BigDipper 80

Middletown has one.

If they put in a diamond (or hopefully a SPUI), I'd think they'd have to end up doing what they did at Hopple and have McMillan fly over Central Parkway. But instead of a jughandle they could make use of the double decker nature of the bridge and still have the lower level connect to Central but the upper level connect to McMillan.

I'll be there! It'll a great time to get out and see all the exciting things happening downtown!

This is pretty obvious on a map of the US, but you can reach nearly every major metro in the country just by picking one of the interstates that passes through Ohio and riding it all the way to the end. The I-10, corridor and SoCal are the two major exceptions, and a few other random metros throughout the south and Plains states.

^I used to live in that "Hobbit House" on Clifton across from Burnet Woods, and it really was annoying to grab something to eat. Of course a half mile to either area isn't really that far of a walk, but Clifton Avenue isn't the most friendly street and there isn't much interesting to look at along your walk. I always wanted an urban Target to go into that Riddle site, but obviously Calhoun Street stole that idea, too.

^I'd still like to see that complex at the corner of Riddle and Clifton redeveloped into something. It's such a big vacuum between Ludlow and Calhoun.

That's one big yuppie box... I'm surprised that developers still feel that CUF can support even more restaurants and retail. Can't say I'm the biggest fan of how it fronts University Ct or Straight Street, either.

I have a theory that the more a website looks like its interface was last refreshed in 1998, the better the quality of the information on that website. Every hyper-detailed website related to specific, esoteric interests/hobbies (particularly transportation and roadfanning type stuff) looks impossibly old, and I've found it to be a pretty good sign of whether the information on the website is high-quality or not. It's not like these websites are necessarily "dead and forgotten" either; there's still some webmaster sitting around uploading photos of Dayton trolleybuses and highway bridges of Minnesota in 2017, but the look of the website itself never changes. Now I don't know if it's because these folks are more interested in just disseminating their information and don't really want to bother with updating the website or what, but I just think it's interesting. Obviously, it takes a lot of time to refresh the look of your site and I'm certainly not faulting any of these people for the looks of their sites, but it's just an interesting observation that these sites probably came online in the very early days of the internet and still stick around, virtually unchanged from the day they were launched.

^What are we as a region doing to leverage that resource and use it to be innovative? Places like Israel are heavily investing in water conservation techniques, and it won't be long before California mobilizes its massive tech workforce toward developing new methods of stretching water useage. It's great that we have a huge stockpile, but we should still be trying to lead the pack in terms of effectively utilizing and managing that resource.

I've been saying for a while that Cincinnati needs more of those "watch for pedestrian" bollards in high traffic-high pedestrian areas, especially on Calhoun/McMillan. Good to see that they finally implemented one somewhere.

I found this huge aerial of Wayne County on Reddit a couple of weeks ago, taken in 1949. It's amazing how vast Detroit is, and of course it's devastating to see the city just a couple of years before expressways started to rip through the heart of the city: http://gigapan.com/gigapans/147450

Oh god, UO has discovered Maui Ski Club... I think they're from Rocky River if I remember correctly. I honestly don't have words that could accurately describe the sonic masterpieces they create.

Ludlow between 3rd and 5th in general just needs a huge shot in the arm. Maybe if the Arcade ends up being successful it'll bump up the demand for more residential over that way.

It would have been really cool if the Clinic had just bought and renovated the area into offices and made it sort of an administration hub for themselves or something. Kind of like how the University of Dayton bought all of the slumlord properties near the school and essentially privatized a whole neighborhood. Some of those buildings look like they could have been pretty easily gutted and reconfigured for some sort of Clinic use. But of course that wasn't the thinking then, and they still aren't thinking like that today.

That tree was legendary! It better get a plaque at whatever park they move it to.

Well, this sure is a lot different from the other Valparaiso in Indiana! Thanks for sharing! Chile seems like such an interesting place.

Argentina as a whole probably had one of the most dramatic rises and falls of any modern nation. It really seemed to be on track to becoming a de facto "U.S. of South America" with its vast wealth and huge immigrant population. The popularity of pizza in Argentina seems weird until you learn that the largest ethnicity in Argentina is actually Italian. I think that its economic woes that have been going on for so long have done a lot to push it out of the public consciousness, at least up here in North America. But yeah, South America gets forgotten a lot beyond Rio and the Amazon and maybe Costa Rica. Peru and Bolivia both seem like really interesting countries (If you've never seen the work of the Bolivian architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre you should google it, it's a trip), and all of Colombia's cities look pretty impressive. As that country cleans up more it keeps growing higher on my list of places I'd like to visit if I get a chance. I think in the Western Hemisphere, though, Buenos Aires and Havana still top my list for cities I *have* to go to before I die.

Detroit can't quit! I like this proposal for Campus Martius better than what was originally proposed pre-recession, even if this is a fairly conservative design.

I think they could fit with the vernacular, too, as long as the massing is significant enough. Just straight up copy these, honestly: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5017912,-81.6616064,3a,70.9y,4.26h,107.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1svyQsSkyrHm1IWFIxlc-c5g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 My biggest reservation with this type of construction right in Downtown is how little confidence I have in a developer to built an aesthetically worthy product. Or better yet, hire some Columbus developers and copy these: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Columbus,+OH/@39.9643904,-82.9944189,3a,66.8y,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sLxAeOIlWZrBQ_8KS7NPyng!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x883889c1b990de71:0xe43266f8cfb1b533 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Columbus,+OH/@39.964163,-82.9963907,3a,66.8y,29.46h,89.88t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1syexHvZ16eS8SiUSe-Qa-PA!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x883889c1b990de71:0xe43266f8cfb1b533 It's possible to build great infill- Cleveland just needs to hire some non-local devs.

Going back to your last food-related thread (I can't remember if I brought this up there), I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that Cleveland just isn't a big "branding" city. Cincinnati and Columbus are far more likely to approach an idea from the get-go as a marketing opportunity. This isn't a knock on Thunderdome or any of the other fine restaurateurs in Cincinnati, but at least to my untrained eye, those guys have approached each new concept from the get-go as a chance to create an expandable brand. I wasn't surprised at all with the proliferation of Bakersfields in other nearby cities - they did an exceptional job creating a slick and marketable product. Cleveland comes up with great concepts, but the marketing know-how (or maybe the marketing willpower) simply isn't as prevalent of a cultural force up there. Columbus and Cincinnati both have large retail companies headquartered there, so there are a lot of folks always thinking about these things. It's ingrained in the cultures, in a way. Clevelanders seem much more content to try some outlandish new things, and there's an attitude of "hey let's see if this sticks" or "we can do whatever the heck we want because there's no establishment to give a damn or push back on us". But because of that, the local hotspots often end up being just that - local. When "chains" end up getting started, they almost seem if by accident, just because the original ones were so popular. That doesn't seem to necessarily be the case with places like Bakersfield or Hot Chicken Takeover, who seemed just a bit too slick from the start for me to believe that the owners weren't thinking about the possibility of more franchises.

^I meant to say "I don't know if that location is new".

Honestly "Flying Spaghetti Monster" would have been a far superior name and theme for Mantis; I'm still bitter that they bastardized my baby (although I think that sentiment is only shared with like five other Mantis ride operators - our exit reviews were always terrible!)

Yeah, IDK about that specific location, but Penn Station has been in the Cleveland market for quite some time. I didn't even know it was a Cincinnati thing until I moved from Cleveland to Cincinnati in 2011. Although to be fair, I didn't know Mr. Hero was only a Cleveland thing until that same move (but Mr. Hero isn't exactly the greatest regional chain in the world, despite their current slogan of "Ohio's favorite sandwich" or some other weird claim).

Steel Vengeance?!?!? Nooooooooooooo!!!! (I'm still going to ride the h#ll out of this, though.)

This is purely a personal observation, but I'm visiting my parents in Olmsted Falls and I've noticed a pretty continual stream of aircraft (and aircraft noise!) overhead - way more than in the past times I've been up north in the last 5-ish years. Bad for my sleep patterns, but a pretty good sign for Hopkins!