GCrites

I live right by there and welcome the range. They also just put in a Lion's Den a few doors down which I also don't mind, though I usually go to the adult bookstore further south on Alum Creek.

Actually, it was an homage to Cecil B. DeMille's movie "The Ten Commandments". Which is what upon "Creeping Death" is based.

I think I've figured out one other reason why a lot of these neighborhood names are forgotten, besides the local media: A lot of them don't have the type of NBDs (neighborhood business districts) you see in say, Cincinnati.

^ That's really cool. Although I don't like the idea of more laws, they are sometimes necessary when the private sector fails to deliver equilibrium -- equilibrium in this case meaning the right number of parking spaces for normal use, not just Black Friday. Not to get too far off topic, but Black Friday is so stupid. Because of it, we have to deal with millions of extra acres of parking lot, have to drive farther to do anything (at least when we are forced to visit sprawl-land), have to look at a barren landscape and have walkability taken from us. You are not saving any money on Black Friday. The concept is costing you hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year. Luckily, most smaller locally-owned stres don't really have to deal with Black Friday. For them, sales are elevated somewhat from a normal day, but certainly not 5-10X like you see at the mall or big boxes. That allows their parking lot impact, both on rent/land cost passed through to the customer and environmental/sprawl factors to be much lower.

^ It's impossible mathematically for something to drop more than 100%

I never knew this area had a name either. Loving these threads of "Real Columbus".

I don't know. I guess it depends on how much OSU will help them in the future. OSU uses 80+ percent of the office space for various college departments and the art studios you see in the pedestrian alley are rent free and used by university students. Basically, OSU is filling in the space and providing the capital to keep the project above water. It's not really a market-driven project. The real benefit of the project is indirect / intangible. Prospective students are awe-struck when they see that on campus tours. Personally, I'm a lot more awestruck by bars that have 25 cent pitchers.

To some extent yes, but we've got nothing compared to the awesome gas stations of the pre-WWII era. This one in Lebanon is an excellent example. There's still a bunch around that have been converted to other uses, like the Lewis Animal Hospital in O'Bryonville, and there's one buried inside of Courtesy Chevrolet in Oakley. That's indeed true. Businesses that catered specifically to pre-interstate highway traffic have an interesting history. You used to see Kewpie and wigwam gas stations, dinosaur farms and ice cream stands that looked like ice cream cones. Interstates killed all that stuff and replaced it with corporate blandness.

Don't forget about the Butler/Warren County Crime Thread. It's not getting enough love -- you know plenty of crime is going on. It could be bigger than this one, but this site spends more time with the Enquirer/Dispatch/Plain-Dealer/Daily News/Blade than the smaller papers.

Wow, I had no idea the building was that old. I guess it makes sense; car-oriented looks roughly the same no matter the year of construction.

Next story: Suburban Sprawl Grows in a Manner Resembling Cancer

Rent free? For how long?

If Cincy wants to keep semis out of the city, I imagine that banning hazardous chemical traffic inside 275 a la Columbus would cut semi traffic considerably. Most semis have at least something hazardous on them.

There's Sherman, keeping this thread straighter than the Greece thread. Though a few more posts from others may turn it back.

What, nobody wants pictures of the awful one story early-'60s tan laminated block with aqua accents and unfinished aluminum thing that I attended? Of course, that's how it was back in the '90s before the school-building binge. Now include a 1995 addition, a 2000 addition and remodeling of a few rooms, another 2004 expansion and new for '09-'10 they have added the 1984 middle school to the high school and built a new middle. Yay sprawl. The fun part is, that all these additions were built using the same growth projections that the housing bubble/last round of sprawl used, so these additions may never come close to capacity.

I know that the horse tracks have a some problem gamblers at them, but are they really the only ones keeping them open? I like going to horse tracks and gamble a little, but aren't most people there for a horse racing experience?

^$35/square foot rent will do that.

A Robek's closed? I thought those were pretty solid businesses. Maybe kids are eating more ramen.

Also, I doubt Huntington is the epicenter of obesity in WV, it's just the nearest city. The real fat is out in the sticks south and southeast of the city. Huntington is a fairly walkable, dense urban environment. You actually don't see that many fat people around town, but you do see a lot of hot Marshall chicks!

I used to live in WV, and there are a lot of real hard workers down there. There's a lot of lazy people as well (picture the stereotypical sit party of overweight women in the side yard). It seems that since a lot of the people who work do work really hard, it intimidates others out of working altogether -- and yes, there is much less work available there because of automation and computers. Also, the proliferation of fast food joints in these small towns is a fairly recent phenomenon. The big fast food companies pretty much ignored Appalachian small towns until the '90s. Take a look at video or pictures of West Virginians in the '70s -- they were skinny like everyone else.

What happened to the String Shoppe? It must have closed while I was living in the 'Nati.

"Modified by a Chosen One!" Metallica day at UO!

Which brings me to a pet peeve I recently developed...Metallica in concert. Do you really have to do the "we say 'Seek and..', you say 'seek and destroy' " singalong? Still? You were doing it 15 years ago. I think we get it. I know...probably not a widely sharted peeve. Nuts to you! Seek and... do what?

A lot of people today justify SUV purchases because they own a bicycle.

"Landmine Has taken my sight taken my speech taken my hearing taken my arms taken my legs taken my soul left me with life in heellllllllllllll!"