Via Cringe.com, here’s the 2007 Comfest schedule. The festival will be in Goodale Park in the Short North the weekend after next, June 22-24.

Columbus: your new country-wide vacation hotspot of choice. Who needs Vegas or Orlando? German Village is lots better than the Germany section of EPCOT. And now that the Short North has those damn lights lit, Vegas is superfluous.

More Skybus-related boosterism here and here.

June Gallery Hop: Lots of People, Little Good Art, from the High Street Art blog. Plus, there are pics. I always thought it was more about the people than the art anyway.

Tray over there also has a post about the arches- and the lights:

The Short North Arches are now fully lit for the first time since December, 2002. Originally a Fibre Optic system, the lights shorted-out within weeks when the arches first took their place across about two miles of High Street. After much finger pointing and finding a Las Vegas company to do the job right, the arches now sport LED lights that can even be connected to the Internet.

Plus, even more pics.

Be sure to check out the Restaurant Widow’s things to do list She’s doing a fine job with that. Among lots of other things, there’s a Short North Gallery Hop tomorrow.

Cameron Mitchell added a new restaurant to the empire today:

Marcella’s Ristorante, Pizzeria and Wine Bar, located two blocks north of the Greater Columbus Convention Center at 615 N. High St., is modeled after a traditional Italian cafe and has a selection of 50 wines and an open kitchen, the restaurant operator said.

Marcella’s seats up to 120 with prices ranging from $10 to $19 a plate.

Speaking of Cameron Mitchell, I found a six-pack of Columbus Pale Ale at the corner convenience store. I’ve been to the Columbus Brewing Company restaurant a bunch of times, but I never noticed their beer for sale at stores before. I guess I wasn’t looking. I rate it pretty good.

The Restaurant Widow has a list of things to do this weekend. Included are a zombie walk and the Grandview Art Hop.

Also, Livin’ in Cowtown relays that the Maverick coaster at Cedar Point will open on Saturday:

Breaking news straight from Cedar Point’s press office, their new 2007 roller coaster, the Maverick, will open sooner than anticipated. In fact, it will open this weekend!

As reported earlier, the Maverick was scheduled to open when Cedar Point did for the 2007 season, but after some initial test runs, the park determined three sections of track would have to be replaced. As a result, Maverick was not expected to open until June at the earliest.

Looks like they’re finally going to light those lights:

By the end of the month, all repairs on the Short North arch lights will be complete.

Feel free to take a moment and let that sink in.

After four and a half years of unlit bulbs, lawsuits, increasing costs, postponed deadlines, broken hearts and infinite turmoil, the arches will finally cast their incandescent glow over North High Street.

“We’re doing a soft opening at the end of May,” said John Angelo, director of the Short North Business Association. “I think this is actually looking like it’s on target.”

Right. Soft opening is the way to go. No reason to invite further disappointment.

Initially, Short North strollers will bask only in white light. But once all the system checks are completed, the lights will be programmable to dance in an array of colors and patterns.

“Columbus will be dazzled,” Angelo said.

Very good. But don’t oversell it. They’re lights. And watch out for those distracted driver lawsuits.

The final price tag for the lights and all subsequent repairs is nearly $2.5 million—about $2,200 a bulb.

Yowza! Only government is that efficient. I’d have done it for half that. (Via RetroMetro.)

Becke at Columbus Foodie has some beautiful pictures of food from Saturday’s 11th Annual North Market Apron Gala. They’ll make you hungry, so don’t look at them until lunchtime.

Here’s the event’s page at the North Market site.

Becke at Columbus Foodie has a nice write-up, with pictures, on the farmer’s market at North Market. (There has to be a better way to say that.) She’s also put together a list of farmer’s markets in the Columbus area, which is quite the helpful resource.

I’m constantly threatening to go all green and local and shop at these places, yet seem unable to resist the siren call of my local Giant Eagle.

Bit of a tempest brewing between the Short North Gallery Hop and what was going to be called the Grandview Gallery Hop, as Jon at ColumbusING reports. Someone from the Short North organization has told the Grandview event that they can’t use the name “Gallery Hop”. From the Grandview site:

The Director of the Short North Gallery Hop contacted us saying that we could not use the name “Gallery Hop”. When we did a Google search for “Gallery Hop” there were almost 3 million searches that came back. The term “Gallery Hop” is widely used not just across the United States, but across the globe. We will temporarily amend the name to “Grandview Gallery Hops” until our Articles of Incorporation for a Nonprofit Organization have either been approved or denied by the state of Ohio.

Now I am not a trademark lawyer- ok, I’m not a lawyer at all- but I think that there is such a thing as a regional mark. After all, Tony’s Pizza in Dayton can’t do much about Tony’s Pizza in LA. So it would be perfectly reasonable for there to be Gallery Hops all over world, with only one being allowed in the Columbus metro area. Secondly, assuming the Short North’s complaint is legit, and I think it is, putting an ’s’ at the end does not constitute adequate relief. Besides, Gallery Hops sounds a bit like a beer ingredient museum, not that there would be anything wrong with that.

The Short North site is here, and the Grandview site is here.

UPDATE: The Grandview event has decided on “Grandview Art Hop”.