The Best of Athens 2012 - Places

Best Uniquely Athens Building

The Ridges/Kennedy Museum

Hooray for our readers' pick as Best Uniquely Athens Building, the Ridges/Kennedy Museum. The former Athens Asylum campus is probably the biggest concentration of historic, vintage 19^th century/early 20^th century buildings in southeast Ohio. Somewhere along the way, it acquired the moniker, The Ridges, though that name also describes the entire 700-plus-acre chunk of land, which includes not only the old mental health center/asylum but hundreds of acres of woods, pastures, orchards and trails. The Kennedy Museum, meanwhile, is part of the landmark structure that once served as the main administration building of the old mental health center/asylum.

Anyway, as you can tell by all of this gushing, this writer has a long-term love affair with the Ridges. Now if they could just figure out how to turn down that God!#!@& noisy air-conditioning unit at the Konneker Center!

First runner-up in this category is the Athens County Courthouse, a building that not only has lots of history to brag about, but has a hot, scantily dressed female standing on top of it.

Second runner-up is that gigantic mushroom, the Convocation Center. We're wondering, though, how can the Kennedy Museum building be "uniquely" Athens at the same time as the decidedly generic Convocation Center?

Best Shopping Area in Athens County

Court Street

Our lovely uptown area – aka, Court Street – wins top honors as Best Shopping Area in Athens County. Some uptown businesses might take this honor with a grain of salt, however, since they likely feel that they don't get nearly the love from local shoppers that they should.

Second place goes to the Athens Farmers Market, located in the parking lot of The Market on State. Third: the East State Street shopping area, which if not the "best" shopping area, is certainly the most popular.

Best Place to Work

Ohio University

The local "U" once again gets top honors – by far – in the Best Place to Work category in the 2012 Best of Athens survey. It garners 94 votes while the first runner-up, LuiLui's restaurant, has 18. Coming close behind is Casa Nueva.

It's no mystery why Ohio University seems to win this category every year. Just by virtue of the fact that so many zillions of Athens Countians work at OU, even if only 15 percent like their university jobs, that's still a lot more people than work anyplace else. Moreover, what's not to like about a nice, secure state job in otherwise economically depressed southeast Ohio?

As far as work conditions at OU, that depends entirely on where you work at the university. In such a gigantic institution, there's probably great departments and niches, and not so great ones.

Other good places to work according to our readers include Jackie O's, Restaurant Salaam, Donkey Coffee, Holzer Clinic and a bunch that received fewer than 10 votes.

Worst Eyesore

Walmart

Sometimes writing up Best of Athens winners reminds us of the great but annoying Bill Murray film, "Groundhog Day." Every year, we're writing the same things about the same winners. And so it is again in 2012 with the Worst Eyesore category. Just like last year, Walmart takes top honors. We're not sure what folks expect to see when they peer at a Walmart, other than Walmart, but as always we defer to our readers' judgment, or lack thereof.

The old Woolworth's building takes second place this year – and to all of you who are too young to remember those halcyon days when Woolworth's stood proudly on the west side of South Court Street, it was a fine and wondrous place. Especially the bargain basement (literally!) tropical fish tanks downstairs. But now, alas, the building remains a big fat zero in our otherwise bustling uptown area.

Third place goes to the "chopped hill behind Walmart," which we're assuming means the clear-cut hillside across the river from (and not "behind) the Athens Walmart.

Best view

Radar Hill/The Ridges

Whenever we here at The Athens NEWS want to look at a nice view, we simply go and pull one out of storage. We keep plenty of them out in our view shed. Ha ha ha! Get it? View shed!

OK, that may have been uncalled for. Anyhoo, our readers, who clearly have an eye for the exhilarating vista and the breathtaking prospect, tell us that the purtiest view in these parts can be enjoyed from Radar Hill and/or The Ridges. Just look out for ghosts up there. After you climb to the top of Radar Hill, and quickly look into that single trash-can to see what other visitors have been drinking up there, you can stand and see a 360-degree view of Athens County. Well, maybe 352 degrees; there is that big bush.

First runner-up is Bong Hill, which the Adena Indians knew as "Hookah Mountain," and the early European settlers called "Water Pipe Ridge." Yes, we are making this up.

And the next runner-up is the city parking garage on West Washington Street. We're guessing this refers to the panoramic view of our fair city that one can take in from the roof of said facility. But you really can't stand up there for very long before the pigeons attack.

Best Venue for the Arts

OU's Memorial Auditorium

In this brand new category, Best Venue for the Arts, Ohio University's Templeton Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium places first this year. But please let me catch my breath before continuing. That name's a mouthful. And to be honest, since old Mem Aud was given that ridiculously lengthy name a decade or two ago, we at The Athens NEWS have waged our own silent rebellion, chopping the name down to its original "Memorial Auditorium" whenever it's listed in our weekly events calendar or in news articles.

Take that, you people who name things without giving a moment's thought to all the trouble you're causing people who actually have to say or write the name (we're talking about you, too, UCM), or without realizing that nobody's going to use the new mile-long name anyway.

With all due respect to the praiseworthy black alumni who gave their names to Mem Aud, we just think that, as a rule, a place shouldn't be forced to take on a new name that nobody's ever going to state in casual speech.

But where was I? Oh, yes, many of our readers really appreciate the arts venue that we all know as Memorial Auditorum, or Mem Aud.

Second place goes to ARTS/West, the former church at the West State "Y," with third going to the Kennedy Museum.

We have no idea why the obvious answer, the Dairy Barn Arts Center, didn't win this category, though they did place fourth, just a few votes behind the Kennedy Museum.