At Long Last

Electric Queen City Boogalou
an InkTank Collaboration

Sitting in the Westin on the corner of Fifth and Vine, I am thinking about the old Sheraton Gibson that used to be in the same area. The Tyler Davidson Fountain, our famous piece of public art from the 1880s, has just returned from its brief trip to the Art Museum. While sitting here I realize all the things we only know about because we’re from Cincinnati. First off don’t tell a guest to go to Jack Ruby’s when they want to go to The Maisonette. Jeff not Jack, you’re acting like a tourist. All this talk of restaurants is making me hungry; my recommendations to a P&G exec would be Tucker’s anyway. Take them to Over-the-Rhine, show them how we survive, when most Cincinnatians are living meal to meal in the nation’s eighth poorest city. Then take them to an empty Great American Ball Park (GABP) and see how fair weather the suburban fans of the world’s oldest professional baseball team can be. So they haven’t won a championship since 1990; Wrigley packs them in with a team that hasn’t won since 1908. How about some flying pigs? What, you say pigs don’t fly? You have a better chance of seeing an avian heifer then a Democrat being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from around here. But then, it isn’t that people don’t try. They do. And it isn’t that people don’t care. They do. But when the Fountain returns to a square and there isn’t a damn thing different than the location, you have to wonder who picked her up and moved her. Was it us? Was it you? Is it that we don’t try? Is it that we don’t care? They’re putting an ice skating rink in soon, filling it with young professionals. But there is something that Cincinnati can be good for: chili, ribs, ice cream, unbelievable views of hills, hills and more hills. Come with me my honored guest and we’ll pass the Embassy, lavish in exterior and cold as a January Cincinnati midnight, bright day though it is. So much life on these city streets, electric energy aplenty to light this square and more like it. Because we are more than a square or a fountain we are every Margaret Garner, Pete Rose, Jerry Springer, Charles Mason, Carson Palmer and Andy Traves. We are the good and the bad of America. We are, have been, and still will be THE QUEEN CITY!