Of the many things I love about Cincinnati, the city’s love of art is near the top of the list. We have a ton of museums, which is pretty standard for a large city. We also have the Art Academy, The School for Creative and Performing Arts, and a ton of non-profits and funding organizations, a ballet, an opera, a symphony… you name it. As a city whose goal was to become the Paris of the West, Cincinnati is brimming with artistic activity just under its Porkopolis skin. Hundreds of successful artists have been touched by the creative spirit of this city. This is a shot of the Art Academy which moved to Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine a few years ago. I never attended this school, but I would like to think it’s just the most literal manifestation of a city that is itself an education in art. Cincinnati is one giant art academy.

Yes, I was taking pictures of stars again. No, I don’t want this to become a habit. This skies have just been really clear for Ohio lately, and living on top of a big hill also makes it a little easier to see everything. Anyway, this is a shot of the big dipper over a house. I’m not sure what it’s trying to say, but I like that the house looks really typical, not too weird, not too plain, not too run down, not too fancy. I’d like to know what you think. I’ll be posting more pictures of people soon, I promise. I’ve stockpiled a couple of shoots that I’ll be posting here over the next week or so. Hope you enjoy.

Musician Michael Bany was playing a show with the Goshorn Brothers in 1995. When the show was over, he left the Over-the-Rhine venue and was murdered in Jail Alley. He was 41 years old.

13 years later, Michael’s brother, Mark, has been working tirelessly to maintain the Michael W. Bany Music Scholarship Fund which recognizes promising young musicians. A few weeks ago Jail Alley was renamed Michael Bany Way by the City of Cincinnati. Mark was there to award this year’s scholarship and unveil the new street sign among a crowd of family, friends and supporters.

Working at CityBeat is a pretty unique experience. There is an atmosphere to the place that forces you to work your hardest at staying ahead of the curve. If people are flocking toward something and it’s the next big thing, we’re done with it. We strive to discover what is the newest angle on the most current trends. The same is true for most alternative weeklies. In this vein, we ran a story last week about “local washing.”

The locavore/buy local movement is still rather new. Alternative media have been reporting on the issue for about two years, but it’s really starting to get some traction in more mainstream areas. So what’s the next step. Well, apparently large corporations are “local washing” their brands. In others words, they are labeling things as local, when in reality most reasonable people wouldn’t agree. They are also sprinkling the term throughout their marketing campaigns. You can read all about it here in article.

So I went to a store in town that stock legitimate local goods, Madison’s at Findley Market. They sell local produce, much of which they grow themselves, but openly admit that they can’t get ahold of local pineapple so they get that shipped in along with other items that don’t grow in the Midwestern climate.

This project was hard, in that “local washing” is not a commonly known practice. It’s so new that people aren’t that concerned about it yet. So it was hard to steer the interview away from a straight forward locavore piece to something a little deeper. Let me know what you think in the comments.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynjd9Ra3NgM]