BigDipper 80

I'd like to see Franklinton go full Scandanavia and keep building more Gravity-type projects all over the peninsula. Maybe even add some canals for the heck of it, too.

This sums up the West Side pretty nicely.

I think he mostly means in terms of built form. Vine Street through Elmwood is very impressive.

Cedar Point could have burned Cedars down with flamethrowers and salted the earth afterwards and they'd still not manage to purify that patch of earth... that place was basically a 1970s-era bathhouse cranked up to 11 most nights, it felt like.

Those Quakers and their archaic alcohol laws!

What's with the Stillers fans in NW Ohio? I knew there was a reason I hated Toledo...

Cincinnati is one of those cities that's really difficult to capture through photos. The topography isn't quite as extreme compared to what you might find in Pittsburgh, but you can find yourself suddenly high in the air over the course of a short walk. Photos also fail to capture how truly eclectic Cincinnati's architecture is. There aren't many places that have as many dramatic changes in style as I've found in various neglected corners of the Queen City of the West. One such street, notable both for its bizarre collection of architecture and its dramatic topographical changes, is McMicken Avenue. It snakes along the hill that forms the northernmost boundary of Cincinnati's "urban basin" and is roughly the dividing line between the "downtown" neighborhoods and the "uptown" areas surrounding the University of Cincinnati. Below are a few shots along just this one street that I hope help capture both the beauty and sheer weirdness of this isolated little pocket of the city. IMG_9554 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr McMicken's southern terminus is at Main Street, where it branches off at an angle roughly parallel to the base of the northern hillside. Because it runs off-kilter from the downtown street grid, you end up with a lot of oddly-shaped buildings. IMG_9555 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr A handsome stone townhouse sits at the start of the street. IMG_9557 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr McMicken is primarily located in the "Northern Liberties", or the northern half of the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Although most of the lower half of OTR has been fixed up after decades of neglect, the northern half is only recently coming into its own. IMG_9558 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Because of its Germanic heritage, Cincinnati was a huge beer producer for much of its history. The Northern Liberties have been adding signage recently to highlight this heritage and to hopefully transform the area into a tourist magnet not unlike Kentucky's Bourbon Trail. IMG_9559 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Notice how the one house is set a bit further back than its neighbors. For whatever reason, this is fairly common in Cincinnati, where you'll have an odball building or two on a block not built up to the lot line. IMG_9562 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr The Second Empire house in the foreground recently got fixed up and sold for quite a bit of money. People have been snapping up some of the properties higher up the hillside for cheap and renovating them, since many of them have spectacular views of the urban basin. IMG_9566 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9568 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9569 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9570 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9573 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr This beautiful building, situated at a five-way intersection in the heart of the neighborhood, has recently been undergoing some restoration work. IMG_9575 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9578 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9579 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9581 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9582 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Another beautiful old brewery building. Some wonky houses because of the street grid's angle. IMG_9586 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9589 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9593 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Things start getting a little weird once you cross into West McMicken and the road beings to head northbound. IMG_9594 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9597 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9598 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9599 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9600 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr This is the famous "Mockbee Building". It's hard to get a sense of how massive it is - because it's on a hillside, it's actually two-three stories taller on the south face than on the north face! Another angle on the building. The views in this area really are spectacular. This shot is from a block further up the hill, so the buildings in the foreground are all along McMicken. IMG_9602 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Another funky-angled dude. IMG_9605 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr I love how this house wraps around on itself but then suddenly stops. IMG_9607 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Look at all the bizarre editions this house has had over the years! IMG_9609 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr A beautiful Second Empire mansion. Yes, we're still on the same street, just over a mile from where we started. IMG_9611 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Cincinnati suddenly gives way to San Francisco and this gingerbread stunner, directly across the street from the previous mansion. IMG_9613 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9614 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr A gorgeous little chunk of rowhouses. IMG_9618 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr The Fairview Steps climb an additional 200 or so feet up to the Fairview neighborhood uphill from McMicken Avenue. IMG_9619 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9621 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr The poor guy in the foreground has been mutilated beyond recognition. IMG_9622 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr More strange additions. IMG_9623 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9625 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9626 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9628 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr It's hard to tell here, but we're 100 or so feet up now. Below us is the Camp Washington neighborhood. IMG_9629 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr IMG_9631 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr This might look like a narrow shotgun-ish house, but it's perched on the hillside and actually has a second unit and a cellar below it. IMG_9632 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr Meanwhile, this house is tucked well down the hillside and almost completely invisible from the street. IMG_9635 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr A better view of how far back this house is. It has no driveway and no back alley access, so it's completely isolated on its lot. IMG_9638 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr And then out of the blue... some bungalows. On one street we've gone from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. IMG_9641 by Ethan Kocjan, on Flickr And there you have it. The last building on McMicken Avenue. Hopefully these photos gave some good insights into a very unique street in a very unique city.

They might as well put a couple pedal wagons up there and add a few "honky-tonks" to compete with Nashville, it's already got the bachelorette crowd built right in.

I didn't even know that Reading had a thriving "bridal district" or that Sharonville had a downtwon until I randomly decided to take 42 instead of 75 home one time. Golf Manor and the surrounding area is still a huge blank spot on my Cincinnati mental map.

Is the northernmost part (with the brick) a completely different project? It looks totally different from the rest of it and I don’t know what the developers were thinking if this is all one big yuppie box.

I don't understand how the city is so inept at planning for these events. Clifton between Ludlow and MLK was constantly being torn up for this reason or that right after getting repaved when I lived across from Burnet Woods.

This is the lamest scandal of all time. What ever happened to real scandals like using public funds to buy hookers and blow in Vegas or allegedly electrocuting mayoral candidates?

This map might help... I colored the roads based on their "name" (rather than their alternating route numbers) to make them a little more clear. Red is the Golden State, green is the Santa Ana, orange is the Harbor, purple is the Arroyo, blue is the Hollywood, grey is the Ventura, black is the Santa Monica, and dark grey is the San Bernadino. The big pink dot is the Four Level interchange downtown, where the original LA freeways met. There's also some name-changing that happens at the big 101-5-10 interchange on the east side of downtown. So for the most part, the freeways are named for where they're headed as you drive away from downtown, but you have some cases like the Hollywood that carries that name past its destination all the way to the 5 because it wouldn't have made much sense to name the chunk of road in the Valley (which was added in the late 60s) something different when it was constructed pre-route numbers, since it's all one freeway.

^There's Reagan too. And the Jennings Freeway in Cleveland. And the Turnpike, I guess. But no one knows about the Mill Creek or Duck Creek Expressways, or the Medina or Willow Freeways.

It makes sense if you ignore the route numbers completely and look at each "ribbon of road" as an individual freeway, regardless of how the route number twists and turns through interchanges. The only major exception is at the Four-Level interchange, where four different freeways (Hollywood, Harbor, Santa Ana and Arroyo Seco) all come together. Of course, the reason for the "honorific names" is because most of LA's freeways came about before the Interstate numbering system. Detroit's network is the same way, in that, for example, the Fisher Freeway carries I-75 until the interchange with Gratiot Avenue, at which point I-75 continues along the Chrysler Freeway (which technically starts as I-375 downtown).

If they did that in Ohio, you'd have reports like "There is an accident at the Freedom Veterans Crossroads holding up traffic between the Veterans Memorial Highway and the Vietnam Veterans Highway south of Sgt James T Johnson Memorial Freeway" and no one would know where the hell the accident was.

Every city that's building yuppie boxes right now is building horrible yuppie boxes. It's not just a Columbus thing. Denver has some of the absolute worst infill in the country, and even New York has been throwing up a lot of garbage lately. I'd love to start seeing some big Austin-esque apartment towers going up in Columbus just like I'm sure most of you would, but this problem is not unique to Columbus.

LOL at Cranley's "suggested changes" that basically amount to doing nothing. What a worthless idiot.

It really should have one side be bike-only regardless, like the Golden Gate Bridge. If they did make it ped-and-bike (pipe dream I know), I'd hope they'd change the grating on the deck, since it's not pleasant to bike across.

Nashville? A second-tier city? Atlanta is a second-tier city. Miami is a second-tier city. Nashville isn't even close to a second-tier city. It's probably fourth-tier as far as cultural and economic output goes (to be fair, the 3C's probably also fall somewhere in this tier too).

How much of the Cincinnatian's exterior is original? I always felt that the mansard roof on it looked a bit... off, as if it was trying to be historically accurate but ended up getting value-engineered by some 80s historicist firm.

Good lord this project is endless.

Who needs stupid tourists clogging up the roads when we can have a nice wide highway to funnel people to an MLS stadium?

The new Stoney's Munchie Bar is having their "Grand 4/2Opening" on, well, 4/20. Seems fitting I guess? Their opening weekend lunch special is Limp Bizkits and Gravy! ... I live two miles away from this joint and I can already smell it from my front porch...

^We do get a lot of nice decorations on our support columns and retaining walls, which I appreciate. But the new I-75 interchange downtown is.... weird.