Rumors about the Old Universal Grille

Rumor has it (and it comes from a really reliable source)...

And investor group has purchased the old Universal Grille and will be turning it into a high end gay restaurant.

Details as they develop...

CINCY GAY SCENE: Bar Closing

Rumor has it -- from a really good source -- that Universal Grille, formerly Hamburger Mary's is closing.

This will be its final weekend open and officially closes its doors on Monday.

Sad to see it go.

CINCY GAY SCENE: Dayton Gay Pride and other jazz

Bagel was up this weekend -- LOVE YOU MUCH BABY -- although she told me that she doesn't really read and thinks I'm funny for blogging. We had a GREAT time:

1) First time eating at Universal Grill since it became Universal Grille. We had a great bartender/server (I think his name was Sam), who is a recent transplant from SC. He was charming and on top of our needs. Food was not much different than we got used to at HM... so, not much new to report there. It was my first burger in a while, and that was far more exciting than the food that we were being served. It is, as usual, up-scale bar food. There is a sign saying they are opening for lunch these days, but it doesn't appear that they have yet.



Universal Grille -- from my camera phone.









2) Went out to see Vivica LaCroix, one of my dear friend performers from Oxford, perform this weekend at Shooter's. She made an OK first performance in Cincinnati, but it was nice to be surrounded by hot men that night (Edro, Chris, QCS, Matt, etc etc etc) although I somehow managed to get a lot drunker than I meant to. Gr. Oh well. We went to the Dock afterwards. You know how THAT goes.


Vivica LaCroix and Truly Scrumptious.








3) Dayton gay pride. I guess it's a lesson in appreciation for what we do have here in Cincinnati. Lame, lame, lame. The parade was short (less than 20 minutes!) and there was simply nothing to do. In fairness, it was raining, so I'm sure a lot of people didn't come, but that doesn't excuse.

This is the first pride I've been to, really, that I haven't been intimately acquainted with in someway. I just wanted to go to go. And there wasn't a damned thing to do. Like Cincinnati's, you watch the parade, you walk around the park, listen to a couple things on stage, and go to a bar. It was a nice venue, overall, but I think there should be carnival games.

Writing that, I guess I kinda made a small realization: local gay prides, like Cincy or Toledo or Dayton or SC or anything like that, are about the local community. They know they don't attract a lot of out of towners, so the focus is exclusively on the city itself. That's wonderful and great, but there needs to be something for us non-locals to appreciate rather than the ongoing glorification of self and city.

IE: Use the opportunity to show off your gay scene, what's special about it. So my day in pictures...





























In order:

a) Beginning of the Parade on the corner of St. Clair and Third.

b) A little hometown activism.

c) Cincinnati representing! It was comforting to hear that they seemed to share a lot of the same feelings about the situation that I did... that we appreciate what we do have here in town. This was the first, time, btw, that the Cincy LGBT Center "marched" in this parade.

d) Cincinnati's Queen City Rainbow Band!!! Yea! Bagel's comment: You have a gay marching band? Ha! Yes! They aren't the best band in the world, but they are fun and I love that they exist.

e) Club Masque and their Super-Limo

f) A LOT of gayness.

g) Hell, yea old lesbians!!!!

h) "Do drag queens melt in the rain?" The answer is no, but they dance to bad music (Mariah Carey, I still hold, has lost her damned mind)

i) Judge Wiseman -- the first openly gay elected official in Ohio, and the first openly gay appointed official in Ohio. She's up for re-election as the Montgomery County Judge. We got to meet her and she is amazing. I asked her opinion on gay marriage, her response: "Well, I'm gay and I'm married. Does that answer your question?" No, actually, it doesn't, but it's close enough that all I could feel was: I wish I could vote for this woman. She is amazing, folks. Vote for her.

j) gohi!!! The Gay Ohio History Initiative! Look, it does exist! They report that they are getting things off to a start and their first display -- LGBT historical figures in Ohio -- is going up soon and their newsletter will begin soon!

k) Duh. Half naked boy. Funny story: his underwear was stuffed. I'm convinced of that.

l) The line for the beer tickets. For people who have never done this: you have to show your ID, get a wristband, and buy tickets to walk to the next booth and get your beer (1 ticket-1 beer-$3). It's really annoying if you're a participant, but, from an organizational standpoint, it's ideal. As few people as possible with their hands on the money makes for an honest day.

m) Courthouse square where the festival was. And yes, there were boys in the fountain at one point.

n & o) MJ's! The bar we went to after words. The bartender was AWESOME! And we had a really good time there, but we were hungover, tired, and couldn't stick around for their free BBQ that afternoon :-(.

4) After a nap Saturday afternoon, Bagel and I went, at Queen City Survey's suggestion, to see Sound of Music at Fountain Square. I got to see cutie-patootie Dan again :-), and I also briefly saw Bruce, former editor of the local gay rag.

However, about five minutes into the movie, I realized I had never seen the whole movie straight through, and I really enjoyed it! It was a beautiful night with Graeter's Ice Cream, a couple beers, and it was BUSY. I just sat there and watched hundreds of people wandering downtown. It's true... downtown is getting busy again, and it's wonderful. Thanks for the invitation out, QCS.





Sun setting behind the Great American Life Insurance Building -- via my camera phone.









It was a good gay weekend. I'm now debating whether or not to go to the Drag Races. I'm sure I'll end up down there, but we'll see.

CINCY GAY SCENE: Karaoke Night at BronZ...

...is a bigger success online than in real life.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love me some BronZ, and I love Karaoke Nights there -- DJ Waves is excellent. But, per an "internal memo" leaked to the media, it was one of the top ten most viewed items on the Cincinnati.com website in the week of Jan 27-Feb 2. It claims that it was viewed 50,000+ times that week. Which, btw, is a LOT of times (compared to the under 1000 times this blog has been viewed).

Now, the QCityNews Blog (www.qcitynews.blogspot.com) thinks the number is absurd. The Daily Bellwether (www.thebellwetherdaily.blogspot.com) is also suspicious of the numbers. I hesitate to believe that 500,000+ people actually are that interested in the CincyMoms website, but I'm going to say this:

The number is not impossible. Whereas QCityNews' editor has been involved with the printing and publishing industry for years, and I respect that, I think the internet can very much skew our perception of who is reading what. But, with the wonders of the internet, we have the ability to actually see what is being read and when and from where. It's not perfect, but short of tracking down individual computers, then the little clicker that's reading off in someone's office is the best we've got.

And I'll bet you this, QCity: Your own readership is higher than you expect. I don't know how you calculate your numbers, but I read a lot of your papers in the bar. Guess what I do with it when I'm done? Excepting those issues that pertain to me or have something really interesting in it, I put it back. So our dear local bartenders don't have to clean it up. And I'm not the only one. Papers left on the bar? Either thrown out or saved and put back. People reading while waiting? Thrown out or put back. I'm sure there's a really complex algebra to your circulation stats, but I'll bet it's higher than you think. (I know because I get phone calls whenever my name is mentioned :-))

First of all: the bit is found in CinWeekly, which I now see around town more a lot more than CityBeat, it's competitor. (SCF in Macon will remember a similar situation in his hometown where the major newspaper published an "independent" to compete with the actual independent paper... meet CinWeekly -- published by Gannett, which publishes the Enquirer -- and CityBeat -- the actual independent, that, I might remind, was pressured by Citizens for Community Values to pull the plug on Dan Savage's column... grrrr... but this is all tangential).

The point is: CinWeekly has a readership of mainly young urban white folks... the types that would have access to the internet on a regular basis. And I'm going to say, if I were in those photos, I would be emailing them to EVERYONE and showing them to the world to see just how cool I am. So assume, first, that maybe it was emailed out a bunch and that friends would pull up a page and say "ooo, look at me!"

Second of all: What is the effect of bookmarking? For example, that CincyMoms number, how many people have CincyMoms as their initial page when they open. I know I open an internet program 2-20 times a day. Multiply that out (I'm sure MSN wonders why so many people are interested in their front page :-)). Did the story appear on the front page, I wonder?

Third of all: Do not assume that Cincinnati is so small. The metro area... NKY to Dayton... is HUGE, with over 3 million people in it. 50,000 is a drop in the bucket, and I'm going to guess that Cincinnati.com is one of the most popular local websites. It is not entirely unlikely that people have perused through. Does that mean they spend an hour being affected by everything they read? Absolutely not. It just means that it is not unlikely that 50,000 people actually opened the page.

I think the QCityNews editor, and Mr. Bellwether for that matter, is under the assumption that Cincinnati is a small town with a limited number of "in" people that you are trying to grasp for everything. Please.

Fact of the matter is: This is a local gay bar -- that's not the typical ones that get played out, like Below Zero or Universal Grille or Adonis or the Dock -- and a local gay event that got some major play on a mainstream and popular website. So what if the number is a little inflated? We know the Gannett-Enquirer Dark Empire has pulled some crappy stuff in the past, and it is most definitely not pro-gay or liberal by any stretch of the imagination, but it's still kinda cool. Go BronZ. You got some publicity. Congratulations to you.

On the flip side, the so-called controversy drove me to the website. So maybe making a mountain out of a molehole is not such a bad idea.

CINCY GAY SCENE: Bar Closings

It's sad to say...

The Ohio Smoking Ban may have claimed its first victim. My dear, dear, favorite lesbian bar in the world, Bullfishes, is, indeed, closed. Donna was a dear friend and used to be my landlord. It is sad to see it go. What makes it even worse was the suddenness of it. No one knew it was happening, she let it go peacefully without a goodbye party.

I spent many Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday nights there. Rarely there on Fridays or Saturdays, but I will give it up for that fabulous Pink Dress Show back in February that raised $750 for Breast Cancer charities.

*sigh* It's sad to see you go, Bullfishes.

Also, per the QCityNews blog (http://qcitynews.blogspot.com/2007/11/northside-gay-and-lesbian-bars-for-sale.html), it appears another one of my favorite hangouts is for sale, the Serpent. Listing price at a million dollars. Now, I've had an AWFULLY good time at the Serpent, and I really hope it will be around at LEAST for their fabulous New Year's Eve clothing optional party, but I don't think (nor does QCity) that it is work $1m, even with the rentable space upstairs. The $200,000 price sounds reasonable, but Anthony and Ford have put years and years and years of their life into that business, I'm sure there is a huge personal attachment to it. I'm almost afraid that, should the business change hands, the cops will raid the place like crazy and close down what every one goes on at Serpent for good... which, btw, would ultimately destroy the business and destroy the Northside gay scene.

Where does that leave BronZ? Or, Club BronZ (I really do need to clean up my "labels")? Well, reported to my ear from one of the best bartenders in town -- a slight uptick in business. Of course, I'm sure much of that is due to the fabulously sociable attitude Brad and John have put out there, along with the fantastic work of DJ Waves in the production of the multiple karaoke nights. It doesn't hurt, also, that it's one of the few bars in town where you can sit at a bar and have a cigarette, there on the back patio. (The owner of Little Bit Bar was scathing in her attack of their patio, as it is really kind of enclosed, but open still. Please, let us just have one place to smoke and drink. You non-smokers have enough places in town.)

See, everyone is driving across the river. I have been in Rosie's and Yadda a few times, but they have been jumping since the smoking ban occurred over here. It really annoys me that the rest of the state, and the locals, can be so callous towards local business. After all, what Cincinnati really needs, is another reason not to hang out in it.

Has anyone wondered how long this Dock/Adonis thing can go one? Rumors are flying as to which one will go first. My money, actually, is on Adonis. I think they would have been long gone had it not been for Penny Tration and her amazing abilities as the most fabulous queen in town. Of course, I would not have put money on Bella Dolce, but she seems to be holding her own. I always liked her personally, I would have never thought she could handle that big of a venue, but she's proven herself quite well on a microphone.

And finally, Below Zero? Seriously. I don't understand the crowd. Do we need two uppity gay bars in town? Universal Grille is bad enough; I've not even been to Below Zero and I already hate it. :-) But I'll go soon, Nigel, and give you a fairer review, I promise.