WAY TO GO OHIO, part 13; or, PORTUGAL FOR THE PORTUGUESE

my uncle sent me a link to an article at cnn.com on the eight best beer cities in america, and i thought that maybe columbus had made the list because he'd sent it the monday morning following the saturday night on which we'd visited the new beer and burgers place on indianola together. but (and of course, as i considered in hindsight) it hadn't. and that wasn't much of a surprise -- although an also-ran honorable mention on a list like that one definitely seems to be where the city has set its sights of late. the crest, on indianola and crestview, is one of five or six derivatively identical self-styled gastropubs to have opened in columbus in the past few months, five or six years after the gastropub trend had already started inspiring cringes outside of ohio's capital, which is now the self-styled capital of "no coast" brewing. the crest isn't affiliated with a brewery, but it's got the copper bar and all of the modern rustic charm of its forebears, the beer and fancy bar food places in all of those other cities that everyone with a small business loan in columbus must think they've been the only ones to visit. and because it's here and not in those other places, the crest also has a half dozen flat screen tvs. its beer list is good, but let's be honest: it doesn't take much thought or effort (or even expertise) to put one of those together anymore. and, anymore, with all of the not at all bad craft beer out there, it doesn't take much to make your list unique either. because the barley's chupacabra had just blown, i had another pint of the bear ass from elevator. i'll go back to the crest for happy hour some time to have some more (if they've still got it) for fifty percent off. i won't, however, go back to eat. the crest is new, and this past saturday night was warm, but the kitchen and the staff at a place styling itself as a gastropub (if a place with a menu like the crest's can style itself as such) should be able to manage a menu such an unambitious menu. the one burger and the three gastrosliders that we ordered took an hour and a half to get to our table, and our server was either too stoned or too scared of us to make even an overture to an apology. if it weren't for the coworker of his who was serving the table next to ours (whose training i assume must have come from a previous job), we'd never have gotten napkins. and napkins i needed, because the unexceptional patties between the gastrobuns of the sliders needed some condiment help. luckily, the crest's house hot sauce is good. there's a bottle on every table, each labeled simply "hot," and the contents of those bottles would seem to be the crest's only signature distinction amid a bustling assemblage of unremarkably pleasant and debilitating inoffensiveness. point, click, gastropub! the irony of the crest's self-styled importance is wholly unintentional and all but lost on the crowd. but i'm not knocking it. the stylings of the staff could stand to be better, and the menu could stand either stricter or more imaginative direction, but i'll be back to drink for half price at the copper bar. until columbus figures out what it does besides be happy not to be the worst of the also rans, it's something. probably nothing even worth writing about, but something. as the generative text (now concluded) on that wall at 88 east broad street contends (with its last): "better late than never." so, for my part, i'd like to go back and change. everything. the boys on the sex apps in the midwest have diversified out from masculine young professionalism into kowtowing to any semblance of creativity. and meanwhile, curation has been replaced by internalization in the vernacular. this is how the class wars of the twenty-first century were won, the funny battle cries for community, designed. but i'll win them all. win them over. i'll go back and be an architect. rewrite the show! before those other ones were written. but then i'll leave. wanted, i'll want to be elsewhere. armed with the national profession, maybe i can convince lisbon to take me back.

THE TIME AND THE TEMPERATURE

i was walking in the rain from a bus on high to the library on front, and it must have been a while since i'd been been down that stretch of broad street on foot (if it's dry i bike, and i won't take broad), because i saw something there that i hadn't seen before, although it's apparently been there since the end of january. and what's there now near the corner of east broad and south lazelle is a sign, and the sign reads "tehran, iran" at the top, plastic part of it, below which (in real time) a scrolling display gives the time and the temperature in the city named by the sign. not so surprisingly, "the time and the temperature" -- as the sign is called -- is a part of "finding time" (columbus' bicentennial public art project)...although our being well into 2013 might (jocularly) call the timeliness of the piece into question (and even after we acknowledge that we weren't quite so far into the year when the sign first went up). pittsburgh artist jon rubin created the the piece to be "pro-conversation." i haven't heard much on the street so far, but maybe people just need, er...time. but now people on the street in columbus (or on east broad street, anyway) will be reminded of the time (and the temperature) in tehran, a city of over twelve million people, which makes it the fifth largest city by city proper population in the world.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 12

winter shows signs of giving up soon, but then it doesn't. the big public art piece on the wall at 88 east broad street should be finished by the spring, but for now, amid a stirring medley of ice and snow and rain it reads: "columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective inside joke, one still looking for a punch line, that begins with 'columbus never came here, but....' that's why our city, if we want it to, will wake up with," ... probably antibiotic resistant gonorrhea. oh man.too much about awareness and not enough action on prevention. oh man.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 9

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective inside joke, one still looking for a punch line, that begins with 'columbus never came here, but...' that's why our city," ... ...

so continues the wall at 88 east broad street. a visiting native who's been living in the pacific northwest for the past eight years asked me to drive him by the other day to see it. and there it was, except for the last part. but in the week or so of meantime the contest judges for the brooklyn born paraprosdokian have finally stopped extending deadlines, made a new selection, and have made the addition to the wall. who cares if the project was supposed to end in december? but that's it: does anyone care? it would certainly stand to argue that the city's identity crisis has already been spelled out -- without the predication of that final clause.

everyone goes to the pizza place in olde towne now, and someone waiting for a table remarks that the city must be recession proof at seeing the place so full on a thursday. aren't they saying the recession is over? and don't they say that the weekend starts early? which was the older news? the other paper will cease publication at the end of the month. "the other paper?" it's old news, no one reads it, although that's probably less to do with the cultural bent of the city and more with its acquisition in 2011 by the dispatch. there's a new sign in light bulb lettering at the bottom of the short north that's absolutely garish -- and nothing new. an oyster bar! they scream. they'd seen one when they'd visited that one city, and now there was one down the street. the urban influx generation's finally getting its proverbial wal-mart. and that's why the city... ...

the next deadline is january 16. have you put in your submission??

HOW TO GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME...AND EVERY TIME THEREAFTER

it's tuesday, which means extended happy hour at yellow brick, where they'll be playing episodes of twin peaks in uncomfortably clear and flattened high-definition on the screen above the bar, with laura palmer's beauty queen smile presiding benevolently over the taps, the pizza oven and all of the exposed brick from where her picture is enshrined on the big chalkboard over the waiting area. portland, ohio, the staff would like us to think. and what do we think? before microcosm publishing moved back to portland, it had left the rose city to set up shop in bloomington. there were other cities with interesting architecture that hadn't over-happened (and had cheaper rents). so when "the simpsons" got the joke, it was probably already played out. and "the simpsons" joking about the new york times being the herald of the next end probably means that it isn't long before they get the joke too and it's all finished. but, for this week at least, we can be sure that most of america knows that the new portland is having lived in portland and blithely talking about how portland is over. cool. that should be good four at least four happy hours at twin peaks tuesday. but then the sneers will probably win out over our humble braggadocio as we're trying to figure out how to get back behind in front of the times. meanwhile, we've got an extra two weeks to figure out how to finish the inside joke about that wall on east broad. they've extended the deadline again. have people already lost interest in portland, ohio? or is the point of it all to be part of the joke. america the beautiful new cool. it's all over, folks (including being over it). let's never, ever speak of it again.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 5

our inside joke without a punch line hasn't developed any since the first half of the month. they've extended the next contest deadline until the tenth of december. so we'll have to wait to see how brooklyn decides to play the columbus bicentennial's last hurrah. meanwhile, however, something appreciably local. even if the columbus emerging artist series doesn't seriously update its tumblr, it purports to throw monthly events. and even if it happened at the pizza place that purports to be portland in columbus, this month's installment in the series was a welcome opportunity to get some good stuff cheap. the matting around the new-urban-blue-collar-throwback (schiele style) grotesquery that i put in a friend's car when i got on my bike was alone worth the thirty dollars that i had to make change for before handing it to the artist and pulling the portrait down from the wall. as i was leaving, the organizer told me that there aren't auctions every month, that sometimes the group just hosts talks...and i cut him off there. because, as they say, talk is for fags. and i said so, and then he didn't seem to want to talk anymore. but wait! because my friend is a puppeteer. he could make something with that skull if you got us some cold cuts. but he was gone. and way to go?

anyway, i've got my painting, made in emerging columbus; and maybe we'll check out december's event. meanwhile, however, we're going to crash the party in youngstown.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 4; or, REWATCHING THE RAIN IN GALICIA

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective inside joke, one still looking for a punch line, that begins with 'columbus never came here, but..."it goes on (and on, apparently). and i made sure that i walked us down broad street when i was walking back north with the illustration professor from the art and design college. he didn't seem to think it remarkable that the artist wasn't local (nor that the artist who had done the awful cutout sculptures for the plinths of the bridge down the street wasn't either) -- even after i made my reminder that the "finding time" public art project was supposedly mounted in celebration of the city's bicentennial. columbus wants to show that it's involved in larger culture, he said. and i, i told him that columbus might as well make its motto "we're not that behind." and i suppose that i had been setting myself up for it as i was waiting at the pizza place on 18th and oak for my call to karaoke to come last monday evening. i was sitting at the bar in front of where the bartender was circumcising the paper covers on the bendy straws. her former coworker (who it appeared had just been fired) was sitting one stool away from me. both of them encouraged my encouragement that he continue to escalate his raucousness. after he'd gone and one of the others who was waiting for the call to karaoke had come to join me, i told the bartender that the pizza place and its personnel dynamic reminded me of a place where i might have spent a little too much time once upon a time in portland. and of course she told me that i might as well consider columbus the portland of the midwest. you'd like that, wouldn't you. touché?

but now the election was over, there was some nice weather, and a lull, and that meant that i actually got around to immediately reading the paper that i'd lucked into after finishing my cold breakfast at katalina's on sunday. in the styles section there was an article on "finding the courage to reveal a fetish," and although the titular one was rather mild, i still felt warmed by the empathy and hilarity i would have shared with the author had i had the chance to tell her a recent story of my own. and then there was the "tour de farce" article in the book review about the book by tyler hamilton and daniel coyle on doping in professional cycling. of course, people, of course! but it felt nice to be in keeping with the times (or at least with the times). ...or was that nearly behind them? touché.

and in the magazine an article about the new economy as epitomized by the ace hotel and the battle for 29th street. feeling ill. then today, on top of the rain, i had a head cold, and i didn't feel like finishing the magazine article on inditex. "galicia, on the atlantic coast of northern spain, is the homeland of generalissimo francisco franco [as well as of mariano rajoy], but is otherwise famous for being a place people try to leave." my morriña. its paradox. get behind the times or get stampeded, columbus says. we've gotta get out of this place, all of us. (and, well, they're saying anyway that we might just be forced off this fiscal cliff.) but today was the perfect day for staying in bed and just reading something else.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 3

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective inside joke, one still looking for a punch line, that always begins with...," it continues. hopefully the joke won't be on us tomorrow when the heart of the heart of it all finishes up at the polls. all eyes on ohio. if somehow you hadn't heard: they're letting us pick the president. so, neighbors, expect us to call. expect us to knock. but for tonight it's karaoke. the not so calm before...whatever happens tomorrow...while far away at holocene, the site of the big election night party in 2008, tin house will be celebrating the release of its newest issue. "portland, brooklyn." you think you've been there, you say? and we all struggle to organize our reactions, caught off guard at having not been the first to jump (in writing) to that retrogressively prophetic conclusion. rats. if it weren't for the election, we'd have liked to have gone. what's important? the war of the culture wars. way to go, ohio.

WAY TO GO OHIO, part 2

"columbus never came here, but when the city sleeps, what our dreamers discover is that we have always created our own collective joke," it continues. en garde, columbus. "et songe bien, oui, songe en combattant." i'm in on it. we'll see where it goes.