Tag: events

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Arts & Entertainment News

Film showcase to kick off this year’s MidPoint Music Festival

A pair of locally produced documentaries will be showcased tomorrow during the first ever MidPoint Film Festival, which is being used to help kick-off the three-day MidPoint Music Festival.

The first will is a film about the rebirth of Cincinnati’s historic Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, and the second is a new film highlighting the history of Newport’s seedy past. The festival is being hosted by Midland Film Institute and will make its debut at the School for Creative & Performing Arts’ (SCPA) Mayerson Theater.


Part of the film crew works on Rebirth of Over-the-Rhine along Elm Street. Photograph provided.

Rebirth of Over-the-Rhine, which was highlighted by UrbanCincy in 2010, covers the nascent redevelopment of the historically struggling neighborhood and how the interplay of social and economic forces is being brought out in the rapidly changing neighborhood. It is directed by award winning director Melissa Godoy.

“We started looking around and we found we were right at the beginning of this push. The history of the neighborhood, combined with its present-day components, really helped to make the story,” co-producer Joe Brinker told UrbanCincy.

The film has been shot in Over-the-Rhine between 2009 and 2012, and highlights some of the social struggles surrounding Washington Park.

Newport Gangster, meanwhile, showcases the gambling legacy of Newport, Kentucky, the original Sin City. The film highlights the scale of Newport’s gambling scene and how it gave birth to the modern gambling industry.

The event is free to the public although a $10 donation is encouraged. Both films will also host a question and answer session with their directors and producers. The film festival will begin at SCPA (map) Thursday, September 27 at 6pm. Those interested in attending are encouraged to RSVP online.

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Arts & Entertainment News Transportation

Cincinnatians transform dozens of parking spaces into temporary parks

For the fifth straight year Cincinnati has participated in the international advocacy effort known as Park(ing) Day. The event, which takes place annually on the fourth Friday in September, aims to draw attention to how much public space is dedicated to automobile parking in our communities. Community organizers do this by taking over on-street parking spaces in cities throughout the world, and turning them into temporary spaces that are more usable by the general public.

In past years Cincinnati has seen parking spaces transformed in the Central Business District, Over-the-Rhine and Clifton Heights. The Central Business District has served as the most hostile location for the activists with several being confronted by business owners and police in past years. Over-the-Rhine, on the contrary, has become the defacto home for the movement, and in 2012 saw more than a dozen spaces converted in the historic neighborhood.


Temporary park/cafe space on Main Street outside of Park+Vine. Photograph by Travis Estell for UrbanCincy.

Cincinnati’s 2012 campaign took on a much different flavor than in past years. Instead of a small collection of grassroots spaces, Merchants of Main Street partnered with Art on the Streets to create temporary art in spaces up and down Main Street between Central Parkway and Liberty Street. The effort included ballet dancers, painters, art installations, and a violinist between 5pm and 7pm.

While the active art spaces took place outside of core business hours, when many Park(ing) Day spaces are set up due to parking demand, organizers were able to dramatically increase the number of converted spaces, and the number of people involved.

Also showcased during this year’s Park(ing) Day was a preview version of what will become Cincinnati’s first parklet – a mini-park built on top of an on-street parking space – in front of Tucker’s on Vine Street.

The following slideshow highlights many of the parking spaces transformed into other uses during Cincinnati’s 2012 Park(ing) Day. All photographs were taken by Travis Estell for UrbanCincy.

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Arts & Entertainment News

Downtown hosting open house this weekend to showcase ongoing progress

On Saturday, September 15, Downtown Cincinnati Inc. (DCI) and the Downtown Residents Council will celebrate urban living with a free event called Live It Up Downtown.

The residents and boosters have cause to celebrate. Downtown Cincinnati has added more than 5,000 residents over the past five years. Over the past decade, crime has also dropped approximately 25 percent, retail occupancy rates have improved to their best levels in five years, and overall employment is up.


Crave is one of dozens of new businesses to open downtown so far in 2012. Photograph by Randy Simes for UrbanCincy.

All of the progress has neighborhood advocates excited about the state of their slice of Americana, and they want the whole region to learn more about the progress.

“Live It Up Downtown is an opportunity to celebrate our vibrant residential community,” David Ginsburg, President and CEO of DCI, stated in a prepared release. “A lively group of residents will be on hand to meet and find out first-hand why they chose to live downtown.”

According to organizers, the event will run from 3pm to 11pm on Fountain Square, and will feature realtors and property managers on-hand to provide information about downtown living options. There will also be scheduled entertainment, live music, food and drink available for purchase, and more than 30 small businesses and organizations on-hand to discuss their involvement in the center city.

Those interested in checking out available residential units downtown will be treated to open houses at the American Building, Lofts at Fountain Square, The McAlpin, Glass House Lofts, 18 East Fourth, and Current at The Banks from 3pm to 6pm.

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Up To Speed

Remembering 9/11 through Baldwin Lee’s early photographs

Remembering 9/11 through Baldwin Lee’s early photographs.

It was eleven years ago today that two glass, steel and concrete towers that once dominated the skyline of Manhattan fell in the worst terrorist attack in the history of this country and thousands of lives were lost. But these photographs from the 1970’s by Brooklyn native Baldwin S. Lee and Professor of Art at the University of Tennessee look back on a time when the then recently completed World Trade Center stood above the struggling old city below it.

At the time of its completion in 1971 the World Trade Center complex boasted 16 million square feet of office space in three low rise buildings and two 110-story towers designed by Minoru Yamasaki. The World Trade Center held the record for the world’s tallest buildings from 1971 to 1973 after being surpassed in height by the Willis Tower in Chicago. More World Trade Center photographs from Professor Lee:
Photograph by Baldwin Lee
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Up To Speed

New Enquirer format delayed until 2013, corresponding paywalls unphased

New Enquirer format delayed until 2013, corresponding paywalls unphased.

The Cincinnati Enquirer and Columbus Dispatch newspapers had planned to shift to a new tabloid-sized print version this fall, but both debut’s will now be delayed until early 2013. The Enquirer, however, will still move forward with its content subscription model, on its planned October 1 date, that will charge readers for access to its website, e-newspaper, tablet and mobile sites, and smartphone applications. More from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

The new edition had been scheduled for this fall; however, unexpected mechanical issues at Dispatch Printing in Columbus, where the new Enquirer will be printed, prompted the delay, Buchanan said.

The new format is 10 1/2 inches wide by 14 2/3 tall, is easier to manage for readers, will feature the same amount of news content, more color, and still have traditional sections. It will feature in-depth coverage of topics readers have said they’re passionate about, and more investigative stories. The paper also is revamping news and entertainment coverage.