Jeffery

I get to be the first UO widower. yay.

Unfortunatly, I notice they are using that "Proof on Main" brand for the bar/restaurant. That name was a specific allusion to the Louisville distilling industry and the industries location, at one time, on Main Street (and to the source of one of the owners' fortune). I'd like it if they chose something more specific or related to Cincinnait, like, say "Soap on Walnut". Or "Pig". Or something like that.

This may have already been posted, but here is the 21c Cincinnati webpage, with renderings: Cincinnati I like the way they are using Gano Alley (I think thats it) for a sidewalk cafe. Nice. And the penguins are there, too, in yellow instead of red.

x

Dont confuse Germany with the US. The place has a more matter-of-fact attitude toward sexuality than we do, and, though the country has a large Catholic population, it doesnt have a politically mobilzed religous right movement mobilized to fight the LGBT community on every front.

There was a brutal gay bashing there back when i first moved to Dayton, except the victim wasnt gay, but a punk rocker with a wife or steady girlfriend. I guess he had too much mascara on for the locals, and they just thought he was a homo. The local live music community did benefits for the guy since he didnt have insurance (and apparently suffered brain damage from his beating). So that was my intro to the Huffman area in particular and East Dayton in general. I've heard about the crime and drugs thing overwhelming the area, too (in the recent past).

The headline says "job losses to bottom 1st quarter". Based on those monthly Ohio employment graphs I've been posting the 1st quarter is always the low for the year...January, February, March. We've already dropped quite a bit since 2006/2007, so, sure, I expect less employment in the first quarter, since the usual winter low will be added to an already weak jobs situation. The question is what is going to happen in the 2nd and 3rd, which is usually when the Ohio economy adds jobs or makes up for the big winter dip in employment. If this is weak, like it was this year, or like it was in 2008, the employmen low will be the first quarter of 2011, not 2010.

Very nice. I recall the old ferry from Vevay to Ghent...that was still in business back in the 1970s, before they built the road over Markland Dam. I think, other than Anderson Ferry and this one, the only other one left is a ferry down at Cave In Rock or Shawneetown, between KY and Illinois. A part of the Ohio I know little about.

I could see how things could have been worse, but fortunatly the funeral home was OK with me making the arrangements as far as I could, and my late partner was out to his family and they accepted him and our relationship.

Here's something that hits home. This happened in Rhode Island but I was recently in a similar situation. Providence Journal Update: R.I. governor vetoes 'domestic partners' burial bill byline: Katherine Gregg Perhaps an example of how Republicans can be evil bastards on the gay issue. However, this hits home because I was in exactley the same situation a few weeks ago. My partner of 21 or 22 years (depending on how you count it) unexpectedly passed away on October 20th (one reason I'm not too motivated to post much online). His next of kin..mother and sisters...are in Sacramento, CA. I was going to have him cremated. I was fortunate that I had a younger women as my funeral director and she was cool with me making arrangements for the funeral, placing the obituary, etc, but unfortunatly, since it was cremation, Ohio required next of kin..my late partners mother, not I, since our relationship has no legal standing in Ohio...to sign the cremation request or whatever form that was. So there was a flurry of phonecalls and faxes between me, the coroner, funeral director, and the family in California to iron all this out. Fortunaly the FD took care of most of this, and that was a big relief. Not to mention that I and my late partner was on good terms with his family. You dont want to go through a bureaucratic rigamarole or have family issues get in the way on top of that. So you can see this Rhode Island law would have smoothed things over gay and lesbian partners if they didn't have the proper paperwork set up beforehand. We did not, thinking medical issues & funerals would come later (living day by day). And its a good object lesson on how the GOP really has become the Gods Own Pricks party with their little holy war against us GLBT folk. Sometimes the consquences of political homophobia hits home in a very personal way, as I'm learning. Another example is the cororners report on my partners death won't be sent to me (it is still under investigation..the death certificate said "cause of death: pending"), but to my partners mother since under the law of Ohio she is next of kin, not me. I will have to ask her for a copy. Stuff like that. Anyway, excuse me for venting. After I read that article about Rhode Island I just saw red.

"Insane" was certainly the operative concept for all that. The lightbulb finally came on and I realized this is just the internet and I was wasting a lot of time & effort on all that Dayton crap here and on that blog I had, wasting it on a place I don't like very much. Which is pretty crazy when you think about it. So I'm back to what I was in 2004, an occasional poster here.

Locutus of Board was a hoot. Outrageous, yes, but he did know his suff. He'd be interesting to have around for the health care debate since he was , I think, a pre-med student. Memorable threads: 1. KJPs Cleveland history threads, esp that one on the Hough, how dense it was, and the ones on the neighborhoods next to downtown Cleveland. 2. CDawgs thread on how urban renewal devastated a street in downtown Toledo, the one paralleling the river. 3. Robs pre-digital pix of old passenger service. Maybe more of a railfan specialty, though.

I had a lot of admiration for what he's done with the old Edgar place, and that he was active in neighborhood groups and such. Very grassroots. But, yeah, there are real structural problems with the local political system.

Congrats to y'all on this win. I was following this and could sense that there was some uncertaintiy...but common sense prevaled!

DAYTON — Challenger Gary Leitzell defeated incumbent Mayor Rhine McLin on Tuesday in the race for Dayton’s next mayor. According to final, unofficial totals from the Montgomery County Board of Elections, Leitzell had 51.5 percent of the votes to 48.5 percent for McLin, a Democrat. That amounted to 14,923 votes for Leitzell and 14,045 for McLin. McLin was seeking a third term as mayor. Leitzell, running as an independent, is chairman of the Southeast Priority Board and a new voice in Dayton politics. source (and read the comments) There was a lot of discontent around McLin due to the decline of Dayton. One of the key moments in this campaign might have been the African-American ministers association refusing to endorse McLin (they didn't endorse her opponent, either). This was a change election similar to Obama's.

Its ironic that one of the arguments to vote no on Issue 9 ...amending the Charter for something that should be policy...also applies to casinos, where the Ohio constitution is being amended instead of policy being set by state law.

Election Day: ...wishing Good Luck to the No on 9 supporters!

that last shot of downtown Detroit looks pretty good...you can imagine Detroit as a little Chicago there, with that recreational water traffic in front. If Grand Rapids had that Lansing art deco skyscraper with the clock it would be perfect. As it is those pix make GR look near perfect. Nice to see some neighborghood shots, too.

I don’t have a background in sociology so the book was quite a revelation, especially the statistical things and that little game theory example they do to demonstrate how segregation concentrates poverty. I think the Brits have a better term for this: social exclusion. It seems rather than blame minorities blame economic structural adjustment combined with social exclusion based on race. The issue in the Cleveland case is the large number of blacks and their concentration in extensive neighborhoods, vs the situation in Pittsburgh, where the ghetto is apparently fragmented and smaller due to a smaller black population. So Pittsburgh seems “less ghetto”, since it’s both whiter and the ghettos are not as visible. Another example is Sacramento, where segregation is not as strong as in, say, Ohio, so one doesn’t have the concentrated poverty and social ills in inner city minority ghettos to the extent one see’s in Ohio.

Sir2gees made one of the best posts on this thread: …and this is something Cincinnati and Louisville share with Pittsburgh, that there are “Squirrl Hills” and “Shadysides” within the city limits. …case closed. This answers the question. It is a restatement of T.J. Sugrues theses in the opening chapters of The Origins of the Urban Crisis, and was one of the salient points of Massey and Denton’s American Apartheid, From the publishers blurb: The authors demonstrate that this systematic segregation of African Americans leads inexorably to the creation of underclass communities during periods of economic downturn. Under conditions of extreme segregation, any increase in the overall rate of black poverty yields a marked increase in the geographic concentration of indigence and the deterioration of social and economic conditions in black communities. It would be great if sir2sges could post excerpts of his paper as it sounds like he is using Cleveland as a case study which would support the points made in those two books.

There was some sort of contextual iinfill project on the east side of Walnut, north of 13th, that predates the 3CDC stuff. I noticed it the last time I was there. Yep, this confirms what I was sensing around that corner. This would be a good strategic gentrification project to take-out a hot spot: Aquire the buildings and do a 3CDC style renovation. This would help change the vibe of that corner.

...from the link: The uniqueness of the Center for Community Engagement is its relationship with the Over-the-Rhine People's Movement and other important organizations within the inner city of Cincinnati that struggle for human and racial right, and social justice. Accordingly, it is a site for learning and for producing knowledge that intersects with the needs and demands of a social movement. The Center privileges human and ecological needs as leading priorities in urban development, and challenges the profit motive as the dominant arbiter in urban social policy. The Center's firm conviction is that such learning in support of broader community transformation is best served by direct social engagement. Part of the Center's mission is to create a "community of practices" that generates learning and knowledge based upon social participation within a cultural community of color. These activities enable faculty and students to experience the realities of race and class first hand, which are not usually encountered by many students who, owing to their backgrounds, rarely get closer to the study of inner city life than what they read in a textbook. Such experiences are not reproducible on Miami's Oxford campus. I wonder if OTR is the long-term place for this given the ongoing work of 3CDC. This initiative could be looking for a new home if gentrification really takes off.

The Dayton Beautiful (a pun on “City Beautiful”) initiative was announced earlier this year. It was or is a set of strategies to deal with the increasing amount of vacant land in the city. From what I recall urban gardening was going to be one aspect of it. The Dayton Daily News reports on the demonstration garden that is kicking off the program. The interesting thing here is that Somali and Sudanese refugees are the gardeners. >snip DAYTON — A patch of vacant ground smaller than an acre has grown a bumper crop of vegetables for a group of African refugees, and the bounty could spill over into a potentially rich harvest for the city…. >snip< …A coalition that includes agricultural producers, city of Dayton officials, Catholic Social Services and the Islamic Federation is testing the potential for community gardens throughout the city’s more than 60 neighborhoods…. >snip< A follow on article talks about expansion and urban agriculture as a way to remedy the “food desert” situation in Dayton (grocery stores selling quality produce are few and far between) City Owned Gardens Look to Expand With many city neighborhoods a drive from larger supermarkets, community gardens could provide a supplement to local diets, City Commissioner Nan Whaley said. So far, the project dubbed “Dayton Beautiful: Vacant to Vibrant” has worked out well…. For more on Dayton Beautiful they have a Facebook page. “Throughout America at the turn of the 20th century, the City Beautiful movement sought to improve living conditions in dense industrial-era city centers through beautiful urban and landscape design. The impact of this movement is reflected in many of Dayton's parks, bridges, and boulevards. A century later, the Dayton landscape has changed dramatically, with its density considerably lower than at its industrial peak and with resultant vacant lots and structures. Can we as a community embrace our 21st century challenges through a new Dayton Beautiful movement? Can we celebrate and strengthen the best of our past, and as we build new, raise the bar of expectations for the future?”

The DDN is a lot better than its readers. The paper did an excellent series of articles this Sunday on the housing crisis here. The comments are probably representative of the type of people who live in the area (both city and suburbs) and the anti-urban negatvity expressed is probably why Dayton is an unusually sucky place for a city its size. Just a lot of pig-ignorant consevatism in this area.

This is probably happening in Cleveland too, which has a similar foreclosure crisis/abandonment issue. Here are some graphs based on articles in the stats. The situation in Dayton was already deteriorating, but the recession and foreclosure crisis made it worse. Note the downward trend beween 2001 and 2006, before the foreclosure crisis hit and the recession drove prices even lower. Volume of sales per year has plunged.