Interview with Reginald Stroud, November 5, 2022



DISKIN: All right, we are underway. Good morning, this is Jonathan Diskin with the Over-the-Rhine Museum. I'm here with Reginald Stroud and we're going to record an oral history of his life and experiences in Over-the-Rhine. Do you mind introducing yourself and saying who you are to kind of get that on the official tape, and then we'll start, start in.

STROUD: My name is Reginald Stroud, and I'm the owner of the store "Anybody's Dream by Reginald", Incorporated.

DISKIN: All right, all right, that's fantastic. I can see it when I click on the map in our neighborhood now that I share with you. Great, so as we were, as I mentioned just briefly before we started, if you would describe a little bit, just kind of your family context and how your family came up to the Cincinnati area and then ended up settling in the Over-the-Rhine area, I think that would be a good place to start.

STROUD: Absolutely. I'm originally from Atlanta Georgia. Uh, born and raise there up until the point where I was about maybe seven--eight years 00:01:00old, we came to Cincinnati. And we had family here from Georgia, living here, and ironically, my mom and I stayed here and my brother at the time, he's passed away now, they all moved back to Atlanta. And my mother and I and my brother still stayed here.

DISKIN: Up and back, yeah.

STROUD: We're the last of the family that actually stayed here. And then eventually, at some point in time, as I got older, around eighteen--nineteen years old, out of junior high school, I had my first baby. My girlfriend in junior high school, who became my wife--and she's passed away now as well. So, uh, that was in the early (nineteen) 80s, and we had one child. Then after that, they began to stairstep. We ended up with five children.

DISKIN: All right.

STROUD: Yes, and they're all grown now. But anyway now, my uh--

DISKIN: --can I just ask, when did your fam-- your mother come up, 00:02:00and did you all come up together?

STROUD: We came up in the (nineteen) 60s. Yes. It was the latter 60s when we came here.

DISKIN: And what was the first neighborhood?

STROUD: The first neighborhood we came to when we got into Cincinnati was Blair Avenue, right off of Reading Road. Then we also lived on Goshen and then we lived on Van Antwerp, and then we lived on Bogart, this is off of Glenwood in Avondale, that's by South Avondale. And as a child, my brother and I went to South Avondale Elementary. And then there was a high school at the time called Samuel Ach. It has since been torn down many years ago and then they built some other structures there.

DISKIN: Yeah, there's quite a history with all the schools that have come and gone. Yeah, there's a whole--someone could do a whole project just on that. (laughter)

STROUD: Exactly.

DISKIN: Yeah, okay, so that's great. I appreciate that. And when did other members of your family move back? I know there's a lot of--

STROUD: That was in the early (nineteen) 70s most of my family moved back. My uncles and aunts moved back and then my grandmother, who lived here 00:03:00also, Renee Crawford, she moved back. And, uh, it's funny. Uh, most of those aunts and uncles that moved back, that all are gone now, with the exception of my mother's youngest sister. And then my mother's sister, uh, about the third oldest sister she had, she just passed away, a month ago. My Aunt Jeanette.

DISKIN: Wow, well--

STROUD: So my mother and my youngest aunt, Elaine, who is in Atlanta now, she's the last aunt that I have in Atlanta, so those are they only sisters still living out of her siblings.

DISKIN: Yeah, was--is your mother's last name Stroud also?

STROUD: Yes it is.

DISKIN: Okay so, that's like a big family story there.

STROUD: Yessir.

DISKIN: Yeah, that's not our main focus, so we can move on, but thank you, I always find it useful to, uh, get some kind of foundations. Um, so then you were growing up in Reading, Avondale, and you know, those addresses you mentioned.

STROUD: Then I went to Burden Elementary, that was on Glenwood. Burden Elementary was my second elementary school. And, uh, that's where I graduated the sixth grade, there. But when I was at Burden, my brother was at Rockdale. So we had two different elementary schools. We were about a year apart in age. So, uh, at elementary school, I do remember when I was third--fourth grade, I began to pick up martial arts from my uncle, Willie Bates.

DISKIN: Okay, that's an important part of the story. Third--fourth grade, so that's young.

STROUD: Yes. So he was in the Korean War and he was wounded in the Korean War. And he studied hand to hand combat which was combat jujitsu at the time. And that was my actual first introduction to martial arts, was him.

DISKIN: Yeah, wow. Did you take to it right away?

STROUD: Oh absolutely, I just had an affinity toward martial arts for some reason. And uh, he would come in and he would show me moves and so forth, and I would say, Uncle Willie will you show me something? And he would and my mother thought we were being a little bit too aggressive sometimes in the 00:05:00living room (laughs) sometimes, where her fine articles were, so to speak, and china and that kind of thing. But he's passed away over the past couple of years too.

DISKIN: Wow, I'm sorry for--It's like a time of loss it sounds like.

STROUD: Oh, oh. absolutely.

DISKIN: Yeah, wow, okay, then you and your family moved here, some moved back, by the time you got to be eighteen, you and your girlfriend were together and you had your first child, where was that?

STROUD: We, she lived off of Reading Road by the Police Station. I forget what district that was. I think it was Asman (?) or something like that, the street that runs right by the ShaRah (?) Lounge, somewhere on Victory Parkway on that corner down there, where you go down the hill. So she lived in that area with her mom. And so we hooked up I should say, junior high school, at Cresthills Junior High School is where we went initially and that's where we met. We had our first child around 1980, we had our first baby. And then I joined 00:06:00the United States Army.

DISKIN: Okay, okay,

STROUD: And, uh, so I went away to bootcamp, I went away to Fort Dix New Jersey for bootcamp. And at that time, when I was approximately eighteen years old, we lived on Van Antwerp. Because she had moved in, we had moved into our own apartment above my mother's apartment on Van Antwerp. So we was on the second floor and my mom was on the first floor. In that same apartment on the first floor, we had been there for at least ten or fifteen years already, my mom and I.

DISKIN: Okay, so that was homebase, that--after those early moves, you had a stable--

STROUD: Yessir, it was.

DISKIN: Ok, that's good to know. So then you--maybe you could just say how long you were in the military and then how you and your family ended up in Over-the-Rhine. Like what was the time period when that occurred?

STROUD: Oh, oh, that was a big jump here. It's probably going to be a little choppy, this one.

DISKIN: That's okay, weave it together. (laughs)

STROUD: My wife and I were together and we had five children. And we lived uh, in the Fay Apartments, and from there we went to Winton Terrace, and 00:07:00we lived in Findlater Garden, which was a little bit up on the top, I think it was another level above us. But we was in Findlater Garden for a while and from there, uh, we separated. (page turning) You want me to continue on?

DISKIN: Yes, absolutely,

STROUD: So we separated. I won't disclose all those underlying issues there, but anyway we separated for a while. And so I was alone, she had the children. And so I moved to the west side of town. I lived on Saffer, over where McHenry is. I lived there for a minute. And I became a manager of the Family Dollar after I got out of the Army. I got out of the Army in 1984. But around 1982--83 my brother passed away of cancer. So we had to go to Atlanta to his funeral. And so it was just I and my mother here in Cincinnati, and my blood children of course, my five children. And so, when I originally joined the military it 00:08:00was the Ohio Army National guard, but, I was in the Army, but it was the Ohio Army National Guard so I did that for four years. And then I did two active duty Army years after that to complete out my contract. That was a total of six. And I was Eleven Bravo, which we call infantry, and I was Seventy-Six Yankee, which we call Supply Quartermaster and Small Arms Repairman. I did that as well.

DISKIN: Okay, that's great.

STROUD: And once I got out of the Army, I worked at VA hospital for approximately a year, in supply processing and distribution, which we call SPD. And then from there I went to Servik services in, on Williams Road in, uh, Blue Ash. And I was a warehouse manager for over three years. And then from there I want to Family Dollar as a manager. I was on Peebles Corner, I got trained in Norwood at that location, and then we ended up Madisonville; they built the store from the ground up. I understand it's not there anymore. 00:09:00So, I was the manager there. Herein lies the rub. But, I will say this; I was still teaching martial arts all along. So, I would teach at different locations. I was the head martial arts instructor at the Cincinnati Arts Consortium when it was down on Linn Street. That's no longer there. It's closed and I forget what the, uh, building is now, next to Cee Kay's Hair place, which used to be Walgreens when I was down there.

DISKIN: That old--I don't know what that old building is down there, almost like a theatre. A couple of stores down.

STROUD: In that same parking lot?

DISKIN: I don't know if it's in that parking lot--but anyway down there on Linn Street.

STROUD: There's a school next door to it now. I think it's Heberle?

DISKIN: Yeah, no, Heberle School, is an old one. I don't know if they rebuilt it. Anyway, yeah. So, Family Dollar, how did--keep going about how you ended up in Over-the-Rhine.

STROUD: So, what happened with Family Dollar, I ended my so-called 00:10:00career with Family Dollar in Madisonville. Charlie Corbin and myself, he's from Kentucky, Charlie Corbin and I opened that store after they built it from the ground up. We hired a bunch of people and so forth. But my entrepreneurial bug started pricking me. I always wanted to have my own business and my own Martial Arts school. So I saw a place across the street, on, uh, Whetsel, at the corner of Whetsel and Madison Road. There was an Art's Chili Kitchen there, he had been there for many, many years. He was the guy who owned that place. But uh, there was a place across the street that was vacant. And so my nostrils were open, my eyes were opened, my ears were opened and I said, Hey, that might be a location to start. So walked over to Family Dollar, not walked over, but I talked to the Manager at the District, the District Manager, Tom, Tom Santer at the time. And I said, uh, "I think I'm going to, uh, resign." He said, "You can always come back." And I told him what I wanted to do, and he said, are you sure? I said yes. I said I want to open my own store, my own candy store for the 00:11:00most part. That was really the beginning of "Anybody's Dream". But it wasn't called that then. But anyway, there was a location there and if Richard, uh, Homler, who's a physical therapist, he's a doctor, he's retired now I think. He owned that property and he gave it to me at a very reasonable rate, monthly, he locked the price in because eventually he donated the property to New Life Ministries--is a church over in that area. So he donated it to them. And after that, because I closed the store because we had so much drug activity in that area, at the time, I don't know what it's like now. But we had a lot of drug activity in the area. It just didn't seem viable anymore for a business, after I stayed there for a while.

So I went into nursing. So, I signed up in Covington at St. John's Nursing Home, which is no longer there. It's now a retirement community from what I understand. But I went to the St. John's and worked there for several years. And then I joined the agency, which meant that I was no longer staff 00:12:00there, but I, I would get staffed through the agency. So I worked at Rosedale Manner,

DISKIN: Okay, they would place you--

STROUD: --at different locations. Yes, I did that for a decade. Did it for ten years.

DISKIN: I certainly didn't know that. A nursing--

STROUD: Oh yeah, I was as Certified Nurse Assistant, like, certified both in Ohio and in Kentucky. I worked both places. And during that, during my tenure in nursing, it was approximately ten years and I worked in probably about ten to twelve nursing homes. Twin Towers up the street, Mercy Saint Theresa over here, Baptist Convalescent over in Newport. I worked there as well. I worked at a lot of them over there. Florence Park, I worked there. But anyway, I decided when I was in that particular field that the entrepreneur bug was still pushing me, that I couldn't do that. I wanted to get back to where my heart really was and that was into having my own business and teaching martial arts since I began so young and I wanted to do that as my life passion if you will. So, 00:13:00again, when I was at Whetsel, I split the building in half: one half was the martial arts school and the other side was the store. But when I left there and went into nursing, as it were--I spent ten years there, and then I ended up downtown. That's when I went into Over-the-Rhine. I was living here actually, in Northside actually, on Fergus, I lived in, that house that I lived in then, is now been torn down as well.

DISKIN: Oh really?

STROUD: Absolutely.

DISKIN: I walked up Fergus this morning to get here.

STROUD: Did you really?

DISKIN: Yeah, I live just above there on Apjones Street, so--

STROUD: So what happened was, I can't tell you what year it was now, it's probably about fifteen or sixteen years ago now, when I was here on Fergus, uh, I decided to open the location on Walnut Street. It was 1125 Walnut Street. That was my first martial arts school that I opened since I left 00:14:00Madisonville. So I opened that, what is his name, uh, Chip Hunter, the guy that owned the property at the time anyway, they allowed me to have that space. I used part for the martial arts school again, the way I did in Madisonville. I had my candy store on one section of the school and then we taught on the other side of the school. And then when 1123 Walnut, which was adjacent to that, when it opened up, because it was vacant and used to be a plumbing place from what I understood, or a furniture place. When it opened up, I moved the store next door. So I had the school on the right side at 1125 then on 1123 I had the store.

DISKIN: Was Chip the owner of both of those properties?

STROUD: Yes, it's like the Twin Towers, there were two buildings that just had a courtyard that separates them, basically, for the most part. It's still there, but it's now a dot.com on the right side and something else on the left side.

DISKIN: Yeah, okay. So okay, you were living here in Northside, you had opened your business, like, I don't know, like the early 2000s ish?

STROUD: It was actually 2004 when I opened down there.

DISKIN: Okay.

STROUD: I opened in 2004. I saw the place available when I was on a bus going into town. And I said, I wonder if that place is, uh, going to fit my needs. So I called Mike Tanner who worked for Chip at the time, he's the construction guy. He said sure, I came in, I moved in, martial arts school, had my students paint some martial arts images on the big windows that we had, plate glass windows that we had there, and so forth. And uh, penny candy on one side, and eventually we opened up the 1123 side which was the Anybody's Dream. Right there. That's where it began, the actual name of the store is Anybody's Dream, by Reginald. It had its beginning there.

DISKIN: So, that's the birth of this particular--

STROUD: --2004. Yes, that was the birth of Anybody's Dream.

DISKIN: That's great. All right, so you set up a business, you said you the entrepreneurial bug kept coming back, then you got a business, uh, 00:16:00well, two businesses, the martial arts school and the candy shop together. How was that first year? It can be tough, you probably have overhead to cover, remodeling to do, getting clients, and all that stuff.

STROUD: Well, I, I stayed with nursing probably for several months to almost a year before I actually let it go.

DISKIN: Okay, they overlapped?

STROUD: Absolutely, and once I stopped doing that, I was full time. One thing I learned about being an entrepreneur, when you are really serious and passionate about what you're doing, is that, it's yours. All the pains and sufferings, but it's yours. You know what I'm saying? It's one thing to work for someone that's where you have a guaranteed paycheck as long as you go there, and you know, you do your forty hours or what have you; you know it's coming. But as an entrepreneur, you got to make it work some kind of way. So I endured. I stayed there. At some point in time, Mr. Hunter allowed me to be the property manager of the building. When I became the property manager, what that 00:17:00entailed was me having people sign leases, showing the property to people, potential residents if you will. So that also helped. He, he kept my rent at a low, because I did that for him.

DISKIN: Yeah, that's great. That's great, so that helped make it work. It's like juggling a number of different roles and jobs, as you said, the life of the entrepreneur.

STROUD: Yes, yessir. From 2004 to 2010 is how long I was there on Walnut. I ran the martial arts school, and still giving martial arts tournaments every year, you know, during my anniversary in July. And I gave it at the Evanston Recreation Center for about fifteen years. So I was the head martial arts tournament guy in Evanston. I saw a lot of people come and go there, administrators if you will. And so when I was down there, my store was broken into a couple of times. And that, that was interesting. Uh, you get a 00:18:00phone call that someone broke into your store. This was still when I lived on Fergus, and then about a year or two later I moved into the building and I was on the second floor. So, it was the martial arts school on 1125, 1123 was the store and then I lived on the second floor above the martial arts school.

DISKIN: Okay, that's helpful.

STROUD: So that way, when I leave to go to work, I'm already there. (laughs) I just came downstairs and opened the store. And then I had black belts that helped to teach next door as well. So, I would have to go and check on the store, not the store, but the school every once in a while, just go next door. We're only talking about fifteen feet, just walk next door into the next building.

DISKIN: Yeah, that's nice. What was the neighborhood like, in that first, let's say from 2004 to 2010, when you were down there? I mean was it--

STROUD: I won't give you a broad spectrum of what it was like from 2004 to 2010 because it changed drastically. When I first got there, there was prostitution. There were women of the night or the evening as some people might 00:19:00call them, uh, walking up and down the street. But the police eradicated that, they got rid of that situation. As a matter of fact, when I was down there, one of the young ladies uh, would come into my store. They all did and I treated them like human beings. You know, that's just what you did. You know, I never brow beat them, never talked down to them. That's the community I'm in, you know? So, Misty Guiner was one of the young ladies. She was a Caucasian young lady, about eighteen years old. She was found murdered. But I used to feed her and give her gloves in the winter time when she would come into my store. Because I knew what she was doing and she said I don't have very much money, but I'm hungry, or what have you. And I'd give her something to eat out of my store and she went on her way and so forth. And when I heard that she was murdered, they found her over in Kentucky I believe, laying in the highway, so only eighteen. And what was crazy, is that she had just had a baby. Misty Guiner, you can look that up. They gave a memorial for her at Washington Park at 00:20:00some point.

DISKIN: Wow, yeah, that's sad. I had an experience down in Atlanta, your hometown, when I was young man, staying at a pay by the week hotel when I didn't' have any money. There were prostitution on the street and they used to come into the hotel just to warm up in the winter time.

STROUD: Same way with her.

DISKIN: And I would just sit in the lobby and talk to people and share whatever little bit I had. But anyway, this isn't time for my story. But it made me think of that, and yeah--

STROUD: Yeah, I would have prostitutes come into my, uh, store. And everyone knew me like in the community for the most part here. Say, "How are doing today teacher?", you know, Sensei and Shippu was teacher in Chinese and Japanese, so ''I'm doing good today, how are you doing?". Like I said, I didn't treat them any different than anybody else, just like family to me, because I see you all the time. So, uh, what's remarkable is to see some of the success stories down there too. Because there were a couple of those young ladies, uh, 00:21:00that bumped into me downtown and said to me--for example, this one young lady came to me and said "How you been teacher? I wanted you to know that I have visitation with my children now, that I have a job now, and that I live in such and such a place now, and that I have my own apartment." And she said "Thank you." And there was another young lady who did the same thing; they don't forget. Everybody doesn't forget, you know. So, I really felt special I should say.

DISKIN: Yeah, especially when you feel some basic respect and humanity, when you're in a tough period in your life. That counts for a lot.

STROUD: Yessir. I was there teaching and running my candy store. And then somewhere around 2000--uh, I'm kind of jumping a little bit around--2007 or '08 it was, Brandon Farris, he was a filmmaker. He came in and said "I want to do a story." Uh, we were talking about, um, Timothy Thomas being killed by a police officer some years before that. And I had just moved in, and 00:22:00he said, "Do you mind if I do a story about your store, that, how a couple of years after that, that you still maintaining a business down here, or you're maintaining a business?" I said, of course I had no problem with that. And they titled it "Two Cent and the Rainbow", and that's found online too. And uh, I mean it was done like Hollywood. Uh, the space that I had, which is probably about half of this here in this store, they had like a--a--a circle in my store where cameras--it's like, a--was on a track or something, I mean, it was really -- if you look it up you'll probably love it.

DISKIN: I look forward to seeing that.

STROUD: I said, Wow that's a lot of cameras and a lot of lights! (laughing) Anyway--

DISKIN: I'm taking notes. (laughs)

STROUD: But I'm serious, there was like a track around, all these things. But I was talking as cordial and confident as I am right now to you.

DISKIN: That's great.

STROUD: He said, "You're a great storyteller", I said, "Well thank you Brandon."

DISKIN: Yeah, well that came through in what I did see, the "Good 00:23:00White People" documentary. But if you're comfortable with who you are, that tends to come through.

STROUD: Oh, absolutely, I was telling him, I can't embellish anything I say, because I'm telling you what I've lived. It's really that simple to me. (laughs) But anyway, he did "Two Cent and the Rainbow" uh, documentary. And we continued to teach at the martial arts school, and we continued to run the candy store. And we had a relationship in the neighborhood, both business and personal, because I knew the people in the neighborhood and they all knew me. And they all watched out for me and things like this. And that was the thing that--when I heard the owner, Chip Hunter at the time, hinting from time to time, that they were going to sell the property. Uh, he would mention it at one time. He said, "We're thinking about selling the property." I'd say, "oh, okay." So, a light bulb goes off in my head and I said, well, what's going to happen--I didn't ask him that, but, I was, this was an internal thing if you will. So, what's going to happen to me, because I had to think about it, once he, you know, 00:24:00opened that can of worms so to speak. And then, nothing happened. Several months later he would mention it again. He said "Someone's coming by to look at the property. Can you make sure that the trash is put out" and so on and so forth, and the building, the halls are clean -- and these are things --

DISKIN: And you're still the building manager?

STROUD: Absolutely. These are things that I did at the property. So, I said, yessir no problem. And so the people would come down there and I'd open up one of the apartments for them to check it out and things like this. And they'd go and do a visual check and so forth and then they'd leave. Never did I know how soon it was going to happen. It was 2014, right around the end of, uh, May it was. Someone came and looked again. And then June, specifically the month of June, he came into my store, and uh, I was on this side of the counter like I am here, and he said, "Master Stroud", he said, "I just wanted to let you know, we sold the building." And he shook my hand, and that was last time I saw him, at that time. And he said, uh, "The new property owners are going to 00:25:00come by. I'm going to give them the keys now." And I thought that was a bit abrupt, you know. The way he approached it. I was going to say, as I said, as if I was talking to you before, uh, I thought I would be given some forewarning or much more forewarning than that, than saying, you know, well, in another month we'll be definitely sealing the deal on selling the property and so forth. But I got a day. You know, we're selling the property, and then this guy comes within the hour, introduces himself to me, and he was not the owner per se but someone who works for the owner who had to do with the, deal with the construction and all of that type of thing. So he came in and introduced himself. And that's when I asked the operative question, What's next for us?, you know, the people that live here. And he said, "Oh, we're not coming here", his words, "swinging the sword or anything, and making anyone move." He said, 'It's just a business transaction. We're just changing the guard so to speak. We're just transferring the property from him to us." And this kind of thing. So, we got a letter from Urban Sites, who was the new owner, development company if you will. 00:26:00We got a notice from them saying they own the property now and who to pay the rent to, which is further up Walnut by Liberty. They had an office established there, which I'd never known about that office until that point in time. So we start paying our rent there. And we paid our rent for approximately two months before we got a notice. And uh, after this gentleman had told me they were not going to put anybody out, we got a notice stating that there was some work that needed to be done in the building and it could not be occupied. So we had to move. And they gave us forty-five days to move. And uh, that was a shocker, forty-five days. So, there were people who, residents there, I think we probably had, there was maybe five units on either side so approximately ten units, and the storefronts on the bottom which I only occupied. So, you probably had maybe five or six of those units still open, not open, but uh, still 00:27:00occupied I should say. So those tenants had to move and some of the people were disgruntled and expressed to me, you know, how they felt, "Why they only give us this short period of time to move", or somebody who has been there less than a year who had just signed the contract, you know, or lease if you will. So, um, there was nothing I could do about it. So anyway, forty-five days. I would have imagined, this is me, that being the business owner of two businesses, the martial arts school and the store, that they would have given me a little bit more time.

DISKIN: Yeah, and perhaps some compensation, because you invest in a business with shelves, partitions, you know, there's infrastructure.

STROUD: This is very true. I had to internalize this stuff. Because I was faced with the reality that I had to move my companion and my children out of there. So, uh, I began to search, and look for apartments and look for houses, and so forth in this forty day window that we had to work with. So, I found 00:28:00someplace here in Northside, on Borden and I've been there ever since. I've been here approximately ten years now as a resident again, in Northside. And about five years ago, about, whatever five years ago would have been ago, what's it, it's 20022,

DISKIN: Yeah, so I guess, what, 2017--

STROUD: --yes, around that time, I opened this store here. Yes, I found it vacant. A friend of mine used to have it, a guy who owns the mattress place used to have this as a store. And he just switched over next door and began to work at Ralph's Mattress. Yes, but anyway, we were given forty-five days to move, found someplace to live here, been here ten years now, and been at the store now, last month was my anniversary here, five years of being here at the store.

DISKIN: Okay, that's great, congratulations.

STROUD: Now, it has been a struggle here. To say the least. I kind of felt like it was repeating itself from the Over-the-Rhine gentrification issue. 00:29:00Uh, coming here and maybe having to lose this business again here. So I had done some interviews with Cincinnati CityBeat about being gentrified and how was life here now. And I told Nick Swartsell candidly, I'm not really sure about being here, and what the future is going to hold here because I heard it through the grapevine from more than one source, that they were talking about gentrification here in Northside. I don't know how true that is. But I paid attention to things, because when I first moved into this store here, respectively, about two years into being here, two or three businesses closed right here on this strip where I am. There was a record store closed on this side. And there was a hobby and craft place that closed on this side as well. And then there was a restaurant up here on the corner up here, on the corner of uh, (bells jingle) Hamilton and Blue Rock.

(Customer enters store)

STROUD: Pardon. "How are you?"

DISKIN: Hi. Do you want to take a pause while you--

STROUD: Yeah, I'll take a pause.

DISKIN: Sure, no problem.

STROUD: You can come on brother.

(Pause - Return)

STROUD: --(prices) go up, and I have to raise the price. And I stay nominally low.

DISKIN: Oh, I can see!

STROUD: The nature of my business has always been to help those that have little. That's the whole nature of my business. I'm the old mom and pop store that you don't see very much anymore. It's pretty rare to see my store. And you have guys like this, nothing against him personally, but guys like that, "Oh, fifteen cents? It sold at a quarter in some stores in other neighborhoods. I'm, fifteen cents. I only went up a nickel about a month ago. But I had to because the price of those went up. If you probably--if you go to BP which is a multi-billion dollar store, they've gone up exponentially on a lot of things.

DISKIN: Oh yeah.

STROUD: A lot of people say, I'd rather come to you than them. I wonder why! (laughs) You follow?

DISKIN: Yeah, oh yeah. It's--

STROUD: But anyway, I just had to get that out.

DISKIN: No, Absolutely.

STROUD: And you'll find, but I still treat him with love, and with 00:31:00kid's gloves. I say, well thank you, is there anything else? "Oh dag, you know, it's fifteen cents!". And then, when I told people my candy bars were $1.09, "A dollar-nine, I can get them at two for a dollar" at such and such a place. I said, no, you really can't. Not anymore you can't. No, not two candy bars for a dollar. Nowhere, but anyway.

DISKIN: Even in years past, you'd have to--that would be a lucky sale, to get them, you know, once in a while they'd be closing them out somewhere.

STROUD: Exactly. That would be the only reason.

DISKIN: But otherwise, that's not the regular price. (laughs)

STROUD: But, I'm sorry.

DISKIN: No, no, it's all good. It's an interesting part of life. So, you probably didn't have a lot of inflation down in Over-the-Rhine, because inflation's been pretty low until, you know, this post-pandemic period. And you have history--I don't know whether you called it the supply chain at the--back in your previous years, but when you talked about your Army training 00:32:00and then working at the VA, and at Family Dollar. There was a lot of supply and logistics --

STROUD: But check this out! You might be recording this, but it's cool. But check this out. This is what's interesting about my business. And we probably could of just opened up a big old pandora's box with my experiences and so forth. But the fact that one of my MOS's in the military was supply and, was supply.

DISKIN: Yeah, yeah.

STROUD: And I learned that skill from the military, organizational supply is what it's called properly. And so also when I went to VA I worked in supply, you know, I worked in medical supply. It was all related. And another thing, when I was in high school, Mr. Metz, who was my high school counselor, he said I'm going to give you a secretarial and business course. He said, "You're going to thank me later." Haven't seen him in all the years since I graduated but I love the man. Because I've used that skill in the military and in my life ever since.

DISKIN: I've heard people say the same thing about basic accounting too.

STROUD: Oh, absolutely.

DISKIN: Yeah, you know, it's just, you have to have a certain order to be successful in almost any endeavor.

STROUD: Yessir, yessir. You're absolutely right.

DISKIN: Well anyway, let, you know, if we could--let's go back to when you were, your building was sold in Over-the-Rhine.

STROUD: The building was sold in Over-the-Rhine.

DISKIN: And, what was it like leaving? That is, like did any of the people who were getting martial arts training through your school, did they, like, do you still have that?

STROUD: This is what happened. When we were told, when I was told, that the building was being sold in Over-the-Rhine by Chip Hunter and these new people moved in, and we had about a month or so to move, forty-five days, I moved in about forty three days. Then ended up here,

up here, found a house on Borden Place down here by the Cemetery. Found it. I was selling on Amazon and eBay to make ends meet when I was there. I was doing that before I got the store. I was still teaching martial arts but I was teaching on Wednesdays and Fridays at my home, which I still do to 00:34:00this very day.

DISKIN: Okay, okay, okay.

STROUD: I still teach. I've never stopped teaching. I teach on Wednesdays and Fridays for approximately two hours at my home, still. So I close the store on Wednesdays and Fridays at five o'clock so I can make it to class. So, that's what happened as far as the martial arts is concerned. And I was still, at the time, doing martial arts tournaments over in Evanston. But when the pandemic came I was no longer able to do it because they couldn't--for this past year and, uh--this year actually I wasn't able to do it because they didn't have the staffing. Because they couldn't get anybody to work, or they had people who couldn't pass the drug test, one or both of those reasons. So that's what happened with my karate tournaments that I would normally do every year. Uh, you asked me--go back and ask me that question again because I think I lost myself explaining it that way.

DISKIN: No. Well, let me--it might be a slightly different question, but I wonder if any of the students you were working with,

STROUD: That's it!

DISKIN: --or even just people you knew well in the community, like, have you stayed in touch with them, have they been able to stay, or have they 00:35:00also been priced out, like, let's focus on that.

STOUD: This is what happened, and I'm sorry that I was remiss in that way.

DISKIN: No, no, it all ties together.

STROUD: But, when we were down there--unfortunately, I lost some of the students. Some of them didn't have a car, didn't know where Northside was, didn't want to commute here. It's not that they didn't love me as a teacher. I still have an amiable relationship with the parents, they call me sometimes, "Hey how you doing", and so on and so forth. "My child is doing good in school, or just graduated", or whatever the case is. But, I lost probably, I'd say maybe six--seven students down there that were not able to come here or just didn't, not want to make the commute to get to here. Because it was change; a lot of people don't like change. But my, most of my students are still with me. Now I don't have a hundred students, and I don't have fifty students. I have approximately maybe twenty-five students, period. But they, they, some of them work and go to school and stuff like that. But they're still with me. 00:36:00And then I also, uh, I'm a YouTube creator. I have a few students on YouTube as well that I've never met in person. But I do videos on every subject you can think about as far as what we deal with from day to day, and I also do demonstrations on there, on YouTube as well. And it's under my full name.

DISKIN: Okay, great. No, I'll check that out.

STROUD: I have over two thousand videos on YouTube. I've been a YouTuber for about a decade now.

DISKIN: Yeah, yeah. So maybe just to focus a bit more on Over-the-Rhine before, you know, we move, you know, into the final part. Did you know other business owners who were also had their buildings --

STROUD: --displaced

DISKIN: Yeah, displaced by building renovation and stuff like--how would describe that whole process; because the investment and the transformation of the physical space and who lives there and works there has been dramatic, over the last decade.

STROUD: Now, uh, business owners per se--I can't say that I really 00:37:00know anybody that was displaced. I know there was a bar down the street from me called Biffs. I was told that they paid him some money. He may have owned a property. But they paid him some money to move. Someone did. I don't know if it was 3CDC. But I have a friend who lived in an apartment complex on Thirteenth, the corner of Thirteenth, it's a large complex, I think they've redone it since then, since I've been gone.

DISKIN: On Walnut? Bracket Village?

STROUD: It's on Walnut as well. if you're going north, it's on the left hand side.

DISKIN: Oh, okay,

STROUD: That's not Bracket Village I don't think. It's a very large complex though. One of my friends, A.J. Callaway lived there. And uh, he said, "Well they gave us six months to move." But we had forty-five days from Urban Sites. This was 3CDC that gave them that time.

DISKIN: Interesting.

STROUD: Yes, so Biff's was bought out from what I understand. Then I 00:38:00had a friend named Lana, she lived around the corner, uh, on Twelfth Street. Uh, right before you get to Main Street, between Walnut and Twelfth there was another short street that I can't remember the name of. But she lived there. They paid them, I think about $1000 or more to help them move. We got offered $200, I kid you not, we were offered $200 by Urban Sites, provided the premises were in the same condition that they were when we moved there. And these were not the owners then either. So, we got a letter, I still have the letter as a matter of fact. Yeah, we were offered $200 to help us do the transition, and on top of that, I know you know this is probably common, they gave us a list of places that we could potentially go to, that they owned, where the rent was like three times more than what the people at our facility or building paid. So the average rent on Walnut was between $500 and $600 at the time. There's 00:39:00was like maybe $1400.

DISKIN: Wow.

STROUD: Yes that's what it was. That's what they offered people to go to. That's what it was.

DISKIN: Do you know where any of the folks who were living in those apartments moved?

STROUD: No.

DISKIN: Okay,

STROUD: Not a one. Um, one, I had a cat here in Northside that I gifted to one of the older, uh, tenants there. Makenzie was her name. Uh, she came to pick the cat up, and I don't know where she lives right now, but that's about the only tenant that I had any contact with.

DISKIN: Yeah, that's part of the bigger story is, like, where do people get displaced to. You came back to a neighborhood where you had some history and, also, you're enterprising.

STROUD: Yes, the ones that I knew personally are not there anymore. They moved somewhere else. And every once in a while I'll see a child that's grown up. I mean it's been many years, I mean it's 2014 when I moved, it's been--some of them are grown now. Some of them--one of the guys that used to be one of my customers, he was murdered. Uh, at a gun fight at a basketball court 00:40:00about four years ago. Yeah, he used to come into my store when he was a little boy; you know, and he was about nineteen or twenty when he got killed.

DISKIN: That is sad.

STROUD: Very much so. And there was a young lady who used to come into my store, also, she was murdered. So you hear these stories, you know. And it's heart wrenching. And even though that happened and even though it's bad, I still wish that I was there, you know, during that time. Someone asked me, would you ever go back? I can't. I couldn't. And I tell you why. Uh, when you establish yourself, you also establish family in the neighborhood. And that's business and that's residential. There are people in the community, we become a part of each other. You follow what I'm saying? That's teacher's store, that's so and so's bar, that's so and so's clothing store, shoe store or whatever. You help each other, it's what a community is supposed to be. But when you're 00:41:00displaced, and even though it sounds like it's not as harsh a word, but it feel that way when you're the person who was displaced, and that's what I felt. I was taken out of a place that was beginning to see money, that was beginning to thrive. At that point is when I was taken out. I actually didn't start seeing money until the last two years that I was there. And I said, wow, this pie in the sky sort of dream, you know my dream is coming true, you know this business might be what I always wanted it to be. And then, they come and say, this is your last month here, you know, you have forty-five days or whatever, this is your last time here. And it's like what do you do, where do you go? You never really plan for anything like that. But anyway, as I said, I got no forewarning. It just happened abruptly. And so, then I did a, or someone did a 'go fund me' campaign to help me in the transition to come here; god bless them. So, Jarod Wellencamp started that go fund me so I could come here. He was one of--the second producer of the film, uh, "Good White People". So they began 00:42:00to help me financially here, through a go fund me campaign, making that transition here. Uh, and then, um, like I said, I didn't see very many people anymore, from downtown and that area. And I was getting back to what I was saying a second ago, about wanting to go back. I couldn't go back, because it's not the same.

DISKIN: Right, the community relationships, are not there anymore.

STROUD: It's totally different. It's like walking into a different town or a town you've never been in before. Uh, and you're seeing people, you're seeing, uh, bars and these different types of businesses that were not there before. And the feeling is not the same. You know, you--as I said before, you had a sense of community when you--it's not your community anymore. And, how can I open my same store with the same passion. I just can't do it. Couldn't do it. So, when I came here, it was almost like starting back over there again. But just in a different neighborhood, you know. And I feel that way again, community wise here, as if this is Over-the-Rhine. If that makes any sense. It feels like the 00:43:00same experience again. But what also feels equally the same is that feeling of how long is it going to last now. Because you've been hearing these same things.

DISKIN: There's been a lot of change in Northside.

STROUD: Yes it has.

DISKIN: I used to live here in the early (nineteen) 90s. We had kids and moved to Oxford like I was mentioning before. And we moved back when our kids left, because we missed the city.

STROUD: Yes.

DISKIN: But it's, it's quite different.

STROUD: Oh, without a doubt, yessir! And then the prices have been going up.

DISKIN: Got to own the building!

STROUD: Yeah!

DISKIN: Of course, that's really hard to do.

STROUD: This is very true.

DISKIN: But that's like the only protection against it.

STROUD: My friend Hassan Ali, he owns H&A Market next to Mr. Pitiful's over on, uh, Main Street. He's still there. Man, he's withstood the storm. And I helped him with his business and that's the same business that we were robbed in at gunpoint. Yes, I was in there helping him. I closed my store walked 00:44:00over to his store which I did customarily sometimes and helped him on the register when he got busy. He and a friend of his along with myself, a guy came in one Saturday night at 11 o'clock, pulled a gun, and had a mask and "Get on the floor."

DISKIN: Wow.

STROUD: I thought it was a dream at first. Because, this is something--I'm, I'm prior military, and to have through all these scenarios of if someone pulls a gun on you what to do, and the martial arts and things like that. I had such a calm. I had seen it so many times. And I had to ask myself, is this real? Just in milliseconds I said, it's real. So I just complied. I got on the ground. Some said, why didn't you do karate on him? No. unh-uh. There's a right time and a wrong time for everything. And you have to exercise wisdom and common sense you know.

DISKIN: And a foolish risk, doesn't do anybody any good.

STROUD: And it would be different if he was going to harm me, and he was up close and personal, if he was going to harm someone that I knew up close and personal again. But at a distance, what would I do? I don't have a cape! You know, I'm not going to fly over--and

DISKIN: Wow, and you said you had a couple of break-ins. But this is a different kind of robbery, at gunpoint.

STROUD: Yessir. So, I was the guy that opened the register for him and dumped the money in the bag. And Hassan had two, two cash registers. He said "You", he pointed to me because I was in front of the other two guys, he said, open the register. I'm glad I had the presence of mind to remember how to open his registers! Because they're not all the same. But anyway, so I opened the registers. He said "All of it." I said all of it? He said, "The change too." So I dumped the change trays in the bag, uh, from both registers. And he said, get back down there on the floor, and he walked out the door. And what's funny, is that there was a crowd of people on the street and he was the only person that had walked in at that time. My Pitiful had somebody patting people down, and wanding them and stuff next door, while this was happening. And so my friend who owns the store ran outside and said "Call 911, we've been robbed!" and the guy was walking up the street, so he ducked up some street somewhere. That was interesting.

DISKIN: And he was not caught?

STROUD: No, to my knowledge. And the thing is, I probably had seen 00:46:00him many times before and never would have known who he was because he had the hood and the mask on. That was crazy. And just a footnote here, I have to throw this in here. People think this is really funny. So, he's the owner of the store and he had a friend in there and he had me, who's the owner of a store over on Walnut, who's in there to help him, the police but me in the car to go have me try to identify somebody. Why me instead of the owner? Anyway, she said, we want to take you around the corner. We have some guys pulled over around there and we want to see if you can identify him. Now this guy had a mask on mind you. So we go around the corner and I see they have these spotlights on these teenagers over there against the wall. I said, those are kids! This was a grown man in his 30s approximately. I said, that's not them, I know them. They said, okay. So, I'm sitting in the backseat of the cruiser and she's got the inside light on and I said, "Can they see me in here?" She said, "Oh no. You can see out but they can't see in." Do you not know that the next day I came to work in my store, there were people saying, was that you in the police car the other day? (laughing) I'm serious, it's like--I know --

DISKIN: No, no, every piece of this is, uh, not quite the way it's supposed to be.

STROUD: It was funny. Yeah right.

DISKIN: Because--thank god, in a way, that they took you and that you knew people in the neighborhood. Because sometimes people are just upset, if they finger the wrong person, they could be going down for a long time.

STROUD: This is true.

DISKIN: On a mistake. That happens all the time too.

STROUD: Yes it does.

DISKIN: I mean, you do got to try and catch people who are, you know, robbing people at gunpoint, but you certainly don't want the wrong people get locked up. Wow.

STROUD: Yeah, I've been seeing people on the innocence project who do DNA evidence, that have been proven to be innocent.

DISKIN: Right, oh and those five kids in New York City, that one time, I forget what it was called, the Central Park Five.

STROUD: Oh yeah, that's the name of it.

DISKIN: All innocent. Years, and years, and years in jail.

STROUD: How do you compensate someone who's spent--I've been seeing these stories over the past month, twenty, thirty years and they walking out. What about the trauma of being in that situation inside those bars. 00:48:00Because it's not a regular world you're in. It's a totally different world you're in.

DISKIN: That's--maybe that's the best you can do; but it doesn't make up for it.

STROUD: Oh no, and you get a half a million dollars or whatever they give you. It's like, okay, that doesn't bring my sanity back. Wow. Without a doubt.

DISKIN: Lost decades, family--

STROUD: OH, without a doubt, the family thing is a killer right there.

DISKIN: Well, anyway, I've just let this run. Is there anything you want to add before we, you know, wrap up the, um oral history?

STROUD: I'll say this. This has truly been a story for me. Starting my business in Over-the-Rhine and being there for a decade. (door chime sounds) Is that someone or the wind?

VIDEOGRAPHER: It's the wind.

DISKIN: I don't see anybody.

STROUD: I enjoyed it, I loved it, it's the story of my life. It's one page in the book in my life. Having this entrepreneurial spirit and wanting to have my own business, not only as just a store owner, because that's 00:49:00something I'd been familiar with, and I grew up and I was taught to be a store business, if you will, and being a martial arts instructor. These are two things I've always wanted to do, was to give back to the community, give back to the world in which I'm in. Because we're all family, irrespective of race, color creed, it doesn't matter; we're all family. Even you're sexual orientation has nothing to do with anything. You know, that's you, and this is me. But we're all family. You know, that's the way I see it. I have people come in here sometimes that might be LGBT or Q or what have you. "How are you doing today?" You're my friend. And that might be the person that might pull you out of a sling one day. You just don't know. You don't know who they know or are connected to, what they're skill sets are and things like this. I say again, I know it's rhetorical, not rhetorical but I know it's redundant; we're family. It's really that simple. I've always wanted to have that business that was open to everybody. And if you don't have a lot of money in your pocket and you come into my store, "Here, you need some food to eat today?" I feed people all the time here. And I don't have that much, and I've struggled. And downtown, 00:50:00in Over-the-Rhine, I struggled down there, and I've fed people anyway. And the bible says, dare any of you say that you, that you love god, and you have this world's goods and you don't feed your brother and help your brother in the street. Because you could be feeding an angel unawares. You know. We just don't know that. So, it's been a journey. It's been a struggle, but struggle builds character too. Some people struggle and they succumb to the struggle. So, I say this all the time to my students. I say, it's not what happens to you, it's how you deal with what happens to you. I'm still here. And I've been here five years as of last month. I'm still struggling. But my struggle, struggle to me is not negative. It's just, it's just a price that you have to pay sometimes to get where you want to be in life. And that's the way I see it.

DISKIN: Yeah, it's hard to imagine life without struggle.

STROUD: Oh absolutely. If everything was given to any of us, you wouldn't appreciate it.

DISKIN: Even learning is a struggle.

STROUD: Oh, without a doubt.

DISKIN: Understanding things, takes effort.

STROUD: Yessir, you're absolutely right. But I love, I love my 00:51:00journey. I love my journey from that point up until this point still. And I still love my journey, because I still meet good people, like you as well, you know, who have an interest in my story. And it's just not my story, it's many people's story. But you're talking about me more respectively in this particular instance right here. We all go through things.

DISKIN: Yeah, but it shines a light on periods of time and issues that we all need to pay attention to and to try and deal with.

STROUD: Absolutely.

DISKIN: To get a little more fair with every generation we hope, I hope.

STROUD: And you know, a lot of people don't know, uh, the nature or the purpose of the title of my store, if you will, or the name of my store. "Anybody's Dream, by Reginald." That's the story right, that this is the author, Reginald, it's by Reginald. So what I'm saying in essence with Anybody's Dream is to say this, that I decided to do this because it was in me and this is my passion. It's like Dr. Wayne Dyer said, he said, "Don't die with your music in you." That's one of his famous quotes. "Don't die with your music in you." 00:52:00In other words, whatever your ambitions are, whatever your dreams and your hopes are, make sure that you satisfy your soul by attempting to reach that goal while you're here. Don't just sit idly by with your fingers wrung in together and your feet crossed in your Lazy Boy saying I wish, I woulda, coulda, shoulda done. No, don't die with your dreams in you. That's what I'm saying. So, this is "Anybody's Dream." So when that person walks into my store and says, dag, I haven't been able to buy this candy for ten cents, fifteen cents, I haven't seen this candy since I was a little girl or boy, what have you--that's a dream! You follow. Nobody else does that, and I keep trying to maintain and to hold on to that. You know--it's Anybody's Dream. That's it!

DISKIN: Thank you!

STROUD: I like the smile on your face.

DISKIN: No, that's beautiful! That is beautiful. That's a lovely way to end.

STROUD: Well, that you very much.

DISKIN: And thank you so much for sharing your time and your story.

STROUD: I hope that--I hope this --it was-- been kind of choppy a little bit, the subject matter from there to here. I hope it was, uh, edifying and I hope that it was beneficial to you for the time you have been here.

DISKIN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

STROUD: If you want to talk to me again, just let me know.

DISKIN: Absolutely.

(End of Interview)

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