BigDipper 80

Five Grains Noodle House to open in former Chop Suey restaurant space in Kettering Five Grains Noodle House is opening Thursday, Dec. 28 in the former location of Chop Suey at 1465 E. Dorothy Lane in Kettering. Owner Yaqin Jing and her husband, Zeng Siong, wanted to open Five Grains Noodle House after operating four restaurants south of China. Five Grains Noodle House is a popular restaurant chain in China with 4,700 stores. The closest to Ohio is in Fremont, Calif. More below: https://www.dayton.com/what-to-know/five-grains-noodle-house-to-open-in-former-chop-suey-restaurant-space-in-kettering/KSZKWWQC55BQXA6GHQLS2FR22A/

It's been a number of years now since Cleveland lost two of its major European-food mainstays, Sokolowski's and Sterle's. Are there any other places left that serve really good central or eastern European cuisine? I'm not really looking for bakeries like Farkas or Rudy's Strudel, or chains like Hofbrauhaus, but actual honest-to-god sit down restaurants with Polish or Slovene or Ukrainian or "insert Iron Curtain Country Here" food.

Kettering bike path to link with route leading to Dayton, Centerville Kettering plans to extend its bike path connections next year, adding a segment to provide a continuous trail from Woodman Drive, through the Miami Valley Research Park and intersecting with one from Centerville to Dayton. More below: https://www.daytondailynews.com/traffic/kettering-bike-path-to-link-with-route-leading-to-dayton-centerville/G2T7AKNT7JENJHBIVI7BYBHN6I/?fbclid=IwAR3CW4ttvlMAUV_xQm3PwaT1YKSvinsSJO9kCKQlD2acuH0YU-FxZL_HsPE

I just noticed that the Second Street cycle track actually has a traffic sensor installed in the bike lane so that the traffic light knows there are bikes waiting for a green light. It's a nice touch that shows that Dayton cares about all street users, not just cars. I didn't grab pictures, but the Metroparks also built a new bike path through Sunrise Metropark on the west side of the river, so that you can still bike when the lower bike trail is flooded. It really is incredible how supportive of cycling the Miami Valley is.

BART tries too hard to be both a commuter rail network for the entire Bay Area and a local subway for San Francisco and it isn't really great at being either. Its distance-based fares don't help either (something that also annoys me with the DC subway). Everything is laid out with San Francisco as the hub, which it really isn't in such a decentralized metro area, especially now with their current office crisis. If San Francisco wanted an actual functioning subway network, they would have built additional tunnels under Geary and 19th when they were constructing BART, but again that network was too preoccupied with pretending to be a commuter network rather than rapid transit for the peninsula.

That's being generous.

I absolutely adore Santa Monica. For all the flack SoCal gets in some urbanist circles, they really do have a lot of very pleasant and walkable spaces, like Third Street and Main Street.

If DeWine really wanted a "common sense solution all Ohioans could agree on", he wouldn't have signed the heartbeat bill in the fist place. This is the common sense solution, and watching pro-birth groups like Ohio Right to Life get forced into a corner and admit that 6 weeks is too extreme has been deeply satisfying. I voted yes, my Catholic parents voted yes, and I'm telling everyone I know to vote yes too.

Just what Middletown needs - an Austin Landing clone as far away from downtown Middletown as humanly possible.

I don’t think a streetcar from Portsmouth to Dayton would get very much ridership 😜.

Great idea for a thread! I think most of the towns I would have suggested have been covered by now, but I’d like to take a second and point out the sheer volume of towns that forumers have claimed as “worthy additions” to your list. 20 or even 10 years ago, I think this list would have been a fraction of the size. All things considered, there has been a pretty drastic turnaround in a lot of otherwise-forgotten places across the state which is really heartening to see and I don’t think we give enough credit to these places for how far they’ve come. We’re not quite up to Michigan levels of tourism yet in these places (we don’t really have a Saugatuck or Traverse City yet) but I think it’s probably safe to say that we’re outpacing most of the rest of the Midwest when it comes to injecting a little bit of life back into our rural downtowns.

It's Cedarville, so I'd expect nothing less from them. Ornamentation might cause you to sin!

The western Ohio counties are called “the land of the Cross-Tipped Churches” because of the humongous Catholic Churches built by German Catholic immigrants. The churches are really cool - better than some in the cities and just as large, but literally in corn fields.

Putnam County is the most Catholic county in the state so it's not surprising at all. In fact, that whole strip of western counties is highly conservative Catholics so that's the result I expected.

I do rather like it as far as student concepts go, but what is it with architects being allergic to corner buildings and street walls? The whole "this building is an object d'art so I can ignore how it interacts with the street and other buildings" is so tiring.

New poll shows Ohioans evenly split on Issue 1 by: Sarah Szilagy Posted: Jul 31, 2023 / 12:30 PM EDT Updated: Jul 31, 2023 / 11:36 AM EDT ADA, Ohio (WCMH) – A new poll suggests Ohioans are evenly divided on a proposal to make it more difficult for citizens to amend the state constitution. The Ohio Northern University poll, conducted online from July 17 to 26, found that neither side of Issue 1 has majority support. Among the 675 polled registered voters, 42.4% approve of Issue 1, while 41% disapprove. The 1.4-point difference is well within the plus or minus 3.7-point margin of error. More below: https://www.nbc4i.com/news/your-local-election-hq/new-poll-shows-ohioans-evenly-split-on-issue-1/ ---- There have only been 3 polls I've seen on Issue 1 but they've been wildly inconsistent, and from what I've heard Issue 1 is such an unusual situation that it's hard to poll for. I've already gone and voted and turnout has been high thus far but hopefully more people keep voting up through August 8 and don't be complacent. This has been all over the news, if people don't know about it by now they're not paying attention.

I just want it to be August 8 already. I can't help but doomscroll whenever I see anything Issue 1 related.

It's City Club so it's going to skew toward a more educated crowd, but the audience did not seem to be buying what LaRose was laying out.

I know it's futile to debate with people in the Facebook comments, but this is the line I keep bringing up. I think that most people who trot out the "protect the constitution" line know it's a smokescreen for their hardline views on abortion and don't want to be called out to their face for being abhorrent and unsympathetic toward women. I'm just hoping with the large turnout so far that voters are smart enough to realize that this is a pretty blatant power grab and that you should oppose it regardless of political ideology. I know a similar 60% vote failed in Arkansas, but it really feels like the Yes people are really pulling out the stops here. But I think the more they directly tie Issue 1 to "saving babies", the harder it'll be to pick up independent voters on the Yes side. On a somewhat comedic (read: depressing) note, I did see a Yes on 1 sign in the front yard of a house that was also proudly flying a Don't Tread on Me flag. Maybe instead of the No Step Snek, they should fly one of these:

It's so weird that Elyria hasn't found its spark yet... so many other similar cities (Hamilton, Troy, Wapakoneta, Wooster, Newark, etc) seem to have figured it out, but Elyria is still in teardown mode, which is sad. Even the sleepier small towns that haven't fullt rebounded yet, like Sidney, aren't indiscriminately tearing things down.

Can we just get a Brassica, please? (And bring back Bonchon to Ohio!)

Super annoyed that, in typical fashion, the No on 1 folks have dropped the ball on getting ads and yard signs out. I’ve started seeing Yes on 1 signs pop up in rural areas (ugh) and still haven’t seen where I can buy No on 1 stuff yet.

Every time I see how much better the streetcar is doing, I have a nice chuckle on Cranley's behalf.

Just freaking build it! The parts along Forest and Old Orchard look fine and reasonably urban for the neighborhood, so I have no real issue with shoving a big parking lot in the middle of that otherwise unuseably huge parcel of land.

Not sure if anyone has seen this, but Cincinnati came in at #6 for parks according to the Trust for Public Land: https://www.tpl.org/parkscore 1. Washington, DC 2. St Paul 3. Minneapolis 4. Irvine, CA 5. Arlington, VA 6. Cincinnati 7. San Francisco 8. Seattle 9. Portland 10. (tie) NYC/Boston If you consider that Minneapolis and St Paul, and DC and Arlington are effectively the same city, Cincinnati actually comes in as having the fourth-best parks in the country!