Peg is covering the Western & Southern Open for Tennis Buzz. Enjoy her first Cincy report (more to come!):

The tournament often referred to as the Cincinnati Open (and which was founded in 1899 with that title) actually takes place twenty miles north of the city that shares its moniker, in a town called Mason. Because Ohio is generally considered part of the US midwest, I tend to think of its distance from Tennessee (where I live) as a long haul. It’s been pointed out to me, however, that Cincy is not significantly further away than Memphis or Atlanta or Lexington (KY), and is in fact closer than Winston-Salem or Charleston and other tennis tournaments I consider relatively “local” to me because they happen to be hosted in other southeastern states.

Objectively speaking, the drive from Nashville to Cincy generally takes about four or five hours depending on traffic (there is always congestion around Cincy, in my experience), rest stops, and the like. Having been asked to write about the city as well as the tournament, I decided to visit the Over-the-Rhine district for lunch. I knew of at least two connections it had to the W&S tournament: the renowned Rookwood Pottery studio creates the champions’ trophies, and the announcement of this year’s player field was held at Ensemble Theatre.

I admit that I picked Bouchard’s Anything’s Pastable partly because of the name (“Any connection to the tennis player?” “No. We get asked that a lot”)…

… but mostly because of its location (inside Findlay Market) and the rave reviews it had received on Yelp. $8 covered a big Cuban panini (made fresh), which came with a salad (and an extra napkin, which I appreciated) and a 23 oz. can of Arnold’s lemonade-tea:

Bouchard’s (which also answers to “Brocato’s Italian Market”) has a reputation among locals as a place to pick up dinner fixings…

… and it’s right across the aisle from Gibbs’ Cheese, which had a jaw-dropping display of fudge:

I wish I’d had time to linger among the vendors. I could smell handmade soap and I walked past watermelon waiting to be tasted:

Findlay market is a mix of run-down and well-kept — as is the surrounding area. It is unquestionably urban, and I could feel my guard (developed during years in Chicago and Detroit) kick into a higher gear as soon as I spotted some of the sketchier-looking individuals in the crowd. But I also saw a matriarch in a Duck Dynasty t-shirt leading her brood into one of the buildings, an activist hawking a progressive newspaper, and assorted other types shopping, shooting the breeze, and so forth. Some of the furnishings and buildings are worn from use, but there’s also a crew of workers who, among other things, tend to the towering floral arrangements on the perimeter:

The parking rate in the market lot: free for the first hour, and fifty cents for each hour after that.

1209 Jackson Street is about four minutes away by car; the meters on that block are free for the first ten minutes, and some of them expressly allow bikes to be locked to them:

It’s the location of the Rookwood Pottery Company Store. There are some beautiful items (e.g., coasters, bud vases, cards) that can be acquired for less than $20 — a pleasant surprise to me! — and there are also items priced into the thousands.

I hope to explore more of Over-the-Rhine some other day — my peek at it has only whetted my appetite. The afternoon was getting on, though — I had a draw party to get to — and there just wasn’t time to do more than look up at and around a few of the nearby buildings: