A BLOCK OF BORING INTRODUCTORY SHIT THAT FOUR PEOPLE WILL READ:
I’m kind of embarrassed to post this thread. Not because I think the pictures are terrible, but rather because of the timing…
See, I’ve been lurking and posting on “SSP” for over a decade…and while some of you may have seen some of my previous photos, I can almost guarantee and few
-if any- reading this have seen me post any photos featuring my own humble hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.
The last time I bothered to post any photo tour of the city was back in the fall of 2002--ironically when I was living in Columbus.
Despite that fact, I’ve taken tens of thousands of photos around town in the years since…photos that are just collecting dust on my external hard drive as I type.
There’s something to the old saying, “the grass is greener on the side.” I think that mentality was definitely reflected in my picture-posting habits.
I generally was *much* more likely to go out of my way to post a thread featuring photos taken out of town than I was for photos taken in my own backyard
(even though as some forumers may suggest, I often suck at putting together threads in a timely manner for ANY city!)
There’s also the fact that I feel a sense of responsibility to represent the city I’m from at least as well as I have repped cities that I have little to no connection to.
I think I’ve used that as a convenient excuse to delay creating a Cincinnati thread until I felt it lived up the ridiculously lofty standards I’ve set inside my head.
Anyway, f-ck all that navel-gazing nonsense.
The photos that make up this Cincinnati (area) thread are *not* meant to be a “best of” representative collection of my photos from the last decade--
Just a random sampling of photos –mostly taken within the past ten months or so-unless otherwise noted.
This is not meant to be a comprehensive tour. Just a (re)introduction to the often overlooked and underrated city I call home.
There are well over 100 images here, be warned.
Hopefully you enjoy them.
This picture was taken just days after Smitty’s, an 84-year-old retail institution on the corner of Vine and 15th St burned to the ground.
Fortunately for the neigborhood, the owners decided to rebuild and relocate into a larger space just a few steps north at 1501 Vine. They reopened in March 2011.
Linn St. mixed use buildings under construction in October 2006. This is the primary north-south commercial street in the West End neighborhood,
The part you see under construction is part of the “City West” development. This $200 million project, which began in 2000, (and is still currently unfinished over 10 years later)
replaced two of the city’s oldest public housing projects – Lincoln Court & Laurel Homes with mixed income housing and a smattering of amenities.
The reviews on the project are very mixed.
Fun fact – Laurel Homes was the second largest PWA housing project in the country.
Linn St. streetwall in 2011.
The magnificent tiled mural designed by the late local artist Charley Harper in the John W. Peck Federal Building
(I wasn’t happy with how the colors came out in my original image so I freaked around with this picture in Photoshop until I was happy with it.)
Even though spring has officially sprung, I thought I would shove these next few pictures in here anyway - if nothing else, but to serve as a reminder of what we recently managed to endure…
Well, maybe not quite so recently. The following series of pictures were actually taken following an ice storm on Valentine’s Day 2007….BETTER LATER THAN NEVER DAMMIT!
(BTW, all the night photos in this series were taken in the hours between midnight and 3:00am)
SMITTY’S! (The closest thing Over-the-Rhine had to Times Square) (The two smallest buildings towards the right of the image were completely destroyed by fire in April 2010).
Because I occasionally like eyesores, I hope that the owner will install those gaudy fluorescent lights at his new location after he settles in this spring.
My father worked in this building for many years.
Look above the awning. For a sign that looked kinda old to begin with (check out the late 1950’s-era NBC peacock rip-off, BTW) this sign has taken a terrible beating
over just the past few years…Check out the same sign in Spring 2010:
Weird.
Now you can resume your ’07 flashback:
My doctor used to be in this building. Yep. Thought you all needed to know that. Let me shut up now.
Now, you can set your time-traveling coordinates back to the present:
Bonus points if you can guess where this sprawl is located. (Hint: Not Cincinnati…Fun Fact: The particular city in question was declared entirely off limits to
military personnel during WWII because of the large number of notorious gambling and prostitution houses –obviously not seen here)
Yes, you read that correctly.
For some reason, I enjoy taking pictures of people taking pictures.
Corryville houses, undergoing demolition, February 2011.
The promise of spring.
I’ll leave you with all with a panoramic postcard from an uncommonly seen angle, shamelessly emblazoned with my flickr calling card:
Oh yes. I has a flickr. Flickrfriend me or something. Eventually I’ll figure that crap out.
Anyway, thanks for viewing the thread!
-Aaron
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