GCrites

Lancaster needs something really badass here to remind those on old 33 that they are downtown. Like Newark and Zanesville, Lancaster has one of those '50s urban highways that just skirted the downtown area... the kind that make people passing through say, "Is that it?"

Kinnear is definitely "Going through Changes" as Sabbath would say. For those not familiar with the area, it's a two lane road that has a bunch of '60s warehouses, union halls and laboratories. There's no sidewalks, but a lot of people walk through to get to their apartments on the other side of the area. But now, urban-friendly apartments with sidewalks and little setback are popping up. So it'll go, setback '60s warehouse, setback OSU lab, urban apartments, setback union hall if you're passing through.

That unusual red and white Dodge you mentioned... could it be Canadian? They did all kinds of weird stuff up there, like sell Pontiac and Mercury trucks.

I can picture a Skynyrd song about those parts of town.

Looks like those first few should be called "Coldday Tours"! HA!

And a third gem from the Kunstler blog: "Did you admire Standard and Poor's sly, Friday night downgrade of the United States Treasury bond rating? I was probably the only one in the whole country besides Anderson Cooper not out eating something bigger than my own head at Applebees, or watching the "Footwear Clearance" show over on the Shopping Network."

Excellent explanation in post #62, rider. Now that I think of it, I can't think of many demolitions of significance (sans the mall) Downtown since '97, but of course, we suffered so much obliteration from the '50s through the '70s that they had to slow down or there'd be nothing left. What I meant by the city hassling those renovating was that those seeking to set up shop in the city (not necessarily Downtown) find that labyrinthine code regulations can increase the cost of their project to the point where it is not viable. That can push projects out to the suburbs, or in non-Downtown areas, to demolition and replacement. I couldn't find the thread over at CU, but I know the Betty's family of restaurants has jumped through a lot of flaming hoops over the years, per Liz Lessner's comments.

Columbus does still hassle those who are making improvements to current structures much more than is necessary, fueling new builds and teardowns.

Er, a lot of businesses aren't going to announce what they're doing until they're ready to promote their opening so that somebody doesn't steal their idea.

Well crap, I used to live there too. Blast you, mystery building.

It will probably wind up being yet another warehouse/light industrial site. No complaints about that from me; that's a good fit for the area and those places mean jobs.

275 is a really long ring road -- one of the longest in the world. It's not surprising that much of it goes through areas that are still undeveloped. Besides the fact that it has exits, it is so long that it becomes a completely arbitrary development boundary.

Thread title made me think there was going to be some really manipulative stuff. I was kind of scared to click at first. Is that building around here? I vaguely think that I may have been in it, but it is common American institutional architecture so I don't know.

Well, I suppose there was a lot of buzz about the Ascent, Mainstrasse, Hofbrau and all that. And the retail at NotL hadn't died off yet nor had the economy completely gone in the crapper.

Man, we really need this since the East Side is in such terrible shape economically... ... ...

Ohio is a lot denser than many of the other states that have county school systems, so larger schools shouldn't be necessary. Plus, that would require spending a lot of money for additions and new facilities right after the 1995-2005 school building boom. I know that in the Cincinnati area the high schools tend to be larger than in Columbus (seems that we always split 'em once they hit 1000 students), but combining buildings wouldn't save much money since they'd have to feed buses. Those one-hour each way bus rides are a complete waste of time and energy in a state as dense as ours. Studying and doing homework on a bus sucks because you are cramped, the paper's moving all over the place, it's hot/cold, it's loud and bored kids are raging. And getting up that early is hell on teenagers (but not on elementary school kids; don't get me started). Finally, monster schools are the ones that make kids snap and shoot up the place. But who knows how this is going to turn out if it gets ramrodded through?

This assumes that the Internet is somehow not part of our economy. I see it as the economy shifting to the Internet, not the Internet killing it. In fact, many of the largest online retailers in the world are American: Amazon, Dell, eBay, etc. Amazon and eBay also offer the opportunity to local merchants to partner with them in order to take their sales global in a hurry--the equivalent of being able to instantly set up a kiosk inside a larger retailer in brick-and-mortar world. Think of the internet as directly comparable to millions of robots. Selling stuff to overseas buyers (even Canadians) online is a gigantic hassle for a small operation due to customs and scams. edit: more problems with auto spell check

Columbus is an interesting case because of annexation. I am 99% certain that most of the area of Columbus that is part of the Groveport-Madison School District was annexed into the city years, perhaps several decades, after the independent school district itself was established. Correct. Groveport schools were only in old Groveport until the 1960s when the new development in Columbus happened. All Groveport-Madison buildings outside old Groveport were built in the '60s and '70s. And, I'm sure Columbus had to assist with the building of the schools since the Groveport system had maybe 600 pupils at the time.

That last line is a good point. If you're out running first thing in the morning and it's already 82, you reek, your breath smells like ass and they don't mind it, you can probably start the farting really early in the relationship.

Those old computer systems can wind up being a lot faster to use than today's systems once you're used to them. Those function keys can make you really tear ass. But man, if you want to hear somebody whine, complain and swear up a storm, just make a technophile use any non-current technology like a cash register or a VCR. They think that they are so good at learning technology, yet they can't learn how to use something a few years old. Take away the ability to Google their query and they turn into Ozzy trying to service a mainframe on acid. You show them a safety video from 1991 and they'll make fun of the fact that it's not in HD and come unglued when they see a guy with a mustache and a mullet. They won't pay attention to the content. Of course, kids have always been like this. In middle school, when they'd bust out the film projector that had to be synched up with a tape deck we'd snicker a bit -- but we were in the 7th grade, not 25 years old.

Plus, folks that move away from urban/suburban areas to semi-rural areas so that their kids won't have "bad influences" or see a lot of attention going to poor kids usually wind up disappointed that those areas have the same problems as everywhere else.

I think sometimes native Columbusites (no pun intended) such as myself and Keith M. tend to think about places like Hamilton, Morse, Hillard-Rome, the South Side, Reynoldsburg and 161 a little too much. Those are the places where we were dragged around as kids since there wasn't much going on in other parts of town in those days. What I had to learn to do is basically ignore parts of town that I don't like. When I lived in Cincinnati, I never went to West Chester or Mason (though I wound up working in Florence for a while, I put the foot to the floor when I got off work). So I thought Cincinnati overall was way cooler since my brain had only focused on the interesting parts of town. I still like Cincinnati a whole lot, but I'm not down on Columbus like I used to be since I discovered that it's usually not necessary to spend time in the parts of town you find depressing. If you watch TV or listen to the radio too much, they'll make it sound like all the action is in Lewis Center or something. It's not.

To get an example of what this might turn out like, look to parts of cities that are served by the suburban school system near them. The Groveport-Madison school system consists mainly not of Groveport or Madison Twp. residents, but of Columbusites that live in the subdivisions off of Hamilton, Noe-Bixby and Williams Roads. Four of Groveport's elementaries are in Columbus, while only two are in Groveport. Columbus pays Groveport millions per year to run the schools. Westerville and Southwestern are like this as well. edit: spell check tried to turn Columbusites into Combustibles

^ of course not, it's just an ancedote.

What kind of parent sends their kid to OU? Here's one type: I was at a bar there (I don't know the names of the bars or streets there; it was across from that food court thing and had pool tables on an elevated section in the back) with a buddy of mine who was in school there. It was parent's weekend and this dad and daughter were in there. It's early afternoon and Dad's banging away on his own pitcher. Daughter starts hitting on my buddy who's got long hair, stroking him, asking him if he's in a band and all that. A lot of dads would be bent getting out of shape by this point, but this Dad's just sitting there egging 'em both on. Man, when I tried to get into OU back in the late '90s, they told me that my grades, class rank and math ACT (19) was way too low even though the rest of my scores were in the high 20s. They told me that I could go to OU-Lancaster and transfer in. There, they said that I was supposed to take Calculus 163 the first quarter, but that since my math scores were too low that I had to take two more 100-level maths to get to 163. It would have taken forever to get into to regular OU. I wanted normal college instead of auto-dependent school so I transferred to Shawnee State. I didn't have to take the equivalent of Math 163 until I was a senior at SSU. OU was never MIT, but they didn't screw around academically back then. I remember hearing Matt Lauer saying something about keeping a towel under the door at all times when he was at OU.