Love Letter To Columbus

Posted on by Jason McGathey — Leave a comment

Polaris/Germain Amphitheater

Polaris gate Jan 2020 cropped watermarked

This picture above is pretty much the last remaining vestige (if it’s even still here) of what used to be arguably the best outdoor concert venue in Columbus: a gate piece and some concrete barriers. Accessible just off of Polaris Parkway, buried behind that strip of businesses currently housing Liberty Tavern, Bella Nails & Spa, and others. The restaurant employee on smoke break back there was giving me weird looks as I snapped this footage, but hey, such is the price you pay for your art.

Considering what a major deal it was at the time, putting our city on the map for some bigtime touring acts it might ordinarily fail to attract, Polaris (as it was originally known – only renamed Germain Amphitheater somewhat near the end of its run) had a shockingly short shelf life. Just about 15 years, give or take, from the early 1990s up until 2007. Though hard to even fathom now, when the venue was built, it was located just beyond the fringes of the city, basically in pure wilderness. But, that area obviously blew up in short order, which to me became the entire reason this controversial amphitheater had to go. While you will hear that the reason behind this was volume/noise complaints – and yes, it certainly did receive its fair share of those, from nearby residents – I feel like that was ultimately just a smoke screen. Developers seeing dollar signs used the noise complaint angle to shoehorn their way in, because there was obviously a lot more money to be made by bulldozing this puppy and putting in a bunch of other businesses.

Toby Keith played the final show held here, closing out the 2007 concert season. The first one I personally attended was an Eagles reunion gig in 1994, the last this Aerosmith/Motley Crue twinbill from 2006. I do have some photos snapped from a concert or two held here, but such was the technology of the time, with our sad little 35mm film cameras, that for the most part all you’re seeing is the back of some people’s heads, with tiny glimpses of the stage beyond. Still, I will probably post them anyway once I get around to digging them out.

Regarding the Aerosmith/Motley Crue show, it was held on September 5, 2006. A coworker/friend of mine, Ancie Schmidt, and her husband Dan, were so stoked about it and generous in general that they bought a whole slew of tickets for a bunch of us to attend. Therefore a veritable slew of Wild Oats employees attend this one and hang out together. Really unbelievable and exceptionally kind of Ancie and Dan to do this, and we all have a great time.

I have Lisa with me, an on/off again “person of interest” for more than a decade – shockingly enough, as far as I can recall, this is the first concert we’ve attended together. She actually drives us here. Otherwise, as these are lawn seats, although everyone is moving around quite a bit, mostly we’re hanging out with Ancie and Dan, of course, Kevin Spain, Ned and his girlfriend Amanda. Though bouncing around some and conversing with anyone else familiar encountered.

Here are some set lists, along with whatever notes I might have:

Motley Crue:

1. Dr. Feelgood (they sound rough here at the beginning, but round into shape soon enough)
2. Shout at the Devil
3. Looks That Kill
4. Wild Side
5. Live Wire
6. Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S.)
7. Home Sweet Home
8. Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)
9. Louder Than Hell
10. Too Fast for Love
11. Sick Love Song
12. Primal Scream
13. Girls, Girls, Girls
14. Kickstart My Heart

Since it’s the first stop on the tour, there are some kinks to iron out. Like Vince Neil surprisingly enough is strumming an acoustic early on, except for some reason there’s this really crackly sound coming from his speaker every time he does. So they drop that from their act entirely. Ditto Nikki Sixx’s headbanging, which lasts for about 2-3 songs before he apparently suffers whiplash or something and never does so again. They’re just a really peculiar act overall because their drummer is probably the most famous member at this point, and therefore Tommy stands up behind the kit between songs quite often, does the most between-song talking of anyone. Most hilarious of all, when Motley does their final bow, it’s just three of them out there – Mick Mars ran off the stage the instant they were done playing. From a presentational standpoint, they have some phenomenal looking colored flashpoints, and cool animated imagery on the screen behind them, like upside down crosses with leather clad babes, et cetera.

They sound okay, put on a pretty solid show, but suffer I think to some extent from being billed as “co-headliners” with Aerosmith. If you’d have called them the opening act, the perception and reaction would have been much better, leaving people believing that was an awesome added bonus. Aerosmith meanwhile sounds killer as always and while the two Joes blew me away the first time I saw them (and are just as awesome here), I have to say Steven Tyler really impressed me tonight. He had throat surgery of some sort and is obviously quite pleased with his pipes now – like this one moment during Seasons Of Wither where he really belts out a line, and then I see him turn, off-mic, and shout a triumphant “hoo!” like you would to yourself if totally jazzed about something you just did. Akin to sinking a basket at the buzzer or winning a big poker hand, something to that effect.

Aerosmith:

1. Toys in the Attic
2. Mama Kin (Whitford up on this walkway, takes guitar solo)
3. Dude Looks Like a Lady (“Yes!” Spain cheers, when Tyler hits this one high note)
4. Cryin’
5. Walking the Dog
6. Jaded
7. Back in the Saddle (according to my notes, this was actually played 10th, after What It Takes – but most of the internet seems to be saying I’m wrong. Which I agree is certainly possible, therefore will go with the prevailing take)
8. Stop Messin’ Round
9. Seasons of Wither

“Jay, what is this?” Spain asks me.
“Seasons Of Winter,” I tell him, yet another fact I get slightly wrong. Then again, considering I only heard this song once prior to tonight, perhaps it’s somewhat impressive I even remember that much.
“Awesome,” he concludes with an approving nod.

10. What It Takes

“This beat reminds me of the circus,” Ned says.
“All that’s missing is a monkey climbing out of a box,” I joke.

11. Dream On
12. Eat The Rich
13. Rag Doll
14. Sweet Emotion
15. Draw The Line

Encore:
16. Love In An Elevator
17. Walk This Way

Tyler’s voice sounds amazing tonight. Seems really into it, too, instead of going through the motions like he is at times. Hitting the high notes like mad – another “wakackackackow” esque adlib near the end of Jaded, for example, high pitched. Leopard shirt, opened, and red pants, shades, blonde streaks in hair. He, Perry, Kramer all three look young as hell and in amazing shape. Green lasers during Jaded. Tyler and Perry sit on the ramp together while playing Wither. Tyler starts What It Takes a cappella.

“This one’s for Tom Hamilton,” Perry says, before the Fleetwood Mac cover (Stop Messin’), “he’s probably watchin a baseball game right now. Or something.” Their longtime bass player is out for the tour due to throat cancer surgery, so they’ve recruited Dave Hull to replace him.

Smitty’s here with his girlfriend, rocking a green army jacket or something, and is unintentionally cracking me up with his antics as they stand here the entire time on the lawn. As in, I find it plenty ridiculous. You see this kind of stuff all over this town, though, and surely just about everywhere. Where all you’re really getting from certain people is (what they perceive as) image maintenance, not actual opinions. I don’t know why I even bother to ask him what he thinks of the Crue. And then when Aerosmith take the stage, it’s even more hilarious. Whenever they play a “post-comeback” era tune, he crosses his arms and pouts like a toddler past nap time. He clearly wants it to be known he does not approve of these newer cuts AT ALL. Not at all! Did everyone observe this? Huh? Did you? But then the instant they launch into an older cut, he begins head banging like crazy, raises one fist in the air with his fingers in the devil horn shape, and shouting an over the top, “YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

I just find him comically absurd. Nobody notices this crap, dude. Well, no, one person did, but he thought you were ridiculous.

Then there’s this moment where I happen to drift past him and Jay Taylor standing there talking.

“J-Mac! What’s up!” Taylor asks me with a grin.
“Well, you know, I’m a dreamer, but my heart’s a road,” I tell him.
“Huh?” Smitty retorts, his face screwed up with complete (exaggerated) bafflement.
“Gold,” Taylor corrects.
“Huh?” It is now my turn to reply.
“My heart’s o’ gold,” Taylor explains.
“My heart’s a gold?” I question, “that doesn’t even make any sense!”
“My heart’s o’ gold,” he repeats, and I finally get it.

When asked about this show, there’s also Matt Miner’s take on Aerosmith to ponder, which I find much more credible than Smitty’s: “I think I’ve just heard these songs too many times,” he says, then laughs and concedes, “of course, the second time I heard them was probably too many times…”

1994

June 29: This footage from a Metallica/Danzig/Suicidal Tendencies show gives you a decent overview of the basic setup here. Always an extremely comfortable venue for taking in a show, cozy and typically with plenty of room to move around, convenient access to both wings of concessions and exits even its most packed moments.

1997

June 17: Ozzfest tour stop which devolves into a riot. Ozzy did not play, period, and anything you’re reading elsewhere about Marilyn Manson’s purported set is mostly wrong too. Click my link there for the full scoop.

July 1: Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne make up show from the Ozzfest debacle.

July 17: Furthur Festival pit stop. Someone filmed a few song of the Black Crowes’ set and they actually sound pretty killer –

1998

July 22: Some great footage here from a Spice Girls show held on this date. I feel like I would remember the deep green of these pavilion seats if you pop quizzed me on them, which tells you how many shows I saw here.

1999

July 23: Phish. I’ve heard some of their stuff, including a different show on Sirius one time, and all I can say is that my face pretty much matches the one Trey is making in the Youtube thumbnail, except with much more befuddlement. But if this is your cup of organic herbal tea, by all means take a healthy sip here:

2000

May 13: Kiss, Ted Nugent. Damon and Melissa attempt attending the show, even leave a message for me which I am not home to receive.

May 20: Charlie Daniels Band Volunteer Jam! Featuring Hank Jr. and Little Feat also

June 4: REO Speedwagon and Styx

June 16: Don Henley plays a somewhat unique, pavilion seating only show

June 19 & 20: Dave Matthews Band plays both nights. What’s most interesting about these, perhaps, is that the show on the 19th appears to be his first ever performance of Grey Street.

June 21: Poison with Cinderalla and Dokken. Say what you will, but I’m sure this was a pretty good time.

June 23: Steve Miller with special guest Gov’t Mule

June 27: Allman Brothers Band

July 7: A blight descends upon Columbus, as we become the latest stop in The Masterworks Tour: The Epic Side of Yes. And here I was thinking that the normal side of Yes was far more epic than anyone could possibly stomach. Even so, I’d rather watch them than opening act Kansas.

July 12: Sting

July 14 & 15: Phish. I’ve never really heard much to get excited about, but give them credit, not many bands would attempt booking this venue two nights in a row.

July 18: Ozzfest 2000. My friends Damon and Paul are among the known attendees.

July 25: Jimmy Buffett. This puppy sold out fairly early, of course.

July 26: All That & More Festival. I feel sorry for the people who have to clean up after something like Jimmy Buffett, and wonder if they ever make a pointed decision to book something a little more tame immediately afterwards. Instead of, say, The Dead or something. This I think is some kind of lite teenybopper pop music tour. The names are M2M, Angela Via, B*witched, LFO, Take 5, No Authority, Blaque, and Leslie, but I only recognize two of those.

July 28: “Club 80’s The Flashback Tour” is how they’re stylizing the name of this event. Pretentious or not, that Yes title rolls off the tongue a little better than this. As for the music, though? Eh, maybe not so bad: Wang Chung, A Flock Of Seagulls, Missing Persons, Gene Loves Jezebel

July 29: The Judds, with some guy named LeeRoy Parnell opening

July 30: Def Leppard

August 1: Chicago, Little River Band

August 4: Stone Temple Pilots, Fishbone, Jesse James Dupree, Dope, U.P.O., The Union Underground

August 8: Blitz 8th Anniversary bash featuring Counting Crows, Live, Galactic.

August 18: Montreaux Festival…on Tour!! Al Jarreau, Roberta Flack, David Sanborn, Joe Sample and George Duke are on hand to deliver the smooth and mellow jams.

August 20: Duran Duran

August 21: Pearl Jam with Sonic Youth. I did review this show but am never quite sure whether to post something like this in multiple places, or post it in one place and link to it from all over. But yes, if interested, you can read about it here.

August 24: Kid Rock, David Allan Coe, Dope

August 25: Neil Young, The Pretenders, Tegan And Sara

September 2: Motley Crue with Megadeth and Anthrax as openers

September 3: Britney Spears

September 8: BB King Blues Festival featuring the man himself, as well as Buddy Guy, Susan Tedeschi, and Corey Harris. I’m pretty sure this is the show I attended. We kept getting a bunch of free passes to the B.B. King fest every year from this one rep at Kroger, but it almost never worked out for me to attend. Only once was I able to, and I believe this was it.

2001

May 11: Bad Company, Styx, Billy Squier

June 2: 9th Anniversary Bash for local FM hard rock station The Blitz. Staind, Buckcherry, Monster Magnet, Saliva, Oleander, Cold, Professional Murder Music, Stereomud, Systematic are among the impressive lineup of performers.

June 12: Men At Work

June 30: Ted Nugent, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Deep Purple

July 6: Toby Keith, Brooks And Dunn

July 7: Paul Simon, Brian Wilson

July 10: Can this possibly be true? A bill with John Mellencamp and…Blink-182? Regarding the latter I like a few of their songs, but reading a review of the show makes me glad I wasn’t here – sounds very juvenile, and that includes the band’s humor just as much as the predominantly teenybopper crowd. Like these guys saying they played in “Shitcinnati” yesterday, which might be the funniest of these “jokes” that I have read about. Alkaline Trio and New Found Glory are allegedly here also.

July 11: Aerosmith, Fuel

July 13: Journey, Peter Frampton, John Waite

July 14: Barenaked Ladies, Vertical Horizon, Action Figure Party, Sarah Harmer

July 17: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Jackson Browne. Here’s the complete audio from the Tom Petty set:

July 18: Phil Lesh & Friends, Ratdog. Someone filmed the entire show:

July 21: Poison, Quiet Riot, Warrant

July 24: Trey Anastasio Band

July 27: Tony Bennett

July 28: James Taylor

August 3: The latest Ozzfest. Black Sabbath, Linkin Park, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, Papa Roach, Black Label Society, Disturbed, Crazy Town, Mudvayne, Drowning Pool, The Union Underground, and a bunch of other bands I’ve never heard of.

August 8: Matchbox Twenty, Train, Old 97s.

August 14: MTV TRL Tour, featuring Destiny’s Child, Nelly and St. Lunatics, Eve, Dream

August 15: Rod Stewart

August 16: Deftones, Godsmack, Puddle of Mudd, Darwin’s Waiting Room, From Zero

August 22: B.B. King, Buddy Guy.

September 2: John Mellencamp, The Wallflowers

September 10: Sade, India.Arie

September 17: Stevie Nicks

October 7: Alice Cooper

November 3: It’s the last night of the season for Germain Shocktoberfest, which features something called Fog Alley as well as a karaoke stage. Held here at Polaris Amphitheatre, it’s been running on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights.

2006

May 30: Bruce Springsteen & The Seeger Sessions Band (doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?)

June 7: Dave Matthews Band, G. Love & Special Sauce

June 14: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Trey Anastasio

June 16: Warped Tour. A small armada of different bands played and I’m not about to list them all.

June 25: Sammy Hagar and the Wabos

June 28: Nine Inch Nails survive a rain drenched show at Germain Amphitheater. They play Terrible Lie, Closer, and Down In It alongside other golden oldies. Bauhaus and Peaches open.

June 30: Chicago

July 12: Lynyrd Skynyrd, 3 Doors Down

July 14: Counting Crows, Goo Goo Dolls

July 21: This year’s Ozzfest horde hits Germain Amphitheater. System Of A Down, Avenged Sevenfold, Disturbed, Atreyu, All That Remains, Bad Acid Trip, Between The Buried And Me, Black Label Society, Bleeding Through, DragonForce, Full Blown Chaos, Hatebreed, Lacuna Coil, A Life Once Lost, Norma Jean, The Red Chord, Strapping Young Lad, Unearth, Walls Of Jericho all play.

July 30: Poison and Cinderella are performing over at Germain Amphitheater, meanwhile, if you’re looking for something to do a little later.

August 2: Earth, Wind & Fire are at Germain Amphitheater, with Chris Botti

August 15: John Fogerty and Willie Nelson double bill

August 18: Mary J. Blige

August 29: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young at Germain Amphitheater. They seem to do this quite a bit for guys who somewhat hate each other.

September 5: Aerosmith/Motley Crue show I have written about above.

September 10: A wholly unique rock n’ roll fantasy camp descends upon Germain Amphitheater – if you rightfully call a one day event a “camp.” Spencer Davis, Skunk Baxter, and Mark Farner are among the most noteworthy camp counselors, who are tasked with splitting the attendees into 11 different bands, teaching them one song, and then throwing them onstage to battle at the end of the day, in front of a crowd. The prize? An opening slot for Journey and Def Leppard, members of which show up late in the day for a meet and greet.

Other counselors forming their own bands include Teddy Andreadis (touring member of Guns N’ Roses), Fred Coury (Cinderella, and actually also a touring member of Guns N’ Roses at one point), Artimus Pyle (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Simon Kirke (drummer for Paul Rodgers in both Bad Company and Free), and then a few more people from the 80s you might have sort of heard of.

Chris Deville from Alive! is sent to report and participate. He’s playing guitar in the Skunk-led group, alongside another Columbus local, Read Wineland, and a handful of out-of-towners. Instead of kissing up to their teacher, though, they decide to try and impress Farner with a Grand Funk Railroad tune, I’m Your Captain. Baxter is less than impressed by the early results, so he decides to teach the fortysomething woman playing keyboards a Bach prelude, leading into the tune, and this seems to work much better. They dub themselves Skunk’s Punx and, since their isn’t much of audience the first time around (they are the opening act of the eleven), get to play a second time later. Still don’t win, though Deville reports that even a short lesson from Baxter has noticeably improved his guitar playing. At least one other known C-bus resident, this guy named Greg Schweppe, is mentioned as attending, and is quoted saying, “this is totally worth the two grand I blew on it.”

Here are the respective set lists of the co-headliners, later that night:

Dep Leppard:

Let’s Get Rocked
Let It Go
Promises
Bringin’ On the Heartbreak
Foolin’
Hysteria
20th Century Boy
Bass Solo
Rock On
Rocket
Photograph
Armageddon It
Animal
Rock Of Ages
Love Bites
Pour Some Sugar On Me

Journey:

The Star-Spangled Banner
Stone in Love
Ask the Lonely
Wheel in the Sky
Keep On Runnin’
Edge of the Blade
Who’s Crying Now
Chain Reaction
Lights
Piano Solo
Open Arms
Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’
Escape
Dead Or Alive
Faithfully
Don’t Stop Believin’
Any Way You Want It
Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)

I wasn’t here, obviously, but would like to cite Journey for excessive apostrophe use. Also this questionable choice of an opening cut and having the drummer sing lead on 3 of their biggest hits.

September 13: Family Values Tour, featuring Deftones, Korn, Stone Sour, Flyleaf, DIR EN GREY, Deadsy, Bury Your Dead, Bullets And Octane, 10 Years, Walls Of Jericho

September 29: Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood play Germain Amphitheater.

October 6: In only slightly less terrifying news, Toby Keith and a drunken mob of redneck fans close out the concert season at Germain Amphitheater.

Posted on by Jason McGathey — Leave a comment

July 29, 2006

Kyle picks me up and we take a short ride over to Sean’s place. He actually lives extremely close to me, which was wild to discover – just on the other side of Cemetery, off of Leap himself. And the detritus of a recent incident is still evident in these parts: the gas pedal of his car somehow got stuck when he was in reverse, attempting to back out from the parking slot. It kept sailing – he was unable to stop – as he first knocked over the dumpster here in his apartment complex. Then the car kept going backwards down a steep hill, where it crashed into a tree and finally stopped. Wild stuff. But he managed to emerge from this episode unscathed.

The three of us chill out and have one beer in his kitchen. “Is it any cooler outside?” Sean wonders – we tell him not really. It’s shocking hot outside, as we disembark – bound for Lisa’s 35th birthday party, which I’ve roped them into attending. They don’t know that crew, and vice versa, but I was able to convince them it should be a swell time. If nothing else, at least a few decent ladies to attempt plying their wares with.

It started around 5, so we’re obviously a bit late to this scene. Lisa has bought a house on a quiet residential street in the Hilltop area, and everyone’s gathered behind it, at or around a pair of picnic tables. And Nicole is here! She’s tanned and blonde, I actually didn’t recognize her at first. Most unexpected indeed. This is the first I’ve seen of her since that night years ago where we started to make out, right before she puked. Tonight as soon as I show up she’s all smiles and calling my name with a little wave and a hiiiiiiieeeeee! from the picnic table in the back yard.

Since about early March or thereabouts, though declaring my social/dating life DOA at that time, I’ve actually rebounded in pretty solid fashion. It turns out I was maybe not completely toast in this town after all. After Jill moved out, understandably I suppose, yet again it was another months long cold snap where I couldn’t seem to get it together with the ladies around here, leading to the doom n’ gloom pronouncements from earlier this year. In fact even in a mindset where I’m telling myself I’m over that stuff, and don’t care if I hook up ever again.

But these matters have always been extremely streaky. Which is easy to forget – during every down period, I pretty much tend to think, well, looks like my antics have finally hit the inevitable brick wall, it was bound to happen sooner or later, chicks are finally hip to this game. But no! And in fact the way I have things set up now might be the most improbably hilarious era ever, because I’m even more aloof than before. Legions more aloof, it feels like, as absolutely nobody has any sort of even remotely accurate picture of my life. And it’s like these girls know they are getting nothing else out of me whatsoever. An ideal scenario, in other words.

I’ve had plenty of time to ponder this aloofness, and why it seems to work so well with the women, when you rationally wouldn’t think there’s any reason that it ever should. I think the reason it succeeds – when it does, that it is – is because there are 2 different levels where you have a shot at connecting with them. Plus one obvious tactical reason it works from what you might say is a strategic standpoint.

So yeah, two different avenues for connecting with them, with this extreme aloofness approach:

They are hoping to remain incredibly aloof themselves, i.e. keep it on the “friends with benefits” level, and so they appreciate the same from you
Hoping for something more, but consider your aloofness a challenge, one that they are determined to break

Either of these might work, then. And as far as the tactical – practical – explanation for why this is successful, I think it’s somewhat obvious, at least to me, in that you’re far more likely to get away with this crap if you’re just kind of floating around (like at a party, sure), not really saying much, not focusing on anybody in particular above anyone else, making your stupid jokes and nothing resembling a real conversation, then leaving – or crashing here, or whatever. Point being if you’re ever in a small setting where you’ve slept with more than one person and are wondering how on earth to pull this off without it turning into drama central, this is pretty much the only route that I’m aware of. Beyond that, though, there are 3 other extremely easy points to forget, to the extent that even I tend to. The real boiled down essence of why any of this works, at least for me:

This is my basic nature anyhow. Being aloof is the preferred default mode that I would just unconsciously gravitate to anyway. “Normal” dating strategies feel incredibly weird and cheesy to me, which is why I always struggled with them.
I am typically bored in short order if spending tons of time with some girl, without lengthy breaks in between. This I have admitted on occasion, although it typically doesn’t go over so well, even when I explain it’s nothing personal. Or should I say it doesn’t seem to go over well on the surface, though I suspect they secretly dig it and this actually works to your advantage. Even so, that too really obscures the biggest point, which deep down I’m aware of, yet haven’t actually spelled out to anyone that I can recall:
They would become extremely bored with me, in short order, if we were spending a ton of time together. They just don’t know it. This zany existence I think might look interesting from a distant, bird’s eye view, and it’s definitely interesting to live it. However anyone caught in the middle of those two extremes would probably consider it tedious.

Well, so anyway, regarding this party, Lisa has two picnic tables set up here in her back yard, floodlit/firelit but still half dark. When we arrive, she and some other family members are playing poker at one of them, and for once I’m curiously uninterested in participating – I think there’s legitimately too much else going on. Plus, Kyle and Sean don’t really know anyone, and I have to keep them entertained. Meanwhile, plenty of others are either seated at the second picnic table or standing around. Among the attendees are Maria, her cousin Michael who briefly lived in their basement, his girlfriend Stacy, Michelle, Tara, Bridgette, Roy, Pat. Tara and Bridgette leave early. Then, lo and behold, an unlikely figure comes breezing into the back yard all the way from Louisville, KY: Maria’s old boyfriend Jason. Semi bearded and heavier, I don’t think I’ve seen this dude since about 2002.

“I’m sure I’ve said some negative things about you, but it’s still good to see you,” I admit.
“You’ve put on some weight,” Michelle tells him.
“You look better,” I add.
“Yeah,” she agrees.

They’ve got a wild assortment of cheap beers in an ice bucket, “sullied” only by my Heineken. Roy’s telling us how he was sleeping with his boss at the carpet cleaning place back in the day, and she gave him 5 accounts. That’s how he got started running his own operation.

Roy’s all gung ho for barhopping, actually, hence some of us take off for Fairweathers Cafe on Trabue. He keeps assuring everyone that this place is “very Mansfield” even though I’m the only other person who would even know what he’s talking about. And I’m down for this concept. Kyle says of the party, “definitely ain’t no bitches here,” an assessment I would actually disagree with – but at any rate, he’s also game to join us. As do Maria, Michelle, Sean, and Jason. Everyone else remains behind at the house.

At Fairweathers we stay for exactly one beer, unless you’re talking about Roy, who buys and does a shot with these two hillbilly chicks at the bar, teeth missing. This is a hodgepodge bar with tacked on pool room, one or two tables, but admittedly tons of people everywhere. Jason’s asking me what it is I do these days.

It’s soon agreed that we will leave this place in favor of Polo’s. Which is now, it seems, somehow…a black bar. Or at least that’s the vibe tonight. I ride with Maria and Jason; Kyle and Sean in another; Roy and Michelle in a third. Walking into Polo’s, I dance my way across the mostly empty back dance floor – Roy bumped into us near door, told us where they were: Michelle, Sean, and Kyle standing looking a little lost at floor’s edge. Bar darker now, lighting-wise, and the back half’s been remodeled: a horseshoe shaped bar, pool tables gone, dance floor now in their place, and yeah this overwhelmingly black clientele. I find this stuff extremely interesting from a sociological or historical standpoint, these changes over time, and how they come about.

But then there are other developments, closer to home so to speak, which are not so lighthearted and philosophical. Kind of like with various workplace predicaments, where you’re unsure even how to proceed, what should be done, if anything even should be done, sometimes who to believe, all of which ties you in knots, often leading to doing nothing. Which also opens up a second philosophical dilemma of its own, separate from the first one.

“Roy was all over me the whole way here,” Michelle complains, in an aside to me, shaking her head, “it was awful.”

“You should’ve smacked him around a little bit,” I joke, playing this off with a laugh.

“I tried,” she assures me.

This instantly reminds me of another night just a year or two ago, a somewhat similar situation. Although in that instance, I personally witnessed some of the borderline questionable behavior. An occasion where a handful of us were out barhopping from place to place, and one of my guy friends was continually hitting on this other female friend, laying it on really thick, although to my eyes it didn’t really seem like she was very much into it. Until we reach what winds up being the last stop on this crawl, and she vents to me out of the blue about the situation.

“He thinks there’s something here and there is nothing here!”

“I was wondering about that,” I admit, “and if I should intervene.”

“Yes! By all means! Please do! Intervene!”

Well, to be honest, I actually did not confront the friend in question. Maybe this is a convenient escape hatch, but by this point he was quite hammered anyway and seemed to have given up on the cause at last. Except then – whoa, what do you know – the two of them, months down the road, did in fact wind up sleeping together quite a bit, consensually, and it was pretty plain after a while that she was the aggressor. The upshot here is that this and other analogous episodes just tend to make you think after a while that, eh, I don’t really know what the hell’s going on here, I’m not entirely sure who to believe, I didn’t see anything all that objectionable myself and therefore I’m just going to stay out of it.

Maria and Jason leave almost immediately. Michelle acts completely different with them (and Tommy of course) not around. I’ve always suspected she secretly dug me, but it always sounds like delusional nonsense when you think that way about a chick, until maybe something happens. Now, with her complaint about Roy, I feel like there’s an easy way to find out and enact a little bit of strategy at the same time: do nothing. Amazing how well this always works. She yanks me out onto the dance floor, it’s just the two of us, and she’s bent over, grinding her ass against my crotch, et cetera, and this goes on for quite a while. So yeah, you might say a picture begins to emerge. That which was formerly fuzzy begins to take shape.

Meanwhile, back at Lisa’s house, apparently Pat is completely pissed off that I showed up. Is throwing stuff around the house and yelling at Lisa about the situation. But then also apparently tells Nicole and her new man that he’s actually cheating on Lisa himself. Before he disappears for the night, crashing elsewhere.

Elsewhere around Columbus and its suburbs, Midwest Biker Rally continues with another performance from Terry Davidson and Co., followed this time by the all-star lineup of Kenny Wayne Shephered, Dickey Betts, and Blackberry Smoke

Across town, the OSU Marching Band takes to the lawn at Chemical Abstracts for the final Picnic With The Pops performance of the season.

An unidentified gunshot victim is found dead in the middle of the afternoon, on a lawn at 664 Rhoads Avenue. Witnesses report hearing a gun go off and then a green car speeding away from the scene.

In Grove City, at Park Street Elementary, there’s an event called Balloons Off Broadway. A bunch of hot air balloons take off from the school grounds and return at nightfall. In between, there’s music and food to keep the masses entertained.

A group of Mormon youngsters, in town for a conference, take to the streets in the Vassor Village neighborhood and begin cleaning it up, as their latest community outreach project.

So, yeah, not a ton that I could drudge up going on around these parts. It’s definitely possible that hanging out with these fine folks today might have been the best use of my time.

Posted on by Jason McGathey — Leave a comment

Skully’s Music-Diner

Skully’s is such a unique place because, for starters, it has occupied three wildly different locations, all of them along North High Street, each of them so dissimilar from one another that even I tend to forget about those earlier homes. Its current incarnation in the Short North has outlasted both of the other ones combined, however, and is legions more iconic, so this will naturally occupy the bulk of what we’re discussing here.

But first, a brief overview of its history, prior to arrival at this particular address. Skully’s started out as an underground (as in literally, below ground) dive bar on the OSU campus, which you accessed via some stairs along the sidewalk on High Street. In those days it was pretty much just a dank pool hall with four or five couches and an all-German Metallica tribute album on the jukebox. Then, in the late 1990s, when Campus Partners started buying up all the properties and knocking them down, owners Skully and Michele Webb were given a handsome payout of $172,605 to relocate – it was either that or hold out for the inevitable eminent domain proceedings. So for a short spell, they were then up in the Clintonville area, at the Graceland Shopping Center, although in this instance it was more of a restaurant than anything else. Finally, in November 2001, they opened up shop the current digs at 1151 North High, this expansion and refinement into the business’s greatest ever incarnation. Kind of like with Used Kids Records, who are also on their third home, you might say this is a “greatest hits” package of everything that worked in previous incarnations…except in this case, with the addition of a few brand new “tracks” which became more popular than anything else they tried before.

The first calendar listing I can find for them is Miss Kitty’s Hot Box, a burlesque show running from February 14 to 16, 2002. From day one, they’ve always featured that sizable stage, plenty of elbow room in front of it on the floor, and offerings centered around either live music or dance parties. Technically speaking, there’s a dash in the name: Skully’s Music-Diner. Most people do not trifle with the dash, but it dates clear back to their “coming soon” sign, before opening, and persists on their website logo, not to mention in plain sight on the official, somewhat famous and definitely glorious marquee to this day – in yellow, all caps font, below the cursive Skully’s and the stars which light up at night.

Foodwise, their menu is much better than you would expect at a venue like this, in fact would justify coming here just for that reason alone. Breakfast is available all day, there’s a decent selection of sandwiches, pizza, other pub grub, vegetarian/vegan options, even a children’s menu. Currently I’m on this run unearthing every detail I can find about 2006, though, so I’m going to start there, and expand outward to other years from this point. Expect much more detail as I work on the page. Presumably you know the drill by now – a little on the thin side at the moment, but bound to become as beefy and juicy as a Skully Burger by the time I’m finished.

Circa ’06, SoulGlo Sundays is a hiphop/funk/soul party with half off drinks for students; Monday nights from 7-10pm brought free pizza for everyone; Tuesdays were Service Industry Night, meaning half price drinks and no cover charge for everyone this applied to. Which seems like it must have been…half the constituent base, during that era; Thursdays were 80s Ladies night, playing the hit songs of that decade, whereby women got in free, also were given a free flower. There was free parking in a lot on the north side of the building, though I’m unsure if this is still true. As far as food went, they were quite proud of some deep fried Cajun calamari, which doesn’t seem to have survived to the current menu, but also their quesadillas, which do live on. Outdoor seating, and serving to 11 Mon-Wed, midnight Thu-Sat.

2006

2011

2012

2006 events calendar:

March 8 – The Walkmen. Their set list is known and runs as follows:

Don’t Get Me Down (Come on Over Here)
This Job Is Killing Me
Little House of Savages
Emma, Get Me a Lemon
Louisiana
Danny’s at the Wedding
Thinking of a Dream I Had
Good for You’s Good for Me
Rue the Day
All Hands and the Cook
Always After You (‘Til You Started After Me)
Another One Goes By

April 5 – The Black Coin

April 7 – Jamnesia, The G.R.I.T.S, DJ Numeric

April 8 – it’s listed as a Dresden Dolls afterparty, but I don’t believe the Dresden Dolls themselves are taking the stage – instead, Zachery Allen Starkey, DJ True Skills, and Ocean Ghosts are, and I also see The Loyal Divide mentioned in one listing.

April 10 – Only Flesh play a CD release party

April 12 – Something for Rockets play. I also see mention of South and yet another one of Alpha Zentradi playing on this night. So I’m not sure if any of these are typos or if all in fact graced the stage here.

April 15 – Kill Hannah. They played Nerve Gas at the very least that night, and it sounds great, you can tell as much even through a so-so recording:

Shiny Toy Guns are also on the bill this night.

April 24 – Gil Mantera’s Party Dream, Shuttlecock, Black Cloud, Stylex. There’s at least one small clip of the very last bit from Shuttlecock’s set. They went on right before Gil Mantera:

April 28 – a CD release party from The Receiver.

April 29 – Sheldon Marsh

June 23 – Tough & Lovely play at 11pm. This is billed as their “Comfest” show but I’m not sure what that means, really. Other than occurring the same night as the beginning of Comfest.

July 6 – DJ Chuckstar oversees Ladies Eighties night, as is the case every Thursday during this stretch

July 9 – DJs Kenny Kim & Carma running Soul Glo Sundays – again, this is their standard weekly gig

July 10 – Mixed Tape Monday starring DJs Pegasi and Gypsy Rider.

July 22 – The Slide Machine, Melty Melty, Kristi Strauss & The Blue Medusa, Moonlight Chemist

July 26 – Obus, Lunarium

August 25 – Weightless Records Presents an “official beatdown” hosted by Blueprint. Whatever that means, although it is an all-ages show so maybe I shouldn’t ask too many questions. DJ Abilities (gotta admit I like that name – almost like he’s saying, “eh, you know, I’m pretty good at some things, maybe not so great at others, but who cares”), Maker (of Clue) and Pompeii This Morning are listed as performers.

August 26 – Ocean Ghosts, Vietnam II, Blood Violets

August 30 – Poor White Trash

Sep 1 – The Slide Machine

Sep 2 – Dynamik, Thought Set

Sep 8 – Watershed

Sept 15 – Bang! Dance Rock Party

Sep 16 – The Receiver CD release party

Sept 19 – OSU vs Texas game on the big screen

Sept 22 – Evil Queens, Fine Dining, Church of the Red Museum. $1 PBRs

Sept 23 – Craftin Outlaws ( an “alt craft show”) until 8pm, featuring Cinema Eye. As well as over 50 handcrafted works from local artists.

Then there’s something called Jetgirl Dance Party – according to one listing. According to another, it’s Bustown Beatdown with Bottom Brick, Envy Records, Kadiz and 3, Kim Wilburn, Interchemistry, Alphabetics, Hold Em High, Ayce the Prophit and DJ Carma. Which, although it shows a Buckeye football helmet in the ad for some reason, is apparently some kind of Urban Music Showcase. I don’t get the connection. So please allow this reporter additional time to investigate such a gripping piece of intrigue. Whatever the case, ladies get in free, and there’s a VIP balcony.

September 24 – Soul Glo Sunday features not only DJ Kenny Kim and Carma but this time also Wild Kyle

September 26 – S.I.N. Service Industry Night with a live DJ playing Britpop, soul, shoegaze, and postpunk classics.

September 27 – The Marble Faun, Mainstreet Gospel, and Demander play

September 29 – Postcard, Proximity Grey

September 30 – The Slide Machine

October 2 – Brother Ali, BK One, DJ Bombay n’ Manwell, Dub Watson, Red Sun

October 4 – Templeton, The Prids

October 6 – The Lab Rats CD release party

October 11 – Hansel und Gretyl, Crud w/ Bella Morte

October 23 – Kid Congo Powers

November 9 – a 1980s themed Five Year Anniversary Party, with a best-dressed contest paying a cool $500 for first prize. And $25 runner up giveaways all night. There are also free massages thanks to Open Sky Bodyworks, and this being an 80s themed bash and all, I can only wonder at the nature of said massages.

November 10 – a potent bill consisting of Embassy, Novada, Marking Twain, and Sean Benjamin. $1 PBRs may get you in the door as well, in case you weren’t already enticed.

November 11 – a Hip Hop Beat Battle. Never let it be said they aren’t mighty diverse with their offerings. The Green Brothers, Lord 360, and more of that ballyhooed dollar Pabst Blue Ribbon are among the listed attractions.

November 14 – features $3 Skully Burgers, a live DJ, and half off drinks for service industry personnel

November 15 – Leah-Carla Gordone is playing at Skully’s. Not on this specific night, but on some other occasion, Brandon and I were at some other bar and saw a poster advertising an upcoming Gordone performance. He joked that this sounded like some mobster’s daughter, and that if you ever happened to bump into that crew at some bar, her mafia don dad would hint around about wacking you if you didn’t go see her show. You wanna be catchin’ her show, now, sonnyboy, if you get my drift. Got it? Not that we ever did.

November 17 – Band: Mickey Avalon, whatever that means.

November 18 – A leukemia benefit featuring 4 bands: The Judas Cow, Earwig, Celebrity Pilots, The Proper Nouns. There is at least one short video taken from this show, but the recording’s audio is very bad. This was apparently shot by Joel Treadway from cringe.com, and let’s just say we should maybe all be thankful the iPhones came along. Worth viewing so you can get a decent shot of the stage setup, and these guys playing, but I would recommend turning the sound off. The Judas Cow are excellent, though, so this is no fault of their own – and definitely not the venue itself, either. Merely indicative of the video limitations and technical difficulties we were facing back then:

November 25 – “The Return of…The Flying Saucers.” Although I’m not sure if this is a movie, some other band, or else the return of local group Th’ Flyin’ Saucers, who disbanded I think in the late 90s.

November 29 – Miss Molly and Hope Vitellas

December 1 – Red Dahlia and Evil Queens on the bill.

and…

Clash-a-Thon: exact date unknown. The Moops play four songs, but rate it one of their best shows.

2011

January 19 – mgk

January 31 – Hawthorne Heights

February 19 – Cadaver Dogs

February 21 – Baths

February 28 – Say Hi

March 18 – The Wet Darlings

March 27 – The Beat

April 4 – Gogol Bordello. Their set list is known and runs as follows:

Tribal Connection
Not a Crime
Wonderlust King
My Companjera
Last One Goes the Hope
Trans-Continental Hustle
Immigraniada (We Comin’ Rougher)
Break the Spell
Raise the Knowledge
American Wedding
When Universes Collide
Pala Tute
Start Wearing Purple
Sun Is On My Side
Mishto!
Sacred Darling
Dirty Old Town

2012

January 25 – Parenthetical Girls play, also Los Campesinos! The latter’s set has been documented:

By Your Hand
Romance Is Boring
Death to Los Campesinos!
You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing
A Heat Rash in the Shape of the Show Me State; or, Letters from Me to Charlotte
Songs About Your Girlfriend
Life Is a Long Time
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
There Are Listed Buildings
Straight In at 101
To Tundra
You! Me! Dancing!

February 11 – Ekoostik Hookah

February 20 – Zola Jesus

March 10 – Loyal Divide

March 23 – Phantods, Indigo Wild

April 22 – The Beat. Set list:

Twist & Crawl
Save It for Later
Mirror in the Bathroom
The Tears of a Clown
Ranking Full Stop
Hands Off…She’s Mine
Sole Salvation

April 25 – Touché Amoré, Defeater, Code Orange, Birds In Row

April 28 – The Town Monster, Mr. Gnome

May 19 – NastyNasty

July 21 – Phantods. Set list:

Raise The Dead
The Promising
Just Like You
Missed the Boat
The Blood of Kings
One Hundred Years
Revival
Music Is Dead
American Girl
All That Glitters
Lone Highway
Our Last Goodbye

July 27 – Bonneville

September 7 – Hoodie Allen, G-Eazy

September 28 – Karate Coyote. Set list as follows:

Underwater Mouthbreather
Cat-O-Pillar
Wookie
Ride On, Pegasus!
When In Rome
Icu2(Rn4a187)
You’re So Cruel
Front Door
So Far So Good
Zombibabi
Lupercalia Pt II

October 14 – House Of Heroes. Set list:

Remember the Empire
Comfort Trap
Touch This Light
Friday Night
God Save the Foolish Kings
Serial Sleepers
Code Name: Raven
If

October 15 – Torche, Kvelertak, KEN mode, Converge

November 2 – VHS Or Beta

November 5 – Espermachine, Assemblage 23

November 9 – Black Moth Super Rainbow

Posted on by Jason McGathey — Leave a comment

Hilliard Beacon

Hilliard Beacon is a fascinating, still somewhat relatively new (it’s been around about 2 and 1/2 years) undertaking from a diverse, or even what you might say are unlikely trio of locals. Although I still haven’t unearthed enough about their backstory to even know how the three of them met. It’s Kevin Corvo, Jordan Smith, and Tim Hofmann, collectively involved with something called Franklin Street Creative. Apart from the Hilliard connection, what all three of these guys share is a deep concern for the demise of local reporting, here and pretty much everywhere – which they are hoping their efforts can effectively combat. Kevin is responsible for the bulk of their reporting, on a Substack newsletter called The Hilliard Beacon; meanwhile, with Jordan as the ringleader, all three of them also collaborate on regular podcast episodes, a program titled, as you might imagine, The Hilliard Beacon podcast.

I’ve actually been working on this post for approximately a year and a half. And was attempting to get somewhat caught up on the material before publishing. But much like other local efforts which I also subscribe to, these hardworking gents are cranking out their reports at a faster rate than I can possibly keep up with. Which becomes exponentially worse when you begin to stack all the irons I have extended into various fires. It just takes me forever to finish everything, not because I abandon the projects, but more due to just having too much crap in general going on. So while I’ve been kind of worried they might feel I haven’t properly appreciated their efforts on my behalf (more on that to follow), my good intentions are there, and I have chipped away at this slowly.

On one hand I will admit lamenting that I’m only getting around to writing this stuff a couple years – or more – beyond the date it was originally posted, and these events transpired. Thinking that what’s the point of summarizing someone else’s local news dispatches, on current events from two or three years ago? Except then it occurs to me, well, no, it’s an even more depressing thought to believe that nobody cares about the events of today beyond this very day. We can only hope that our efforts would be timeless, whatever they are. At any rate, I find this material fascinating, and am certain that other souls out there among our collective readership might consider it so as well. Bottom line is I am wishing it will inspire you to check out The Hilliard Beacon, in whatever form best suits you. Because it truly is an exemplary production, from a few guys who decided to take local reportage matters into their own hands.

Considering that I’ve listened to the podcast more than I’ve deeply read the articles, it makes sense to start here…

Audio Companion #1

Kevin says he graduated from Hilliard in ’88 (at the time there was just one high school!) and started covering the city in ’99. He also attended OSU and was writing for This Week and Suburban News at the same time while enrolled here. In this inaugural transmission, they are detailing their collective histories – Kevin especially – and frustrations that local based publications have pretty much ceased to exist. Not just because their own careers have been impacted, but on philosophical grounds as well, what a shame it is that this rich information source is no longer available to most communities. They also make some great points about how a local reporter covering issues close to home is going to have connections and more of a bird’s eye view of the issues than some random, outsourced corporate conglomerate ever could.

About halfway through, they switch gears and begin discussing a then current (in 2023) financial scandal, whereby a city employee fell for a phishing scam and lost the town a boatload of money. Even here, in the first episode, it’s already striking to me what’s changed between now and the bygone newspaper heyday they are lamenting: they don’t name any names. It’s hard to imagine even a small-time local paper back in “the day” would have covered a story like this without doing so. I guess we are living in much more litigious times, but still, I find this interesting.

Local references of note: Hilliard Northwest News, Jack’s Appliances.

Most comical unintentional moment: you can hear a door creaking open and someone asking, “anybody home?” in the background at one point. I’m glad they didn’t clean this up. It certainly adds to the homespun charm.

Audio Companion #2

Jordan says he is known as “the donut man,” and Tim, “the coffee guy,” although I haven’t unearthed precisely what this means yet. Kevin as “the reporter man” is more obvious, considering that Corvo is the one behind the written version of this project. Somewhere along the line I discover Mr. Smith there does own a donut shop in Hilliard, which explains at least the first portion of that mystery.

They kick off this one by discussing mysterious local phenomenon, The Turkey Gang. Tim begins to explain this saga by stating that February of ’22 is the first time he saw a pack of wild turkeys in Hilliard. He was so intrigued, driving past them, that he circled back to photograph them. Then, in discussing this with a friend, learned that there was already a Facebook group dedicated to this topic, the Hilliard turkeys of unknown origin.

Apparently things get a little heated on that page – Tim says he stopped checking in as a result. But anyway, it seems these wild turkeys liked to hang out mostly on Leap Road, in between the post office and Cemetery. Apparently someone living in an apartment complex along that stretch had a bunch of bird feeders out, which was a major draw. Then somehow a trio of them became impartial instead to hanging out in the yard of this one house at the corner of Leap and Cemetery.

The ODNR initially said they were doing nothing about these birds, because this was their natural habitat, so people would just have to deal with it. Well, these dominoes started to fall when one bird somehow injured its leg and was transported to an animal hospital or whatever. The remaining duo kept the flame alive for quite some time – and we’re talking about a year at this point, this odyssey with the turkeys – before the ODNR changed its mind and agreed to find proper homes for these fellows.

All in all, a highly entertaining saga. This episode then concludes with Kevin saying he might cover Hilliard train history in a future episode. That might seem like a jarring shift, but that’s the beauty of this podcasting format, it all flows in a manner that makes sense – it’s not a newspaper article and it’s not a news broadcast, it’s a totally unique brand of reporting specific to this medium. The closest thing might be talk radio, except there are no callers throwing hot potatoes at these guys. Anyway, Corvo mentions that Hilliard used to be formally known as Hilliard Station, in honor of John Reed Hilliard, because there was a rail stop at Main and Center. And that not so long ago, trains used to block traffic to an ungodly degree on Main and Cemetery both, sometimes all at once.

As far as modern tidbits, we learn that Hilliard voted for a city manager awhile back, which was supposed to mitigate financial scandals like the one mentioned in episode #1 – which they are still following up on as well.

Local reference of note: Darby Glen Park, where Kevin notes that he occasionally spots deer

Most unintentionally awesome moment: what sounds like an old school landline telephone ringing in the background

Audio Companion #3

As Jordan attempts calling this chaos fueled meeting to session, I’m already starting to get a feel for their basic personalities, or at least the lane they are tasked with patrolling in this podcast. As the moderator, so to speak, he’s more of the moving things along, connective tissue, staying on task guy; Kevin, in a role befitting his experience, skews towards serious, in-depth, feature length reporting; and then Tim’s balancing things out with a lighter, more comedic touch. All three are capable of firing off some zingers, though, of course, just as they are the insightful observation. Jordan for example breaks out the big guns using the word maturation early on today, impressive enough on its own to stop me in my tracks. In all seriousness, though, they’re all well-spoken and bring great personal observations to the table, none of which is easy to pull off – for example I’m not at all sure I would be up to this task.

In this one they begin by discussing an Axios piece spotlighting their brand new endeavor. And speaking of tracks, as hinted at last time around, the next topic involves the train industry and how it pertains to Hilliard. Norfolk Southern and CSX are two freight lines which move through this great town at present. And I actually think I might recognize that fence along the tracks, which they are using for this episode’s thumbnail image – if I’m not mistaken, that’s along Scioto Darby. Anyway, Kevin details some points about a couple of historical derailments here in town, which he’s also reported upon in this week’s newsletter. Back then they had to store at least one fire response truck on the south side of the tracks, because the fire station was on Norwich behind an IGA.

Notable mentions: Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall on Hilliard Rome Road.

Audio Companion #4

In this episode they begin by covering a forthcoming primary, and observe that Hilliard is one of the rare regional suburbs which holds partisan city council primaries. Jordan surprisingly relates that he once ran for city council here, but lost. Next, there’s an update on the phishing scam which cost the city over $200,000 and led to the termination of former finance director David Delande. Since resigning, Delande has sent a letter to city council outlining his case for why he believes he is due at least some sort of severance package. I don’t know all the details, but one interesting point which might potentially bolster his argument is his saying they caught wind of the scam, and called the bank, who initially told them the payment had not yet cleared and so everything appeared to have been properly sewn up in the nick of time. Therefore Delande didn’t sound off a ton of panic alarms. However, it soon emerged that the bank representative was wrong and the payment had already cleared. Cue up complete pandemonium.

Well, again, I don’t know anything about this guy or the job he was doing. However, I will admit that I kind of like it when people in high places occasionally lose their jobs – generally speaking, I feel like there’s not enough oversight (in politics and in the corporate realm both), that folks appointed to even relatively “small” local government posts can wield a tremendous amount of power, and scandals like this show someone was at least paying attention this time and that there are consequences. Sometimes, anyway.

On that note, the following segment essentially hews to this same theme. Jordan’s discussing this recently created Hilliard Development Corporation board of directors. He expresses considerable reservations about where this is headed, because he feels like this process has proven somewhat of a hollow victory, and the city’s residents have ended up right back where they started: voting to strip power from what they’re terming a “strong mayor,” one who maybe greenlit unchecked expansion at all costs, in favor of a “city manager” instead. Only for this resolution to pass, creating this committee which is bound to consist of…a bunch of well-connected, moneyed up, developer types who are probably going to greenlight every expansion opportunity which comes down the pike. Well, I’m with him in this regard. It’s frustrating to feel like being steamrolled by these power grabs is seemingly unavoidable and that the average citizen has no true say in these matters.

Although I must say Tim does offer an interesting counterpoint in that it would be hard to find someone for a committee like this who knew what he/she was doing, and had the experience to get things done, yet didn’t present some sort of conflict of interest. Admitting he’s right reeks of issuing people in power a free pass, however, so I’m not really sure what the answer is here. Except that maybe even city-wide power is too broad, and we should breaks things down instead by the ward. Also quite clearly that everyone needs to get much more involved.

Finally, the fellows offer a little tribute to former police chief Robert Fisher, who had recently died following a battle with cancer.

Audio Companion #5

In this one, our intrepid reporting trio delves into more detail yet concerning that theft case. Then up next on the docket is a somewhat brief mention of the city manager’s “State of the City” address at Crooked Can Brewery on 3/22/23 – she mentions that they’re breaking ground on the new community/wellness center on April 14.

There’s a reference to something colloquially known as (I think) “Blatz Lake?” I like what Jordan has to say on the topic of thoughtful land use. This relates in part to some grading in progress on the west side of Trueman, south of Davidson. A baking company on Main recently opened. My favorite moment(s) of the episode, though, are when the sounds of what I swear must be someone pecking away on an old-school typewriter occasionally bubble to the surface. If it’s not that, then it sounds close enough to it – and I’m not sure I want to hear otherwise.

Audio Companion #6

More details about the “State of the City” powwow at Crooked Can – Kevin was impressed overall. The city manager and her crew want to focus on the Cemetery Road corridor more. There’s talk about how they plan to extend Cosgray to meet Alton Darby – will need to relocate the soccer fields in order to make this happen, however.

The current community center, they are saying, was built back in the 1970s. It used to be much more difficult to get things done around here. As for the new one being constructed, that was funded in part by income tax increases which the majority of everyone (or at least those who voted – which I’m guessing was probably a sadly miniscule percentage of the residents) agreed upon.

Then discussions veer sharply into some terrain that I would say is much more in my wheelhouse – though I’m at a loss to explain why this stuff fascinates me ever so. I’m into the history of various addresses, obviously, and also into current happenings, and yet I find the collision of these two topics most fascinating of all. As in, what is happening now versus what used to transpire in this very spot, with maybe a little commentary on the side about what it all means. Totally killer!

Well, so anyway, at this time it is breaking news that Popeye’s is going into Mill Run where Burger King (and I think something called Rapidfire) used to be. This leads to an amusing and extensive discussion about the days of yore where it was somewhat shocking when a Sheetz gas station took over where Max & Erma’s used to be.

This in turn leads to even more arcane discussion about the minutiae, finer points, hair splitting – whatever you want to call it – about what technically belongs to Hilliard, versus Columbus proper, and the zoning differences for such. Like how when Kmart was here, their store sign was technically a Hilliard concern, whilst the road sign fell under Cbus purview. Tim refers to this one section of the Mill Run area as “Wild Columbus,” which I love, and by this he means it’s often falling into these no-man’s-land zoning peculiarities. Like how there’s some guy with a table selling honey in front of the donut shop that Jordan owns, which is only permissible because this is technically Columbus, not Hilliard.

other references of note: First Responder Park, Splash Pad. Speculations about Converge Technology, which took over some of the building space formerly belonging to the Rahal/Letterman race team. Apparently Converge landed a contract at some point to make drones for the police department. I’m also doing silent (or not so silent, actually) fist pumps in the air when Kevin pronounces Fishinger Road the same way I always have – a lot of people have corrected me over the years, claiming that I should be saying “fishing-er.” But no, he is evidently of the same mind as me, that it’s more like “fish-injure” instead. Score one for the home team!

Audio Companion #8

The plot thickens! Episode #7 seems to have disappeared from the internet entirely! Or at least from all the usual places where I find podcasts. What this means of course is another rabbit hole to get myself endlessly sidetracked within, trying to maybe dig it up elsewhere.

But that can wait. Right now what concerns is episode #8. This time around their guest is Don Kloss of the Ohio Wildlife Center and Metro Parks. Although hilariously enough, he doesn’t really speak until around the 15 minute mark. This because the core trio gets into an extended discussion about some annexation plans around Hayden Run Road – Hilliard has no legal say in the matter but gets to chime in with their own opinions. A nerd like me does find these details endlessly fascinating, yet it’s still cracking me up because I feel like Mr. Kloss had to have been sitting there wondering about the nature of this invite and how exactly this pertains to him.

Well, he does enjoy his moment in the sun soon enough. He’s offering his take on an organization known as RAPID5, whose mission statement revolves around adding new parks, and trails connecting various waterways around town. Supposedly, anyhow. Kloss scoffs that it’s more about adding “urban playgrounds” and condos, i.e. purporting to be about one kind of green (nature) while in fact the entire purpose concerns another (dollar signs). According to him, and the fellas seem to agree, it’s just front for adding fancy new developments and lining the pockets of everyone involved. Tim makes my day by saying this reminds him of Campus Partners, which was the first thought leaping into my head as well.

From here discussion spins off into some related topics, like Quarry Trails. The original agreement was that the land there would be given to Metro Parks when they were done mining on that site. Or how a Hilliard resident willed a plot of land to the city under the stipulation that it had to be converted into a park. Hilliard gladly took the land, of course, except then the city manager announced they had no money for converting it into a park, therefore it was…put to commercial use! Shocking, I know. In fact the land one of the Amazon centers was built upon was supposed to be a park.

Well, this is as far as I’ve gotten in transcribing my notes thus far. Have listened to quite a bit of these podcasts, however, and read many of Kevin’s Substack pieces in the course of my travels. If even remotely interested in these topics, and/or of a mind to support these guys in their fine local reportage quest, then by all means seek them out. Future dispatches in this space will follow – as soon as I can shoehorn in the time! Keeping up with their prolific output, however, I’ve already written off as an impossible task.

Posted on by Jason McGathey — Leave a comment

April 27, 2006

(<- click image to return)

–shift at Wild Oats

After that to Goodwill, buy badly needed work shoes and a 99 cent old answering machine – thinking it might play my old micro tapes. Doesn’t work, but oddly enough, in desperation I try my old microplayer again, and two years after it last worked, today it miraculously does again! Kick ass! I can now transcribe some of those old tapes before it’s too late.

Record some vocals on computer, too, and mix down one song, burn to disc track by track, then delete the files to free up memory on there.

Then it’s time to assemble the troops for our big outing to Marshall’s, for Shauna’s 21st birthday. Our lives sure have taken some weird twists and turns, and this year is already shaping up as possibly one of the strangest ever. Seemingly at a time where things were kind of winding down (I mean, I’m living in freaking Hilliard these days, to cite just my own example), which makes it doubly odd. For example in the early going, our group at the outset is Shauna, Norman, Jay Taylor, Hostetler, Kyle, Amy, Elissa, me…but also this one peculiar middle aged couple who shop at our store. Somebody invited them, I’m not sure who. The other 8 of us are all Wild Oats employees, these are Wild Oats shoppers. But it’s cool, we pull together some chairs and tables for this huge conglomeration in the middle of the room, game on. That hot new Buckcherry song, Crazy Bitch, is spewing forth from the jukebox. Apart from that one couple, our troop is four dudes in their thirties…Kyle, the “young lad” here in his mid-late twenties…and then three chicks who are all exactly 21. At the age of 19, Shauna was my roommate, then began hooking up with a friend of mine (Norman). These other two girls are much more recent, ahem, additions to the entourage.

Hilariously enough, Tim just happens to be wandering around here for some strange reason. He had no idea any of this was going on, is literally meandering about the bar aimlessly. “Every time I come here I see someone I know,” he mumbles and pulls up a chair next to me. Then as we seem to be the only two actually listening to Shauna’s stories, she gets up, sits in between us now. Doing a good job pacing herself, though, I must say, which is difficult for most folks on their 21st, and definitely a struggle for most chicks on their 21st.

Tiffany shows up, then Jim Marshall, Suzie. We pull up a third section to add to our table. Tim’s telling me he quit Bob The Fish Guy and is now repairing bicycles at this mom & pop shop in Westerville. Fitting because he’s not driving these days and is instead riding a bicycle everywhere himself. Jay buys Shauna some minty shot, not knowing that she’s actually allergic to mint. He is the first person to leave, too.

Elissa is desperate for my attention. Tonight she tells me the same thing Amber G. said when I was dating her, almost verbatim, in that I remind her of a “little boy.” But the funniest aspect about that, or should we say one of the funniest, is that while possibly possessing somewhat of a baby face and definitely youthful with my energy at this age, I feel like I’m actually pretty decent at playing these girls at this point. It just seems like there’s no way some of us guys cannot have the upper hand with a lot of these females, and certainly younger females, at his stage in the game, after the past 10-12-14 years of…man, I’m not even sure what you would call it, but it’s certainly been an epically wild ride, somewhat all over the map, but a definite learning experience. You’re almost on autopilot at this point, if you choose to be.

For example, I fall into this off the wall conundrum. I know by now that ignoring Elissa to some extent, and treating her somewhat dismissively, is the paradoxical best way to keep her around. But then you tell yourself, well, no, I actually like this one, I should treat her better. Except THEN there’s actually another level above that where you almost have to tell yourself, and force yourself to stick to it, of, okay then but if you do actually like this girl quite a bit, and want her to stick around…then the best way to accomplish that, nonetheless, is to…ignore her, and treat her somewhat dismissively. Or you can be nice, watch her scamper away, kick yourself for being an idiot and not doing what you actually knew would work and wanted to do on top of it, anyway, all because you were on some big nobility kick or something. This is the minefield you’re negotiating right now as a guy.

At least until the drinks start a-flowin’, at which point it maybe doesn’t matter as much. But then let’s look at things from her point of view, or maybe what we should say I feel like must be going through these girls’ heads, at least on the oddball occasions where they are actually maybe into me, and are picking up on what I’m throwing down. It must run something like this: okay, he’s distant and kind of a smartass, but he’s not actually a mean person with any of this stuff. He’s got some wacky theories on life, yet at the same time seems to possess some peculiar confidence in them anyway, like he believes he knows what he’s talking about. I mean, Elissa did after all tell me one night here recently, “there’s no reason I would ever say, wow, this Jason guy’s an asshole,” when I was explaining others were often not quite so amused by my antics. Beyond that, she’s already worried she might not have anywhere else to stay after fighting with her roommate last night. Is a chick in this situation going to waste her time with, like, some normal, nervous acting but really nice guy who is jumping through the proper hoops and timelines and so on of trying to be serious and date her? Or would they prefer some dude who, even if a weirdo, does appear to have his life together and tends to muddle forward with a kind of unflappable shrug no matter how chaotic things become? Well, whatever the case, this is my take on everything. Plus one other additional consideration: is this somebody you would want to get serious about, anyway? So that’s why I tend to think being distant is typically not an issue.

Tim and I are discussing Sequoia Lanes, Capri Lanes. Elissa chimes in, then somehow this morphs into a discussion of “crustache rock” as she calls it. She’s brought with her of course her cute little backpack with the red strap and the buttons pinned everywhere.

Come to think of it, this must have been before Jim Marshall even showed up. Elissa tells me, “Amy says you look like Steve Buscemi, but I disagree.”

“That’s good. I mean I know my teeth are fucked up, but come on,” I joke.

Anyway, Chris, Tiffany, Shauna, and Amy are all outside, smoking a joint. Amy is wearing this red dress with heavy material, like denim, with a button up blouse part, short skirt, but vaguely I must admit cottage cheese thighs. Shauna calls Jim, to try and talk him into joining us, and Amy slurs, “if Jim comes here, tell him I’ll fuck him!” into the phone.

“He was there about a minute and a half later,” I will joke, after the fact, “his tires were still smokin when we left the bar.”

So soon enough, they’re all over each other. Jim has shown up in this thinly vertically striped, blue and white, button up shirt, in other words his classic attire. The middle aged couple split, and so does Tim – it turns out he’s actually driving his boss’s van for some reason tonight. Tiffany has the right idea, too: a couple of drinks and then bye-bye. Shauna’s wearing a black sleeveless dress, low cut neckline and cleavage. Suzie a black sleeveless blouse also, looking sharp, but no cleavage.

Funny, the first time I ever saw her, I thought, “now there’s a chick that’s right up my alley,” without any specific explanation why. Tonight’s the first time we’ve actually spoken, but I think I was right, maybe subconsciously picking up on something (then again it ties into these massive rivers of water under the bridge I was alluding to earlier).

Forgot to mention that also much earlier, before Jim showed up, Amy was reading an Other Paper at our table, and I said, “don’t read at the bar – that’s lame,” and threw it across the room. Totally unfazed, she reaches down and pulls a book from her own backpack, holds it aloft with both hands like one of the girls from The Price Is Right.

“The Sun Also Rises?” she says, and I nod approvingly.

-Elissa (to me): You’ve got a great laugh. It reminds me of my uncle (Tim) (not our friend Tim who is here) (this is actually the second time she’s told me this, but she doesn’t remember).

By now we’re progressing to the middle-later stages of our outing. She comes over and plops down in an effort to disrupt my conversation with others. Flips me off, other standard shenanigans, and so on.

-And this is all before Shauna’s whole Xenos crowd shows up – fellow practitioners of her somewhat controversial religion. This seems to me as the moment where matters escalate into exponentially even greater weirdness (but not necessarily wildness), somehow. I remember there’s a black chick (cute!), and Elizabeth (Shauna’s current roommate, with brown hair and preternaturally, possibly fake, blue eyes), some John guy (curly red hair, extremely talkative) from the Xenos crew. Meanwhile Pitt is here now too and trying to work his magic with the black chick. I’m locked into an extensive conversation with Suzie – telling her about my writing, some nonsense estimating I make “sixteen” bucks an hour, just total gibberish. It doesn’t matter provided you stay in character and just keep going.

It’s all meaningless, up to a point. She does throw me for a loop, though, asking why I don’t hook up with Amy, who plainly appears ripe for the plucking. But I say no, “I gotta be good to my girl.”

Then there’s another moment where she, Jim, Chris, and I are having a highly involved discussion about our collective war stories. One extremely peculiar tragedy those two guys share is that they have both been shot at and lived to tell the tale – as in not just shot at, but the bullets actually hit them. For Jim it’s still lodged in the small of his back, and he shows us his wound; Hostetler of course was attacked by some stranger at a park when he was five, and still walks with a limp. “I would’ve died if it went out the other side,” he says, as it’s resting to this day against his spinal column. When it comes to my history I’m estimating, “I know I’ve used up 4 of my 9 lives,” with reference to two serious car wrecks, this time that idiot at Jamie’s apartment was playing with a gun and it went off (everyone says it missed my head by about an inch) and then also at least possibly the strangest occurrence, if not necessarily the closest brush with death, of having survived a plane crash.

“I work for NewsCenter,” Suzie marvels, “I’m surprised I never heard about it.” (I have no idea what this is, am merely guessing at the spelling/styling).

“Check the London paper, early March 2001,” I tell her.

-Jim insists upon buying himself, Chris, and me this “oil slick” shot: it’s 151 and Jager. Never heard of such, but it is about as nasty as it sounds. Hostetler slugs his, while I sip mine, feel like I’m obligated to at least finish it.

-Shauna goes outside and forces herself to stick her finger down her throat and puke up some of the alcohol. I know a lot of the guys consider her annoying, that she tells outrageous tales sometimes, but I don’t care what anyone says or how much they bitch about her – I think she’s a pretty cool person, overall.

-Kyle’s trying to rustle an afterhours coalition. But no. It’s time for most of us to get out of here.

-one guy I know pissed in someone else’s bed tonight, though, at said afterhours. I’ll be a real chum and omit his name. It sounds like some of us made the right call in skipping this puppy, however.

-then again I’m saying that despite, never mind my “early” exit, getting up just a handful of hours later and calling off at Target anyway.

Epilogue: I seem to recall writing about other 21st birthdays and/or similar occasions in the past, and that there used to be much more detail, a more coherent narrative. But I think those were the absurd outliers. It’s borderline insane to have even this much scattershot detail about a night such as this one, and after awhile you recognize that there is no overarching narrative to anything. It’s just a bunch of random, intersecting nonsense. By extension those other nights were freakish to the extreme, in holding together as some sort of actual story, with somewhat of a real semi-point. But endlessly fascinating, in any case, whatever way you wish to slice it.

In summary I would say this was a somewhat arbitrarily chosen, but fun and representative day, for this little sliver of our collective personal lives. It was also sunny, and warmer than expected, with temperatures topping out in the high 60s. But what else was happening around this fair city, on this date? It turns out there weren’t a ton of newsworthy developments, at least not that I’ve unearthed so far. Yet here are a few of the highlights:

Mae are at Newport Music Hall

Columbus Symphony Orchestra backs vocalist Barbara Cook at Palace Theatre. The CSO plays an instrumental first act of old standards, before Cook joins them onstage.

Comedian Kathy Griffin performs a 90 minute set at Southern Theatre, her first of two nights in town.

The OSU Medical Center emergency room treats 84 year old Leo LeVan for minor injuries, before releasing him – he was helicoptered in after a badly driven dump truck plowed into his living room.

Pitcher Aaron Small, making a rehab start for the Yankees, leads the Clippers to a 7-2 win over Louisville, at Cooper Stadium. Kevin Thompson keys the offense, with a 3 run homer in the 6^th.

Harper are playing at Blues Station.

Park Street Tavern has an open stage jam with Jimmy McGee.

(click image to advance ->)

Love Letter To Columbus

Polaris/Germain Amphitheater

1994

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2006

Like this:

July 29, 2006

Like this:

Skully’s Music-Diner

2006 events calendar:

2011

2012

Like this: