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If you like fried fish and fries, Alabama Fish Bar is the place for you.  It’s located at the intersection of Race and Liberty in Over the Rhine.  I’ve driven by a thousand times, but stopped in for the first time last week.  I’ve always wished for more restaurants in Over the Rhine, so there’s no excuse for not visiting and supporting the ones that are already there.

Alabama Fish Bar is a small take-out place where your only choice of food is three types of fish, Perch, Cod, and Whiting. The fish is lightly coated in batter and deep fried.  It’s crispy and not too greasy.  Each order of fish is served on a bed of fries and some bread.  With each order there’s a choice of toppings of grilled onions and hot peppers.  The fish and fries are handed to you before they’re wrapped up so you can add your condiments of choice, malt vinegar, ketchup, or mustard.

I don’t eat fried foods often, but I enjoyed the fish.  It’s a cheap meal and you get a lot of fish for the money.

I saw Scrappy Doo at Findlay Market on Sunday.  I want one!

Scrappy Doo not backing down!

On the same walk that brought me to Goettafest, we also encountered the Ride the Ducks vehicle sitting in front of Newport on the Levee.  The Duck had just loaded up and the tour guide was giving his talk.  As we were walking back over the bridge to Cincinnati we saw the Duck drive by us and later float by on the river.

The Duck seemed aptly named, slowly moving up the Ohio River.

I took this photo of the Tyler Davidson Fountain at Fountain Square yesterday with my iPhone.  Turned out better than I thought it would.

It was beautiful day yesterday, so my friends and I went for a walk downtown and over the bridges in to Kentucky.  At Newport on the Levee, we stumbled across Goettafest with lots of booths, entertainment, and Goetta.

What’s Goetta? From Wikipedia:

Goetta is a peasant food of German origin that is popular in the greater Cincinnati area. It is primarily composed of ground meat and oats. Pronounced gétt-aa, ged-da or get-uh Americanized Pronunciation, this dish originated with German settlers from the northwestern regions of Oldenburg, Hannover, and Westphalia who emigrated to the Cincinnati area in the 19th century. The word “Goetta” comes from the Low German word götte.

Goetta was originally a peasant dish, meant to stretch out servings of meat over several meals to conserve money.

The modern popularity of goetta in Cincinnati has led to it being called “Cincinnati Caviar”. Glier’s Goetta, the largest commercial producer of goetta, produces more than 1,000,000 lb (450 metric tons) annually, around 99% of which is consumed locally in greater Cincinnati.

Cincinnati Caviar is a pretty strange nickname since caviar is not exactly known as a peasant food.  I’ve had Goetta before and it’s ok, nothing really special to me.  I wonder who’s eating the 450 metric tons of this stuff.

Here are some photos from yesterday.  Love the Goetta vending machine.

From NYTimes.com: Shorts Crack the Code

From NYTimes.com: Sichuan Teacher Punished for Quake Photos, Rights Group Says

A Chinese schoolteacher who posted his photographs of quake-damaged schools online has been ordered to a labor camp for a year, a human rights group said Wednesday.

He was detained on June 25, and the principal of his school was told that he was being held for “disseminating rumors and destroying social order,” the group said in a statement.

His wife was informed earlier this month that he had been ordered to serve a year of re-education through labor, an extrajudicial system that sidesteps the need for trial or formal charge.

No trial. One year in the labor camps for re-education.  Just for posting pictures of shoddy school construction.  This hits home for me because if I felt like a something was wrong here and I had photographs of it, I wouldn’t hesitate to post them on the web.  Here, that makes you a blogger.  In China, that makes you a prisoner in one of their labor camps.

I hope the added attention brought by the Olympics sheds some more light on these human rights abuses.

From NYTimes.com: A Lab Is Set to Test the Gender of Some Female Athletes

Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have set up a sex-determination laboratory to evaluate “suspect” female athletes, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Sunday.

Man, this has to be one of the worst jobs to have and really embarrassing for the athlete if they’re asked to be tested.  I’m pretty sure they’re not testing the likes of Maria Sharapova or Jenni Finch. Instead it’s the 300 pound Hungarian female weightlifters.