Ram23

^ Well, they both should be ranked somewhere. OSU is a top 20 team and UC is a top 10 team, IMO. The entire top 25 is a sea of mediocrity this year, which should actually make for a good tournament. I'd have to look back, but it seems to me like top 25 teams lost almost as many games as they won this week.

^ Well, given the events of the past week they're, at most, the second most overrated team in the state of Ohio.

I don't think Cranley really wanted a grassroots transit supporting bus rider on the board. I think he wanted this to go down exactly as it did - a black man was denied a seat on the SORTA board by PG, Seelbach, et. al. I don't do Twitter and the account linked above is protected, so I know next to nothing about Mack, but if he's as mean on there as is being implied, Cranley probably picked him under the assumption that fellow Democrats on council would reject his appointment. Cui bono? Smitherman, and his likely campaign against PG for mayor. Race has consistently been an interesting factor in mayoral elections, and if we end up with Smitherman v. PG in 2021 it will be very, very interesting, and little tidbits like this one could easily pop back up as talking points.

From the Business Courier article: "In an interview on Friday, Cranley said he nominated Mack because council members, including Sittenfeld, have said they want a regular bus rider on SORTA’s board, which he says describes Mack." So now Cranley can say he tried to do what council asked of him, but they rejected the appointment. Now he's clear to nominate one of his pals and council can't really complain as much.

^ Yeah that last foul was a pretty terrible call:

^ Did they actually print it with the little spell check squiggly lines visible? I don't think I've ever seen that before - I didn't even know you could print those.

I always just say I don't have anything. My wife tried the "I only have cards" line once at the Over-the-Rhine Shell station, and the guy pointed out the ATM. That actually got a laugh out of me before I told him there was no way that was going to happen. That Shell station is also the location of the one single time I've ever given any spare change to a beggar. I specifically brought 4 quarters to use the air machine to fill up my tires. The machine says $1, but apparently only needs 75 cents, and some guy was fully aware of that fact - so I was caught standing there very obviously holding a quarter I didn't really need. I thought about just saying "no" for a second, but he offered to pump my tires, so I gave him the 25 cents. I didn't have him pump the air, though - I didn't trust him to get the pressure right.

Walnut has a huge bottleneck between 6th and 7th - it is only 3 lanes because of the Aronoff sidewalk bumpout, one of which is always crowded with stopped cars due to the 21C valet. Anytime I'm on the streetcar heading south, particularly in the evening, I get off at the stop just north of 7th. It's almost always faster to walk south from there. A transit only lane there would be the biggest help, but seems difficult to implement because of the hotel valet and the fact that the streetcar tracks are essentially right down the middle of the street. Making that whole block a transit/pedestrian only street would solve the problem, and might even improve traffic flow all around in the long term.

The preferred alternative has the new bridge being built west of the existing bridge: http://www.brentspencebridgecorridor.com/uploads/pdfs/RecommendedAlternativeOhio.pdf I thought this was essentially the selected design, and that it would be developed into a final design if/when funding is available. It looks like The Dock property was needed for a ramp. The rest of the property they need seems to be on the other side of the bridge - Duke, Longworth Hall, and parts of UPS and another Duke property north of 3rd Street. I imagine acquiring the property and demolishing buildings makes the project seem more "shovel ready."

^ A site plan for that group of buildings on Moore, and the ones behind them on Walnut, was posted on this website (somewhere) awhile back - maybe a couple years now? It may have been in an HCB packet. They had proposed a small parking lot between the buildings, accessed from the end of Moore, with apartments in all of the buildings surrounding it. A few of those buildings on Moore and Walnut right there are already apartments (I lived in one years ago). It's possible that's finally moving forward.

UC's resume does not look too shabby on the NCAA's team sheet as of now (page 8 of this PDF): https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/Stats%20Library/Feb.%207,%202018%20Team%20Sheets.pdf Cincinnati is 4-2 in Tier 1, and those 2 losses are their only loses. It's hard to argue that a team like Purdue is any better than Cincinnati right now. The City of Cincinnati might very well have two top 5 teams next week. It's possible the city ends up having two number 1 seeds in the tournament.

Space X landing two boosters simultaneously may end up being a pretty historical video clip. This was the largest rocket launched since the Saturn V: The landing starts around 37:40 in the video.

Jeff Pastor and Chris Seelbach got into it on Twitter yesterday: https://twitter.com/votePASTOR https://twitter.com/ChrisSeelbach The short version: Seelbach tried to call out Murray and Pastor for missing a meeting because they attended the president's visit. Pastor called Seelbach out for his "Hipster Liberal Racism." A Business Courier reporter chimed in mentioning that the committee meeting in question only needs a quorum of 5 to vote, so 3 other people were absent as well. Seelbach walked right into this one, I'm not sure why he bothered with picking this fight.

^ PG-13 probably has a better shot at beating Smitherman than Aftab does, I was under the impression the next race was shaping up to be between those two. I think in a primary, Aftab would be third behind them if he ran, even if he ran a really good campaign. Though Aftab's probably going to lose this election by > 15% so I'm sure he'll still be around to run for mayor in a few years, if he wants to.

Another derailment, this time a collision between Amtrak and CSX: 2 dead, 70 injured as Amtrak train collides with freight train in South Carolina https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/02/04/amtrak-train-collision/304692002/

I shared the elevator up to the suites in Nippert with Mark Mallory at an FC game last year. The usher gave him directions and said something along the lines of his destination being the owner's suite.

I think many (most?) of these corners already have something going on. 14th and Republic has Salazar, 14th and Republic has Sundry and Vice, 15th and Pleasant has Pleasantry. Clay has something on each corner now, too - Please, Brown Bear, and Longfellow. There's at least one place anchoring almost every one of those in between corners now.

I wouldn't be surprised to see something like The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Horses spring up at some point, when the real estate values are high enough to threaten the stables. Maybe 3CDC will offer to build a much nicer, larger facility in Queensgate as a compromise. This facility is so close to downtown because these are the horses that pull the little Cinderalla carriages around. They walk down to Fountain Square from the stables every day around 5 or 6. I usually pass them as I'm going the other way up Central Avenue. I've never understood the appeal of carriage rides, the horses almost always smell like poop.

I believe this is the crossing where the accident occurred: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.0772696,-78.7167598,177m/data=!3m1!1e3

^ The West End is also one of only a handful of Cincinnati neighborhoods to be home to a team of horses: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1154466,-84.5265731,3a,65.6y,151.32h,87.97t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s89OIgVNuy-p50LWeZbYhRA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

^ More and more estate sales are moving online, though, which gives them a wider audience and increases the likelihood that someone who knows what they're looking at is going to find anything worthwhile. A few years ago I picked up a Knoll Barcelona table (not one of the many knockoffs) for $50. The only reason I got that deal was because it was at an auction and was simply listed as "glass coffee table" and no one recognized it. Online that doesn't happen as often. Head over to EBTH and all of the old midcentury modern furniture sells for a pretty penny because there are enough people who know what its worth.

If you start making districts strictly urban vs. suburban/rural, you'd just be gentrifying in favor of Democrats. You'd have one district mostly, but barely, blue and two surrounding suburban/rural districts (2 and 8) that were overwhelmingly red. If the requirement is to make districts geographically concise, there's no reason not to split Cincinnati in half. There's a pretty strong cultural justification for splitting Hamilton County down the middle, anyway. Anyone who has lived in Cincinnati for any amount of time is aware of the east side/west side cultural divide. I think the Warren/Butler county flip gets away from this principle, but not egregiously so.

Great, now we'll have two MLB teams in Ohio with red "C" logos. That will certainly help get the rest of the country to stop thinking Ohio is generic.

^ On the flip side, the redistricting in 2010 helped make OH2 more competitive. It balanced out OH1 and OH2 - each is now about 60% Republican, 40% Democrat - which aligns well with how the Cincinnati metro area is composed as a whole. You'd have to really gerrymander the two districts in order to get more competitive results in either one. Prior to 2010, I'd say the districts unfairly lumped much of southwest Ohio's republican population into OH2.

Pureval lives in Hyde Park, in Ohio's 2nd Congressional district, and is planning to run in the 1st against a lifetime West Sider? I don't see that going very well. If he lived downtown or in OTR or someplace actually in the district he might have a shot, but he will be painted as a yuppie Hyde Parker attempting to colonize the west side.