Bank Arena downtown, next week there's one at the Bank of Kentucky Center on NKU's campus, but this week there were monster trucks at the best arena in town: the Cincinnati Gardens.
Third Time's a Charm - Forgotten Cincinnati Exhibition Returns
Not many "threequels" are successful.
The "Glencoe Hole."
One of Cincinnati's abandoned icons - a complex of row houses and apartments in an entire neighborhood where the residents have left.
A Festivus For the Rest of Us (2011 Calendar on Sale!)
There was some radio station in town that started playing Christmas music the day after Halloween. Why?
An Impulsive Tour of Chicago
I first went to Chicago on one of my favorite family trips ever when I was probably 10 or 11.
Roebling's Last Gleaming
It's by far one of the most recognizable, if not the quintessential, architectural symbols of the Queen City. And while there were many others well before me who braved the fence spikes and potential plunge to the chilly Ohio River below, I doubt I'll be the last to ever personally take in a breathtaking, postcard-esque view where your eyes are swept up by the curving lines of the cables towards the city skyline - like its some island in the distance.
Stearns and Foster
A massive abandoned mattress factory in the Cincinnati suburb of Lockland as seen in the summer of 2008.
Rally at the Square, Reds October and an Open Letter to Frank Fitzpatrick of the Philadelphia Inquirer.
On the morning of October 20, 1990, then Reds owner Marge Schott addressed a large crowd gathered at Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati. "We won this for the fans, God love ya," she said.
The Rise of an Icon.
In July 2008, the second phase of Queen City Square began construction. Phase II, dubbed the "Great American Tower" (after primary tenant Great American Insurance) would eventually come to be a 41 floor office tower topped with a "tiara" inspired after the late Princess Diana's, a tribute to Cincinnati's nickname of the "Queen City." The first Cincinnati skyscraper to be constructed in the past two decades would continue to rise despite the onset of the "Great Recession" while other major construction projects in nearby Kenwood became rusty hulks on the suburban skyline. A new icon was rising in Cincinnati.
Steel City Discovery
Like Cincinnati's cut-in-the-hill view on North 75 in Kentucky, Pittsburgh features a dramatic entrance. Cars crowd through suburban countryside and into the Fort Pitt Tunnel (seen above) into a mess of traffic and yellow light before emerging into a striking view of the Pittsburgh skyline.