BigDipper 80

Dayton doesn't really say "no" to any project no matter what it looks like, which is probably why Brown Street is looking the way it does. But some of the new apartments that will be going up soon I think will be pretty nice, and I think we should be/hopefully will be reaching a point where there are actually enough people living in the core to demand higher design standards. It's just a challenge to get people on board with such things when you're a "second-tier" rust belt city and "first tier" (relatively speaking) cities like Cincinnati can barely get their infill act together as it is. I'm more disappointed that it's a near-clone of their other building than I am of the height... Dayton has enough other empty skyscrapers that I would like to see get some love, and I think this'll be a fine size for this site.

I saw "The Beach Boys" (the group that's just Mike and Bruce, not Brian's band) at GABP a few years ago after a Reds game and Stamos made a guest appearance. It got really uncomfortable when Mike tried to make a joke about sleeping with Stamos' mother.

Glad to see so much love for the Beach Boys on here. Brian's easily my favorite artist, and I think part of what made a lot of his music so special is that even if you split the vocal track from the instrumental backing track, they can both pretty much stand on their own and still be a really solid piece of music. He was such an incredible composer and did some amazing stuff with the Wrecking Crew. I too love Smile, but even the snippets from Brian's post-meltdown albums are great. Smiley Smile is a surprisingly solid record for being just a bunch of assorted Smile clips re-recorded in the bottom of an empty swimming pool by all of the (clearly stoned) Beach Boys. And I'm a big fan of Sunflower too. Never really got into Surf's Up though, and after that album they basically fell off a cliff. Let us never mention Kokomo... thanks for that one Mike Love. The fact that basically every song on Pet Sounds can have its backing track removed and still sound like a complete song is pretty incredible.

This is great news! They mean East First though correct? If so, that's good news. I hate that giant lot and it would be great to see the streetscape extended further east. It's probably one of the worst empty spots downtown, along with the parking lot at 2nd/ St Clair and the old Daily News site.

Old Towne East is a seriously impressive neighborhood. It seemed pretty stable, at least from my quick tour of the area. I'm surprised that it hasn't exploded yet, but I won't be surprised when it does.

That number absolutely boggles my mind. THIS is the sort of stuff I want people to hear about when they learn about Cleveland.

A Kink in the Hyperloop: http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/10/the-kink-in-elon-musks-hyperloop.html

It was nice out this morning, so I took a quick ride through Dayton View to get a couple of shots of one of my favorite houses in Ohio... if anyone knows more about the history of this place, please share it!

I figured since it's how I got my online screen name for every website I've ever posted to, It'd be fitting for me to break the news that the Big Dipper is no more. Honestly it's heartbreaking not just for sentimental reasons, but for me, watching Geauga Lake decline and ultimately close was really the first time that I opened my eyes to Cleveland and its struggles. I thought it was unfair to let that ride sit there and rot, and I slowly started to notice everything else that people had let fall apart across NEO. I wish it was cathartic for me to know that this chapter in Aurora's history was mercifully over, but it hurts me as much as losing any other piece of our history, be it some nondescript storefront along St Clair or the Fifth Church on 117th. People are slowly re-learning to value our resources in this region before they all disappear for good, but frankly it sucks that we got here in the first place.

I don't think anyone really talked about Cuyahoga Valley - some other highlights include Brandywine Falls and the village of Peninsula. That whole area is so "New England-y" which is a surprise to a lot of people, but it obviously makes sense if you know Ohio's history. The train ride is nice too if you feel like taking it. The park is going to be beautiful with the leaves hitting peak color right around now. And you'll be close to Akron while you're down there, so it might be worth checking out their art museum or Stan Hywet Hall and grabbing a burger from Swensons if you've never been and/or the weather turns nasty. Highland Square is the "hip" area of Akron, but I haven't actually been there in person yet. Edit: added some links to Stan Hywet and the art museum in case you aren't familiar with either of them. http://www.stanhywet.org/ https://akronartmuseum.org/

Every time I visit Detroit, I'm struck by three observations: It's incredible how far Detroit has fallen, it's incredible how far Detroit has come, and it's incredible how far Detroit still has to go. Anyone interested in watching how cities can reinvent themselves should be paying extremely close attention to what happens in Motown. I took my annual trip up to see the changes, and the whole central core is a flurry of cranes right now. While there are a lot of challenges for this city outside of the impressive re-building of downtown and midtown, there is really only one way for this city to go and that's up. 1. Got up at the crack of dawn to get some blue hour shots. Ended up walking 12 miles in one day - I'm still limping as a result of my... overzealousness. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. The security guard in the Z Lot wasn't happy about my use of a DSLR, but she said cell phone cameras were acceptable :wtf: 10. 11. 12. I really need to find an excuse to get inside this damn theater. 13. At least it has windows now! 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. Love this house. 20. 21. Woodward is still a mess from the light rail construction. 22. 23. I walked 12 miles and I still hardly saw any of the Motor City. I need to travel up 2nd Avenue all the way to New Center some time. And go to Boston Edison. And Palmer Woods. And spend more time in Indian Village. And visit Belle Isle. And... 24. Great terminal vista. 25. 26. Your reminder that Detroit, like a lot of American cities, has a lot of people out there who could use help and deserve better. 27. 28. 29. So freaking spectacular. 30. The Aloft hotel in the Whitney Building is incredible. Glad I went inside. 31. 32. Red lights? The people mover doesn't stop for your stinking red lights! 33. I almost bribed a guy parking here to let me ride shotgun with him just so I could get some shots of the partially-intact movie palace architecture in this garage. 34. Lots of work happening around Capitol Park. Going to be a cool area when it's all fixed up. 35. The way the streets collide downtown makes for some really interesting angles, but it also breaks up the streetscape in strange and uncomfortable ways some times. Can't really explain it. 36. For the uninitiated, Lafayette Park is the largest collection of Mies van der Rohe architecture in the world that's all located in one spot. 37. The high-rise portion of Lafayette Park. 38. Lots and lots of new infill. These are right on the riverfront and the Dequindre Cut bike trail, I'm sure they're going to be super expensive regardless of how "eh" the architecture is. 39. The view from the only non-flat piece of land in southeast Michigan. 40. Lucked out and got a tour of the top floor of the RenCen, unfortunately the restaurant wouldn't let us onto the lower level so I couldn't get close to the windows to take nice wide panoramas, as you'll see in a second. 41. Vertical photos just don't work as well for skyline shots from above, but I tried to make it work regardless. I love the Book Tower even with all its garishness. The David Stott building is great too. Crazy these were/are entirely abandoned! 42. New Center and midtown. 43. Cass Park and the top of the Cadillac building. 44. Forgive the window panes... This would have been great if they would have just let me get close to the windows! 45. Cobo Hall and the Ambassador Bridge. The new bridge should be under construction soon. 46. Some rowhouses in Bricktown, which look like they need a little love. Bricktown is totally overshadowed in scale by the rest of downtown, especially considering that these little guys front the massive Jefferson Avenue. 47. My only photo from Indian Village. I didn't really have time to walk around, but I will say that the street trees in this neighborhood are seriously impressive. 48. I thought this intersection on Mt Elliot Street (or some other east side street) was pretty cool. Short tour, fairly geographically constrained, but hopefully it still helped give a good look at some of the exciting things happening up in Detroit!

This whole sub-district is going to be really cool when it is done. I was impressed with the scale of it when I was up there over the weekend.

That's something I've wondered about. When these articles appear, I don't think that some/most of these reporters realize that Cincinnati's streetcar runs through a very different set of neighborhoods than, say, Atlanta's or KC's. OTR is historic and fundamentally walkable, and I can't really think of another city's streetcar that runs through even a remotely similar environment. Even in Seattle or Portland most of the growth has been in old warehouse districts that are now filled with a bunch of yuppie boxes, while Cincinnati's is rolling through an already-existing, highly dense Brooklyn-y neighborhood.

It's a strange world we live in when people go and post comments on articles that are just a compilation of comments from another article.

Travis' insightful comments on CityLab's "streetcars are evil" article from a few days ago sparked its own separate CityLab article: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/10/best-reader-comments-the-great-streetcar-showdown/503546/

^ I have always kind of wondered why that area wasn't re-aligned into a wide two way through street west of Vine after everything got demolished back when, instead of leaving it as a one-way pair with a relatively narrow block between the two.

^That store definitely isn't urban. The Cbus and Cincy ones are actually going to be small and up to the curb. I think it's the "Target Express" model, which is smaller than a CityTarget.

Finast, now there's a name I haven't heard in ages! My mom still occasionally slips up and mentions Finast or Rini-Rego when she's going to the grocery store.

^^Did Dayton View ever have any sort of business district that just got lost to the sands of time, or has the Salem corridor always been essentially residential? It really is a beautiful neighborhood but there really isn't anything to walk to or even a logical place to construct a new business district in the heart of the neighborhood.

I'll be very happy to see another "normal" bar open downtown. Looks like it'll be a nice hangout spot.

You're thinking of the Clifton UDF.

^ This is exactly the way I tend to approach Detroit. The amount of destruction in Detroit is/was unmatched by other Rust Belt cities, and much of its urban form was pretty terrible to begin with. Seeing the fact that these projects are able to take root in this city gives me a lot of hope when it comes to fixing the mistakes made across this region in the past 50+ years.

Detroit's been blowing my mind recently. Can't wait to head up there over Indigenous Peoples' Day weekend and see how much has changed in the year since I last visited.

I wonder if the fact that the vast majority of transit in Japan is privately-owned made the implementation of that system easier or more difficult.