Sunday, May 02, 1999
Say so long to Stenger's
BY JIM KNIPPENBERG
The Cincinnati Enquirer
This looks to be the end of an era: After 52 years at the stove, Leo Sunderman is cooling his burners.
Sunderman owns Stenger's, the Vine Street cafe in Over-the-Rhine that's famous for its blue-plate specials and its eclectic clientele. It may be the only place in town where a tableful of CEOs sits next to a tableful of street people next to a tableful of judges next to Findlay Market shoppers doing Bloody Marys.
It's a circus, this, which Sunderman presides over with non-stop banter while slicing up sauerbraten, pot roasts and hams.
But not for long. Sunderman is selling the cafe and building with 11 apartments. It has been in his family 65 years.
“It's been a good life, but I'm ready to sit down,” he says. “I have five grandchildren and golf to play. I'm ready.”
One more thing: Real estate agent Chris Schoonover, who has the listing, usually mails post cards with pictures of her listings. For this one, she's sending a picture of Sunderman. “He is Stenger's. The building isn't,” she says.
FOR THE BIRDS: Merciful heavens, it's another flock of pink flamingoes.
Yep, says Gerald Checco, a Cincinnati Parks exec who decided Krohn Conservatory is too tasteful.
“It needs a flamingo invasion,” he says, adding that even as we speak he's asking people to loan flamingoes, accessorized with tacky jewelry, cheap sunglasses, bad hats, whatever.
“What I hope is that Krohn, one of the most revered collections in town, is invaded by the world's most reviled lawn ornaments.”
He'll install the birds on the front lawn later this month, he says, because the annual butterfly show is in progress and it's already a fantasy fest (bunches of things based on Alice in Wonderland).
“I think it could be scarier than Hitchcock's Birds.”
We'll say.
NORTHERN NOTES: And this from way the heck up north: They made it.
Referring here to Cincinnatian Doug Hall, founder of Richard Saunders International and Eureka Ranch, and the 11-member Great Aspirations team's North Pole trip.
They trekked 250 miles, recreating Robert Peary's famous 1909 trip. They left April 13 and arrived at the Pole at 8:26 p.m. Monday.
But not without problems, says Jordan Pines, the Aspirations director who kept in touch with them.
There was that white-out with 4-foot visibility; there were the ice bridges they had to build; there was the day Hall fell in water registering 50 degrees below zero.
But they made it . . . all in the name of doing good for kids.
The trip was planned to promote www.greataspirations.org, a Web site that gives parents ideas on how to inspire their kids. It worked: Pines says the site got 75,000 hits a day (that's not a typo) during the trip.
Hall arrives home today.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
Psst! appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Have an item to report? Call Jim Knippenberg at 768-8513; fax: 768-8330.
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