New Year’s Eve 2017, Cincinnati.
Can you recapture magic, and recreate a once-in a lifetime evening? Sorta.
Prologue:
January 1, 2017. Early afternoon.
A day after finishing my tour of 14 bars and parties solo, I was texting my then-on-and-off-again girlfriend Victoria. She’d gone out for a New Year’s Eve celebration in Clifton the previous night — a hilly, treacherous hike of an area surrounding the University of Cincinnati. Between the celebration, the walking through the poorly maintained sidewalks and hillsides of the area, and fashionable women’s footwear, she’d taken a tumble.
Still, we planned to hang out on the evening of the 1st and discuss the previous evening. This was also the same time, whether it be due to pain inspired laziness or increased trust, she gave me her door code. We’d talked about our respective evenings, played some Trivial Pursuit, and went our separate ways.
New Year’s Eve.
8:35 PM.
Urban Artifact.
In a fitting start to the return tour, this exploration of Cincinnati nightlife started exactly where my 2015 ended: Urban Artifact. A brewery built into a former church, Urban Artifact found a niche in being host to performance and musical artists as weird and unique as its home neighborhood in Northside. 2015 had a singular theme in Ball of the Beasts — a masquerade that brought out some of the most fantastic outfits possible.
2017, though, hosted two events. Weird Year’s Eve as a free event in the downstairs taproom/music venue, and Black Light Ball upstairs, with a $65 cover and an open bar. Weird Year’s Eve featured a projection background and a crashed UFO with a handful of bands typical of the area: most notably Ernie Johnson from Detroit, whose membership contains no members from Detroit nor any Ernies Johnson. Black Light Ball is just that, a black light-lit venue with multiple DJs throughout the night leading into a club feel.
For now, the speakers played some R&B loops. My now-pretty-steady girlfriend Victoria and I exit, seeing the calm before the storm in the form of a multiple-dozen-long line of people anxious to get in. We moved past them, to the car, and headed to the next stop.
9:21 PM.
Taft’s Ale House.
When planning an evening that spans a city, there’s some planning that enters the picture. Some additional time is budgeted for travel, entry, exit, getting to and from parking. I’d planned on getting to Taft’s Ale House at 9:15 to keep things rolling, but due to not taking in account that parking would be scarcer than usual thanks to the nearby Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve celebration we wound up circling the block in order to find a spot.
My luck.
We jumped out of the car and walked the block and a half to Taft’s Ale House, yet another brewery built into an old church. Unlike the previous stop, the vibe at Taft’s Ale House was genial. Warm. A venue filled with old friends bantering and listening to local classic (or “Classy” as the lead singer defined) rock band Eden Park Band. As the band played I Want A New Drug by Huey Lewis and the News, the hostess strongly offered us drink tickets.
Victoria, knowing that the rest of the evening would be dry and who’s going to say no to free beer, accepted and grabbed a Cookie Ale named Santa’s Bribe. I wandered the bottom level and the upper mezzanine to feel the vibe of the venue.
More than anything, it felt like a hybrid between a small fair and a beer hall. The same sort of warm, welcoming affair with Old Guy Rock playing in the background to keep spirits high and conversation that kept everyone engaged. Nobody was too interested in dancing, but everyone was interested in who they were with.
I went back down to rejoin with my equipment manager for the evening, took a sip of her brew, and went back to the car.
I’d left my phone in the car.
In a pretty so-so area of the city.
Luckily, no takers.
9:49 PM.
Hotel Covington.
It’s at this stop that the cold starts to settle in. Already dipping into the single digits, wind chill in the negative temperatures was really, really hurting our progress. Thankfully, parking was available within a couple hundred yards of the hotel / bar that was our next destination.
After walking past a line of smokers — your first indication you are indeed in Kentucky — we enter Hotel Covington. It’s a great looking venue, albeit crowded. Super traditional, celebratory, the same sort of atmosphere you’d associate with a New Year’s Eve party in a deeply Red State.
The room energy was directed, specific. The warm conversations of the prior stop were replaced with pitches, dictums, slaps on the shoulder with a deep laugh. Women moved through in trains, men tended to block out their conversation circles with their shoulders, the lucky few who got seating leaned forward in an exaggerated way to gesticulate their feelings and thoughts.
Don’t Stop Believin’ played over the PA. I knew we’d hear it several times more over the evening.
Downstairs, a VIP room was being set up for its future guests — a live band instead of the PA upstairs, golden sequined tablecloths and champagne glasses on each stand.
The band played to an empty room, warming up for a crowd that was a few minutes from arriving. They were pretty good.
10:16 PM.
Queen City Exchange.
Serving as the parallel to last year’s bar stops, Queen City Exchange is a long, narrow bar with a gimmick: stock-market like pricing on product, that fluctuates with demand. Their New Year’s event was packed, but not in the way the other venues were.
In this, it just felt like a really busy weekend night with a pile of balloons perched near the end of the establishment for midnight release. Some people were taking selfies in front of an inflatable 2018 balloon grouping, but most of those in the establishment were corralled heavily against the bar watching some college basketball.
Unlike last year, Ohio State wasn’t getting embarrassed in a bowl game. Which is a net positive.
It was then that I posited we could probably wander into the nearby venue The Phoenix in the same way I walked into Rhinegeist a year prior. One issue, though, we forgot the two tiny bottles of prosecco we’d left in the trunk for consumption around midnight. So we walked back, then walked past The Phoenix again.
A stocky 20something was outside the venuecursing about how “those kids don’t even know who he is.”
I had no idea who he was.
We moved on.
Passing Knockback Nat’s, we heard Don’t Stop Believin’ again.
10:50 PM.
21c Museum Hotel.
In what was Victoria’s favorite venue of the night, 21c combined a pretty standard New Year’s Eve party in a lights-down museum with a drag show featuring several of the Queens whom preside over the Metropole (21c’s attached restaurant) Drag Brunch.
And I can see why. The mood was definitely getting friendlier, people were starting to get excited over the new year, and the performing hall came abuzz at 11PM when the centerpiece of a drag show began. I exchanged lenses with Victoria, who kept at the periphery of the crowd as she valued personal space over her love for drag queens. I moved through it, trying to get the best possible photos.
Which, if you’ve ever tried photographing a shiny surface on a perpetually moving object, is a nightmare. Doubly so if the venue is dim, and people are milling about.
I started using the manual focus and hoping something would take. A few shots did. Thankfully. A crowd of people milled in and out, with things at a relative fever pitch.
11:24 PM.
Contemporary Arts Center.
After the glowing review I gave of this venue last year, could the CAC’s NYE match last year’s?
Mostly.
Things seemed a bit more full downstairs, to the point of chaotic. It wasn’t a great look.
But upstairs, in the main foyer, people were still bringing their A-Game and it was easy to see the best and brightest of the Cincinnati YP crowd floating about. Nothing in Cincinnati compares to the feeling you get in the foyer, with an air of glamour you’d associate with a high end gallery opening.
11:50 PM.
Fountain Square.
Famously housing the Tyler Davidson Fountain, Cincinnati’s Fountain Square is a community hub that hosts several events over the year. Those events include a countdown on a giant screen, accompanied by fireworks at midnight.
This is a New Year’s Eve celebration for the people.
And you can see that when you look at the crowd. Parents, grandparents, children, people of all walks of life and at least five languages I could overhear were amassed on the patio around Cincinnati’s most iconic fountain.
And all of this, hosted by a local radio station.
Don’t Stop Believin’ played yet again, mercifully for the last time in 2017.
The countdown hit 0.
Fireworks went off.
The local radio station hosting the event played a song that wasn’t Auld Lang Syne. Victoria scoffed at that, then we kissed to celebrate the New Year before walking back to our car. We’d elected not to drink the prosecco until we got home.
12:42 AM.
White Castle.
It was after midnight, we had a craving for awful food. Skyline wasn’t open. So we ordered two sliders apiece. Regular for me, veggie for her.
1:10 AM.
Henry Probasco House.
Our journey ended, in the former estate of the man who bought the fountain for Cincinnati. We ate our sliders, had a sorta-champagne toast with the flute’s worth of prosecco in each of the bottles we’d had along, and went to bed.
Sure, it was colder outside. I didn’t do half as many locations. I didn’t get as many photos. But I got to do something I never thought possible.
I got to redo that crazy evening from a year prior, and I got to share the experience with someone else.
That’s magic.