The Best of Athens 2011 – People

Best of Athens Readers' Choice Awards for the category of PEOPLE.

Best Radio Personality/DJ
Robin Barnes

Taking first place as Best Radio Personality for the third straight year is the honey-voiced and consistently impish Robin Barnes, FM Power 105’s rise-and-shine disk jockey.

When you’re huddled in bed of a chill winter morning, shrieking and pounding your pillow in impotent rage because your kids are facing yet another school-district snow day, Robin can make it all better with her sunny disposition and quirky ruminations. And when she and news director Bob Beyette get to bantering, it’s like Tracy and Hepburn.

Second place goes to Mark Hellenberg, who hosts the “Crossing Boundaries” show on WOUB-FM radio. Third goes to Ms. Barnes’ WXTQ colleague, Jason Stone, the station’s afternoon drive-time jock.

Chris Riddle of WOUB and Beyette of WXTQ get honorable mentions.

Best Local Politician We Hope Will Go Far
State Rep. Debbie Phillips

She’s smart. She’s astute. And she’s popular to boot. Athens County residents are hoping state Rep. Debbie Phillips, D-Athens, will go far as she comes in as best politician we… hope will go far. Unfortunately for the Rep. with the pep, she’s not up for re-election this year, so she’ll have to carry all this good will forward for another year before she can shrewdly use it to her political advantage.

But fostering and maintaining good will shouldn’t be a challenge for Phillips, with all her charm, verve, pluck, moxie, vigor, zest and zeal. She’s got style. She’s got grace. She’s a winner.

Also a winner, coming in at number two politician we hope will go far, is Athens Mayor Paul “The Wild Man” Wiehl. Hizzoner the Mayor is known as a good-natured rapscallion in the City Building, prone to applying both the velvet glove and the iron fist. In third is state Sen. Jimmy Stewart, R-Albany. Incisive, measured, thoughtful and shredded like a Julienne salad, Stewart can put down some smart political analysis and give you two tickets to the gun show in the same breath.

Best Local Politician to Go Far Away
Susan Gwinn

As she did last year, former Athens County Democratic Party Chair Susan Gwinn takes top honors (?) in this ambiguous category, Best Local Pol We Hope Will Go Far Away.

The category is ambiguous because rather than wanting to send her away for negative reasons, some of our readers may have meant that Gwinn, a local lawyer, deserves some R&R in Bali or Fuji or some other Pacific haven. If we could get our readers to contribute to the plane ticket and accommodations, this could become a very popular category.

We should mention, however, that good or bad, this category seems to be clear about one thing – it’s only for local politicians, a role that Susan Gwinn is not currently fulfilling. But a vote’s a vote…

Second place goes to Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl, with the runner-up Athens City Council President Bill Bias. Since Bias succeeded Gwinn as chair of the county Democratic Party, we can’t help but conclude that our readers really like to see local Democratic Party chairs going on long trips. We bet county GOP chair Pete Couladis wishes he could be so popular.

Others who gained a place in this dubious category were, in descending order, Athens Law Director Pat Lang, City Council member Elahu Gosney, assistant county prosecutor Keller Blackburn, Athens County Commissioner Lenny Eliason, Athens County Auditor Jill Thompson, and a bunch of others who “won” five votes or less.

Best Local Veterinarian
Greg Allen, DVM

Taking your pet to this year’s best veterinarian, Greg Allen, at the Allen Pet Clinic in The Plains, is like taking your cat, dog, rabbit, hamster, iguana, snake, tarantula, chinchilla, ferret, cockatoo or fish to the Mayo Clinic of the animal kingdom. He’s the Sanjay Gupta of bestial healthfulness.

Allen knows animal health as well as the back of your pet’s paw. The reviews are in from the animals. According to professor Cosmopolitan Sossalitto, a calico from Nelsonville, Allen’s pet clinic is “purrfect.” Marvin the Monkey says he’s “bananas” for Allen’s treatment.

Runner-up for best local animal doctor is Stephen Abfall, who makes run-of-the-mill pet medicine practitioners look like Dr. Nick Riviera from “The Simpsons.” His competitions’ advertisements are left pleading, “You’ve tried the best. Now try the rest.”

In third place for best pet doc is Rick Kroner. His very presence in front of your animal is like a double helping of chicken soup for your poodle’s soul.

Best Local Media Figure
Bob Beyette

Last year, WATH/WXTQ radio news director Bob Beyette tied for first place in this category with our very own Editor Terry Smith.

This time around, Beyette decided to “bring it on,” as the cheerleaders say, and buried Smith deep in second place, to reign alone and supreme as Athens’ Best Local Media Figure. Come to think of it, Bob does have a rather nice shape, what with those snaky hips and chiseled pectorals.

As mentioned in the paragraph directly above this one, second place goes to The Athens NEWS’ Terry Smith, a quasi-legendary “spell-check cowboy” who in the 1970s helped pioneer “gonzo editing.”

Third place goes to Chris Riddle of WOUB public radio.

Jim Phillips of The NEWS got a lousy honorable mention, as always. It’s like socks and underwear at Christmas.

Most Annoying Local Public Figure
Susan Gwinn

As that brilliant poet, composer and social critic Don Henley once put it: “Kick ‘em when they’re up; kick ‘em when they’re down.” It’s been a year now since former Athens County Democratic Party chair Susan Gwinn, having been convicted of falsifying campaign finance reports, gathered her marbles and left the public stage in ignominy.

Still, that’s no reason to quit bashing her, is it? Our warm-hearted readers picked Gwinn as our county’s most annoying “public figure,” despite the fact that her only publicity these days comes from media updates about her ongoing appeal of her misdemeanor conviction. Ah, well – to hate is to stay young.

Second place goes to Ohio University President Roderick McDavis. Oh, come on. How can you not like that guy? He’s not much bigger than a full-grown koala bear, and he beams like a halogen headlight. All those votes probably came from a bunch of unregenerate Trotskyite faculty members who want to bring in a so-called “labor union” and outlaw varsity sports. Faugh, we say. Faugh.

Third place goes to Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl, who was also our winner this year as best public figure. Did we mention the part about how this contest is offered for entertainment purposes only?

Honorable mentions go to county Prosecutor C. David Warren; Sheriff Pat Kelly; City Council President (and Gwinn’s successor as Dem chair) Bill Bias; and developer extraordinaire Brent Hayes. Jeez, what an abrasive bunch.

Best Local Business Owner
Lili Chandler Glover

Top vote-getter in this on-again, off-again category – Best Local Business Owner – goes to Lili Chandler Glover, owner of the BellaVino “fine wine, spirits and interesting beer” store on Stimson Avenue in Athens. If any OU alums from out of town are reading this, Bella Vino is located in the building that housed Sutton’s One-Stop (and then, simply One-Stop) carryout for many years. You know the place — for many decades a magnet for OU students living in the Mill Street neighborhoods, East Green and South Green.

Lili has done a great job with BellaVino of taking this retail sector uptown (figuratively speaking), offering a great variety of wine, from the most proletarian reds to aristocratic Chardonnays.

Second place goes to Angie and Chris Pyle, owners of Donkey Coffee, an old-school (meaning the beatnik era) coffee-house that’s as much a meeting place and psychological refuge as it is a coffee dispensary.

Third goes to Hilarie and Mark Burhans, who own Restaurant Salaam, just a few doors west of Donkey Coffee.

Other business owners who garnered a respectable number of votes (more than eight) include Art Oestrike, owner of Jackie O’s; John Gutekanst, owner of Avalanche Pizza; Andy Vogt of Athens Insurance; Larry Young of Larry’s Dawg House; and Jessica and Jason Kopelwitz, owners of Fluff, the new bakery/deli at 8 N. Court St.

Best Law Enforcement Officer
Sheriff Pat Kelly

Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly, say our judicious and law-abiding readers, is the county’s finest lawman. And so say all of us.

Kelly manages somehow to hold in perfect balance his easy-going Andy Taylor yin and his club-swinging Buford Pusser yang, thus harmonizing his every action with the ineffable Thin Blue Tao. And amongst ussuns over here in the 4^th Estate, his administration earns high marks for its openness and cooperation with the media.

Second place goes to Rick Crossen of the Athens Police, a veteran officer who’s known to generations of local kids as the DARE guy, and known to lots of us grownups for his work with Crimesolvers Anonymous and other outreach activities.

Third place goes to Crossen’s new boss, former Athens Police Capt. Tom Pyle, who has been selected the next police chief of Athens. We look forward to Pyle’s term as chief; during his years with the force, he’s been tireless in his commitment to an enlightened brand of policing that includes plenty of community input.

Honorable mentions go to APD officer Destry Flick, and Sheriff’s deputies Jimmy Childs and Bryan Cooper.

Coolest Person in Athens County
Me, of Course

Thanks you, thank you, thank you. The Best of Athens voters chose “me, of course” as the Coolest Person in Athens County. Aw, shucks, it waren’t nothin’.

Excuse me, what did you say? You’ve got to be kidding!

Ahem, well, there’s been a misunderstanding; the answer “me, of course” isn’t a vote for yours truly (me), but rather, from the perspective of our readers, was self-referential. The shameless little egomaniacs were picking themselves as Coolest Person in Athens County (well, a dozen of them anyway).

Second-place winner Chris Banar actually has a pretty good argument for being the actual winner in this category. He could say that each of the 12 readers who wrote down “Me, of Course,” were picking themselves, of course, which means they were selecting 12 different people.

Our Best of Athens Supreme Council held a grueling nine-hour meeting on this important question, and finally decided to go out for a drink or two. The last comment heard at the meeting went something along the lines of, “Oh, crap, we’ll just go with whatever the conceited little SOBs wrote down (in this case, “me, of course”).

Third place goes to Restaurant Salaam owner Hilarie Burhans.

Others who garnered multiple votes (more than four) include: Andrew Chiki, Alex Couladis (aka, Elvis), Tim Peacock, Dave DeWitt, Scott Nevil and Wil Chandler.

The person who’s writing this knows most of those people, and yes, they are all very cool, except for DeWitt, one of our reporters. He’s extra-special cool.

Best Athens County Public Figure
Paul Wiehl

If it weren’t for the gooey mess, we would say Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl should get a few extra bananas in his pay envelope this month. Surely he deserves some type of bonus for pulling down his fourth straight win – fourth! – as the county’s Best Public Figure. In terms of sheer popularity among the hoi polloi, Wiehl’s only serious rival at this point is probably Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

Much of this is undoubtedly due to his willingness to appear on national television and explain price-auction wage theory in terms of fruit. He did this memorably during a segment of CNBC’s “Squawk on the Streets” program in January 2010, bravely admitting that by his own calculation, he earns as mayor the cash equivalent of about one pound of bananas per minute. Ever see your Rudolf Giuliani do that?

Second place goes to Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly, who among other accomplishments has worked to combat a serious narcotics problem in the county, cracked down on illegal dumping, and provided supervised jobs to help ex-convicts and other unemployed people transition back into the workforce.

Third place goes to Debbie Phillips, the Democratic state representative from our 92^nd District. Phillips worked hard for the district in her first term, and after getting re-elected in November, she will no doubt have to work even harder with John Kasich as governor.

Taking honorable mentions in this category, in descending order, are peace activist Art Gish (posthumously; he died in a terrible farming accident last year), assistant county prosecutor Keller “Slim” Blackburn, and longtime county Commissioner Lenny Eliason.

Best Local Entrepreneur
Lili Chandler Glover, Bella Vino

Watching when Lili Chandler Glover starts to entrepreneur is like watching when the lights go out and The Alan Parsons Project’s “Sirius” starts to play before Michael Jordan is introduced to the basketball court.

She’s got business sense. She’s got horse sense. She’s got business horse sense. And she’s not afraid to use it. She thrives, the business thrives, and so do her customers. When Glover entrepreneurs, other entrepreneurs stop to watch and learn.

Second place this year goes to Brent Hayes, a well-known developer ‘round these parts. Hayes has got his fingers in a lot of pies. In addition to his habit of poking confections, Hayes also plays a role in a lot of projects around Athens County.

Meanwhile, Art Oestrike comes in third place for his stellar entrepreneurship. Oestrike owns Jackie O’s, Athens’ only local brew-pub, where the beer flows like wine and the beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano, as Lloyd Christmas might say.

Best Local K-12 teacher
Pam Vogt, Meigs Local Primary School

This year’s best local K-12 teacher, Pam Vogt, is to education what Louis Pasteur is to cleaning products and pasteurization. In fact, the National Education Association is giving serious consideration to changing the term “teaching” to “Vogting.” In Vogt’s classroom, the youngsters aren’t so much learning course materials as they are being infused with knowledge, critical thinking and intellect.

Ben Robey at Nelsonville-York Elementary School and Fitz Read at Athens High School share the number-two slot for best teacher this year. Read and Robey purvey knowledge as naturally and majestically as bears snatch salmon out of a running stream.

Meanwhile, the third-place honors are also shared this year. Erica Stirsman from Alexander, and Ms. Goodfellow over at East Elementary in Athens pulled out the big finish in this category. For them, education is a passion, and a learned mind becomes a symphony of their own compositions.