Bloodbuzz

First things first: Wire & Twine are having a fantastic holiday sale. The Sound Burger tee, based on the fancy little gadget seen above, is on sale for just $12. Scurry on over before they run out of your size.

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I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees. No: I was carried to Ohio in a Nissan filled with salty snacks.

While we were home soaking up the love of family and dogs and good food, we decided to knock in on Wendy, Tom, and Chris at Wire & Twine. (The background of how I came to be acquainted with the good folks of Wire & Twine can be found here.) These are people who are instantly kind, welcoming and warm. The fire was already rolling in the fireplace, the cups laid out for coffee. We were greeted with hugs and smiles, the curious and friendly black dog, paw outstretched.

After multiple cups of The Perfect Coffee and the obligatory lesson on how to hold a chicken (whatever you do, be sure to hold its wings down or you'll get a good flap in the face), we got to see the magic of their studio, where their minds set to work. Amidst printing supplies, saw cutters, and a healthy collection of vinyl, Tom's desk space was speckled here and there with wires and knobs and metal plates, little working pieces of something that might make noise or light up when assembled properly. He cleared a space to show us his pride and joy, the Sound Burger, in motion. We watched the record spin and marveled that someone would create something so exposed on which to play vinyl.

"It looks so… so vulnerable."

They were more than happy to open up about what it means to live in Ohio. Creativity has no geographical boundaries, of course, but Chris smiled his knowing smile as he told us the kicker: "The difference is that here you have the time to figure out what you want to do." It stuck in our heads like a skip in the record, looping over and over: Having the time.

Limited for time on this particular visit, we said our goodbyes and headed south towards Cincinnati. A quick spin through Hyde Park shot us west to North Avondale, where our friend Vaughan showed off two of his renovation projects, including an enormous and stately house with butler doors and beams in the ceiling and a seemingly endless number of rooms. The scale of things exploded before our eyes, all this room to stretch. Like I said about the city a year ago: it feels good to stretch.

We cut through Clifton down a busy Ludlow Street, past an Indian grocers, a library storefront, and the glowing Esquire theater, and punctuated our trip with a traditional stop at Shake It Records in Northside, the stacks humming with a different kind of Black Friday crowd. We drove back up Colerain just past dinnertime, the lights of car dealerships and tire shops turning dusk bright as daylight. Times Square just north of the Ohio River. The Las Vegas strip in the tri-state area, the come-hithery warmth of lit plastic and metal.

Some of us have this strange need to break things apart at their hinges, then put them back together again to find what makes them make noise and light up the way they do. I tend to do it with cities: the nuts and bolts of cement, electrical cables, rivers, and roads, adorned with signage, shop windows, and a smattering of people. How does it all fit together? How does it work? The more we break apart Cincinnati, the more we find, all of its working parts, its pulse, a circuitboard running hither and thither over the hills.

Maybe one day we'll have the time to figure out how we might fit in.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.