Urban Life Staff Picks

Best Shot of Local Color for Downtown: Photo By: J.D. Cutter

Best Shot of Local Color for Downtown:
Everyone seems to love the big-screen TV on top of Macy’s that makes Fountain Square into a cool place to hang and watch a Reds game or American Idol. But let’s give props to Fifth Third Bank for sprucing up a drab office building in some eye-catching ways. The William S. Rowe Building (he was a president of Fifth Third way back when) is the “low building” on the north side of the Square, and one side of it now provides a changing illuminated backdrop for the relocated fountain. Even more mesmerizing is the eye-catching redo of the building’s Sixth Street facade, once the bland wall of a parking garage. With counsel from Cincinnati architectural firm FRCH, the bank engaged internationally known artist (and one-time local resident) Julian Stanczak for a block-long piece of public op-art made of multi-colored tubes that seem to undulate as you pass by. The Walnut Street corner has a big-finned Caddy above the entrance to Cadillac Ranch. How cool is it that the once-bland view across from the CAC is now one of downtown’s most colorful blocks?

Best Urban Hiking:
The Highland Cemetery nature trails in Fort Mitchell are a well-kept secret, with more than four miles of hiking trails. The longer ones offer a great hilly workout, but an excellent wildlife habitat program means that the trails are great for just birdwatching and wildflower viewing if that’s more your speed. Trails are open daily from 8 a.m.-6 p.m. www.highlandcemetery.com/hikingtrails

Best Towering Achievement:
There’s a lot of architectural beauty in Covington from the 1800s and 1900s, but The Ascent is the masterpiece of the new millenium. Architect Daniel Libeskind designed it to “tell a story of where we’ve been and where we are going.” Seeing the way this amazing structure sweeps upwards towards the night sky, we sense that it’s inspirational now as the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption was in 1915. 1140 Madison Ave., Covington, 859-431-2060.

Best Place to Take Little Kids When It’s Below Freezing:
Sharon Woods Adventure Station indoor playground has barrel slides, a tree house, a cave and secret passages guaranteed to wear your little ones out. Pint-size adventures are only $2.50 a child. Sharon Woods, Sharonville, 513-563-4513.

Best Place to Throw a Round of Disc Golf:
Mt. Airy Forest. Even if you don’t smoke enough of that Chris Henry to enjoy playing disc golf, this course is fun and challenging to play. The course offers a variety of hole types, and on a spring or summer day with the wind blowing through the trees it doesn’t get much better. Look out for the local deer — they don’t take kindly to your kind around those parts. 5083 Colerain Ave., Mount Airy, 513-352-4080.

Best Retro Public Transportation:
Streetcars! The details are still under debate — what else is new? — but never has a retro system of moving people generated so much excitement about the possibilities for new development in the urban core. www.cincystreetcar.com

Best Improvement in Relations Between Employers and Employees:
The Employee Free Choice Act not only gives employees some control over their lives in the workplace, it removes the temptation for employers to intimidate, harass and otherwise be involved in illegal activities that bust up union organizing.

Best New Anti-War Initiative:
The Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center organized monthly anti-war vigils in Northside, Clifton, Avondale and three other neighborhoods around the city. Soon the number of vigils grew to including suburban communities like Mount Healthy and Anderson Township. www.ijpc-cincinnati.org

Best Fish Story:
Laughing Brook at Salway Park on Spring Grove Avenue was the latest attempt to help clean up the Mill Creek watershed. Part of an effort to remove pollutants from storm water run off, the sculpture of fish and human hands is next to an informational kiosk, benches made from recycled plastic and serves as an engineered wetland for cultivating plants for use in other Mill Creek Restoration projects. www.millcreekrestoration.org

Best Public Disguise:
If it looks, tastes, sounds and smells like a street festival, it must be a street festival, right? Yes, and more. Second Sunday on Main is actually an economic development engine disguised as they city’s coolest urban street festival, offering entertainment by crowd-pleasing local bands on the CityBeat music stage, a samba parade, a Christian Moerlein beer garden, vendors, artists, food by celebrity chefs and even a dog parade. Held the second Sunday of each summer month May through September, this year will be the event’s fourth consecutive summer. Every month the festival attracts 800-1,000 people who stroll a blockaded stretch of Main Street (from 12th to Liberty) and shop the stores and colorful vendors. www.secondsundayonmain.org

Best Place to Take a Nap Outside: Mt. Storm Park Photo By: Joe Lamb

Best Act of Vandalism:
Someone broke into Washington Park Elementary School in Over-the-Rhine in November and hung signs protesting its demolition; the most prominent sign said, “Children Before Parking Lots.” The unused school was being razed to make way for the expansion of Washington Park and would temporarily house parking for Music Hall.

Best Act of Irony:
At the very same moment, on the opposite end of Washington Park, a parking lot was being bulldozed to make way for a public school (the new School for Creative and Performing Arts).

Best Grassroots Response to Gentrification:
When 3CDC decided Washington Park should be updated and improved, Over-the-Rhine residents got together and presented their own version of what the redeveloped park should like. Their demand for keeping the swimming pool and basketball court was eventually overridden, but their effort was a useful reminder that outsiders’ good intentions really shouldn’t trump neighbors’ concerns.

Best Attempt to End Cluelessness:
In January the YWCA and National Underground Railroad Freedom Center hosted two days of human trafficking educational seminars for cops, lawyers, social workers, community organizers and others who are in a position to help end modern day slavery but might not know that.

Best Nightlight:
Lighthouse Youth Services Independent Living Program tries to help kids successfully leave the child welfare system at the age of 18 by giving them a chance to live on their own while they have the guidance of some caring adults. Even though they “age out” of the system, many of those kids are able to find their way because of the educational programs, financial support and straight talk of the social workers and advocates who illuminate the darkness of adulthood without parents. www.lys.org

Best Use of Green:
The University of Cincinnati signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, setting the goal of cutting UC’s net carbon emissions to zero.

Best Battle for the Old Alma Mater:
When Antioch College’s board of trustees decided to close the school, alumni rallied, started raising money and put together a feasible financial plan that made the board change its minds — at least temporarily. The fate of one of the most liberal of liberal arts colleges in the Midwest continues to hang in the balance, but alumni refuse to give up the fight.

Best Alt Patriotic Parade:
Marching bands, cyclists, drill teams, mascots and politicians all make up the typical visions in any Fourth of July parade. Not so much typical are a human typewriter, a skiing skateboarder, a ping-pong posse and a group of ladies prancing about lawn chairs that make up just a few of Northside’s ever-so-eclectic Fourth of July parade visionaries. Whether it be our country’s birthday or Uncle Bulbock’s birthday, this community’s creativity and ability to positively incorporate all walks of life inspires its people to represent the notion of freedom every day. www.myspace.com/northside3and4

Best Non-Conventional Church:
The Spiritualist Church of Light and Hope is a congregation that recognizes the thread of truth running through all major faiths. It’s spiritual rather than religious, mystical instead of dogmatic. Healing, mediumship and clairvoyance are used to touch the infinite, intelligent divinity in us all. 1401 E. McMillan Ave., Corryville, www.churchoflightandhope.com.

Best Punk House:
Yeah, we thought Punk Rock was dead, too. But over on Glendora Street, hidden between a University Hospital parking lot and a dead end near Adriatico’s Pizza, sits a functioning punk rock house. Liquor bottles and macaroni boxes scattered throughout the kitchen? Check. Pool table in the family room? Check. High school kids getting loose in the basement to bands comprised of 30-year-olds? Check. It’s not so much an anarchist punk hideout of the 1970’s, but its regulars will crank up the amps louder than you’re comfortable with.

Best Reason to Stay in Cincinnati:
Cost of living. In an age when every city’s chamber of commerce is doing its darndest to attract young people and their disposable incomes, we still see young, creative people leaving Cincinnati as quickly as their parents pay their art school bills. The rest of us don’t stay in Cincinnati because of cheese coneys, Northside or the weather. We stay because it’s freakin’ cheap. Cincinnati’s cost of living is 35 percent less than Chicago, 29 percent less than Portland, Ore., and 24 percent less than Phoenix. And most of the savings come from housing costs, which are low because there are fewer people here.

Best Farewell in the Public’s Interest:
After receiving a few deadline extensions over the years, city officials this summer finally tired of Eagle Realty’s lack of progress in building a project at the long-vacant site at Fifth and Race streets and rescinded its development rights. Eagle, the real estate unit of Western & Southern Financial Group, tried to lure a Nordstrom department store there in the late 1990s. When that deal fell apart, Eagle floated several other concepts, none of which ever advanced beyond conceptual drawings. Good riddance.

Best Way to Use Yuppies:
Cincinnati Shares, the alternative workplace-giving organization that supports progressive social services, started YPSHARES, a special outreach to young professionals. www.cintishares.org

Best Harassment of the Most Vulnerable:
In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement rounded up 161 undocumented workers at a chicken processing plant in Fairfield, breaking up families and sowing fear in the immigrant community, as only an agency with the acronym ICE could.

Best Way to Build an Eco-Friendly Future:
The adoption of an environmental studies curriculum at Aiken University High School in College Hill.

Best Way to Spruce Up Covington:
The new Artisan’s Enterprise Center, a clearinghouse for information for and about local artists, plus a gallery, workshop area and meeting rooms. www.covingtonarts.com

Best Argument Against Religion:
Brother Micah Armstrong, a member of Revival Open Air Mission USA, held one-man tirades at UC’s main campus in May that caused outrage among the student body when he insulted and taunted gays, lesbians, women he considered immodestly attired and the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Best Day for a Movement:
Come celebrate World Tai Chi Day at 10 a.m. April 26 in Ault Park. The folks from White Willow Tai Chi are providing live music, demonstrations and embracing the movements of peace. www.whitewillowtaichi.com