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June 20, 2008
Just Cincinnati.
This is not the East Village or Paris; you can't yell, swear, dance on sidewalks or openly admire a woman's walk without having the local papers pick it up as serious breaking news. But I still love it.
I'm in Cincinnati: River City, Queen City--and even Clean City, which it gets either from being home to favorite son P&G, or from a tongue-in-cheek guilty hangover from the Simon Leis v. Larry Flynt and Oh Calcutta! days. I do remember that Frank Zappa played here on Mothers Day once when I was growing up. Jerry Rubin went to the local high school for over-achievers, quite a few of them ending up at college with me. The then-wunderkind lawyer Jerry Springer and Ken Blackwell, both very unusual at the time, and with whom I met in connection with a wonderful summer law job, started their political careers here.
My family and I lived in DC, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Detroit and Chicago again first--but for us all along this was the Promised Land, a true City-State in southern Ohio which was always compared to Rome due to the climate and the hills, seven of them in particular. Unlike other Midwestern towns, some very innovative and interesting people will reluctantly move here--but actually stay and tolerate it, and many thrive. It's conservative and a bit stiff like San Diego--but it's not considered unhealthy, anti-family or rude to work hard in Cincy.
I still love it, from distances. I use the town as a "mirror". Only I change; it stays the same. Best points: German, well-educated, honest, organized and a hard-working lot. The Sixth Circuit, headquartered here, usually makes sense. Fine old-school lawyers, and a small but colorful "underground" which somehow survives. Great fine arts community. Gorgeous terrain. Hilly, and lots of undisturbed ancient burial mounds, especially near places like Indian Hill, where Peter Frampton (appropriate somehow) lives. Industrial, but lightly.
Two minor bad points: downtown, you can't jaywalk; it's worse than Vienna or Frankfort, Germany. And the people are almost too nice, and reserved. This is not the East Village or Paris; you can't yell, swear, dance in public or admire a woman's walk without having the local papers pick it up as breaking national news. You conform. You behave. Like a Louisville friend and writer once said of Cincinnati and Milwaukee: "There is just no room for personal flashes of anarchy in the good German mind". Otherwise, this is Heaven for people who want to wake up and not have today be too different from yesterday. "Beg your pardon? Please?"
Posted by JD Hull at June 20, 2008 09:36 PM