Dayton is sweet on Dayton
HOW TO CAST YOUR VOTE IN DAYTON.COM’S BEST OF DAYTON CONTEST
Dayton, I knew you liked liked Dayton even if you didn’t always act like it.
And boy did some Daytonians not act like it.
Just as in the 1979 psychological horror “When A Stranger Calls,” the “call” was very much coming from inside the house.
When I arrived in this gem of a city two decades ago, I would get negative comments from Daytonians whenever I’d mention something cool about the city.
Kind words about downtown Dayton, in particular, would bring out the venom.
“Downtown, why would anyone go down there?”
“Why would you move to Dayton, Ohio?”
I didn’t get this chip on people’s shoulders — and still don’t to an extent — but as time went on, I realized its size was enormous.
There were few symbols of that chip larger than the Dayton Arcade, a sprawling, five-building complex smack dab in the heart of the center city.
John Gower, a placemaking engineer with the city of Dayton and CityWide, has described the Arcade of old as “a city within a city.”
A sparkling piece of the city’s pride when it opened in 1904, the Arcade officially became a “dead mall” in 1990 and, to some, a reminder of what was lost and would never again be.
I’ll admit I was among those who did not see much hope for the old girl, which is ironic.
The Arcade’s exterior is one of the reasons I thought I’d like living in Dayton when I interviewed with the “Dayton Daily News” in 1999 before landing the job in 2000.
I looked up at The Arcade on my way to the newspaper’s then-building nearby and thought that a city with a building that beautiful had to be pretty cool.
I was right about Dayton being cool, but as time went on, I learned more about the complex story of the decaying Arcade.
Plans for rehabilitation stopped and started and stopped again.
Hopes were dashed and cynicism set in.
But here we are 30 years after the Arcade closed and there is big life flowing through the structure.
If things go as planned, the University of Dayton and The Entrepreneurs Center’s Hub at the Dayton Arcade will use the space for classes, entrepreneurial support services and working space.
Visions of retail, restaurants and residents in the Arcade dance in Dayton’s head.
Dayton is talking about Dayton differently these days.
This hope and pride started before the Arcade project began to take shape.
The community’s spirit was always there, even if hidden under the surface.
I’ve seen it grow and grow and grow over the years.
The community spirit was felt this summer when the tragedies we are all too familiar with hit: the Memorial Day tornadoes, the mass shooting, the failed KKK rally…
People literally wore their “Dayton Strong” pride across their chests on a new crop of T-shirts.
The fact is that the Arcade is just one project, and there is still much work to do.
Far too many are not included in the prosperity, but the fact that a symbol of pride turned anchor around the neck is being rehabbed should not be overlooked.
Dayton loves Dayton a lot more than it has in a long time.
Hopefully, that love will spread.
The polls are officially open! It’s time once again to weigh in on the best Dayton has to offer in our annual Dayton.com Best of Dayton contest.
This year, more than ever, we want to shine the spotlight on the best things about living in this gem of a city.
Thank you to all of the members of the community who submitted more than 125,000 nominations for this year’s contest. Your nominations helped shape the final ballot. the nominations in the more than 150 categories and vetted those nominations for relevancy to the category. Your top nominations are what you see on this ballot.
Each contest has anywhere between three and 10 finalists, depending on the volume of nominations per category, as well as how close the tallies were in each category.
You can cast one vote per day per category for the duration of the contest, which runs through Feb. 7, 2020.
You can cast your vote at projects.dayton.com/ best_of_dayton/vote
There are two ways to be the first to know the winners. Sign up for the Dayton.com What to Know newsletter or download the Dayton.com app to have results delivered straight to your inbox on Feb. 24, 2020.
We will showcase the first, second and third-place winners in each category.
The number three has worked for one of Dayton’s most celebrated photographers.
Inspired by a photo of his children developed in the darkroom at the Dayton Art Institute, then 33-year-old Andrew Jack Snow III made a decision about his future in 1983.
“I wondered if I would spend the rest of my life thinking what ‘if.’ Wouldn’t it be great to have a life with no regret?” Andy Snow said. “I just jumped in with both feet and my camera.”
Not everything has been perfect, but Snow says the decision to become a full-time photographer has led him to a life of travel, artistic expression and joy.
The Ohio Arts Council announced Thursday, Jan. 9, that Snow will receive a 2020 Governor’s Award in the Individual Artist category.
Snow and eight other Ohio artists will be honored at a luncheon and ceremony at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 25, at the Columbus Athenaeum in downtown Columbus.
James Friedman of Columbus is the only other photographer to have received the individual artist award, Snow said.
At least one Dayton artist has received an individual artist honor for the last 10 years.
“The honor is being nominated. The award is for the community,” said Snow, a resident of Cooper Lofts in downtown Dayton. “The community has nurtured me since I moved here in 1974.”
The Connecticut native’s family relocated to Upper Arlington when his father, Andrew Jack Snow Jr., an engineer
Community development & and salesman, got a job in Columbus in 1965.
Snow said his father and aunt Ruth McKinney passed on the love of photography they got from their grandmother, Margaret Weaver, an amateur photographer and Brookville native.
“It is a wild American story,” Snow said of his family’s history, which can be traced back to the Pilgrims.
The high school All-American swimmer and National Honor Society member earned a degree in philosophy at Princeton University, where he studied under documentary photographer Sol Libsohn and photography historian Peter Bunnell.
Snow moved to Dayton for a job at KH&C Advertising.
“Rike’s (department store) was the first client I served,” he said.
After working at the advertising firm two years, Snow and his then-wife opened a retail business, selling items in Beavercreek, Englewood and the Dayton Mall.
He used some of the money he earned to buy camera equipment.
Snow said he always wanted to be a street photographer and travel. That dream came true.
“I worked through every single magazine you could think of when there were real magazines on paper and no screens,” he said.
That list includes “TIME,” “BusinessWeek,” “Newsweek, “The New York Times,” “Forbes,” and “Fortune” and numerous other publications.
He found jobs with a who’s who of current and past Ohio companies including NCR, General Electric, Procter & Gamble and Reynolds and Reynolds.
“I just wanted to tell the story in one picture,” Snow said.
Snow also took photos of a list of celebrities that includes the late Roger Troutman and for a list of arts organizations that includes Dayton Contemporary Dance Company, Dayton Ballet and Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra.
Snow, the author of the 1993 book “Location Photography Secrets,” was honored as one of 20 “Best Projects of 2013” by the American Society of Media Photographers for “Watershed, Then & Now,” a history project commemorating the Great Flood of 1913 in the Miami Valley.
Snow, who also studied at Ohio University and Antioch University and received a master’s degree in digital media from Antioch University in 2005, remembers the advice he received while photographing famed fantasy and sci-fi writer Ray Douglas Bradbury in the 1980s.
Bradbury, a favorite of Snow’s, told him to do what he enjoyed and the rest will follow. “I don’t have a job; I have a joy,” Show said. “I took (Bradbury’s) words to heart and everything else has followed.”