Previously in the past, we have enjoyed making fanciful articles that mention our plans for extravagant wealth. It is a hobby, you could say. You could also say that it is our way of using the Power of Attraction to Manifest Our Best Dreams. Whether or not the Universe as an entity totally agrees with that assessment, I guess we will find out. But we still enjoy looking at local real estate, at the very least, and plan on how to improve our chosen city where we shall live out our most glorious days.
Covington, KY, already has a lot going for it besides the fact that we live here. There are so many delicious, fattening food places — the list of new places to try seems to be unending, and everything we have had has been exquisite. There are some book stores, some oddity shops, a record store, places of dark aesthetics — sometimes all in the same place! There are breweries of course, and even one that is circus-themed. They have a circus school (or they did) in like the next town over, and of course the ventriloquism museum isn’t far away either. We are very thankful for the things we already have, but I think there’s some room to cater even more to our specific tastes!
The Universe granted my loud, repeated spoken wish of delivering empanadas into my mouth, but it also apparently read my article about having a closer cafe, as one did appear about five blocks away soon after the post. And it read the article on placing my friends in commercial spaces because instead of Kevin having a mystical shop on Pike Street, some other people opened up a mystical shop farther up on Pike Street! Furthermore, the shop I had selected for Kevin’s business wound up becoming the empanada eatery. All in all, the real life results might be better than my original intention — I can always find another way to make Kevin move to our fine city and flourish as a result.
Around HQ, we frequently mention our daydreams of shop-owning. We have all these great ideas for shops, diners, delis, and community centers that serve various purposes. We have to stop short, obviously, once any seriousness enters the conversation. Not a single one of us here at sneer campaign actually wants to be tied to a brick and mortar store. Our print-on-demand stores are often too much for us to pay attention to more than once every three or four months — imagine having to physically BE somewhere for hours every day! It is a hideous, suffocating nightmare, in my very honest opinion to be quite honest with you.
However, we do still imagine an alternate reality where clones and hive minds exist, clones of us who are convinced that since there are so many of us, we DO have the time to dedicated to an entrepreneurial endeavor and are happy with our lot in life. Maybe even we, the originals, could relax into that lifestyle, if one of our clone sets were out there getting agents and wheeling and dealing in ways that we are too tired and stressed to do ourselves. Actually, I would prefer to be the clone set that leads a life of pure leisure without the burden of guilt that hustle culture breathes into our faces at every opportunity.
Covington Night Coffee
As mentioned mere paragraphs ago, this town has a lot going on in it but it is mostly of the fattening food kind. While that is indeed delicious and I never want that to change, there is one thing that is mysteriously lacking: All Hours Coffee. While there are several coffee places which exist here, most of them seem to close earlier in the day. Some of us need night coffee! Well maybe we don’t neeed it but we want it! Dollissa used to work in a cafe in Newark that was open from eight o’ clock in the morning til ten o’ clock at night. Where is our version of that, Covington? Our gelato place serves coffee later in the day, but there we run the risk of also eating our ever-increasing weight in gelato! I know that there are worse problems to have.
A Comic Bookery
I don’t think any of us in the compound of sneering even like comic books particularly, but there seems to be a need for a comic book store in any good city. It is one of my core beliefs. There is one in the neighboring town of Newport. It appears to have a lot to do with Games, too. We don’t need to go that far. You’ll note in the map below that there is a place in Covington that counts as a place for comics, but really it is an amazing toy store and scifi shop that is very excellent and we are proud of it, but it is a very good store that happens to also have comics in it. Although it is close to the comic book store that we are chanting to the heavens for (and is in many ways better), it is not the standard comic book store the people of Covington deserve.
I envision a small hole in the wall kind of store, one that is not near the popular areas of town. Maybe it can be in Peaselburg or Lewisburg. It could even be in Latonia! And yes, I’m aware that many of you don’t live here in Covington (yet) so you don’t know the neighborhood names, but whose fault is that? (Yours. It’s your fault. You should have moved here already.) Anyway, I’d like it to be off the beaten path and giving the illusion that it has been there for fifty years. Universe, I trust you are taking notes.
Bike Shoppery
Along with plentiful, safe bike lanes, bike paths, bike streets for bikes only, a shop that offers affordable bikes and affordable bike repair would be a nice addition to our city. This may be a wish on behalf of Jamie, who is the ardent rider of bicycles in the Sneer Compound, but I am aware that there are many bikes jetting around these streets, darting in and out of traffic, and dangerously disregarding the laws of the road in a manner so cavalier that I always stop and marvel over it.
Personally, I think an affordable shop would best serve our community because I think the wealthy snoots can drive their la dee da car to a snootier shop if that’s what they need to do. I think Covington is reaching its gentrification limit. There, I said it. It might be surpassing it even as I type these words. But that is an article for a local community website or furious zine-based manifesto!
Laundro Galaxy
There’s nothing gentrified about laundromats! Not even ones with delightful themes! I crave for there to be a place where people can gather to launder clothes, maybe have a snack or non-fancy coffee, play arcade games while they wait, pet some laundromat cats who live there, and also maybe read free books — like one of those Little Libraries, but as a whole room where there are laundry machines. Also, the whole place is decorated in almost-childlike themes of outer space, so that the name of the establishment makes sense!
I admit that I was inspired by the legendary (and sadly gone) Cincinnati laundromat and concert venue bar called Sudsy Malone’s. It was such a good idea. I want a good idea like that near to me. I want there to be a laundry facility that people like to go to even when they don’t have any laundry to launder! Laundro-Galaxy has long been a dream of ours, so maybe the Universe can plop this one down here somewhere soon.
Marionettery
We already have a few community and allotment gardens in Covington, some small theaters, and theater costume places, but I have personally noticed a grave lack of community theaters dedicated to the marionette arts. Learning to build, learning to craft, learning to send your immortal soul into a creature of wood and cloth — I would like for there to be one of those here. The Frisch Marionette Company — one of the finest in the world — is located somewhere across the river in Cincinnati, but that might as well be on the other side of the planet to a non-driver. Also, I imagine it’s hard to become part of their esteemed company.
All I want, very simply, is for the Frisch Theater to branch off and dedicate precious time and energy to open up their own theater house for puppetry, in Covington, preferably in my neighborhood. Most preferably of all would be if they bought the (currently occupied) church next door to us so that we may worship these very real idol dolls.
Sneer Store: The Softer Side Of Sneers
Maybe in Austinburg, our neighborhood, we can open up a physical store where we can hang out all day, scheming our schemes between customers. We can sell my art, and prints, and clothing. We can also sell Dollissa’s crafts and woven arts. We can sell all of the merchandise with my illustrations on it that we can come up with. I can cook up like five new designs a day, I won’t ever stop! My Art Deco Cats, my eat the rich notions, my work incentive posters, my carousel horses, my cryptid illustrations, and my drawings of the war of the worlds villains demolishing our fair city — they can all be handled and purchased by our adoring fans. We can sell our books, too!
All we need to do is find two or three trustworthy and willing employees to actually do the retail work and some kind of machine that creates our products quickly and easily, with very little cost going into production.
