My Interview with VoyageOhio

A version of this article was published March 21, 2024 on VoyageOhio.  

Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today. 

To go all the way back to the very beginning: I grew up in Vandalia, which is a suburb of Dayton. Throughout my childhood and into my teenage years, I would visit downtown Dayton for the arts and theatre performances through school or family. My grandma worked downtown and took me with her sometimes. I had a very clear concept that everything fun and exciting happened there, and compared to what little there was to do in Vandalia and the surrounding small towns, I was pretty sure I was right.

I took a video production class in high school and in one assignment, I had to conduct interviews. I decided to ask other students what they loved about Dayton and couldn’t believe the negativity I heard. I get that many of them were parroting what they heard from their parents, but it was a shock for me to hear everything from how incredibly dangerous they felt downtown was to how there was nothing going on downtown at all.

I went to college at Wright State University and met lots of people from all over the world, and whenever the subject of Dayton came up, they would say mostly that they didn’t have time or interest to get to know their new, temporary hometown.

After college, I was in the habit of reading all kinds of blogs but I was drawn to blogs about cities – especially ones I could visit easily like Columbus and Cincinnati. I couldn’t find one about Dayton, but checked every now and then. It occurred to me one day that if I couldn’t find the blog I wanted to read, I should write it. And that’s how Girl About Dayton came to be – I created the blog I wanted to read about my town.

And it turned out a lot of other people wanted to read a blog like that, too! I launched my blog in 2011 and pretty soon I had lots of traffic and even opportunities to write for other publications about Dayton. Over the years, all of the grassroots efforts by small business owners, community organizers, and young people dedicated to Dayton brought this dying city back to life.

Has it been a smooth road? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?

After a few years, hackers took over my website and it was really hard getting it back. I lost a ton of content and images and just about all of the wind out of my sails. I couldn’t figure out the tech side of how to get it back up and running and didn’t hire anyone to help me until years later when I happened to be going through a lot of upheaval in my personal life. I wasn’t in a place where I could devote any time to getting the blog set back up so it sat there, unlaunched for years while I focused on writing for other publications, a career change, and posting Dayton things to social media instead.

Finally, in 2023, I was 100% ready to devote the time and energy to my blog and reached back out to my developer, hired a designer and a writing coach, and got the website back up and running within a year. It’s been really great having it back and a lot of fun writing for myself again.

Please tell us more about Girl About Dayton.

Girl About Dayton is all about broadcasting all of the unique, weird, and wonderful things I love about the Gem City to the world. As a writer, I have the ability to communicate these things through articles and maintain an archive of great Dayton food, shopping, and entertainment on the internet where lots of people like to start their planning. My brand is bright, colorful, and fun, like my beautiful city. I’m proud that people resonate with my articles and find them useful, and I’m especially proud when people tell me I’ve helped them find a new favorite place or to see Dayton in a new way.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?

The most important lesson I’ve learned in over a decade of writing about Dayton is that your biggest critics can be louder than you but ultimately wrong. I heard constantly about how Dayton would never come back, how people like me are wasting our time and being naive believing Dayton would have a resurgence. Now, seeing all that’s grown back over the years, you can’t really hear those naysayers anymore. And I hope they ended up giving in and enjoying this beautiful renaissance, anyway.

For more articles about Girl About Dayton, check out my Press page.