I mean, it’s nice to be comfortable. Sitting in a comfy chair, watching a movie you’ve seen 50 times before, eating a salty, meaty meal you know is bad for your body but it causes your brain to squirt out just the right combo of chemicals that makes you feel serene. Comfort.
But we all know in our hearts that comfort can cause stagnation. If you want to move forward, expand your horizons, learn anything new, there’s going to be discomfort involved. I have been guilty at times of avoiding growth because I was comfortable where I was.
In the world of art, historically, those who produce uncomfortable pieces have been scorned. Think Luis Buñuel, who filled his pockets with rocks before a screening of Un Chien Andalou in case he had to defend himself against furious, confused moviegoers. Or Marcel Duchamp, whose Fountain and other subversive works caused chaos in the art world a century ago. Or Stanley Kubrick, director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which still bewilders and discomfits today, as it did in 1969.
I’m not an artist, but I can say with fair confidence that Columbus is not a city well-known for its art scene, and even less so as a hub of groundbreaking art. (Though I would argue Field of Corn is subversive in its own way, and it’s certainly derided by those who don’t attempt to understand it.) That said, there is one permanent installation at the Columbus Museum of Art that — for lack of a better phrase — gives me the willies in the best way.
Not a barrel of laughs. (Courtesy of Mel Chin, melchin.org)
It’s called Spirit, by Mel Chin, and it’s been living rent-free in my head since I first saw it two decades ago. It consists of a length of twine, stretched loosely from one end of a room to the other; balanced precariously on top is a massive barrel, bloated, bulging, as if it could burst at any time. The piece has the entire, ominously lit room to itself, yet it feels like it takes up too much space — as if anything else in the area is in imminent danger. It makes me feel…. uncomfortable.
What does it mean? Does it matter? People are obsessed with getting to the bottom of any art whose meaning isn’t immediately obvious. I prefer to let it be. If a piece of art evokes strong feelings from me, positive or negative, it’s done its job, and the intended meaning is irrelevant.
That said, Chin did intend for Spirit to mean something, something that’s important to him. You can look it up if you’re curious. But before you do, see it with your own eyes. Maybe it’ll say something deliciously uncomfortable to you.
When I visit a restaurant’s website, I want to know exactly three things: where the restaurant is; what its hours are; and, most importantly, its menu.
It’s disheartening how often those vital morsels of information are withheld. Instead, we get slickly produced sites that fade in on a closeup of a creme brulee, overlain with meaningless words in a loopy font. Then you’ve got to dig deeply into the tabs to find the menu and decide what you want for dinner. (I’m not the only one who has his mind fully made up before arriving at the restaurant — right?)
Simulated, but pretty spot-on, no?
Certainly, the last thing I want to click on is the ubiquitous “Our Story” tab. I spent 22 years in journalism looking for “hooks,” and let’s face it, a lot of these eateries’ stories are decidedly hookless, i.e., not exactly compelling.
In the heart of Clintonville, though, there’s an exception: a throwback burger joint with a comeback story for the ages.
But first, let’s travel back to 1980, the year that gave us the Rubik’s Cube, Iron Maiden and “Who Shot J.R.?” In Columbus, a fellow named Graydon Webb left his position at Wendy’s HQ to start a new burger joint he called G.D. Ritzy’s. Its 1950s theme, simple menu and homemade ice cream hit the spot among Columbus diners, and Ritzy’s quickly exploded across the Midwest, topping out at 120 stores. But its success was short-lived, and by 1991, the company had disappeared, leaving behind a nostalgic abyss, not to mention dozens of identical buildings with their distinctive awning, many still in use today.
Gyr today and gone tomorrow
And for most beloved businesses, that’d be the end of “Our Story.” But Graydon Webb, still hanging around the capital city, recognized the power of yearning, and in 2017, he announced that Ritzy’s would return.
My newspaper broke the story, and the excitement I saw from readers on social media was unprecedented. In those days, a typical story posted on Facebook might get a few hundred views and two or three shares. This one had more than 100,000 views and hundreds of shares in a matter of hours! And the comments section was packed with folks waxing carnivorously about chowing down on Ritzy’s burgers.
Webb’s dream took some time to crystallize, but with the help of his two sons and a family friend, the new, G.D.-less Ritzy’s opened in fall 2018, to widespread accolades. Part of that acclaim stemmed from a new commitment to quality; Webb admitted the former chain had resorted to frozen food, but promised the new store would do no such thing — while still maintaining the menu Ritzy’s fanatics drooled over in the ’80s.
Mission accomplished. In this writer’s opinion — an opinion uncluttered by longing for the past, at least in this case — Ritzy’s serves up one of the best burgers in town.
Hello, fellow Columbus-lovers. Can you believe it’s been more than five years since I last waxed semi-poetic about all the little things that make Columbus great? The world has changed a bit since then, but I know you’re still out there. How do I know? Because my blog posts from 2015 and 2016 continue to get pageviews almost every day. In fact, views increased in 2020 from previous years. I get it — you were stuck at home, you’d already watched “The Office” seven times through, and pandemic ennui was as heavy as that weighted blanket you bought on Amazon along with a cubic yard of Chinese toilet paper that didn’t arrive until Christmas. So you fired up your internet machine and you searched for “Poste Lake” or “Morse-Bethel connector” or “Huntley Bowl Park.” Don’t try to deny it; I have bar charts.
So why am I here, now, in 2021? Let’s move to the Q&A format, shall we?
Q: Why did you start “1000 Things I Love About Columbus”?
A: To answer that question, we must journey back to the glorious year of 2015. The USA and Cuba put aside their differences, cementing a friendly relationship that would last forever. Donald Trump was still just a sleazy game-show host. Du Yue and Li Yinhui won the girls doubles tournament at the Badminton Asia Junior Championships, bringing the world together in celebration. And I was enjoying my job as a newspaper editor for the 17th straight year.
Editor life was pretty OK back then. There was plenty of stress, but the newsroom was lively, and there was an air of energy and fun. Plus, there was a unique perk: We all got a mid-week break. After our morning staff meeting each Wednesday, everyone had the rest of the day off, barring “breaking news” that rarely happened in the sleepy burbs we covered. I typically would use my free time to walk or run at Highbanks Metro Park or Shale Hollow Park, then head home for a nap.
This royalty-free stock photo accurately portrays my Wednesday-afternoon naps.
But then — an idea! What if I were to use those extra hours to create a blog that would show off my writing and photography skills, my research ability and my knowledge of the city? Not only would it give me a chance to exercise my chops, it might be helpful for a future employer that wants to see evidence of my talents.
I started by spending a sunny Wednesday afternoon driving around the city, taking photos of all kinds of things I wanted to write about. Then I wrote — a lot. My goal was two posts a week, and I met it most weeks. I was having fun, and I was proud of my work.
But like an electrical disturbance on the line that separates land from sky, a storm loomed on the horizon. The family-owned company that paid me to shuffle words around had been bought by a national company known for making life hard for its employees. One of its first moves was to mandate twice-daily Facebook posts for each and every community paper we published. Since I personally edited five papers, that put the burden of 70 weekly posts on my back. Sayonara, Wednesday free time. In addition, new, onerous editorial standards and record-keeping demands from on high and the tensions of an increasingly toxic workplace wrung me of the zeal I once had for this project. Thus, as suddenly as it had begun, it ended.
The next five years were a tumultuous journey that included two office moves, another buyout, dozens of layoffs, resignations, shutdowns, furloughs, new software, a complete redesign of our product, unrealistic expectations, frustrating shifts in newsroom dynamics, and, of course, a pandemic that had everyone working from their kitchen tables.
A few of them still are, but I’m not among them. After eluding the pink slip for 22 years, I got the call from my boss that I was out.
Q: That was a wide-ranging answer.
A: Astute observation.
Q: OK, so what are you doing here now?
A: Great question. It turns out my hunch was correct; potential employers do, in fact, want proof that I can do what I say I can do. Edited newspaper stories with someone else’s byline don’t provide that proof, but this blog does, and a link to it is emblazoned on my resume. Multiple interviewers have told me they enjoy my writing, though I haven’t quite parlayed my work into a job offer yet. I expect that to change soon.
Q: So you’re back!
A: Settle down, hoss. I’m not committing to anything. I just wanted to explain my five-year absence for any readers who might be curious. Ideally, I will drop in now and again with another entry, but that will depend on what the future holds for me in other areas.
Q: Can you at least give us the updates on your past entries that we’ve been clamoring for?
A: If my loyal readers demand it, how can I say no?
Unsurprisingly, of the 43 “things” I wrote about, it’s the businesses that have been most affected over the past five years. If you don’t see it below, that means as far as I know, it’s pretty much the same now as it was in 2015.
This one hit me hard. For a restaurant that was somewhat off the beaten path when it opened, Wholly Joe’s hung in there, but in the end, the rent was too darn high, and it closed in 2018, taking its authentic Chicago cuisine with it. Not counting the ones I consumed within the Windy City’s limits, I haven’t had a satisfying Chicago-style dog since.
A restaurant called the Pancake House has taken over the space at 1182 E. Powell Road, so that’s a silver lining.
As I type, the Olentangy Trail is pretty much the same as it was five years ago, but exciting things are in the works. I didn’t mention it in the original post, but on its trek from downtown Columbus to Worthington Hills, the trail has a gap around West North Broadway that requires cyclists to ride on surface streets for a short distance. After much (and I mean much) talk, that gap is finally going to be cinched up, with two new bridges spanning the Olentangy River.
I like to think my work helped to bring about this development. In early 2018, the Clintonville Area Commission sent a letter to the city of Columbus, arguing that OhioHealth’s redevelopment of the land near the trail gap was an opportunity to fix the issue. I pushed my reporters to write story after story to keep up public awareness. I even filmed this little video of the trail gap itself, during a time when publishers were pushing the false narrative that consumers wanted nothing more than to watch news videos:
So I was personally invested in April 2021 when the city finally announced its concrete plans to “close the gap.” Now, the waiting game begins. Hopefully, my 1995-model bike still works when the new trail section opens in 2023.
Bono Pizza, sadly, had already lost some of its peculiar charm by the time I wrote about it in 2015. It had already moved from the astonishingly cramped corner of a skeezy convenience store to the roomier lobby of an apartment complex, and while the pizza was still top-notch, it was clear something was missing.
I’m guessing co-owner Jake Wilch felt it, too — whether the missing element was quirkiness, money or something else. He and his wife, Ruth, shut down Bono at the beginning of 2018, with a pledge to open elsewhere, though that crackly crust hasn’t resurfaced yet. Since then, I’ve heard Jake’s name associated with a food truck and a BBQ joint, both untried by me. If he ever wants to get back into the pizza game, I’ll be waiting.
Side note: The convenience store that used to host Bono was leveled, rebuilt, opened as another restaurant, then that restaurant closed, and now it’s a third restaurant. Everything changes.
Turns out, I’m not the only one who really digs this sign.
Tee-Jaye’s shut its doors just a few weeks ago; it’ll soon make way for Chick-fil-A, which many would consider a downgrade for various reasons. Personally, I would take Chick-fil-A’s waffle fries any day over an omelet with a greasy Kraft Single slapped haphazardly on top, which is what I received last time I went to Tee-Jaye’s.
The sign, meanwhile, faces an uncertain fate, but Chick-fil-A would be daft to replace it with its generic standard beacon. That giant red arrow is the most recognizable structure in Clintonville. Plus, any wrecking-ball operator who shows up would be wasting his time. I predict Clintonvillians will glom onto that neon pharos like a hippie on a sequoia.
It’s been a crazy ride for the city’s only Japanese arcade, which strove to distinguish itself during a time when retro arcades were popping up left and right and left and right, B, A start.
When I wrote about Gotcha Gachapon, it was already on its third location, all on or near Fifth Avenue. Shortly thereafter, it moved to what I thought would be its permanent spot in a former Victoria’s Secret at the mostly dead Eastland Mall. In the new space, what was then redubbed Akiba Arcade had plenty of elbow room for the rhythm games, fighters and merchandise loved by Columbus weebs.
But the owners’ vision was to serve food and drinks, so they found a fifth space — this time in far-flung Newark — that would allow it. That brought another name change — GeekEasy, a play on “speakeasy” — but an apparent conflict with the city of Newark over liquor licenses kept the doors closed.
Unbelievably, the owners are still trying, with a sixth space called the Bunker at a former golf-course clubhouse outside Lancaster. I wish them the best, though I’m not sure they qualify for this blog anymore.
I still shed a tear when I think about that fateful day in August 2018. I’d been craving a Big Boy all day, tart with pickles, dripping with tartar sauce that begged to be scooped up by a hot french fry. I’d planned to finish it off with a slice of rich pecan pie. But when I pulled up to my local Frisch’s, the sign was gone and weeds poked through the parking lot’s pavement. It was closed.
It still hurts like it was yesterday.
I guess Columbus doesn’t like Frisch’s as much as I do; there are just two left in Franklin County. But I’ll keep my hopes up that the Big Boy will keep hoisting that burger.
In perhaps the least surprising closure ever, Tropical Fruit and Nut shut down its small space on an industrial stretch of Huntley Road and now hawks its bags of bulk goodies exclusively in Urbancrest.
As previously noted, I’m likely among the few people in Columbus who watch the community-announcement channel for laughs. So that makes it doubly hilarious that they’ve updated both the graphics and the music, but the typos persist. One new feature is a scrolling message along the bottom of the screen that invites viewers to “submit you notice to Channel 21” — an error that has lingered for more than three years now.
I have to admit, though, my bizarre affection for Channel 21 is moving into unironic territory. I now find myself switching to it for comfort, when I want some background noise for scrolling Reddit or doing a crossword puzzle without the grating dialogue of a sitcom assaulting my ears. Its corny yet eclectic soundtrack has come to represent relaxation and lowered anxiety. If Channel 21’s on, life is good.
Fresh Market shut its doors in 2019, never able to get a foothold here in a market overcrowded with gourmet grocery stores. I take partial blame; I only shopped there while I was waiting for my takeout food at Bahn Thai next door — which closed in 2020. Everything I love is closed.
As far as I know, the Columbus Square Bowling Palace is the same as it’s been for decades. It still has 64 lanes; it still has that weird bowling-alley smell; it still attracts a motley crew of characters after dark.
Instead, I want to talk about how I promoted this blog. I didn’t just throw stuff up and wait for the clicks to come — I worked hard to get noticed. Every time I made a post, I sent messages to people who might have a vested interest in sharing that post through their own social media. For example, when I wrote about the CAPA Summer Movie Series, I asked CAPA to share the post on its own Facebook page.
As expected, most of these requests were denied or ignored, though I did get huge traffic boosts when a few PR reps came through for me.
The Columbus Square Bowling Palace was an “ignore.” What makes it stand out is that, a few months later, the company used stole my wholly unremarkable photo of its building for a paid Facebook ad. Hilarious.
I told you it was unremarkable.
Now, friends, you’re caught up — and so am I. I’ll do my best to bring you new posts soon, but in the meantime, get out there and enjoy this great city.
A few years back, my wife and I embarked on a road trip whose epicness…. epicity?… epicosity… well, let’s just say it was epic. We started in San Francisco and drove to Seattle, staying on the Pacific coast for the vast majority of the drive. For a dude who’s lived his entire life a full day’s drive away from the ocean, seeing it from so many vantage points over the course of five days was an astonishing experience — one I’ll never forget.
Some of my preconceived notions about the Northern California coast proved to be false. For one, I expected to see evidence of fishing operations: boats, nets, seafood restaurants. There was none of that. Instead, there were cows. Thousands of cows, grazing on verdant green pastures on cliffsides overlooking the infinite blue yonder.
Do these cows know how fortunate they are? What percentage of cows spend their lives in cramped pens, escaping only to be led to the slaughterhouse? The most an Ohio cow can hope for in its short life is an open field with a view of a silo or two. But these cows had vistas humans pay millions for.
Sample — not actual cow’s-eye view.
The brain is funny. Those lucky bovines come to mind every time I drive on state Route 315 in Delaware County. Just north of its intersection with Powell Road, sandwiched between the asphalt and the Olentangy River, there’s a grassy knoll. It’s never overgrown, so someone must own it and take care of it, but it doesn’t seem to be connected to any nearby properties. There are no structures or signs of human encroachment, apart from a patio swing I’ve never seen in use. Just a perfect enclave of green, hanging over the river, with seemingly no purpose but to offer peace to anyone — or even any cow — who stands within.
It doesn’t look like much, I know. You’ll just have to trust me on this one.
I want to go to there. I want to play catch there. I want to have a picnic there. I want to lie there and listen to some new-age music and watch the river flow by, and stare up at bits of blue sky filtered by rustling leaves.
It’s not possible, of course; even if the spot were public property — which it’s not, hence the Google Streetview photo — it’d be a nightmare to get there, given the lack of parking, sidewalks and shoulders. I doubt even the owners idealize their plot like I do, given the roar of the traffic mere feet away that must detract from its intrinsic value.
But as long as my car and my imagination remain operable, I’ll keep thinking of that grassy knoll as a tiny oval of utopia just off the highway.
And to those California cows: Graze on, my friends. And enjoy the view.
Since President Eisenhower dragged his pen across the piece of paper that authorized the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, tens of thousands of houses have been destroyed in the name of transportation. This websiteshows how dramatically cities’ landscapes were changed when those concrete ribbons ripped through them — and there’s plenty of evidence to prove poor neighborhoods were targeted by government leaders.
And then you end up with situations like this one near Bexley, where people “lucky” enough not to have their houses confiscated and razed are cut off from their neighbors by eight lanes of roaring traffic.
Kent Street West rules! Kent Street East drools!
Some cities are reclaiming the land that interstates took; Boston’s Big Dig, for example, put interstates underground and replaced them with parks. San Francisco removed a double-decker highway that separated the city from the water, and Seattle’s doing the same thing.
Of course, that’s prohibitively expensive for many cities, so they have to make do and adapt to what they’ve been given. In Columbus, east-west thoroughfare North Broadway had to deal not only with the gash cut by Interstate 71 that permanently separates Clintonville from Linden, but an ugly canyon cut under railroad tracks as well.
So here’s what they did:
(Photo: Paul Vernon, ThisWeekNEWS.com)
This incredible mural, finished in 2012, is a veritable compendium of the histories of both Linden and Clintonville, featuring colorful renderings of leaders who shaped the areas, favorite businesses and iconic structures, quirks like the Tee Jaye’s sign, and (my favorite) a giant tribute to the Booster, the community newspaper founded in 1933 by Clintonville advocate Rand Hollenback and currently and proudly edited by yours truly.
You’ve seen drive-thru nature preserves? This is a drive-thru history preserve — a skillfully crafted scrapbook of the past. And best of all, it took a bleak section of street and transformed it into an artistic wonder. That’s called making lemonade with lemons — a sweet victory for Clintonville, Linden and the city as a whole.
Why did the guy with the Block O painted on his chest, the scarlet-and-gray wig, and the bottle full of “water” cross the river? To get to Ohio Stadium, of course.
For a few Saturdays every fall, more than 100,000 people pack the Horseshoe. I don’t need to write about what happens inside; countless print, TV, radio and online resources and the guys in your office pretty much have that covered.
I’m more concerned about how they get there. It’s a slog on gameday, to be sure, but Franklin County made it a lot easier in 2003 when they opened the current version of the Lane Avenue Bridge.
Back then, Columbus had no signature bridge. Sure, there was the Beach Road Bridge, with its stunning design, but it’s so tucked away in a remote corner of the countryside that I doubt most people know of its existence, let alone rely on it daily. Downtown Columbus has several bridges, but until the Main Street Bridge was rebuilt in 2010, utility was the main concern. Not even the city’s longest bridge is distinguished — it’s an unnamed section of state Route 315 that, weirdly, goes over the Olentangy River but does not cross it.
Take that, San Francisco Bay!
So when the Lane Avenue Bridge started crumbling, the county decided Ohio State’s main entryway — in the shadow of the university’s esteemed halls of athletics and academics alike — should be more than a simple span. This is what they came up with.
It’s just 370 feet long — to compare, the Golden Gate Bridge is nearly 12 times that long — but it packs a wallop in that small space, with two grand towers, 145 feet tall each, holding up the deck via a web of cables. For Buckeye fans trying to get to the game from points west, it doubles the number of lanes from the old bridge from three to six, and offers far more space for the crowds on foot as well. And it even gives drivers something to do if they get stopped on the bridge, with Block O’s hidden here and there on the structure.
My favorite vantage point, however, is from the bike trail that passes beneath it on its way from Worthington Hills to downtown. A bridge of this scale deserves to be surveyed from all angles, and there are paths leading every which way to accommodate observers in that quest. I commend the county for recognizing the gateway to one of the world’s greatest universities deserves a bridge to match.
And best of all, you know Ann Arbor’s got nothing even close to this.
A busy newsroom is less like a typical office and more like a movie about the Chicago Stock Exchange directed by David Mamet. There’s a lot of people talking at once, sometimes shouting, reporters and editors running this way and that. The chaos factor is far higher than, say, the billing department of an insurance company (incidentally, the only other office environment in which I’ve worked).
Many journalists thrive on that type of atmosphere, so when the newsroom is barren (as it often is these days, with smaller staffs and writers filing from home or the field more often than not), they like to create drama to fill the void. This comes in the form of pointless arguing. Is Jeni’s Ice Cream overrated? I recently witnessed a group of dudes nearly come to fisticuffs over that question. What do you think of M. Night Shyamalan? I’ve vehemently defended my love for his films more than once over the scoffs of my peers. Even the one where the guy runs over himself with a lawn mower.
Rated R for graphic landscaping.
But one unanswerable question reigns supreme in the newsroom, and it comes from the sports department: Is X a sport?
Replace X with any activity that doesn’t involve a ball and/or perspiration, and you’ve got yourself a debate. Cheerleading seems to be the most discussed, with one side insisting that any endeavor that must be “judged” is not a sport, while the other side points out the extreme physical fitness and coordination required. I’ve listened to sports junkies bicker over curling, marching band, board games, figure skating, pool, table tennis… heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was willing to take the side of baseball being a non-sport, just for fun. (Depends on who’s playing, I guess.)
And then there’s bowling, so contentious that a former co-worker wrote a column in 2006 declaring his passionate stance for its status as an activity, not a sport. Said column and its author were declared “gross,” “ignorant” and far worse on professional bowling forums the next week, but he stood his ground, to this day ready to defend his beliefs.
I don’t know if it matters one way or the other. I am sure, though, of one bowling-related fact: There is no better place in town to partake of this… uh, pastime… than Columbus Square Bowling Palace off Dublin-Granville Road.
Let’s start with this: Sixty-four lanes. Sixty-four! It’s an extraordinary sight, no doubt, to see them all lined up, side by side, like the Pacific Ocean spread out before Lewis and Clark in all its glory.
And here are a few more digits for you: 24/7/365. That’s its operating hours. You wanna go bowling at 4 a.m. on Christmas Day? Go for it. The shoes will be waiting for you, freshly Lysoled.
Here’s one more number: $13. That’s how much it costs to bowl for three hours after 9 p.m. on weekdays. With two people, you can make it $1 a game if you really put some effort into it. Or, if you’re more of a night owl than I am, you can wait until 3 a.m. and get the same deal for $6. Compare that to the cost of any other leisure activity… I mean, sport.
Do you see some characters when you go bowling? Sure. That’s half the fun. At least a quarter of the fun, anyway. Because bowling is fun. I think people forget how fun it is, now that it’s been mostly relegated to the realm of mockery and ironic detachedness. But I dig it. I’m not afraid to say it. And you will rarely catch me digging it anywhere but the Bowling Palace, the city’s finest sporting arena. Er, activity center. Er… whatever.
Close your eyes and think about your last trip to the grocery store.
Are they closed? OK. Now, what are you picturing? Packed aisles? Wailing children? Glaring fluorescent lights? Surly cashiers? Finicky self-checkout machines? Long lines? Huge parking lots? All of the above?
Now, think about the last time you went to the spa. What was that like? Quiet, calming music, subdued lighting, relaxing aromas. You leave feeling refreshed, not harried.
Imagine if you could make grocery shopping as pleasant as spa day.
Well, you can’t… but Fresh Market is about as close as you can get.
Fresh Market is a national chain, but you’d never know that from Columbus; its location on Henderson Road is the only one anywhere near central Ohio. I’m guessing the multitude of gourmet grocery stores already here in large quantities — Whole Foods, Market District, Trader Joe’s, Fresh Thyme, and local stalwarts Weiland’s and the Hills Market, to name a few — dissuaded the Fresh Market brass from expansion.
Yet, among the glut, Fresh Market stands out in its subtlety. The first thing you notice when you walk in is the lovely fragrances of flowers, coffee and fresh fruit. Then you realize how quiet it is. And… is that classical music? Uninterrupted by jingles or pleas for cashiers on Register 6? Can you envision a world in which you can shop for groceries without hearing Wilson Phillips?
And the lighting — there are no flickering fluorescent tubes here. Instead, small spotlights hang from the ceiling to unobtrusively illuminate displays.
Note, too, how compact it is. The store wraps around a rustic-looking hub that hosts the prepared foods; everything else — baked goods, produce, meat, frozen foods and pantry staples — is within a few steps from the center.
And it goes without saying that everything here is top-notch quality. My wife swears the freshly squeezed orange juice here is the only OJ she’s tasted that comes close to her grandpa’s version, made in Florida from oranges within lobbing distance of the trees that bore them.
Do I shop weekly at Fresh Market? No. Usually convenience and penny-pinching trump luxury, and I head to Giant Eagle, which has toilet paper and still doubles coupons. But it’s always there for when I need a special treat, served with a side of Mozart.
Ohio has, at times, found itself the butt of jokes, most coming from haughty East and West Coast dwellers who’ve only seen The Heart Of It All from the fogged-up window of Delta Flight 1908. Maybe they drove through once on I-70, back in ‘88, on the way to an old college roommate’s wedding in Peoria, and based on that four-hour experience on a strip of land that comprises an incalculably low percentage of the state’s total land area, they declare Ohio “boring.”
But there’s one area in which Ohio always gets — and deserves — respect: its roller coasters.
Longtime Ohioans may not realize it, but it’s not normal to have two major amusement parks in one state. By my count, at least 32 states don’t even have what I’d consider one.
This one’s fun.
According to RCDB.com, the thrillseeker’s IMDB, there are 37 coasters currently operating in the state. Lamentably, just one of them makes its home in Columbus: Zoombezi Bay’s Sea Dragon, a “starter” coaster that doesn’t pack much wallop to those accustomed to 120mph in 3.8 seconds.
So what does an irritable Columbus coaster enthusiast do when the nearest thriller is too far away? I suggest Cooke Road in Clintonville.
No, it doesn’t look like much in that photo. But hills are few and far between in our fair city, and the view from behind the wheel, just like the view from the front seat of Millennium Force, makes it look much steeper than it is. In any case, it’s probably the steepest road in town, and certainly the most coasteresque: a big drop, a little bunny hop, and then back up the other side and into flat-as-a-pancake reality again.
The speed limit is 25mph, granted. Probably faster than you’ll get riding Sea Dragon, but you won’t feel that stomach-dropping euphoria that coaster lovers crave. No matter. After 15 years of living near Cooke Road and driving that section at least a couple of times a week, I still look forward to it.
I like looking out for deer. (Five spotted last month.) I like checking out the houses and imagining what it must be like to live in this wooded valley hideaway. In the summer, I like holding my hand out the car window and feeling the dramatic temperature drop.
But most of all, I just like plunging into that ravine. And I promise, I’ll keep my hands and arms inside the ride vehicle at all times.
Drama on TV has never been better than it is right now.
With shows such as Breaking Bad and The Sopranos setting the mold, networks and streaming services continue to pump out movie-quality shows, from violent fanbase-splitters Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead to gentler but no less compelling programs such as Downton Abbey. My current favorite, Fargo, might be as good as the Oscar-winning Coen Bros. film that inspired it.
Things are a bit more bleak on the comedy front. Sure, you have standouts like The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Veep, but the prime-time comedy landscape still seems to be dominated by dumb-and-dumber garbage that makes even the lightest laugh track sound unconvincing.
I’m looking at you, 2 Broke Girls.
So next time you’re in the mood for some comedy, just turn to Channel 21. That’s what it is on my cable box, anyway; the guide lists it as “Public, Educational, Government Access.”
This isn’t the public access from Columbus’ days of yore, a pre-YouTube bizzaro-land where characters such as Damon Zex made themselves locally famous through dadaism. No, it’s simply a listing of upcoming events around town — 95% of them from churches — backed by soothing new-age music.
How is that funny? One word: typos.
I’m not sure who edits the information once it’s submitted by these organizations, but would it kill them to run spell-check first? I’d estimate one out of every five slides has a major typo or error in grammar or punctuation, and even the clean ones often have ridiculous wording, pretentious titles, strange font choices, peculiar programs or other items worth razzing.
Don’t forget to check out that Bible sudy.
Please note that I don’t mean to mock anyone, especially not some poor, overworked city employee or volunteer. Typos are just hilarious to me (as long as they’re not mine).
Maybe you don’t find them hilarious. Would it help if I told you some of these typos have remained unfixed for more than a decade? Yes, when I first became aware of Channel 21, it was the early 2000s, and I would get together with friends to watch it and make jokes, Mystery Science Theater-style. (True party animals, we were.) Some of the typos we laughed at back then are still hanging around, apparently unseen by human eyes. Seriously, there’s an organization ostensibly called “Come As Your Are” that’s been touting its typo since Seinfeld was on the air.
Will you find Channel 21 as funny as I do? Probably not. Maybe it’s a writer thing. But give it a chance. You might just discover the best comedy on TV.
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