Rusty Shackleford

I'm kinda waiting for the mods to split this Dayton specific tangent off to its own thread. My whole point is that the AFB is a closed system. It benefits certain entities and certain people, and few others. In general, the biggest direct spinoff you see from the base that directly benefits the local economy is employment and personal taxes. The problem with USAF technology is that most of it is classified; and when military technology does spin off to the civilian sector, it is usually non-localized and it benefits all of the US, or the world, not just the local region. A "new teflon" or a "new velcro" just isn't going to be dropped into the evirons of Dayton to commercialize. The high tech scene in Ohio (outside the base and some specific companies) is third rate bush league - there are places with much better entrepreneurial cultures to take advantage of new tech than the Dayton or Cinci regions. IOW, why should some lucrative new advance be hobbled by the lack of really good systems engineers or programmers or competent technical managements in the Dayton area? That stuff will go to either coast. There really aren't any "world class" IT or high tech product development organizations in SW Ohio that provide a stable employment situation to produce those engineer who could help leverage the military technology locally. So this is a chicken and egg problem. One exception to all this: the base does fuel growth at the WSU and UD schools of engineering. So those kids graduate, find that the opportunities are restricted for them in the Dayton area, and move out to Silicon Valley or Austin. I think there's actually an oversupply and underutilization of engineering talent in the Dayton area. It's not a good place to be one of the herd of engineers. Anecdotally, I interviewed with the base when I graduated in the early 80s. The only "engineering" jobs available at the base seemed to be in contract administration, aka paper pushing. Even back then, the base imported or bought expertise from contractors. Specific reactions: Technology Transfer and Spin Offs See my rant above. In short, few local spinoffs to speak of, except well paid and cossetted insiders who work with the AFB on contracts. And the educational establishment. You mention Lexis-Nexis. It is always cited as a technology crown jewel of the region. OK, it had its day. Now to put things in their proper perspective - and this cuts to the heart of the backward local business culture issue - L-N owned the LARGEST online information databases in the world, *years* in advance of the world wide web, back in the 1980s and 1990s. Now - WHY ON EARTH did a couple of Stanford graduates put up a minimal and trivial hand written home page and wind up *owning* the web in the late 90s (Yahoo)? Lexis/Nexis had assets that it did NOTHING with until very late in the game, and it was in a PRIME position to capitalize on the web with its information assets. Lexis/Nexis should have OWNED the internet. They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Essentially L/N was hidebound by a bureaucratic management structure that was inherited from places like NCR where many of its managers came from. Economic Development by Act of Congress >> And new locally-based entrants could go after the defense work. See my past post. They can't. They aren't qualified because they don't know anyone who can steer work to them, even if they can *do* the work. It's a closed system. One wrinkle to doing classified contract work that these papers don't explicitly mention is that in order to obtain contract work, you need a security clearance, and in general, the contractor organization has to pay for the clearance. An ordinary secret clearance used to cost at least $10K the last time I heard. And the company that is the "trustee" of the clearance has to have premises that have certain security measures in place, including things like TEMPEST radio frequency shielding. Basically, it's certainly not a mom and pop accessible thing, even for fairly light duty contract work. Most of these contracting companies try to steal each other's cleared employees so they don't have to fund someone's secret clearance application process (once a person has a clearance, they can move to a different contractor and the clearance is transferred for minimal cost.) >> Is this cluster moving beyond defense work, competing in the private sector? Obvious answer - I've never seen it. Most companies performing defense contract work (I have worked in several) have NO clue how to commercialize their technology. It's an aspect of that "technofascist" mentality. Their managements and employees really don't understand free market competition. This is not just a Dayton thing, it is true of all defense contractors. IE, don't expect to see Grumman or Boeing selling PCs or air conditioners. Defense Edge City Pretty much true. Without WPAFB you wouldn't have the entire I-675 corridor and Beavercreek would be rural. Not much to dispute there. My summary is that much of Dayton's current physical size and extent and suburban growth is due to the base. And that has benefited real estate construction, and retail, and service industries. Outside of that - if you wanted, say, to start a new (and viable) dot com or software product company - you really could not look to the local region or the base to support your effort with innovative engineers, competent and experienced managers, or a strong high tech network. WPAFB is a "parallel universe" alongside the civilian remainder of the Miami Valley.

Rotflmao! Well, I was restrained in my opinion but that cuts to the core of it. Like I said, as an IT person in the private sector, for me the base is a vast and irrelevant area of non-opportunity, closed doors, and cliques. I have had experience interviewing with a few base contractors and working for one. (One place was started by refugees from another - they basically took over/stole contracts when the former place went under.) The place I worked for was absurdly "techno-fascist" - managers would scheme over which engineer they would screw over or "rein in". They were developing avionics systems and nobody in the entire building had ever used or had any experience with C++ (this was 2002.) It was just incredibly backward for a self congratulating "advanced technology vendor". A few years ago I joined a Toastmaster's club populated by guys who worked at several base contractors and were ex-AF guys. Another freaking mutual admiration society, they should have just gotten a room together. :evil:

My opinion - at the local worker end, it's about the only reliable large employer left in the region. At the upper end, it's a professional enclave that doesn't mix much with the area - another clique. An engineer who isn't in the middle of DoD stuff already with a clearance and a bunch of contacts will have a tough time getting into the AFB contract firms that surround the base. When I interviewed at different places up there like CSC (I had a clearance a few years before) it felt like a cattle call and like I was wasting my time. A few military people settle down in the area but basically they're transient. And, sorry to everyone for hijacking this thread. The comparisons between Cincinnati and Dayton are always compelling to make. I'd sum it up like this: Cincinnati is "open for business." Dayton says it is, but really isn't, when you look at opportunities for non business owners to better themselves. By "non business owners" I mean the general public (you know, that vermin that we should outsource ASAP :whip: ) that actually drives a local economy.

I am. Please post this, or post the link here if you did so already. I make the following claim: it's probably just about impossible (or highly unlikely) for a person in a creative or technical field to graduate from college and to start and have a good career based in the Miami Valley. And that has to rot the local fabric. I had a younger friend who graduated from WSU with a mechanical engineering degree around 1990, and the local summer jobs he could get weren't appropriate internships, they were working at landscaping companies and blue collar stuff. He moved to CO because he couldn't find *any* entry level job in the area after he graduated. I got the impression from him that this pattern was very common - his classmates left the area, too. I also don't know one person in the area in my own field (IT) besides myself, in my age bracket, who isn't a basket case. Dayton is an exceptionally hard area to be middle class in - socially as well as economically. Rich or company owner, no problem, it's cheap here. Redneck low class, there's lots of "options" and someone will always want to rumble with you. In between is very uncomfortable. It's also an exceptionally "cliquey" area - people are tight with whomever they know and extremely suspicious of newcomers and people outside their small circle of acquaintances.

LOL! That was really what I was trying to say in Jeffrey's Dayton out-migration thread. Remember the "Almost Florida Mobile Home Park" on Beavis and Butthead where Lolita and Tanqueray lived? B&B were set in Texas, but that mobile home park could really be a Miamisburg or Northridge thing. Jeffrey: as always, stellar job of data analysis and data crunching. Your statistics seem to point out something else I've intuitively discerned. Dayton has become the land of mandated no-opportunity with nothing but generally continually bad news about jobs and economic progress, and so most people with any ambition eventually leave the area. Cincinnati is sort of a self contained "island" of a metro area and has a decent job base. So it also makes sense that most migration out of Hamilton Co. is to the cornfield-based housing developments of adjacent counties where people stay local but get their HGTV style McHouse. People stay put around Cincinnati -there's "old" families there. People don't stay around Dayton for more than two or three generations anymore. Butler is more intensively suburbanized than Warren (for now) so it also makes sense that most movement is up there. I think that local civic pride plays into this, and it is in addition to the economic opportunity angle. Cincinnati metro residents are usually proud to call Greater Cincinnati home. Most people I grew up with in Dayton who were on a college/professional track spent a good deal of energy washing the Daytonianism off of themselves (well, I did, and I was pretty typical of the thinking.) So I think how people feel about each region - that it's basically a good place to live and to be associated with, or not - reflects clearly in these numbers.

Ok. I think they have one other location, on 741 near Alex-Bell. That one freaky pothead guy with dreadlocks at Ron's Centerville made great pizza. :) How is Centerville Pizza's product, notwithstanding your bad experience?

This probably isn't even worth mentioning, but I bought a Domino's pizza after I rode the bike trail last night - for some reason my blood sugar was probably spiking low and I was famished, so my judgement was impaired. ;) I got a thin crust with pep. It was probably the first Dominos I had in 10+ years. OH MY GOD. You talk about crappy, tasteless shingles! Domino's thin crust is as though they made the pizza on a bed of saltine crackers. When I got it home I dumped salt and red flake pepper on it, and it didn't make a damned bit of difference. I am in the Dayton area and Ron's (formerly of Centerville, now closed, and has a location in Springboro that is is *NEVER* open when we need it) has been a fave in the past.

Regardless of flagship status, this coaster will be a net projectile vomit producer. Maybe the park needs to have umbrellas available to the public walking around Rivertown.

What the heck was a llama doing on the sidewalk? Was someone walking it as a pet?

Almost any place with a hot economy will have higher cost of living and higher housing costs. It's just supply and demand. I think maybe only someplace like Texas (large supply of land for building, IE, most cities not "land locked") has both a hot economy and "affordable" housing. Yes, the housing costs may be 1/2 or 2/3 in Ohio what they are in Florida, but you may have to drive 100 mi. round trip in some parts of Ohio for a good paying industrial or service job. I think the fact may be that *survival* is easier someplace like Florida or California, even if the housing situation sucks, because at least you can find a job. This logic, of course, only applies in normal economic times, not now when a state like California is laying off masses of guv workers!

As far as Florida in-migration patterns, like attracts like. I worked in Boca Raton for a while. That whole South Florida strip from WPB to Miami is extremely East Coastish and heavily urban and Jewish. I mean, even I-95 runs down through the center of the south FL metro area. Personally I found South Florida to be a diverse and stimulating area and filled with interesting people and very cosmopolitan - I'm a geek and yet I was invited to parties all the time. I just don't like the heat. But my experience is that lifetime Daytonian's heads will explode off their shoulders if they are exposed to any real diversity. So they move to one of these highly suburbanized tropical swamp settings where they won't be challenged by anything. (OK, I'm feeling mean today. :whip:) If you talk to anyone back in Ohio and it's always gotta be either Orlando, Daytona, or Tampa. Always. As far as social ills being transported to FL, I remember some brilliant pothead guy from my high school class who knocked up his girlfriend. I ran into him at a gas station in the neighborhood and he was telling me earnestly how he was getting away from all the bullsh*t and moving to Florida where everything would be perfect. The guy was working in a gas station and had no degree or training. So multiply that by a few hundred thousand... PS: +++military out-migration. WPAFB is a dispatch point for other military towns. Probably 1 out of 3 (or more) professionals in Dayton have a tie to the Air Force. Great point.

The main thing I found in growing up in Dayton is that everyone conforms or else - it's a social structure thing, and nobody has much of an imagination. Daytonians consider anything "southern" Godly, and the more, southern the better. Florida is considered by the average born and bred Daytonian to be at the right hand of God. IE, all anyone in Dayton seems to want to do is vacation at Wally World Orlando. So while I enjoy your detailed analysis of the cold figures, I pretty much could have guessed that the vast majority of Daytonians looking for a fresh start will head to the Sunshine state. I would have been shocked by any other answer. Daytonians, by and large, totally romanticize the south and think it's Shangri-La. When I graduated from college eons ago I told high school friends in Dayton that I was taking a job on the west coast. They acted like I needed a special government issued travel pass to do that. And you can't tell anyone in Dayton that you decided to move to, say, the east coast. They believe in the medieval map concept of the flat earth with dragons past the edge. Sorry if I sound condescending towards Daytonians, I grew up there and I just know exactly how they tend to think about certain things, it's very predictable. :|

I think the "affinity" is simply that people who eat carcinogen-laden, albeit delicious smoked meats are prime candidates for partaking in high butterfat ice cream afterward. ;)

The inside shots of the pool and "living room" areas remind me of those Five Seasons country club banquet halls. Very corporate-retreatish. Awesome pictures! :clap:

Ugh, that dropoff on the bike trail is nasty! How is the rest of the trail? And how's the "hassle while riding and minding your own business" factor? I stopped riding the GMRRT in the early 90s after having "tough" white trash briar kids in Miamisburg mouth off at me like I was supposed to stop and fight them for sport. The Dayton area is the only city I've lived where natives regularly like to pick fights with random strangers.

I was thinking the same thing. Turns out, no. See: http://www.wdtn.com/Global/story.asp?S=8268283 He apparently just passed in May. He joins Dayton TV luminaries such as Don Wayne and Joe Rockhold a.k.a "Uncle Orrie" in eternity.

Sears on Patterson Blvd... heh... good memories. Friends and I going to the old Magnet School at the YMCA would stop at Flying Pizza across from Rike's parking garage for a slice, and we would then walk up to Sears and vandalize the bathrooms (nothing bad, my friend thought it was hilarious to throw a roll of TP into the toilet) and screw around wasting time on the primitive "pong" games and vintage calculators they had on display. This is a 1975 period memory.

It's a good thing that you used the past tense ("they were delicious") in that sentence, otherwise U.O. would get a DMCA takedown notice from the Mike-Sells company. ;)

Mark Twain or HL Mencken would really appreciate that rant. :clap:

That's exactly what I was thinking. What a bunch of losers - they need nice, flat, shiny black asphalt where those stupid old buildings and trees are standing now. Haw!

Jeffrey, I'd be happy to help. Go ahead.

Jeffrey, as far as "lipstick on a pig" - Dayton comes off to many lifetime residents and most of the business and military transients who filter through the area as completely whitebread, uninteresting and with no local flavor. I find Daytonians to generally be profoundly disconnected with the city's past. Witness the destruction of most downtown landmarks. There are few in this town who remember even the recent (40 years or so) past. Your stuff is fascinating but it is also incredibly sad when reflected against the lack of local interest in historicity. There is spot interest - yuppies colonizing former redneck neighborhoods in the east end, for instance. But in general, Dayton is a highly transient town that in many cases only goes back a generation or so with any coherent memories. Why? Most kids who grow up in Dayton view the area as inherently inferior and want to get the hell out. I did when I graduated from college. So the Dayton area tends to be a collector of people who took career opportunities that are incidentally based here and some entrepreneurs. I don't know where the "local self loathing" comes from, but it's quite prevalent. And when I read your stuff and I recall my mother's enthusiasm for collecting, er, "Daytoniana", I feel a bit ashamed that the city has been used by so many people as "real estate kleenex" - grow up here, go to school here, then go to a "good" city where the good jobs are. More than a "pig", Dayton has been (for years) a multi year "stopover" for many people. That has resulted, over time, in deteriorated local pride and sense of place.

Why do small northern Ohio towns always look so austere and plain? Is it in the water? This is a relatively nice one, BTW.

Jeffrey, as a measure of how utterly hardened provincial born and bred Daytonians like me are, I grew up in Belmont, across town, and I had absolutely NO clue about this neighborhood or its history. What a fantastic, eye opening analysis. I didn't give a rat's @$$ about Grafton Hill before reading your article and now I "grok." Great work.

The pictures of those houses look like an extremely austere version of Landen (the older bits, built in the 70s.) I wonder if this resemblance is the fault of Ryan Homes? :) "Frozen in time" and laid back describes most of western Montgomery county well. I always preferred to (bike) ride out in that area when I was in college in the 70s, even though I lived in Belmont and had to either ride directly through town, or drive out and park. I always wished that Beavercreek could have retained some traces of that "edge" rural flavor, and it really hasn't. If Beavercreek had developed like the "empty quarter", there probably would have been traces of the 1800s Shaker (Watervleit) settlement at the Montgomery County line into modern times, yet it was all erased by the early 20th century. And I remember seeing a sign along Dayton-Xenia Rd at Fairfield Rd in the late 70s denoting "Zimmerman". You can find stuff like that all over the western part of Montgomery. In the yuppie burbs to the east and south such traces have been "ethnically cleansed".