Jeff

There is some absolutly cool stuff about surfers in Lake Michigan. I ran across the great lakes surfing subculture via websurfing..... Apparenlty there are some good waves off the Gary/Hammond area during the fall! Imagine surfing in a icy cold lake with flecks of snow coming down, with a backdrop of refinery flares and blast furnaces!

Little Kentucky in Fairborn. Yeah, I actually know where thats at. I've heard Fairboring before, too. The place does have a certain 'realness' character to it, thought. My barber is in Fairborn and he has some real characters come through (this is one of those barber shops where people hang out at).

...sort of a baby CommFest, but without so much politics and more around music then a street fair... hipster vendors... ecological clothing vendors My Samoan attorney advises me to get some more beer tickets. Politics You might recall this guy from my other festival threads. He was even up at that jam fest at that Shawnee "rancheria" @ Zane Shawnee Caverns up in the Bellfontaine area this past summer. I think he has something to do with the Trolley Stop, but dont know. He certainly is connected somewhat into the local music scene to show up at the jam fest. More politics check out the funky fabrics and peace sign in the tent... ...maybe more dancehall style? This band came from Missouri to play. There was a band from Texas, too. This was a local ska band, though a few members are from Columbus the two solitudes... though we got a taste of the good old Dayton gloom this weekend the sun did come out a bit near the end of the day.... ...which brightened up the mood and brought out more people up to dance (including yr humble host!) Skyscrapers and Reggae, whats not to like ?!? Two closing shots... Now..for something completely different..... ...I'm gonna tell you a story I'm gonna tell you about my town I'm gonna tell you a big bad story, baby Aww, it's all about my town.... Yeah, down by the river Down by the banks of the river Charles Along with lovers, fuggers, and thieves Well I love that dirty water Oh, Boston, you're my home In this dirty old part of the city Where the sun refused to shine People tell me there ain't no use in tryin' (Yeah!) He's been workin' so hard (Yeah!) I've been workin' too, baby (Yeah!) Every night and day (Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!) 8-) LOL.....well, The Professors didn't cover the Animals or the Standells (or at least those tunes) that night, but they did cover the Dave Clark Five....but you certainly get the picture...mix a bit of Yardbirds/Animals English + US garage and protopunk and you have that fun musical stew this band serves Review from the Journal-News: Once in a while I come across a local band that romances my eardrums and temporarily cures me of my jaded view of music. This time around I have to credit The Professors for doing just that. The brand new release from The Professors is everything you would expect from this tremendously trashy retrograde rock n’ roll 5-piece. It is fun, raw, hip, and nostalgic. The 6-tracks from the new ep, entitled Get Out Of My Head, will get your hips shaking and your wheels turning with enough energy, bloody beats, and non-filtered vocal wailing for anyone who loves rock music from bands like The Sonics. Some of the most intriguing tracks on the cd are the horror blues of Hell on Wheels, and the title track, Get Out of My Head. Get Out Of My Head closes out the cd with a distorted bass walk-up, an active organ, and the scratchy voice of Richard Stockton yelling out the hook. Along with Stockton, The Professors also include Tony Moore (guitar), Nick Yates (organ), Derek Gullett (bass), and Phil Cavenous (drums). The guys got together Sunday, September 3rd at Canal Street Tavern for the official release of the cd. The band is also releasing a 7-inch split with My Latex Brain simultaneously with the ep. The band will drag their vintage guitars out on October 7th for The Dayton Music Fest. Pick up the ep at Dingleberry’s, Gem City Records, or CD Connection before you head out to see them and bring your dancing shoes.

There was some discussion over at the city discussions forum about the old canal in Middletown. Here are some pix for a thread I never posted here, that was going to be on SW Ohio as a "paper valley"..made of of my pix plus some from the local historical society, I think... Very similar to Dayton, this was a hydraulic race that powered water wheels and turbines for factories...here mostly paper mills. The canal that went through town did something similar where there was a fall at a lock. A map from 1875 showing the hydraulic race on the west side and a paper mill on the south side using the canal as a source of water power Example of a paper mill at a lock, with the "wheel house" projecting over the headrace. An old paper mill from the 1850s on the hydraulic canal Today paper money ....note the arches at the base of this paper mill. I wonder if this was built over that hydraulic canal: canal again (tailrace) Gritty Middletown Whats left of the Wren Paper Company plant Skyline shots Paper Bag Factory Today Canal & Chimneys.... Today (but from the other direction)(canal is now Verity highway, I think) The Spirit of Paper...

That sucess rate looks pretty good. I think that Tech Town concept was partly concieved with the Entrepreneur Center in mind, as it could be a place for new companys to relocate to after they leave the incubatory.

The market also provides affordable housing in the form of older, out-of-date, building stock. The urban decay that supplies it is no less integral to the organic urban cycle as gentrification. That's certainly what is happening in the Dayton metro area today, where most of the new home construction is for the upper part of the market. But that isn't what happened in the 19th century....where affordable housing was being built at the same time as mansions and middle class housing. That is a real good question as to what really was going on, sociologically, in the 19th century. Places like the Oregon appear to have started out with a mix of housing for middle class people and for the developing urban working class, as indicated by some of the small doubles being built around the same time as single famliy houses. And perhaps that was what happened in Cincinnati as well. In what's left of the West End, one can see Dayton Street, which was fairly well-off, surrounded by a more working class area. Maybe even that little Betts/Longworth neighborhood, too, as an example. I can appreciate the concept of urban recycling, which is sort of what gentrification is. But it would be ahistorical to say that some of the old Ohio neighborhoods we are talking about really would have been as homogenous as the New Urbanist writer implys.

This has been going on for 18 years...supposedly the oldest festival of its type in Midwest. A few pix from the festival. More later. Seefari..the band leader has been the longtime organizer of the show... After the fest I visit the home of the Foto Fairy.... Finishing up with the Professors at Canal Street Tavern, who always put on a great show (but not reggae)...

Thanks, ColDayMan. I hope you and the others enjoy perusing these threads as much as I enjoy putting them togther...though it does take a while. For Conovercourt: SSP and SSC are two message boards. Skyscraper Page (SSP) and Skyscraper City (SSC). I think SSC is based in Europe and has an international series of forums. As one can tell by the name the boads are for skyscraper enthusiasts, as well as places to post on other types of new development. They do digress into more general urban discusssions, similar to this board...though Urban Ohio seems to be focused more generally on urbanism than SSC an SSP. I am on both boards, but really post more at SSP in their political subforum and a bit in their general discussions area. I post at SSC mostly on the Louisville Development thread and a bit in the Midwest subforum. Though I sometimes post pix there, what I'm into isn't really the same as what the forumers at SSC and SSP are into, given their bias towards "development" and such (which can be surburban shopping centers as well as downtown loft renovations). My interests are more historical/geographical, as you can tell by the threads I post here.

...yeah, Oregon Overkill 8-) (that would be a good band name?) ....tackling the Oregon...I wasn't going to do this but what the hey. I feel I just scratched the surface of this place, and there are probably people who actually live there who know tons more about it than I do (or, really, am guessing at).

I know down in Kentucky south of Louisville one can find farmhouses that look like doubles. They have two doors in front, just like a double would. But these are single famliy houses that are just two rooms wide and one room deep (with an el usually). They are sort of a cheaper version or simpler version of that central hall I-house I posted on upthread. Here in Ohio I've seen doubles in the country, too. Here is one between Brookville and Trotwood, at the site of an old railroad station. This line was built in the 1850s, around the time this type of double house was appearing in Dayton. They are in country villages too, like Germantown: I guess thats they way they built towns back then (based on models back on the East Coast). And during an era of labor-intensive agriculture and handcraft, there was probably the need for cheap housing for hired hands.

Columbus' German Village is an important neighborhood for Dayton, as the preservation work there was the inspiration & model for the first moves to preserve the Oregon District in the 1960s...the Oregon may never have happened as a preservation "save" if not for the example of the German Village. Oddly enough having been to Columbus a number of times I never explored the German Villiage, except for a visit to Schiller Park for a gay pride day event, stopping by the Book Loft and Max and Ermas. And the "German" part got me interested too, especially the discussion here about some surviving German buisnesses there. So I went to explore the place earlier this year. It was different, and interesting as an example of how Columbus grew in somewhat different way than Dayton. First off there is the original plat of Columbus with the first plats in German Village: ...which is an interesting pattern of development, in that Columbus has this system of wide primary streets, but then a subsidiary grid of narrow secondary streets or alleys. Though these would be alleys (usually) in Dayton they seem to have become residential streets in Columbus. Though lost downtown this is really visible in German Village. Another early map of Columbus showing the extensions of German Village And Columbus in 1875, showing the fine mesh of the street grid, and an expanded German Village East-west cross street in German Village One of the secondary streets, showing the intense level of devleopment of zero-lot-line houses. Is this an alley or a street..its between the two. Imagine this level of density continuing right into downtown Columbus before the construction of the freeways and urban renewal. Columbus version of a double Very dense single family and doubles residential development...zero lot line development and very little open space between houses. ...next step, the rowhouse. I guess in Cincinnait the next step would have been to "go up" via those tenements we see in OTR. Further out in German Village, there still is residential development in these narrow brick alleys or backstreets. I really like the paving in these alleys, where the brickwork is laid to form a mid-street drain. On the "primary streets", the development is not quite as dense. I noticed that Columbus houses in this area seem to use those hip roofs a lot. Looking down a cross-street again. Check out the brick house on the corner..it is sort of repeated down the block. Also sort of a half-hip roof on it. And a surviving German buisness...this is a sausage factory and restaurant. Sort of suprising to see Columbus having something like this, survining into our own day, when Cincy is supposed to be the big German center. It turns out Columbus was one of the few cities to have a local brewery until the 1970s...Gambrinus beer. This place had some good sausages and also potato pancakes and saurkraut as well as their own house beer. They have a very good cream puff type of pastry which is quite good and apparently no skimping on the ingredients. There is also a German pastry/bakery shop called Juergens in this neighborhood, but I havn't stopped there yet. A final note is that one of the great things about German Village for visitors is that the neighborhood association has a little vistors center and display area, and a video you can watch orienting you to the neighborhood. Its staffed by locals who can tell you about the history of the place and so forth. Something they should do here in Dayton, maybe. Or maybe something Cincinnati can do for Over The Rhine, perhaps in the Findlay Market area.

That tower piece with the pyramidal roof is just tacked-on, though. I like the side that faces Dave Hall Plaza, with the bay windows. Probably a better skyscraper is the old Hulman Building, but that depends on the angle as the elevator shafts on one side sort of detracts. The thing that I found suprising is how empty this building is. Just 20% occupied. I had read about the top floor penthouse apartment before, though. That's interesting. Gut the lower floors and turn them into parking.

A LIFE OF LABELS. But how much value do we place on a sense of place, or a sense of history? History only tells us where we've been, but it's those stories that help us understand who we are and where we're going. What stories do we tell about our communities when our history is relegated to some old black and white photos in the barber shop or a doddering historical society? This sort of gets to the German concept of heimat, which is untranslatable in English, but sort of describes the spirit or character of a place..the combination of history, landscape, architecture, society, dialect, folkways and foodways, and also maybe a bit of economics that make up a sense of place or the character of a place.

If you’re a folk music fan you’ve probably heard the term “the folk process”. Coined (I think) by Pete Seeker all it means is that “the tale changes with the telling”. Songs and lyrics get changed by the singers, adapted to new situations and circumstances, but still retaining familiar elements or a basic structure. I think this concept can be applied to vernacular or folk architecture, which is the anonymous construction by builders and contractors that is much of our built environment. This thread will explore what I think might be the folk process in action in 19th century Dayton, in the Oregon District. My theory is that traditional rural houseforms of the mid-Atlantic and the Ohio Valley where adapted or modified for an urban setting, and one can sort of see this in action via old houses in the Oregon, as this is the oldest neighborhood in Dayton. In the Oregon, one can see the development of two urban vernaculars common to Dayton; the Double and what I call the “Urban I-House”. Starting off with a “cartographic essay”, sort of a “historical geography” on the development of the Oregon district… Cartographic Essay Oregon Before the Canal Dayton in 1820 showing the town plat and out-lots …with the future Oregon district outlined in red. The original town plat of 1796 and the three subsequent re-plats of Daniel Cooper, (the proprietor of Dayton) provided for out-lots running to the east (to about Tals Corner). This was a common practice in the Ohio Valley (Lexington also had an town lot/out-lot plat), where settlers would obtain an out-lot as well as a town lot. Cooper continued to add out-lot plats around the original town plat. I don’t know if the out-lots where intended as farms or just as a land speculation. In Lexington the out-lots (today’s North Side) where used as “suburban” estates or for the local gentry, and there some evidence this happened in Dayton, too. In any case the pattern and orientation of the out-lots set the pattern for urban development in Dayton for the first half of the 19th century.- Urban growth in Dayton remained within the original town plat for the first quarter of the 19th century as there was almost no new town lot plats until the arrival of the canal in 1829. A close-up of the 1820 map of Dayton. Today’s 5th and Brown Streets appear as lanes providing access to the out-lots. Cooper retained large blocks of land immediately east of the original town plat as a commons and as property for a saw mill. This was the route of a lowspot, slough or gully that connected between the Mad and Miami Rivers, probably an old floodway or river channel. During the War of 1812 Cooper put troops billeted in Dayton to work by excavating the mill race visible on the map, following the route of the low area. This mill race was to be the route of the future Miami & Erie canal The Canal Era The Miami and Erie Canal arrived at 1829, which caused and economic, population and real-estate boom. The 10 years between the opening of the canal and the1839 map below saw Dayton’s population jump: 1810: 383 1820: 1,139 1830: 2,954 1840: 6,057 Development probably filled-in the original Dayton town plat and the out-lots started to be platted, including today’s Oregon district, in speculation and to respond to the population boom. The following map illustrates how the out-lot configuration (shown in red) controlled the pattern of land development in the Oregon. It was in the 1840s when “Oregon” was first recorded as referring to this neighborhood. The canal formed the western boundary of the Oregon. The lock just north of the west side of the Oregon was determined by a change in slope, which also provided the opportunity for water power ed industrial development. The following maps show the route of the canals and hydraulic races, and early industrial development. None of the early factories noted here remain, t though the sites remained in industrial use into modern times. The failed Seely's Basin is to the east of the Oregon. This extension to the canal was an impetus to real-estate development of the east side of Dayton. Some of this area was actually platted prior to the Oregon, and later became known as the Haymarket The appearance of a school on one of the out-lots indicates that this area was populated enough in 1839 to require education facilities. This school site is now the location of the Oregon park & gazebo on Brown Street This industrial development around the canal was key to the development of the area. As this was the era of the “walking city”, without mass transit for the working class, housing needed to be within walking distance of the factories and workshops. The result was an increasing density in development in era before cheap transit. Oregon in Mid-Century The Oregon in 1868-69, a few years after the Civil War: By this time the Oregon had been fully platted and mostly built-out. A map showing the plat history of the neighborhood shows that most of it had been developed by the Civil War. (color code is lighter= newer/darker =older) Introducing the grid of out-lot boundaries… …demonstrates how they generated the development pattern and street layout of the Oregon. In some cases, along Brown Street, the development seemed to be pretty granular, with out-lots split and quartered to form what might have been sort of a “large lot” development opportunity for suburban estates, which then themselves became subdivided. Industrial development in the late 1860s. This is an imperfect map as I don’t show all the varied industry here, just the larger plants. The “Joint Tracks” connecting railroads coming into Dayton from the east and north to those from the west and south appear, snaking their way around the factories, canals, and hydraulic races. This dense industrial development drove a residential density in the Oregon As Dayton did not grow as fast as Cincinnati, nor did it have topographical limitations, yet still had the constraint of developing somewhat quickly during the era of the “walking city”, the areas near job concentrations developed somewhat densely via “doubling-up”, already evident in the 1860 from these enlargements of the map above: This doubling-up phenomenon is evident in other Great Lakes cities, particularly Chicago, with its alley houses, and in Cleveland and Chicago with their two-flats or double-deckers (maybe Buffalo & Detroit too?). In Dayton it happened via squeezing two houses onto one lot, side-by-side, and by the “double” or duplex house (though alley houses are found here too). From the 1890s, a close-up exploration doubling-up via Sanborn maps. Early example of doubling, on Tecumseh Street, in one of the older parts of the Oregon, close to the industrial development along the canals. And on the earliest Oregon plat, on 6th Street…. The original plat had lot frontages of 49’-6”. These lots where often split in half, and became the frame for a variety of ways of fitting the house to the site. Note also how the lots facing Brown where replatted to face Brown Street, as they would be worth more facing a main street into the city (later the route of a street car). A close-up of 6th Street. The various ways of doubling up are shown here, including a double alley house on the “convenient alley”. Note also the working of small workshops into the neighborhood. Oregon as 20th century urban slum and dodging the urban renewal bullet Oregon in 1940. By 1940 Oregon was reaching its maximum build-out. Urban “recycling” was going on here through the 19th century as well as the 20th, with old houses being replaced by newer, or by apartments and commercial buildings. This was particularly the case on the busy streets on the boundaries of the neighborhood, Fifth and Wayne, and with the industrial buildings (for example the carpet mill of the 1830s was replaced by the Oregon four mill, which was replaced by an industrial building of the early 20th century, which still stands). The following map shows the frequency of double houses or doubled-up houses in a portion of the neighborhood. This was not the only way density was being achieved. There where apartments on top of commercial buildings on Wayne and 5th, apartment buildings within the Oregon replacing older houses, and houses and doubles where split up into smaller apartments or rental rooms. The neighborhood was considered a problem housing area, and, along with the neighboring Haymarket to the east of Wayne Avenue, was slated for demolition via urban renewal as early as the 1930s. At this time the neighborhood was referred to as “Burns-Jackson”, and actually extended further south into what is today South Park. (today the Burns and Jackson intersection is in South Park, south of the US 35 Expressway). Freeway construction and urban renewal razed the southern part of the Oregon, as well as obliterating the Haymarket, resulting in an isolated pocket of some of the oldest housing in the city. The rump Oregon was a bone of contention during the 1960s during a three way battle between the city planners, preservationists, and residents (this was sort of an Appalachian ghetto at the time), with the first proposal at preservation via wholesale restoration failing. The future was bleak in the early 70s, but the neighborhood was restored during the 1970s, house by house, in some case using special loans by the then-new Citywide Development Corporation (this was apparently the first project of Citywide). The Folk Process The above was to set the stage for what is more an “architectural” speculation or theory on the Oregon as a setting or laboratory for the working out of an urban vernacular for Dayton. Housing in Dayton…the pre-canal era The oldest houses in Dayton are lost to us. One might catch glimpses of them in old photographs or Daguerreotypes, but the ongoing recycling of the original plat of Dayton, today’s downtown, has left few structures surviving from the 19th century, let along from the early pre-canal era. The original plat was probably “rebuilt” two or three times after the first construction before being slowly razed via urban renewal and parking lot construction in modern times. Nevertheless three structures survive which appear to predate the canal. I can only verify the provenance of the last one as it has a 1827 date stone. The others are based on tradition and some notes I found in an old photo collection at WSU. (heavily modified with the big window on the ground floor) These three are the oldest town-houses in Dayton on their original sites (not counting Newcom Tavern here). All supposedly date from the 1820s…around the time of the first map on the thread. All have a common feature of having the roof running parallel to the street. The last one is probably the oldest “double house” in Dayton. One can see versions of these in the Oregon. The other two are what could be called “half-I houses”. The oldest house in Dayton is this old farm house in Westwood. This is what is called an “I-House” (a term coined by cultural geographer Fred Kniffen in his essay “Folk Housing a Key to Diffusion”). This type of house is what I think was the one of the sources for the urban vernacular of 19th century Dayton. The Urban I-House Two other I-houses in Dayton (both probably old farmhouses that survived subdivision) and one in Portsmouth, Ohio. I will use the Portsmouth example as a “typical” example showing how this house form might have been modified for an urban site. One thing to note is that all these houses have the gable end perpendicular to the street and entry is mid-house. The source for the drawings and pix is Portsmouth: Architecture in an Ohio River Town,an exhibition catalogue published by the Miami University Art Museum A typical I-house. The entry is mid house, from the front and rear. Usually with an el addition to the rear. Often these “additions” where built along with the original house. The gable end is perpendicular to the street. The house is always one room deep. Adapting the house to an urban site by flipping the plan…. …and making some adjustments with the “kit of house parts”...windows, chimneys, etc. Entry remains mid-house though. The el is cropped to fit the site. Some additional adjustments to the el, such as a second floor and extended porch, and possibly extensions to the rear, and one has an “urban I-house”, which is consistent with Dayton examples from the Oregon district. Two interesting aspects is the relatively low slope on the roof in the Portsmouth example I am using is similar to the Dayton houses, and the retention of the mid-house entrance into the long part of the house or into the el, which is different from similar houses in other Great Lakes cities. There are examples, however, in Dayton of entrance directly at the gable end. Another possible genisis of the urban I-house is from the half I-house. A similar process of flipping the plan, moving windows to the gable end, extending the house deeper into the lot, and adding a side porch or el could be operating. Three ways to the Double As can be seen unthread Doubles are probably a very old houseform in Dayton. The following is speculation on three sources for the Double, using diagrams and examples from the Oregon and rural SW Ohio. 1. The first seems to be the logical extension of squeezing the urban I-house on narrow city lots. Why not take the next step of merging two houses into one? 2. Another source for some of the Oregon doubles is the “double pile house”, which was a rural house from the mid-Atlantic. Unlike the I-house this house is two-rooms deep, and has a distinctive double chimney arrangement at the gable ends. A rural example from Red Lion, south of Dayton, and a very similar house in Oregon in massing and gable end chimneys, except instead of one house it is a double. The double dropped the central door and window, but the window and door spacing wasn’t adjusted to the extra space on the façade, leaving a blank area where the central door and window would be. 3. A third way to the double. This uses a version of the I-house that we saw in 1820s Dayton: one room wide, gable parallel to the street, but have the door to one side. They come in 5 and 4 window versions. This house can be joined into a double, and it could be that that just the roof changes, with the gable end facing instead of running perpendicular to the street. On the last pix in the series below the proportions of the roof and the house below it seems like this is what happened. The house seems to call for a roof running parallel to the street. The above speculation is missing one key thing. I don’t have any floor plans of the Dayton examples to work with, which would really help with an analyses. So the above speculation is just working with exterior form, thus incomplete. Oregon Seriation…the first three decades of the Oregon A series of Oregon examples by year and by typology from 1830-1860. One of the neat things about the Oregon is that some of the homeowners have researched their houses and put date plaques on the outside, which really helps guys like me who don’t have the time to research property records to date houses. 1830s This is supposed to be the earliest house in the Oregon, on the 1829 6th Street plat. As you can see it bears a family resemblance to the 1820s downtown Dayton plat houses upthread. A substantial portion of the Oregon was platted prior to 1840. Interestingly most of the houses (that I can date) date after 1839. This when the city underwent considerable population growth between 1830 and 1840. Why? Perhaps the original houses built in the Oregon where replaced later? Perhaps there was enough open space left in the original Dayton plat and in other new plats so new construction was happening elsewhere? Perhaps these houses are misdated and are really earlier? In any case the 1840s provides the first extant examples of Dayton housing: 1840s 1840 1842 1843 ..an early example of the urban I-house. 1845 1845 Another early example of the urban I-house. 1846 1849 1849 1850s 1850 1850 1852 Interesting example of an el-plan. 1853 1853 1853 1854 1854 1855 1855 An early double. 1855 1860 Now a look at old Oregon houses by typology. None of these are dated. Half I-Houses Doubles with the roof parallel to the street This example has those impressive gable-end chimneys, which was also a popular construction detail for commercial buildings in Dayton, based on old photos and illustrations. Urban I-Houses & a Double …and this is the double alley house on “Convenient Alley” behind 6th Street: About that I-house term. If I recall right Kniffen says he called these houses that because he saw a lot of them in the “I-states”..Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Also the houses are tall and thin, like the letter “I”. One can visit the neighborhoods surrounding the Oregon and see these house types continue through the 19th century, with newer house forms appearing in the plats, like shotgun houses, one story houses, various Victorian styles, and, later four squares and bungalows. Yet, for me, these early and mid-19th century areas are really precious, as they are a physical link to a time beyond all living memory. For example, some of these houses where built when California and the Southwest where still part of Mexico (Mexican war in 1846-47) And Oregon. The UK/USA joint sovereignty over Oregon ended in 1846 after a near war with Britain over the territory, with the 1840s and 1850s the big era of settlement, the time of the Oregon Trail & “Oregon Fever”. So the Oregon country was far away and at the edge of things in the 18302 &1840s, but in the news as a new frontier settlement area….so naturally Daytonians would call their “distant” new suburb that.

Yes, I wish I heard more about Akron. Im more of an urban history vs urban development geek, and Akron is pretty interesting from an urban history or urban geography perspective, from what I was able to find out reading around and visting up there twice just to check the place out.

There was a documentary about this that came out 10 years ago: Taken for a Ride The Ohio connection is that the director, Jim Klein, is from Yellow Springs...or lives there. He teaches at Wright State in their film program.

They have a place up in Broad Ripple that gets a lot of travelling acts, sort of like Bogarts (it was an old movie theatre) or Southgate House. Broad Ripple is sort of the "Clifton" of Indy...but its on the north end of town, well away from downtown. That Northeast quadrant area has some good gay bars, too...I liked the Metro as they had a deck from which you could see the skyline. I really like what they did with that canal...these pix are just a taste of it, as that canal acts as sort of armature for new residential condo/townhose development to the north of downtown, all the way to I-65. And Rob is correct about the Indiana State Musuem. That was one of the best state/local history museums Ive seen. I was going to see that western art museum and the state museum but spent nearly all day in the state museum. They have recreated the old LS Ayres resteraunt in the museum, down to the china, menu, furniture, and even the waitress' uniforms (Ayers was Indys big downtown dept store).

^ Oh, I have nothing against Cincinnati, which is deliciously photogenic, as you say. It just would be redundant to take pix of the place as other posters here have it so well-covered.

^ I happen to like the railroad theme (but I'm sort of a half-assed railfan, so go figure). Muscially they are showing local indy bands on Saturday nights, which is a new thing for them this past year or so.

Much of the interior in this three story building is finished with highly polished tablets of Tennessee marble engraved with the names of Butler County pioneers and veterans of American wars from the Revolutionary War through the Spanish-American War of 1898. That was my experience of the Monument. Inside, one is surrounded by names...the walls are covered in names. A bit sobering, all those names of the war dead. For me that had more of an impact than a simple statue with a plaque. Ink, thanks for this thread. This is indeed one of Hamiltons treasures.

A few gay happenings in Dayton. I know there is a gay presence on this site so those of you of the persuasion might be interested (or amused) :wave: First, 22-24 September there is the "Downtown Dayton LGBT Film Festival", at the neon, sponsored by the Downtown Dayton Priority Board (!), Masque (a disco), and Therapy Cafe. Their myspace site: link (sort of interesting to see some of the "friends" at that site...interesting mix!) Then, this coming weekend, a "circuit party" (a big gay dance party, I guess..i dont know much about this "circuit party" scene) next Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, with the main even at the Dayton Convention Center, with imported DJ and female vocalist. The Flight Party

The nice thing about having Cincinnati and Dayton close to each other is that it is possible to partake of events in both citys. I usually don't take pix of Cincinnati, but I did take some of an art event and festival there this weekend. First was that outsider art fair on Court Street. The area around Court and Garfield Place as well Main street south of Court is one of my favorite parts of the city. In some other towns similar areas would have been a victim of Urban Renwal or covered with parking lots. In Cincinnati this downtown fringe or frame is still more or less intact, so a great funky old neighborhood. It seems like this would be a great place to live. At the art fair. This was still somewhat early, so perhaps better attended later in the day. The raffle prize Outsider Art. Dish antennas to recieve transmission from the planet Aesthetos More city More outsider art Art Deco skyscraper. Urban Voodo Shrine? hmmm.... This gallery was having a show/silent auction for some things by a local art figure called the "Construction Clown". Actually the things weren't too bad for primitive art. I liked this guys sensibility... The Construction Clown The Construction Clowns' Cincinnati My Cincinnati: density and narrow brick alleys. On the way to the Latino Festival The Latino Festival was at the county fairgrounds in Carthage. I think there was another one earlier in the month, too, over across the river in Newport. famous Mariachi singer They had various musical and folkloric dance acts. I liked that stage decoration at the base of the stage Futbol! colorful soccer balls, one with the team logos from the Mexican league, I think. They had quite a few booths here. Lots for schools, banks, sort of services things. This was a union organizing project. Even Mike Dewine had a booth here (didnt see any for that Sherrod guy) Mexican Folkloric dancers (the Spanish Journal/Jornada Latino l is how I found out about this...they have it at the Dayton library) Little Panamanian devils The kids section of a Panamanian folkloric dance group. The adults perform on Sunday. The last pix of them is an African influenced dance as there where apparenlty a lot of Africans brought to Panama (as in much of the Carribean islands and coastal countries and Brazil) ...and a crowd shot: Back to Dayton for the Lebanese Festival and an art show. Only three pix from the Lebanese festival as it was raining real heavy and we where all trapped in their big tent. I didnt get good pix of this event this year. The main features are the food and belly dancers Art event at Front Street. The way I found out about this was a poster at the Oregon Emporium coffee shop. Following the "Art Show" signs through the interior maze of the Front Street factories... Some show shots. There were 14 people showing. Some of the artists there have their own websites gERM? Jason Goad (who does rock posters) Mike Guidone (who is a tatoo artist) Jeffie Art and Machinery Finishing up....Life among the "industrial ruins" on a Dayton Saturday Night.... Street food

I've heard UD described as "a Buffy and Jody school".

—Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

Monte nails it.