Ram23

^ I had a job where any major screw up that resulted in the need for an insurance claim (damaging/crashing a car) required an immediate drug/alcohol test. I somehow managed to end up being the one responsible for escorting people to the piss test place at a nearby urgent care. On more than one occasion the people would completely disappear from the building between doing the paperwork about the incident and me showing up to take them to the test. That was obviously an automatic firing, but without the failed test I think the insurance still paid rather than the person being completely on the hook for the cost (which could be thousands or even tens of thousands depending upon what happened). One guy disappeared for like 20 minutes and then showed up and asked me when we were leaving - I have always assumed he snuck off and got some pee from someone else.

^ Yeah I'm in the same boat. I thought expansion was likely until the recent news about the TV networks going all in to stop it. I think they likely offered to pay the Big 12 money to not expand. Fox/ESPN will owe something like $50 million more per year if the Big 12 adds 2 new teams. If they offered half of that, the Big 12 makes more money without having to bother with expansion, and keeps the TV networks happy for future contracts. *Edit - although this is now making the social media rounds (reportedly being printed right now at UC) so who knows?

Ohio and Kentucky have a reciprocal agreement - if you live in one state and work in the other, your employer is not required to withhold income tax for the state the employer is in. I don't know if your employer withholds for the other state, or it it is entirely up to you to take care of it. You only pay income tax to the state you reside in. I think you still do pay city income tax in the city your employer is in, though.

^^ ^Yeah there are ways to mitigate the landslide risk, but they are all pretty cost prohibitive given current real estate costs. If we ever get to a point where most of the vacant parcels in OTR are developed, development has spread into the west end, and people are still wanting new construction in lieu of previously occupied buildings, the hillsides could become viable for development - it's just a matter of the price being right, IMO. If houses here sold for what they do in San Francisco, people wouldn't hesitate at all to drop triple figures on foundations and retaining walls. On a related note, this is a great website if you've got a little spare time and want to read about Cincinnati landslides - I took a class at UC on Cincinnati regional geology (ended up being one of my favorite classes, actually) from one of the guys that runs this: http://www.ohiovalleylandslides.com/?page_id=6

The cities standard street sweepers fit just fine in the bike lanes, I have seen them sweeping the bike lanes on two occasions, albeit both were shortly after the bike lanes were built (and I haven't seen them since).

The federal government prevents construction in flood plains on the basis that it isn't a matter of "if" it will flood, it's "when" it will flood. Hence, the 100 year flood plain concept. You can't put a new building in such a flood plain unless it meets requirements for being flood-proof (think Riverview East academy in Cincinnati) or you raise the ground level up out of the flood plain. To some extent, coastal flooding is also a matter of "when." Pretty much every spot on the southeast coast of the US experiences hurricanes and coastal flooding at some point, it'd be interesting to do a similar analysis and see what the frequency is. If hurricanes cause disastrous coastal flooding in any given town more frequently than the Ohio River reaches it's 100 year flood mark in Cincinnati, for example, why the more restrictive laws for building along inland rivers?

It's always great to see photos like that one because they show how the density of downtown and OTR used to simply continue up the hillsides to neighborhoods like Mt. Adams, CUF, and Mt. Auburn. A lot of demolition occurred on the hillsides around OTR due to foundation issues. Today it's prohibitively expensive to build much on those hills for the same reasons - so instead of a continuous unbroken density we have all sorts of wooded gaps between dense neighborhoods. I wonder if, in the distant future, demand for property in OTR gets so great that hillside development will become viable again. Though hopefully not too soon since my house is atop one of those hills and has a great view I wouldn't want to lose...

^ "I will be voting for Mike Pence for President." That is a dumb strategy. Maybe I'll vote for Mike Pence for Ohio Senator, which makes about as much sense as voting for him for president. Seeing as how Portman pretty much has the election in the bag already, this comment was superfluous and essentially only helps Clinton. Very odd move.

I saw this video posted elsewhere, it was not last night's shooting but a previous shooting. It is a pretty fair example of how nuts this Shell station is on a typical weekend night - I didn't see it last night but it was apparently a lot more crowded than it was in this video. I can't believe the franchise owners allow this to take place on a regular basis: https://vid.me/VGhV

"Club Shell." I wonder if the police, particularly the UCPD who is obviously on an extremely short leash right now, are just afraid of confrontation. The CUF Shell and Liberty Street Shell really need to adopt an "if you aren't buying anything get the hell out" policy.

The one place one-way streets make sense is in the basin. It's a grid for the most part, and the streets are all relatively narrow. A single stop light and some occasional speed limit enforcement would do wonders. Personally, I think two-way streets make pedestrian crossing more difficult. It's pretty easy to 'jaywalk' or use one of the non-signaled crosswalks when you only have to look one way. Another consideration is that people in Cincinnati are awful at parallel parking. With a two way street, a single bad parker could cause massive congestion.

I think we should add an "e" at the end, "Bucktowne." That will emphasize the historic nature of the name.

I can't remember if NYC uses actually cops or just meter maids to patrol their busy intersections. Their uniforms are exactly the same now, unlike about a decade ago when the meter maids all wore brown and were easily spotable (they supposedly switched them over to standard NYPD uniforms because they would routinely get ignored, harassed, and beat up). They stand on a corner with a handheld device, and every time a light turns red, they walk out into intersections, knock on windows, and print out tickets. It has to be a profitable venture because they seem to write a ticket or two every time a light turns.

The first floor of Cincinnati's downtown library still recreates the atmosphere of Blockbuster to some extent, completely free of charge. I'm probably in there once a week or so on my lunch break to get a movie, they actually have a pretty wide selection, though you usually have to reserve new releases and wait a few days.

The Enquirer is now blocking people who use ad blockers: Blocking the following script fixes this: http://www.gannett-cdn.com/uxstatic/cincinnati/uscp-web-static-1942.0/jsb/apps/overlay/pages/story-overlay.js

^ In addition, I think given the tight confines, the resulting mess of debris would just be too unwieldy. I work nearby and watch this all the time, the actual demolition doesn't take that long, they probably spend 10% of the time with the wrecking ball, and the other 90% of the time hauling off the mess. Given that the time spend hauling everything off would take just as long either way, the schedule savings probably wouldn't be that great. On a related note, at times the sound of demolition coming out of this garage sounds like the apocalypse. I don't really know how to describe it and my phone sucks at recording sounds or else I'd try and capture it.

^ I can't believe that is real, it has to be viral marketing for Portlandia. If not, the "Women and Women First" bit has captured them perfectly.

Maybe Stop N Go can open a new location at the Banks. That would have the added benefit of saving CPD money because they could just move the Banks police substation into it.

I think it's a niche market at this point, and probably will remain one (if not a trend that dies off entirely at some point). I don't think we'll ever see traditional homebuilders and contractors switch over because there's not enough volume. I think being a niche market is why the profit margins are so high, not unlike any other craft or artisan product.

So do I, which is why I said $95k is way too much for that home. 50% of that price is profit. They are sold at prices like any other commodity - whatever people are willing to pay for them is what they go for, but it is apparently a good business to get into. As for trailer, a comparably sized 5th wheel trailer runs about $30,000 on the high end. Here's a "tiny house" sized camper at Tom Raper for $18k: http://www.tomraper.com/new-travel-trailer-rvs/2016-cruiser-rv-fun-finder-214wsd-1206049 Getting your tiny house at Tom Raper instead of an artisinal Nashville tiny house showroom is sort of like getting your fried chicken at Richie's instead of the Eagle. You can get a lot more bang for your buck with the 5th wheel, but your friends won't think you are hip.

I think the 2/3 rate is a bit high, but even using that number the overhead and profit for whoever is building/selling these is probably coming in somewhere around 60%. 10% is pretty standard, I think the other 50% is the "artisanal" adjustment. And it isn't really "real estate" since there's seemingly no land/location included in the price.

I can't believe they get $95,000 for that house. There can't be any more than $20,000 worth of materials. It doesn't appear to come with land, either, which would possibly make that a reasonable price.

This was the dumbest baseball event I've seen in a long time - a walk off that shouldn't have been. I think it trumps the playoff infield fly goof in Atlanta a few years back, another horrible moment of umpiring that helped the Cardinals. The Cardinals wouldn't have been eliminated from the race for the last wild card spot with a loss, but they would have been pretty close to it. http://www.espn.com/blog/st-louis-cardinals/post/_/id/2636/cardinals-are-in-a-receiving-mood-for-thursdays-gift-win Cardinals in receiving mood after gift win Yadier Molina's double shouldn't have scored Matt Carpenter. After it hit the Missouri Lottery sign above the left-field wall, it should have been a dead ball. At that moment, Carpenter wasn't even halfway between second and third, so he would have been sent back to third. But somehow third-base umpire Scott Barry didn't see it and neither did any of the other three umpires. By the time Cincinnati manager Bryan Price reached the umpires as they were headed off the field to their locker room, it was too late.

^ Given that Milicron wasn't reused, I'm not hopeful about Cast-Fab. The front portion of that complex was also a very nice looking mid century building, and the inside was essentially a gutted open office space, with a pretty big clear span. There didn't seem to be any significant reason the front of that couldn't have been retrofitted for new office space, but it seemingly wasn't even considered by the developer.

^ The people who thought that the urban core was going to be a poor neighborhood and would never change in their lifetimes still think that, despite the fact that it's already changing. They are also the only people who still use that bridge, and are the ones fighting to keep it. It should be torn down, and the money that would have been spent to repair it should be used for pedestrian improvements on Central Parkway - which is a rather massive street to try to cross, and doesn't really need to be.