Hello. My name is Joe Robb and I live on the south bank of Cincinnati.

I don’t know what you know about Cincinnati.

When I used to live in Boston, I met people from the East Coast or the West Coast who thought my hometown–the mighty metropolis on the coast of the Ohio–coasted through a flat sea of corn, and that it was a town, small and rural, full of twang. They were surprised by my accent, and to learn that my city was big, and ugly sometimes, but beautiful at other times, so seeped in odd history that when you step on the pavement of Cincinnati, stories leak up through the cracks in the asphalt and the smells of malted barley and pigflesh flood your nose.

Was that too much?

Cincinnati is the Queen City, The ‘Nati, The City of Seven Hills, The Beer Capitol of the World, and Porkopolis. Cincinnati is the birthplace of Roy Rogers, Bootsy Collins, Doris Day, Stephen Spielberg, Sarah Jessica Parker, and King Records, but not Jerry Springer, although he served on our city council from 1971 until 1974 when he resigned, admitting he had hired a prostitute with a personal check . . . that bounced. The... more »