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Someone please shed some light on this matter. Ever since moving here, people seem to be VERY interested in whether you reside on the westside or the eastside. West and east of what? 75? 71? What is the rivalry between the two sides? Is there that much of a difference? Until I actually took a drive around the 275 loop and explored a little more, it seems to me that the only difference is the ability to expand. The east seems to have alot more room to develop, where as the west is governed by the state border. Any thoughts?
I think almost every region has an imaginary line (or many!) that people like to use to differentiate "us" and "them"...
In Detroit metro - its the East Side / West Side. In Chicago, its NorthSide/SouthSide...
I have only been here a year - so I can't comment too much to the situation here, however I know when I was looking for houses all of the locals (locals to the Cincinnati metropolitan area) spoke of EAST and WEST side. And from what I could tell - I-75 was the divider. I-71 seems to be pretty well ignored.
I was told originally the I-75 corridor (and west of it) was predominantly blue collar originally, and that prompted the differentiation .. but who knows!?!
Someone please shed some light on this matter. Ever since moving here, people seem to be VERY interested in whether you reside on the westside or the eastside. West and east of what? 75? 71? What is the rivalry between the two sides? Is there that much of a difference? Until I actually took a drive around the 275 loop and explored a little more, it seems to me that the only difference is the ability to expand. The east seems to have alot more room to develop, where as the west is governed by the state border. Any thoughts?
There is actually a lot more undeveloped land in western Hamilton County than the eastern section of the county. The eastern section of the loop takes a broader sweep around the entire east side, whereas the west side of the loop dips down into the county before entering Indiana. So when you're on I-275 in the western section of the county, you can't see a lot of empty land that stretches all the way north toward Butler county, and you miss all the space that is out toward Harrison.
As for your other question, the established dividing line between east and west runs along Vine street and Route 4. The "rivalry" comes from the west side of the county being much more conservative than the east side.
The west has deeper family roots and people born there tend to stay there as they grow older. They are more sports-minded than people from the east, and are generally more thrifty in their ways. There is a strong blue-collar work ethic on the west side, and people aren't quite so concerned with "flashy" things.
The east side is more liberal, and more oriented toward singles or young couples looking to start families. There is a greater sense of entrepreneurism in the east, and the people are generally more active in the arts/society/social activism scene.
On the west side, when people ask you what school you went to, they are referring to "high school", whereas if the east side asked that question, they'd be referring to "college". The east side is generally considered more "hip", while the west side is seen as not-so-progressive. Each side has a tendency to be very territorial, and is loyal to its side of the county, thus looking down upon one another.
I am born & raised west side Cincy gal.. I have also lived on the east side as well though.. I'm consider myself a Cincinnati resident. I'm the rare neutral oddity.. West side is more blue collar & loves Sports. They say west side for life. I dream of moving to Cali. I would hate to spend my life in one city forever.. West side is also more ghetto & trashy as the east siders think., west siders think east siders are stuck up... I have known east siders & it's not that they are stuck up maybe just different standards & views.. I love both sides. I am the queen of the Queen City
As for your other question, the established dividing line between east and west runs along Vine street and Route 4.
That's only the "established dividing line" when it comes to street addresses. 1 West Whatever Street would be at the southwest corner of Vine and Whatever. 1 East Whatever would be at the southeast corner. If you're in the 6600 block of Beechmont Ave, you have sixty-six blocks toward the sunset to travel before you reach Vine St. And so on.
There's friendly debate over what constitutes the invisible "dividing line" (also known as The Sauerkraut Curtain. ) Several neighborhoods and communities are bisected by Vine St and Springfield Pike*, but they're uniformly thought of as being "east-side" whether you're talking about Woodlawn at one end or Over-the-Rhine at the other. The Curtain also dates way WAY back before expressways, although the Mill Creek has always been there and arguably forms part of the boundary. What people squabble over is where exactly it is that the line skews northwestward. I've always mentally drawn it along Colerain Ave from Northside out, but many other people place it along Hamilton Ave and sometimes even Winton Rd.
I'm a native east-sider, and can tell you that the question of where you went to school is exactly the same - and asked every bit as often - there. But a response of "[a public or non-sectarian private school]" is more often heard east of the Curtain. Although the Catholic population is well dispersed throughout the region, and the most selective parochial high schools are all on the east side, the likelihood of someone's having attended Catholic schools from K-12 is much greater on the west side. This is even more the case in recent times with the steady decline in quality of the city's district high school (Western Hills, aka West Hi.)
Some Protestant congregations do exist "across the viaducts," but the image of that part of town is "Catholic with a capital 'C.'" Despite a relatively large Jewish population in Greater Cincinnati, only a minuscule number of people from that faith and culture live on the Indiana side of the Curtain. (Strangely, however, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries is in Price Hill. ) Housing covenants and personal preferences placed most of the Jewish households in the West End - a LONG time ago - then later in Avondale. From there the concentration extended out the Reading Road corridor to Roselawn and adjacent Golf Manor. Since the '60s it's diffused out to Wyoming, Amberley Village, and the suburbs in the Sycamore and Loveland school districts. But real and perceived anti-Semitism has held back full-scale assimilation throughout the region, no place more so than on the west side.
What's also relatively new to west-side neighborhoods (almost exclusively within the city limits, and in Cheviot to some extent) is racial diversity. On either side of the viaducts any attempts by AA households to join a community have all too often not gone well. But the east side has far more experience with this. For every neighborhood pushed downhill by real-estate "steering" and the crime that follows instability, there's another which has weathered the storm with varying degrees of success. West of the Curtain the narrative is still being written. Will Westwood emerge as another Paddock Hills or will it be another Avondale? Will Bond Hill replicate in Price Hill, or will Price Hill end up more like Hartwell? The image many folks still hold of the west side's being "lily White" is out of date. But its accuracy is a lot more recent than is true of "changed" communities elsewhere around town.
West Siders are not exclusively a Catholic version of the Bunkers of "All in the Family" or the family on Roseanne Barr's former sitcom. Nor are East Siders uniformly progressive (HA HA, as if) snobs. Some folks from Covedale attend Playhouse in the Park productions, as surely as some folks from Mt Lookout chug brewskis and go all-out in cornhole tournaments at a parish festival. All the same, stereotypes exist because a kernel of truth is embedded in them.
BTW the Cincinnati definition of "mixed marriage" is an East Sider pairing off with a West Sider!
*At the border between Woodlawn and Glendale, the dividing line for addresses continues directly northward although Springfield Pike veers northwest. From there to Tri-County Mall - then I-275, then Crescentville Rd - the line is along OH-747, known as Congress Ave in Glendale and then Princeton Pike in Springdale up to the Butler County border. Quibblers and nerds, I've got your back.
OMG!!! I just broke one of the sacred commandments of City-Data, "Thou Shalt Not Revive Long-Dormant Threads Nor Shalt Thou Abet Such Revival."
Quote:
Originally Posted by goyguy
That's only the "established dividing line" when it comes to street addresses. 1 West Whatever Street would be at the southwest corner of Vine and Whatever. 1 East Whatever would be at the southeast corner. If you're in the 6600 block of Beechmont Ave, you have sixty-six blocks toward the sunset to travel before you reach Vine St. And so on.
There's friendly debate over what constitutes the invisible "dividing line" (also known as The Sauerkraut Curtain. ) Several neighborhoods and communities are bisected by Vine St and Springfield Pike*, but they're uniformly thought of as being "east-side" whether you're talking about Woodlawn at one end or Over-the-Rhine at the other. The Curtain also dates way WAY back before expressways, although the Mill Creek has always been there and arguably forms part of the boundary. What people squabble over is where exactly it is that the line skews northwestward. I've always mentally drawn it along Colerain Ave from Northside out, but many other people place it along Hamilton Ave and sometimes even Winton Rd.
I'm a native east-sider, and can tell you that the question of where you went to school is exactly the same - and asked every bit as often - there. But a response of "[a public or non-sectarian private school]" is more often heard east of the Curtain. Although the Catholic population is well dispersed throughout the region, and the most selective parochial high schools are all on the east side, the likelihood of someone's having attended Catholic schools from K-12 is much greater on the west side. This is even more the case in recent times with the steady decline in quality of the city's district high school (Western Hills, aka West Hi.)
Some Protestant congregations do exist "across the viaducts," but the image of that part of town is "Catholic with a capital 'C.'" Despite a relatively large Jewish population in Greater Cincinnati, only a minuscule number of people from that faith and culture live on the Indiana side of the Curtain. (Strangely, however, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries is in Price Hill. ) Housing covenants and personal preferences placed most of the Jewish households in the West End - a LONG time ago - then later in Avondale. From there the concentration extended out the Reading Road corridor to Roselawn and adjacent Golf Manor. Since the '60s it's diffused out to Wyoming, Amberley Village, and the suburbs in the Sycamore and Loveland school districts. But real and perceived anti-Semitism has held back full-scale assimilation throughout the region, no place more so than on the west side.
What's also relatively new to west-side neighborhoods (almost exclusively within the city limits, and in Cheviot to some extent) is racial diversity. On either side of the viaducts any attempts by AA households to join a community have all too often not gone well. But the east side has far more experience with this. For every neighborhood pushed downhill by real-estate "steering" and the crime that follows instability, there's another which has weathered the storm with varying degrees of success. West of the Curtain the narrative is still being written. Will Westwood emerge as another Paddock Hills or will it be another Avondale? Will Bond Hill replicate in Price Hill, or will Price Hill end up more like Hartwell? The image many folks still hold of the west side's being "lily White" is out of date. But its accuracy is a lot more recent than is true of "changed" communities elsewhere around town.
West Siders are not exclusively a Catholic version of the Bunkers of "All in the Family" or the family on Roseanne Barr's former sitcom. Nor are East Siders uniformly progressive (HA HA, as if) snobs. Some folks from Covedale attend Playhouse in the Park productions, as surely as some folks from Mt Lookout chug brewskis and go all-out in cornhole tournaments at a parish festival. All the same, stereotypes exist because a kernel of truth is embedded in them.
BTW the Cincinnati definition of "mixed marriage" is an East Sider pairing off with a West Sider!
*At the border between Woodlawn and Glendale, the dividing line for addresses continues directly northward although Springfield Pike veers northwest. From there to Tri-County Mall - then I-275, then Crescentville Rd - the line is along OH-747, known as Congress Ave in Glendale and then Princeton Pike in Springdale up to the Butler County border. Quibblers and nerds, I've got your back.
That's only the "established dividing line" when it comes to street addresses. 1 West Whatever Street would be at the southwest corner of Vine and Whatever. 1 East Whatever would be at the southeast corner. If you're in the 6600 block of Beechmont Ave, you have sixty-six blocks toward the sunset to travel before you reach Vine St. And so on.
There's friendly debate over what constitutes the invisible "dividing line" (also known as The Sauerkraut Curtain. ) Several neighborhoods and communities are bisected by Vine St and Springfield Pike*, but they're uniformly thought of as being "east-side" whether you're talking about Woodlawn at one end or Over-the-Rhine at the other. The Curtain also dates way WAY back before expressways, although the Mill Creek has always been there and arguably forms part of the boundary. What people squabble over is where exactly it is that the line skews northwestward. I've always mentally drawn it along Colerain Ave from Northside out, but many other people place it along Hamilton Ave and sometimes even Winton Rd.
I'm a native east-sider, and can tell you that the question of where you went to school is exactly the same - and asked every bit as often - there. But a response of "[a public or non-sectarian private school]" is more often heard east of the Curtain. Although the Catholic population is well dispersed throughout the region, and the most selective parochial high schools are all on the east side, the likelihood of someone's having attended Catholic schools from K-12 is much greater on the west side. This is even more the case in recent times with the steady decline in quality of the city's district high school (Western Hills, aka West Hi.)
Some Protestant congregations do exist "across the viaducts," but the image of that part of town is "Catholic with a capital 'C.'" Despite a relatively large Jewish population in Greater Cincinnati, only a minuscule number of people from that faith and culture live on the Indiana side of the Curtain. (Strangely, however, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries is in Price Hill. ) Housing covenants and personal preferences placed most of the Jewish households in the West End - a LONG time ago - then later in Avondale. From there the concentration extended out the Reading Road corridor to Roselawn and adjacent Golf Manor. Since the '60s it's diffused out to Wyoming, Amberley Village, and the suburbs in the Sycamore and Loveland school districts. But real and perceived anti-Semitism has held back full-scale assimilation throughout the region, no place more so than on the west side.
What's also relatively new to west-side neighborhoods (almost exclusively within the city limits, and in Cheviot to some extent) is racial diversity. On either side of the viaducts any attempts by AA households to join a community have all too often not gone well. But the east side has far more experience with this. For every neighborhood pushed downhill by real-estate "steering" and the crime that follows instability, there's another which has weathered the storm with varying degrees of success. West of the Curtain the narrative is still being written. Will Westwood emerge as another Paddock Hills or will it be another Avondale? Will Bond Hill replicate in Price Hill, or will Price Hill end up more like Hartwell? The image many folks still hold of the west side's being "lily White" is out of date. But its accuracy is a lot more recent than is true of "changed" communities elsewhere around town.
West Siders are not exclusively a Catholic version of the Bunkers of "All in the Family" or the family on Roseanne Barr's former sitcom. Nor are East Siders uniformly progressive (HA HA, as if) snobs. Some folks from Covedale attend Playhouse in the Park productions, as surely as some folks from Mt Lookout chug brewskis and go all-out in cornhole tournaments at a parish festival. All the same, stereotypes exist because a kernel of truth is embedded in them.
BTW the Cincinnati definition of "mixed marriage" is an East Sider pairing off with a West Sider!
*At the border between Woodlawn and Glendale, the dividing line for addresses continues directly northward although Springfield Pike veers northwest. From there to Tri-County Mall - then I-275, then Crescentville Rd - the line is along OH-747, known as Congress Ave in Glendale and then Princeton Pike in Springdale up to the Butler County border. Quibblers and nerds, I've got your back.
Actually the Jewish Cemetery is in Covedale not Price Hill.
Actually the Jewish Cemetery is in Covedale not Price Hill.
How many Bernsteins, Kauffmans, Goldblatts, etc do you know in Covedale? The point of my statement is still the same - nearly all the Jewish bodies on the west side are in the ground.
Whenever someone is due to be interred in that cemetery, the obituary places it in Price Hill (usually prefaced with "West.") It's another one of those instances where no set boundary exists so people civilly agree to disagree where it is. The same can be said for the two Price Hills - there's actually only one, but the media never fail to trot out "East" or "West" in an article. No actual line is there. "East" is not only a geographic locator, but also code for "where most of the Blacks, Hispanics, and poor Whites are." Even today with a diverse population distributed through nearly the entire area that connotation is carried. Once upon a time, the "West" prefix was code for "the Italian section," but with the demographic shifts being as they've been I doubt anybody attaches that meaning any longer.
Similarly, where does Westwood end and the fairly recently coined "East Westwood" begin? (I have my doubts as to whether anybody uses the latter in conversation although it pops up in media stories.) In some minds it's at Baltimore Ave, in others it's McHenry, and in others it's - as in East Price Hill - where the majority of "those people" live. Here again, though, now that the community's Caucasian majority has gone from "overwhelming" to "razor-thin" and many "integrated" blocks exist all over, the race/class coding implicit with the "East Westwood" label has lost most relevance.
By the 2030's there will probably be breaking headlines out of "East Delhi" and "West Bridgetown."
From the ESPN Sports Century piece on Pete Rose: Always remembered this. I think it sums it up.
"Pete rose was a local boy in the city that prides itself, rightly, as the birthplace of professional baseball.
Cincinnati was a very elemental city. It was called "porkopolis" in the 19th century.
It was where pigs were slaughtered, and grains and goods went up the ohio river and back down, and charles dickens and frances trollope from england came over to marvel at and be disgusted by what they took to be american manners -- all in cincinnati.
Tough guys' town -- good place to produce Pete Rose.
Pete Rose was born on april 14, 1941, in Anderson Ferry, on the banks of the ohio river, five miles downstream from the city.
There's a west side and the east side, and on the east side you had quiche and white wine and croquet.
And on the west side you have beer and barbecue and bowling.
Where pete rose grew up, on the west side of cincinnati, was right across the river from kentucky, and really in feel and texture, it was more related to appalachia than it was to city life."
From the ESPN Sports Century piece on Pete Rose: Always remembered this. I think it sums it up.
"Pete rose was a local boy in the city that prides itself, rightly, as the birthplace of professional baseball.
Cincinnati was a very elemental city. It was called "porkopolis" in the 19th century.
It was where pigs were slaughtered, and grains and goods went up the ohio river and back down, and charles dickens and frances trollope from england came over to marvel at and be disgusted by what they took to be american manners -- all in cincinnati.
Tough guys' town -- good place to produce Pete Rose.
Pete Rose was born on april 14, 1941, in Anderson Ferry, on the banks of the ohio river, five miles downstream from the city.
There's a west side and the east side, and on the east side you had quiche and white wine and croquet.
And on the west side you have beer and barbecue and bowling.
Where pete rose grew up, on the west side of cincinnati, was right across the river from kentucky, and really in feel and texture, it was more related to appalachia than it was to city life."
I wonder if they'd talk about all the quiche and croquet of his boyhood home in Silverton in a Barry Larkin piece. I'm sometimes not sure which side gets the worst of the stereotypes in the divide.
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) Several neighborhoods and communities are bisected by Vine St and Springfield Pike*, but they're uniformly thought of as being "east-side" whether you're talking about Woodlawn at one end or Over-the-Rhine at the other. The Curtain also dates way WAY back before expressways, although the Mill Creek has always been there and arguably forms part of the boundary. What people squabble over is where exactly it is that the line skews northwestward. I've always mentally drawn it along Colerain Ave from Northside out, but many other people place it along Hamilton Ave and sometimes even Winton Rd.
) Housing covenants and personal preferences placed most of the Jewish households in the West End - a LONG time ago - then later in Avondale. From there the concentration extended out the Reading Road corridor to Roselawn and adjacent Golf Manor. Since the '60s it's diffused out to Wyoming, Amberley Village, and the suburbs in the Sycamore and Loveland school districts. But real and perceived anti-Semitism has held back full-scale assimilation throughout the region, no place more so than on the west side. 
