natininja

I thought there was a long layover in Indy that made the Cardinal to Chicago slow.

West Chester and Liberty Twp. will be fascinating places when infrastructure maintenance bills come due and the cheap construction loses its sheen.

It doesn't "reimagine urban spaces" in the sense of showing an alternative which could be permanently transitioned to (as Park(ing) Day is meant to do), but it does in the sense of transforming the area into something completely different, by using streets, sidewalks, and other usually-separate spaces with their own mundane (e.g. transporting commuters) purposes into a unified space with the purpose of having fun, celebrating, etc. When you were a kid, maybe your school had a sleepover night. It's sort of like that: you have certain associations with the school building, and they are, for a night, completely broken down. There's a certain liberating feeling or catharsis that comes with such a "rule-breaking" lapse of the regular order. For students, it helps build a sense of ownership of the school and a sense of belonging. Similar sentiments are built from having Oktoberfest break the rules of the city. You don't get that by just holding yet-another-event in a space permanently designated for recreation. And again, literally (as far as I know) every damn city does this. It's a thing cities do, and enough people like it that it continues.

Well I don't know if the not-tipping thing is the reason, but my friend is convinced it is. (Can customers view their own rating? I think he said someone gave him a 1 star.) Maybe the customs are different in different cities, and in Boston drivers expect tips. Or maybe my friend did something else the driver thought was douchey. Or maybe the review was a mistake. Anyway, he is upset about having the service be basically unusable for him now.

What you guys are missing is the difference in land use patterns encouraged by roads vs. rail. Would light rail encourage development in the exurbs it reaches? Yes, but concentrated within a short distance of the station. In fact, it may even encourage some of the jobs already located in these areas to relocate near the rail stations -- these companies would like to have access to young talent that doesn't want to drive. The exurbs exist and are here to stay, so why not encourage them to build more densely? The region benefits if they do this. Retrofitting the suburbs to be more sustainable is not a threat to the city. Enforcing a monopoly on sustainable development for the city is another type of zero-sum thinking. It's not like you are erasing that distance by putting in light rail. There's quite a difference between 5-minute train access and 30-minute train access. And when you consider using LRT for purposes other than commuting (i.e. during non-peak hours), you have to worry a lot about frequency or often what time the service ends at night (are you going to pay for a cab from OTR to Mason?). People and businesses will still be attracted to the walkability, sense of place, much wider net of transit access, etc., of the city, which Mason will never be able to compete with.

One thing that I'm not sure they emphasized enough in A Band Called Death is how appropriate-but-strange it was for this band to emerge from "Motown" in an era pretty much immediately after the Motown heyday. I couldn't help but think of the name "Death" as a symbol of the death of Motown -- and the sort of "innocence" of music that also died with that era. I know that wasn't intentional, but it was striking to me. Everyone notes that they were "before their time," but I think this context helps to explain why. (Not that this takes away from the band's prescience. I think it merely adds to the story, how appropriate it was that they figure these things out before everyone else.)

Just about every city in the world, if not every, has this "problem" with street festivals. They're just part of being a city. (Don't live in the city center if you don't like it, or plan a vacation around event days.) A park setting isn't appropriate for every event, and one of the things these events do is reimagine what type of space a city can be (not one for cars and corporations but for people and revelry). IMO it would be cool if the festival grew to cover a massive area, including all the locations discussed so far in this thread. What if Oktoberfest had enough people and programming to cover downtown, from Smale Park to Findlay Market? It seems obvious there is already a critical mass to grow the area of the festival significantly, if people are forgoing beers/food (or simply not attending) due to long lines. Quite simply, more money would be spent and the economic impact would be greater if they expanded the festival a few blocks and added more vendors. Maybe the answer is to move to Smale, expand into the Banks, and keep going up year by year as the event grows organically (this would work better with a capped Fort Washington Way).

Is there a system for rating customers? A friend in Boston seems to think he has been pegged with a low customer rating by Uber drivers because he doesn't tip (which you aren't supposed to do, right?). He says now he has trouble getting picked up.

Can anyone remember where it was Cranley said he was a supporter of a city-county merger? That was a big picture idea, though ironically it came a couple weeks after he told Aaron Renn that he believed Cincinnati would be better for having stopped annexing suburbs.

Those liberal commies in West Chester put up too much red tape for development.

It seems one good way to stay off that list would be to have a powerful, exclusive "old boys network" making sure no one outside the inner-circle can possess any agency or aspire to any position of influence. Whether the list is desirable to be on or not, it's clear there are ways of escaping the list that are undesirable.

Reading this and watching the video really shows how trading Mallory for Cranley has thrown a wrench into progress in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, other cities continue moving ahead. We've been set back for 4 years at least, and potentially 8 or more. http://www.treehugger.com/bikes/pittsburghs-mayor-wants-copenhagenize-his-city-video.html

You must be referring to free-of-charge teleporters?

Maybe you're right, though I think if there were some allowances made for taking shots at teams and keeping it sports-related, as opposed to insulting individuals or cities, it might work okay. When shall the AFC North thread be revived? :-D

^ I started it but didn't finish it. It is definitely interesting, but didn't hold my attention over time. I don't regret watching the first 45 minutes or whatever I watched. It's an interesting story, especially if you are a fan of punk, or if you are black and into rock. On a marginally related note, I watched Punk in Africa and made it through the whole movie.

Sanu has a 100% completion rate, 38.5 yards per pass, 50% of passes are touchdown passes. 4/4, 156 yards, 2 touchdowns

What are the rules for posting in sports threads? Is it just up to moderator discretion when a post goes too far? I had a post deleted which I thought was just friendly, impersonal ribbing, while a personal attack that could be interpreted as a homophobic slur went ignored. (I let it go without comment because I know the poster is a staunch gay rights supporter, but still...)

Bengals up over Tennessee 26-0 at the start of the 4th quarter. These boys continue to look legit.

Well, let's say it was post-ironic. I think it would be a good idea for EVD to take up cycling and provide a "good citizen" example of cycling behavior. So I definitely meant to convey the semantic content of my statement at face value. But I also think that, were he to take this sincere advice, he might find that the laws as they are are not so reasonable and he may end up changing his mind of what it means to be a model cyclist, and about what would be appropriate from an enforcement perspective. Though in the particular case of a cyclist going faster than the speed limit, barreling into pedestrians in a crosswalk, I think his opinion would not change so much.

^ Maybe you just need to know where to look? Somerville is allegedly one of the world's top 5 hipster cities outside Brooklyn: http://www.metro.us/newyork/lifestyle/travel/2014/09/15/worlds-hipster-cities-top-5/ The Globe has noticed: http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2013/08/22/some-somerville-worry-become-too-hip-for-its-own-good/Ibas2h5Q5p9MTl82qQ2OwK/story.html

^ Perhaps you should pick up cycling yourself, and set a good example.

That "pizza" looks like a giant hamburger patty.

I agree 100%, but I've found saying so will catch you a lot of flack. I think the argument that "it's the most expensive of all American cities, therefore it's too much" is borne of the fallacy that Cincinnati can't be at the forefront of anything.

^ It's also a matter of "what's done is done." Letting one genie out of the bottle doesn't justify letting another one out.

"shackles of fashion in...Great Lakes cities" ???