Ram23

Is this the guy? (warning: bad language)

A gas line was ruptured during construction on the roundabout, resulting in a huge fire: Active fire scene in Montgomery, officials say avoid travel in the area https://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2020/10/07/active-fire-scene-montgomery-officials-say-avoid-travel-area/5914248002/ Multiple units responded to a fire Wednesday afternoon at the roundabout construction site off Montgomery Road, according to Montgomery, Ohio officials.

I vaguely remember the computer store. Looking at the auditor, the picture looks like it might have been called AAA Computers - which leads me to wonder if it is the same as AAA Laptops that still survives up in CUF. The little barber shop that is adjacent to the parking ramp had been there since 1957:

I'm glad they made it "President Barack Obama Avenue" so that no one is confused and thinks its named after some other "Barack Obama."

Bezos founded Amazon with $1 million in funding provided by his parents and wealthy friends. His story is similar to Trump's. That said, it's still impressive. I know more than a handful of people who have lost hundreds of thousands of their parents money with bad business ventures. What people like Trump and Bezos did - turn a generous investment from wealthy parents into a massive fortune - isn't all that easy. Plenty of people blow it, which is where we get the saying "wealth skips a generation." Really, generational wealth is a pretty big misconception - it's estimated that 70% of wealthy families have kids that will lose the wealth. 90% of wealthy families lose it by the third generation.

Not to get off topic, but something I've noticed when looking for old photos is that there is about a 5-10 year gap of quality photographs right around 2000 that seems to be the result of a combination of early, poor quality digital cameras and a lack of hard drive storage space. From the 90s on back there's always an original or negative somewhere that can be scanned at high resolution if needed. Once you get into the 2000s, every photo seems to be a 400x600 pixel jpg. This goes for things like family photos, as well as photos I've needed to refer to doing architectural work. I think historically, we're always going to have this gap where all the images are terrible.

Is it just me or is this drawing hilariously bad? My first question was where are the Reds? Then I realized there are quite a few teams missing. And then I looked at all the faces. Blake Snell is my favorite.

I've been blasted for this opinion by my friends and family that are realtors... but I've always thought the standard 6% is a giant scam. It doesn't seem to me that it takes twice as much effort to buy/sell a $300,000 house as a $150,000 house, so why's the fee twice as much? No one can give me a straight answer.

Agree - I don't like the switch from the dominating vertical elements to such strong horizontals. The verticals seemed to work a lot better with the overall building proportions.

I rarely ride my bike. Like 1-2 times a month during the spring/summer/fall. I'm pretty close to "clown on a bike" territory. That said, my house was halfway up the hill on Clifton Avenue and I'd ride to Ludlow Avenue without any problems. These lanes do seem a little unnecessary. Streets like Taft and McMillan are the ones that could use bike lanes. Getting from CUF to Walnut Hills was a pain because of the traffic on those streets. And of course, if there were something that would just carry my bike up Ravine Street for me, I'd have ridden more often.

The single-surname brand names work pretty well because they're typically not as contrived or commercial sounding as some of the goofier stadium names out there. Take a look at Cleveland, for example - Rocket Mortgage Field House is a silly name. If it were just named for the guy who owns the company that bought the naming rights (Gilbert Field House), it'd be way more palatable. Cincinnati is ripe for a bad name, though, so I won't be surprised if we get something along the lines of what's been posted here. Something like P&G Stadium would be fine, but someone will want to brand it and we'll get Pampers Park.

There have been so many shootings in Cincinnati this year that WCPO has decided they can no longer cover them all, unless someone dies: https://www.wcpo.com/about-us/trust/wcpo-is-reducing-coverage-of-nonfatal-shootings-and-other-crime-coverage-policies-explained?fbclid=IwAR0qP8B6QgccFPkm-GCPTjg2KqCahPHQj0cQEa6a_xP0uZqcQyYQs41OwEI

Yeah, Cincinnati lucked out with that one. I'd guess that the majority of people don't realize it's actually a company name. So it's sort of a win-win. Some cities end up with some unfortunate sponsor names that are just odd or glaringly commercial - like Guaranteed Rate Field, which sounds like something you'd find in an Excel file.

I think he's just talking about the wedge that was carved out of the southwest corner and converted to sidewalk: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1000425,-84.5126823,3a,75y,81.81h,87.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1su-IIWO-b7PSpSWUgnw-X9Q!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 I've done some work in downtown buildings and old easements are often bizarre like this. After a few years, there's no one left on either the owner nor city side that knows why these things exist. The skywalk easements are the really fun ones.

The Bengals, with the help of county tax dollars, have formally started crafting the renovation plans: Hamilton County, Cincinnati Bengals hire firm to examine Paul Brown Stadium, potential upgrades https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2020/09/14/county-bengals-tap-firm-to-examine-stadium.html Hamilton County and the Cincinnati Bengals have hired a Los Angeles-based international architecture, design and planning firm to assess the condition of Paul Brown Stadium and make recommendations on maintenance and upgrades along with a new master plan for the site.

We don't trust them down here, either. He declared Cincinnati a sanctuary city, LGBT rights, his stances on BLM, etc. He hasn't done much policy wise, but he likes to take up the popular talking points. I don't think his just-left of center stance is going to work well against an incumbent who is just-right of center and wildly popular. Plus, DeWine has a respectable and professional demeanor and Cranley comes off like he's trying to sell you an overpriced used car.

The first time I noticed this sign I stood there for a good minute scratching my head: And I'm still not really sure what this one means:

I just got a bird feeder and put it right outside the window by my desk. It distracted me from the distractions and sort-of neutralized it all. It also kept the cat occupied for the full 6 hours a day he isn't sleeping.

When the COVID lockdown first hit, Ohio passed a law stating that anyone working from home due to the pandemic was still to be considered as working from wherever their usual office was located, for income tax purposes. So downtown may be a ghost town because ~50,000 people are working at home, but Cincinnati is still collecting the income tax. If work-from-home becomes permanent for any significant portion of the blue collar office workers, I'd expect push back against this in the coming years.

Regarding the city's plan to fund a grocery store in Avondale, this story came out today about the city's failed attempt to do something similar in Westwood: Taxpayers spent $260K on a West Side market with nothing to show. The city's solution? Give the owner $20,000. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/08/30/jubilee-market-cincinnati-taxpayers-spent-280-k-nothing/5615796002/

If you haven't seen it, the movie it's based on (starring Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords) is also hilarious.

Yep, cancel culture and the immediate demands to fire people don't do anything to improve or advance a cause, they make it worse and drive divisiveness. Compassion, here, is a better tool than vengeance. Also, it's ironic that its often the same folks who demand compassion for violent criminals, rioters, drug dealers, etc. who are so quick to demand vengeance when... someone says something they don't like. Plus, a home run was hit right in the middle of his apology - what more could you ask for?

Probably because I can name a dozen places off the top of my head with better burgers than Shake Shack. It was nice when it was a novelty in Madison Square Park. A few years ago I went to one of the chains and it was wildly underwhelming. Like, I'd rather have Wendy's underwhelming.

We made the Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8633303/At-18-shot-four-dead-Cincinnati.html I suspect anyone who wants to "close the gun show loophole" or demands "mandatory background checks" has never been to a gun show nor purchased a gun - nor do they understand what either entails. A lot of people seem to make suggestions that would have had zero impact in terms of preventing the event they're upset about. Something that likely may have actually prevented 10 people from being shot and would have saved 2 lives is... if the police had shut down the giant block party that takes place at Grant Park every weekend night until the wee hours of the morning. The drugs, open containers, litter, noise violations, street blocking, etc. all seem like pretty good reasons for the police to intervene. This wasn't even the first time someone had been shot there.

For the last two decades or so my go-to response to panhandlers had been "I don't have any cash." I abandoned that about a year or two ago because too many bums have the gall to follow up by telling you where an ATM is or asking you to buy something with a card and get cash back for them. This was happening about once every three visits I made to the Shell on Liberty. "Can't do it" is my response now. It seems to work. I have noticed panhandlers will be way more aggressive with women and anyone that seems like they aren't used to living in a city. There's a good reason you can't legally panhandle near ATMs, storefronts, or even parking meters - to discourage that sort of aggressive panhandling in a place where victims have money/cards out and ready to use; but like many laws in Cincinnati they are practically never enforced. If they were, there would be very limited places downtown that you could actually ask for money: https://library.municode.com/oh/cincinnati/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TITIXMI_CH910PUOR_S910-12IMSO