Illustration by Lars Leetaru
Is there a study or something that shows the most durable plastic grocery bags in Cincinnati? I reuse bags for trash, cat litter, etc., and Kroger bags always get holes. IGA’s are a little better. Remke seems to have the strongest, but maybe there’s something better. Does anyone know? —BAG, YOU’RE IT
DEAR IT:
The Doctor hopes you have a bag strong enough to hold the hornet’s nest you have poked. Single-use plastic grocery bags have long been under fire for their environmental ickiness. Efforts to get rid of them have mostly gone up in smoke, creating even more pollution. Kroger first announced in 2018 that its bags would be gone by 2025, but then in May 2021 it said the bags would be gone in a few weeks, but then said it’ll be in 2022.
Meanwhile, Cincinnati City Council passed an ordinance in 2020 banning plastic grocery bags, while the State of Ohio tried to pass a law banning all such bans. It’s hard to even keep up with this stuff, but the bags are still winning.
As for which stores have the best reusable bags: The Doctor has found no scientific treatise on the subject, but his personal survey suggests that Remke bags have the most fans in this category. There also seems to be general agreement that Kroger’s bags grow holes spontaneously upon contact with groceries.
Outside the Hyde Park Medical Arts Building near Hyde Park Square is a tall pedestal and a brass plaque with a long story about the ornate historical clock that’s mounted on top. But there’s no clock there! The pedestal has nothing on it. Was the clock stolen? Did it fly away? —DOES TIME REALLY FLY?
DEAR FLY:
Again with a clock. Regular readers know this topic has been stuffing the Doctor’s inbox as of late. This, however, is our first clock that has gone AWOL. Before calling the milk carton people, the Doctor conducted his own investigation and found about one-half of an answer.
The clock was made in 1895 and installed on a street near Cleveland. No surprise, then, that a car ran it down in 1972. An enterprising chap personally restored it and later sold it to Cincinnati’s Wooden Nickel antique store. An enterprising doctor bought and re-restored it in 1976 to go at the entrance to the Hyde Park Medical Arts Building.
Somewhere between then and the year 2009 or so—we found a photo from that year showing an empty pedestal—the clock suffered another calamity. A doctor currently practicing in the building remembers seeing the clock in the lobby some years back and being told of some weather-related incident. Or maybe that same driver from near Cleveland.
I’m a regular at the coffee shop in the Atlas Building on Walnut Street downtown. A plaque outside says it was built in December 1924 as the Atlas National Bank. The Art Deco building’s 100th anniversary makes me curious: Was Atlas a Cincinnati bank that was wiped out by the crash of 1929? —COFFEE MAKES ME CURIOUS
DEAR CURIOUS:
Again with a plaque. The Doctor must first deliver a small slap of the wrist for your referencing the Atlas Building as Art Deco. After consultation with a most experienced authority in architecture—the highly esteemed Mrs. Know—we declare the building to be Neoclassical. As to your question: Atlas National Bank, launched in 1887, was truly a major Cincinnati institution. You are incorrect, however, about Atlas joining the countless bank implosions of the Great Depression. That it survived the storm attests to its eminence.
No, Atlas National Bank was a victim of forces even mightier than those of the business cycle. It fell into the merciless maw of Merger and Consolidation, gobbled up in 1954 by First National Bank, which became Cincinnati’s largest bank until it disappeared into Star Bank, which then melted into Firstar Bank, which merged with U.S. Bank. Your not-Art-Deco building with its beloved coffee shop and an upcoming 100th birthday was, for many decades, owned by—prepare to spit take your coffee—Fifth Third Bank. We can’t begin to suggest where to send the greeting card.
Dr. Know is Jay Gilbert, radio personality and advertising prankster. Submit your questions about the city’s peculiarities here.
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