What are your plans for Sat 21 Nov, noon-6pm? I really hope they include checking out the Crafty Supermarket at the Northside Tavern. We’ll be there, along with 20 other artsy, crafty, designy makers, music by Projectmill, the Dojo Gelato cart, and a table set up for on-the-spot DIY projects. Here’s a sampling of what we’ll have for sale.

All these items are also available in our online shop. Cloverleaf Interchange trivet:

Coney Island print:

Bar 1132 coasters:

Goetta Food portrait:

Midwest Seed Bombs:

Florence Y”All print:

We’ll also have tons of brand-new work for sale that the world hasn’t seen yet!

Hailing from Cincinnati, Dayton, Pittsburgh and other cities in the region, the other vendors include: AmyD, BUZZ, BYOProject, Curly Girl Crafts, gracie sparkles books, grey goose gifts, Kitsch Café, Lori Brown / morninglori, Miss Chief Productions, Off The Beaten Path, Paper Acorn, SaysYou, Vein & Baby Alpaca, and Wholly Craft.

The Crafty Supermarket will also serve as the book release party for Crafty Superstar: Make Crafts on the Side, Earn Extra Cash and Basically Have It All, a business guide for part-time indie crafters, written by Grace Dobush.

Plan to arrive early! The first 50 people through the door will receive swag bags with tons of goodies from all the vendors, including our new make-ready prints. We cut down a bunch of our test prints and printed an image of a Victorian bicycle onto bits and pieces of our other work:

A few of our favorite make-ready prints are available in our online shop. 5×7 inches, various colors, and each print is completely unique:

Get Fired Up at Funke Fired Arts!: my feature on one of the most unique creative facilities in Cincinnati.

Suburban Tipi: this project by Cranbrook student John Paananen takes “the fused nomadic home designs of the yurt, tipi, and igloo” and slips “the straitjacket of suburban values, materials, and methods of construction over them.”

Nastiest Retailer in New York Barks at Customers and Eats Workers’ Food : Ha! I always thought that The Sock Man was having a sordid affair with his street-vending neighbor, the crystal lady.

I’ll Meet you at Valencia and Falcon: an 1861 map of San Francisco shows the planned street grid extension and proposed street names that didn’t make the cut.

Pittsburgh Travel Poster: JHill Design is currently discounting its Pittsburgh Travel poster in celebration of the Steelers’ Superbowl victory.

Brooklyn Redrawn: “Sarah Bostwick, Rebecca Layton, and Karla Wozniak all draw upon Brooklyn’s past and present urban structures to convey the visual complexity of competing commercial, architectural, and real estate interests in the borough in which they work and live.”

Dude Has Red Hook’s Demolished Revere Dome Tattooed on His Shoulder: speaking of drawing Brooklyn, there’s this…

According to a recent Pew Research Trust survey, 84% of the people surveyed who do not live in Cincinnati would not like to live here. Cincinnati is marginally more popular than Cleveland and Detroit. But, only 23% of the respondents even claim cities as “their favorite community type.”

From the full report, some statements that reference Cincinnati:

A new national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project finds that nearly half (46%) of the public would rather live in a different type of community from the one they’re living in now—a sentiment that is most prevalent among city dwellers. When asked about specific metropolitan areas where they would like to live, respondents rank Denver, San Diego and Seattle at the top of a list of 30 cities, and Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati at the bottom.

The five least popular big cities—Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Minneapolis—are all in the Midwest.

When it comes to the nation’s 30 biggest metropolitan areas, Americans have a wide range of likes and dislikes. Denver, San Diego and Seattle top the list of favorites, while Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati anchor the bottom.

Rust Belt cities of the Midwest and East receive the lowest ratings. Overwhelming majorities of Americans would prefer not to live in Detroit (90%), Cleveland (88%) or Cincinnati (84%). Nearly as many give a thumbs down to Minneapolis (82%), Kansas City (81%) and Pittsburgh (80%); fewer than one-in-five would like to make their home in any of these cities.

College graduates seemingly can’t wait to move to Denver, San Diego or Boston. More than half of adults with a college degree or more say they would like to live in these cities. But Detroit, Cleveland and Cincinnati hold no such attraction, ranking at the bottom of desirable places to live for better educated Americans—and for less well educated adults as well.

If you care about Cincinnati, read the synopsis of the survey findings, or the full report [PDF]. Take the brief community satisfaction quiz [my results are above -- I must have been in a generous mood]. If you care about urban communities, read about the mixed response to cities in general, versus what people say they want out of their community. I wonder if the over all mismatch recorded in these results wasn’t due to the timing of the survey in the first half of October, when people were first beginning to seriously panic about the economy. Might the results be a product of our general malaise?

I’m a bit surprised that Chicago didn’t rank higher, as it definitely seems to be on the up and up. I would also expect Minneapolis to rank higher than it did [barely above Cincinnati, or 4th from the bottom]. And where is Portland, OR, that hipster mecca and posterchild for all that is good about urban life? Ha, it’s barely a step above Sacramento, a.k.a. The Sac, a.k.a. California’s armpit. So, how much stock should you put into these results? Maybe 2,200 people wasn’t a large enough polling sample, or maybe October really wasn’t the best time for big questions.

From my own perspective, I rather like living in a place that’s a bit off the map. It gives me some breathing room to live and make artifacts that feel genuine to my own experiences here. There is no compelling myth of Cincinnati, which enables creative people like myself to construct our own myths. I rather like being able to have this kind of ownership over this city.

So, Cincinnati is not an aspirational place, just a normal city in which normal people live. I’ve moved around quite a bit over the years, but I only ever aspired to live in one city — Boston. It was a goal, and I achieved it. But, my four years there left me broke, bored and bitter. So much for aspirations.

Check out the NYT’s own interpretation of the results. Urban Cincy and Cincinnati Imports have also weighed in on the findings.

Sure, reading over these survey results is a bit of an eye-opener, but I’m not entirely surprised, and not entirely disappointed either.

Speaking of pranky interventions, artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley worked with the people behind Google Street Views to inject some absurd scenarios into Google’s documentation of Sampsonia Way in Pittsburgh. Their Street with a View includes an escape [above], marching band [below], a man wearing a chicken suit, fake marathon, garage band practice, sword fight, and firemen rescuing a kitty from a tree.

Oh, dear me! This project brings together elements of surveillance, constructed narrative, a mapping system that results in nonsense… It’s magical realism on the streets of Pittsburgh. What’s not to love? Gabriel García Márquez would surely approve.

I’ve featured the talented illustrator Ian Dingman on this site before, but his work is worthy of showing again. To kick off November, here is his haunting Monoliths in November.

Just Past Central: another Over the Rhine blog; welcome to the blogospheric microcosm!

It’s All About the D: tomorrow, a free summer festival celebrating what’s hot, cool and funky in Detroit, on Heidelberg and Elba Sts. between Mt. Elliott and Ellery.

Where: “a blog about urban places, placemaking, and the concept of ‘place.’”

Current State of Innovation… Say What?: the Agents of Urbanism have some harsh words about the new Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis and its so-called “innovative architecture.” Sorry, Just for View…

Young Farmers Find Fertile Ground in City: urban farming in Pittsburgh by the Landslide Community Farm.

Why I Prefer to Live in a Failing Neighbourhood: contrarian thoughts on the city written by a Londoner.

Columbia Ecovillage: on the other end of the spectrum, a green co-housing condo village in Portland, OR.

Valerie Lueth and Paul Roden are partners in the Pittsburgh-based Tugboat Printshop. Their work is both charming and varied but, today, I’d like to showcase Paul’s wonderful woodcuts. Pictured above is Dirty Livin’: A Simultaneous Narrative of Suburban Adolescence.

Pictured below are City in a Flowerpot, Nuclear Winter: A Glimpse into the Private Escape Pod, Summer of Lovin’: Lest Ye Be Judged Ye’selves, Cave Dwelling, Treehouse, and Buses as Caterpillars. Check out the available woodcut prints and t-shirts in the Tugboat Printshop online shop.