mrCharlie

Aangan Indian Bistro has reopened! https://www.columbusmonthly.com/story/lifestyle/food/2023/12/11/aangan-india-bistro-is-reopening-sweetgreen-coming-to-short-north/71878187007/ After trying many of the Indian restaurants around Columbus when we first moved here, we settled on Amul as the best. A few years ago we began to notice it wasn't quite as good as it used to be...turns out the original owners sold it, and the original owner was the chef. Recipes included ingredients, but apparently not the amounts of each. The original owners started a new place, Aangan, in Crosswoods. The neighborhood had a worn-out 90's shopping area vibe to it, but the actual restaurant was quite nice inside with great service (something Indian places can be hit-or-miss about). You also had to really know it was there and go looking for it, and we had to deal with the 270/23/71 mess on the way home. We mostly got takeout (COVID) and only ate in a few times, but the food remained amazing. Sadly, it closed in the fall of 2022, posting on their website they were looking for a new location. That location has been found at 5855 Frantz Road in Dublin. We went there over the weekend, and it's just as good as we remembered. Great food and great service, and the building is nice. It's a little further for us to drive, but in a lot of ways more accessible. I'm hoping they have better luck at this location, it's certainly a lot more visible with more people nearby. I ordered my very favorite thing Murgh (Chicken) Tikka Saag, spice level 4/6. It was amazing.

Elkhart is the RV capital of the world, and RVs had a major boom during COVID. That bubble popped for 2023 so I'd expect an updated map would be a little less impressive. That said, the company I work for (not in the RV industry) is based in Elkhart. I first went up there in 2017, and a few times since including this summer. The city just looks so much nicer now than in did six years ago, you can really feel the effects of the recovery.

How effective is RCV when it comes to getting third-party/independent candidates elected? The part of Ohio I grew up in (Clermont County) is definitely full of "don't trust the machines" types, but convincing them RCV would greatly increase the chances of "outsiders" getting elected would probably go a long way towards gaining acceptance. A lot of people I grew up with are the leave-me-alone/anti-government type Libertarians who don't like politicians from any party, but vote Republican so a "big-government" Democrat doesn't win. They'd probably welcome the opportunity to vote their conscience without feeling like they are throwing their vote away. Really, it would be nice to be able to vote for the candidate I actually want to win, instead of having to strategically vote against the candidate I don't want to win. It might even bring some positivity to the political process in Ohio.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced this is a partially a myth perpetuated by the business world. It's an excuse to keep prices high, and keep raising them. It's also important to set the expectation for employees who might want a raise that things are tough and the company just can't afford it - in fact, you are lucky to even have a job. That one has been going since the Great Recession and reprised for COVID - just ignore all the years of record profits. Hopefully, eventually, we see some real wage growth as actual employees continue to become more scarce. We will also hopefully eventually see companies undercutting the competition on pricing and getting things back to a more reasonable level.

Apologies, that's fair and I got a bit carried away. The owners are not well liked in Granville, not because of their political views, but because they went out of their way to troll and antagonize pretty much the entire town during COVID and after. I realize that context isn't obvious here, nor is this really the place to have that discussion.

We all know they only went out of business strictly because of their brave political views. There was no hope for success once they moved Knuckleheads to the liberal paradise of Buckeye Lake. Or for the established diner they bought in the People's Republic of Johnstown, which lasted a few months under their ownership. We ignored our instincts and gave Knuckleheads at least a couple tries after they bought the place, because we liked it under the old owners. It was mediocre at best...bland, and always out of stuff. The last time was when it took 30 minutes to get a milkshake (they weren't busy), and I got to stare at the propaganda on the walls while I waited (and that was before they really went off the deep end).

Uniqlo would make my wife VERY happy, and save us the annual-ish drive to Chicago.

In "things I never thought I would type", Granville will be getting a Chipotle on South Main St - along with multiple other retail spaces. Also Denison is building a 70-unit housing development on New Burg St for faculty and staff, across from the High School. https://www.thereportingproject.org/mill-district-development-annexation-plans-move-forward-in-granville/ Yes there has been some token complaining in the usual places about chain restaurants and traffic, but largely I've seen the South Main development met with acceptance. Chipotle certainly isn't my very favorite place to eat, but I do like it and it fills a food niche (cheapish, fast, not a bar or sit-down) that is very underserved in the village. I also like that the particular development is pedestrian-friendly - it's certainly walkable from my house. Can't wait to see what goes in the other spaces! South Main St really is really becoming an established second business/dining district for the village - excellent since downtown doesn't have much vacancy or additional parking capacity on a busy night. In addition to both Station and Harvest opening in the last year or so, a new restaurant called Seven 4 Zero opened in the old Knuckleheads (good riddance) space in the IGA parking lot. It's owned by the owners of Day y Note, serving burgers, chicken tenders, and ice cream. Another excellent "cheap and quick" option for village, we've gone there at least weekly since it opened. https://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/local/granville/2023/12/15/seven-4-zero-serving-up-ice-cream-chicken-tenders-in-granville/71856173007/ And one other thing which I'm also super excited about - One Love Bike Shop & Cafe was just approved by the planning commission to open up in one of the old lumber yard building on South Main, next to Station (and the bike trail). They plan to offer bike sales and service, rentals, and be a place to meet for rides. I'm a cyclist and have been saying since we moved here that this town is very overdue for exactly this kind of place. https://northpointohio.com/granville-bike-shop/

I'm not sure how to find out the actual exact tax rates for each location, but spot comparing a few houses of roughly equal value they are no more than $200 different from each other. School taxes are by far the largest % of each bill, and everyone in the district pays the same rate (and same income tax). Granville Village has a higher Fire/EMS levy percentage-wise than Newark City, and has a (small) green space levy. All pay for the Granville Rec district (it's the school district boundary), and everything else is the same. Park Trails also pays a non-trivial special assessment for (I think) the first 20 years after each house is built to help pay for the new Intermediate School the development forced Granville to built. This more than offsets any other tax savings to be had by living there. My understanding (this was before I lived here) is that this was a concession offered by the developer after the initial fight. To me, this seems like an extremely fair compromise so all the current district residents don't have to feel like they are fully subsidizing these new developments. I feel like if similar concessions were offered for each proposed project (it has to be voluntary on the developer's part, and that probably means cutting into profits) you would see a lot less pushback for every project.

It's a pretty funny thing for developers to advertise "Granville Schools, Newark Taxes". Park Trails/Park Ridge residents pay the same school taxes as everyone else in GEVSD (which is the bulk of it). Newark City income taxes are actually higher than Granville Village (1.75% vs 1.5%). Township residents don't even pay that.

I think that was really the argument Granville made from the start, and NCS would be better for it (and the tax money it would bring). But I think the whole point of Park Trails is that it's a new build in GEVSD for under $600k. I'm also not saying the 793 GEVSD voters should be dominating Newark, but they are also just as much Newark citizens as you are. So they do get a say in the matter, since they get doubly affected by school burdens and other things like traffic. I do agree with you though it's time to move on and make things happen - hopefully Newark plans infrastructure properly to access the area moving forward as it grows. The situation right now is not ideal. One last thing, which hopefully signals a shift in mentality throughout the area, perhaps even acceptance - someone posted the same Advocate article 5 hours ago on the biggest (5k members) Granville Facebook group. In the past it would be met with outrage and complaining, with dozens of comments by this point. Today...crickets.

That's all fair, and I agree that Granville (Schools) have been kicking the can for long enough. It's time to accept reality and embrace the demand - build some new buildings, and plan for growth. We will ALL be better for it! The school board itself, FWIW, does seem to have a plan and is shifting towards that position. They are also not as well funded as people seem to think - there isn't a lot of state money coming in compared to most districts in the region (we got hit hard by the changes to the state funding formula), so we pay a LOT in local taxes. This is particularly hard on middle-class residents of the district...many of which live in Park Trails/Park Ridge. That's a big part of why you see that group making a lot of noise at the prospect of paying more taxes to build more buildings - many claim they just can't afford it. I was curious to just how many people live in Newark City/Granville Schools, but I haven't been able to find that information specifically. The best I could do, as a proxy, is infer some things based on the precinct breakdowns for this year's election results. I used an unopposed unexpired term for GEVSD school board (John Kronk) to figure out eligible GEVSD voters in each ward, adding together votes and undervotes. https://www.boe.ohio.gov/licking/election-info/election-night-results/ Newark Ward 3B - 1960 registered voters, 1021 voted on 11/7/23 - 706 in GEVSD Newark Ward 5A - 1118 registered voters, 738 voted on 11/7/23 - 87 in GEVSD So a total of 793 Newark City/Granvilles Schools voters participated on 11/7/23 Other stats about the 11/7/23 for some context: • 14165 voted in the Newark Mayors race • 6495 voted in GEVSD • 2299 voted in Newark Ward 3A/B/C So it's isn't a TON of people in the grand scheme of Newark voters, but it also isn't trivial. It is however a sizable chunk of GEVSD's voter population. It's an even bigger percentage of Ward 3's voters, so you can bet they have councilman's ear (along with others in the ward opposing new developments over traffic concerns and the usual stuff). Again, no way to prove it with numbers - but going by local chit-chat, I think you would find the majority of vocal opposition to the Newark projects comes from Park Trial/Park Ridge residents.

Remember, it isn't Granville residents opposing these projects - it's residents of Granville Schools. Many of those residents are indeed residents of the city of Newark (Park Trails/Park Ridge), who are both very vocal and numerous - and most definitely have a say in the decisions Newark makes. As more of those developments happen there will be more constituents opposing each new project after. That said, I pretty much agree. Park Trails/Park Ridge are some of the very worst for the "drawbridge mentality" and most fail to see any hypocrisy there - a fact pointed out anytime these projects are discussed online locally. Most of us in the village proper only care about the schools getting too crowded, they have to deal with the added traffic and "changing character of the area" as well - as did everyone who lived on River Road before Park Trails happened. There is added concern right now regarding school crowding - while the last Granville school operating levy did pass (in the face of organized opposition), it's only a five year renewal. The prior attempt to made it permanent failed. Obviously a new building(s) will be needed soon in the face of coming growth, but there is a lot of concern about passing a bond issue to pay for it (and running into "we just gave the schools money" a few years later when it comes time to renew the operating levy). I can speak firsthand the elemental school is VERY full, my son's kindergarten class last year was in an auxiliary building that had been used as offices for years. Hopefully any new building(s) are much further south, where the growth is happening. Presumably in part because of the long bus ride, lots of Park Trails/Park Ridge (and Union Township) families DRIVE to school. My kid usually rides the bus because it's a 20 minute walk, but the times we have walked the pickup/dropoff line stretches for blocks. I think I've said this before here, but in general I'm pretty concerned with the hands-off approach Granville (as a whole region) seems to be taking to the obvious growth coming our way. It seems like its been obvious since Park Trails happened that the full area of Granville Schools needs to be incorporated to maintain control, but the conservative big money people in the township are against the "taxes and regulations" of living in what would be the City of Granville. I don't know if they think nothing will change as long as we do nothing to change it, think Granville and Union Township will prevent it (they have no real ability), or if they are just hoping to get the opportunity to sell out and profit.

As a long-time Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan (who hasn't exactly loved the reboot seasons), I've been watching a lot of Rifftrax episodes lately. There is a channel, as well as many on-demand episodes, free on PlutoTV. It's perfect "something to have on in the background" television. Also free on PlutoTV, I've been watching Mr Wizard's World with my six-year-old kid. He likes it as much as I did back in the day. Speaking of vintage Nickelodeon, I stumbled onto a Youtube series/project called Nick Knacks, which is a very well researched and comprehensive history of Nickelodeon and EVERY show ever shown on it. There are currently 98 episodes, some of which are multi-part, and multiple specials and addendums - and he has still only made it into the early 1990's. I wouldn't normally watch a youtube series like this, and certainly not during the day while I'm working (I usually listen to music) but something about this really works - and it's fascinating. Nick Knacks caught my attention by staring with the history of Warner's interactive QUBE cable system, which I'm old enough to remember once it made it to Cincinnati and family members got cable. Nickelodeon started as the Pinwheel channel, produced in Columbus, and Pinwheel eventually became one of its first shows. I definitely watched Pinwheel when I was a little kid, so that episode was fascinating as well. The first few episodes were good enough I kept going, eventually catching up to when I started watching the channel (1982? 1983?). I've since learned the in-depth history of plenty of shows I instantly recognized, but basically forgot about. I'm still working my way through the full collection, but approaching middle school era (for me) when after school TV was more Disney Afternoon and Comedy Central.

This is one of those "if I wanted to live in backwards Southern state, I would move to a backwards Southern state" bills. Ohio is better than this.

As an Ohioan I know to never get my hopes up, but something about this project just feels different this time. It no longer feels like a long-shot, there seems to just be a lot more support from a much more diverse group of people. The timing seems better this time, with a stronger economy and overall greater interest in alternatives to driving, especially from younger people. Maybe it also helps that there are multiple rail projects in the works for Ohio - another so-called "fiscal conservative" can make a big show of canceling one of the projects, but it wouldn't be our only shot at getting something. When Kasich killed this last time, I was pretty annoyed. I was making the trip from Cincinnati to Cleveland every few months for my then-job, downtown-to-downtown, and found the drive to be absolutely dreadful. Now that I live in Central Ohio, I'm not quite as excited about the 3C+D specifically. I still really want to see it happen and think it will be great, but both I and my Cincinnati family live too far from either of the stations, and too far from public transit, to make it an especially practical alternative for every visit. Taking a train from here to Chicago though sounds amazing.

Interesting idea. If this helps discourage the practice of buying up older buildings in historic neighborhoods, leaving them vacant while they rot (destroying so much in Cincinnati and elsewhere) I am all for it. Maybe it makes turning downtown building into surface parking lots uneconomical as well. Would this potentially encourage density as well?

I saw the Broadway version of Mrs. Doubtfire will be playing in Cincinnati next month. Under this bill, wouldn't that be illegal? Didn't the Supreme Court block Florida's equally-stupid bill (at least for now)? It's sad what our Republican state legislature is doing to our state.

When I was in school, I was pretty annoyed about the requirement to take a full range of liberal arts courses and electives, when I barely had time and energy to keep up with the workload of the graphic design courses I was actually there for. Granted I ended up with a BS rather than the BA more common in the field, but (at the time) that distinction meant nothing to me (and most job applications just say "bachelor's degree"). In the 20 or so years since graduation (and even during co-op quarters whole in school) I've worked with a lot of designers who went more the trade school route, or even took design courses online. Few of those designers have the skills to move much beyond the initial trade-oriented position they get right out of college. That's tough - it's a competitive field with new graduates entering the job market every day, changing styles and technology that new graduates probably understand better, and companies that often lack longevity. I started off freelance after college (thanks to the Post-9/11 slump), followed by a few jobs in print media (R.I.P) and a small agency while my now-wife made her way through grad school. That gave me a good chance to build up technical skills, and work quickly and independently with the chance to develop communication and project management skills that no doubt were improved upon by the additional courses I took in college. I've now worked my way up to an all-but-title creative director role (our parent company reserves "director" for high-level management) at the company I've been in-house at for 14 years. Design remains a big part of my job, but I also spend time defining brand standards and creating content - not to mention managing and communicating about projects. I don't feel like a trade-school degree would have adequately prepared me for that.

After spending two winters in New England, I really found a new appreciation for how far west Ohio is when we moved back. November thru the end of Feb, the sun had already set when I left work at 5pm. In December it set at 4:15pm (and rose while I was on my way to work), so it wasn't even still a little bit light when I left in the evening. I worked in a building with no windows, and it was brutal - I made sure to leave the building for lunch so I could see the sun more than an hour per day.

Hahaha! More absolutely on-brand virtue-signaling from the Warners. Expect her equally-awful husband Jake to follow. The Warners are the least-liked people in Granville, an otherwise friendly community that is largely more than willing to ignore personal politics and support locals. They and their families own a few local service businesses, which have been around a long time. Their politics were not unknown, but people still supported their businesses - they were overpriced, but largely provided good service. A few years before COVID, they bought a well-established ice cream/sandwich shop called Knuckleheads, which was in the parking lot of our local IGA grocery store. They covered the bulletin boards in anti-abortion and other right wing propaganda. In the newspaper articles that ran when they bought the place, they both made it clear how Christian they were, and said they won't take cash because employees will steal it. Despite all of that, we (like most in Granville) still gave it a chance - but gave up after a few tries because it was mediocre at best, very overpriced, and always took forever. Then COVID hit. Granville was generally pretty responsible, following lockdowns and mask mandates. The Warners decided to take their stand against "tyranny" by openly defying the mask orders, and posting all kinds of RWNJ/Q-anon propaganda inside and out of the building for all of town to see. They even posted billboards on 161 bragging about all of this. Eventually they were cited by the police, and played up the martyrdom angle. It was pretty obvious they were virtue signaling, looking to get likeminded people from across the region to go out of their way to eat there. She eventually got banned from the IGA (also their landlord) for some reason I can't recall. That was later followed by an anti-mask march originating from the restaurant that went inside the grocery, harassing employees and customers alike (she denies being responsible for that, nobody believes it). After Jan 6, they added a big "Trump won" flag to the front of their building, along with anti-vax, anti-LGTBQ, and other Q nonsense. That isn't everything they've done to become disliked (protesting against Granville Pride, harassing the library about LGBTQ-positive books in the children's section, etc). None of this has further endeared them to anyone in town. They made their personal politics impossible to ignore, nobody wanted to be seen walking into Knuckleheads, or have a Jake's Property Service sign in their yard. They made our town look like idiots, and are equally disliked by local liberals and conservative alike (Granville is actually pretty politically balanced, though our conservatives are more Kasich than Trump). They moved Knuckleheads to Buckeye Lake - and shortly after, also bought Johnstown Family Restaurant. They made a big show of how the "liberals" in Granville made it impossible to run their business. Despite moving to "freedom-loving" locations, neither business made it an another year - with the locals (on Yelp) all citing mediocre food and high prices. The Warners however framed it as no longer having the time to run each business, since they were both now on the Republican Central Committee.

Also close to OSU Newark. Lots of students live in Franklin County and will drive past that location on their way home every day. We've had a retro arcade in downtown Granville for a year or so, and it's always packed. There is definitely a market around here that is being underserved. This location is also across the street from Trek Brewing (in the old Damon's). I suppose they technically are competing, but definitely not the same kind of place. Either way, driving more traffic and awareness to that neighborhood is probably great for both. That area has been a little too quiet since State Farm closed, but I'm sure its been great for the businesses in the area with OSUN using part of the State Farm space while Founder's Hall is being renovated.

I've been trying to figure out why Facebook has, for years, been making it increasing harder to simply see a semi-chronological feed that is only stuff friends (or pages I follow) post. It's because none of my friends post anything either.

I sort of assumed the visitor center would take the place of the country club facilities.

• Seconding Granville, somewhat biased since I live two blocks from downtown. That said, it's truly like urban living but on a small scale - we can walk to most everything we need. • Mt Vernon is a great suggestion, always impressed how intact (and unique) it feels. • Something about Bellville makes it feel like it's a small healthy village in rural New England. • I loved it when I used to work in downtown Athens. • Lancaster looks better every time I drive through. • Grew up in Milford, also biased about that one. It was never bad, but its was nicer than when I was a kid.