Northern Row Park, at the corner of Clay and Melindy Streets in Over-the-Rhine. Small but powerful, it adds a freshness to narrow back roads while showcasing the positive outcome of community togetherness. Local volunteers started rehabbing this green space almost eight years ago, and the park continues to thrive in the heart of Over-the-Rhine. You can just now see the tulips starting to push up, and the four corner street lights add a romantic ambience.

Photo By: Joe Lamb

Best Morning Bike Ride: Even non-morning people can appreciate how good Cincinnati air smells with no cars around. For the past 25 years, area cyclists have woken up before sunrise to ride with other bike enthusiasts in the Morning Glory Ride. The 2007 route isn’t set yet, but past rides have wound through Eden Park, downtown Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky; last year’s trip took the more than 2,000 participants on a tour of Lunken Airport. Benefiting the Miami Group Sierra Club, this ride ends with a hot breakfast at Sawyer Point Park and spicy Cajun music by Lagniappe ($35 for adults, $25 for youths, $95 per family).
(tobuta.com/mgr2006/FAQ00006.htm)

Best Do-Gooders: The friars who held down the corner of Liberty and Vine in Over-the-Rhine for generations. They just opened the Canticle Cafe a little over a month ago, a coffee shop/community outreach center where Father Al Mascia provides coffee and snacks and a warm place to take a load off your feet to the neighborhood folks. They run completely on donations. They also have the Sarah Center, St. Francis Seraph School and other worthy causes. They’re doing really good things down here.
1615 Vine St., Over-the-Rhine, 513-535-2719.

Best Underused Visitor Resource: Metro’s Route 1 bus. They call it the No. 1 bus for a reason: The route winds from Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens at one end to Cincinnati Museum Center at the other. In between it offers stops and views that would rival any existing commercial tour operator: UC Medical Center, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Harriett Beecher Stowe House, Krohn Conservatory, Eden Park, Cincinnati Art Museum, Playhouse in the Park, Mount Adams, Sawyer Point, Taft Museum of Art, Fountain Square, City Hall, Duke Energy Convention Center and Music Hall. All a visitor to town needs to do to see the best of Cincinnati is keep his/her eyes open and pay attention.
(go-metro.com)

Best Social Service Program That Really Helps Kids: Lighthouse Youth Services Independent Living Program, in conjunction with Hamilton County Job and Family Services, helps teens who are going to “age out” of foster care when they turn 18. They learn the skills most of us take for granted but aren’t necessarily taught by foster parents — cleaning, cooking, laundry, budgeting and paying bills. They take classes and do all of this while living on their own in an apartment and going to school or working.

Best Re-Use of an Old School: Clifton Cultural Arts Center will be housed in the old Clifton Elementary School on Clifton Avenue. Instead of becoming yet another office building with blackboard left hanging to give the place “charm,” the community created a nonprofit organization (cliftonculturalarts.org) that will convert and run the new arts facility.

Best Architectural Secret: Why is everyone so quiet about The Banks? When Mayor Mark Mallory talks about the city’s architecture, he talks about it in the past tense. We have the perfect spot to build something great, something new, internationally recognized, and no one knows what’s going on with the Banks Working Group. Why all the secrecy? Are they building a mall?

We like the looks of Vine Street heading north from Central Parkway. It’s a whole new look, with building exteriors being spruced up and a few new businesses moving in. We can say thank you to Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati for sticking it out in a block that used to be pretty much a war zone and to the Art Academy of Cincinnati, which has shown real faith in the neighborhood by moving from peaceful Mount Adams. ETC now has a secure parking structure nearby (the Gateway Garage) where patrons can leave their cars, and the Art Academy has a beautifully remodeled facility to house its students at 12th and Vine. Already the apartments and condos nearby are being snapped up by young adults looking to live close to the center city, and as more buildings are finished this will surely become a thriving strip for urban residents. Once upon a time — in the late 19th century — Vine Street was Cincinnati’s most lively thoroughfare. Maybe it’s finally on its way to a vital new vibe.

Photo By: Scott Beseler

Best Endangered Place: Over-the-Rhine was added to the list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places, issued by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Waiting to realize its potential for more than 30 years, OTR is getting help from the Trust and a renewed sense of cooperation among the various community groups trying to pull off a dramatic rehabilitation of the neighborhood. Maybe 30 years from now this will all be a lovely memory.

Best Sign/Name Lost During Past Year: “The World of the Satisfyin’ Place” hung over a bar on the corner of McMillan and May in Walnut Hills. The bar is now out of business and the sign is down.

Best Spot for the Lazy Birdwatcher: For whatever reason, the Northern Kentucky University exit off I-275 is the chosen meeting ground for flocks of thousands of birds traveling south. During the autumn months, it’s easy for a motorist to get sidetracked watching the dizzying swarms nearly blot out the dwindling sun. We recommend parking first — in a spot that won’t get you one of those ugly orange envelopes from campus security, of course.

Best Place for a (Slightly Uncomfortable) Realization About Nature: Krohn Conservatory has the right idea with its annual springtime festivities, when they release thousands of butterflies into the space to mingle with patrons. Few things are more beautiful than clouds of butterflies alighting on budding plants, but take heed — those fragile and gorgeous wings carry the feet of insects, hairy, prickly toes and all. If the kids love it, then let them have their fun. But if you’re an even slightly bug-wary parent, wear long sleeves. And absolutely no swatting.

Best Place to Geocache: Winton Woods park boasts plenty of trails to hike through and more than 20 caches to locate. If you haven’t tried geocaching — a family-friendly activity where you use a GPS tracking device to find a hidden “cache” — this is definitely a fun hobby to check out. 10245 Winton Road, Springfield Twp., 513-521-3276.

Best New Skating Rink: Opened last year, Miami University’s new Goggin Ice Center is an incredible ice skating rink, complete with all updated fixtures. For most visitors it costs $5; MU faculty and staff, plus high school students and younger, get in for just $4; MU students are just $3. Rent your ice skates for $2 more.
610 S. Oak St., Oxford, 513-529-9800.

Don’t feel intimidated if you’ve never climbed anything more than a set of steps. RockQuest makes it easy to try this sport, whether you’re bouldering (free climbing) 10-foot walls or trying their 45-foot vertical climb while tied in to a rope. For just $14 a day, you can try out their almost 20,000 square feet of climbing walls with or without a partner.
3475 E. Kemper Road, Sharonville, 513-733-0123.

Photo By: Jymi Bolden/CityBeat

Best Place to Long for Your Childhood: Winter conditions render long sections of I-71 impassable, often making for some chilling stories; this season’s last storm left travelers idling for up to seven hours on a commute that would normally take about 15 minutes. With the city’s routine preparation and clean-up methods failing, why not just clear traffic and invite stranded drivers to take part in what we think would make for one hell of a sled ride down the Kenwood hill?

Best Proof That the Oxygen Is Thinner Up There: The Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber was so taken by the commercial possibilities created by the new Purple People Bridge Climb that it predicted 80,000 people a year would mount the structure for an aerial view of the Ohio River, spending a total of $25 million in the process. With a 128-day season, that’s about 600 climbers a day. Maybe next year.

Best Math Mistake: When the U.S. Census Bureau revised its population figures and concluded Cincinnati has actually grown by 27 people in the past few years, you’d have thought the city had secured the Olympics. All that talk about people fleeing Cincinnati for the suburbs was just more media bias. It turns out we’re thriving!

Best Move to a New Home: The closing of the Crazy Ladies bookstore in Northside and sale of the property meant the possible loss of the Ohio Lesbian Archives, a treasure trove of literature, journals, posters and other materials. But the Clifton United Methodist Church came to the rescue in June, giving the institution a new home.

Best Catering to Job Skills: Everyone talks about wanting to “help the poor,” but other than a donation made at Christmas time people don’t have the time or ability to get involved. Helping yourself — with catering needs or grabbing a pizza on the way home from work — can help a Cincinnatian learn a new trade and get into a food service industry. All you have to do is place an order by calling Cincinnati COOKS (513-651-0700) and Venice on Vine Pizza/Catering (513-221-7020).

After several years of standing mournfully vacant (and one abortive attempt to reopen), the Diner on Sycamore has been reborn as recycled plastic in the form of Vinyl. Owners Michael Spaulding and Roula David have made the place hip and earth-friendly at the same time. They keep tinkering with the menu to find the right lineup to attract customers back (lunch has been set aside for the time being to get dinner on course), and they’ve found a flair for special evenings that draw a crowd. (Our favorite is a “Pink Wine Tasting” for women only on the third Wednesday of each month.) And they have the confidence that’s going to be needed to keep OTR on the comeback trail: It’s been recently announced that Spaulding and David plan to extend their energies to the one-time Jump (which closed in 2001 after the riots) by opening a lounge and sushi bar. Business at Vinyl has been slowly growing, and David and Spaulding have faith in the neighborhood. We have faith in them.
1203 Sycamore St., Over-the-Rhine, 513-898-1536.

Photo By: Scott Beseler