Corryville

Let's get one thing straight.  Corryville is not Clifton.  Clifton Heights is not Clifton.  All those hospitals are not in Clifton.  U.C. is not in Clifton!.  Most residents of this city collectively refer to anything withing a 2 mile radius of U.C. as Clifton.  Even most of the students living around the area don't know what neighborhood they actually live in.  I know this blog is about Corryville and not Clifton, but this is the first of the neighborhoods that is often erroneously referred to as Clifton that has come up in this blog.  As stated in the Mt. Auburn post, the proper way to refer to these neighborhoods collectively is Uptown, although hardly nobody but signs use that term.  It's not just me that is a stickler, the Enquirer did an article on the whole darn issue called "So where exactly is Clifton?"  The experiences related by Clifton residents in the article were similar to the ones I had for 8 years living in Clifton.  My students at both Elder and Purcell would hear I lived in Clifton and they would say "Oh yeah! It's dangerous! My brother lives on Wheeler." Me-"That's Clifton Heights.  I live in Clifton."  I once had a friend from Oregon who said "You live in Clifton, I don't want to come over to your place, I almost got mugged on Vine Street outside of Bogart's".  Me-"That's Corryville.  I live in Clifton!"


It is still tough from that map to tell where it is exactly so look at this map below with the lines marked out.

The red lines show it is basically boxed in by East McMillian, Burnett, Jefferson/Vine, and Erkenbrecker.  As is often the case, I've seen these boundaries disputed.  I've seen the southern border moved up to William Howard Taft, the welcome to signs don't even appear till north of there anyway.  I've also seen the University Hospital Complex given to Avondale.

But I digress..When I was in high school, Corryville was the epicenter of the 90s punk scene, it was kind of skeezy but your biggest danger was some purple haired teenager trying to bum a buck or a smoke off of you.  In the 2000s it hit upon hard times and many businesses closed and crime greatly increased.  But Corryville has been making a comeback in a major way.  They've got several huge new rental and condo complexes up, their own Taste of Belgium, and many other hip restaurants opening up.

The first few flags I made were based on the Colorado flag.  It's got a C on it like the Cincinnati flag but it's a little different in style.  Here is a picture of it below.



I swapped the colors for UC's colors because the neighborhood (especially it's business district on Vine) are often associated with UC.  I also moved the C into the center and then put the buckeye leaves from the Cincinnati flag onto this Colorado C.

FLAG 1

And swapping some colors.

FLAG 2

Then I took the same basic pattern and tried to make it look a bit more like the U.C. logo

FLAG 3

And a color swap

FLAG 4

I was trying to use a flag with a C for Corryville because I didn't know what else to do for it.  At first I didn't just want to do a different version of the Cincinnati flag because I already did that for Covedale.  But then I was curious how it would look so I quickly made the flags below.

FLAG 5

FLAG 6

FLAG 7

and finally

FLAG 8

Flags 5 through 8 would really work for UC, but for the neighborhood of Corrvyille, I think they look TOO much like a UC flag.  The waves even look like they could be scratch marks from a fearsome bearcat.  I wanted some uniqueness for the neighborhood.  

Then I tried one more thing.  Remember, from Mt. Auburn I came up with the idea of the Pan-Uptown colors.  This is especially apropos for Mt. Auburn and Corryvile, because Corryville used to be considered part of Mt. Auburn.  If you go to Mecklenburg Gardens, you will see in the history of the restaurant that it used to be called the Mt. Auburn Garden Restaurant.  If you look at the map of the neighborhoods, you can see that Corryville is running straight on northward from Mt. Auburn so this makes sense that they were once the same neighborhood.  At some point, much like Kentucky cleved from Virginia and Tennessee cleaved from North Carolina, Corryville cleaved from Mt. Auburn.  So I tried the flag schemes from above one more time but in Uptown colors.  

First, emphasizing the slate blue.

FLAG 9

I couldn't easily get in to the red coloring of the leaves, but ideally, this would be orange too.

FLAG 10

FLAG 11

FLAG 12

My biggest problem with flags 11 and 12 are that I've already used the simple recoloring of the Cincinnati flag and it seems like a copout.  I think that makes FLAG 9 my favorite out of the Uptown color flags, it paralles the Cincy flag with the C and buckeye leaves, but not too much like many of the ones below.  

The last thing I tried was to give Corryville a bit of distance from Mt. Auburn in terms of color, yet keeping the relationship.  My mind turned towards Denmark, Norway, and Iceland.  As you can see from the flags below, Norway and Iceland had a simple way to assert their independence from Denmark in their new flag yet give an obvious nod to their old relationship with the Danes. 

Denmark's flag: 

Denmark's is the oldest and therefore original Scandinavian cross flag.  According to legend, the flag with a Christian cross on it fell from the sky in 1219 as the Christian Danes battled the pagan Estonians, defeating them with help of the flag.  Despite it being hard to believe on a religious level, there is no historical reference to a flag until the 1300s.  Anyway, the Danish flag is below.

Originally, the cross had arms of equal length, but over time, the outer arm lengthened giving us the Scandinavian Cross that spread across Scandinavian cultures and beyond.

Norway's flag:

Denmark, despite being tiny geographically, was the powerhouse of Scandinavia and controlled many of the other countries, including Norway.  In 1821, control of Norway was passed from Norway to Sweden.  Some Norwegians started pushing full independence at this point.  The Norwegians used the basic Danish flag design and added a blue cross with a white fimbriation (border in flag speak).  They did this to reference the colors of the French flag which was seen a symbol for the struggle for liberty.  This flag was suppressed, however until 1899 and independence from Sweden was granted in 1905.

Iceland's flag: 

Iceland was also controlled by Denmark.  This flag came about in 1913, but again suppressed by the Danes until 1918, and then only allowed to fly on boats.  In 1944 Iceland gained full independence and made this their national flag.

But I digress...BIG TIME!....Again.    So I thought about making Corryville emphasize the orange over the slate blue.  Keeping the colors of Mt. Auburn, but making the orange more of their color.

FLAG 13

And last but not least

FLAG 14

Wheeew!  Corryville just beat out Mt. Adams to set the new record of 14 flags to choose from.  Choose and comment wisely.  And submit your own.

Lower Price Hill

Lower Price Hill, the heart of Appalachia in the city.  See the map below.  Again all the Price Hills have been colored in on this map.


The distinction between East and West Price Hill might be a bit of city fabrication (then again, Vladimir Putin says Ukraine isn't a real country, just something invented by the Austro-Hungarian Empire) but Lower Price Hill is definitely "it's own thing."  Although it has shifted greatly in the past 10 years, Lower Price Hill has long been home to a large Appalachian community.  I remember the first time I accidentally drove through with my fellow McNicholas High School classmates (We were killing time till the next Omnimax show at Union Terminal, which is what you WISH you were doing back in high school).  I remember thinking it's like the city had a baby with eastern Clermont County were I was born and raised.

So one thing that comes to mind when I think of Lower Price Hill is the 8th Street Viaduct to get there or the viaduct that U.S. 50 is on.  Then I saw the city flag of Des Moine Iowa.  See it below.

The three bridge lookin things are just that bridges over the Des Moines River.  A bridge is basically the same thing as a viaduct.  So I appropriated the basic design of this flag and applied the pan-Westside colors (purple and cream) to create the flag below.

FLAG 1

And then swapping the cream for white because it's sharper.

FLAG 2

But then I tried to tie in either the Mill Creek, which is Lower Price Hill's eastern boundary, or some Appalachian symbolism.  

So here is the flag of the Appalachian Alliance

  

From the website, here is the description.

Color and symbol interpretation:

Blue – sky, unlimited vision and potential.

Brown / Red – earth, hard work, and deep roots, along with the blood and sweat of its people – the backbone of this nation’s rise to a World power.

White Star – purity and guiding light to a rising future.

Green – triangle at the hoist signifying growth (both nature and human) with the Star on its way up the side of the slope – the slope signifies the hilly profile of Appalachia.

Here's an Appalachian proudly holding his flag!

Why does Appalachia need a flag you ask?  Well, the Appalachian Alliance has an answer.

"To represent the people of Appalachia, beyond politically imposed borders, and all its potential that is within its people. Appalachia is home to nearly 25 million people, as the borders are defined by the Appalachian Region Commission, that extends across the globe increasing the number of people from Appalachia exponentially. We proudly fly our flag"

So I took the basic design of my flag from above and merged it with the Appalachian flag.    The first result is below.  I simply replaced the brown bar with a purple bar with the viaduct on it.

FLAG 3

These colors are not a great combination, though, and I tried a simplified two toned flag.

FLAG 4

I was trying to keep it with two colors.  But the two toned star look awkward that way, maybe it's just my poor execution.  I tried the old stand by of adding some Cincy flag colors in there.

FLAG 5

And trying a different color combination.

FLAG 6

So the symbolism of the flag is that it works off of the template of the Appalachian flag in honor of the numerous Appalachians who made Lower Price Hill their home.  The viaduct at the bottom symbolizes the 8th street and 50 West viaducts that take you to the neighborhood from downtown.  The red and blue symbolize Cincinnati and the purple symbolizes the West Side.  

After thinking about it, Lower Price Hill is not pound your chest proud to be Westsiders like Price Hill or Delhi.  And, again, the colors don't go well together.  So I tried one more dropping the purple entirely and using Cincy colors and the blue from the Appalachian flag.

FLAG 7

I like this one best in terms of color and losing the Westside Purple doesn't seem like a big loss since to me they don't seem like "real" Westsiders.  Then again, Finland while geographically Scandinavian, is not linguistically Scandinavian, yet they use the Scandinavian cross on their flag.  If you love talking about Scandinavian flags, make sure to read next week's post.

  

I am sure there will be many Lower Price Hillians who be reading this flog and adding their comments/votes/submissions.  

Linwood

If you're not from the Eastside, you probably have never even heard of Linwood.  Even if you're from the Eastside you might not have heard of it unless you often drive on the Beechmont Levee.  So this map is probably more necessary than usual.


If you ever have been through Linwood, you may have noticed that it is pretty much just Eastern Avenue.  Notice the map above puts Lunken Airport in the East End.  I've always associated it with Linwood.  Come on East End, you've already got the river and all those fancy new condos! Let Linwood have something!  It even gives Otto Armleder Park to the East End and if you know where that is, people definitely associate it with Linwood. One very popular location in Linwood is Terry's Turf Club, arguably the best burger in the city.  So here ya go Linwood, your first flag

FLAG 1

This flag represents a burger with lettuce and tomato!  

But look here at this image from the Linwood Community Council web page.

So you can see by the plane that they ARE claiming Lunken Airport.  That's good because I don't have much else to work with.  

So I found a logo lookin thingy with a plane on it from the internet and used that on my next attempts.

FLAG 2

This flag is based on the Brazilian flag just because it works well with circular logo type thingys.  The colors are from the Cincinnati flag.  

Switching the colors

FLAG 3

But maybe Linwood wants their own colors!  Here is a picture of some ladies standing in front of a Welcome to Linwood sign

I actually drove by one of these signs earlier in the blog a took a couple pictures myself.  One thing I noticed was the blue and green were brighter and had clearly faded in the photo.  So I went with a brighter blue and green.  I have to guess at the original colors, so I used the logo of the Seattle Sounders for colors.

FLAG 4

But I love trying to throw in a Cincinnati reference into the flag.  So I made this flag.  Keeping the waves and logo one color.  This blue comes from the Cincinnati flag.

FLAG 5

And this one, making the logo like the red C on the Cincinnati flag.

FLAG 6

Then I tried the above style with "Linwood" colors.  

FLAG 7

and swapping colors and making the background Linwood blue like the signs

FLAG 8 

And then a little tweak to the flag above, making the waves white to give a bit more color distinction.

FLAG 9

I really like FLAG 5, but the simple colors make the logo look a little too logoy, a bad thing for a civic flag. Flags 7 and 8 give the neighborhood some distinction with unique colors.  The plane in the disk represents a plane taking off as the sun rises over the Little Miami valley.  The waves represent the Little Miami River, Duck Creek, and the Ohio River while paralleling the waves on the Cincinnati flag to indicate that Linwood is a part of Cincinnati.

But then I looked at the close up photos I took of the sign and realized I lost an obvious design possibility.  

The three leaves and maybe even the semi circular looking thing.

So I created the flag below.  Originally, the semicircle was white, but that didn't contrast well with the leaves so I made it yellow.

FLAG 10

I think this flag looks a bit elementary.  If I had the time it might work if executed a bit better.

As always, votes and comments appreciated.

Prospect Hill BONUS FLOG POST!

Mt. Auburn, like West Price Hill, has a sub-neighborhood that often tries to differentiate itself from the larger neighborhood that the city considers it a part of.  Usually this is for property value related reasons.  Anyway, the front slope of Mt. Auburn often calls itself Prospect Hill.  These are the few streets heading up Sycamore and running over to Highland that have the old fixed up homes with the spectacular views.  So I created a flag for them.  I took the key idea from Mt. Auburn, this time swiping a different key from a different flag.  I decided to use a chevron to symbolize the Hill itself.  As for the colors, I wanted a way to evoke Prospect, which made me think of the 49ers and the Gold Rush, so I used the San Francisco 49ers colors.  The result was...

FLAG 1

This is nice because it gives the Prospectors an unique color scheme.

Then I thought, maybe the Prospectors might want to retain some links to their Mt. Auburn Uptown heritage, so I used the pan-Uptown colors.

FLAG 2

I picture Prospectors identifying more with Downtown/OTR/Pendleton area, though, because that would be much easier to bike or walk to.

Two choices for this one is all there is.  Comments/Votes/Submissions below.

Mount Auburn

It is said that Cincinnati, like Rome, was built upon 7 hills, but no two lists seem to agree on what those 7 hills are.  One that all lists have, however, is Mt. Auburn.  Mt. Auburn was the birthplace of arguably Cincinnati's most famous native son, William Howard Taft.  If you haven't been to the National Historic Site in Mt. Auburn, I highly recommend you visit and take a tour (although I hear their best tour guide ever retired from the job many years ago).  I actually couldn't find the typical map image I use for the neighborhood, so I screen captured what Google said the neighborhood boundaries were.  It's tough to see the red dashed lines, though.

My brain kept going to old Tafty and his big mustache like the photo below.


So here is

FLAG 1

The moustache symbolizes the neighborhoods most famous resident.  The three vertical bars are the break the plainness of the white field and to prevent too much white from showing when the flag hangs limp.

But then I thought about what Taft is unfortunately most famous for, getting stuck in the tub!  So I made the flag below.  It should be noted, that that event did not happen in Cincinnati, though.

FLAG 2

Some may find this insulting, however.  So I kept looking.

Upon reading about the neighborhood I learned that it was called Key's Hill until 1837.  So I thought I would try making a key the symbol of the neighborhood.  Turns out that there are lots of flags (almost all European) that use keys in their symbolism.    

I saw this flag from De Marne, a city in the Netherlands.  It works really well because the key could symbolize Key's Hill and the wavy line mirrors the wavy lines on the Cincinnati flag.

I straight up am just going to steal this flag design and try to Cincyify it a bit by using Cincinnati flag colors.

FLAG 3

and a different color combo

FLAG 4

But then I thought, if I am going to use Cincy colors, the Mt Auburn flag should mirror the Cincy flag as close as possible. 

FLAG 5

But then I though that I have used the Cincinnati colors on many flags and began looking for a more unique color scheme for Mt. Auburn.  One day I was driving near UC and noticed one of the Uptown informational signs.  Uptown is the correct name for the group of neighborhoods, surrounding UC, not Clifton!  The idea of Pan-Uptown colors came to mind since I just did the Pan-Westside colors.  I went to the Uptown Consortium wepage and noticed that the little logo that came up (which is the word "up" btw) was blue and orange.  That would be unique.  Very few national or state flags use the color orange, let alone blue and orange together.  Interesting because it is a fairly common sports team color combo.  So I tried the flags again taking the colors from the Uptown logo.  The logo is below

I was going to focus on the "up" because the creators of this logo just decided to throw every color in their logo just to be sure.  

FLAG 5

I actually like this color scheme, I find it a nice combo.  But then I was thinking I've seen this color scheme on a flag somewhere before.  Remember, I am a flag nerd so I have seen a lot of flags.  A little bit of searching Google for blue and orange flags revealed this, the flag of Tierra del Fuego Argentina.

Very similar shades of blue and orange used here too, but they are a bit less "metallic" maybe?  I tried Flag 5 again with the blue and orange from the del Fuego flag.

FLAG 6

I am having a hard time deciding which blue I like better.  The blue from the Uptown logo is almost a grayish color.  The Tierra del Fuego blue is more vibrant, but may be too much with the orange.  The orange, by the way, was an imperceptible difference in shade which I find interesting.

Next. I tried making Flag 5 but swapping out the colors, making the background orange, the wave blue and the key white.

FLAG 7

That doesn't seem right to me.  So let's try a blue key and a white wave.

FLAG 8

But again, it just doesn't contrast as well as the blue background version.

Finally, I went back to FLAG 2 and redid it in the Uptown Slate Blue and Orange (I'm calling it.)

FLAG 9

Two coincidences occurred to me as I finished this blog.  One is, the key flag I used is Dutch, and the Dutch national sports colors are orange and blue.  See their very similar blue and orange from their 2008-2010 home soccer kits below.

Also, Auburn University (which is in absolutely no way linked to Mt. Auburn) color's are blue and orange, although a much darker shade of blue.

I know I just recolored all the key flags from the Dutch flag but they seem way superior to the mustache and tub flags.  I was looking for another symbol for him but I just couldn't come up with one.  Maybe a former Taft National Historic Site tour guide could help me.

Vote and comment and all that stuff.