Flying Pig #14: Bethesda North

An awesome reader named Don sent us a new pig photo with full deets. This piggy, "A Fly in the Ointment," sits out front of the Bethesda North Hospital in Montgomery. The artist is Sarah Thompson.

Don writes his own awesome blog about Cincinnati, which I hope you're following: Queen City Tour!

Flying Pig #13: Junior League of Cincinnati

Our friend Alex sent us a Flying Pig! This is one that Dan and I had actually seen a couple of times, but were never able to snag a picture from the street. How awesome to have this show up in our inbox!

Meet "I'll Cook When Pigs Fly," located at the Junior League of Cincinnati at Delta and Columbia Parkway.

Our other piggies: http://www.cincinnatireadventure.com/search/label/bigpiggig

Flying Pig #12: Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center

Another piggie with a nameplate! We're batting a thousand over here.


Meet "Swine Art." We met him at the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center on a recent gallery visit; in the next couple of days we'll share some photos of the exhibitions we discovered at this gorgeous museum in Covington.




I went a little nuts with the photos. It was a gorgeous day and the pig was as blue as the sky.

Flying Pig #11: Hyde Park

Guess who we found in Hyde Pork!


Did I seriously just say Hyde Pork?

Anyway, Dan and I took a trip to Hyde Park; the pig is front-and-center, but we don't spend much time in the area.


We were even fortunate enough to find a name plaque with this one! Ladies and gents, meet Goldie Hocks. Cuuuuute.



Stop by and see her when you're in Hyde Park Square!

Guestblog & Flying Pig #10: Werkhaus

Quite some time back, an awesome reader contacted me because she'd found one of the elusive piggies. She promised to snap a pic next time she saw him, and here we have 'im! Thanks, MaryWernke!!


Werkhaus Pizza & Pasta has a red, white and blue pig which stands close enough to the road that it looks like it is waving at passing drivers. At one time it must have been a “Super Pig,” because there is a design on the back of its shirt that looks like it was once a Superman “S.”

Up close, Super Pig is not faring well in its exposure to the elements, with chipped and faded coloring and some cracks as well. Was there a time frame when these pigs were created that said how long they would last outdoors? I hope that there is a way to maintain these statues for a long time, as I like them and their cleverness very much.

As for Werkhaus, it is located at 3637 Werk Road on the border between the city of Cincinnati/Westwood and Green Township/Bridgetown. The owner is Mike Westendorf. The restaurant is a remodeled wood frame house and sits across the street from the back entrance to Toys 'R' Us.

Its main entrees are pizzas, hoagies and other pasta dishes. A small plate of spaghetti for lunch is $5.99, while the most expensive items are the large (13-inch) stuffed pizzas for $18.99. I chose a small (8-inch) original crust pizza for lunch. Its name was The Werks! (I do love the possibility for puns with this name), with pepperoni, sausage, onion and green peppers, and I substituted black olives for the bacon. It was delicious and I ate the whole thing!

Carryout is available and there is also a catering menu. Telephone number is (513) 451-9911 and its website address is www.werkhauspizza.com.

Flying Pig #9: Dave & Buster's

Dan's birthday was on August 12th! To celebrate, we gathered his friends together for an evening at Dave & Buster's. Upon entering the building, we were greeted by a Big Pig Gig entrant!

I don't tend to review places like D&B's because it's a big chain and not particularly local, but I will mention we all had a great time and it was the perfect place to get a dozen people together for a low-key, high-fun evening. It's not an everyday experience ($$) but worthy of a special occasion.

Happy birthday, Dan!

More of our pigs: http://www.cincinnatireadventure.com/search/label/bigpiggig

Flying Pig #8: Palomino

Hurrah!

Last weekend we had lunch with @5chw4r7z-- we ended up at Ingredients, but originally thought we'd eat at Palomino. On our way up, DAn and I stumbled across Queen Porktunia!

Thank heaven for placards, because this would have been a doozie to find online. There's no information out there, except for where Porktunia was originally supposed to be, years ago.

Guestblog & Flying Pig #7: Karlo's Italian Bistro

The other day, my friend Evan (www.wtfcincy.com) pinged me to let me know he'd found a piggy. It's been a while since we featured one, so I was thrilled when Evan said he'd write it up for us!

After dropping off my in-laws at the airport, Sara and I went to the Florence area to hit up a Best Buy and see about finding a cheap laptop to replace our old one that just died. After giving Big Blue $500, we realized neither of us had eaten yet and decided to give Karlo's Bistro Italia a try. When we walked in, I noticed one of the Flying Pigs in the entry way. I asked our waitress if they had any information about the pig, but all she knew was that the restaurant bought it from the city of Cincinnati. There was no plaque attached to the pig... The only piece of information was a painting of the pig with the name "Sow-vatore Pastavino".

According to the Big Pig Gig site, this is number 279, done by Mary Beth Dowlin. It was originally slated to be in Sawyer Point.

Guestblog & Flying Pig #6: Cincinnati Museum Center

My friend Amber sent me some pictures of a flying pig that I'd somehow missed last time I was at my beloved Cincinnati Museum Center. She was awesome enough to write up a post about "Animal House"-- thank you, Amber!

Being a mom of two young kids leaves me with a lot of "what are we doing today?"s. So my husband and I decided it would be more budget-friendly to buy passes to places we knew the kids would enjoy time and time again.

The first pass we bought was to the Cincinnati Zoo. That one was a given-- both of our kids love the outdoors and animals. As for another pass, because we had decided on buying two, we were stumped. Both our children are daredevils and love amusement park rides, but aren't tall enough to ride the majority of rides, so Coney Island and King's Island didn't financially make sense to us.

One Sunday afternoon we had planned to go to the zoo, but the weather didn't agree with our plan. So since we had already planned on being in the downtown area, I suggested that we go to Union Terminal. Well, needless to say, our kids instantly fell in love with it and it soon became our regular rainy day spot.

I had seen that Erica and Dan were documenting all of the pig statues that they were coming in contact with in their Cincinnati Re-adventure, and was über-excited when I came across this one in the Children's Museum on the lower level of Union Terminal. Since I'm pretty sure Erica and Dan have never been in the Children's Museum, seeing as they have no children, I figured I would take some pictures to share with them.

Upon more research on the web, I found out that this pig is named "Animal House" and was created by Tracey Antoun. In an article I found she explained that she just wanted people to look at the endangered plants and animals displayed on the statue and think about how we don't think enough about our environment.

Animal House's Pig Profile: http://cincinnati.com/bigpiggig/profile_102300.html
Cincinnati Museum Center website: http://www.cincymuseum.org/

Flying Pig #5: Cincinnati Shakespeare Company

I knew without looking that this pig must be Hamlet.

Earlier I blogged about my first trip to the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company downtown. Naturally, this is where Hamlet lives. A bit about the pig skull from the Cincinnati.com interview with artist Brian Heim:

I wanted a real pig skull so I found a pig head at a butcher shop, borrowed my grandmother's pressure cooker and boiled it for about seven hours. It was a really strong smell.

Niiiice. Another bit I like, which I hadn't noticed:

Words from Hamlet's monologues are written in silver around his clothes, as if they are stitched in thread.

Hamlet's Pig Profile: http://www.cincinnati.com/bigpiggig/profile_072200.html
Cincinnati Shakespeare Company website: http://cincyshakes.com/

Flying Pig #4: Enquirer Building

Meet "Dual Porcineality," so named because the pig is split between the east and west sides of Cincinnati. You can probably even tell from this photo that the artist is Jim Borgman.

I've known about this pig for a while... I used to park in the Enquirer building for work, and I'd see this piggy each morning. Of all the pigs I've ever run across, this is the one I could spend the most time with-- it has landmark names painted on its wings, 275 painted down its spine (with a construction barrel for a nose, notice) and far more detail than some of the others I've seen.

I think at one point the pig was standing, though? I believe his base broke, and he's no longer reaching for the stars. Pity.

Thing I just learned about Jim Borgman: he won a Pulitzer. How'd I miss that?

Full "Pig Profile" page: http://cincinnati.com/bigpiggig/profile_051400.html

Flying Pig #3: Main Auction Galleries

I have to admit, finding the name for this pig was kind of fun.

I snapped this outside an auction house near my office. Tonight, when I googled "auction house on 4th street," I found a page about Main Auction Galleries-- and their chief auctioneer's last name is Karp. Whiiiiich might explain why the back half of this pig is a fish.

So I hunted for "Big Pig Gig" and "Karp," and ended up with "J. Karp Hogtioneer." Bingo.

On this quest, I also found an Artworks page that lists pigs still on public display in Cincinnati. That ought to help out substantially in the future, yes?

See our other piggies here!

Flying Pig #2: CVG airport

I am telling you... finding the names of these pigs is hard work. I'm going to have to start paying attention to their little placards when I take the pictures.

This is Spirit of Pigcinnati. Now that I know that, I can find all kinds of great info on him:

What's the pig idea?
The plane has an 8-foot wingspan. To meet safety regulations at the airport, it had to be displayed at least 7 1/2 feet off the floor. I placed it as if it was being launched from the top of a Cincinnati landmark, the PNC building.

I hadn't even noticed that Spirit was standing on the PNC building, though now it's perfectly clear.

All of our piggy posts (2 so far!) can be found using the BigPigGig tag.

Flying Pig #1: Rookwood Commons

I assume anyone reading this blog is from Cincinnati, but if not: pigs are our thing. Cincinnati used to have a thriving meat-packing industry, hence the occasional "Porkpolis" reference. Our marathon is "the Flying Pig," and we have art installations throughout the city known as "the Big Pig Gig" (similar to Chicago's cow thing).

Dan and I thought it would be fun to post pictures of the Big Pig Gig installments that we come across as we rediscover Cincinnati. I recently found this first one when I was in Rookwood Commons.

Finding pictures (and thus names) online is frustrating because the Big Pig Gig site is archived and doesn't have any of the images anymore! Their gallery is useless, and all the other sites I can find link back to BigPigGig.com for their images. Argh. I'm not sure how to find the names for the pigs-- the numbers on the Big Pig Gig map don't seem to correspond to anything.

HOWEVER, after some super sleuthing I was able to find this link, placing our pig in the "A Pig for All Seasons" series.

I might need some help naming other pigs in the future-- I think I got lucky on this one.

Wikipedia entry on The Big Pig Gig: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Pig_Gig

Big Pig Gig map: http://www.cincinnati.com/bigpiggig/images/pigmap.jpg