Jeffery

Hmmm, after re-reading I see Ohio cities get mentioned a bit.....

I thought this was pretty good: ...which we can cross-link to the hipster thread. His comment on Potemkin Bohemias and "creative class" as bait reminds me of what goes on here in Dayton. It's more transparent here for various reasons, perhaps because its such forced growth and so desperate., so "trying too hard to be cool"...so maybe Franks comments ring truer.... For me vibrant would be if the local neighborhoods were prosperous enough to support all the vacant neighborhood retail spaces and corner stores around here, or there was enough of a market or demand for urban housing so that the city wouldn't be on its way to abandonmnet. It wouldn't be particularly cool....in fact when these places were occupied this was a 'square' blue collar factory city.... ...... but it would be closer to what I would consider a living city, vs a shell with this wannabe hipster bohemia grafted on.

The always-excellent Tom Frank skewers the "vibrancy" argument behond creative class theory for urban revitalization. Dead End on Shakin' Street He starts by taking a look back at bland Kansas City (his hometown) and then brings us up-to-date.... The place fairly quivers with vitality now. It is swarming with artists; its traffic islands are bedecked with the colorful products of their studios. It boasts a spectacular new performing arts center designed by one of those spectacular new celebrity architects. It even has an indie-rock festival to call its own. And while much of the city’s flowering has been organic and spontaneous, other parts of its renaissance were engineered by the very class of civic leaders we used to deride for their impotence and cluelessness. At that Kansas City indie-rock festival, for example, the mayor himself made a presentation this year, as did numerous local professionals and business leaders. Besides, as everyone knows, cupcakes are cool nowadays, like yoga or something—the consummate expression of the baker’s artisanal vibrancy. Your hometown is probably vibrant, too. Every city is either vibrant these days or is working on a plan to attain vibrancy soon. The reason is simple: a city isn’t successful— isn’t even a city, really—unless it can lay claim to being “vibrant.” ...then on to the general points. Pretty good stuff, and I was waiting for him to take this on since he has cast a jaundiced eye on a lot of this hip/cool stuff in the past (see "Consolidated Deviance" in a previous Baffler, and his book "The Conquest of Cool").

Supposedly new employment numbers are being released today. If we are "between recessions" it seems we now have a structural unemployment rate of around 8%. Which would be a historic high for an inter-recession unemployment rate (back in the 1980s the assumption that structural unemployment would be in the 6%-7% range).

Oinkadoodlemoo seems like a neat concept. I thought Cold Beer and Cheeseburgers could have been good as a national or regional thing too, but they didnt expand.

I get this with the modern "green" movement in its various manifestations...which extends to the bicycle trend and the interest in "streetcars". A lot of this was happening in the 1970s, too. I still get an LL Bean catalogue! Preppy was my style. An easy style because it was simple and you didnt have to think too much on how to put together an outfit....you could tweak it to be more professorial or rustic (which could read as sort of "grad student bohemian"), or more upscale & "at the club".

According to their FB page the Fifth Street Brewpub has reached its membership goal! Here's a pix of the building from an old UO thread

I didn't see this posted...re beer and micro-brews... New co-op brewpub seeking charter members DAYTON — Founding members of the planned Fifth Street Brewpub at 1600 E. Fifth St. in the St. Anne’s Hill neighborhood are seeking charter members who would pay $100 to be part-owner of a cooperatively run brewpub. ....for those of you familiar with Dayton or who have been following my neighborhood history posts from years back, this is the old American Saloon AND an adjacent building that used to be a shoe repair shop back in ye olde days. ...and, for those of you who know me as Mr. Negative when it comes to Dayton, I put in my $$$ and am a charter member in the co-op! I figure I'd do a little bit to try to save one of the empty buildings I took pix of...

Sounds like the guy and girl having this drunken fight in the elevator outside my hotel room (My hotel was on Deleware, half block from Rush Street). Yet the tourists are pretty "boul Mich" too....you have to have a lot of $$$ to afford those hotels, so you are not getting the average Joe tourist in that area. I was up in Chicago for some used-book shopping, particularly the Newberry Library book fair. Book boffins are their own set...and there where these quirky activists types tabling around that Bughouse Square event that was being hosted outside the library....and I saw this older guy with this anarchist/IWW stuff tatooed on him, when on the L. Chicago still has a few originals floating around, even tho the gentrification (hipsterization is a subset of this) is getting fairly intimidating to me, where I'm getting the same feeling I did when I was in DC and the Bay Area...that I don't really belong here, or I'm not young enough/ cool enough/smart enough/creative enough/affluent enough for the place. To be frank about it reading about this stuff and studying it from from a distance is interesting and entertaining. Actually experiencing and witnessing it in real life is alienating.

Ive been randomly picking CDS from the library if the album cover or song titles or group looks "interesting" So far its been hit or miss. Some oddballs: The Gathering/Aboreteum (or is it Aboreteum/The Gathering?). Sounds Like: An updated take on prog rock..sort of like Uriah Heep. Alarum by Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit. Sounds like: that Mumford and Sons take on folk music...not as electric, more buskerish. A bit of Robb Johnson thrown in, too. I like these guys (and gal). Augustana: CD packaging looks sort of rust belt gritty...instead I find they are from San Diego!. Sounds Like: sort of that Springsteenyish rock thing, but not like Marah..... Vaguely folk rock.

Wouldnt have a door zone to worry about....

No kidding! I nearly sh@t a brick when he was passing that cab....and then almost running into the van.... I get annoyed by having cyclists in front of me when I'm driving.....who ride away from the curb and take up a lot of the road...but that race was beyond annoying.... this was down the main shopping street in downtown Cincy on a late afternoon...

Hah! So I'm not the only one who's notice the 'pick-up truck bloat'!

I was up in Chicago and they have went bike crazy. There are bikes everywhere. And one almost ran a 4-way stop and hit my car when I was over in "Roscoe Village". Chicago is a massively congested city and now you add cyclists to that mix ??? Watch out!

Oh yes, riding around in Centerville/Washington Twp & the Dayton Mall area...be verrrry careful! I've cycled to Waynesville and down to Cesars Creek Gorge and back but I would only do that on an early Sunday morning when the traffic is lite. I don't feel comfortable doing road-riding during normal business hours for the reasons you state, which is why I also do my shopping-by-bike very early on weekends, when traffic was light. I will do some mix of road and sidewalk riding after work to go to the PO and library, but you have to know what makes sense to do on what road, and when. THough so far (knock on vinyl) most drivers seem to be pretty good about giving some space...once I had a close pass by some SUV, and one other I got a horn, but I think those where high-school kids, so maybe not too serious. But yes, best to ride in very off-hours. And I use the sidewalk or paths if possible...they've redone the sidewalk along Lyons so it functions as sort of multi-use bikepath/sidewalk, which makes more sense than riding in 50 MPH traffic... @@@ Yeah, this why I would never really participate in this stuff...too much of a loner and I don't have the "right" bike for it..... tho its entertaining to read about. Besides I live in Dayton and there just isn't ...er..a 'critical mass' (pardon the pun) of hipster cyclists for this kind of scene. The vintange stuff...I sort of see them as like these hot rod/vintage car cruise-ins we see around here in Dayton. People just ride to these things to show of the car, and I don't think they really use their 57 Chevy or old Merc for day-to-day transportation. Same with bikes. @@@@ Yeah, I noticed this, though I prefer more landscape than tunnel of trees. The trail btw Tipp and Dayton is pretty nice though...yet .river trails can also be bland, Ive noticed...one is essentially riding in the bottom of a huge drainage ditch.

Hard to put these three in any particular order... 1. NYC 2. Chicago 3. San Franscisco. They all compete, for me, for the top spot. After that...hmm....im thinking Boston should be here but I need to see more of the place. I like these... 4 Pittsburgh or Cleveland. I'm thinking Pbgh since its not so abandoned and ghetto...though Cleveland does have the rapid and the lake and the market. 5 Cincinnati or Louisville. Maybe more Cincy for the hills and architecture and they are getting that streetcar and I really feel at home in Northside. Sort of suprised I didnt put DC in there. It might really be #4, but belongs in that top 3 grouping.

In a negative way. This is kind of personal, but I got really turned off on activism and politics and "political people" via Occupy (I tend to be a loner and a contrarian anyway), and my embrace of cycling was that it was something I could do that didnt involve "people" ....the same the way I got back into hiking, esp longer distance hiking and walking (if im in the city). A solitary activity...like the song goes: "I am my own ragged company"...spending time outdoors and by myself and tuning out political and cultural things.... The other motivation was to get serious about being car-light, and using RTA to get around town and to work. Since RTA is so infrequent it made sense to save time by using the bike instead of waiting for busses, and that it brought some grocery shopping options out here in suburbia a lot closer in travel time. The "sunday drive" bike path cycling i'm doing now is sort of a new thing, more a recreation thing, not really why I got the bike. But it's opened up possibilities... @@@ Very cool! Biking from Northside downtown would be neat. For me it would be tough to do this by going "over the top" via Clifton and UC, so this valley route would be more possible for me, personally (older 50 something not particularly fit dude) I should say that earlier in the year when I was spending more time walking around Cincy I walked all the way a long the river from Tusculum/Alms Park to, say, "Fulton", beyond that church with the clock on the river...not as far as downtown, though....and noticed a LOT of people cycling that stretch (this was on a Sunday). I figured that's how they would bring the bike path from the Little Miami into the city. I think that would be "Riverside Avenue"? AND, on the way back from a hike to Buzzards Roost Rock, I drove downtown via that Little Miami River valley by way of Newtown, I think, and noticed how congested it was...thinking they would have to really do something as it wasnt safe for road-side bike traffic....

If you look at RTA as a lifeline service to the working poor (which it is), what's "out there" are hotel/service jobs and cheap shopping at Meijer. I use that bus out to WSU on occasion and that seems to be who uses the bus, beyond the WSU riders. If you lived near line 1 this would be a good destination since you wouldnt have to transfer to go shopping...you could ride it out to Meijer. I think there's also an Aldi over in Westtown, but the selection is better at Meijer. "as a taxpayer...." yeah we all are taxpayers. But I'm also a rider, so I put myself in a rider or customers perspective. Again, not such a big deal to make a handful of stops beyond the county line since the bus is already running to WSU. But yeah, cutting or not expanding service to Greene County is a win-win. A position for fiscal conservatives in Montgomery County ("a taxpayer" vs "a citizen") and for racist snobs in Beavercreek (reduce the "crime risk" by minimizing exposure to the, ahem, "undesirable element") to come together on.

Dayton: Wer're number two, but we try harder! America's Emptiest Cities 2012 Each quarter, the Census Bureau publishes data on homeowner and rental vacancies in the 75 largest cities. Listed here are the five cities with the most vacancies, using a weighted ranking of both rental and homeowner vacancies based on a 12-month average of both kinds of vacancy rates to smooth out sampling errors. Weights are assigned to rental and homeowner vacancies according to the national proportion of homes to rental properties in the U.S. Our list reveals the most significant outliers in both categories relative to other major U.S. cities. (They are ufront with their methodology, and seems like a rational way to rank-order places by vacany) The list: 1. Orlando 2. Dayton 3. Memphis 4. Detroit 5. Richmond ...so some suprises. From their article that downtown pix makes Memphis look pretty interesting and actually sort of downtownish. I really need to visit there one of these days. Anyhow, vacancy also equates to affordability, so if you have a job that pays above subsistance you are seeing, probably, lower housing costs and maybe more discretionary income. I know Dayton scored near the top for affordability in one of those lists....

That Oakwood deli sounds interesting...with the upstairs deck seating. And the coffee shop in Kettering...interesting....trying to place the location??? (BTW, ColDayMan, thx for the intel on the food scene here...giving me some ideas for my monthly "dinner with friends" socializing).

They go all out on ambience..... ...the former Meadowlark, which had a rotating gallery of large paintings on those now-bare walls. The restaurant will open in a temporary space in the tower on Monday while renovating the former Rutledge Gallery space in the main lobby. ..good to hear, since it wont be burried in that old "King Cole/Olivias" space. unfortunatly one of those restaurants that is only open during the week on business hours...same with Ohio Coffee. Ohio Coffee could have been one of the cool spots downtown, as it had a sort of funky somewhat bohemian atmosphere (& they did host occasional after-hours things generated by the local boho set). It will be interesting to see how they "fit in" to the lobby of a skyscraper, in a space that has zero street visibility (in contrast to their old location).

I've never been a big fan of comic books or their movie adaptations, but for some reason I've always liked Batman, particularly from watching the cartoon series a lot growing up. Me too...the cartoon from the 1960s (I know theres a more recent one out but saw it mabye once or twice) and the TV series. They even ran a batman comic strip in the Sunday paper for awhile, up in Chicago back in the 1960s. I think I've seen two of the Batman movies mainly because my partner was an big film buff.... the one with the evil department store owner who gets electrocuted and that first one with Jack Nicholson as the Joker (excellent casting for that role). I think the same with Spiderman. The cartoon show from the 1960s was my intro to the character, but only saw the frist movie, which was pretty good, sort of dark & a bit of social comment, in its own way.

I'm less familiar with the site, but on the surface it's probably big enough, but the runways are the wrong orientation. It still appears to have rail lines crossing the property, but I'm unaware of whether they're active. ...yeah...that flatland trends E-W, and if you need N-S orientation for the runways, that wouldnt work. I think the rail thats down there might be serving AK steel?. But, yes, ultimately this would be a project that would need an LOT of money and leadership. Especially leadership, to tackle the various show-stoppers. And I'm wondering what the cost/benefit would look like....would both CVG and Dayton be closed and redeveloped? Then you'd have to look at operational savings vs the cost to start up a new airport. But would both airports shut down? I bet not...I bet the pressure would be to keep one or both open as some sort of freight or general aviation airport. So less operational savings if that was the case! This central airport really does not make a lot of sense. There is a 20 post discussion about this at a civil aviation discussion forum: Cincinnati-Dayton Metroplex @@@@@ Back to more generic sprawl discussion. The improved accessibility to the Warren/Montgomery County line area due to the Austin Blvd interchange is spawning even more development, well to the east of the interchange. Witness this zoning battle to increase density on Social Row Road, which is the name of Austin Blvd when it crosses into the Centerville/Washington Twp area: Centerville planners approve rezoning Despite objections, the group reverses an earlier ruling... more at the link. And just down the road from that, at the intersection of Social Row and SR 48, the interchange developer RG Properties, is going to develope a large mixed use development. So sprawl is happening in increments and the somewhat rural character is slowing eroding away in drips and drops. Thought there is still quite a bit of open space left south of Dayton (nothing quite as intense as the Warren County developments north of Cincy). This isn't California-type sprawl where it seems a carpet of highly planned subdivision development rollls open across the landscape.

This already exists in that RTA runs to WSU. So they turn the WSU line (Route 1) into a loop on Pentagon Blvd. Since most of the cost of operating transit is in personnell...the drivers....this wouldnt be adding a personnell cost since they already have drivers on the route. The only additional cost would be the fuel/wear n tear cost for the extra leg on Pentagon Blvd, and maybe the stop improvments (one-time capital cost). That this is a fairly low-cost service enhancment is probably why RTA is even considering this.

Beavercreek vs the Bus....the tale continues.... The Feds started an investigation earlier this year in response to the civil rights complaint. Agency examining Beavercreek’s denial of RTA request DAYTON — A federal agency has launched an investigation into allegations that the Beavercreek City Council discriminated against minorities when it unanimously voted against adding three bus stops near the Mall at Fairfield Commons. A civil rights specialist with the Federal Highway Administration will lead the investigation and meet with Leaders for Equality and Action (LEAD) in Dayton during a public meeting at 7 p.m. April 9 at College Hill Community Church, according to organization officials. Then Beavercreek city govt. decided to revist the issue, passed another ordnance, but not much changed....and the Feds continue to investigate.... The latest: Revised Beavercreek bus stop criteria approved The Federal Highway Administration continues to investigate a civil rights complaint against Beavercreek filed by Leaders of Equality and Action (LEAD), a coalition of 16 congregations in the Dayton area, said administration spokesman Doug Hecox. LEAD claimed in its complaint that the vote rejecting the bus stops discriminated against minorities..... .......Mark Donaghy, executive director of RTA, said his agency will decide how to proceed after the federal investigation is complete. He called changes council has made to the 28 page criteria minor and requirements like surveillance cameras, traffic studies and vehicle turnouts in high traffic area burdensome and overly expensive.