Columbus Memes & Inside Jokes

Tim Fulton 00:13Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, Columbus has a lot of character to it. From ComFest to COSI, there are a myriad of topics, issues, inside jokes, and even memes that every Columbusite should be aware of. 614 enthusiast Doug Powhida, the man behind the satirical Twitter account Fake Dispatch, graces us this week with a high-level survey of what makes the city great, and sometimes not so great. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Also, the Confluence Cast is on Patreon. Find out how to support this podcast on our website, theconfluencecast.com, or at patreon.com/confluence. The Confluence Cast is sponsored this week by the Gateway Film Center. Gateway Film Center is a nonprofit cinema committed to supporting storytellers and amplifying the impact of their work in our community. Join them at the film center this season as they celebrate these artists with a retrospective of unique stories from their partners at A24, and new independent stories premiering this summer. To plan your next visit, visit gatewayfilmcenter.org. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here virtually with Doug Powhida, a Columbus enthusiast, and I'm gonna go ahead and refer to him as our resident expert on all things memes and conversation topics and issues that are unique to Columbus and sometimes not so unique.

Doug Powhida 02:06Columbus expert — that's, you know, you're going out on a limb here.

Tim Fulton 02:09I am, I am. The authority that he brings here — Doug is the curator and personality of the Twitter handle Fake Dispatch, which was previously an anonymous account. Doug, first of all, how did you get started with the Fake Dispatch account?

Doug Powhida 02:27Oh, you know, for years I was under the handle Holy Wine. And I had a blog and some other things. And then I had a friend one day say something about the Columbus schools. And I was like, "Oh, it'd be great if there was an account where we could say things very similar to how the Onion might, but have it be Columbus-centric." So I think my very first tweet was something about Columbus schools being out, "except your school." I should look that up. But then it just started from there. And I always, back in the old days, back when there was only 140 characters, everything started with the word "breaking" and a colon, and I would gauge how many characters I could use. And each tweet was, like, professionally crafted, and I was so happy. And the people were like, "Why are you starting everything with 'breaking'? It sucks."

Tim Fulton 03:21And give us your background. Who are you?

Doug Powhida 03:24So I grew up close to Columbus. I'm from Lancaster, Ohio, went to Ohio University. I came up to Columbus when I started working for COSI, and I had what was the greatest job in the world, because I had a traveling exhibit called Science of Sports. And I traveled with that from town to town across the United States — Boston, Denver, Omaha. And that exhibit was known because it had rats that played basketball. And you can go still see, at COSI, rats that play basketball. And I came back to Columbus, came off the road, worked for COSI, and I was part of the team that built the COSI on the riverfront. That team kind of broke off and became a company called Roto out of Dublin, and they do hands-on exhibits for children's museums and science museums in the UK, where they do a lot of different fun stuff. I worked for them for a while. And now I'm in the financial institutions of the world right now.

Tim Fulton 04:29Okay, you're in banking. It's your day job.

Doug Powhida 04:32Yeah, it's my day job. Friends love to say, "Oh, you're a banker."

Tim Fulton 04:36I think a lot of this is going to be opinion-based. Is the old COSI better than the new COSI? I would say, as a correction, I would say —

Doug Powhida 04:43The answer is that, in our memories, it's a better place. Most of the people that go to new COSI, it's nothing like the old COSI, they're absolutely correct. Old COSI was this very fun place. Everything was crammed together, you couldn't turn without running into another exhibit or something else. It was an old building, there were weird stairwells. It was a very unique experience. And I can't speak for the whole team, but as we were moving from the old building to the riverfront, we needed more space. And so new COSI has got a lot of space, and some people would say it's empty, and they've spent the last — boy, new COSI is 23 years old. Oh, Lord. Yeah. So that's the other thing, when people are saying "old COSI," it's like, which old COSI are you talking about? Because when new COSI first opened, they spent a lot of time and energy trying to fill those empty spaces, make the hallways a more exciting place. So I would say that old COSI was great, new COSI is very good, and just a different experience. And I can absolutely see why people like the old COSI. And I still say new COSI should build a stinking coal mine. Just build it.

Tim Fulton 06:05Yes, another coal mine. Yep. So, yes, there's that. So you have provided — this is not just me off the top of my head — you have provided a list of things. You did a brain dump of, "Here are the Columbus things," and I want to punch through them. What is the noon god?

Doug Powhida 06:29Oh, so, noon god. As we all are aware, in Columbus and surrounding suburbs and counties and throughout the state of Ohio, Wednesday you have the tornado siren. And for some reason, it just felt like everybody was always scared, like, "Oh, my gosh, it's noon, I forgot." And it's like, noon god is the perfect — that tornado siren, I think other people call it "the big Whoo." Everybody is aware of it. And it just seems like the perfect opportunity to base a religion around this siren, that comes out once a week, like a lot of other religions. And when you need them the most, there they are for you, and people forget about them until they absolutely need them. So, yeah, Fake Dispatch posts a "noon god" — not "noon guy," noon god.

Tim Fulton 07:21Right, a reverence.

Doug Powhida 07:25Absolutely, yes. It's just like, let's pay noon god the respect that it deserves.

Tim Fulton 07:30The character of that sort of changed, at least in my mind — and maybe I'm unique in this — during the pandemic, that we were all in our homes, and so we were all much more attuned to the environments around us. And you're absolutely right, I think that's true. And then it became kind of more significant. It was almost like, okay, every day we're going to do "wine with the wine," and at noon on Wednesdays, we have something else we can depend on.

Doug Powhida 08:00Yeah. And I think that more people were probably home with their pets, mainly their dogs, and it's like, "Oh, God, the dog's barking." Or if you've got a noon meeting — and curse you people that have noon meetings — it's like, "Oh, I gotta wait till the siren stops before I can continue."

Tim Fulton 08:14Absolutely. And a lot of this is going to be things that everyone is mostly aware of. But what is Columbus pizza? How would you define it?

Doug Powhida 08:25So, I mean, this is something that's all across the United States, is everybody's like, "What is the best pizza?" And obviously it's like, "Whose mom is the best mom?" It's like, of course it's my mom, your mom close second. But Columbus has a nice wide variety of pizzas. Now, obviously, anybody coming to Columbus, moving to Columbus for school or for work, will be like, "Why the hell is all this pizza flat and cut into squares?" And it's like, that's — I think that St. Louis style is how that technically would be defined. I grew up in Lancaster and we had Fatcats Pizza, which I don't think exists anymore, but that pizza was so good, cracker crust. And Columbus has a great number of locations for that kind of pizza. But then you've got, like, Adriatico's and Hound Dog's, and there's a ton of different pizza in Columbus. It's good. And I love to stand back and watch people fight about pizza, because, what else are you going to do? You're going to say, "No, sorry, you're wrong, because I'm right about my pizza."

Tim Fulton 09:34Exactly. Getting into a little bit more negative of a topic, you had written down "CPD helicopter." It should be noted that Columbus is unique in that we have more police helicopters per capita than, I believe, any other city in the country. The conversation topic here, though, is not that.

Doug Powhida 09:59No. It's just that we used to have — where I live up in Westerville, the Columbus police pilot, or somebody, knew somebody in my neighborhood, and would fly over once a week, and you could see him waving out. And if I remember correctly, I could probably put it on the calendar, it was always like Sunday afternoon at three o'clock, "Oh, there's a helicopter." And for most people in Columbus, when you hear the helicopter, you see the bright light shining down, it's chasing a car. He was always flying up there. We recently had the helicopter pilots that were using the helicopters to draw the initials "CPD." Yeah, in downtown Columbus, over disadvantaged neighborhoods. It's like, they don't need you to be flying over top of here for fun. Yeah, it seems like, "Oh, well."

Tim Fulton 10:50This is not what we gave you the asphalt for. Yes. So, yeah. Columbus driving.

Doug Powhida 11:00Columbus area —

Tim Fulton 11:01There's a sub-list here of just everything that you're like, what happens when it rains, people that don't have license plates. Like, let's just go off.

Doug Powhida 11:13I think the number one thing is that the people that think Columbus has bad traffic, obviously you have never lived somewhere where the traffic can be very bad. We definitely have spots that are bad. And then there's the whole, "Hey, can't we just add a couple more lanes to fix this?" And I would say that Columbus has done a pretty good job in some areas of fixing some traffic areas, but some places — anywhere that 270 intersects with 70 or 71 — it's going to be a mess, no matter what.

Tim Fulton 11:47Right. Why — I think I know why, but — you wrote "AM 820 bumper stickers."

Doug Powhida 11:54Oh, my good here. Yeah. So that's a stereotypical make-fun-of-a-group-of-people. Because if you're driving on a road that has a 55-mile-an-hour speed limit, and you come upon somebody whose blinker is on and they're going 40 miles an hour, more than likely they've got an AM 820 —

Tim Fulton 12:12Radio, religious radio station. I think they have done a fantastic job distributing bumper stickers, possibly only second to CD92.9, which we all still, and I think rightfully so, refer to as CD101. From a branding perspective, that's not great. Sorry, random. I'll have you on your — on my list. Additionally, the potholes that are in the city, the fact that the first snow of the year happens and everybody forgets how to drive. And it can be a mess.

Doug Powhida 12:52And I would say that people even more recently have complained that it feels like drivers are getting worse. And it's just like, I don't know if Columbus is that bad. I mean, there are bad drivers, potholes can definitely be a problem, but it seems like they fix them pretty quickly. There's always that three days of potholes where they first emerge, right, and everybody seems surprised that it happened. But I saw this year, there was a friend of mine, boy, they hit a pothole that gave them a flat, and they pulled over to fix their flat, and there's four other cars there that all have flats as well. And it's like, yes, fortunately it was the emergency pothole. And it's like, there should definitely be some kind of warning system for that, because you're not going to be on Twitter and see that there's a pothole somewhere. You come home and come to Twitter to complain about it.

Tim Fulton 13:40Absolutely. And so that's what you hear about — you aren't hearing about, "I had a very pleasant, smooth drive to work today." You put here people saving their spots for fireworks, both Red, White & Boom and neighborhoods. And while that may be true, I think that there was one community in particular that on the Fourth of July puts out chairs — or, excuse me, ahead of the Fourth of July puts out their chairs for their parade before any other. And so I would like to give a hat tip — maybe this should be like the Columbus awards — Upper Arlington reserves their four-by-three sections for their lawn chairs a week ahead of time.

Doug Powhida 14:32Yeah. Well, someday you're gonna go out there and you'll be like, "Oh, I see you're a month out reserving your spot for the parade," and it's like, "No, no, no, this is for next year's parade." Right. Really digging in.

Tim Fulton 14:45Absolutely. So, the number of breweries that we have.

Doug Powhida 14:48Oh, yeah. I think it's great. I mean, at some point it feels like — I don't know what the economic term for that is, but at some point it feels like we're going to reach a tipping point, and then the breweries are just gonna all close down, and then there'll just be one. But no, it's great. There's just a ton of craft brew in the city. And that's the other thing, it's like, I feel like someday the names are gonna run out. It's like, how many funny names can you make with hops? I think everybody's testing the limit. But it's just great that you can — and I haven't done it myself, but there's definitely, like, the brewery trails, where you get a stamp when you go to one of 12 different breweries. And that's very fun. I love it when local businesses can do something that involves alcohol. It feels like there's definitely a community with that. And I say the more the merrier.

Tim Fulton 15:46You have here on the list, "Ohio against the world, semicolon, Columbus against Ohio."

Doug Powhida 15:51Right. So I think everybody in Ohio likes this idea, because it feels like Ohio gets a bad rap, we're a flyover state, made fun of. But people that live in Ohio know that Ohio is a great state, and we've got some great things here, and "screw all you guys, we'll stand up and face all of you in a fistfight, all the other 49 states," because I think we're very proud of Ohio. But then once you get in the room and you're just having Ohio, then it feels like it's Columbus against Ohio. Because it's like, you've got Cincinnati and Cleveland, they get some of the bigger concerts. It's like, come on, Columbus, we've got a great music scene. You know, besides the Basement, we've got some great places to have — and it's like, sadly, we don't have — you could put the show in itself, but we don't have a professional football team, and we don't have a professional basketball team. And it's great, we've got the Blue Jackets and the Crew, but sadly you get the cred when you've got some other major sports team. And because we've got the Ohio State football team, it's like, everybody's like, "You know what, we don't need any other professional teams, we've got the Buckeyes, and we're happy with that." And we'll do well.

Tim Fulton 17:20Well, and by extension, I think that a lot of — certainly the new stadium helps for the Crew, but our teams aren't that great, other than Ohio State.

Doug Powhida 17:33Now, the Crew won, you know, two years ago.

Tim Fulton 17:37That's fair. Well, sorry, let me rephrase. The attention given to our professional sports teams is not necessarily at the level that we give to Ohio State.

Doug Powhida 17:52And, you know, as much as I say that I'm a big fan of Columbus and everything, ask me how many Crew games I've been at to the new stadium.

Tim Fulton 18:01How many? Zero. Zero. That's my greatest — ages, mice.

Doug Powhida 18:05And I do need to get over there. But I'm one of the problems, when it's like, you got to fill the stands, you got to sell tickets. I definitely need to get over there. I don't know if they're priced for me, or if they had some kind of "buy a ticket, get three beers free," that might help me get in the door. But yeah, so I love the teams and I'm supportive of them, outside of the fact that I'm not supportive, because you need to buy tickets to really support the team.

Tim Fulton 18:37Absolutely. You have written here, "counting down until Jim Ganahl."

Doug Powhida 18:41We're tired. Oh, my God, he just needs to go now. And the only reason — I mean, Columbus news stations, sadly, I think just because of the nature of television — as a kid, it was like, you watch the local news, and you'd watch the six o'clock news, or the five or whatever, and then the national news would come on, and then the 11 o'clock news, because you had to watch that because that came on before the late shows. But it was like, I remember — oh, God, Doug Adair, Mona Scott — all these, like, way back when, and Jim Ganahl, he was way back with them a long time ago.

Tim Fulton 19:20I met Jim Ganahl when I was in fourth grade. And I am not a young man anymore. I will dispute the idea that he just needs to go, I don't agree with that. But he is — I will refer to him as a mainstay. And this is a shout-out, my positive shout-out for him.

Doug Powhida 19:41I would just say I lost my faith in Jim Ganahl when he said that global climate change was caused by solar flares. And I was just like, "Oh, come on." Did that really happen? Yeah, you can look that up. Solar flares, it's something to do with the sun. He definitely, you know —

Tim Fulton 19:57Well, it is something to do with the sun, so let's acknowledge that.

Doug Powhida 20:03Right. But like, you know, you're a man of the community, you're a man of the people, people consider you a scientist, and he's like a kind of a doubter. And it's like, "Oh, man, Jim, come on."

Tim Fulton 20:14Couches on porches, which is not a thing that they can do anymore. Right? Or am I wrong? We used to have them, and this was primarily around the campus area. And then there were a couple of years where there were a couple of riots after Michigan games. And I think — I will fact-check this — that the city outlawed couches, or couches that are meant to be inside, from being on front porches anymore. I mean, but it is a thing we dealt with. If that's the worst, now —

Doug Powhida 20:51You look at, when you drive down and you see the yards that are all stomped flat and muddy, and there's a beer pong table out there — that's what they used to like. Let's sell the couch and buy as much fire on the table and cut it in half.

Tim Fulton 21:05We are known, I think nationally, for the Arnold Sports Festival. I actually went this year, I think the first time, and what a spectacle it was. But what it does to the restaurants in the area — hopefully most of it is positive, that this is a weekend, or a week rather, that's going to have basically guaranteed revenue for these folks. Our chicken breast industry does really well at that time. But we're basically just noting it here.

Doug Powhida 21:40I mean, just tons of people coming in. And I think that's the other thing, I would say that Columbus is very welcoming. I know that there are some bad players out there sometimes, but even when visiting people coming down for the Arnold Schwarzenegger, for that fest, for Ohio State football games, it seems like most of the time we're very welcoming. You'll see people wearing different jerseys in a restaurant, you'll say hi to them, ask them where they're coming from. I've seen on a lot of different occasions that we're a very welcoming place. And I think that's what most people are like, we're just kind of friendly folk.

Tim Fulton 22:20Yes. And we could probably spend an entire episode on this, but let's talk about ComFest.

Doug Powhida 22:26Oh, yes. I was at ComFest this year. And it was just great to be back out there. I think that, number one, in its own right — I don't know the history of it, but it seems like this very interesting gathering of, like, whoever runs ComFest, a very interesting collection of, like, who gets what, what band is going to get picked to be on this stage, and at what time. There's a lot of politics in there. And then they stopped allowing people to bring their own coolers and stuff one year, because obviously you want to get your cup. And I was extremely disappointed this year because they changed the size of the ComFest mug. I think previously it was — well, was that four years? Was it for you? Because I haven't been, I probably haven't been for about six years, including, you know, the —

Tim Fulton 23:21A friend of mine made a "rest in peace, 32 ounces" T-shirt. The brief history is, ComFest was founded in 1972. Very similar format, but it was actually held at — I don't think it exists anymore, wait, yes it does, because the church is still there — it was held at basically 16th Avenue, about half a block east of High Street. So they're basically behind where the old Bernie's was. And this will have a fitting transition for me here in a minute. But that's where it was originally held. And when I was younger, that space was used for the Anti-Racist Action festival. But then it moved to Goodale Park at some point. And I do actually have on my list to have Candy Watkins, one of the organizers of ComFest, on here to just give the high-level history. Let's note a couple other things just so that it ends up in the transcript. Our turkey legs, gone from ComFest.

Doug Powhida 24:25See, that's the thing, I did not — I don't think I got —

Tim Fulton 24:28My pad thai — I got my corndog, but no, I didn't see any. So the transition there, then, is OSU campus. What you wrote is, "OSU campus used to be better when it was off." As someone who grew up on North Campus, I absolutely agree.

Doug Powhida 24:48I mean, the fact that we used to have to have thick steel cables running down the sidewalk to keep people from walking into traffic, or being, you know, accidentally tripping drunkenly into traffic. With paddy wagons at, you know, every other block there would be paddy wagons, and you would never — you couldn't walk by one without seeing some drunk person in the back of there, just like, "Oh God, why did I steal that bowling trophy?"

Tim Fulton 25:15And it wasn't just — and we're not just talking about football Saturdays, this was every Friday and Saturday night, specifically where those guardrails were, which was South Campus. Which, let's talk about that really quick, and get into the fact that all those bars, I believe through eminent domain, were all torn down at the same time. We then got the desert for exactly four years. How long is the normal person in college? Four years. So that no one remembered what these old campus bars were. And now we have the South Campus Gateway there. And that "sticks and bricks" has slowly moved north, and I think we're now up to Lane and High. And I can only imagine it's going to keep going.

Doug Powhida 26:12I've never been pepper-sprayed in a Starbucks, but I definitely was pepper-sprayed in Mr. Mustard's one night, when a fight broke out, and they — and I was like, "What are you doing?" Everybody was heading for the door and coughing, and it's like, that just doesn't happen anymore.

Tim Fulton 26:29Yeah, the good old days. You have a list here of Columbus art, public art. I'll let you work your way through the list.

Doug Powhida 26:39Oh, yeah. So I think that Columbus is awesome for art. I mean, CCAD is a wonderful art school. And I think they're probably, like, top three, top five in the United States for art school. So you've got a lot of extremely creative people. But just outside of CCAD, they've got their giant sculpture that says "ART," obviously. In Dublin, you've got the concrete corn. The Other World Museum is stinking awesome. And we've got, like, fun, weird things like the bronze deer down on the riverfront, the giant gavel, the stainless steel gavel that's out in front of the courthouse. So there's giant murals in places, we've got that big electronic head where you can get your face scanned at the convention center. So I love the local artists, the little shops, there's just a ton of art. And even with all of that, most of it is pretty cheap, too. You can pick up something from a local artist that you can be proud to have in your home. And it's just everywhere, and it's just wonderful.

Tim Fulton 27:48You have a sub-list here of things that are, I think, basically from Reddit memes.

Doug Powhida 27:54Oh, yeah. And that's, you know, if you're in Columbus, you should at least check out the subreddit, only because — so it's reddit.com, and they have subreddits, these subsections. And one of those is Columbus. A lot of interesting things on there in sort of two different formats. One is, if you go to the wiki page, endless links to things in Columbus, from restaurants and bars and calendars of events and everything. That is a mecca of, if you don't know what to do, get in there, click around and find out. The main half of that, though, is basically the interactions of people posting things about Columbus. And it's like, people either complaining about stuff, or people bringing things to our attention that we should be putting effort into changing. But then you've got a lot of stupid stuff that goes on down in there. But it's got its own sub-memes of Columbus. Like, there's a Burger King on Fourth that is traditionally, like — I don't know how it's not shut down, but it's got the worst service ever. The lights will all be on, and there'll be eight people in line, and nobody will be serving food. Or there'll be a handwritten sign up that's poorly misspelled that says —

Tim Fulton 29:12This is the Burger King on —

Doug Powhida 29:14I think it's even on Fourth. Fourth, it's like near Rod Graham.

Tim Fulton 29:20I think it's Fifth. Okay. We will verify.

Doug Powhida 29:23But then they've also got, like, there's a guy — and probably a couple of men in Columbus — where somebody will go around and recycle pallets, and they don't have a truck, they've got a car, and they'll have six or seven. So people love to take photos of that. Big Rust — there's a guy that has a license plate that says "Big Rust," and I'm not 100% sure who Big Rust is. I'm not sure if he's a rapper, or if he is a celebrity in some way, shape, or form —

Tim Fulton 29:47Or just a personality, this guy, like the Buckeye guy.

Doug Powhida 29:51Oh, yeah. Big Rust has Cookie Monster airbrushed on his truck, and so people will post sightings of that. It's always fun to be like, you go to the subreddit, you see people complaining about stuff, and then you'll see one of these fun memes, and you can be like, "Ah, life is whole again."

Tim Fulton 30:11Absolutely. I want to make sure — I don't know if you listen to the podcast, I hope that you do — but I end every episode by asking folks what they think Columbus is doing well, and what they think Columbus is maybe not doing so well. So go ahead. You've got an opinion, let's go.

Doug Powhida 30:32God, I don't know if I have an opinion. I mean, I think that Columbus does a pretty good job of supporting the LGBTQ community, I would say. I feel that people are supportive. I would hope that it feels like a safe environment. And a lot of companies will definitely stand behind the needs of that community. So I really feel like that's great. Especially because, man, that Dude Operators is still around, and that is one of the most fun things. And we've got our yearly, for Pride Month, we'll have the Pride Parade, which — I think it was gone last year. So I think that's something we're doing a pretty good job of.

Tim Fulton 31:19And then what aren't we doing so well?

Doug Powhida 31:22Oh, gosh, getting that professional football team? No. You know, I don't want to beat up the politicians, but it just feels like, it doesn't matter who the mayor is, it doesn't matter if they're Democrat or Republican, it just feels like nothing ever happens. Or if things are happening, it feels a little backwards. It kind of stinks, because we've got all these outside-Columbus politicians coming into our downtown area, and their opinions don't really match how I feel, how a lot of folks in Columbus feel. But it's too bad. It feels like, if we actually ruled the place, things would be a lot better. I could be doing a better job at a lot of things, but instead I just complain.

Tim Fulton 32:11Right. Absolutely. Doug, I appreciate your time today. Hope to have you on again so that we can talk about everything that is Columbus, unique or not.

Doug Powhida 32:21Awesome. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Tim Fulton 32:34Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite Reddit user. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.