This week, The Extraordinary Times had the pleasure of catching up with Greg Hand. Proprietor of the “Cincinnati Curiosities” blog, Hand retired from the University of Cincinnati as associate vice president for public relations. Before his employment by the university, Hand was editor of the Western Hills Press in suburban Cincinnati. During his time at UC, he co-authored three books about the university with UC archivist Kevin Grace. In addition to his blog, Hand contributes regularly to Cincinnati Magazine and the WCPO-TV “Cincy Lifestyles” show. With Molly Wellmann and Kent Meloy, Hand presents history chats in bars and saloons through a program called “Stand-Up History.”
* What do you remember most fondly about your 36 years working at the University of Cincinnati? It is an ongoing joy to run into students—now alumni—I met over the years. Their creativity and energy continue to give me hope for the future. I also recall some fascinating chats with faculty. Just sitting in their offices or laboratories was like getting my own private graduate seminar. I learned so much about Antarctic lichens and Pleistocene rivers and hypersonic engines and a plethora of interesting topics. * Your blog Cincinnati Curiosities celebrates “the weird soul of the Queen City.” What inspired this fascination? While I was running the public relations office, I worked with the university’s archivist to produce a few books about the university. While researching those books, I kept bumping into bizarre factoids about Cincinnati and threw all that material into a file, not knowing what I might do with it. There was a girl named Arachne Death and an archeologist who found a privy filled with cat skeletons in the West End and a heavyweight boxing champ who trashed a local bordello—that sort of thing. When I retired, I started a blog and began posting items from my “bizarre” file. I thought it might keep me busy for a couple of months. It’s now eight years later and I’m still uncovering new material. The fascination with Cincinnati’s weird past derives from a thesis I have developed in my research. I believe Cincinnati works very hard to maintain a specific reputation as a bland, somewhat conservative, definitely safe place that has always had Skyline Chili, Graeter’s Ice Cream, Procter & Gamble and the Reds. In reality, this was a raucous, dynamic, frontier town often run by corrupt politicians and supporting charlatans, mountebanks and scoundrels. I want folks to remember that aspect of our history. * What made Cincinnati weird, historically? At one time, Cincinnati was among the 10 largest cities in the United States—and this was back when Brooklyn counted as a separate city! We were big, growing constantly and placed at the gateway to the West. Immigrants from all over the world and from all over the United States landed here looking for fame and, mostly, fortune. They all brought their own brand of weirdness, from Caribbean voodoo to European witchcraft and eschatological religious cults. Throw in a measure of shysters, quacks and grifters and you get a most entertaining metropolis. * Is Cincinnati as weird today as in days gone by? There are few folks who have the insight to evaluate their own time period. I am old enough to have survived the Sixties twice (insert rimshot here). I used to listen to students wistfully nostalgic for the days of hippies and incense and psychedelia that happened 30 years before they were born. I am certain that one day, their children will be yearning for the good old days of the Twenty-Aughts or the Twenty-Teens. In other words, if you look for it, you can still find some home-grown weirdness in the Queen City. * What is your favorite Cincinnati story highlighted in your blog? The story I keep returning to is the role of prostitution in Cincinnati from the early 1800s up to 1920. The sense I get is that a network of brothels run by some quite successful and politically connected madams created a significant woman-led segment of the local economy. At a time when women were brutally confined to a very few approved roles, the city’s “houses” offered sanctuary, support, medical care, and opportunity denied by “polite” society. The insights provided by studying this community expose all sorts of moral, ethical, and legal structures supporting a patriarchy based on openly accepted hypocrisy and misogyny. The whole system was demolished by progressive movements around World War I and resulted in the pimp-run exploitation by organized crime we see today. While hardly an ideal environment, the brothels were often the only option open to women cast off by their families and communities. * What are you working on now? I’m in the process of final edits for a book titled, by amazing coincidence, “Cincinnati Curiosities,” to be published by the History Press. It will be out this autumn sometime. I have also discovered—I monitor my readership closely—that the folks who follow my blog love lists, so I am researching lists of curious facts about Cincinnati Chili, lost bridges of Cincinnati, the Cincinnati subway, and a few others.
3 Comments
Kathleen Bastin
6/15/2022 05:32:01 am
Greg is a wealth of interesting information! Looking forward to the new book!
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Katherine Notley
11/30/2022 10:03:12 am
I'm Jerry Ransohoff's daughter, and I grew up eating Empress Chili for breakfast almost every Sunday. I was about 13 when a friend invited me for dinner. I was shocked when she said they were having chili... I couldn't for the life of me figure out what they ate for breakfast!
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May Hummel
9/12/2024 08:23:39 am
Hello Cousin . I am sending my Grandson Nathan Marx. He is in History UC.
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AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
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