Her smile, that’s what cued me in. Was it a smile that was specifically targeted for me or was it a smile she prepared for all customers? After all, I dropped by Current Cuisine just for the soup.

It was the summer that I graduated from Antioch and I was basically extending a co-op in Yellow Springs. I was living in a shack on High Street. An extension cord from the main house brought me heat and entertainment from a radio. Water was heated on the oven and brought back to me in a deep pot for my daily bird baths. It wasn’t a sexy existence, but it allowed me to embrace the town of Yellow Springs that I found rather elusive during my three year Antioch stint. I was helping a guy build a house and I was, oh-so occasionally, writing articles for the Yellow Springs News under the wise tutelage of Amy Harper, then editor of the News.

By Levi B. Cowperthwaite

The first time my sweetheart and I shared a dance was during a party in the romance-inspiring Dance Space. The music was blaring, the bodies were sweaty and spinning, and my now-sweetheart and I were dancing with a respectable, torturous distance between us when she leaned in close and whispered in my ear, “Can I grind with you?” My libido’s response?: Oh. Hell. Yes. We didn’t start dating until almost a year later, and she was actually probably yelling (rather than whispering) to be heard over the music, but it was such a sexy, sweet moment (and satisfying dance), that when I think of it today, I feel everything I was feeling in that moment: sexy, desirable, giddy, hot.

By the CCNWSS (Jeremie Jordan)

About eight years ago Reversal of Man proclaimed that “internet and indie-rock are killing hard-core.” Certainly Dayton’s own once prolific extreme music scene has since reached a very stark low. With punk rock bars and venues closing their doors, all-ages shows practically ceasing, veteran hipsters moving away or settling down, and the attempt of major labels to cash in on the pseudo-post-heavy watered down trendy music that passes as punk, metal, and hardcore, the younger bands in the local scene that have any ties to, or play any true form of these styles are very far and few between. Once upon a not so distant past, Dayton was synonymous with creative and ground-breaking music. Our city was known for the quantity of quality music that emerged in the nineteen nineties with such gems as Brainiac, The Breeders, Guided By Voices, The Amps, Twenty-third Chapter, and countless others leading the way and bringing much attention to the energetic scene. The past few years, however, have been marred by bad luck, tragedy, and loss of resources.

Welcome to the Dried Baby Organ Dispensary. Here at the D.B.O.D. we pride ourselves on collecting and recommending only the freshest of jams to smoke your babies to.

Telepathe- Farewell Forest EP [ The Social Registry :: 2006 ] In the dead of night, deep in the forest; in the shadiest of groves, the neglected, lost souls of this earth gather and cause a mighty din. And not in an A.A. meeting kind of way. This is sheer debauchery, a feast of sin even. It is urgent and sensual, incomprehensibly dark and devilishly alluring. Like swimming through the folds of the velvet blanket of night, and drowning, and sinking into it, endlessly…… And then waking up inside of a jack-o-lantern. Awful, demonic creatures are dancing around you in circles and laughing beautifully. Everything seems fluid and starts to blur, and you find yourself lost but comfortable, and the shadows creep over your mind like a coma. And then you wake up again, alone in the rain. The wind is blowing and the leaves are falling and you are staring at the face of eternity. It looks kind of like movement stuck inside of an aging polaroid photograph and…. then it’s gone. That’s it, party’s over. The way the details of a dream slip away from you as you watch the sun drift up over the horizon, it just goes away.

by Marjorie Jensen 

As tautological as it may sound, Chicago is an expensive city. Between only the most essential groceries and envelopes marked “Antioch Business Office,�? unexpected bills found me miles from my “current mailing address.�? My pithy checks signed by the President of the Newberry don’t cover half of these costs. I had to find a second job. I wasn’t surprised.

The second store within a few blocks of my apartment with a “Help Wanted�? sign offered Caitlin and I jobs moments after turning in our applications. I am now an exhausted employee of Jimmy John’s sub shop. In fact, I have to leave for work in exactly two hours. Do I like it? It offers me something that the Newberry doesn’t: working-class people.

Now, I’m not implying uneducated. Some of the kids go to various colleges in Chicago. Most are just refreshingly down-to-earth. Take Kenny, one of our delivery drivers (read bike messenger with subs), informing us about where the elastic in his boxers had begun to separate from the rest. Davorah, our manager, asked him to clean the lower racks of the cold table (where we make our subs).

“I told you about my underwear,�? he replied, unwilling to bend over. It breaks up the monotony.

JJ’s is open late on the weekends (by late, I mean until 5am) and we are on Division Street (read one of the most expensive bar districts in Chicago). My Friday nights are spent listening to the mantra of my manager, Matt: “bathrooms are for customers only,�? to the rich, drunken “douchebags�? with popped collars. He changes the CD to Mindless Self Indulgence and sighs as they ignore him.