The Couscous Chronicles

As I headed up Main Street I noticed a young man off to my right wearing a faded yellow surgeon’s mask making a diagonal bee line across the street into my general vicinity. I could not help but wonder why a dude with a surgeon’s mask was heading towards me on the mostly empty Main Street. Net, I tightened up and quickened my pace pushing the shopping cart through ruts of un-shoveled snow as best I could without looking like I was trying to avoid him.

As he approached behind me I heard him talking, “Hey you in the green skully and tan overalls”. I kept pushing.
Again, “Hey you in the brown work boots”.
Once again I did not stop, thinking to myself did he not notice my cap partially pulled over my ears and understand I could not hear him very well?!
Next, “Yeah, you pushing the Kroger grocery cart in the green Freestore Food Bank volunteer vest”.
That did it. I braced myself and turned around and said, “What up”? Noticing he had removed the mask to make sure I could hear him…
And his simply request, “When y’all closing”?
I thought of the masked inquisitor’s question as though he thought I owned the place. I replied, “I think they close around four o’clock” and I then turned and continued heading North up Main Street.

This is how my suburbanite ass learned what it means to walk through the so called “tough” streets of Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine (OTR) neighborhood which last year was reported as “America’s most dangerous” neighborhood in a questionable survey that was convincingly debunked in this short Fox 19 news clip http://www.wxix.com/Global/story.asp?S=13267849. Despite its shortcomings of boarded up buildings and pockets of gentrification, I love OTR as it is still considered one of the largest historic districts in the country and at the end of the day it still represents in many ways what is still real about America.

During a half day of volunteering at the Freestore Food Bank, I reaffirmed what I always knew about OTR: Its a place mostly made up of honest hard working folks and while many of them have a tough time making ends meet in working low paying jobs and raising families they majority of them do need and appreciate the help.

The genesis of my walk up Main Street began with my assistance of pushing a grocery card full of a women’s allocation of a turkey, sides, bread and fruit to her family of five to her doorstep because her only mode of transportation was a baby doll umbrella stroller. On the way to her apartment, she and I had a lively discussion that included debating the value of the Cincinnati street car project and what she saw as far more important issues in improved education and more responsive police and fire support citing “you call 911 for someone getting stabbed or shot in the street and it takes them twenty to thirty minutes to get here”! This is reality for her and all in all this was the exclamation point of my time spent in OTR and helped to reinforce and ground me more as a person who has been out of touch with the “reality” for some folks.

So on my way back from dropping off the umbrella stroller women’s groceries and within five minutes of taking the photo below I had four events occur:

1) I ran into someone I knew. She was approaching me as I took the shot and is second from the left in the photo. As I walked up and we noticed each other, she said “hey what’s up” and I am sure she immediately noticed what looked like a puzzled look on my face that said “what are you doing on Main Street in OTR” and her reply, “I work downtown” and then she gave me the same look as she noticed what really was giving me my own puzzled look and that was the thought of her seeing me pushing a Kroger shopping cart and wearing an under sized florescent lime green safety vest and I replied, “oh yeah, I’m volunteering”

2) Next I ran into the “masked inquisitor” described in the first paragraph above and I then headed North toward the busier intersection of Liberty and Main Streets. The light was green and I knew the masked inquisitor was closing in on me and I needed to cross the street fast as I was tired and ready to be done. Within steps of Liberty Street the light changed and “don’t walk” flashed on the crossing post. The inquisitor over took and passed me skirting across the busy street at an angle avoiding the cross walk and the cars zipping past him altogether. The very sight of this masked young man crossing and the traffic dodging him was an event in itself. I paused.

3) As I crossed the street a two young girls with two guys, all creative types dressed in mostly black and two of them pulling suit cases (ballet or theater or homeless?!) came toward me and after they passed I heard one of the young ladies giggling and saying, “he looked like he took it (referring to volunteers helping the food bank haul folks groceries) all the way to they door step”. I paused again.

4) After crossing the street and getting within yards of the Freestore Food Bank, a young lady reached out to me and cried, “sir could you please help me, this guy brought my groceries only as far as here”. “Here” being only a few feet beyond the Freestore entrance and I assumed the guilty guy was a volunteer. I said, “no problem, where are you trying to go”? She said, “He did not even act like he wanted to bring it this far and I need to get to my sister’s car down the street”. She like all the other people I assisted was very thankful and courteous for the help.

After dropping off her groceries I returned to walking down the series of ramps leading into the bowels of the Freestore Food Banks basement and I noticed the “masked inquisitor” heading out of one of the I.D. check outs with his allocation of food in one hand and a bagged chicken in the other. I watched him out the door as he skipped across Liberty Street with the traffic once again dodging effortlessly around him as he made a trajectory towards Main Street.

While a smidgen of my FB friends get to share their photos of business trips to far flung exotic locales such as Mumbai and Moscow, I have the distinct honor of occasionally making the business pilgrimage to Hutchinson, KS, home to my client Dillon’s, a division of Cincinnati based Kroger Stores.

The good news is I left my new “toy” at home, the new Panasonic GF1 digital camera given I did not expect to see anything worthy of my carrying the extra weight of the camera on a business trip. Of course I did get my belly full with some decent BBQ and a notable Italian meal last night at a slightly upscale funky Italian restaurant in Downtown Hutch called of all things, “Jillians”. We ate BBQ in Wichita out of convenience at Hog Wild BBQ, a local chain that provided a respectable brisket, but my preference locally would have to be Roy’s “you’ll be in hog heaven” Hickory Pit BBQ in downtown Hutch as they have over 20 different BBQ sauce choices, a more local feel and of course their claim to fame of they are “one of the top 100 BBQ restaurants in America” (http://www.roysbbq.com/). I love this country.

Upon disembarkation from the plane at the “air capital of the world” Wichita airport, I told my colleague that we would be in for an adventure. While my prophesy did not necessarily come true, we thought we might get to invoke our inner storm chaser as we dodged our way through a tornado watch on our way back to the airport this morning. Other than that it was all uneventful just the way we like it, but I learned my lesson as next time I am bringing the camera just in case we do see a tornado forming above Kansas highway 96 or at the very least to take hundreds of pics of haunted grain elevators.

If you like barbeque there is no better ‘que town in the world than Kansas City.  K.C. is special because the barbeque is slow cooked just right over hickory and the meat is excellent as historically this is and was a cow town.  While most folks like Arthur Bryants for their meat and Gates and Sons for their sauce, I like a little “hole in the wall” place at the intersection of Blue Parkway, Coal Mine and Sni-A-Bar Roads east of downtown called LC’s.

LC’s is extra special because they have a common dish on their menu called “burnt ends”.  It’s pork rib tips basted in LC’s tight spicy K.C. style sauce slow cooked over an open flame fire and smoked to perfection.  Completely sloppy eating and not complete without the requisite couple of pieces of white bread tossed into the take out box where the bread soaks up all the smokiness and flavor that is signature to good slow smoked K.C. BBQ.

In a town that is absolutely mad for its own unique blend of chili as well as proclaiming itself “Chili Town USA”, Mr. Gene’s Doghouse is an anomaly in that their specialty is also chili dogs but more akin to those slathered with a chili you might find on a dog in Chicago or Texas versus Cincinnati. [Read more →]

My streak is almost over.  I write this as I am on the cusp of a minor upheaval in my years of living in suburbia. I have been living in suburbia most of my adult life.  I experienced it from the bucolic “first post WWII planned GI community” in Park Forest, IL. to the edge city suburbia of Detroit’s Southfield and the New York City commuter bedroom community of Norwalk, CT.  Not exactly the quintessential stuff, but you get the picture.

“Shame” on me some of you would say, particularly those of you whom consider yourselves the proper urban pioneer types.  That’s ok too because I am as comfortable in my skin as I am sure you are in yours. You see given my wife and I are able to sell our home in the Cincinnati mega suburb of West Chester we will relocate to a different kind of “suburb” in the inner I-275 loop/beltway historical village of Glendale.   This concerns me as Glendale is technically supposed to be more of an “urban like” suburb if you know what I mean.  My wife assures me its all about being able to walk every where and being able to get the kids to school, soccer, and “calculating minds” sooner and in shorter distances and let us not forget it will be a shorter commute to work for myself.  I don’t buy it.  Don’t get me wrong Glendale is a great community and I am looking forward to moving there, but I struggle with all the burdens we place on where we live.  I am furthest from being one of those folks who actually believes that if you move somewhere it will change you.  I am the exact opposite.  My belief is you make the place (through community involvement and support) and the place does not make you.

The whole suburbia itch began for me when I was in pre-K and growing up in Park Forest, IL.   Back in the early seventies Park Forest was the ideal suburb to raise kids.  I knew this not only because I heard my parents repeat it all the time, but I felt it every time I set foot on one of the numerous playgrounds, climbed its crab apple trees, and swam in its Aqua Center.  It was safe clean and yes you could “walk” everywhere unencumbered by the fear that you could get hit by a car as all the sidewalks practically connected with minimal street crossings.  I spent most days there like a modern day Huck Finn, the only difference was that I did all my exploring via my ninety eight percent plastic big wheel tricycle.  Now I too look forward to seeing my two kids experience their own form of urban Huckleberryism in the urbanist surburban confines of Glendale.

The folks at El Pueblo opened a hamburger joint called Sammys.  Go figure.  I tried their Chorizo burger and Caribbean cole slaw.  It was good enough and big enough that I could probably eat one once a calendar quarter for full satisfaction.  Any more frequent than that and I would be dead by age 50 from the generous portion of beef, chorizo, guac and “mexican white cheese”.

For the last seven years I have been locked in a mortal combat of absolute epic proportions.  While I had originally intended to write about my ongoing love-hate relationship with life in exurbia and its correlation with my family recently relocating from the quintessential Cincinnati exurb of West Chester, OH (home of Euro style roundabouts and the tallest man made object is the IKEA sign) to the inner I-270 beltway Mayberry (like the 1960s TV show setting) like village of [Read more →]

I know now what’s been missing in my life for the past thirty years.  You know that itch you could never satisfy.  I found it heading east on Interstate 70 near New Castle, IN off of an exit dubbed “Wilbur Wright Rd” in a rusting hulk of a sign bearing the word “Nickerson”. [Read more →]

Yesterday I had the distinct pleasure of meeting my “new” neighbors Jackie and Josiah Saunders. [Read more →]

“After the storm, after the rain, after the harm and after the pain, after we laugh and after we cry after we live after we die, we need a healing”Strange Fruit Project “God is/After the Healing”  I finally built up the courage to watch the four hour Spike Lee directed HBO documentary “When the Levees Broke, a requiem in four acts” DVD set. [Read more →]