RiverViewer

Let's say gas costs $2.75/gallon (from here). $720 buys you 262 gallons of gas. Let's say you're getting 25 mpg - that will give you 6,550 miles. 30 days in a month, that's 218 miles per day. So fine, a 90 mile commute - does that mean the daughter commutes 128 miles/day? And, by the way, that's assuming they drive that much seven days a week... I have no doubt that higher gas prices are impacting folks in rural areas - but those numbers are preposterous...

$720/month on gas? They're driving what, 15K miles/month? Or was that their entire budget, with heating and groceries?

Too bad about your nuts, but yeah, June is shaping up to be just about as good as May was bad... Actually, far better...the Reds went 17-8 in April, then 12-16 in May - but they haven't lost a game in June... My wife and I are going to the game on Friday against the Cubs for my birthday...want to sit in the bleachers, way over towards center field, so we get a kick-ass view of the river. Plus as she learns about baseball, she's at the point where she can watch and understand the whole defensive dance the fielders do when balls are in play - backing people up, cut-off men, all that - and that should be easier to see and understand from out there...plus they're the cheapest seats in the house!

Nick, can you give a citation for that? I'd be interested in seeing where on earth Citybeat got those figures from, because digging through the census data, I can't find anything even close to that. Here's some links: 1990's Census Data; 2000's Census Data). The city lost 32,755 people total during the 1990's. The figures don't break down evenly into 18-39, but if you throw in everything from 15 to 44, you still only get a net loss of 17K. Now, Citybeat may be talking about a gross figure of 28K being lost, and ignoring another 10K that moved in - but then we aren't really talking about the same thing. And between 1990 and 2000, we lost fewer 15-24 year olds proportionally than we did the general population. I have no doubt we're losing young people - but I'd like to know if we're losing them disproportionately; if we're losing them not because they're moving, but because they're older, and we aren't attracting new young folks in; or if it's really that we're driving young people out with rocks and sticks. Saying "all the young people are leaving" is obviously hyperbole - but how true or untrue is it? Without citations and facts, we're just left to guess...

^Those are interesting figures, but they don't really have much to do with what you've been saying. Gen X'ers range from around 26-41 years old today - hardly the indie music scene. I don't doubt that we're losing young folks, but do you have any figures we can hang our hats on?

Also, potentially of interest to those looking for another take on RFK's ideas: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/03/kennedy/index.html

Ach, gorgeous...I recognized more of those than I expected to, so I feel pretty good about myself, thanks to your thread! You rock...

An interesting rebuttal to the Exit Poll section of the RFK piece...part 1: http://www.mysterypollster.com/main/2006/06/is_rfk_jr_right.html ...with links to other responses to the article...

Here's a post on the museum: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=9159.0

My dad is a big Civil War buff, and he and mom were visiting from up north this weekend. So I hunted up Geoffrey R. Walden's General's Tour of the defenses of Cincinnati from the "Panic On The Ohio" in 1862. He's put together a tour of the whole ring of defenses constructed around the city when Heth's troops came north looking for trouble in the early part of the Civil War. It's a great tour, though I'd recommend giving it a dry run before you try to take out-of-towners on it... Anyway, we hit a few spots on it, then went to the new James A. Ramage Civil War Museum in Fort Wright, on the site of Battery Hooper. (BTW, many thanks to Issue430's roommate, who gave us directions - Walden's tour was published long before the museum opened). You park in the lot of a church that's now a daycare center - make sure you stop in behind the church for the skyline view: ...then you walk through the paved path through the woods, over the what used to be Fern Storer's house (she was the food critic for the Cincinnati Post for years). In front of the house, which is now a museum, there are earthworks currently being excavated. They've found a dry well, the powder magazine, and the half-circle stone wall that the cannons were placed behind. The works are slowly being excavated by Jeannine Kreinbrink, an Archaeology professor from NKU. They occasionally hold public dig days, where you can help dig out the earthworks, learning about history and archaeology at the same time! Anyway, dad and I checked out the earthworks, and the surrounding view: Then we were talking about the cannon before going into the museum, when one of the volunteers came out and started talking with us. He was amazingly helpful...he took us over to the earthworks again and explained what they'd learned, the history of the site, of the Battery, the context of the war, etc. Then we went into the museum, and he walked us through each room, explaining everything, answering questions, just doing a fantastic job. The museum is fairly small, but it's got interpretive panels, and a number of artifacts from local Civil War history. Some of the items aren't local, and some aren't authentic, but it's only been open a year, so I'm sure that will change over time. The plan is to excavate the site scientifically, and then to restore it to how it would have looked in September of 1862. I can't wait to see it! It's really a tremendous asset, and I highly recommend blowing an hour or two of a Saturday morning by stopping by.

Oh, I see - I'd tried to track down Cecilia Avenue and couldn't find it...indeed, your guess was a little farther away than richNcincy's, but was basically dead on for alignment...good show! The museum rocked out. Dad and I parked and walked over there, checked out the excavated earthworks, then were discussing the cannon they have in front when a volunteer from the museum came out and started chatting with us...actually, hold on, I should put this in its own thread...gimme a couple minutes...

That will be a very interesting plan to see...making that area invitingly walkable would be quite an accomplishment.

That's utterly fantastic. Thanks for posting it!

richNcincy was awfully close...if this location doesn't have a name yet, I'd like to dub it the Battery Hooper Skyline View. I went to the James A. Ramage Civil War Museum with my father this weekend - the second shot is the view to the south from the old Battery Hooper Earthworks they're excavating in front of the museum. It looks over Madison Pike, with 275 in the background. We'd parked in the lot of what used to be, I believe, a Methodist Church, but is now a day care center of some sort. Dad isn't walking all that well, so I was picking up the car and going back to get him near the entrance, when I saw that view sticking up behind the church. I went around to the rear parking lot, got out, and took a few pictures! Here's a Google map of the area - the church/day care is the building north of the circular driveway...the square parking lot is where you park to go to the museum, and then you walk on a paved path through the woods WSW to get to the museum. http://maps.google.com/?ll=39.055876,-84.525708&spn=0.003949,0.007231&t=h&om=1

OK, we're into the point in the argument of diminishing returns...but yes, I'd walk around lots of parts of Evanston at night (and did), lots of parts of Walnut Hills at night (and do), lots of parts of Clifton at night, etc. No, I'm not going to take a stroll through Peeble's Corner at 1am, but that doesn't mean I need to sit inside with the doors locked and a shotgun on my lap. When you say there are safe neighborhoods where kids can play only in Pleasant Ridge and Hyde Park and Mt. Lookout, you're 100% wrong, just dead wrong. That doesn't mean there aren't bad parts of the city - just that there are TONS of great parts to it.

Sorry, I had Evanston in my head, but was rushing to a meeting and didn't proofread...I almost added Norwood to the list as well, but didn't since it's not in the city...thanks for catching that. Yes, there is crime in all those neighborhoods - but not in every area of every neighborhood. No more so than anywhere else. Just because someone gets murdered near Chapel and Park doesn't mean a condo on St. James is more dangerous - but they're both Walnut Hills, they're both 45206, and they bear little relation to one another. I lived in Evanston for a couple years, and didn't see any crime. Perfectly safe street, no problems. The houses on that street are all assessed at well below $100K. It's not blighted, it's not crime-ridden, and there are areas like that in every neighborhood in the city. It's there, if folks will realize that Evanston is more than Fairfield at Hewitt, Walnut Hills is more than Concord at McMillan, Avondale is more than Reading at Blair, etc., etc., etc. There are a lot of nice, safe, non-blighted neighborhoods in the city - you don't need to confine yourself to Hyde Park, Mt. Lookout and Pleasant Ridge to find them.

There are loads and loads of Oakleys in the city...perception may not match reality, but the reality is that there's a ton of affordable housing, in the city, in good neighborhoods. Price Hill, Pleasant Ridge, Walnut Hills, Avondale, Evendale, Mt. Auburn, Northside, CUF, Madisonville, etc., etc., etc...yes, there are problems in each of those neighborhoods, but there are plenty of attractive, affordable, safe digs in all of them and more....

I forget how zoomed it was, but the camera only has 3x...probably was somewhere around 2x, maybe a little more... No, not east of 471...

An excerpt from a letter to the editor of Citybeat, from the CSO's Director of PR, Rosemary Weathers (http://www.citybeat.com/2003-07-23/letters.shtml) Ramos incorrectly writes that "suburban women with plenty of disposable income but little interest in coming downtown to spend it" are not inclined to attend performances at Music Hall. However, women as well as men from every ZIP code in a 10-county area attend the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops performances at Music Hall. Neighborhoods with the highest concentration of CSO subscribers are located throughout Hamilton County into Warren, Clermont and Butler counties and deep into Kenton County in Northern Kentucky. I emailed one of the media contacts to ask if there was any hard data that had been published from the big 2003 survey they did - if I get any info, I'll definitely post it...

Ah, you finally joined up! Hopefully Mr. Issue will come out and play with us more often now that he's got a login!

Oh, fantastic! I know aerials are a real pain in the neck to get focused, and to frame the subject you're looking for, and these are very nicely done! You've got yourself a treasure in those shots...

The location was publically accessible (or at least it wasn't someone's yard), and I was standing on the ground... Here's a hint - this shot was taking within about a 300 yards' walk of the skyline shot: I'll post the exact spot tonight, or confirm if someone nails it...

Sounds like jack-hammering going on there this morning. As PhattyNati observed, they sure built up a hell of a pile of rocks over the past couple weeks! Heard construction equipment working most days, starting probably around 7:30, though as long as it's not that loud grinding, it won't wake me up, so it might be earlier.

Just had a Graeter's vanilla shake yesterday, and I can say that raising the vanilla level is, without a doubt, a good thing!

Seven were Republican, but William Henry Harrison was a Whig, which was definitely different...but yeah, party affiliation up through Reconstruction was different from party affiliation in the early 20th century, which was different from party affiliation post-FDR...and I'd contend it's changing again today - Bush is really a Truman Democrat, to my mind. But I guess that's neither here nor there...