To Market, To Market

The 2nd Street Market (to give it its full name, the Five Rivers MetroParks PNC 2nd Street Market) is a great place to spend a rainy Saturday morning. I spent mine sipping Guatemalan roast from Caffeine, eating breakfast from All Souped Up (crustless mushroom quiche, apple cinnamon muffin, fruit cup), looking over the free books on the Dayton Metro Library bookshelf (you're welcome to check them out, but you don't have to check them out!), and watching a gaggle of toddlers wave balloon wands in time to dreamy music from Michael and Sandy Bashaw. Outside the old freight depot windows, trains went by. Inside, shoppers--their brought-from-home bags and market baskets full of new asparagus, loaves of crusty bread, spring flowers, maple syrup, and whoopie pies in rainbow colors from Hilary at Thistle--drifted by in eddies and whirls like sticks tossed into a stream, sometimes jamming the flow to stop and talk, then popping free a few at a time to move away on the current.

I like the Market in this place, and I liked it when it was in the Cannery nearby (though there was never any parking). But I have to confess I will always prefer the Market the way I first knew it, as an outdoor farmer's market at Wegerzyn Gardens MetroPark. That's where I bought my first tomatoes-with-flavor and sweet corn and brown eggs "so fresh you wanna slap 'em!" from Mike Brown and his gaggle of daughters. It's where the Wildflower Girl (never did know her name) sat on a curb and made up fairytale bouquets picked from her own garden, no two alike and laced with fresh herbs so they smelled like heaven all week. It's where Steve Smith (now ruler of a Flowerman empire) stood on top of his truck and called you out by name if you looked like you were going to leave without armloads of glads in velvety purple-black and shell pink and sunshine yellow splashed with crimson. My apartment always looked like the reception room at a funeral home after a visit to the Market, with 3-foot-tall arrangements of glads in every receptacle that would hold water, because I didn't want Steve to yell at me.

In its 2nd Street incarnation, the Market is less farmer, more market. There's still produce in season (Mike's gone, but Russell Garber and his three-generation family serve up Amish quality), and fresh flowers (Steve's people are there, but no more truck and no more yelling), but there are more artisans and craftspeople than growers. The Wegerzyn Gardens Foundation has a gift shop at the Market (I bought my friend Jean a bird feeder for her new yard this morning), and the Humane Society tempts adoptive families with sweet strays to cuddle. And there are many more opportunities to grab a meal to eat in or carry out, catering to every taste and ethnicity. Up at Wegerzyn, the only prepared foods on offer were the Kolbs' Hungarian sweet rolls, tucked in individual baggies (they're at 2nd Street, too); otherwise, it was all promise and delayed gratification, planning what to do with that spinach and those beets and those little new potatoes, and rhubarb! Back then, the Market was the first stop for checking off the grocery list. Today, it's that plus a downtown neighborhood gathering spot, a tourist attraction, and a great place to spend a rainy Saturday morning.

The link, as it is for so many things in Montgomery County, is Five Rivers MetroParks, which sponsored the market at Wegerzyn and promoted it to a park of its own when it moved to 2nd Street. The MetroParks system moves higher on my list of reasons to be in Dayton On Purpose with every passing year, as I keep exploring the limitless opportunities it provides to Get Out and Walk, Garden, Play . . . and even things I don't do but love knowing somebody does, like Hike, Bike, Ice Skate, and Kayak.

Listening to Michael Bashaw's magic flute this morning, I remembered that it was at Wegerzyn I first heard him play--not at the Market, but at the Art in the Park festival that used to be held in May before the art center closed. That flute is another ribbon that runs through my time in Dayton. Markets move, and rainy Saturdays change to sunny Sundays and the years roll away like train cars, but some good things remain.

Old Creatives

On the eve of updayton's 2012 Summit: Change Is in Your Hands, I have to say first how grateful I am for updayton, a grassroots organization that defines itself as "connecting the Dayton region's young creatives." And then I just have to say how much that phrase young creatives ticks me off.

I've been complaining about this from the outset. I "like" updayton on Facebook, and follow with interest the group's efforts to make Dayton a place anybody would be proud to call home on purpose. But I've never formally joined updayton or attended its summits, because that young part throws me. It tells me that while I may indeed be creative, my creativity and that of other old geezers is not particularly useful or desirable. Keep moving, Grandmaw, nothing here for you to worry your little blue head about.

I have less of a problem with Generation Dayton--the under-40 network of young professionals that is an outgrowth of the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce--and other "junior" groups, precisely because they're outgrowths. But there is no Dayton Area Bunch of Creatives that updayton is the under-40 cadre of.

To be fair, updayton's mission statement puts no age limits on membership. "Our members are of all ages," it begins. That explains why so many of the folks I see promoting updayton and participating in its events are suspiciously longer in the teeth than others. (Some of these are my friends, so I know firsthand that they have been ineligible for the Dayton Business Journal's 40 Under 40 list of up-and-comers for more than a few years.) That concession seems to be a formality, though, because the statement continues, "but are focused on attracting and keeping those under 40 in the region. We are passionate about building a better Dayton."

All this hoopdeedoo about young creative people being the salvation of dying cities is, of course, a Richard Florida thing. Florida's group used Dayton as a training ground a few years ago, and updayton emerged from those sessions. It's certainly true that the transformation of places like Dayton will not happen without a commitment from young people--creative, professional, or just your average Joes and Janes--to stay in or move to the area and get involved in its life. But it's also true that building a better Dayton has been going on for much longer than Richard Florida has been in the consulting game, and that some very fine folks who haven't seen 40 in a while have been and continue to be passionately committed to and creatively engaged in that effort. Some have even moved here to do it, without any organized efforts to recruit them.

I have my own candidates for the start of a 40 Over 40 list, people who make a difference in Dayton every day through the passion of their commitment and the creativity of their gifts. They're artists like Willis 'Bing' Davis and Michael and Sandy Bashaw, Debbie Blunden-Diggs, Sharon Leahy and Rick Good, Bruce Cromer, Jim (The Rev. Cool) Carter, and Rodney Veal. They're idea people like Herman Castro of El Meson, Peter Benkendorf at Blue Sky, Beth Miller at Five Rivers MetroParks, Bill Pflaum of Stivers' seedling foundation, Perry Martin of The Agency Group. They're gadflies like David Esrati, blogger and love-him-or-hate-him-you-can't-say-he-doesn't-care-about-Dayton candidate, Janet Michaelis and Ken Clarkston of the Hope Enclave Alliance, and the older, wiser heads who kept Occupy Dayton occupying longer than almost any other such group in the country. They're indefatigable Dayton boosters like Charlie Campbell, who paints and plays the accordion with the same gusto as he emails his It's Great in Dayton newsletter. These are only the names that come to my (aging) mind at the moment--I ask pardon of the many I've neglected--and I'd be happy to welcome your nominees.

Is there no deadwood in Dayton? Of course there is, but lack of creativity and apathy about Dayton's future are not limited to any one age group. So, updayton, I salute you, and wish the participants in tomorrow's summit well. And I ask you to consider refining your subtitle to lose that age-limiting adjective, and widening your mission so it becomes attracting to and keeping in the region all those who are passionate about living in Dayton On Purpose.

In the meantime, anyone for joining me in forming Dayton's very first Old Creatives chapter?

Welcoming the World's Rhythms

When I first moved to Dayton from Los Angeles, I had culture shock, or maybe multiculture shock. I missed the completely unmelted melting pot of LA, where my son's junior high had to send out family communications in more than 100 languages and dialects, and music and food and arts and lifestyles reflected the world's diversity not in a once-a-year festival but in daily exposure. Dayton seemed to pale, literally, in comparison.

Both my knowledge of Dayton's deeper historic diversities and the region's real diversification have grown phenomenally in the last 16 years, and both of those developments delight me. The more I get to know the history and living presence of Dayton's African American, Appalachian, Middle Eastern, Puerto Rican, and Eastern European communities, the more I appreciate the subtleties of what at first seemed to be a monochromatic cityscape. And the more that diversity grows, with more recent arrivals of African, Russian, and Turkish, South Asian, Mexican, Caribbean, Filipino, and Latin American groups, among others, the more at home I feel. I'm proud as punch that Dayton, bucking the current isolationist trend in many other US cities, has put out the public welcome mat to immigrants. (See the website for Welcome Dayton.)

Yesterday afternoon, I sat in the cavernous auditorium of the Dayton Masonic Temple and experienced the power of cultural fusion to lift the human spirit and blast asunder all the boundaries and border fences our small minds can invent. Soul Rhythms, the culminating celebration of CityFolk's 8-week Culture Builds Community education outreach initiative, brought together internationally known artists representing African American, Mexican, Turkish, Celtic, and Appalachian cultures, local artists working in the same traditions, and young people from 5 Dayton Public Schools. Through music, song, dance, stepping, and spoken word, all focusing on percussive rhythms and the theme of migration, these folks rocked our world for 90 minutes of unrelenting joy, tears, and astonishment.

You had to be there--and my only regret is that more people weren't. The audience was largely composed of the kids' families, which was terrific, because you heard spontaneous shouts of personalized approval (and not a few Amen!s and Preach it!s) throughout, but it would have been even better to have more of populace be reminded in such an amazing way that culture does indeed build community. (To be fair, it wasn't lack of interest or scant promotion that kept a larger audience away, but the downside of one of the other reasons I'm in Dayton On Purpose: There are just a whole lot of things to do on a Sunday afternoon, and we haven't learned bilocation yet.)

Nothing I try to describe can convey why I think my ticket purchase was the best $12 I ever spent, and if I single out individual artists or kids to praise I'd be shortchanging the seamless excellence of it all. So I'll just send a big MWAAH to CityFolk (itself a reason to be in Dayton) and all involved. And I'll put out a couple of special pleas to folks who live in the Dayton area:

• Get on board the Welcome wagon. No matter who we are, we're better for being part of a community as wide as the world.
• If you've never sampled what CityFolk has on offer (which includes the annual folk and traditional music and arts festival that draws the most diverse and happy crowd I've ever seen in one place), don't waste any more time.
• Stay informed about CityFolk's efforts to keep the kids who've participated in Culture Builds Community programs involved in the arts all year long, and support those efforts as generously as you can. School budget cuts have starved our hungriest kids of the food for the soul that participation in the arts supplies, and that famine has tragic consequences. On the upside, it doesn't take much--8 weeks on a wing and a prayer will do it--to transform a child's life utterly, sometimes in literally lifesaving ways.

If you don't live in Dayton, think about migrating. Seriously, I lived most of my life in one of the most diverse cities on the planet, and I had to come to Dayton to find out the truth: Every culture has its unique percussive rhythms, but underneath it all it's just one and the same. It's the beat of the human heart. Preach it! Amen!

Disclaimer: CityFolk's Education and Outreach Coordinator is Jean Howat Berry, my BFF and another huge reason I'm in Dayton On Purpose, but I'd have written every word of this even if she hadn't been involved. (Though I am biased enough to think that if she hadn't been involved it might not have been nearly as jaw-droppingly amazing. Just sayin.)

Breakfast in the Oregon, NY, Italy, Heaven

Someday I'm going to remember to have dinner at Roost Modern Italian. I'm sure it would be amazing, but in the meantime I cherish the perfection of Sunday brunch in this sliver of a room.

On a cold, gray, drizzly day like today, there's no better place to settle in with a good book, a hot cup of coffee, and the best Bloody Mary in this or any other town. The tall narrow window perfectly frames the steeple of St Paul's Lutheran behind the sleepy shuttered north side of Fifth Street. The eggs carbonara--fresh and fluffy, scrambled in olive oil with onions, peppers, zucchini, herbs, and crispy bits of pancetta--nestled up to the pan-roasted potatoes aromatic with rosemary and the buttery crostini are so good that I never order anything else. The service is friendly and attentive without being intrusive. (My server gets big bonus points for noticing the cover of the book I'm reading--Barbara Tuchman's terrific history of Europe's pivotal 14th century, A Distant Mirror--and making some salient points of his own about tracing historical turning points in music. This is definitely not something you get with a Sausage McMuffin at the drive-thru.) And then there is The Dessert: cherry vanilla gelato topped with imported glace cherries like little cannonballs of Italian summer going off in my mouth. Yes, there is also The Dessert Sticker Shock, when I discover the gelato is more expensive than the breakfast, but it is worth it.

But the best thing about Roost is the trilocation factor. While rooting itself firmly in the Oregon District, as Dayton as Dayton can be, Roost lets me have breakfast simultaneously at home and away and away. The ambiance is pure New York--the simple urban cool of the room, the jazz soundtrack, the other breakfasters who all look like they'll be spending the rest of the day at the Met or in Central Park or reading the Times Arts & Leisure section in bed in Hell's Kitchen. And the food is pure Italy, but better than almost any meal I actually ate in Italy--like Italy died and went to Heaven's Kitchen.

At the table next to me, breakfast is delivered to a couple and their 3-year-old son. The little guy takes one look at his plate of ciabatta French toast, carefully rolls up the sleeves of his Sunday-best shirt, and tucks in like a truck driver getting off a 24-hour run. Ten minutes later, food nearly demolished, he looks over at me and flashes a syrupy grin that fills the room with sunshine. "I am happy, happy, happy," he says.

Me too. Me too. Me too.