Greg Badger poses at the Emery Apartments where he lives in Over-the-Rhine. (Photo by Craig Ruttle)
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Rehabber
Greg Badger
Greg Badger, 44, former national sales manager for a company that
sold research journals, is rehabbing townhouses these days.
A few steps from the back door of a Race Street townhouse that he
is fixing up, Greg Badger sees a large group of men urinating.
Several days later, he notices others smoking crack pipes in the same
place.
"I think I've been more cautious and I keep my eyes open more,"
he says. "You're much more aware of the problems here when you live
here - the little things like going to Main Street to go to a
gallery, and you get asked for change three or four times."
He doesn't feel threatened. "But those are the things that keep
people from coming downtown," Mr. Badger says.
Recently divorced, Mr. Badger moved into the Emery Center at the
end of June, three months after the riots. He has always lived in
racially integrated neighborhoods. He loves the architecture of city
buildings. But it was also a lifestyle decision: he walks to the
library, to restaurants, to buy groceries, much like his friends in
Germany do.
His spacious corner apartment in the Emery has a drop-dead panorama
from two sides.
"I never considered not living down here," he says. "People
talk down about Cincinnati, about how it's so racist. And I think,
what town isn't? Where's the model? I think we're trying down here."
A short walk away in his gutted townhouse, sun streams in through
high windows. He gazes out, toward Washington Park.
"In some ways, we're still in the middle of last year, with the
first anniversary coming up, and the far too late reports on the
Officer Roach story," he says. Worried about break-ins, he has
thought about getting a gun, "just to have to protect my property,"
he says.
"If anything's changed, I probably care more now about what's
going on. In some ways that's selfish, because I've got an economic
interest in what happens to downtown."
He spends more time reading the paper - not just the headlines,
and "making an effort to understand both sides."
"We need to take the city back from the thugs," he believes. "I
want to be in a mixed neighborhood, both racially and
socio-economically mixed. But I don't want to be around thugs. We
have the power to stand together, black and white, and take the city
back."
- Janelle Gelfand
Faces of Over-the-Rhine
Restaurant owner Paul Sebring
Taft senior Darrel Shields
Social worker Angela Coleman
Sarah Center director Sister Jeanette Buehler
Jordanian grocer Taraq T.A. Adwani
Filmmaker Steve Gebhardt
Gallery owner Suzanna Terril
Beauty shop supplier Chong Kim
Teacher's aide Kemberley Alexander
Waitress Karla Davis
Teacher Sharon Brooks
Dock worker Leo Sneed
Police officer Michael Ammann
Soup kitchen manager Denise McPherson
Artist Joseph M. Winterhalter
Janitor Latrell Walker
Fund-raiser Torren "T.J." Partridge
School social worker Joe Wilmers
Rehabber Greg Badger
Medical student John Eckman
Treatment counselor Calvin W. Wooten
Photographer Jimmy Heath
The Police
Violence up, arrests down
Changes made since April 2001
Q&A with Police Chief Streicher
Q&A with former F.O.P. president Keith Fangman
Neighbor to Neighbor
Community meetings produce results
Going beyond polite silence
What your neighbors said
What do you think?
What's happening in 145 communities
A sampling of communities:
• Mount Healthy
• Pleasant Ridge
• Milford
What institutions are doing
Related Links
Neighbor to Neighbor home page
Matters of Race: Bridging the divide in Greater Cincinnati
On the Same Page Cincinnati
Live Without Hate
Common Ground
Cincinnati 2001: Year of unrest
Unrest in the city: Archive of riot coverage
Unrest photo timeline
Jim Borgman on race
