Time to fire up the Way-Back machine, although this trip isn't too far back in time. We set the destination dial for the mid-1990s, specifically 1994 and 1996. When you visited downtown in the mid-90s, what were you likely to be doing? How about going to the brand-new Jacobs Field to watch the Indians win 100 games in 1995 or 99 games in 1996? Or, taking a sunset cruise on the Nautica Queen down the river and out on the lake? Or having dinner at one of the many riverside restaurants on the Flats East Bank?

 

Rather than read about it, let's just look at it and see what has changed and what hasn't in the roughly 15 years since.....

 

Of course, any weekend in August in the mid-90s would mean a pennant race involving that team called the ballpark at Ontario and Carnegie home. What's that place called nowadays? ? ?

 

 

 

I zoomed in on the scoreboard. Check out that Indians line-up in 1996! No wonder we won 99 games that year. But while pitchers like homegrown product Brian Anderson were good, they weren't good enough to win championships....

 

 

 

Yep, another sell-out....

 

 

 

After a ballgame, a stroll over to the Flats was usually in order to celebrate another win by hoisting a few and smoking a few (which you could do indoors back then)! Here are some friends and family at Dick's Last Resort. And check out that cell-phone ... it's a cross between an 80s "brick" and the pre-smart phones of just a few years ago....

 

 

 

OK, here's the shot you've all been waiting for ... These Flats East Bank riverfront restaurants are no longer there. They are part of the section that was demolished. And yes, that's me (29th birthday) with the cigarette and the booze (both of which are years in my past) and my friend Mark. I am standing on the deck behind Dick's Last Resort, next to Max & Erma's. Those were the days when the chain restaurants wanted to cash in on the Flats' success. They didn't have long to live....

 

 

 

So let's re-set the dial back exactly two years earlier to August 1994. Groups like Nine Inch Nails, Scatman John and Depeche Mode were keeping Flats clubs pumping and baseball went on strike just when the Indians were heating up a pennant race -- their first since 1959. But there was other stuff to do that summer, like anticipating the first Browns team since 1984 without Bernie Kosar as quarterback (the Browns went 11-5 in 1994 and won a playoff game, BTW!).

 

Here we are aboard the Nautica Queen for a dinner cruise on the river and lake. After departing from the Powerhouse in the Flats, we start out on the lake and check out that new building under construction at North Coast Harbor. Now what in the name of rock & roll could that building be?

 

 

 

We head up the river and see some of the other pleasure boats out and about, including this paddle-wheel boat "RiverQueen" parked by what is now Ohio City Bike Co-Op on Columbus Road....

 

 

 

This view of Tower City hasn't changed much in nearly 17 years....

 

 

 

This one has changed quite a bit. Longtime Flats fixtures Jim's Steakhouse and the Fire Station with fireboat (out on a call) at Collision Bend are both long gone....

 

 

 

And we end with this view of the Big Three from the Flats, between the Columbus Road and Scranton peninsulas....

 

 

 

Hope you enjoyed this brief trip back in time to the 20th century!  :wink:

Great shots!  Can't say I really miss any of the individual restaurants on the East Bank...  but I do miss that energy. Great memories from that era.

 

KJP, is that Flats firehouse really gone?  I remember reading sometimes in the last couple years that it might close but as of the last googlemap shots it was still there and operating.

Great shots!  Can't say I really miss any of the individual restaurants on the East Bank...  but I do miss that energy. Great memories from that era.

 

The Watermark?

Curious, what happened to East Bank that it flatlined?

Curious, what happened to East Bank that it flatlined?

 

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,23936.msg545072.html#msg545072

The Watermark?

 

I don't remember enough about the food quality to really miss it, but yeah, it was a beautiful spot and not generic chainy schlock.  Happily it can be reborn someday because the building survives :)

Wonderful post.

 

I worked at Jacobs Field for the first nine years and those teams of the mid-late 90s were a blast.  The average Friday night routine was working at a game, sneaking downstairs and taking a shower in the ushers changing room, then going over the flats and spending all the money we just made at the game.

 

Good memories.