I was setting up one of the cameras when something started to feel noticeably “off.” Kind of like when a giant patch of clouds obscures the sun for a second in the middle of the summer, but not exactly like that. It was noticeably darker, but somehow still bright. Like if you ramped up the contrast and warmth settings on a tv. Making it to my friends on the other side of the lake, I put on the glasses to see the moon as it naturally maneuvered in front of the sun. And then: life was like one of those made-for-tv, sci-fi films from the 90s. The kind where they’ve clearly filmed in Los Angeles d ..read more

“I never thought my dream man would be obsessed with driving to random pizza places just for a story.” - My girlfriend after I told her what I was going to be doing one weekend.   I never thought I’d be anyone’s dream man, but I do seem to often find myself on pizza peregrinations. This trip wasn’t a case of curious fast food offerings like the McPizza one, though. Nor was it like that time I went in search of “NEWstalgia” from a Pizza Hut Classic. Rather, this one was purely Midwestern. Even the pizza style could be described as that. Some might call it “tavern style” or describe it as ..read more

Some March photographs made on the border of Cincinnati’s Northside and South Cumminsville neighborhoods. Since 2007, the content of this website (and its former life as Queen City Discovery) has been a huge labor of love. If you’ve enjoyed stories like The Ghost Ship, abandoned amusement parks, the Cincinnati Subway, Fading Ads, or others over the years—might you consider showing some support for future projects?  Donate ..read more

Last year, “House of Hades” tiles began appearing in downtown Cincinnati again. The mysterious pieces of street art, which take inspiration from the original “Toynbee Tiles,” have been a favorite subject of mine over the years. Thanks to the weather of this past winter, it seems like those latest examples may have finally “cured.” I’ll check on them all eventually, but for now—another form of tiles has emerged. This time in a different neighborhood and bearing a local reference. Old Timber Inn mural. November 2023 I really wish I could tell you the history of The Old Timber Inn. I didn’t (and ..read more

The DoughNut Plant - Brooklyn. Barclays Center - Home of the Brooklyn Nets If you google “Barclays Center rock” you at first get a bunch of information about how the “Rock & Roll Hall of Fame” induction ceremony was once held in Brooklyn instead of at its home in Cleveland (which is a rabbit hole I’ll probably go down once I have a few more drinks). The sculpture out front, however, is actually titled “Ona” and comes from artist Ursula von Rydingsvard. Downtown Brooklyn. Park Slope Bedford Stuyvesant. Williamsburg Appreciated this place’s “Surf Cincinnati” style chairs. The face/stre ..read more

As soon as the custodian flipped the switch, light came bursting out of the windows and into the darkness of the street like a mall-food-court-mirage in the middle of November. I don’t know if the best ideas manifest when you’re stumbling around the city waiting for the dog to do her business, but this one had. As the effects of a late evening transformed into the exhaustion of an early morning, I drafted an email to the Federal Government of the United States. “90s mall food court aesthetic.” That’s the term I used when explaining to Mike, my guide from the U.S. General Services Administrat ..read more

I don’t really remember how the idea for this post came about, but I’d known about Stegowagenvolkssaurus from my time as a student at Northern Kentucky University. No matter how (in)frequently one made use of the library, it was impossible to miss the hulking hybrid of dinosaur and iconic car that would easily stand out in any art museum, let alone among monotonous rows of books. It wasn’t until years after I graduated, though, that I realized there was another half-reptile, half-vehicle adorning another local literary institution of higher education. I wanted to photograph and put together a ..read more

Reservation Dogs may be one of the best television shows I’ve ever seen. I have no idea how I first came across it, but it became something I looked forward to every week. Even in an era of on-demand binging, the story was so wonderfully structured and paced that I never seemed to mind the wait between episodes or seasons. As described by the FX Network: “From Co-Creators and Executive Producers Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, FX’s Reservation Dogs is a half-hour comedy that follows the exploits of “Elora Danan” (Devery Jacobs), “Bear Smallhill” (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), “Willie Jack” (Paulina ..read more

Several years ago, friend and artist Nicole Trimble, used a few of my photographs as references in a painting she created. Then my friend, the talented Laura Metz, based a few works off of my Waffle House series. Now, another talented artist has extended that same kindness to me. Artwork by Ashley Halsey Hemingway. My photograph from September 2023. I’d snapped that photograph with my phone while taking a train to Chicago in 2022 as I passed through Indiana’s sprawling farms of both the agricultural and windmill variety. On choosing that particular image, Ashley said: “That specific photo s ..read more

On the day of the very first FC Cincinnati home match, shortly after Die Innenstadt had been founded, we gathered at a brewery in the city’s Over-The-Rhine neighborhood. Kicking off the first supporter’s group march, we eventually had to climb the Ohio Ave. steps all the way up Bellevue Hill. While regrouping for a breather at the top, everyone took turns passing around and polishing off a bottle of Four Roses in a pre-covid, desperate frenzy to have something to drink. Eventually, as we got closer to the uptown stadium, we merged with the other supporters groups and then welcomed FC Cincinna ..read more