BigDipper 80

I think people also like to undersell how big Columbus was even in the past, simply because Cincinnati and Cleveland were so much larger. Even in 1890, Columbus had about 90,000 people living there, whereas Springfield only had 25,000. Jefferson City only had 7,000 people in 1890, which proportionally was way smaller than either KC or StL. Columbus was pretty neck-and-neck with Indy until the formation of Unigov (which of course Columbus has now surpassed), and Indianapolis has pretty much always been the dominant city in Indiana. Columbus was always an "actual" city despite its roots as a planned capital, whereas some of these other midwestern capitals were really nothing more than a convenient place for the state legislature to meet for a few months.

The showers and everything are in the building I circled below. Interesting that not all the signs have landmarks on them... I know the one I ride past on the 25 when I ride to UD has the National Park and RiverScape called out on it with mile-markers.

^Just FYI, RiverScape Metropark in downtown Dayton does have a restroom/shower facility, bike lockers/rental facility and a repair center.

The first forum I ever signed up for was a Geauga Lake forum, so I picked a random roller coaster from the park. Stuck the 80 at the end because Big Dipper happened to have been in operation for 80 years when I signed up.

It's still a little weird to me that Dayton has 5 gay bars downtown but Cincinnati only has, what, Below Zero and Main Event? But then again Dayton also has a bunch of strip clubs too and you have to cross the river to get to any in the Cincy metro.

Yeah it's fairly common for highway engineers to leave out interchange movements that would lead to "backtracking". You also can't go from 480 westbound to 80 eastbound without taking Lorain for a mile or so, because the traffic count of people heading west to go east would be so low as to not make economic sense to build extra ramps.

I don't have the blueprints in front of me, but I think part of it is the tricky, narrow location of where 71 and 480 meet (between the airport and the CSX rail lines) and the fact that the Berea Freeway, which is much older than either 71 or 480, wiggles its way into it. There's really no good way to configure those five entry points into a coherent interchange.

It looks like Windsor did the Vero Lofts in Italian Village. I hope they're more competent than the Ellway Group and we actually start to see some movement over here.

This is... not something I would have expected to see pop up in Harrison Township.

I'd definitely say the latter. There seems to have been a rise in "amenities cities" in the past decade or longer, most notably with Portland and Denver, but also to a lesser extent places like New Orleans and Missoula. NOLA in particular is interesting since it doesn't seem like there has been all that much economic growth down there, but the post-Katrina housing prices are getting pretty outrageous.

If I had to guess, it's probably the Michigan ("Meeshigan") influence.

Splitting off San Bernadino and Orange Counties into a completely separate state from L.A. County seems like it would have some major economic consequences.

The Dayton Riverfront master plan was revealed to the public yesterday. It's ambitious, to say the least. You can download a copy of the presentation at the link below (6-12-18 is the most up-to-date presentation): https://daytonriverfrontplan.org/resources/

Directly from the census bureau: Hopefully that's enough to shut down the argument that MSAs can "choose" to merge.

SEARS and PEACE have the same number of letters... they should move that sign and put it along the Salem Peace Corridor!

^That's an interesting way of looking at it. I've always thought about how each Ohio's city's overall clout is somewhat dampened by the fact that the big metros are fairly evenly sized (whereas if we just had one "big" MSA it would be the second-largest in the Midwest), but I never really thought about it from a regional perspective. I guess there's both advantages and disadvantages to having so many other cities within driving distance of each other in the region. Meanwhile in Denver, by the time you've reached another city of note via car, you could have driven all the way to the Acela corridor from Ohio.

They've been saying the same thing with Cin-Day for decades too, and it still hasn't happened.

When did the whole "gaslight district" even become the predominant term for Clifton? It sounds like some sort of unnecessary neighborhood marketing campaign from the 70s that somehow got imprinted on everyone's mind to refer to a specific sub-neighborhood of uptown.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, call it SoCal. Anything north of Calhoun can become a new NorCal neighborhood or combined with University into a new University Heights neighborhood.

I've pointed out before that Dayton has 3 IKEAs that are all closer to Dayton than either of the two IKEAs within driving distance of Cleveland. I got ignored by the Clevelanders.

I wonder if one would open up at Summit Park in Blue Ash? Hopefully it won't get dumped at Liberty Center. Wait, actually, dump it at Liberty Center... that's closer to Dayton!

I think another good measure for whether a food is truly "hyper-regional" is whether or not they have outposts in vacation destinations. Both Primanti's and Skyline have stores in Florida, far away from their core markets. I'd be willing to bet that both of these chains are supported almost entirely by ex-pats and retirees, which is a much different expansion strategy than the Hot Chicken thing.

Where did Steak n Shake get the idea for doing chili on spaghetti? They're from Illinois so they don't have any real link to the Cincinnati region, and yet they have Cincinnati-style chili-on-spaghetti on their menus for some reason. The chili they use is different from "Skyline-style" though, probably closer to a Detroit-style chili, if anything.

The closest Maid-Rite is in Greenville, about an hour from Dayton.

O'Bryonville is actually a part of Evanston according to the City's website, as well as Google Maps and Wikipedia. I've seen some maps that list it as a separate neighborhood though, so maybe Cincinnati has 51.5 neighborhoods instead of 52.