Zan McQuade - The Cincinnati Anthology

The
Cincinnati
Anthology

Edited By Zan McQuade

The Cincinnati Anthology

Rust Belt Chic Press

Selection, Introduction, and end photo copyright 2014 by Zan McQuade

All individual pieces the author; reprint permissions can be found on

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing 2014

Book design by Chris Glass

by Zan McQuade

Print edition: 978-0-9859441-2-4

E-book edition: 978-0-9859441-3-1

www.beltmag.com

by Polk Laffoon IV previously appeared in the May 2012 issue of Cincinnati Magazine . Printed by permission of the author and Cincinnati Magazine.

by David Falk previously appeared in The Huffington Post on October 23, 2013. Printed by permission of the author.

by Sarah Wesseler previously appeared in Satellite Magazine. Printed by permission of the author and S atellite Magazine .

by Brian Trapp previously appeared in the Fall/Winter 2012 issue of Black Warrior Review . Printed by permission of the author and Black Warrior Review .

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by Curtis Sittenfeld previously appeared in the October 2007 issue of Cincinnati Magazine . Printed by permission of the author and Cincinnati Magazine .

by Jack Heffron previously appeared in the October 2007 issue of Cincinnati Magazine . Printed by permission of the author and Cincinnati Magazine .

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by Katie Laur previously appeared in the September 1993 issue of Cincinnati Magazine . Printed by permission of the author and Cincinnati Magazine .

lyrics from the 2012 album Meet Me At The Edge Of The World , published by Great Speckled Dog Records. Printed by permission of Over The Rhine.

Nestled deep within one of the wings of the Cincinnati Museum Center in Union Terminal, just off of the glowing sunrise of the lobbys deco dome, is a miniature model of Cincinnati, a moving diorama of the city through various points in its history. The first time I visited, I fell hopelessly in love with the scaled model, its moving parts, the winding pathways and plexiglass windows through which you could spy on the lives of the miniature city below: Crosley Field, the Zoo, Music Hall. I watched as the lights suspended over the city took it from daywith delivery trucks dashing through city streets past warehouses and shops with striped awningsto nightwith windows of the Italianate houses high on the hills glowing golden above the slow lumbering shift of the long-gone trolleys up the Mt. Adams incline. I knew that I could stay on the other side of that plexiglass forever, imagining the stories behind each lit window, wondering how those streets may have changed since the model was built, how the people who lived there have changed, what parts of Cincinnatis history were preserved by the model, what stories could be imagined in its future.

Wouldnt it be a great thing to try to gather these stories in one place, I thought, to bind them together and send them out into the world for everyone to see? To consider Cincinnati for what existed beyond its stereotype, behind those windows, as a collection of experiences, both good and bad? Wouldnt that be a thing.

I moved to Cincinnati for the first time in 2011 (I grew up just north of the city, but hardly knew it then, and spent most of my adult life on the east coast), lured here by what I can only describe as the thrum of the city rumbling under the hills, the exciting energy of progress bubbling up from the river basin. I could feel that something was happening here, something I could be a part of; it was what everyone was talking about. I saw a city full of potential and ideas; everyone I met seemed to have a full-time job and a full-time passion project. What was happening was the revitalization of downtown and Over-the-Rhine, restaurants blossoming across the city, breweries and flea markets and music festivals, contentious construction projects and neighborhood battles. I had landed in the midst of a sort of Renaissance, a seismic shift, and I wanted to pin something of this feeling down, etch it into the citys collective memory, preserving some of what inspired me to move here in the first place.

That is my intent here with the gathered pages you now hold in your hands: to preserve, to etch, to pin.

Much of what you will see in these pages represents the visions of those who have fallen madly in love with the city of Cincinnati, either for the first time or all over again. These are the stories belonging to some of the citys most legendary citizens, many of those who have passed through one way or another, and many of those who are here to stay. These are the sights of the city that take our breath away: the bridges, the architecture, the ghost signs, the hills, the people we pass on the street corner. These are stories and images both of transition and of immutable sentiments.

The essays in these pages arent all love letters; each of us can acknowledge that there are faults and cracks in the facade of this city, some that run deep: vast swaths of vacant buildings that could do with saving, hills that need shoring up, lingering racial and neighborhood tensions that need to be massaged out with a more progressive dialogue. An anthology purporting to represent an entire city would not be a fair assembly of ideas if it didnt include criticism, or if it didnt highlight the more challenging parts of living here. I hope that while were sitting here in Cincinnati on the precipice of great things, we wont neglect to consider that every city is born of change, and that we must consider what change is still necessary to make this city as great as we want it to be.

To tell the story of Cincinnatia story of every life lived here, of every sight seenwould take more than a handful of essays and photographs, but I hope this anthology will serve as a miniature glimpse of some of the great thoughts this city brings about in us, some of the stories it has created through its past and its present. This beautiful and sometimes troubled city that fosters creative endeavors, that makes us acknowledge race and gentrification, that makes us ponder the view of sky and bridge and brick wall and cobbled street, this city that makes us stop and look around at whats being built and whats being destroyed, at what potential might be around the corner: this is a great and unique city, and this anthology is a window through which you might view the collective greatness that this city can inspire.

Zan McQuade

February 2014

This book would not have happened were it not for the generous logistical assistance and recommendations from the following people: Kevin Fanning, Chris Glass, Emily Gould, Jeffrey Harrison, Robert Hitt, Amy Hunter, Jonathan McQuade, Meredith Melragon, Alison Momeyer, Sridhar Pappu, Randy Simes, Curtis Sittenfeld, Jay Stowe, Linda Vaccariello, and, of course, Anne Trubek and the Rust Belt Chic Press.

Lets start with a story.

Sometimes, when Im driving into Cincinnati from Dayton, I watch the horizon line to the south and feel that quickening of the senses that coming home can impart. The land stretches across the woods and fields (and behind the housing tracts and shopping malls) into a gentle upward slope until the sky claims it, and just when it looks like nothing could lie beyond, the hills come into view again. Gentle, rolling, densely wooded and, in their way, welcoming. When I see them, I know Im back.