Right Now Downtown

LEAVE THE LUGGAGE AT HOME

Close your eyes, lean back and imagine yourself at an outdoor cafe’ along the side streets of Paris.  Can you hear the French accordion music waft out the doors of the restaurant along with the smell of freshly baked bread?

No need to cash in your greenbacks for Euros just yet.  Alfresco dining is offered all around Downtown Columbus, and Gay Street is a great place to kick off an international expedition.

Leave the passport at home and head to Due Amici.  The European feel of this outdoor dining experience may leave you wanting to study Italian.  Sit down and relax with a superb glass of wine, and you don’t even need to worry about the exchange rate.

Is Cuban fare your thing?  Check out Plantain Cafe’, but make sure to save room for the plantain chips.  You will never look at another bag of Lay’s the same way again.

The coffee is roasting at Cafe’ Brioso, and you’ll have a hard time choosing among all the freshly prepared sandwiches and salads.  Those crunchy little handmade croutons are about as close to heaven as you need to be.

Tip Top Kitchen & Cocktails celebrated their three-year anniversary last week.  Honor the milestone with a cold one and big plate of sweet potato fries.  Go ahead, throw in a pot roast sandwich if you dare.

Is your stomach growling yet?  We haven’t even hit J. Gumbo’s for jambalaya, and Latitude 41 builds delicious meals around fresh ingredients purchased right here from local merchants to create a meal that you won’t soon forget.  Rendezvous Cafe’ is nestled across the street and offers a wide assortment of delicious stews, sandwiches and salads.

If that’s not enough, just around the corner Pearl Alley plays host to burgers at Ringside, pizza at Cafe’ Napolitana and Latin cuisine at El Arepazo.  Wrap it all up with a Drunken Chunky Blondie at Sugardaddy’s or loosen your belt and head on down High Street for even more options.  Let us know your favorites.

ON YOUR MARK, GET READY…

Grab your walkin’ shoes and shoppin’ bag and GO!

Pearl Market opens in just one short week and shoppers will find record numbers of vendors this year offering a cornucopia of treasures.  One-of-a-kind handcrafted jewelry and artwork, baked goods, meats and cheeses, and don’t forget the freshest seasonal fruits, vegetables and flowers abound on Tuesdays and Fridays beginning May 18 from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Get to know the farmer who grows the food you purchase and find out what inspired the artist who creates that can’t-live-without necklace.  While you’re there, grab a bite of lunch and enjoy the live entertainment.

Shopping is even easier this year since Pearl Market now accepts major credit cards and the Ohio Directions Card.

Want a little preview?  Check out the video below.  Farmers Jarrod and Carie Starr from Cherokee Valley Bison Farm and Steve and Gretel Adams from Sunny Meadows Flower Farm tell you all about the benefits of Pearl Market.

Pearl Market Opens Soon from Downtown Columbus on Vimeo.

WHO’S YOUR DADDY?

Sugardaddy’s is open and ready to tempt you.  Wow, where to begin?  Who would ever guess that brownies and blondies could offer so many possibilities?

Co-founders/creators Tom Finney, self-taught baking genius, and Mark Ballard, marketer extraordinaire, created a business like no other that began as a labor of love.

The venture launched online at sugardaddys.com and the two experienced profound success after appearing on Food Network.  Did you know InStyle and Ellen DeGeneres rave about Sugaraddy’s?

Mark and Tom discovered along the way that customers want to touch, feel and, don’t forget, taste their products, so they opened their first retail store in the Polaris-area last year.  They had a hunch that downtown was the place to be and Pearl Market offered the perfect opportunity to test their hypothesis.  Now you can find them on the corner of Gay and High streets serving up their Sumptuous Sweeties in a beautiful store you won’t want to leave.

These two Sugardaddy’s hook you with the first bite – Brownie Biscotti, Brownie Cheesecakes, Brownie Truffles, Brownie Pocket Change, Brownie Ice Cream and Brownie Bark envelope you as soon as you hear the baby grand piano playing in the background.

Plan on regular visits – each taste will find you with a new favorite, and you must try the newest creation, Sugardaddy’s Drunken Chunky Blondie, or if you only have eyes for chocolate, get the Sugardaddy’s Fiery Brunette or Auburn Original.

Sugardaddy’s is open at 11 E. Gay Street from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday, and you won’t want to miss the month-long grand opening specials.

Sugardaddy’s from Downtown Columbus on Vimeo.

Sugardaddy’s Sumptuous Sweeties
11 E. Gay Street
614.888.4491

PARK IT HERE

The Parking Meter Advisory Team made final recommendations to the City of Columbus last week, so changes are coming soon as you pull up to park.  More meters.  Simplified rates.  Extended hours.

More importantly, you’ve arrived and it’s where you want to be.  Forget your worries and park it here for a while to see what Columbus has to offer…

(And never fear, if you need more information on where to park it downtown, just click here.)

Park It Here from Downtown Columbus on Vimeo.

ARE YOU STRONGER THAN A SIXTH GRADER?

It’s that time again: downtown’s kickball league is just getting fired up.  Are you going to stand on the sidelines this year, wishing you had run with the ball?

Or, are you going to get down with downtown and PLAY BALL?

Honest, you don’t even need to actually “run with the ball” by corralling a team of eight members for Capitol Square Kickball.  Our crew can help any player find teammates to join.  This sport is fun, it’s healthy and it’s addictive.  And kickball is here, NOW.

Not a jock?  No worries, this game is for everyone.  Misti Crane has been on board since the beginning with the Columbus Dispatch team, the Fishwrappers.  She’s got a great gift for explaining the nature of the league.  Crane says, “When they started up the kickball, a couple of us figured, ‘Why not?  If sixth graders can do it, so can we.’”

Crane continues, “That said, I’m sure sixth graders might clobber us on any given day, but we have a good time.  It also happens to be a fine excuse to have a couple cold ones with some friends after work.”

Speaking of sixth graders, the rules for Capitol Square Kickball are the same game rules you remember from grammar school:  there are some common-sense provisions for kicking and running, and provisions for something called by the technical term “bouncies.”

All of the rules are posted here, and it’s the job of head referee Matt Maynard to make sure everything runs fairly.  The ref’s biggest worry?  Maynard says, “We go through fifty or more balls a season, and lose at least one every game.”

The referee explains, “Whether it gets stuck in a tree, explodes on contact, or gets run over by a COTA bus (the most common type of loss) – I’m there to make sure that the fun never stops and that there is always a bright red ten-inch kickball to be played with.”

The league is filling up fast, so get on the ball and get on board!  You can find the details about registration and game dates here.

The deadline is May 20, 2010.

YET ANOTHER EXPERT

When it comes to downtown, everyone’s an expert.

That wasn’t sarcasm; the public knows what the public wants.  That’s why the city is hosting public meetings, to gather information about the community’s needs and interests.

When it comes to downtown’s planning and design, MSI Design enlists experts too.  The team is wholly invested in studying cities and development and human behavior.  What do the fulltime experts say?  MSI’s Andrew Overbeck has a few ideas of his own about the future of downtown.

First and foremost, he maintains, “We’ve got a great fabric to work with.”

What does that mean?  He continues, “Downtown has the Arena District, CCAD and the art museum, the Scioto Mile Project and COSI; we have great things here.”

What downtown needs is something to tie all this greatness together.

MSI favors what Overbeck terms “small interventions” when it comes to downtown Columbus.  Designed to improve walkability and livability in the community, Pearl Alley has already gone through a “small intervention” process and now it’s a hubbub of activity.  It’s proof positive that the right modest moves can make giant impact.

And although those small interventions make the magic, Overbeck still urges us to “dream a little bigger” for our city.  He points to statistics like the fact that 25 percent of downtown’s turf is devoted to surface parking lots:  “Every one of those represents an opportunity for us (as a community) to design and define what it means NOW to live in an urban setting.  We have the fabric; we just need to fill in the gaps.”

Our community will have the opportunity to make those big dreams a reality this week.  At the upcoming April 15 Strategic Planning Meeting to be held 6 – 8 p.m. at the Columbus State Conference Center, we will get a chance to learn more about the planning process and share our own insights and expertise.

Given the suggestions from the last meeting (and from the 500 surveys that have been completed), downtown Columbus is excited to build a new future. For more information about the public meeting, visit downtowncolumbus.com/plan.

SPEECH SPEECH!

Have you seen the Street Speech newspaper vendors, hawking their wares on downtown corners?

If you’ve purchased a paper, you already know what it’s all about.

If you’ve walked on by, here’s a risk-free chance to learn a little more about the newspapers and the program.  As it turns out, the publication is the best education that one slim buck can buy.

Street Speech is published by the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless.  The vendors you’ve met are local homeless people.  They are participating in a program that blends education and employment:  selling the newspapers offers work experience and it generates a little income.

The sellers aren’t the only ones getting an education.  As readers, we can learn valuable lessons too.  According to Coalition member and Outreach Specialist for Discovery Special Improvement District, Jim Rose, “Some of the articles are from national sources, some are locally written.  A number of authors write from the perspective of being homeless – or formerly homeless, while others take advocacy positions.”

Its diverse content makes the newspaper especially interesting – so much so that the group has increased distribution exponentially.  Only 400 copies of the first Street Speech were printed; these days the group turns out 8,000 – 10,000 copies per month.  Each vendor invests twenty-five cents per copy, and sells them to patrons for one dollar.

You can support the program by buying a copy of Street Speech, and there are many other opportunities to get on board with the Columbus Coalition for the Homeless.  Their great work is possible only with the help of many volunteers.   To learn more, check columbushomeless.org.

SO BIG IT’S…

You know what’s big?  It’s big when an event changes the meaning of a word.  Consider the term “titanic.”  The word is classically defined as “huge and colossal.”  Most of us don’t think of “titanic” though, we think of THE Titanic:  huge, colossal and completely tragic.

So the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 was indeed a titanic event; it changed the connotations of a word.  Now in 2010, the Titanic is still making waves:  in the world of science.

The Titanic exhibition at COSI opened this weekend.  Things have changed since the exhibit’s first visit in 2005.  The retrospective arrived with 89 additional artifacts, 23 of which made their world debut at our local gig.

If the exhibit has changed, it should come as no surprise:  science itself is all about change.  Audiences can learn about submersibles and how they help us learn about artifacts under the sea.  COSI’s Christine Hurtubise explains the lesson in engineering and data collection.  “These machines are equipped with mechanical arms capable of scooping, grasping and recovering the artifacts that are then collected in sampling baskets or placed in lifting baskets.”

Local powerhouse Battelle is getting involved in the program too.  It’s renowned for its innovation in underwater exploration.

The Titanic changed a word, it changes science, and it’s changing audiences too.  Each guest travels through the exhibition carrying the name of a different passenger.  At the conclusion, the fate of that passenger is disclosed.  Hurtubise has seen the impact the entire experience makes.  “Visitors leave their thoughts and comments in a visitors’ book in that room and you can tell that they have really made a connection with the past.”

You can make the connection at COSI through September 6.

SWEET POTATO MAYO

Be careful what you ask for.  Remember the surveys last autumn?  The questionnaire told us that Downtown Columbus is filled with incredibly hungry people.  There were urgent requests and suggestions and DEMANDS for more things to eat in the city’s core.  More food: more-more-MORE.

Done.

The cavalry has arrived, and it’s armed with sweet potato mayonnaise.

Consider Guillermo Perez the first wave of relief for the insatiable masses.  He just opened Si Senor Latin Cafe for business weekdays at 6 E. Long Street.

Patrons of the Pearl Market already know Si Senor’s fare quite well.  The business was born as a lunch vendor in the summer marketplace. Although it’s now a full-fledged café (with tables and chairs), you’ll still find the old favorites on the menu . . . plus some new must-have winners.

Perez says, “The roasted pork sandwich is very popular… and so is the roasted turkey.”  Then he adds Si Senor’s roast beef to the list too.  It’s impossible to name just one great thing on the menu.  It’s filled with treats:  those meats are roasted in-house; the sandwiches feature an exclusive sweet potato mayo; and there’s an avocado salad that’s been earning Internet raves.

You won’t find this fare anyplace else but at Si Senor.  And you won’t find Si Senor anyplace else but Downtown Columbus.

The new wave of eateries has just begun.  Yes indeed.  Si Senor!

INTERVIEW WITH A LEPRECHAUN

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we’re proud to bring you an interview with a real live leprechaun.

Stop smirking.   This isn’t some delusional loon.  This isn’t someone who takes those silly Facebook games too seriously.  This is Brian Byrne.  He’s not just a leprechaun; he’s the son of a leprechaun too.

This story starts back in the 1970’s in the downtown St. Patrick’s Day Parade.  A man named Murt Byrne decided to dress up like a leprechaun for the march.  His son Brian tells the story, “All it took was one parade and it characterized my dad from then on.  I joined up with him in 1977 when I was five years old.  I remember how I mimicked everything he did as I followed a couple steps behind through the streets of downtown.”

Nothing gold can stay, even for leprechauns.

“As years went by, especially during adolescence, I did not think it was so cool.”  He continues, “My dad developed mouth cancer in 1988, but he never missed a step.  In 1994, my dad did march – but not as the leprechaun; he let three of his sons pay him tribute and we marched as leprechauns.  In 1995 my father passed away, and I took on the full role of leprechaun.  I have deep pride in the title I have.  There is not a moment when I am marching in the parade that I don’t think of the Old Man.”

Although Byrne is proud to fill his father’s shoes, he’s acquired a new costume.  The original was good at first… “Until one year at Broad and High: I did my standard leprechaun stance, when me knickers ripped right where you-know-where.”

Brian Byrne’s ma-in-law crafted the new suit, and two more for his young sons.  It’s a beautiful downtown tradition, for the Byrne family and for all of us.  As the man-in-green comments, “It automatically prompts the Irish spirit of good will, faith and humor that is in each and every one of us, regardless of ethnic background.”

St. Patrick’s Day in Downtown Columbus: it’s something we can all celebrate.  This Wednesday and every year.