Ram23

I saw them coming into town doing the exact same thing. I don't remember ever seeing that with other college teams that have played at UC. I remember a WVU bus getting lost and somehow trying to turn around on Probasco Street once, though that was after they had dropped off players or the band or whoever it was. I do see similar cavalcades for NFL teams regularly (my office is across the street from Paul Brown). I guess you can get the police to do whatever you pay them for, and BYU certainly has no shortage of money.

COAST must be all but gone at this point if they couldn't manage to mount a campaign against Issue 44, which is a pretty massive tax hike with all sorts of potential loopholes for people to take advantage of, not unlike the missteps of MSD and Parks recently.

The Enquirer apparently filed a request for all the juror's questionnaire responses, which could then possibly be used to ID them even if their actual names were redacted. I would not be surprised if protestors sought to doxx the jurors if a guilty verdict isn't handed down, and that information would obviously help them. They would also probably try to intimidate them and their families during the trial, which would probably trigger a mistrial and make this whole thing drag on even further.

^ That guys hands were like glue. I'm surprised he didn't at least end up as a practice squad guy in the NFL, he could test NFL defenses, even if his size might prevent him from playing.

I think the murder charge will prove to be a mistake by Deters. I don't think there's any way a jury finds Tensing guilty of murder under Ohio law. They might find him guilty of the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter, but even that is questionable. IMO reckless homicide would have been a more appropriate charge - I think the political pressure got to Deters and drove him to seek the murder charge. But I'm not a lawyer so all I know about this is what I've read in the Ohio Revised Code. I assume I have about the same understanding of these charges as the average juror, though, and at the end of the day the law, as written, is hopefully what they're looking at. I definitely don't think this is as open and shut a case as so many people in Cincinnati seem to think it is, though.

I think your chart does a good job of illustrating that aside from the first two weekends (opening weekend with free rides and Oktoberfest - the biggest downtown event of the year) ridership has been pretty regular. On a side note, there's a book called The Visual Display of Quantitative Information that anyone who ever looks at graphs and/or charts (everyone) should read. It's so easy to take the exact same data and display it in ways that make completely different points.

I think one of the best points made is this one: Most of the folks I worked with were new recruits not much older than I. Few were from Cincinnati. Many had lived here all of three months. This is something that has bothered me in recent years. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it is but there does seem to be a disconnect between the Enquirer and Cincinnati. One blatant example was how frequently they got neighborhood names and/or spellings wrong. They seem to have fixed that in the past year or two but there's still something that just feels wrong about so much of their content. I get so much more insight into the complexity and nuances of local issues from this forum than I do from Enquirer articles.

Here's an interesting blog post about the Enquirer's coming demise: https://medium.com/@waterbabyben/the-slow-death-of-the-cincinnati-enquirer-63a85e4a1a02#.vgro8s1xh

^ Fairview is a pretty nice street, especially toward the south end. I knew several people while at UC who lived on Fairview, a few of my friends rented a house there for years. I don't think you'd have any problems renting that one out every year at a profit. I know nothing about the neighborhood the other house is in though, what's the difference between that and Clifton Heights?

We're already seeing some shenanigans play out in the Tensing trial, as the Joe Deters had to kick out some Black Lives Matter protestors during jury questioning: http://www.wcpo.com/news/local-news/hamilton-county/cincinnati/ray-tensing-trial-opens-with-questioning-of-234-prospective-jurors-in-killing-of-sam-dubose

^ Yeah there are definitely some areas of the trucking industry that are ripe for robot takeovers, and others that don't seem to be very feasible any time soon. A lot of warehouses and other large shipping locations that have dozens or even hundreds of truck docks would definitely see improved efficiency because in my experience their biggest concerns are truckers parking their trailers in the wrong spot, not having paperwork ready, etc. - all human error. They could even have driverless yard jockeys and really automate the entire process. However I think even the finest software might have some trouble working with smaller loading docks and urban environments. I once had a knockoff Roomba type thing that rolled around and 'swifftered' my floors. It would routinely get stuck in tight areas and just wiggle back and forth. I imagine that would happen with driverless trucks in any type of non-interstate situation all the time.

That photo archive is one of my favorite things to browse anywhere on the internet. It's like Google Streetview from ~100 years ago.

^ I think the bigger stinky smell issue is FL Emmert (I'm pretty sure I've narrowed it down to them). Every once in awhile they do something that douses the entire area in some really, really gross smells. I live up on Klotter and have to close my windows on occasion because of it, if the wind is just right. I think i saw a photo in the UC archive that showed that building with four more floors and it looked like a traditional early 1900's factory with big casement windows and roof skylights. Wonder how it got to one story? Here's a photo showing it as 2 stories - that is weird. I wonder what happened?

The big reason AirBNB is so cheap is precisely because of the risk, IMO. You get what you pay for. With a hotel room, you get peace of mind - you know exactly what you're getting: you're guaranteed a clean room, you don't have to meet someone's schedule to get your keys, your belongings are safe, no one is going to snoop around your room, someone will clean your room daily, you won't wake up with a creep standing over your bed and have no recourse, no one will live broadcast your stay on the deep web, etc.

^ I believe the police have several cameras all over OTR and around UC (although those may be UCPD's cameras). Here's an old article stating the police had 118 cameras, and wanted to add 800 more: http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/03/05/cincinnati-police-want-1000-public-cameras.html I hardly ever see these cameras discussed in local media. I don't think I've ever seen any actual footage from them. Someone hit my car when I was parked right in front of one of the cameras once, and drove off. I asked the police if they could review the video and they brushed it off.

In my opinion bringing a dog into a bar/restaurant is like smoking in one. I don't care, at all, if you are a smoker or not but if you are just do it out on the street where you aren't making other people share your experience.

Google Streetview + these old "Street Improvement" photographs from UC's digital archive make for some good comparisons: https://drc.libraries.uc.edu/handle/2374.UC/702780/browse?type=series I used to post a blog a couple years ago with some examples: http://zfein.blogspot.com/2013/10/cincinnati-then-and-now.html

A rare late fall thunderstorm is roaring through Cincinnati right now. So far all I've seen is rain and nonstop lighting - no 3" hail, yet, and a total lack of any wind whatsoever:

There are courts a block away on McMicken and Walnut. What's the big deal about saving these ones? Grant Playground has room for more, if capacity is an issue. The urban garden also shouldn't be an excuse. That's a great use for vacant land that isn't in demand, but it is about as opposite from "highest and best use" as you can get. I imagine the real opposition to this development is the usual crowd with the usual reasons, which aren't the reasons they're pretending to care about.

The Bengals are looking like an 8-8 team, at best. If they would have played close at Dallas and New England I would have given them the benefit of the doubt but at this point I'm not watching any more games, just listening to Dan and Dave on WLW, though even Dave seems downright sad about them this year.

^ It's surprising that they haven't released a single security tape or image of the suspect. He has to have been on dozens of cameras in one way or another. In an updated article, it looks like the latter theory I mentioned above is looking promising: http://www.wlwt.com/article/uc-students-head-back-to-class-after-shot-fired-incic/6808911

For comparison sake, Boba Cha is on Main just north of Streetpops (north of Liberty, actually) and seems to do okay. They sell a similar niche product, though it might be a bit more of a 'destination' product than Popsicles because "Bubble Tea" is still kind of hard to find in Cincinnati. IMO this was the most 'hipster' thing to happen in Cincinnati in years, perhaps ever. It seemed like something right out of a Portlandia episode.

My theory is this was either a routine mugging or some kid trying to buy weed, and the mugger/dealer pulled out his gun for intimidation purposes and accidentally shot it due to a lack of trigger discipline. One shot was fired, allegedly up into the air, and then the guy ran off. Really it was nowhere near as big a deal as the shooting at Shell, but as you said it was on campus instead of across the street so it resulted in an overblown lockdown, which got national attention.

I saw elsewhere that the way it will be set up is in two separate suites - one is the coffee shop/foodservice establishment and the other connected space is the cat area. You can take your coffee/food from one to the other, but the cats stay on the one side. I imagine this will result in more needy cats being adopted instead of put down, if it wasn't all the way out in West Chester I'd stop in occasionally - apparently Butler County was more willing to work with them than Hamilton County (can't say I'm surprised given the seemingly endless red tape in Hamilton County). IMO this setup is safer than places like Neon's and Queen City radio that serve drinks and food (sometimes, in Neon's case) and let people bring their big, smelly dogs in to run around.

^ I have noticed the same thing, particularly for older renovated homes. There are a lot of older homes that have issues that are not cost effective to address, a lot of people see them as red flags of sorts but if you want an older home they are conditions you may just have to live with. I had an acquaintance pass up an amazing deal in Columbia Tusculum because of issues that were all pretty mundane old house things like a leaky basement (it was stacked limestone, what do you expect?). They bought a new build in Morrow because the inspection was perfect.