9 Things to Know About Emily

Aug 31, 2017

1)What is something you get unreasonably excited about?

Tacos. Part of the reason I was so excited that Curiosity is located downtown is that I know I can find some good tacos for lunch without looking too far. I’m a pretty simple eater and most of the food I want to eat on a daily basis can be thrown into a taco. Even when they are “gourmet”, tacos are pretty simple yet so delicious. My family thinks I’m joking, but I’m probably bringing tortillas to the next Thanksgiving and testing out my theory that you can turn anything into a taco.

2) You are a Cincinnati native, born and raised. Tell us about how you’ve “found your roots” as you’ve grown up here.

As a kid I didn’t do a lot downtown or go to events or even Reds games with my family. We were more “neighborhood people.” That at least helped me identify with the suburbs and neighborhoods of Cincinnati. As I got older though and went to college here in Cincinnati I had the freedom to do and go wherever I wanted. I started going to more Reds games, festivals downtown, I attended Bunbury and started strolling around OTR and The Banks. I’ve come into adulthood at a great time for this city. I feel like as I grow so does Cincinnati. I love my hometown so much that I have the skyline tattooed on my shoulder.

3)Explain how you managed to keep your phone dry during a torrential downpour in Hawaii.

This is one of my proudest moments. My parents, my best friend, and myself biked a 3 mile trail out to a volcano in Hawaii which was one of the biggest adventures I’d ever been on. At the end of the trail we walked off the side a bit to see a beautiful view of lava flowing out of the volcano and hitting the ocean. That’s the first and only time a view of nature has ever made me cry. Everything went great until the sun went down and we got stuck in a torrential downpour and had to bike three miles back to our cars in the dark. Before we got to the volcano we bought a backpack for some of our stuff. When the rain started I put everyone’s phones in the pencil bag that came with the backpack. Then I put the pencil bag in the matching lunchbox and then I put the lunchbox in the backpack. I was NOT going to waste time in Hawaii trying to get myself a new phone. So, while all of the humans on the trip were completely soaked by the end, the phones were safe and dry.

4) Tell us a memorable story of yourself when you were a kid.

In grade school we had a program called AR (Accelerated Reading) that assigned you points whenever you read a book and took a quiz on it. I was the top reader in my grade so by the time the end of the year awards rolled around everyone was really curious to see how many points I had. The three students with the most points earned awards and two of my friends won second and third. It wasn’t a surprise that I came in first except for the fact that I beat the student in second place by almost 200 points. That person also happened to be my best friend, who ended up very jealous that I beat her by so many points. She was so jealous that for the rest of our friendship that whenever she told the story about how many books we read she told everyone that I came in second place that she beat me by 200 points. She lied about this through the rest of grade school, middle school and into high school. The day I finally called her out for still being jealous and lying was the day her and I stopped being friends. I just couldn’t take it anymore. We were 17 and she was still lying about something from when we were 9!

5)Tell us about how you learned to ride a bike.

One night when I was five my sister wanted to help me learn how to ride a bike. She was doing okay until she ran me into our metal basketball pole and my parents said I had to be done for the night. The next day I was ready to start learning again but everyone was too busy to teach me and I was livid. I NEEDED to know how to ride a bike. Instead of waiting around until someone had time for me I took my bike out of the garage and spent two hours out in my driveway, trying figure out how to ride by myself. I finally managed to not only get up on the seat of the bike without falling, I actually completely taught myself how to ride. Case and point if I want something I will figure out how to make it happen.

6) You are a big fan of live music. Tell us about your appreciation for local Cincinnati bands.In college I was part of a student media group called Bearcast Media. I managed all of our social media accounts so I was very connected to everything Bearcast internally and did with the local music scene. It was amazing to discover great music right here in the city from so many young and talented people. I’m a huge fan of the Best New Bands show Bogart’s hosts every year. I think listening to local music is really special because you feel like you’ve discovered a secret gem.

7) What are your top 2 pet peeves?

When you’re trying to talk to a friend or someone about something stressful happening in your life and you just need someone to listen but then they start comparing their problems to yours and try to make their problems look so much worse.

When people say “would of” instead of “would have.”

8)What is a nerdy thing about you?

I grew up watching Star Wars. My family watched a different Star Wars movie every Saturday night and ate popcorn. I can probably watch all of the movies in my head, and I’m still on the edge of my seat every time I watch them. One of my most prized possessions is a Star Wars themed Cincinnati Reds bobblehead. And yes, the first thing I did when I took it out of the box was pretend to fly it around and say “pew pew.” I also own a Star Wars tin lunch box.

9)If you had unlimited resources for the next two years, what would you do? (After two years, you go back to your life as is now.)

I would open a bar whose profits all went to dog shelters and pet hospitals. We’d definitely serve a ton of local beer and partner with local breweries for special releases of beers with punny dog names. There would be a designated courtyard for food trucks, cornhole and the whole place would obviously be dog friendly. During happy hours different shelters in the city would be invited to bring dogs for people to adopt.