CBC

To quote Charlie Brown " Good Grief !!!!" Will the drama ever end?

Cool pics, I wonder what the chairs in the auditorium were made of? They seemed to holding up the best of anything in those pictures.

Update on Five Guys Burgers in lakewood from the Sunpost. edited:article removed

It's Meander Reservoir that I-80 crosses both as the Turnpike and as the freeway east. I-76 crosses Lake Milton. Good pics KJP. Just a note on the GM Lordstown complex, those poster/billboards are on the new Paintshop which was completed in the early 2000's. That used to be all parking lot, However you really can't tell where that is from KJPs pictures.

Here are my comments to ODOT.. "To Whom It May Concern: First,I applaud the effort to open up access to the lakefront by modifying the current layout of the West Shoreway. In particular I support the changes made at W. 73th to give access to Battery Park and the surrounding areas. This is am emerging neighborhood and increased access to the lakefront will only add to the list of positive attributes. I also applaud the effort to improve and connect the multi-use trails tying the Gold Coast and Gordon Square with access to downtown. However, my biggest disappointment with the current design is the retention of on-ramps and off-ramps, which does limit access and limits future development along the West Shoreway. From earlier press releases and renderings, it appeared that redesign of the West Shoreway would result in a 35 mph landscaped boulevard that would have 3 or 4 intersections with traffic lights and the potential for land along the Boulevard to be open to development, creating the potential for a new lakefront neighborhood. The current plan appears to result in some sort of hybrid resulting in a limited access 35 mph divided highway that still limits opening up developable land along the West Shoreway. As someone who commuted the West Shoreway to downtown for a number of years, I can understand the traffic concerns. However I think that the concerns about traffic that drove the retention of on and off ramps could be accommodated by intersections with traffic lights. Specifically, during rushhour the 3 or 4 new lights being flashing yellow in the East and West directions, flashing red in the North and South directions, and the whole span of the West Shoreway being right-turn only should be studied to see if it is a viable solution. Even if a scenario with intersections, like the one outlined above, results in incrementally more congestion it would be outweighed by the potential created for Cleveland to have real development along the lakefront. By leaving the on-ramps and off-ramps I feel that current plan is planning for the 4 hours of rushhour a day and potentially forgetting the other 20 hours in a day robbing Clevelanders of one of their greatest assets for years to come. Thank you for allowing me to submit my comments and once again applaud the effort by ODOT to help facilitate the Lakefront Plan. If you have any questions for me please feel free to contact me by e-mail at *******. Sincerely, "CBC"

"One of the biggest consequences [of store and mall closings] is the loss of a sense of community," Birnbrey said. "I am a big believer that malls are an essential part of Americana. A mall is a place where people gather and socialize." Love that quote.....

Don't forget to fill out the comment form. It is due by tomorrow. http://www.dot.state.oh.us/projects/ClevelandUrbanCoreProjects/LakefrontWest/PublicMeetings/Pages/CommentForm.aspx

Jpop, I see how this plan is an improvement by the access up by Battery Park but I was under the impression that this was going to be a flat boulevard, too. From the earlier renderings and description of the plans I was envisioning basically an extension of Clifton Blvd from Edgewater to W.25/W.28 with 3 or 4 Traffic light intersections and maybe a couple of underpasses. I thought there was a push to develop the land actually on the shoreway too? Do these off and on ramps accomplish anything that smart traffic lights and right hand turns only during rush hour couldn't accomplish? I mean the shoreway basically funnels 70-80%% of its traffic down Clifton and Iimagine that if the speed limit is the same you wouldn't get the back ups from cars slowing down.

I take it the 35 mph speed limit isn't happening? EDIT: I found that they still referenced the 35 MPH in the Dec 2008 update for phase 2 by reconfiguring the lanes, eliminating shoulders and adding median for 35 mph traffic standards.

Can we just cancel the last two games? Or at least the last one against the Steelers. Please. I can't watch another beating like last night.

How would you attempt to urbanize the exurbs? Or even the post-war burbs, which have the benefit of having smaller footprints? You can create a town center for civic functions, but from a commercial perspective how can it be done? Most of these suburbs are built around either freeway interchanges or on long strips of state or fed 4-lane highway which are extremely unfriendly to pedestrians even if they are modified. How can you get commercial access to the residential areas of the burbs without building new "villages" ? Is it worth the effort? Am I out of line with this thinking? Check out KJPs Youngstown pictorial to see how long it takes nature to reclaim it's land. It's a lot faster than you would think.

I don't think that I have any artists to add from that picture... As far as right now I am listening to the new Q-tip, the Renaissance, and the new Kings of Leon, Only By the Night.

I thought he got it but then he lost me at the end with the development of "city centers" in the exurbs? :? The first 2/3 were top notch though. I loved the line about overshooting by moving to the exurbs.

http://images.google.com/hosted/life Google is hosting the LIFE magazine picture archive. Type in your favorite city and see what pops up. So far I have a lot of pictures of the Indians and Browns, and the national guard in Ytown with machine guns during the Strike in the 1937.

An Obituary from the 90's, ZIMA is finally laid to rest. 1994-2008. RIP "it doesn't suck if you put a jolly rancher in it..." uncredited quote from my highschool days http://www.slate.com/id/2204596/ The Long, Slow, Torturous Death of Zima Fourteen years after its heyday, Zima is finally at peace. By Brendan I. Koerner Posted Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008, at 6:53 AM ET -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There are a million ways to slight a rival's manhood, but to suggest that he enjoys Zima is one of the worst. Zima was the original "malternative"—a family of alcoholic beverages that eventually came to include such abominations as Smirnoff Ice and Bacardi Silver—and it has long been considered the very opposite of macho: a drink that fragile coeds swill while giving each other pedicures. That stereotype has persisted despite the fact that Zima's brief heyday came nearly 15 years ago. The brand was then hailed as a marketing coup, an ingenious way to sell beer—or rather, a clear, beerlike solution—to consumers who eschewed traditional suds. But virtually overnight, Zima was done in by its medicinal taste and girly-man rep: After selling an astounding 1.3 million barrels in 1994, the year it went national, Zima's sales fell to just 403,000 barrels in 1996. Many drinkers assume that Zima vanished shortly thereafter and has since existed solely as a punch line. But Zima actually survived for more than another decade, until MillerCoors pulled the plug on Oct. 10. Rarely has such a famously maligned product enjoyed such a lengthy run—a testament to its brewers' Madonna-like knack for reinvention. The Zima that died a quiet death last month bore little resemblance to the malternative that swept the nation during President Clinton's first term. Zima debuted in the midst of the "clear craze" of the early 1990s, when products ranging from Crystal Pepsi to Mennen Crystal Clean deodorant sought to take advantage of a vogue for (literal) transparency. Coors, then the nation's No. 3 beer-maker, hopped on the bandwagon by devising a simple process for making a clear brew—just filter your lowest-grade lager through charcoal (a process that strips away both color and taste), then make the liquid palatable by adding citrusy flavorings. Miller, then one of Coors' chief rivals, mastered this technique, too, creating Clear Beer, which failed miserably. Coors thought it knew why: the presence of the word beer on the label. Clear brews may have been beer-based, but they were bound to disappoint true hops aficionados—there was no foamy head, and the taste was sodalike rather than malty. So Coors decided to pitch its see-through drink at male consumers who didn't love beer but fancied themselves too macho for Boone's Farm. (Coors pointedly instructed stores to never place Zima alongside wine coolers, which male drinkers regard as effete.) Coors threw $38 million into promoting Zima's nationwide rollout in 1994, more than it spent hawking Coors Light that year. The campaign's centerpiece was a series of TV commercials starring a black-hatted pitchman who replaced his S's with Z's and touted Zima as "zomething different." The ads offered no inkling of what Zima was supposed to be, exactly, but the mystery obviously intrigued the masses: In 1994, Coors estimated that 70 percent of America's regular drinkers gave Zima a try. Unfortunately for Coors, most of those drinkers tried it only once, since straight Zima tasted like tinfoil soaked in Fresca. Some college kids mixed the drink with schnapps, creating a head-splitting cocktail dubbed Nox-Zima, but few other drinkers were so enterprising. To Coors' horror, Zima proved most popular among young women—a demographic that, while generally fond of getting tanked, just doesn't have the same thirst for hooch as its male counterpart. And once the ladies took a shine to the stuff, the guys avoided Zima as if it were laced with estrogen. (Coors was also widely accused of marketing Zima directly to high school students, many of whom were convinced that Zima couldn't be detected by Breathalyzers.) By the end of 1994, Zima had become a favorite whipping boy of David Letterman, who regularly featured it on his nightly Top Ten lists. (The No. 9 sign that your senator may be nuts? "Breakfast, lunch, and dinner—Zima!") Coors tried to lasso male consumers with new ads featuring pickup football, to no avail. Then in 1995 it launched Zima Gold, a caramel-colored version of the malternative that boasted high alcohol content (5.4 percent) and a bourbon-and-Coke tang. It barely lasted three months on the market before it was pulled for lack of sales. It was simply too late to salvage Zima's rep among men. Coors was widely expected to kill the brand, as Miller had done with Clear Beer. (Several me-too malternatives, such as Pabst's Izen Klar and Stroh's Clash, had suffered similar fates.) But the company instead chose to reinvent its once-proud brew. It altered Zima's formula to make it taste even more like Sprite and launched a new ad campaign touting Zima as the ideal thirst quencher for oppressively hot days. Sales never came close to reaching their 1994 levels, but they did rebound to a respectable 610,000 barrels by 2000. That's peanuts compared with a flagship beer brand like Coors Light, which sold 16.6 million barrels that year. But Zima was a high-margin product—charcoal-filtered dreck that sold for superpremium prices. It could still earn its keep on low-volume sales, most of which took place in warm-weather states during summer. Zima went through two more complete retoolings, the first in 2004 when it was transformed into Zima XXX. Coors pumped up the alcohol content to 5.9 percent and introduced flavors such as Hard Punch and Hard Orange. The move was made after Zima had lost significant market share to Smirnoff Ice, which benefits from confusion over whether it contains vodka. (It doesn't, at least in this country.) Coors sensed that the only way to compete was by hyping Zima as a drink worthy of daredevils. The gambit failed. Three years later, Coors (on the verge of its merger with Miller) reversed course and decided to embrace a group of consumers it had once reviled—women in their 20s. Zima was relaunched with less alcohol, fewer calories, and an array of fruity flavors such as pineapple citrus. Going after women wasn't a great way to grow the product's market, but Coors believed that today's young females could sustain Zima as a niche product. This last, dainty incarnation of Zima might still be with us were it not for killjoy lawmakers in Utah and California. In the former state, notorious for its tough liquor laws, Zima was one of the few potent tipples available in grocery stores. (Most alcoholic beverages are available only in state-controlled shops.) But MillerCoors withdrew the brand from Utah in September, after the state's legislature passed an onerous law requiring new labels that indicate a malternative's alcohol content in bold, all-caps letters. It didn't make economic sense for the brewer to print Utah-only labels. In California, meanwhile, the state's Board of Equalization decided to tax malternatives as distilled spirits rather than beer (the dubious rationale being that such an increase would discourage alcohol abuse among cash-strapped minors). MillerCoors could have challenged the $3.10-per-gallon tax hike by submitting scientific evidence attesting to Zima's lack of liquor. But for a brand that already had one foot in the grave, that apparently seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Shortly after the regulation kicked in on Oct. 1, MillerCoors finally threw in the towel on Zima. California had been one of its largest markets. For a brand that was selling tens of thousands of barrels per year up to the bitter end, Zima's demise has inspired surprisingly little anguish among its fans. This online petition aims to send 1 million signatures to MillerCoors headquarters; as of this writing, it's just 999,947 names short of that ambitious goal. There are surely more than 53 Zima lovers in America, and many of them are doubtless male. But that's a love that dare not speak its name. Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for Gizmodo. His first book, Now the Hell Will Start, is out now. Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2204596/ Copyright 2008 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive Co. LLC

Following the Browns for the past 30 years will do that to anyone. The fact that I still turn the TV on each Sunday in each Fall should color me the ultimate optimist. Self-mutilation would be less painful if I cared as much for the Browns as I once did. Understood. At this point I still care but I am forcing myself not to get involved. How about those Cavs?

I guess that is my point, what does bring somebody like Cowher do for the team when they have so many other problems. I am actually leaning towards keeping RAC and seeing how this plays out next year.

Wow KJP you are a JADED BROWNS FAN. You can appreciate this then. While we were waiting for the bus after the Baltimore game somebody told a ten year kid find a new team to like because it will be easier than all those years of the Brown breaking your heart.

This a question for everybody out there on the Cowher band wagon. What ( or who) does the Jaw bring besides a no nonsense coaching style that will really help the team. Cowher has a Ring and a winning record,but while he was in Pittsburgh he had the support of the Rooney Organization and a defensive team that is based upon running the ball and Dick LaBeau's defense most of those years. I think that this year with Baltimore's and Miami's success, and Mike Tomlin hitting the ground running in Pittsburgh last year, show the importance of quality O and D coordinators. The Browns have a rookie D coordinator and and a 2nd year O coordinator which means the problems go deeper than RAC. I think both Chud and Tucker have shown great potential but they have made their share of on the job training mistakes.Like veering from the game plan.RAC pretty much wasted 2 seasons of his tenure withe the Maurice Carthon fiasco, so he is to blame for much of this mess. So who will Cowher bring with him to right this ship?

That's what was there when we moved in. Notice I called it a quarter bath because at 3 x 4, I couldn't even call it a half bath. I have gotten many comments on the sink, mostly that it was cute or it reminds people of the dentist's office

http://thisolderedhouse.blogspot.com/ My "dream and nightmare" house. Great location and potential but we have been in it for going on 4 years and the progress has been moving at a glacier's pace. I need a huge influx of money or time, preferably both. I will throw up some of the planned renovations on the blog.

It's at OU in Athens, and if I am not mistaken it was taken from somewhere around the back doors of Morton Hall.

Thanks, GIS monkey. I am aware of the doubles to singles program and the loans available to facilitate the conversion. I fully support the initiative to move the rental mix down to a more appropriate level and was excited by the project house on Bunts. The following is mostly on-topic: The problem that I run into when I look at that model is that houses are worth more as doubles ( cashflow from rent) than as a single, so in order to break even you have to purchase the house in foreclosure or it has to be in shambles. Basically that house A is worth $150 as a double due to rents, and the same house is only worth $100 as a single. What I am wondering is it feasible that by turning the house into townhouses/condos the two units would be worth $90 each, or $180 per house, which would give you enough of a margin to update the house and still get paid for your time. There are definitely problems that I see with this (buying three or four properties next to each other for one) and I don't think that it would work for all Lakewood doubles but it was just an idea that has been bouncing around in my head. The upside for the owners is the Association would handle exterior maintenance and any major costs (roofs, etc)would be socialized across all owners.

I've been tossing the idea of buying 3 or 4 doubles, the ones that I had in mind are all side by sides, and rehabbing them and then selling the units off as condos/townhouses. But what does everyone think of that model to get some these rental properties into the hands of owners? What would the minium number of units be 6? 10? I know that they tried to convert some up/downs to condos somewhere on the East Side and that didn't work out that well. I am not suggesting anything as radical as that, just updating and not changing floorplans.

As someone who was born after Black Monday and only heard stories of the mills, all that I can say KJP is wow. Seeing all of those pictures really puts a new perspective what was lost. Thank you for putting these together.