Ram23

Yeah the cycle takes a long time primarily because northbound Vine and southbound Vine move on their own individual phases. To add to this, the crosswalk signal only activates when the request button is pushed - and when that happens, all lights turn red for ~30 seconds (which could make it a Scramble intersection with the right striping but that's another topic all together). The fire station is also capable of turning all lights red when trucks enter/exit, after which the light inexplicably starts back up at the beginning of the cycle instead of where it left off. I've seen buses wait 5+ minutes here before.

W. Hollister also looks too narrow to convert without removing the parking, which I imagine would have objections from nearly every single property owner. E. Hollister is also pretty narrow but looks just wide enough to allow two way traffic with parking on both sides. It seems a bit wider than any number of streets in CUF - like Ohio, a street that squeezes in parked cars on both side of two-way traffic with mere inches to spare. These sorts of streets are great for areas that have lots of foot traffic because it forces drivers to slow down and pay attention.

^ UC has has some great player names. Off the top of my head, in addition to Bryant they've had a Mike Tyson and a Lyndon Baines Johnson. I wouldn't be surprised if good 'ole Tommy Tuberville recruited these guys just because he liked the names. A blocked PAT returned for 2 points has to be one of the rarest plays in college football. I was at the game and scratched my head for a few seconds during the return, before the scoreboard updated, because I couldn't remember if it resulted in 1 or 2 points. The stadium announcer called it a touchdown, which I knew wasn't right, though I'm still not entirely sure what it's called. In general, UC's offense is terrible. They might get blown out in Memphis two weekends in a row unless the defense gets a few turnovers.

At least they left you some of the leftover paint cans, as shown (for some reason) in picture 30, so you can do some light touchup.

The only person who ever made a comment about me driving a "girly" car was a friend of mine who is a die-hard feminist. I'm on a couple different construction sites every week and haven't gotten any trash talk about it - I'd say the majority of cars around are old beaters like mine and work vans. Although the last month or two these places have been big mud pits, so maybe folks don't want to get their showroom quality trucks muddy?

When I started renovating my house, I coincidentally needed to get a new car. I briefly looked at little old pickups and was shocked at how well they seem to hold their value. Even now, 15 year old 4WD Toyota Tacoma's with 180,000+ miles are almost $10k. I got a Toyota Celica for $4000 off of Craiglist, instead. It's a hatchback, and with a few bungee cords I've managed to get a surprising amount of lumber, doors, tile backer boards, etc. in the thing. The only times I've had to rent trucks were for sheet goods like drywall, plywood, and rigid insulation. Even when actively completely renovating a house, there were only a handful of times I really needed a truck.

Wait until the "Working" Group finds out what Cincinnatus thought of the Plebs.

^ Yeah, this team is all over the place. The defense had been mostly consistent, but almost blew the game at ECU and gave up 500+ passing yards to a team that hasn't won a conference game. Luckily the offense put up big enough numbers to eek out a win. This weekend at a bad USF team, it was a different story - the offense couldn't put a drive together for the entire first half. They had < 50 yards at halftime, and were lucky the defense, who spent nearly the entire half on the field, held USF to 10. The offensive coordinator has made some lackluster game plans all season, but this was a new level of questionable. They're 10 games into the season, 9-1, and I still have no idea what sort of performance to expect each week. They need to beat a good Temple team, win on the road against Memphis, and then win a conference championship game to get to the cotton bowl. UC hasn't really had a good, convincing win on the road all season so that Memphis game looks problematic. If UC beats Temple but loses to Memphis, they might end up having to play Memphis in Memphis two weeks in a row.

^ Yeah, it's just in an unfortunate spot. It would be worth double that if it ere a block east or west, rather than on Reading Road. It would be worth 4 or 5 times that if it were a mile away in Hyde Park.

Not necessarily "weird" - but possibly the nicest house I've ever seen for < $600,000: https://www.coldwellbankerhomes.com/oh/cincinnati/3886-reading-rd/pid_33673667/

I was in Tokyo last week and made a point to swing by Renzo Piano's glass block clad Maison Hermès:

Parks atop FWW would be virtually unusable - there would still be significant highway noise from the adjacent blocks, there would be a lack of shade for several years (if not indefintely - I'm not sure how big trees can get atop a highway cap), 2nd and 3rd Streets would still be among the worst downtown streets for pedestrians to cross, and there's a far better park a block to the south - and a better square a block to the north. In my opinion, it's not worth the effort without some sort of building - even if it's something like a two story restaurant/bar/roof deck.

Years ago Google had huge backpacks that people could sign up to use - be it to do a hiking trail or some other area people couldn't get cars to. However, 360 degree cameras are tiny and cheap these days so you don't need any sort of huge equipment like that. In the last year or two we've started using them a lot in architecture/construction. You can carry around a little tripod, set the camera down every few feet, and essentially have a Google Streetview-like experience of buildings as they are being built.

When I grew up we always had a globe in the house, I played with it all the time. Now, I haven't seen a globe in years. Do classrooms still have them? I saw a great antique one at auction years ago but it sold for > $600

I'm somewhat suspicious that the county commissioners are secretly opposed to the SORTA tax. We'll likely see two separate tax hikes on the ballot, which almost certainly dooms both. Did they really think they could pull this off, or did they want the SORTA tax (which is essentially a funding mechanism shift, not a tax raise) to fail?

The most famous statue in Cincinnati, by far (The Genius of Water), is a woman.

These signs are pretty easy to read considering how much information they are displaying. They're a welcome addition (though simpler parking policies would be a far more welcome addition). I can't find it right now, but somewhere I have a folder of terrible parking signs in New York from the time I spend living there in the mid 2000s. Some of them were pretty ridiculous. I was happy to read, a few years ago, that there's a large effort to simplify the signs.

I get that the guy just wants to make as much money as possible... but it's probably best to just not outright admit that you love money so much you're willing to toss the concept of freedom right out the window: LeBron James undermines values he's espoused in most disgraceful moment of career https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/dan-wolken/2019/10/14/lebron-james-daryl-morey-china-hong-kong-tweet/3982436002/ On behalf of the 327 million American citizens who generally believe that freedom is good and authoritarian regimes are less good, let me apologize to LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers. It must have been a real inconvenience to take that 13-hour chartered flight to China last week and hang around a luxury hotel in Shanghai for five days while promotional appearances got canceled. Surely it was awful to be in the middle of an international firestorm where the stakes were so high: Would preseason NBA games be played or not? ... "So many people could have been harmed, not only physically or financially, but emotionally and spiritually. Just be careful what we tweet, what we say and what we do. We do have freedom of speech, but there can be a lot of negative things that come with that too."

^ Time to grow that mohawk I've always wanted.

The low is 35 degrees Saturday night which might trim the crowd down a bit, seeing as how that'll be a good 10 degrees cooler than anything else we've experienced so far this fall. I also assume they will do the official estimates by tallying up the crowd on each night and adding it together. I'll probably walk around a bit on 3 or possibly all 4 nights, so I'll get counted 3 or 4 times.

Agreed - especially as ticket prices go up with the move to MLS and the new stadium. If they are terrible again for the next few years the new stadium will quickly start to look like PBS did on Sunday. This will be especially true if the Reds continue to improve. Reds games are great, easy events for families and even though there are those groups of guys who "wooo," they aren't quite as disruptive as the soccer hooligans at FC games.

At the start of the season, Cincinnati was the 12th best team of the decade: https://www.patriots.com/news/nfl-decade-standings-how-the-league-ranks-from-2010-2018 There are two teams at the top (Patriots and Steelers) who seem to have it all figured out. The Browns are at the bottom, way below everyone else. The rest of the league is within sight of the mean. They're separated be a few fumbles, highlight reel catches, bad calls by the refs, etc.

She stuttered through what should have been a canned "climate change 101" talking point rebuttal. She somehow managed to leave the door wide open as to whether or not we should or shouldn't be eating babies. I won't even mention the excessive blinks and winks... If you're going to do these events, especially if you're someone like her, you've got to be prepared for the outlandish because they're going to make up about half the audience.

^ Let's not pretend that the lack of decent public schools isn't a problem. It essentially precludes middle class families from urban living. It's unfortunate because that is one of the single largest demographics in the country. Because of this, the vast majority of families with school aged kids in and around the urban basin fall into one of two categories - they either can't afford to move their kids into a neighborhood with better elementary schools, or they're wealthy enough that they can afford private schools. Cincinnati can add thousands of decent paying middle class jobs downtown, but very few (if any, to be honest) of those employed are going to spend $300,000+ on a condo, pay $10,000+ in property taxes every year, and be satisfied enough with the performance of Hays-Porter to send their kids there. The reason so many immigrants live in the area off Montgomery that you mentioned above is because it's in Sycamore School District. The same goes for a number of apartment complexes in Mason and West Chester - in Mason and Lakota schools. These families mostly end up buying homes in the same areas.

I know I've seen City of Cincinnati cars with something like "litter patrol" on the side - are they part of the Health Department? It was an early 2000s Dodge Stratus if I remember correctly (and I've seen this car in the last year or two). Would it be possible to have non-police officer force that's allowed to write citations for litter, similar to parking enforcement? I know in NYC, sanitation workers can write citations. It seems like it would pay for itself while both helping to improve the urban quality of life and clean up the environment. Somebody could stand outside of Tina's on Liberty and make thousands of dollars per hour.