Rusty Shackleford

Southwest Ohio is mainly rolling hills and former and current farmland. Clifton Gorge, as well as the Ft. Ancient valley, don't really belong in this area. If you look at a topo map, those two spots along the Little Miami river are basically geological freaks of nature. The explanation I've read is that the glaciers that scoured the rest of this region "missed" those deeper parts of the river vally, so the remaining geology there is basically a little piece of West Virginia or Hocking Hills in the plains.

The mayor is being attacked by a fruit basket! MEDIC!

Nearby news - the Little River Cafe in Oregonia burned Friday morning: http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2009/02/13/ws021309fire.html?imw=Y I drove by this afternoon and checked it out. The roof has big gaping holes. I don't doubt that it's now a tear down. According to the article above, the lot is too close to the river to build on. I think that some entrepreneur should erect a shelter and picnic style seating and truck in barbecue. My wife and I once went to am "open air" barbecue place near Natural Bridge in KY that some kids were running - it was a restaurant that was closed for repairs but it had outdoor seating and shelters and it was in a natural valley. It was one of the most memorable places that we have ever eaten. Anyway, that location lends itself to something like that, assuming that it can't be rebuilt.

So I take it from your post that the "Greene" in Greene University is not specific to our Greene County, it's just a naming coincidence?

Which building is that?

This is an old Lawson sign, I'm sure. I haven't even seen a repurposed one in years.

A client I once had in Middletown told me that many of the primary Middletown streets are freeway-esque with apparently useless (and quite tedious, annoying and confusing) on and off ramps and merges because they were optimized for the traffic resulting from steel and raw materials being hauled in and out of Armco. The idea was to keep trucks moving with a minimum of starting, stopping, and jake brakes. Great photo essay, but it makes me want to put Dr. Kevorkian on speed dial.

I don't think it would turn into a hellhole but it could be pretty tense. I'd have to think that the administrations of these universities would take the local character into account and would realize that it's a gross mismatch. I doubt that the bobo residents with day jobs in Dayton or any local hangers-on have much of a say in this. At the end of the day it's a piece of real estate.

Seriously, Antioch reminds me of what the UD campus would be like if the last 30 years of transformational research institute income and high-income parental benevolence had not happened. I remember going to mechanical drawing classes at UD in the late 70s that were held in a 100+ year old 4 story red brick building that was like 50 degrees inside in the winter time. Antioch strikes me the same way. I have no idea what the answer is, other than to turn the lack of health club/spa amenities on the Antioch campus into a "plus" somehow with clever marketing.

Condos? Antiques mall? Sorry! :evil:

"When Society and Order breaks down, we shall meet at the Cinci Mills Mall." I just checked it out. It's pretty darned funny! It has a post-apocalyptic feel to it.

Wait a minute. Just to be fair, I want to include the "World of Sanding Belts" vendor at Traders World for a positive mention. :) (It is one place that seemed to have every conceivable sanding belt and pad.)

MayDay, those are good insights. I think that *perhaps* I saw one or two businesses out there that fit your notion of "potential good quality business in incubation phase." There was, indeed, someone selling what looked like their own homemade hot sauces. And the comic book vendor's inventory seemed to be high enough quality that it could be a decent freestanding store. I would have really enjoyed more true collectibles stores and more really unique places. It did seem that the majority of the booths were owned by those lacking those critical observational and thinking skills, who were just imitating all the crap that everyone else was selling. I think that a "100% collectibles" mall along the lines of a flea market but only with "quality" dealers *could* work. IE: no lookalike crafts and soy candles and Chinese tube socks. Maybe a used book dealer like you're describing, perhaps specializing in a genre like sci-fi, some artisanal food vendors, maybe a used camera dealer. And "balanced" - once they had two antique clothing stores, don't allow any more unless one of the existing places leaves. The Second Street Mart in Dayton is a pretty good model for what I'm thinking, but it is mainly having to do with food items and produce. The sin that most outlet and flea market malls commit regularly is to *be boring* and one-dimensional. How about a mall where mom can look at her kitchen accessories, the kids can check out a vintage toy vendor, and Dad can find antique radios? It seems to be heresy with outlets and flea markets to have a merchandise mix that doesn't bore someone smart to tears. One question - do you mean to say that the visitors and sellers at Trader's World in Monroe are literally driving in from Appalachia for the day? Or do you mean that this place simply attracts the dirt poor and is a draw for "Appies"? IE, Trader's World is the go-to place where you go in the Cin-Day region if you come from Appalachia or if you are so poor that you need to buy Chinese toothpaste laced with ethylene glycol? :(

Re: buying cast-offs - Amazingly for the size of the place, I saw *NOTHING* that fits the description of "discarded gems". Nothing whatsoever that I would consider worthy of buying for refurbishing. The quality of the merchandise there was almost uniformly "crap." The only exceptions to this: a used comics store with some very good collectible stuff; a "Jerky" store with some deals (only thing is, they kept the samples on a plate out where anyone passing by could cough on it :-( ); and a clothing place that had decent Steve and Barry's new winter coats for $10/apiece. My opinion is that the reason for the astoundingly low quality of the "merchandise" at flea markets is the online economy, and I agree that you would probably find lots of computerphobes there. Good stuff is being sold online through Ebay and CL, not flea markets. I would see a chicken and egg problem with trying to sell good merchandise for what it's worth at a flea market; anyone with money wouldn't bother shopping there. And low quality *free* stuff is available through freecycle.org.

I'm really and truly trying :evil: to see past the social class aspect of this. Commerce is commerce and that's always a good thing in itself. But, as an eyewitness, I really didn't see much commerce being conducted. Most of the vendors reek of poverty. My wife's grandmother used to rent stalls at flea markets to sell antiques (and I hardly saw anything worthy of being called "collectible" at Trader's World, except at one arguably excellent comic book vendor). My wife says that her grandmother hardly made her stall rent in profit. It would be a really interesting study to map a collection of vendors at some well traveled flea market and track them in 3, 6, 9 and 12 months to see what the attrition rate is. I see it kind of like judging the effectiveness of a classified ad: look for a competitor's ad over a period of time and see if they continue to advertise. If they do, then the ads are definitely worth the cost. Same with this.

(Moderators: please move to the general chat section if this is inappropriate here.) This weekend my wife and I visited one of those hillbilly meccas: Trader's World. What I would like to know is, do these places make any real money for most of the vendors? Or is it just a revenue engine for the owner of the buildings? Basically, you have about 5 or 6 standard flea market business types: Biker leathers vendors (the cheap, heavy black stuff that is 1/4 inch thick with maltese crosses and chopper embroidery.) Over scented "handmade" soy candles and supplies. And enough fake vanilla and pine scent in the air around these places to make you vomit. "Thrift stores" that are at least three quality notches below Dollar General, with 100% Chinese origin goods. Including dicey looking toothpaste named "Crescent" (aka "Crest") from China that seems to be similar to the stuff with antifreeze in it that started the whole poisonous Chinese goods scandal a few years ago. Used book, tape and DVD stores. *Really* crappy used computer stores with absolutely nothing made after 2003 (we're talking stacks of beige CRT monitors and no flat panels.) Crappy tools vendors with things like tablefulls of rechargeable drills without the batteries (note: I have four really nice rechargeable drills at home that each require $100+ in replacement battery packs. The batteries cost more than buying a new drill! So there is no need whatsoever to buy an orphaned drill.) Oh, and the food court in the center of the complex the weirdly medieval hillbilly/briar motif, with really low dark lighting, country knick knacks nailed to the walls, and oddball country music playing. Basically, it's "down below" of Babylon 5 meets deep discount hillbilly shopping culture meets poverty. I expected to find people living in corners of the place huddled under blankets burning furniture to stay warm. Or another pop culture reference is, I expected to see little Asian guys at stalls doing small scale genetic engineering of eyeballs and body parts a la Blade Runner. There's something uncomfortably survivalistic about the whole scene. Most of the vendors seem too desperate to sell you something. It reminded me also of going to street markets in Mexico and not being able to blow off a merchant because they want to run after you and haggle with you. The biggest problems with these places, in my opinion: truly repetitious mechandise (what I listed above is 80% of the vendors.) Little real value at most of the stores. As noted, lots of stuff that would otherwise get hauled away as junk. And in general, sensory overload. Even if something really good was being sold at one of the places there, you would probably not notice it above the din. I also noticed that the ENTIRE complex was full. We saw NO empty vendor spaces. (Well, my wife disputes that. I thought the entire place was packed out.) IMO, these places are a waste of money for the vendors. I bet that the economy is causing lots of people to try to hang a shingle out. And not a terribly good place to go shopping. (We just went to get out of the house.) Any thoughts? I think there is some sort of grand "anti pattern" for going into business represented by the place. Like, here's what you do to ensure failure - 1) have lots of similar competition 2) sell total crap 3) place yourself where people suffer sensory overload so even if you DO sell quality merchandise, you will never be noticed. 4) Look really desperate. Some places did seem to do well. I saw a hair salon that was permanently located with a real door. The food vendors seem to be "established". Other than that - subsistence city. :cry:

Crappy sales, where the merchandise isn't marked down that much more than a normal sale, you have absolutely no return privileges or store warranty, no one will give you any buying advice, and you feel like you're walking around in a morgue. "Authorized liquidations" and going out of business sales conducted by outside marketing companies are cattle calls for consumers and big wastes of time, IMO. Never again. ^Ahahaha, when KB Toys was "clearancing" all their video games as part of their closure, they just marked them at GameStop's price. 40% off my ass! That's exactly the same experience I've had. Plus you feel like you're in an airport passenger screening with all the visible security. Plus, you can't return DOA merchandise.

Crappy sales, where the merchandise isn't marked down that much more than a normal sale, you have absolutely no return privileges or store warranty, no one will give you any buying advice, and you feel like you're walking around in a morgue. "Authorized liquidations" and going out of business sales conducted by outside marketing companies are cattle calls for consumers and big wastes of time, IMO. Never again.

Yes, that seems like what we tried to do. We have no idea if the freaking thing "took" or not. And there is absolutely no help text nor instructions anywhere on this. Thanks for the thoughts.

A rant, and a request: My wife was laid off temporarily by her company over the holidays. Her employer is large enough to have a local HR department that has become pretty well useless for the last several years. Just barely, by the skin of her teeth, she managed to camp out on phone lines for long enough to talk to a real human in order to start her claim in late December. Now she has returned to work and she needs to close the claim out. We found the ODJFS online web application to be cryptic and not really offering an explicit way to "stop" an unemployment claim. We *thought* we found the magic check box in one form to do this, and it failed to submit without an error. She gets a queue of messages on the site from ODJFS in a "mailbox" and none of them indicate how to do this nor do they indicate that she successfully closed her claim. She can't get anyone on the phone - their phone system just crashed - and the web site is an absolute dead end. WTF? It doesn't take much to Google the news and see that the Ohio unemployment system is overwhelmed this season. But what do *individuals* do to make certain that their claim is handled correctly? I am not much help to her - I have no clue what she is supposed to do at this point. The last time I filed for unemployment was in '93 and I got a little blue book to keep track of employment applications. I went to a local state unemployment office in a shopping center and waited around for awhile in order to be served. I had to drive someplace when stuff like this came up but at least there was "a" way. Today, apparently, all unemployment claims funnel through the clogged and broken 1-800 numbers and the (totally crappy) web site. Any war stories or tales of jumping ahead in line anyone wants to share? Any advice you can give? (TIA.) This is freakin' stupid. :whip:

Chick-Fil-A closed at the Towne Mall (Middletown) on Dec. 31: http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2009/01/04/ddn010409localheadlines.html

Good work. Awaiting the themed photo essay on nearby Enon.

Has anyone seen a similar photo of Culp's Cafeteria in the old Arcade? My mom and grandmother would love to go there for a bite to eat after shopping downtown. (A way of life that was still available in the 60s.) Btw - cool pic!

I'm sorry, but sh*t like this feels like colonization by a hostile alien presence.

Actually, you should self-publish this material in a huge anthology. Look at what "The Real Dayton, Ohio" guy did: http://www.lulu.com/content/414509 You have posted enough material easily for two or three volumes.