A TRUE TYCOON
It took me nearly 30 in-game years to build, but I bought every piece of available land and filled the entire Leafy Lake map with content in Rollercoaster Tycoon. The park is divided into "Chilltown” (easy rides) and “Thrillsville” (rollercoasters and log flumes). I’ve decorated almost every inch and removed all grass in favor of sand and dirt. A monorail with two stations shuttles people from the front of the park to the back, and a chairlift takes people across the lake if they want to access that side quickly. And I paid off all my in-game debt on top it all off.
A PHOTO I’LL ALWAYS THINK ABOUT
Photo by Melanie Einzig
I listened to all of the Blindspot: The Road to 9/11 podcast this week. I found it to be a fascinating look at the decade leading up to the tragic event and how it all came together after years of warning signs US intelligence recognized but didn’t act upon. It’s haunting and sad despite being extremely interesting. As someone who vividly remembers that day and how the world changed in response to the attack, I feel like it’s permanently ingrained in me as it’s ingrained in millions of other Americans who remember a world pre- and post-9/11.
And it got me thinking about the one photo I can never stop associating with that day: the one with the UPS man on his route by Melanie Einzig. I wrote a whole blog post about it and lost it in the early hours of yesterday morning. I do not have the desire to rewrite all of it, so I’ll just put it here and you can form your own thoughts about it.
SATISFYING HOUSE SHOOT
A beautiful house I photographed in Wallace Woods went pending within days of hitting MLS this week. I worked like a dog on Memorial Day to shoot it and process the images so she could get it online the next day, and that hard work paid off. The realtor, Rebecca Weber, is someone I work with often because her listings are always history-focused and/or extremely unique. She did a great job marketing this place. Below is a gallery of some photos from the listing.
The house also made it onto a popular Facebook page.
CICADAS IN BELLEVUE!
Found my first cicada in Bellevue yesterday. Myrtle wanted to inspect it. She doesn’t seem to have a taste for them, unlike her fellow dogs. I remember when these buggers erupted from the soil the last time in 2004, but I don’t personally remember the 1987 emergence. We had them in “off” years and my dad taught me how to pick them up by their wings from an early age. As far as I can tell, gingerly picking them up by their wings doesn’t hurt them.
TOURING CINCINNATI
Our neighbors are from Kansas City. She lives here full time for her residency at a Cincinnati hospital. He visits as much as possible. Because they moved here in the middle of the pandemic, their relationship with Cincinnati is minimal at best. After meeting them for drinks at Frida one night, I resolved to give them a guided tour of Cincinnati the next day. After tailoring the tour to their interests and taking them around areas of Over-the-Rhine and the riverfront, they seemingly understood why so many choose Cincinnati over other US cities.
I worried about revealing where I took them to locals. Would they approve? Then I realized it doesn’t matter. The tour was for them. They enjoyed experiencing our city in the way we did it, and that’s what matters.
LEROY’S SIDEDOOR EPISODE
Photo by Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Sidedoor did a great episode on LeRoy Nieman. I will confess, my familiarity with Nieman’s work was minimal before I listened to the podcast. Of course, his style is something I’ve seen before, but I didn’t realize whose work it was until the episode.
The fact that Nieman’s popularity and success in his own time made him unpopular in the elitist art world endeared him to me. Personally, the gatekeepers who place unnecessary restrictions on what’s “worthy” and the critics who go along with it have always bothered me. By the end of the episode, a high-profile art critic tells a story about how little he thought of Nieman’s work and how, in an instant, he backtracked on his feelings for the man after having received a sketch from him while at an event. He goes on to talk about how he’d always considered himself the art world populist, but realized that Nieman had been authentically doing it all along.
On top of it all, Nieman eschewed luxury items and used his fortune to develop art school sponsorships. That struck me as incredibly selfless and humble.
I don’t know much about Nieman besides what the podcast episode revealed, but in this snapshot, he seems like the archetype other creatives would do well to emulate. Continuing to do what he loved despite the critics’ incessant negativity is inspiring, honestly.
