RiverViewer

^LOL, indeed...though considering UC's Law School had its graduation at the Aronoff that afternoon, it was important to make if obvious enough that even a lawyer could figure it out...(er...no offense, Kendall, and congratulations!) I put together this little gmap-pedometer thing for the route we took on the downtown/OTR walking tour: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=193586 Starting at Carew, we went up Vine to 6th and had lunch at Rise and Shine Cafe...they thought they had a light afternoon coming up, time to wind down, no other customers in the place, when in walked two dozen forumers all at once! Anyway, after lunch was Main Street all the way to Liberty, to Sycamore to Milton, and then we cut up to Boal in some new park they have there (I'm guessing it's new, but it's at least new to me!). That's where Rich got this phenomenal shot from, combining standard OTR architecture with Music Hall, nestled in among the wooded hills of Ohio and Kentucky - very nicely done, Rich!: Then up Boal of Highland, back to Milton, then down to Liberty, and I'm not all that certain I got all the street crossings exactly right...but down Broadway to 13th to Sycamore to 12th, and we split into groups for the car touring in front of the Sycamore Diner (soon to be Vinyl). The various car groups all mustered at Theodore M. Berry Park, and thence to the car tour - if anyone wants to document the car tour route on gmap-pedometer while you still remember, that would be cool for letting the rest of us know what we missed!

Hmm...the plan to get the grouped backed by the skyline seems to have gone a tad awry! Indeed, wonderful meeting everyone...and someone else will have to post a shot of the group so New Orleans Lady is included!

Ach, very nice...though I was still there for most of these shots, so my jealousy of The Ones Who Stayed hasn't really been engaged yet - though my envy of your skill and gear sure has!

I had to cut out of the meet a little early, and don't have time for a full thread of my own, but wanted to whet folks' appetite - it was a super-clear day (relatively speaking), so the Carew shots from folks with good gear are going to be phenomenal...here's just a sampling from my shots...and anyone who doesn't want to post a whole thread can feel welcome to drop a couple in here! Here's Rob, getting a front-on shot of a firetruck - we got to watch a roof fire from the top of Carew - the building that houses Akash India had an issue - I'm sure others will have better shots than I have of that!

Yeah, very nice to see the bats coming alive. It was just a matter of time - and now we just need to keep the pitching going like it was and there will be a real possibility of being strong enough by the All-Star break to see Castellini come through on his promise to go out and buy some help...and then, who knows?

Two dozen youngish male urbanite dorks with cameras around their necks ought to stand out at least a little!

We thought about the audio tracks - an early run of the videos included me announcing the road crossings like I was a bus driver..."Fifth at Walnut", that kind of thing. But that was a) a pain in the butt, b) increased the file size dramatically, and c) sounded so trashy. I just have a little computer mic, I've got finches chirping in the background, so there'd be silence, then "[hissssss][chirp^3]Fifth at Walnut[/hisssss][/chirp]" Just sounded stupid. We also talked about putting together our own CincinnatiRoads.com theme, but good lord, would that get annoying. Now different songs for different roads, or looping background Cincinnnati stuff? Yeah, I'd rather let folks interested in music go to a music site, or leave their own stuff on in the background, than impose my choices on them...but you're right, we definitely discussed our audio options, and in the end went without. Well, except for the Roebling Suspension Bridge videos - I rolled down the window and left the sound on for all of those, since it's so distinctive. Know any out-of-towners? Send them here: http://www.cincinnatiroads.com/DirectLink.php?RoadFileName=RoeblingSuspensionBridge_KYtoOH20060402.swf ...the sound of the hum is like Graeter's and goetta - pure Cincinnati!

^And new offices going in! http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php?topic=7772.0

Just spoke with the Vice Mayor's assistant, and she put the meet on his calendar, Carew Tower at noon on Saturday...he's still a maybe, but it's a far firmer maybe than it was before!

Jesus, people, these folks weren't selected to represent balkanized interest groups or something - it's your damn job to represent the people of the city! This group is NOT making decisions, it's making SUGGESTIONS. It's working out a plan, which will be approved or disapproved by you folks, who are a diverse lot of folks. And if your concern is that minorities are going to end up shut out of contracting and hiring, just look at Riordan's record on the Convention Center, which I understand well exceeded all minority contracting targets. Ms. Cole, are you saying that despite Mr. Riordan's past behavior, you can tell what he's really like from the color of his skin? Mr. Cranley, are you saying you're going to be steamrolled by this working group when it comes time to approve or disapprove? Mr. Crowley, are you admitting that you're incapable of representing the interests of your African-American constituents? These people astonish me...

Indeed, I keep meaning to get to that...I'm a bad homeowner, at least on outdoors stuff...actually, we've already pulled some of it down, but there's vines a-plenty! Oh, and your Car-Hit-By-Tree picture kicks the everlasting ass of mine...that's WAY too cool! I hope the owner's first reaction was similar to mine - after that "thought I heard something, honey" thing the night before, first thing I did on seeing that was to laugh out loud...and there's just something so profoundly massive in your shot, it's gotta make you smile, assuming nobody got hurt. No, we've added a half-bath to the right of the front door, and while we could probably try to open up the space to the far right, we'd have to change the back wall of the bathroom to something exterior quality, and we'd have to figure out an exterior grade door where we currently have somewhat flimsy but very cool old french doors...I do wish we had a porch somewhere, but no, probably not unless we add on someday... Oh, Rob, one question on your house - that chimney looks like it sticks up an awfully long ways. Is that just because it comes up on a low point of the roof, and all chimneys typically stick up a few feet above the peak, or is there something else going on with that one?

Oh, and regarding radical transformations that take some getting used to, here's my house a couple weeks ago: ...and here it is a couple days later: ...it was just brush, honeysuckle, a garbage tree here and there, so nothing like losing a member of the family like a 50 year old tree would be, but still will take some getting used to!

I sympathize on the loss of your tree, but I've gotta admit, I believe trees are the enemy. Not trees in theory - I'm a big fan of forests and such - just trees near my house or things I care about. I came outside one morning two and a half years ago to see this: ...the neighbor's tree behind us had fallen, out of nowhere - just a very wet summer, it was August, and one night during a peaceful rain, it just came down. My wife thought she heard something in the house, but after investigating, I didn't see anything (at 1am, probably still drunk, dark out, in the rain, not surprising I didn't see dark leaves in the pitch black). So the neighbor's beech fell into my locust tree and snapped it off 20 feet off the ground (this shot after a day of clearing brush and starting to work up the tree): Then when the two tumbled down, totalled my car, then sheared all the branches off one side of a box elder I had, which was already leaning towards the house, and was now even more overbalanced. I couldn't sleep at night until I had it dropped and added to the pile...I still haven't completely finished working up all that wood. Were you able to keep the wood from the tree for winter heat? I took great pleasure in burning that damn birch this past year...

My wife's out of town for a business conference the rest of the week, so I went out to eat with a friend at Nicola's tonight, and sat at the bar next to Jim Tarbell. I told him about CincinnatiRoads.com, and I gushed about UrbanOhio.com, and invited him to the meet on Saturday. He asked me to call his assistant and have her remind him about it...I told him we were meeting in Carew by the entrance to the observation deck on the first floor at noon, and he said he didn't know if he could, but he'd try to make it - woo hoo! We could have a Vice-Mayoral escort for the meet!

Ouch.

^And I read somewhere (don't remember where) that one of the reasons Cincinnati became what it became, rather than Marietta, was because in Marietta the plots were far more controlled, they tried to sell plots of land in order, etc., and it just couldn't grow like Cincinnati could... Though without a reference for that, definitely treat it as speculation! Wish I could remember where I read that...

^To be honest, I never really followed the details of the subway plans. They're very neat, I plan to tour them someday, and I vote for any public transit issues that come along, but my real interest in Cincinnati is that it's so heart-breakingly beautiful - I'm probably not going to get excited about the subway unless we started actually making progress towards it... But, I should mention that Andy made a super-kick-ass map of the Cincinnati subways for a contest or project or something, and he's yet to share it with us...time to put the pressure on him! And I should take a subway-route movie and have Andy plug it into the map, with appropriate titles to indicate points of interest, like where it reaches the surface and such...

When I pulled up that page, the only image I saw at first was this: ...and I thought, "that's more brown than orange, and it doesn't look like a shirt...and dude, with eight appendages you must be able to type awfully fast..."

^That's a violation of realtor ethics. They're not allowed to steer you to or from neighborhoods. If you have any documentation, you should definitely report her to the local board of realtors. Obviously, it depends on what exactly she said, but no realtor should leave a person with the impression that they ought to avoid somewhere... Any realtors here who can speak more authoritatively about this? All I know is what I've heard second-hand from realtor friends...

They do - though they only served food on the weekends in the summer, last I was there. But that was probably three or four summers ago - have they started serving food more frequently? That would be very cool - it was a great spot, as long as they didn't have a band playing (I hate going to dinner and being unable to talk with my tablemates - I know, other folks love it, it's just not my thing).

Very cool photos...almost makes me want to move!

In Cincinnati we just got through this huge infestation of the caterpillar-like bugs that were some Asian Tent Worm or something like that...they were everywhere, but seem to have gone away now...

Never really cared for basketball, unfortunately...but if I did, I'd definitely be with you!

^Thank you! And if you ever wanted those segments strung together for a presentation or proposal or anything, that's easy enough to do...actually, I'd probably just drive it special...

No, I think you have to add parking costs on top of that figure. I can't find a direct description of the methodology from Runzheimer, who's created the IRS figure for 25 years now, but in another story it talks about a figure of 61.1¢/mile as the cost of driving between Philly and Boston (the 44.5¢/mile figure isn't intended to cover the whole cost of driving, just the deductible portion), and says that figure includes "operating costs for fuel, maintenance and tires, and ownership costs for insurance, license and registration fees, taxes and depreciation."