North of Downtown Cincinnati, a group of business and art entrepreneurs offer items not found elsewhere - everything from contemporary crafts, pottery, jewelry, beads, silk fabrics and antique Indian saris, to decorative accessories ranging from antique, to vintage, to new. Many of these independent businesses are part of the Merchants on Main, a group that has been supporting, programming and encouraging patrons to come down to Main Street in Over-the-Rhine for over 20 years. This week's Soapblogs feature three of Main Street's newest 'merchants', Jessie Cundiff, J. Michael Skaggs, and Mike Markiewicz.
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Mike Markiewicz
Posted By: Merchants On Main
8/5/2010
When I returned from the North Woods in the late '80s to deal with family matters, I could not readjust to Chemical Lawn Land. I had been in the natural world too long. I couldn't leave Cincinnati for a while, though, so I did what I COULD do. I could shape a place that would have fit well into the forest, a place where you could sit and imagine yourself surrounded by forest. Perhaps it's ironic,but the inner city seemed best for that. There seemed to be an aura of the old forest still clinging to Main St. And so Kaldi's was born: a place for me to feel comfortably rustic. A place totally without plastic. It didn't have to be a coffee house (I drank instant at the time), and it didn't have to be a bar It didn't have to make money,which was good because I didn't. It just had to be a place that had good feelings.
I didn't like the name "Kaldi's." I accepted it because it allowed me to have a goat logo. The staff would explain to customers that the leering maniacal paper mache goat atop the doorway at Kaldi's represented one of the goatherd Kaldi's goats, who according to myth discovered the coffee bean. Not true. That goat represented the Great God Pan, goat-footed God of the wild lands, the wilderness. A far better companion. And so it was that Kaldi's may have been the first sign of the forest's return to main street. It will return,slowly, as people begin to realize that the age of the personal automobile needs to be over, and all the parking spaces revert to green space. I won't see it (I'll be gone to the mountains), but I'll leave the goat behind to watch from here in another part of the forest.