BigDipper 80

^It boggles my mind how much cool urban fabric we've lost.

This is the one thing that has constantly surprised me and infuriated me as I've explored the city. The developmental patterns of city neighborhoods here are so totally bizarre and I've struggled to wrap my head around how so many contradictory styles of architecture and city planning can exist in the same city. The "detached row houses" just seem so baffling to me, especially in Corryville. They're the exact same skinny houses you see down in Pendleton or elsewhere but they have sizeable side yards and huge back yards more in line with what you'd expect to see in other Great Lakes cities, interspersed with outher housing styles. It's just so weird that the layout of some of the (relatively) flatter neighborhoods didn't continue the building pattern of what you'd see in the basin. I get that a lot of it was the wealth running out to the original suburbs, but it still seems incredibly spread out in some parts, and it never really reached the point where the old stuff got torn down and replaced with denser construction. I think the west side confuses me the most. You'll notice that I don't have many photos from west of the Mill Creek, and part of that is because I just can't geographically figure out that side of town at all. To even get to places like Westwood you have to travel up an incredibly long boulevard that is essentially isolated until you get to the other side of Mt Airy Forest, and it all seems so completely detached from the density down in the basin and the Mill Creek valley. I guess I would have expected these areas to have developed closer to the edge of the hillside with higher densities, but then you get into Price Hill and it's all very spread out again before fairly quickly breaking down into cul-de-sacs. It just seems so very bizarre, like it's its own little world. That said, I'm hoping to spend some more time over that way since it really is unexplored territory for me, for the most part. Every neighborhood here meets other neighborhoods in such odd ways, and I think it makes Cincinnati feel very detached and eclectic simply because each neighborhood really is its own little city that happened to grow out and bump into another city that has a completely different development pattern. There really isn't anything like it, and it's led to such an incredible diversity of architecture that you're always going to find some really weird, eclectic gem hidden in the oddest place. And that's what I love the most about living here, is just how surprising it is. You can take four different routes to the same place and you'll travel through four completely different environments. It never gets old. Just wait until you stumble on the insanely rural and ramshackle streets on the western hillsides of the Mill Creek Valley. It's amazing to think that these are actual City of Cincinnati streets with people currently living on them: Knox St - http://tinyurl.com/zz2ub9d Saffin Ave - http://tinyurl.com/hpsxgjs Brestel Rd - http://tinyurl.com/npk6jnh Reemelin Ave - http://tinyurl.com/jc4ox28 Judson St - http://tinyurl.com/pw5bq7r Those roads are beyond bizarre. Roads like that in the middle of big cities always fascinate me. It's so weird that Cincy has so many of them. The whole development of the west side is just beyond baffling to me.

I love seeing energy coming out of Ohio's smaller cities like this. Sandusky is such a gem and has absolutely massive potential given its location and amenities. It easily has the potential to be Ohio's top-tier small city, and it can and should be a bigger draw than it currently is.

^Yeah, if there is one thing I miss about living in Cleveland it is the ready access to really good foreign cuisine and culture. Cincinnati just doesn't have that, and a lot of the "German heritage" is essentially superficial at this point.

^^ That's another strange thing about Cincinnati. it definitely has its own culture, but it doesn't immediately come across as super distinctive in most cases, other than the chili I suppose. You can probably tell if someone is from New Orleans even if they're removed out of the context of their city, but here the distinctive aspects of the culture don't seem quite as readily apparent until you spend more time immersing yourself in the city and seeing some of the idiosyncrasies of life here. I think some of it may have gotten muted just due to the influence of the generic, flavorless Ohio sprawl that dominates so much of the metro now, but then you get into the nitty-gritty and have all these great things like the Northside parade and Bockfest and praying the steps at Holy Cross-Immaculata, and they're these great regional things but they just seem expected so no one makes a big to-do about the little unique things that happen here. It's something that should be embraced and shared more often. As to the asterisk, the hillside streets are absolutely my favorite in the city. There's something disorienting and thrilling about walking down a street like Mulberry or McMicken with dense buildings on either side and travelling relatively flat, and then coming to a cross street that shoots up the side of a hill. I'll bet the effect was even more spectacular when all of the gaps were filled in decades ago. Now, many of them have strange houses tucked in among incredibly thick forests, and it's downright spooky and hard to believe you're literally a street away from the dense urban core. One house that intrigues me is at the foot of the Ohio Avenue steps (I've attached a photo of it that I took from Jackson Hill Park), it's so tucked away and isolated that I've always wondered about its history. The basin looks so impressive in those old Nelson Ronsheim photos, and try as I might, I don't think I've ever managed to capture the endlessness that his photos convey. (Seriously, if you know anything about this place's history, please share! All my searches have turned up empty.)

This is the one thing that has constantly surprised me and infuriated me as I've explored the city. The developmental patterns of city neighborhoods here are so totally bizarre and I've struggled to wrap my head around how so many contradictory styles of architecture and city planning can exist in the same city. The "detached row houses" just seem so baffling to me, especially in Corryville. They're the exact same skinny houses you see down in Pendleton or elsewhere but they have sizeable side yards and huge back yards more in line with what you'd expect to see in other Great Lakes cities, interspersed with outher housing styles. It's just so weird that the layout of some of the (relatively) flatter neighborhoods didn't continue the building pattern of what you'd see in the basin. I get that a lot of it was the wealth running out to the original suburbs, but it still seems incredibly spread out in some parts, and it never really reached the point where the old stuff got torn down and replaced with denser construction. I think the west side confuses me the most. You'll notice that I don't have many photos from west of the Mill Creek, and part of that is because I just can't geographically figure out that side of town at all. To even get to places like Westwood you have to travel up an incredibly long boulevard that is essentially isolated until you get to the other side of Mt Airy Forest, and it all seems so completely detached from the density down in the basin and the Mill Creek valley. I guess I would have expected these areas to have developed closer to the edge of the hillside with higher densities, but then you get into Price Hill and it's all very spread out again before fairly quickly breaking down into cul-de-sacs. It just seems so very bizarre, like it's its own little world. That said, I'm hoping to spend some more time over that way since it really is unexplored territory for me, for the most part. Every neighborhood here meets other neighborhoods in such odd ways, and I think it makes Cincinnati feel very detached and eclectic simply because each neighborhood really is its own little city that happened to grow out and bump into another city that has a completely different development pattern. There really isn't anything like it, and it's led to such an incredible diversity of architecture that you're always going to find some really weird, eclectic gem hidden in the oddest place. And that's what I love the most about living here, is just how surprising it is. You can take four different routes to the same place and you'll travel through four completely different environments. It never gets old.

Dixie Terminal, I believe! Yup, that is in fact Dixie Terminal. Only took me four years to get downtown at a time when it was actually open!

Louisville's riverfront is a mess. It's a pain to get under I-64, and there's basically only a parking lot once you get down there. And then there's that weird plaza by the Galt House that goes over the top of I-64 but only has a staircase shoved off to the side to actually get you down to river level.

Thanks everyone! I tried to show off as much unique stuff as I possibly could, this city is constantly surprising me. To answer a few questions: Yup, that would have been me! It really is a small world. My coworker's sister was in town from New Haven and we wanted to take her somewhere different for the 4th, and what better place than Northside for the parade? It really comes down to where I get hired. I'd love to stay here, but I've been applying all across the Midwest for stuff. I certainly would love to end up here long-term, but at this point in my life I'm not opposed to getting out and seeing a bit more of the country.

I never really meant to spend an entire year putting together this album. I’ve taken thousands of pictures in Cincinnati this year, and I had hoped to share batches of them as the year went on, but I never felt that I had enough shots worth sharing. So I stockpiled the few from each excursion that I thought were decent, and almost accidentally I found myself putting together this love letter to Cincinnati. In the nearly five years that I’ve lived here, I’ve been enchanted and surprised and frustrated and delighted by this city, and it’s a bit weird not knowing whether I’ll still be here after graduating from UC in the spring. One thing’s for sure- even if I don’t end up here long term, I’ll never forget my experiences and I’ll be talking everyone’s ear off about how great the Queen City really is. I hope you enjoy this look back at 2015 and perhaps you’ll get a feel for why I’ve been so proud to call this place home. This is the oldest photo in the batch, from the tree lighting ceremony last November. He asked me to make him famous, but posting the photo here is about as good as I can do in that regard. I have this one hanging in my living room. Lasers in Mt. Adams. ' You didn't think I would leave out the single most important event of the year, did you? Phew, that was exhausting. Cincinnati is far too vast to fully document in a year, but I’m happy with the ground I’ve covered so far. I hope it was worth the wait!

People seem much more willing to put up with brutal summers than with brutal winters. I'd much rather take the latter than having to deal with six months of awful humidity.

^That Arby's was gross. Didn't they close for a health code violation or am I making that up? I wouldn't mind seeing a Wendy's in uptown somewhere. The new Wendy's near OSU is pretty nice, mostly for not being a standard suburban one plopped in the middle of an urban area.

Calhoun/McMillan's had a lot of vacancies recently. Lime left, Potbelly's is gone, Firehouse Subs closed, 200 West is closed, and there still hasn't been anything to fill in the old Starbucks, or Five Guys, or Yogurt Vi, or that one vacant storefront at USquare that never had anything in it. I assume the new monstrosity at McMillan/Clifton is going to have even more ground-level restaurant space?

^ Actually, it is the BSB. If you open the report, you can see that they're referring to the 71-75 interchange in OH, not in KY.

I also voted for the four-lane concept. I've traveled the road at rush hour plenty of times (granted, I'm coming inbound), and as it's been pointed out, a lot of the traffic has to do with poor signal timing. The light from the 471 offramp to Liberty/Reading lasts approximately ten seconds, and then you invariably get stuck at Vine, Race, and Elm. Same problem on the other side when trying to turn left from Central: the signals are old and weird and it's just poorly timed. Also, I hate trying to turn left from Main or Sycamore southbound onto Liberty eastbound. There's no turn signals and the width of the road is such that I'm always worried about making that turn and someone barreling up Main and not paying attention. A narrower road would help combat that.

^Hmmmm, now that I don't know. I would assume that it's only open when the resorts are open. But you probably wouldn't want to go to an Ohio beach after October anyway :wink:.

There are definitely moments where I get a European vibe from this city - especially Mt. Adams and OTR from afar. The ornamentation here seems more across-the-board elaborate than a lot of other comparable rowhouse cities. Nut the use of brick vs. stone facades and the more rough-hewn nature if a lot of the detailing gives the buildings a distinct frontiersy and "American" vibe.

^I'm pretty sure you can get on Cedar Point's beach as long as you pay the parking fee, unless they've changed that since I worked at the park 3 years ago. You just have to park back by Soak City and walk over toward Hotel Breakers (which is another Sandusky gem). Of course, they don't advertise it as such so no one really realizes this, and it's hard to pass up the roller coasters if you're driving out there!

They would if many of these areas weren't full of blight and abandoned buildings. The quicker these neighborhoods can go through gentrification, and the blight can be cleaned up, the more you will have Mason tourists visiting downtown and taking note of what we have. At the present time, there still reluctant to go down to OTR, and at best frequent The Banks or Newport. And that tells you all you need to know about architecture in Cincinnati if your basing it off those locations. This isn't a dig on anyone in particular, but I wish people could learn to see that even blighted buildings still have underlying beauty. It almost seems that a brand-new strip mall is viewed as inherently more valuable than, say, a building in Mohawk just because it's "new". Such a mentality leads to things like Moving Ohio Forward.

There aren't many cities with such sheer architectural diversity between neighborhoods as there is in Cincinnati.

I've always thought it would have been interesting if Sandusky had swelled in population and and/or a sizable city had sprung up on Marblehead. Ohio could have had its own mini Bay Area! Great photos. Erie's one of those places I've really only been through, other than a couple of trips to Waldameer. Maybe next time I'll have to actually stop and explore a bit.

I walked past last Friday, and it's looking great. Mulberry is a really nice street. So many gems hidden up on the hillside streets around the basin.

ODOT's been making some weird design choices statewide. I'm not terribly pleased with the various mis-mash of new infrastructure we've been getting; none of it is cohesive and it's almost all ugly.

I love these Eastern smaller cities. They're often much denser and more urban than many cites four times their size. Downtown has some seriously impressive scale for a city of that size!

That's Earl Clark, I got to speak with him briefly during the delivery and he's a bit of a fan of streetcars to say the very least. Quite the rail historian.