BigDipper 80

Kenwood, another one of those sneaky Cincinnati townships that no one knows is a township. I wonder if that affects why it hasn't gone vertical as easily, as say, Fake-Hyde-Park (aka Rookwood, aka Norwood).

If we can get four sky wheels, we can build the World's Largest Monster Truck and have each ferris wheel be a wheel on the truck.

Even then, the southern half of Ohio is definitely not "Great Lakes", or Cincinnatians would take weekend trips to Put-in-Bay instead of Lake Cumberland. Defining regions at the state level is dumb since states are just political entities made of random lines drawn on a map.

^I know at the original one in California, they bought a bunch of old street lamps from St Louis when they were ripping them out and replacing them with electric lights.

A funny sign story - big, bold signs and advertisements are seen as such an integral part of American urban fabric by people overseas that when Disney built their park in Paris, the park's version of Main Street (literally the definition of a Disneyfied sterile urban environment, lol) had a bunch of turn-of-the-century signs added to it to make it seem more "authentically American" to European audiences. But for some reason, all these nostalgic types who run historic districts in this country prefer the American Main Street USA to the Parisian version, although even Disney himself admitted that no place ever actually existed like that.

Hummels need to have a new surge in popularity by the time my grandparents die so I can make a profit off those stupid things.

I think my real problem with the term “Midwest” is that, no matter how people try to justify its boundaries, it’s really just shorthand for “I’ve never been there because it’s flat and boring and no one lives there”. The only places that are ever contentious are the Dakotas because they’re west enough that some uninformed people assume they’re part of the Mountain West, and Oklahoma, which some people treat as an extension of central Texas. Of course, then you open up the can of worms about Dallas probably being more culturally similar to Omaha and Kansas City than Houston or San Antonio, but don’t ever dream about telling a DFW-ite that!

Even East Coast is too broad of a term, IMO. Boston and Springfield have very different cultures, despite being 90 miles apart. Is Altoona really “east coast”? Does Pittsburgh count because it was around during colonial times? My point is, because America is so freaking massive, we use such broad brushes to try and describe regions that could hold four European countries in them.

True, but on a list that includes Waffle House and Dunkin Donuts, they probably should have went with Wendy's or at least City BBQ or Penn Station.

You can't even get Gold Star north of I-70... why would anyone pick a place that isn't available in 4 of Ohio's 6 biggest metros?

To beef or not to beef, that is the question.

^Yeah. The fact of the matter is, a single municipal density number really doesn’t mean anything. You need a full gambit of descriptive statistics at various scales to get a feel for a metro area, but no one wants to sit down and calculate that. But instead of using stats to try and prove a point, people should just get out and experience all these different cities! Bickering over density doesn’t do much to quantify your enjoyment of a place.

I wish there was some easy way of comparing "average density" and "median density" like you do with home values or income, but it's harder to define individual units. You'd have to do it by census tracts or something.

Wow, a feature in the Irish Times of all places... Ohio’s swing city fights for a new future ahead of 2020 election A city of 140,000, Dayton is trying to shed a decades-long legacy of industrial decline and socioeconomic decay that, in the 2016 presidential election, contributed to voters backing a Republican Party candidate for the first time in almost 30 years. More below: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/ohio-s-swing-city-fights-for-a-new-future-ahead-of-2020-election-1.3927427

Visit America’s newest adventure capital Full article below: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/destinations/north-america/united-states/ohio/dayton-rust-belt-revitalization-new-mecca-urban-parks/

They're electric scooters/bikes, not electronic scooters/bikes. I'm being pedantic, but it's a pet peeve of mine.

^^^You can also add Wichita, Denver, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, DC, Grand Rapids, Miami, Tampa and Orlando to your list of cities with free circulators. Honestly Cincinnati is an outlier and it's absurd they don't just subsidize the damn streetcar already.

^KI tends to serve as an “absentee babysitter” for Mason parents since the season passes are relatively cheap.

Man, the hype for that coaster was unreal. Not even Dragster was that big of a deal three years later. Millennium Force is the Empire State Building of roller coasters; it’s the platonic ideal and probably won’t be surpassed in that regard.

So all these super-niche unprofitable OTR shops are just going to take the "Detroit Family Video" approach to stay relevant, right?

My only complaint about Cedar Fair's ownership is that they aren't big on theming like Paramount and Taft were. Dressing up the rides makes them just a little bit more special. But Cedar Fair has never been done themed attractions well (Disaster Transport was aptly named), and KI is vastly cleaner and better-operated than when Paramount owned the park. Plus, Cedar Fair is better about not adding low-capacity rides like Invertigo or Italian Job at a park as busy as KI.

Cedar Point has a ton of room left to expand. It's like saying Manhattan is out of room - you just have to get more creative with your use of space. I made a quick map of all the land CP could build on without having to remove a single ride, but might include some consolidation of employee and maintenance facilities or a new parking structure: \ And Cedar Point is far from the densest amusement park. Only two rides "overlap" with each other - Rougarou and Iron Dragon. Look at this park in Indiana: Or this one in Sweden: ... where there's a will, there's a way. I'm not worried about Cedar Point "running out of room". At all. And Kings Island actually only owns about 700 acres total, of which 364 are already developed. A big chunk of it was sold off to the Lindners on the west side of I-71 to build the tennis center. KI originally didn't buy 1000+ acres to make it all a theme park. They wanted to compete with Disney World and be a full "resort", with multiple hotels and golf courses to keep people on-property for multiple days. And KI's current layout makes it inconvenient to access a lot of the land that it hasn't developed, since it's either behind Bat and Banshee and effectively walled off by those two coasters, save for a long walk, or out by Beast, which KI will probably never develop to keep that ride hidden.

Ah yes, Connecticut, home to thriving boomtowns like Hartford and Bridgeport.

So... WEWS felt the need to write an article about something that hasn’t made any progress in two decades, and still won’t make any progress for at least another decade?