Bethel Journal 06/02/21

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BETHEL JOURNAL

BOGO BONANZA

Your Community Press newspaper serving Bethel and other East Cincinnati neighborhoods

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YOU’LL BE Delighted

Dancing teacher spreads some morning joy to school drop-off lines David Lyman Special to Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK

Lauren Martin spins and wiggles. And bobbles and bounds. She moves with the infectious energy of someone looped into a never-ending dance workout class. Except instead of sailing around a sweat-soaked dance studio, she’s on a sidewalk outside Sands Montessori School in Mount Washington. And her job isn’t to entertain. Rather, it’s to shepherd cars through the dreaded morning drop-off , where 150 or so cars converge on the school parking lot and, in less than 30 minutes, disgorge scores of students at the beginning of their school day. When Martin joined the school’s staff 12 years ago, dancing wasn’t part of the job description. Indeed, she spends the rest of her workday as a paraprofessional in a fourth-and-fi fth-grade classroom. But back in February, when the Cincinnati Public Schools returned with a hybrid learning plan, there were more than the usual number of parents dropping off their kids than in previous times. The procedure was slowed down, as well, by the need to take the temperature of each child before exiting the car. The slowdown resulted in a line that threatened to stretch all the way back to Beechmont Avenue, four-tenths of a mile away. It blocked driveways and side streets. It was a nightmare. So Martin was assigned to step in and guide traffi c through the complex maze in the Sands parking lot. Two lanes enter the school grounds from Corbly Road. From there, they peel off into a pair of looping patterns, with cars crossing oncoming traffi c and, in one case, making a left turn across a lane that is exiting to the street. It is devilishly complicated. But as long as someone is there to help organize the patterns, it works.

Lauren Martin, a teacher at Sands Montessori School, directs morning traffic while dancing on May 19, 2021 at Sands Montessori School in Mount Washington. Martin started dancing in February when students came back to in-person learning. MEG VOGEL/THE ENQUIRER

And that someone, it was determined, would be Martin. She didn’t set out to turn it into a dance routine. “Lord, no,” said the 39-year-old Martin, whose two daughters both attended Sands. “I’m so uncoordinated. I tried to take a Zumba class once, but I fell over. They asked me not to come back.” But in the parking lot, it’s a diff erent matter. Martin plugs into her traffi c-directing playlist on Amazon and she suddenly surges into motion. “It’s a pretty eclectic list,” she explained. “There’s a lot of old ‘90s club music. Some Beyonce, too. And Tupac, a little Will Smith, Rage Against the Machine. All I know is that when I started dancing, the parents started smiling.” Martin’s routines, it seems, are just a lucky happenstance, a matter of the right person being in the right place at the right time. And for those of us in the dropoff line – I occasionally drop off my fi fth-grade son –

Martin is a godsend, providing us a delightful break from the tedium of one of modern education’s lesser byproducts. “It doesn’t make any diff erence what the weather is, whether it’s freezing or raining, she’s always out there greeting the whole school,” says Angie Wilson, who drops off her third-grade daughter every day. “We’re always in such a rush to get out the door, it’s totally stressful. But then we get to school and there is Miss Lauren. She just puts herself out there and does it for the joy of everyone else. She brightens up my day.” Certainly, Martin must have off days? You know, days where she feels cranky or out-of-sorts. “Everybody has them,” she said. “But you drag yourself in and get to work. And that’s the good thing about this – as soon as I start moving around, it becomes the bright spot of my morning. It’s my time to shine. The only thing is I need to have more arms. You know – like an octopus.”

Red Sesame Korean BBQ to ease Madisonville’s ‘food desert crisis’ focusing on Korean BBQ, one of only a few in the city of Cincinnati,” Kim’s attorney, Christopher Finney of Union Township, said in paperwork fi led with Cincinnati.

Jeanne Houck Cincinnati Enquirer USA TODAY NETWORK

The owner of a popular food truck business that sells Mexican dishes steeped in Korean barbecue sauces is opening a restaurant in Madisonville. Red Sesame Korean BBQ will turn a former crack house into an eatery for which the Cincinnati neighborhood is hungry. “Red Sesame will be another bright spot in solving our food desert crisis in Madisonville,” Kate Botos, president of the Madisonville Community Council, said in an email to Cincinnati offi cials in January. Botos was voicing support of restauranteur BJ Kim’s request for a zone change that would allow him to open Red Sesame on the fi rst fl oor of a building at 4804 Whetsel Ave. and turn the upstairs into his living quarters. Cincinnati City Council on May 12 approved the new zoning, which the Madisonville Community Urban Redevelopment Corporation and the Madisonville Business Chamber also publicly endorsed. Kim lived in Korea before he moved to New York and then, in 2011, to Cincinnati. He launched his food truck business the following year.

'Property acted as a crack house for at least two decades'

BJ Kim, seen here taking an order at his Red Sesame Korean BBQ food truck, is opening a restaurant in Madisonville. LEIGH TAYLOR/ THE ENQUIRER

Red Sesame leased space inside Jungle Jim’s International Market Eastgate in Union Township for three years before leaving in March 2020. In the meantime, Kim had turned his eyes to a vacant, four-family home in Madisonville at the Whetsel Avenue address. “Mr. Kim purchased the property in 2015, fulfi lling his dream to buy his fi rst property in America, with the vision of establishing a small ethnic artisanal eatery

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“Through discussions with previous owners of (a nearby) church as well as community members, it is well established that, up until Mr. Kim bought it in 2015, the property acted as a crack house for at least two decades.” Finney said Kim wants to sell beer and wine at Red Sesame and to “create a warm, inviting and social gathering space for the Madisonville community.” “There will be outdoor seating where visitors from the surrounding neighborhood can walk to the restaurant and gather together for a meal,” Finney said. Finney said Kim was ready to proceed as soon as he got the green light from Cincinnati. “Mr. Kim has gutted the property, an action that was necessary due to its previous condition and use, pouring several $100,000s into it,” Finney said. “The property on the fi rst fl oor is a shell ready for commercial use.”

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