Columbus’s best kept 95-degree day secret was overrun this week by scores of young people at Runaway Bay apartment complex in Grandview. The pop-up party fueled by social media once again exposed a historical reality: There’s too few public spaces and not enough culture for non-privileged young people in Columbus. There are also too few public pools in Columbus, due to lack of funding or greedy developers, such as those who bought out Olympic Pool in Clintonville.

The Free Press is not condoning the illegality of young people taking over a private beach, that by the way is rarely used by tenants, but we are not condemning them as the police-state apologists from Channel 6 WSYX did. Few people are ever seen on this beach probably because Runaway Bay management charges $100-per year to have access.

A Free Press reporter witnessed the pop-up party at Runaway Bay on Tuesday. Columbus police were also there and justifiably told the (illegal) party goers to continue to have a good time, which they were. No violence was seen, but these pop-up parties have resulted in violence. What is never blamed anymore, however, is the massive influx of guns into the community.

Runaway Bay has a smallish private beach on the shores of one of Columbus’s mostly forgotten quarries turned into a lake filtered by the nearby Scioto River. The lake is large by urban standards yet completely shut off to the public. It is surrounded and besieged by condos, apartments and ugly office buildings that are believed vacant.  

In 2022, the Free Press published a flippant story on how a section of this quarry should be returned to the public and made into a beach with boats or kayaks. Knock down the offices and dig out the rock walls and replace them with white sand. Tear out the parking lots to make a park. Set up a boundary within the lake so tenants at both Runaway Bay and Hidden Lake condos have their areas. And for good measure, obliterate the iHeartMedia local corporate office across the street. 

Runaway Bay is good example of what local activists and the Free Press refer to as the “Columbus Way.” Runaway Bay is just one of several massive quarries in this area, yet all have been hoarded by rich white men for over two centuries. Italian immigrants who migrated here in the 1800s dug out the limestone in these quarries with pickaxes for $1 a day and were beaten if they slacked by their Upper Arlington bosses who spied on them with telescopes. These quarries are also on sacred ground – just up the street from Runaway Bay is Shrum Mound, a First Nation burial mound.

But after the limestone was removed roughly 50 to 100 years ago, the rich white owners ringed these quarries with condos, apartments and offices. Worse is how one of the quarries is used as a dumping ground by the City of Columbus for pollutants in local drinking water.

For a historical comparison, Austin (Texas) did right for one and all. The Colorado River cuts through downtown, but its banks and nearby springs, such as Barton Springs (a city pool), are mostly public use. On most days, there are hundreds of young people sunning on the slopes of Barton Springs, and hundreds of kayakers and paddle boarders on the Colorado.  

On Tuesday night as a DJ pumped out hip-hop jams a large circle formed, and some soulful moves broke out in the middle for all to witness.

“Listen up everybody! Do not throw your garbage in the lake. And no fighting,” urged the DJ.

Sadly, for this area rich in history, more high-end developments are rising out of the dirt on Trabue Road and Mckinley Avenue. “Tomato Dick” (Dick Capuano), an affable Vietnam vet, sold most of his 1,700-plant tomato farm to developers so they could build the San Margharita mixed-use, which also displaced a trailer park. His popular Italian-flag painted tomato stand is no more, and a storage unit facility went up across the street.  

Catty-corner to the San Margharita mixed-use is the Quarry Trails Metro Park which was paired with the mixed-use disaster called “Project QT.” Metro Park fans were so miffed they told the Free Press they will never vote for a Metro Parks bond issue again considering they were promised a world-class park in the heart of Central Ohio, but instead got “Easton West.”

But on this overheated Tuesday night, young people had had enough of being shut out.