New Life in an Old City

I saw a lot of hub-bub on the Twitter and Facebook when this assessment of state pride was published a few weeks ago. The logic behind the data seems flawed – does “liking” something on Facebook really guarantee anything more than a casual interest in that thing? I apparently “like” 174 pages on the FB, and the State of Ohio is not one of them.

But you know, I’ve lived here my entire life and I’ve been all over the state – thanks to my dad, I’ve even been to every cave here too. The Buckeye State has it’s shortcomings – namely the 12% ABV limit on beer (am I joking?) – but the more I see of it, the prouder I am to call it home. While visiting Cincinnati this weekend, we came across something familiar: a city working to revive its once-desolate historic urban neighborhoods into cradles of culture and commerce.

Over-The-Rhine (or OTR), just north of Downtown Cincy, was our neighborhood of choice this past weekend, between bouts at King’s Island and the Cincinnati Zoo. A little more than a hundred years ago, the area was populated primarily by German immigrants (hence the name). A series of racially-fueled riots in the early 2000s ushered in a dark period for OTR, and for several years the neighborhood recorded the highest rates of violent crime in the country. Businesses and residents fled, and needless to say, it was not the place to be seen on a Saturday night.