Bockfest Beginnings

Photo courtesy Orange Frazer Press

“Everybody knows Jim Tarbell,” says Julie Fay, community activist, investor, and owner of Iris BookCafé and Gallery on Main Street. “Most people anyway, and many people know him from Arnold’s Bar & Grill. But I really got more involved with Jim when he was the president and one of the founders of the Over-the-Rhine Chamber of Commerce in the late 1980s.

“Jim had Grammer’s at the time, and it had gone through a couple of ups and downs, probably because it was too far into Over-the-Rhine to be successful then. We proceeded to have a number of meetings—Danny Dell, who owned Rhinos on 12th Street at the alley; Mike Markiewicz and Sonya McDonnell, who owned Kaldi’s, the coffee shop and bookstore at 1202-04 Main Street; Ken Cunningham and John Spencer with Liberty’s in the 1400 block of Main just around the corner from Grammer’s; me; and Tarbell, who was the most established of any of the entities there. There were representatives from Franciscan Home Development and several German mass attendees from Old St. Mary’s Church, including Heide Lucie. We were all just getting started in business in 1992 when the occasion came to launch Bockfest.”

Fay recalls that Terry Carter from Neon’s Bar came to one meeting and said there was an opportunity to roll out a Christian Moerlein Bock, which was being revived from an old recipe. Hudepohl-Schoenling was deciding if it would be in Mt. Adams or Over-the-Rhine. Fay says the group decided to form a nonprofit to secure the opportunity. Cunningham stood up and said, “We should become the Merchants of Main Street, like the Merchants of Venice!” Fay says everyone applauded. Ben Grossheim, an attorney for St. Mary’s, put together a state of Ohio nonprofit filing so that the new organization could accept funding.

“Everyone around the table had ideas,” says Fay. “There would be the running of the goats, a parade with floats, select food, and Lucie advised us to incorporate the Middle Ages, harkening back to when monks developed bock beer, saying that people get tired of that ‘Oomp-pa-pa stuff.’ There weren’t enough bars yet in Over-the-Rhine, so Carter rented a vacant building at 12th and Main streets and called it Bockfest Hall. Merchants of Main Street got a liquor license for the weekend, and by the next year the building was on the way to becoming a new business, Main Street Brewery.

“For quite a few years afterwards, Bockfest Hall was moved to a different vacant building and by the following Bockfest it would be occupied. This was part of the appeal to Tarbell: getting people into OTR to see the value and the possibilities of the vacant historic buildings and revealing the past embodied in each building.

“Once Tarbell was on board, Arnold’s became the starting point for Bockfest. We decided to add a bock beer blessing at Old St. Mary’s Church, and Grammer’s was another stop. As for timing, it was the earliest parade of the year. Who has a parade in Cincinnati in February or early March? Similar to Mardi Gras, the date depended on when Lent started. The hearty bock beer was developed by monks to get them through the Lenten fast. They could drink but not eat during the season of fasting.

“We decided that the bars involved in Bockfest would have to have three things to participate: They’d place an ad in The Cincinnati Downtowner newspaper, have a float in the parade, and have a monk in the bar either as bartender or bouncer who could sell the T-shirts. These early floats were very simple, and the band was composed of SCPA students. Avril-Bleh butchers added a Bockfest bockwurst sausage that Tarbell would carry on a silver platter during the parade.”

When asked about the barrel-goat wagon that now accompanies each Bockfest parade, Keith Baker remembers the story clearly. “That came about when some friends and I had a workshop at the end of Clay Street that had been occupied by Michael Frasca, a potter and sculptor who created the book fountain at the downtown Public Library. Spring Street Pottery was the name of his shop, and he was friends with Jim Tarbell and Dick Ernie, who was an English potter as well. After Frasca moved down to Shaker Village in Kentucky, I took over that space on Clay Street. We all went to lunch at the BarrelHouse Brewing Co. one day, which was one of the early microbreweries in Cincinnati, and owner Mike Cromer had approved Jim Effler’s poster for the 2000 Bockfest, which was a Trojan goat being pulled through the streets of Cincinnati.

“Mike looked at us and said, ‘Can you build that?’ We said, ‘Of course!’ ” It seemed that within this Over-the-Rhine group creativity knew no bounds.

“We built it to look like the poster. Michael Bath and Randy Bailey brought in some other local theater people to help us, like Cliff Jenkins, Jenny Jones, Sarah Johnson, Joseph Schneider, and others I have forgotten, especially a CCM teacher who was a real ‘wood wench.’ She often walked in front of the parade with a 12-foot bullwhip, whipping. She built sets and was a tremendous asset in building that goat. Mike sent up a quarter barrel of beer to our shop, and we just built this thing. It’s a theater piece, and it’s lasted all these years.”

Fay recounts the details of that first Bockfest in 1993. “Mayor Roxanne Qualls read a proclamation for Bockfest, and Tarbell wore a Renaissance outfit—one that I have continued to rent for him for the past 30 years since they won’t sell it to us. After the first year, everyone was so happy with the business it had brought that we decided to do another the following year. Twice after Jim locked the sausages in the trunk of his car, Marge Hammelrath, who was then president of the OTR Chamber, was given the platter to hold. That was the start of the Sausage Queen. To commemorate her important early role, she was named Bockfest Grand Marshal in 2020, tapping the first keg of the season.

“Friday night was the blessing of the bock beer, and everyone would be dispatched to ‘Eat, Drink, and Be Merry.’ On Saturdays at Bockfest Hall, we would have educational things, tours, and lectures so that the public could become more familiar with OTR. Since the hall was always an abandoned building, we had to have a fireman at the door to monitor occupancy and also rent [portable toilets].”

Fay’s own history in Over-the-Rhine and Pendleton spans four generations, and when considering what drew the group to commit such time and energy to the area, she says, “Most of us were interested in that architecture and in saving those beautiful buildings and turning their abandonment around. And, of course, Tarbell and the rest of us are still committed to doing those same things.

“Jim is quite an asset and interesting character, which permeates his whole being. I am so happy that the mural [Mr. Tarbell Tips His Hat, at 1109 Vine St.] is on the side of that building as such a welcoming sight as he tips his hat and welcomes all to Over-the-Rhine. It’s the perfect tribute to him and his love for our city.”