jam40jeff

Everyone wants to live in a dessert. Everyone eats McDonald's. Everyone drinks Bud Light. Everyone shops at Wal-Mart. Everyone watches Jersey Shore. Nothing surprises me in America anymore. If I could live in a dessert, it would pumpkin pie with whipped cream and a little pumpkin ice cream on the side. Haha, whoops.

Everyone wants to live in a desert. Everyone eats McDonald's. Everyone drinks Bud Light. Everyone shops at Wal-Mart. Everyone watches Jersey Shore. Nothing surprises me in America anymore.

Of course it would be a bad thing.

Suburbanites would prefer downtown to look like 83 and Detroit in Avon. I couldn't give two sh1ts what those people think.

Is that the one with "a proper setback"? I've noticed it as well.

I wasn't really defending him. As I said, he's been awful. I was just saying that it's not accurate to say he's not giving us a chance to win because somehow (and I'm not really sure how either) he's managed to get more wins than losses.

Ubaldo has been awful, but somehow he has been giving us a chance to win sometimes, as he has won more games than he has lost, even after yesterday (his record is now 5-4). That can't be said for Masterson, Tomlin, or Gomez.

He sure didn't disappoint.

The difference is that there are far larger barriers to entry into the hotel market than the restaurant market. That is why you see a ton of Mom and Pop restaurants, but not Mom and Pop hotels. I'll take the Glidden House or a Bed and Breakfast any day, but I also know that it's not realistic to expect a large enough influx of independent hotels to serve the needs of the entire market. However, I think we have seen that a large number of independent restaurants can open and thrive downtown and people will go to them. Just because many people want to eat at Applebee's after seeing 54 advertisements for it the prior week doesn't mean they shouldn't be exposed to something new and better (and many of them will want to return). The biggest problem I have with large chain restaurants is how many of them ship preserved ingredients or worse yet prepared foods across the country, filled with sodium and preservatives to keep it "fresh" longer (and you can always taste a difference from real fresh food). That's not to say there can't be a good chain restaurant, because there certainly are, but that on average, they by far serve more food which is overpriced and of a low quality. The reason they can do this is advertising. The whole purpose of advertising is to get people to pay more for a product than what it would be worth by the laws of economics. If you forced me to hand pick some chains which I think would be decent additions to downtown though, I could name a few. Chipotle, Chick-Fil-A, and Dibella's are some that I will eat at, and I'm sure I could think of a few more. Lower priced fast food options of a middling quality aren't evil (sometimes you just need to quickly grab a bite to eat and some chains have perfected that while maintaining some semblance of quality), but the fact that people love places like PF Chang's make me want to throw my monitor out the window. That crap is just overpriced junk food. I'll take the worst strip plaza Chinese over that place. At least I'd only pay half as much and it would probably be healthier. I feel the same way about Panera. The "power of advertising" is the only reason anyone thinks that place is healthy.

Please no. We have a lot of good restaurants downtown. We don't need them pushed out with the likes of that crap. Tilted Kilt was bad enough, we don't need the trend to continue. NYC has plenty of McDonalds. I don't think that is what means a city has "arrived" though.

I don't have any data to back this up, so it's just my perception, but I think of riding a train through the cut west of Shaker Square and the series of bridges to East 55th as being FAR safer than riding a bus down Kinsman.

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Deagan's Kitchen may block off the room on the east side of the restaurant, which should hold about 30.

Its good they had a nice time and good experience! But those infamous ticket machines... ha! Lol but you know the thing is those ticket machines aren't that hard to work or figure out it tells you step by step. Could it still be simplified? Yes, but it isn't as hard to use as people make it out to be. I read somewhere on UO that RTA is looking at other ATM's (Automated Ticket Machines) especially the ones in Boston which are supposedly one of the easiest ones to use. (correct me if I'm wrong) They actually told me the machines weren't too bad, but that a worker offered them help before they really had any trouble so they let him help them.

Just a little side note with an outsider's perspective. This week, my parents were up from Florida. On Thursday, they took the Green Line downtown to check out the casino and Indians game. They told me that night that they were "impressed with how much has been done" to make riding the Rapid a nicer experience. They went on to say that their driver on the way downtown was extremely personable and friendly, giving them plentiful and entertaining announcements over the loudspeaker about stops, weather, attractions, etc. Just in case Jerry reads this, his name was Anthony (don't know any further information, I told them they should have gotten his Operator ID Number). Also, they were pleased with the service at Tower City, as they were having some trouble with the machine to buy tickets, and they said a very friendly worker helped them figure it out. With all we complain about things which are very hard to fix, little things like this are what really make an out-of-towner's experience with the Rapid more pleasant.

WKNR Sports Radio just broadcast 24-hours, non-stop, from the Horseshoe. On the Rizzo/Goldhammer show, some official told them that downtown hotels were booked solid, as in 100% capacity, and that there were no openings at the Ritz for several months. Can anyone verify this? My brother and his wife tried to book a room at the Ritz-Carlton for their anniversary this summer (mid-July) and they told them that they are all booked up through September 30.

I'd put the chances of the lots behind the Market being filled at close to 0% That's too high.

So they'll gain a customer with your Mom, but lose two with my wife and me.

I'd be quite disappointed if they did this since I'm living on the third floor haha. But I don't think it would be a wise idea. From what I can see on the Building plans of the South Tower at least, there are 35 apartments per floor, 3 floors, and only TWO elevators. The condo I live in now has 35 floors, about 5 suites on each floor, and really struggles with 3 elevators. Nearly an identical apartment to elevator ratio (52 vs 58). I can see a lot of people using the stairs (myself included). Gotta say I'm quite excited to move in. University Circle looks great! The first floor apartments are not potential elevator users though, so there are really 2 elevators for 70 apartments, which is much better than the 3 elevators for 34x5=170 potential elevator users in your current building. Then factor is that many 2nd floor dwellers likely won't use the elevator, as well as the fact that the elevator trips are shorter in a building with much less height, and I think the elevator situation shouldn't be a problem.

It's fine, I wasn't berating you for supporting suburban things, but just setting up my comment to be within the context that I understand that you do. But even for suburban development, I don't like Chagrin Highlands. It reminds me of the super bland "super suburban" development that I believe will date itself very quickly. Roads with 500 foot easements, retention basins everywhere, a lack of trees...it may as well be a suburb on the north side of Dallas. Not all cities' suburbs look like this and they don't all have to. We have had suburban development for years that hasn't looked this awful. If the Aloft was going in at Eton Collection or near Chagrin Falls or even somewhere like Willoughby, Solon, or Mentor, I would say that's not a bad suburban development. But something about Chagrin Highlands feels overexaggerated, cheap, and tacky, just like the Lifetime Fitness. Globo Development or something, I can't put my finger on it, but it's bad even for suburban development.

Winking Lizard has a pretty good business model for being successful in the suburbs. It took them a while before landing a downtown location. Now with "lizardville" they will have two Yeah, but Melt started in the inner rings. You would have thought downtown would have been a natural expansion point before the suburbs (if the suburbs even had to become an option, Melt was doing great without diluting their brand).

Dwirthwein, I know you support suburban things more than many of us here, which is fine, but even given that, why do you think Chagrin Highlands is a good location for much of anything? The times I am in that area, that is probably one of my least favorite places to be because of the awful landscape, wide roads, impossible to enter big box strip plazas, etc. It actually makes Beachwood and Woodmere feel urban after being there.

?, Jimmy John's, Starbucks Five Guys, ?, PetSmart Panera, Menchie's, Sprint Can anyone read the ones I marked with a question mark?

R&R, just buy a wireless router. They'll be about $50. If you can wait until Black Friday, you can probably get one for $10, haha. Anyway, they're pretty easy to set up and put a password on. WAP2 is the most secure, but even if you use WEP, you'll be fine. 99.999999999% of people trying to hack/mooch someone's WiFi will move right along to something else as soon as they see any type of password is needed to connect to the network. Also, credit card security has nothing to do with whether your WiFi network is protected. Any site you enter your credit card number on will be using SSL security these days, which means that even if someone is sniffing the traffic at any point between your computer and the seller's computer, there's no way for them to decipher what is being sent since it's all encrypted. Seriously, though, get a router. Especially if you have a laptop. They've become mainstream enough that most of them have wizards to make them very easy to set up. And don't go to the Apple store. They'll charge you at least double the price for a router that does nothing differently than your average router at Best Buy.