clvlndr

^^Excellente!

Love is fine against the other 28 teams in the league. With the "position-less" Warriors who just switch the hell out of you, he's a liability. He's not athletic enough to switch on the defensive end either, especially when the Warriors go small ball...he has to guard one of Curry, Thompson, Durant, Green, or Iguodala/Livingston/etc - all of whom are more athletic than him and at least 3-4 of whom can just shoot over him if he has to sag off. So we are going to tear apart a team that has made three straight trips to the Finals to match up better against a certain lineup one team can employ? Again, if you name me the PF we are going to get in exchange for Love, I'm all ears. Keep in mind that, so long as we have Tristan, it can't be another paint clogger. It has to be someone who can stretch the defense or else those lanes for Kyrie and LeBron to drive to the hoop will close up quickly. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a better candidate who we have a realistic chance of landing. Let's take a quick look at the top PFs in the league.... You're not gonna get Anthony Davis or Draymond Green. Blake Griffin, Paul Milsap, and LaMarcus Aldridge are all just as big liabilities on D. Derrick Favors is a post player who wouldn't mesh well with Tristan. Serge Ibaka maybe? I don't know that he is an upgrade over Love. More than anything IMO, we need to upgrade the bench with a rim-protecting big man and a backcourt player who brings some scoring punch. I dont think we need another PF to replace love. We need an athletic forward. The matchups will take care of themselves. Draymond is considered a PF, but hes really just an athletic guy that can play anywhere in the front court. There were long stretches of most of these games where Lebron was the tallest guy on the floor throughout the NBA finals. And i say, yes...you have to craft a team to beat the Warriors. They arent going anywhere. If you do nothing, the results will be more of the same next year. Again, our starters are good enough to win a title even against THIS Warriors team. What we need to do is tear apart the bench and get younger/more athletic.

I'm usually the last one to cry about officiating, but it really seemed, esp I Games 4 and 5, that the refs really bent over to protect the Warriors. (Green should have been ejected for his 2nd tech and, he and Pachulia (a real NBA thug imho) both deserved flagrants (especially Green for his wild elbow to Shump's noggin) -- instead, they gave that cheapie to Love -- West should have been tossed for 2 separate fights in one incident, but the whistled JR and Thompson sending Curry to the line)... and as I mentioned in my post above, the Durant 2nd quarter non-call turned the outcome of the game; I truly believe had Durant sat out most of the 2nd quarter had he should have, we likely would be looking forward to a Game 6 this morning. Oh well. It really seems the refs felt burned by the criticism that they supposedly overreacted by suspending Green for Game 5 last year and that this cost GSW the championship... personally, I feel that both claims are B.S.: Green should have been suspended because he's a hothead and, no, it didn't matter in the long run, because he returned for Games 6 and 7 -- including the closeout game in THEIR building -- and we still won.

Last night turned, in the 2nd quarter, on the Durant non-call on LeBron when he dunked on KD -- shoulda been an and-1. Durant would have gone to the bench just when the Cavs were gaining momentum. As it was, KD remained in the game and sparked an 28-4 run which put us in a hole for the rest of the game although we fought back valiantly, with some HUGE 3s by JR who should be back in the team's good graces the way he played since Game 3. Amazingly, despite KD and Steph's onslaught, our starters outscored theirs 113-94... yeah, that means our bench scored a measly 7 points!!!! So does that mean the Big 3 plus JR and Tristan are good enough to beat the Warriors and that, what we really need to do, is bring in and begin grooming a young, athletic bench; a bench with 2-way players? Note last night that Kerr rode UNLV rookie Patrick McCaw in bigtime 4th quarter minutes in a game where the Cavs were very much alive until midway through the quarter.

^That really sucks. David Watson should be proud of himself as an upstanding public citizen.

Definitely a bombshell, KJP... so many questions to answer, starting with: which counties (other than Cuyahoga, of course)? Why is this happening now, politically? I mean, is this strictly a Grace Gallucci initiative or is it shared widely? Just curious because it could give some indicator as to the potential success or failure of this initiative. Obviously this is a Halleluiah moment for many of us.

Well, there is a 22-story building across the street, a 16-story building next door and a new 11-story residential building a block away. But this will definitely fill out the skyline more.... 2013: cleveland from lake erie-large by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr 2023? cleveland from lake erie 2-labeled by Ken Prendergast, on Flickr Cleve York?

^I hope you're right. I sure would feel a lot more comfortable if MRN owns Kingsbury as opposed to Coral.

...in a word: WOW! Very nice picks, KJP. I had no idea this place would be THIS stunning. Gotta get over there with the quickness...

^Just reviewing KJP's post from January... Would $5M and Dan's blessing really be all it takes to move CVSR's Tower City extension forward? If so, has anyone approached him about it? Train excursions from Valley View, Akron, Canton, Green, etc., would be a neat way to get a lot of people, esp retirees, into the JACK which as we know has been struggling a bit the last fiscal year. I'm sure it would be a hit and would further bring positive attention to the casino.

That's not true. At the end of the year, you're supposed to claim and pay all sales tax on anything​you bought, online or elsewhere, if the vendor did not charge it for you. Nobody, and I mean nobody, does this. True, though companies with a physical location in the state (this includes Amazon) will charge the state tax. But not the local and county ones and they aren't covered on the state forms. People will avoid taxes when they can. How many of us buy tobacco and alcohol in the surrounding counties when we can? I'm not against a VAT as long as it's offset by cuts to income and/or corporate taxes. Probably the latter. Trump is right that US corporate taxes are ridiculously high and this exports jobs. Do we a sum certain VAT for transit? Will it be enough to harm state corporations, especially larger ones, to the extent they would threaten to leave the State over it? Could there not be other state bennies state and local govts toss their way to placate them?

Very exciting stuff. I've long felt this location has tremendous TOD potential and already has good bones with the high number of multi-unit buildings even if all of them aren't in the best of shape -- but they appear to be slowly improving. And the huge Edgewater Landing K&D apartment complex is just around the corner and both the excellent, diverse Edgewater neighborhood, as well as the beach, are also within walking distance. So glad AAO is getting directly involved in this project. Certainly the newly-disclosed Playhouse Sq. apartment tower is a great blueprint for direct involvement of community service organizations of projects of this kind... Good luck.

Welcome rwashington... I've been in the retail of the Kingsbury many, many times, but never the apartment. It is indeed a lovely old Tudor building and the location, as you've noted, is great especially with the Blue Line to Shaker Square, downtown and the soon-to-come Van Aken development at the end of the line. (as well as buses to the popular Cedar Lee neighborhood in Cleveland Heights, which includes a bunch of bars, restaurants and the artsy Cedar-Lee theatre). There are a number of cool shops in the building like Give Me Java coffee, a pastry shop and a cleaners. Plus it's a block away from tons of retail, including the anchor Heinen's supermarket (it's the high quality supermarket in greater Cleveland), a few fast foods, a shoe shop, liquor store, CVS and Shaker Hardware, among the best of its type that I know of. The Shaker Heights Public Library is across the street from the Kingsbury which is next to the Stephanie Tubbs Jones community center (which used to be the library which moved into what used to be the Moreland ES next door). The community center has lots of programs of public interest including prominent local speakers. It's a busy, diverse neighborhood with lots of foot and auto traffic but very safe. Unless the Kingsbury is a total dump as an apartment building, which I doubt, it's a great choice. If it is, there is a variety of other apartment buildings within a block of the Kingsbury in either direction which share Kingsbury's aforementioned conveniences.

Most of me believes it'll be over after Friday ... BUT if the Cavs manage to win (and don't discount No. 23's pride at not wanting to be swept, by the Warriors in his own building just like 2015), KD or no KD, don't tell me if that team won't be looking over its shoulders because at 3-1 going back to Oakland, it would be 2016 all over again -- with the same LeBron and Kyrie who beat you last year and who SHOULD HAVE WON LAST FRIGGIN' NIGHT!!

I think you're on to something. Those old (often) Victorian-era stations with wrought-iron turnstiles, exposed wooden platforms (with a few heat lamps for winter which oftentimes are inadequate given the size of the station crowd or are simply not working), while cute and interesting from a historical, preservationist POV, don't necessarily connote to the kind of creature comforts modern commuters expect -- commuters nowadays want to be moved in speed and (relative) comfort and are not particularly interested in their transit system's historical attributes. The L is comprehensive and extensive in many ways, but is antiquated and even slow, in many sections such as the Brown Line and parts of the northern Red Line where trains literally stop every few blocks. Plus there are other antiquated L aspects which slow down trains, such as the frequent level (as opposed to banked) 90-degree turns -- often to squeeze in between close buildings -- which force trains slow to a crawl. In one actual fix to this condition along the southbound Green and Orange lines between Congress and Harrison Streets, CTA actually rebuilt a section of track that contained adjacent 90-degree turns weaving from Wabash St into an alley between Wabash and State Streets into a diagonal elevated track over the parking lot which affords a faster, safer trip -- but that's only one such straightening out, if you will... many more slow/sharp curves exist, dating back to when the L was built in the 1890s and early 1900s. I'm sure many Chicago commuters would rather fight the auto traffic in their own cars or opt for nearby Metra stations, even though the latter is more expensive and less frequent. Also consider that if Metra didn't have many in-city stations, there would be even more motivation to ride the L, not less.

I think you're on to something. Those old (often) Victorian-era stations with wrought-iron turnstiles, exposed wooden platforms (with a few heat lamps for winter which oftentimes are inadequate given the size of the station crowd or are simply not working), while cute and interesting from a historical, preservationist POV, don't necessarily connote to the kind of creature comforts modern commuters expect -- commuters nowadays want to be moved in speed and (relative) comfort and are not particularly interested in their transit system's historical attributes. The L is comprehensive and extensive in many ways, but is antiquated and even slow, in many sections such as the Brown Line and parts of the northern Red Line where trains literally stop every few blocks. Plus there are other antiquated L aspects which slow down trains, such as the frequent level (as opposed to banked) 90-degree turns -- often to squeeze in between close buildings -- which force trains slow to a crawl. In one actual fix to this condition along the southbound Green and Orange lines between Congress and Harrison Streets, CTA actually rebuilt a section of track that contained adjacent 90-degree turns weaving from Wabash St into an alley between Wabash and State Streets into a diagonal elevated track over the parking lot which affords a faster, safer trip -- but that's only one such straightening out, if you will... many more slow/sharp curves exist, dating back to when the L was built in the 1890s and early 1900s. I'm sure many Chicago commuters would rather fight the auto traffic in their own cars or opt for nearby Metra stations, even though the latter is more expensive and less frequent. The L had a horrible accident in the late 1970s where 2 Loop trains collided (I believe at one of those sharp curves) and one of the trains fell off the elevated tracks onto the street below killing about 10 people including 1 or 2 pedestrians crushed by the falling train cars. I believe there was a push by some to replace the elevated loop with additional subway lines, but the plan got nixed for both cost and historical reasons IIRC. Here again a modern, underground metro would be much more comfortable, faster and even safer than the Rube Goldberg-ian elevated loop that exists, even though the Loop L is extremely interesting from an urban visual standpoint and, in many ways, give Chicago its identity. Again, cute as opposed to fast and comfortable...

Knitpicking, but Berlin also has the S-Bahn (ostensibly something like commuter rail but has many stops within the city, not like Metra at all), not to mention trams all over town. I beg to differ: Metra has a lot of station stops within Chicago's city limits, esp the Metra Electric line such in-city stop frequency it's like a rapid transit line.. ME's the South Chicago branch even ends within Chicago. Also a number of Metra's diesel routes have in-Chicago stations, like the Beverly branch, and number of the northern routes stopping in such City neighborhoods as Jefferson Park, Clybourn (very close-in to the Loop) Lawendale, Ravenswood and Rogers Park -- to name a few.

[a message for Chicago... but could it be for Cleveland, too?] A Challenge to Chicago: Increase Transit Ridership Before System Expansion Before expansions of Chicago’s rapid transit system occur I propose a challenge: increase ridership to the level of peer cities first; Chicago’s transit system is punching far below its weight. In an ideal world, the system would be expanding. But resources are needed to do that. One of the best ways to get more of that is through riders. It’s a simple solution, and Chicago needs to get its act together. Chicago, Berlin, and Barcelona are ideal cities to compare. Each city have comparable populations and densities, they’re all major cultural and economic centers, and they all have similarly sized metro system each within larger multi-model framework. The largest of the three metro systems (size is system length in kilometers) is Chicago’s ‘L’ at 165 km followed by Berlin’s U-Bahn at 151 km and Barcelona’s Metro at 146 km. The marked difference is the number of trips on each system. Berlin’s U-Bahn and Barcelona’s Metro respectively see 517.4 and 416.2 million trips annually. Chicago’s ‘L’ only sees 238 million trips annually. That’s fare less than half Berlin. https://urbanelijk.com/2016/10/28/a-challenge-to-chicago-increase-transit-ridership-before-system-expansion/

^one more note, my friend posted photos of FEB on Instagram, esp the Boardwalk with all the boats and people, and she got a number of incredulous responses... Cleveland!?... they said. They all thought it was some resort spot either in Cali or Florida.

^Awesome. We had dinner at Collision Bend (in Watermark's old space). It was packed and the food was very good. We couldn't get a seat on the outdoor riverfront patio; too hungry; too long a waiting list (drat!). But instead we sat in a window facing Old River Road which was nice... I haven't seen THAT much foot traffic on ORR since the good old days of FEB 20 years ago. There was a large food truck just south of Coastal Taco selling gyros and the like and, it too, was swamped with people.

^Nice. Did anyone attend Flat out Fridays last Friday? (I believe this would have been the 1st one of the season, no?). I know Scene Mag's Taste of Summer was a mega-hit, especially on Saturday, 5/27, where FEB, esp the Boardwalk, was overflowing with people (great time for people and dog watching) -- and many even used the Waterfront Line to get there (take that Mark Naymik with your so-called "Ghost Train").

^Cool.

I'm totally disgusted with JR Smith at this point. He's less than zero with his only contribution in these finals being his commission of silly fouls. At this point, I would start Shumpert and may consider giving Korver and/or Williams the balance of his minutes. I guess we can see how JR responds to home cooking on Wednesday. He started slow last finals but did come around toward the end, and had some HUGE buckets in Game 7, so I'm not wont to just throw him under the bus ... not just yet, at least.

^We had a very good 1st half yesterday. We were only down by 3, (Shumpert) had held Durant in check, we were forcing turnovers and LeBron was getting other guys involved in the scoring, particularly bench guys... Unfortunately it fell apart late in the 3rd after we narrowed the lead to 1 point. Suddenly we had a number of missed shots (mainly Kyrie's), we started turning the ball over again as well as started giving up the offensive board again... Thompson only had 4 rebounds again and only 1 offensive board that I recollect. I'm not sure, when we go "big" that Frye may be the better option at this point. If Thompson isn't rebounding and/or clogging up the lane he's practically useless except for a dunk or 2 -- I recall him having 1 yesterday. Frye isn't nearly as strong defensively, but he does have length and, of course, he's a weapon to stretch the floor with his 3s.

Good stuff jws. This is very welcome news. You may want to stick this in the TOD thread as well.