I'm on a boat! And apparently, the subway...

Last night turned out to be more fun than I thought it would be.

CAPCHA THA BOOTY, on a boat down on the river: awesome weather, BEEEEAUTIFUL views of Cincinnati and Newport. GAAAAHHHH, and I left my camera in the car like a stupid imbecile so I could not take any good pictures of the bridges and lights. It was lovely. The music was on as well. I ended up running into a friend and we hung out all night. We chatted with this girl named Life (really). She was 19. She wore a cut off tank top and some panties that said "Barely Legal" on her backside. Life was interesting. Life was...19. Her panty slogan was very befitting in a way. Haha. She had also been raving since she was 15. For a moment I was like WOW, that's a long time to be raving girl! But I was figuring in my age, not hers, in which case she has been raving for 4 years.

I guess that's still a long time to have raved/to be raving/to rave. I have no expertise in rave years.

It was fun. I also ran into my underage co-worker. That was somewhat awkward. But cute. Cubicle City reunion! er...

Regardless, the music was bumpin', checkout In The Groove Productions for future events if you're into techno, drum and bass, electronic vibes.

For the after party, I was told that I should bring myself to The Subway, downtown on Walnut. I had never been to the Subway, so I was excited. My excitement was not in vain either. I think I may have found a new hole-in-the-wall that I love. Last night Zeropoint was playing some OFF THE WALL RIDICULOUS drum and bass and hip hop fusion that was blowing. my. mind.

I made a note to check them out post event.

I should also note that last night, the climate was particularly sticky and gross here, so I was a sweaty mess. By 3am at the Subway I'm sure I was emanating a pretty raunchy aroma. However, that didn't stop my limbs from undulating to some music! The Subway is very reminiscent of, well, a subway. In fact, (don't quote me on this) I believe it's one of the old platforms that would have been used for the Cincinnati metro that got abandoned back in the 40's. So it's got this underground cool vibe that I enjoy. You know, dark and seedy and hip. Yeah. Check out my crappy pics. My camera was conveniently dying. Not a good camera night :( Oh well, fun was had folks! Now it's 10am and I've had 4.5 hours of sleep. Exhaustion + Starvation= Crabby, but elated, Moi. :)

an old friend

So I'm waiting on a trip to the 'burgh to purchase some super-8 film for my new camera (!), because Pittsburgh Filmmakers is my home away from home on the media front. However I'm trying to locate a possible place here in the 'nati. Anyone? I'm friggin' eager to shoot something on this baby, ASAP. It's getting to a really ridiculous geek-out point, and I need to channel some of my energy as soon as possible onto celluloid. This would be a good thing. It's been a while my film friend.

Mise en Abime

I was driving a winnebago on a stormy summer afternoon (?? I know, weird). Just after I came off an exit ramp (I think 275, but it was a weird and distorted 275), my window was bombarded with rain and it fogged up too fast for me to clear it. So I crashed into some trees. The winnebago got turned upside down and the rain, now a monsoon, came pouring in from a gaping hole in the side. Then I woke up, dazed, in my bed with water falling all over me. It took me a minute to gather myself and shake off the haze, but I realized that my waterbed had busted overnight and I was sleeping at the bottom with water gushing all around me. I got up, totally freaked out now, and tried to make some sense of this. Was I feeling the water in the winnebago because I was really feeling the water from my bed? I leave my room and shout for my mom. No answer. So I go into the living room with a crazy smile on my face about to tell her about this dream. She's sitting in a chair by a lamp, and I see only her silhouette. She says, "I was wondering how long it would take before you said anything about this." At first I thought perhaps she came in my room earlier and was upset that I, somehow, soaked my room in water in my sleep. Then she got up and pointed to a random pile of junk on the floor. "Why didn't you pick this up last night before you went to bed?!" Suddenly, I felt odd, and queasy, and it didn't feel right, this situation. She just kept staring at me, waiting for me to fess up. I turned around, all of a sudden realizing that I don't HAVE a waterbed and I ran back down the hall to confirm this. As soon as I opened the door, I woke up. For real this time. In my spring mattress non-water-filled bed, even more confused than before. But it was raining outside and my window was open and items were getting wet. Hmmm...still wondering if this is another dream, just a very prolonged and lucid one. Guess I'll never know.
Aren't dreams inside of dreams fabulously frightening? Mise en abime...Just thought I'd share.

Valley Thrift bounty: $120

8 belts

8 dresses

4 skirts

1 jacket

1 shirt

3 purses

1 painting

and 1 chinese fan

Not bad for 120 bucks!!! I'm a secondhand junkie. :)

WARNING

Taking pictures whilst driving is dangerous. But can still be done. Takes a minimal amount of one-handed skill. Here's my view of sparse 9am traffic on 71 South this morning. I got this urge, so I went for it. This woman was staring at me cock-eyed in the other lane as I haphazardly lined up a shot and attempted to not get myself killed quickly. This is the result



not bad.

I went downtown for a background check today. Reasons to be explained later. But the thing I secretly love about being downtown is that its kind of impossible to get really lost. It's just a grid, just lots of circles, whether you're walking or driving it works. Also, this guy working at a parking lot gave me change so I could park at a street meter instead of pay $2.00 for 15 minutes. It was his suggestion- really. He was quite nice. But then I knew I would have to parallel, which I'm not so good at. Luckily, it was morning time, and no one but a few stray office workers and people unloading shipments were lingering on the streets, so I did a swift "pull in" to a space. God I love it when that happens.



I'm always wondering where the people are when I'm downtown. The same thing in Pittsburgh, a similar downtown situation. Which is why I support all of the efforts with tranforming Over the Rhine and re-investing and bringing more business down there. ESPECIALLY a light rail in the future, and the streetcar, AND more bike lanes. Cincinnati is so NOT bike friendly, which is unfortunate. I have some friends that flip their wig when bike riders are mentioned, basically expressing their desire to run them off the road in some state of rage. I want a bike at some point, and I plan to ride that bike outside, probably. I guess I just hope my friends don't run me off the road one day. But the fact of the matter is Cincinnati, currently, is not designed for biking. It just isn't folks. So yeah, bikes on narrow or high traffic roads is noble and awesome (go bikes!) but nonetheless a nuisance at times because we don't employ sharrows. At all.

While I'm on this topic...It occurs to me that no matter how awesome a new transit initiatve is, it's only as strong as the people behind it and supporting it. So the fact that Cincinnati folk are pretty much attached at the hip to their vehicles is a wee bit of an issue. Not to mention the fact that soooo many people in the Greater Cincinnati Area commute everyday from suburbs and periphery areas to uptown and downtown (like me). Until the streetcar and light rail plans include at least some of these areas, I don't realistically see city wide support happening.

:) Let's all get involved, and at least get informed, shall we? Check out Cincinnatians for Progress, they've been kind of lighting the pathway on the transit thing as of late, especially for the upcoming November ballot.

Entrance into the inner circle

Upon leaving a wonderful dinner party with new friends last night, I was driving along central parkway at 11pm with street lights kind of peeking out at me through the trees, and I felt, in a happy daze, as though I finally lived here. I smiled, listening to fuzzy renderings of some warm happy song on the radio, from a station apparently too far off to completely receive. Shortly thereafter I missed my turnoff onto 75 North, obviously too caught up in my movie-like moment. But without even thinking, my car somehow found its way around some streets and turned back towards the direction of my northern suburban destination (I consider myself someone who lives far up north, as compared to my more city-central dwelling friends, of whom I'm undeniably envious). Still smiling, I felt comforted by the fact that I just naturally knew where I was, and where I was going. A big achievement for me; I'm kind of challenged with the layout here. Anytime I'm driving with friends I constantly ask "Oh, and what area are we in now?" pointing to random signifiers of some neighborhood or township or whatever. Interestingly enough, even when I travel to the same places with different people who live here, everyone has a different conception of areas and names of those places. This doesn't quite help someone seeking basic info (i.e. this is neighborhood A, this is neighborhood B) but it definitely gives a sense of how people view their place of residence.

It still amazes me that I spent 3 years of high school here back in the day and still didn't soak up any Cincinnati-ness. But then I remind myself of something a friend mentioned when talking about locals and natives: Everyone tends to stick to their area, their social network, the places where they grew up, and keep it close-knit, a bit hesitant to outside inclusion. Which makes sense, given I often feel like I'm in limbo. It leaves me pondering my status in Cincy, always concluding that this is temporary: not home, but not quite foreign, it just...is. A place, a city, a space. A place, that is, until you pour yourself into it. I assumed after graduating college I would move to a city like New York, where things are constantly happening and culture and art and liveliness consume your being. And as amazing as that sounded, it wasn't realistic for me personally (or economically feasible at that). Instead, I moved back to the 'nati, and admittedly I was quite reluctant and discouraged about that decision. But slowly I realized that a city can't make your life for you. Therefore, it really matters not where you go, it's all about perspective and what you make yourself.

Ok, enough of the motivational-poster-sounding thoughts.

But really, my drive from the dinner party- where I happened to meet and get re-introduced to so many fantastic and interesting people who I never would have met had I not tried to make my life work in this city- spawned this sort of dorky epiphany moment where things clicked. And I felt good. And I wished I wasn't driving so I could take a picture and document, literally, how I was seeing Cincinnati right then and there. Such magic. (Note: the picture above is random pretty sky I was staring at today, has nothing to do with this post or magicness.)

Well I suppose this is an introductory post. I'm exploring so forgive my waning focus on any one particular thing. Please feel free to comment! I'm hoping to post randomness here. I'm a big fan of randomness. C'est la vie...ONWARD!