neilworms

They also did a good job making those bricks look old - no where near as uniform as a lot of high quality infill does it.

Hahahaha. This thread has been torn apart. I was always shocked how few of my friends in Cincy knew about this a few years back, maybe I'm dated. Btw speaking of film I took a glance at the schedule for Memorial Hall, lots of great cultural stuff programmed there - you guys even got the found footage festival. Cincy is getting better at this sort of thing (I still have a hangover from my days in the city's nadir). Anyways back to topic.

The new theater at Oakley Station plays Indian movies but not Indie movies. 100+ Indian UC students uber over there from the Mont Michelle and Forum Apts every week. Meanwhile, the Esquire, which is within walking distance of the Mont Michelle and Forum complexes, screens a half dozen indie (but not Indian) films every week. The esquire tends to play safer middlebrow indie films, which is good, but if you want crazy indie stuff, cult cinema or even decent cinema retrospectives/special events - they are a terrible theater IMO they overemphasize how conservative Cincinnati is. Ever heard of the room for instance? Its a huge midnight movie phenomenon but not in Cincinnati :P

Not for Foreign and Indie movies.

Its a snide comment I make in regards to how Cincinnati gets passed over too much for films, concerts, trial runs of stuff etc. Cincinnati is pretty cool, but I get the feeling national level orgs don't notice it.

This seems like a very useful feature given what is going on here: https://medium.com/transit-app/better-real-time-transit-data-is-coming-to-your-city-finally-a38ed0e90084#.czsrk6k9s Though because Cincinnati isn't a "cool city", you aren't going to get it anytime soon. (I recommend tweeting them and asking for it in Cincy).

All I can say is that Illinois is very very pro rail, even Republicans are in this state (I live here if you didn't already know). Chicago being a major rail hub and having a functional and extensive transit system really helps transit support downstate. I think Kentucky is a way more challenging politically.

The selection at Park + Vine wasn't quite big enough to go for what I was talking about though it wasn't too far off. Good Examples in Chicago (check the photos): https://www.yelp.com/biz/green-grocer-chicago-chicago https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/go-grocer-chicago-3 (video is the best view) Really great pic at the bottom of the homepage: http://www.oliviasmarket.com/

Cincy will eventually get small scale independent market focused on high end/organic items. Its only a matter of time and the fact that it hasn't happened yet at least in downtown/otr is pretty surprising. Think riddle road market meets whole foods.

Yeah the skytrain was a pretty nice system. Vancouver in general is a really great city to visit. I normally like places with history but Van City had so much great new architecture and such great urban design that the lack of history (though there is a great historic called gastown that's right out of the 1890s) didn't really bother me, that and the natural setting is simply unmatched - rain forests like steps away from suburban houses.

Still though to ensure that growth is consistent, pressure does need to be on the city to make the streetcar perform better. This is a critical time to get things fixed, the longer it festers the more it gains a reputation as being unreliable.

Barry Horstman world champion speedwalker.

Fair analysis, though I do feel that there should be a concentrated effort to get the traffic study done, improve signal timing and at the very least get the silly tracking system up and running. I've seen this sort of thing before (re the real time tracking system) The CTA f-d up next gen contactless cards (Ventra Cards) when they were first introduced due to vendor issues, and there was near constant pressure on Ventra's vendor to get the stupid thing fixed even down to threatening them with lawsuits. It took time but it was eventually fixed and for the most part Ventra now works well (it didn't when it was started). One instance where the CTA still hasn't fixed stuff was with smartphone tap payment, its something people didn't put enough pressure (its kind of technical) and they still haven't fully implemented after like 2 years of ventra being in service. I cannot stress enough how important it is to keep the pressure on the stakeholders else you'll not get what you want. Cincinnati and SORTA need to take a similar approach and people need to be constantly pressuring both of them to do the same, otherwise it will never get fixed. Its the people's job to keep the pressure on especially those of us who know transit. Also, Jake mentioned Boston, and he's right in Chicago I rarely take the train for lunch as there already is enough near me that's pretty good, however frequently I take trains after work for after work outings usually to a bar as a means to get to know co-workers a bit better. Rhinegeist is ideal for something like that :).

Link?

Can we ban people from using that stupid euphemism for Pittsburgh? Grow up. (And people wonder why outsiders feel like Native Cincinnatians are so hostile to outsiders too - That's it buddy). Btw with a large Polish, Irish, Latino and Italian Population Chicago is quite Catholic, but the Catholic Church doesn't feel nearly as prevalent or culturally influential here as it did in Cincy. You still hear about bishops now and then, but not socially conservative stuff coming out of the church nor nearly as much Catholic HS pride as I did when I was in Cincy.

Its probably not for me, but I do see a market for this - lots of people live with roommates already to help cover the cost of expensive rent in urban markets, and this is another way of organizing such an arrangement. OTR is getting expensive enough that I see this as a good way for someone fresh out of college to live in a cool urban neighborhood that might be out of their price range.

These look like a lot of the infill that's built in Chicago these days. Very nice.

Cities are actually fun and exciting places if you make them dense. Besides there are plenty of places in this country which are still that way even 100 years after things were built ;). Its wonderfully refreshing to have a board where people have high standards for Cincinnati because IMO you guys have a serious cultural problem as a whole of low standards and low expectations and IMO its part of the reason why you squander so much potential beauty/tourism/honoring of history that can and should happen in your city. IMO the priority of Cincinnati when I lived there seemed to be more about stupid petty turf wars because someone goes to a different high school than you do than actually raising the bar for the place.

OTR is cool, but not necessarily the coolest in America. I'm happy to see where it will be in 10 to 15 years too :). Maybe it will be better known to people outside of Cincinnati, that would be nice.

An easy solution to the parallel parking issue is to make flat streets with good have dashed yellow lines in the middle allowing cars to go to the other side of the street with caution, its pretty much how all major streets are in Chicago outside of downtown: https://www.google.com/maps/@41.9094509,-87.6774707,3a,75y,16.06h,46.75t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1szqINci7F0ltztAZK0NR-UQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DzqINci7F0ltztAZK0NR-UQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D295.67917%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656

What is it with Cincinnatians liking parks more than their exceptional urban environment? Parks are already good in Cincinnati, and there are PLENTY downtown, what's really needed is better utilization of the amazing old architectural bones you have. About the only place I'd consider a park in the basin and even then its kind of redundant (with Washington Park and Ziegler Park being pretty close by) is at 12th and Vine, I think the parking lot there could be converted into a small plaza with a fountain in the center and be a pretty great gathering spot. That's it.

I wonder what it would take to convince them to know that they are making a very dumb business decision. I mean these guys are successful businessmen, they have to have some semblance of sense of what is going on downtown and how they can profit from it?

I've used uber pool and lyft line a few times and never really had a problem with bad people.

Not true at all ... It seems everything in Minneapolis is slow. Just visited Minneapolis and yeah checkout lines were slow, however the Twin Cities are pretty used to transit and I didn't really experience problems getting on or off buses/trains in an orderly fashion.

Even in larger cities there is a slight delay with transit tracking, where a bus could arrive up to 1 min later than where it says its coming. Due to congestion, downtown tracking is more off than outside of downtown too. One of the biggest culture shocks when I visit Cincy is how slow paced basic things are like getting through a line at a restaurant or a store - I wouldn't be surprised if the same applies to entering and exiting a train vehicle even if everything possible has been done to speed things up. FYI Metro bus stops are agonizingly slow, adoption rates of stored value passes is pathetic and way too many people still use change and even when people use change on buses the driver is more likely to remain stopped than they are in Chicago where the bus driver will pull out as the people are paying with cash.