(See A Tour of Columbus for background on what can be found around town and the theory about how to show the city to other people.)

Consultants Come to Town

In early January of this year, a client of mine had representatives from another vendor it works with come in town to help with integrating some of the product. One of the reps lives in Connecticut and the other lives in Sweden. When asked for someplace cool to visit, the people at the client site could offer nothing more interesting than Easton Town Center and for dinner took them to the Cheesecake Factory. (“Something for everyone!” quoth they. Technically correct, though the only thing they ever seem to have for me is a headache.) Ugh!

Easton has started to grow on me in the past couple of years but never have I been tempted to forget that Easton really is a mall. Yes, it's open-air, yes it has a feel a bit more like a town, but it's still just a mall. It's not the kind of place that you point out as some kind of tourist attraction. The fact is that even though the concept was pioneered here and the developer is here, these things are going in all over the country. And if you want to show someone something of Columbus, a chain restaurant that focuses on the amount of food that can be put on your plate, how many people can be stuffed into the restaurant, and just how high the volume level can get inside just isn't the right thing to do.

Determined not to allow my new colleagues to return to their perspective homes with that being their definition of Columbus, I took it upon myself to act as their tour guide. I set out to show them a wider view of the city than what a single developer and his partners had in mind, a view of the city's rich and diverse history. I hasten to add here that I haven't any particular qualification for this sort of job beyond having lived here and having paid attention.

Remember the point I made above about the value of locals: you're simply not going to be able to show people the city if you haven't seen it yourself. It doesn't matter if your city is the fifteenth-largest or a small town, it's not the city's fault if you don't know anything about it.

I made arrangements to meet the representatives from their vendor in the late afternoon at their hotel—the Courtyard by Marriott at Easton. We met in the lobby. After finishing some phone calls on our respective mobile phones, we headed outside to the COTA bus stop on the corner. Being built as a hotel at a suburban mall, the hotel has no sidewalk that would get us easily to the bus stop, despite the fact that it was less than fifty yards from the door.

We took route 16 to downtown and exited the bus at High and Long Street. Since my office is right there and I had a briefcase with me, we ran up to my office to drop off the bag so the three of us could just walk about instead of carrying a bunch of stuff with us. Eva (from Sweden) had a particular interest in walking around to get a picture of the city; I aimed to please.

From my office at High and Long, we walked north on High, up to see The Cap, whereupon I pointed out that it kept a city street going over a highway to prevent killing the continuity of the street. We then turned west around the Greek Orthodox Cathedral and toward the North Market.

The North Market is worthy of a tour all by itself, so that's what I did. I pointed out my favorite spots, including, of course, Jeni's Ice Creams. Eva tried it and wanted to ship some back home. Unfortunately, it wasn't possible, as they can use FedEx to ship only within the U.S. We paid a visit to the Grapes of Mirth and then wandered to Pure Imagination Chocolatier to buy some lovely truffles and other chocolates.

From there we went south through Arena Crossing, over the footbridge and I pointed out the LeVeque Tower, the State Capitol, the Ohio Theater, the Southern Theater, Thurber's Bar, and down Main to Third, which we took down into German Village.

Paul (from Connecticut) seemed impressed by the number of condo developments downtown. We went past Katzinger's and I showed the exterior of the Book Loft. We then went to G. Michael's where Niki met us for dinner. We had drinks first.

Eva had her first Cosmopolitan, Niki had a Belvedere Martini, Paul a Vodka & Tonic, and I had Glenlivet on the rocks. We talked for a bit about the business that brought us together, some reflection of the tour that we had taken, and then discussion of travel in Europe. We heard about Eva's home town of Skelleftea and Paul's origins in Little Italy.

Dinner was excellent; the restaurant and the St. Francis Old Vine Zinfandel 2002 that we had are worthy of articles of their own, and no doubt will get them another time. When the food, the wine, the service, and the company are all excellent, it's simply impossible not to have a wonderful time.

After dinner, we continued down to the Book Loft and spent some time there. I was happy to find two copies of Brute Force on the shelf in the genral science section. We headed out, got in the car (Niki had driven down) and dropped them off at their hotel.

I daresay that there's no risk of our cohorts thinking that Columbus is all boring malls and chain restaurants.