Discoveries of Columbus

Last week my wife Leslie and I traveled to the heartland of Ohio for Thanksgiving with her family in Columbus. This was my second visit to Columbus and I have now come to the conclusion that it is the Rodney Dangerfield of American cities. It gets no respect!

For example, if you asked ten people from North Carolina which city was bigger, Charlotte or Columbus, I would wager that eight or nine would answer Charlotte with little or no hesitation. Wrong! Charlotte is the nation’s 20th largest city with a population of about 1,594,800 while Columbus is the 15th most populous with about 1,708,700 people.

Buckeye madness! Ohio State fans filled Columbus area sportswear stores after OSU defeated Michigan 42-39 in “the game.” Photo by Jeff Eason

I think the reason for this misconception is that Charlotte is home to two professional sports teams, the NBA’s Bobcats and the NFL’s Panthers, whereas Columbus only has the Blue Jackets, the Rodney Dangerfield of NHL hockey teams.

Of course, Columbus does have the number one college football team in all the land and while we were in Ohio we saw firsthand what an outbreak of Buckeye fever can do to a restless citizenry. To compare the rivalry between Duke and Carolina in college basketball with that of Ohio State and Michigan in football is to compare a civil discourse about the relative merits of two different religions with an all-out jihad.

I saw mild-mannered Midwestern housewives in Ohio wearing T-shirts proclaiming things about the Michigan Wolverines that are not suitable for re-printing in a family newspaper. Buckeye fans even went after UM’s hometown, saying what they would do to Ann Arbor if she were a real person and not just a quaint college village in Michigan. I’m all for school spirit but these people had the same look in their eyes that the villagers did when they brought the pitchforks and torches to Frankenstein’s house.

All of this was witnessed, mind you, a week after “The Game.” Yes, in Columbus you just have to say “the game” and everyone knows that you mean Ohio State vs. Michigan. This year the game took on added life-altering importance for Ohioans (if such a thing is possible) as the two teams were ranked #1 and #2 nationally heading into that fateful Saturday.

For the past 16 years group of punk musicians in Columbus have annually adopted the name The Dead Schembechlers in honor of former Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler. The guys in the band would dress like Bo’s arch-rival Woody Hayes and sing songs like “Bomb Ann Arbor Now” at pep rallies and frat parties. The day before “the game” the band was about to play its biggest show ever in front of 1,500 at the Newport Music Hall when their namesake up and died on them.

“(Drummer) Bo Biafra was really crushed,” said friend of the band Mark Borror. “When you’re so close to a project, to find out that the man actually died. The Schembechlers weren’t about hating the man. Here’s Bo, who grew up in Ohio, was an assistant coach under Woody, then went to the dark side.”

The show went on that night, even if the Dead Schembechlers cut all of the anti-Schembechler songs from their set and decided that the profits from the show would be donated to a charity of the Schembechler family’s choosing.

Despite the fact that Columbus is home to the largest university in America, it is much more than a college town. It is also home to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, consistently rated one of the top five such attractions in the U.S. We spent three hours there last Friday and according to the zoo’s map had only seen about a quarter of the exhibits. One of the zoo’s most recent additions is a pack of Malaysian flying foxes, brown bats that are as big as a medium-sized dog with wingspans of six feet!

Jack Hanna is the zoo’s famous director emeritus. You have probably seen him dumping a venomous and/or nervous creature into the lap of Jay Leno or David Letterman on late night TV.

While Charlotte is known nationally as a banking center, Columbus has a similar reputation in the insurance industry and is home to such firms as Nationwide and Cardinal Health. It is also the home of Limited Brands, a company that includes subsidiaries The Limited, Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works.

Columbus is also the hometown of three major fast-food chains, giving the visitor a glimpse into the greasy gastronomic habits of Ohioans. They are, in no particular order, Wendy’s, Charley’s Grilled Subs and White Castle.

All things considered, I don’t think that Columbus is destined to replace Orlando or Las Vegas as a major vacation destination for traveling Americans. And that’s probably just fine with most Columbans (Columbites? Columbians?). They’re content to live in their relatively unknown metropolis on the banks of the Olentangy and Scioto rivers, patiently waiting until “The Game” rolls around next fall.