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Arts & Entertainment Business News

Tour new condos in OTR this weekend

From noon to 5pm on Sunday, September 13, the public is invited to tour some of Over-the-Rhine’s newest condos and lofts. The free OTR Tour of Living will take guests through 11 buildings in historic Over-the-Rhine; seven of which have opened within the past year.

In all, there are 115 units priced from the low $100’s to the mid $200’s within the 11 buildings (full list below). More than 40 percent of these units have already been sold or are currently under contract, but all of the buildings on the tour still have some units available according to Gateway Quarter realtors.

The OTR Tour of Living will take place during the monthly Second Sunday on Main street festival which features local vendors, live music, beer, food, cooking demonstrations and more. September’s Second Sunday on Main festival is the last one of the 2009 season, so be sure to get out there.

Those going on the tour can pick up a map and “OTR Gateway Quarter Tour of Living” information at tents located at 12th and Main and 12th and Vine streets. Event organizers will also be providing free Gateway Quarter water bottles to tour participants, and will also offer the opportunity to register for door prizes from the Gateway Quarter shopping district.

Parking is available a the corner of 12th and Vine as well as street parking along Vine, Walnut and 12th streets. The Gateway Quarter and Main Street through OTR is also well-served by a host of Queen City Metro routes. To see which route is most convenient for you, and to plan your trip now, use Metro’s Trip Planner.

OTR Tour of Living Loft Condos:

  • 14th & Vine, 1331-35 Vine St.
  • Belmain Lofts, 1202 Main St.
  • Centennial Row, 12th and Race streets
  • City Home, 14th and Pleasant streets
  • Duveneck Flats, 1214-20 Vine St.
  • Falling Wall, 1417-21 Main St.
  • Gateway Condos, 1128 Vine St.
  • Good Fellows Hall, 1306 Main St.
  • Lackman Lofts, 1237 Vine St.
  • Mottainai, 1222-24 Republic St.
  • Trideca Lofts, 1232 Vine St.
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Arts & Entertainment Business News

Free Wave Riot celebrates 20 years for Media Bridges

Cincinnati is fortunate to have a community media center, Media Bridges, which makes it easy for our citizens to have their voices heard. The organization operates our city’s public access television channels and will soon launch an FM radio station, Radio Free Queen City.

You can support independent media in Cincinnati, and help raise the money needed to launch the new station, by attending the Free Wave Riot this Saturday, September 5 at the Know Theater. The event, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Media Bridges, will help feature live music from local bands IsWhat?, the Tigerlilies, Fourth Letter Gang, Culture Queer, J. Dorsey Blues Revival, Losanti, and the Frankl Project. Spoken word performances, dancing, and video installations will also be part of the art presented at the event.

A raffle will be held with lots of great prizes, including an Enjoy the Arts membership, Media Bridges merchandise, and gift certificates to Coffee Emporium, Total Juice, Enzo’s, Chez Nora, and more.

Tickets are available at the door and at WVQC.org. The suggested ticket price is $9.57 (since the new station will be at 95.7 FM), but donations of any amount will be accepted at the door.

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Arts & Entertainment Business News

Newport Gangster Tours return for third round of fun this fall

Remember when Newport was Sin City? Some people around these parts do, but most of us don’t think of Newport as more than a destination for dining, movies, or a show at The Southgate House. Well, the fellas running the Newport Gangsters Gamblers and Girls Tour are getting the story out about the city’s colorful history and they do it with a passion and energy that only make it more interesting. Additionally, they are happy to talk up local establishments including Mammoth Cafe, Dixie Chili, Sin City Antiques, and York Street Cafe not only for their current contributions but also for their place in the history of Newport, KY.

In the spring of this year a few friends started the tour as a fund raiser for Global Service Learning Inc. and originally intended it to be just a limited engagement to raise money and help send local school kids to Jamacia. The trips are dedicated to serving a part of the population that could definitely use a some help, and it’s used as a teaching tool for our local kids to show how service and activism can benefit them in the long run.

After tickets sold faster than expected, they brought the tour back for Italianfest in June and they had over three hundred more people show up over the course of that weekend. Well, they have been on hiatus for the rest of the summer, but now the fellas are back for the fall offering tours through the end of November.

What should you expect when you head down to the tour? Well, it starts at The Syndicate and features a short presentation about the history of Newport and the characters that really made it like Las Vegas before there ever was a Las Vegas. The tour guides will talk you through how Newport ended up the way it did and give you some great stories about the personalities that give it such a wonderful history.

After about twenty minutes, you head outside for a seventy five minute walking tour through the city. Heading up Monmouth for three blocks there are plenty of stops to talk about all the history, including the seventeen gentelmen’s clubs that used to line the street, as well as a wonderful story of gangster activity outside what was the Mustang Club.

Back down York Street, the group shows you the building where all the chips (no, not the kind made with potatoes) were made, the lot that used to be the Weideman Brewery Complex, as well as and old haunt of Frank Sinatra. And while the history is very interesting, the tour guides could not do a better job bringing the stories alive and they have clearly done their homework. The tour is easily walkable as it totals not much more than a mile and it is very flat the entire way.

It’s no wonder that these guys were drawing 100+ people to their tours at Italianfest! They are great and definitely worth checking out. They hope to draw a few hundred people down each weekend through the fall. You’ll never look at Newport the same way again, especially all the parking lots around town. Tickets are a mere $15 for the regular tours, $20 for the Haunted tours on the last 3 weekends of October, and $40 for a behind the scenes tour which runs on the first three Saturdays of November.

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Arts & Entertainment Business News

Big night in OTR tonight

Tonight is not only a Final Friday gallery hop night throughout historic Over-the-Rhine, but it is also another Vine-L Friday in the Gateway Quarter.

Vine-L Friday will run from 6pm to 10pm and is looking to compliment the Final Friday crowds in the surrounding area. As a result many Gateway Quarter businesses will have displays from local artists and live music throughout. There will also be food, drinks and discounts at all your favorite locally-owned shops.

There will also be members of ArtWorks Cincinnati around to discuss their four-story mural of Mr. Cincinnati – Jim Tarbell. The new mural will be prominently displayed on the southern wall of the same building that houses Park+Vine. The mural should be complete within the coming weeks according to officials.

Following the Final Friday and Vine-L Friday fun, there will be an after party starting at 10pm at Below Zero Lounge at the southeast corner of 12th & Walnut streets.

Here’s a full lineup of this week’s Vine-L Friday activities:

  • Venice on Vine Pizza, 1301 Vine St. – Visionaries and Voices exhibits “Hair Salon” by Kenny Barger with a special menu of gourmet pizzas as well as live jewelry making by “One Bead at a Time.”
  • Segway Cincinnati, 1150 Vine St. – Works by Josh Beeman and Billy 7. Live music by “Vinny Bricks” and “that guy from Okinawa” City Cellars will be on hand with its frozen desert cart to cool off the crowd.
  • Park+Vine, 1109 Vine St. – The unveiling of the new exhibit “Mimockracy.”
  • Switch Lighting and Design, 1207 Vine St. – New works by Alison Shepard will be exhibited.
  • Outside, 16 E. 12th St. – Live DJ playing Electronica, Trip Hop, Soul and Funk, with refreshments served.
  • Below Zero Lounge, 1122 Walnut St. – The official VINE-L Friday After Party. Live music by the “Blue Merchants” at 10pm benefitting Gary Burbank’s “Play It Forward” Project.
  • Mixx Ultra Lounge, 1203 Main St. – Marcus Jordan exhibiting works from his collection titled “My Passion.”
  • Coffee Emporium, 110 E. Central Parkway – Extending its hours until 10pm and featuring works by Allison Archberger and the Thirty Duo Collection.
  • Lackman Lofts, 1237 Vine St. – Kate McClung exhibiting works from her “Balanophagy” collection.
  • Duveneck Flats, 1220 Vine St. – Mark Cummings exhibiting new works from his “In Bloom” collection and Stan Stenten will be showing pieces from the collection “Visions of Cincinnati – Old and New”

Photo from 5chw4r7z

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Business News Transportation

Could streetcars be manufactured right here in the Midwest?

On July 1 the United States celebrated the completion of the first American-made streetcar. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood was in Portland to celebrate the moment.

The Infrastructurist points out that Oregon Iron Works felt like they could be profitable producing the modern streetcars, and feel that they are already producing a superior product than what is being produced overseas. CincyStreetcar says that this event illustrates two important issues.

“The first is that public transportation is not a partisan issue; both sides of the aisle benefit from increased public transportation. The second is the progress other cities around the country are making with increasing their transportation options and the positive returns on their investments.”

When examining this news one could also speculate on what this could mean for Cincinnati as it develops one of the first streetcar systems in the Midwest region of the United States.

Last month when the City announced the selection of the development team that will help finance, plan, design, construct, operate and maintain Cincinnati’s modern streetcar system they also announced that Cincinnati Streetcar Development Team partner, Stacy and Witbeck Inc., will be opening a new office in downtown Cincinnati and will also be relocating their executives to Cincinnati specifically for this project.

First American-made streetcar in Portland, Oregon – image from United Streetcar, LLC

Could the same also happen in regards to the production of streetcar vehicles in a state and region that was built on manufacturing and could easily produce streetcars with the existing infrastructure and talent in place here?

Columbus and Cleveland have recently examined streetcar systems for their cities. Milwaukee recently received tens of millions of federal dollars to build a three-mile modern streetcar system in their city that is being seen as a started line to a much larger, city-wide system (similar to Cincinnati’s effort). St. Louis and Minneapolis currently boast light rail that has vehicles similar to streetcars and could potentially be produced on the same line. Indianapolis is working on a light rail system there that would also fit into this category.

With all of these existing and future systems in the Midwest, it would seem reasonable to have a manufacturer for those vehicles right here. Could Cincinnati or Ohio attract such a firm, or grow one of their own so that it starts producing streetcar and light rail vehicles in one of the many plants we have that used to produce automobiles?