My only beef with Columbus is that it is too flat.

Being from there, but here in Cincy for so long, I love the hills here.

But, everything else, the cities are pretty similar.

yaknow, except for me on city council . . .

NICE.

Yeah, Cincinnati could definately use a Buttermaker on Council!

ever hear '20 or 30 people' by ron house's old band the twisted shouts?
that shit ain't gonna change judging by the fact that he wrote it almost 30 years ago.

columbus is wonderful...ever try baltimore,md? its lame, expensive, and the streets are littered with chicken bones and rat droppings.

dude makes a point- you better have a pretty long resume of living other places before shittin' on columbus. Besides the lack of mountains and places to swim, if you can't find stuff to enrich your life here in columbus it's your fault, not the city's.

Yeah, Red State status notwithstanding, it's a heckuva lot easier to live here than many other places I've lived. My wife & I moved here from Chicago, where we never would have been able to buy a house. The same goes for Denver, where I also lived for a number of years. There are bad things about every city, but this one is pretty good overall.

Proposal to Baltimore City Council:

"Teach the chickens how to fight the rats."

we've been working on that too.
http://www.columbusneedsamountin.org

I had to parallel-park on a steep hill there last weekend; I don't get the attraction.

Columbus has its good and bad elements. Cost of living is cheap here, we have a very diverse population, the city is growing very quickly, and thanks to the many excellent colleges here, we have a diverse population of fairly well educated folks who support the arts.

Nontheless, Ill be leaving here as soon as I graduate from OSU.

Why?

First off, I grew up here. I grew up on Avondale Avenue in the Bottoms on the West Side. I went to Wesltand High School. I worked at the Main Library downtown all thru high school.

Ive been hanging out on High St. and seeing local bands and goignt o locala rt shows and other things since 1995. I used to see the New Bomb Turks play at the High Five.... Its all been very wonderful....but I have simply grown tired of it.

There are a few minor beefs I have with Columbus, namely the art and music scene here. Well, concerning it at least.

The first is that I find the music scene here to be slightly, slightly conservative. Columbus leans very much towards loud garage rock, spaz rock,metal, prog metal, and sorta jangly indie rock, which is all cool....however, if you dont play any of the above mentioned genres of music, you pretty much get ignored.

While I am sad about Slaybaugh getting fired from the Alive (he is a passionate writer and a great guy), I do have to say that the Alive mainly payed attention to CD-R bands. Thats fine, there are plenty of great groups on that label, but if you werent on CDR, or you didnt play that kind of loud rock music, you prolly wouldnt get too much coverage in the Alive.

I don't care if people get pissed at me for saying this....

But the Columbus music scene is incredibly cliquey, and unless you fit the definition of what that cliques idea of cool is )garage rock, metal, insturmental indie rock, pixies-ish spazz rock, "The Cowtown Sound") you are pretty much an outsider. Its the truth.

Also, Columbus seems to be rather incredibly bigoted towards dance music and electronic music, which is apparently not as "authentic" as guitar dominated rock music.....although the recent uber popularity of local Hip Hop acts has been a nice change.

So, given that I write electronic dance music, I feel that my music might find a better audience in another city. This is one of the main reasons why I am moving.

Beyond that, after 24 years of being in Columbus, I need a change of scenery.

And my job will prolly promote me after I graduate, thus neccessitating me to move away.

But I digress.

Columbus at least has a thriving music and art scene, at least we have a great library system, a bunch of liberal arts schools, and people that actually care about things. At least the Other Paper and people like Slaybaugh and Melissa Starker cover local artists and musicians, even if they aren't always the ones that I think should get covered.

Plus, cost of living is cheap here....and we ARE growing as a city.

Really, overall, its a tough call.

I mean, I live cheaply in a lovely apartment in Clintonville, surrounded by all the things I love to do for fun and need for living within walking distance, and my neighbors are great.

Thats kinda hard to give up.

But I will most likely leave. However, there is a part of me that wouldn't mind staying, either.

I love Columbus, I'm attending OSU in the fall and I just got a nice apartment/duplex on California in Clintonville. We have a good music scene, great parks, comfest, great libraries, great restaurants, high street, hookah bars, great neighborhoods (though there's plenty of shit ones too), a huge diversity of people, good colleges, good music stores, an awesome recording studio (workbook SHIT YEAH), cool music venues, close location to the country, plenty of places to buy delcious gyros, the north market, lots of specialty food stores, pro soccer/hockey teams, studio 35, plenty of art galleries, those cool 'fuck yeah ohio' shirts, great hiphop scene, great bike paths, lots of other stuff I'll probably think of later.

But I don't plan on living here forever. This is a great city but there is SOOOO much more to see. Maybe I'll come back eventually, I'm sure I will actually, but when it comes to living and experiencing life, I want to get out of here and see what's up with the rest of the world.

You'll be back.



So lead the way. I'd say it should be your duty to fulfill this opportunity. Seek out others who also appreciate this type of music. Start a label. Produce other bands. Book some shows. It's not like you are invisible. As soon as you go somewhere else where you feel more accepted by your musical peers, you will just be a number. Maybe Columbus needs you.