These photos were taken about a week before Christmas 2020.  Loveland is the biggest thing on the "Loveland" bike trail between Cincinnati and Xenia and it's home to the lowest railroad overpass of all-time. 

 

Originally two separate railroad mainlines crossed paths in in Loveland.  The older of the two was abandoned around 1968 and became the bike trail in the 1980s.  The newer of the two railroads is still active and has about four trains each day. 

 

 

 

 

 

Loveland Eagles Hall...pretty much the only blue collar thing left in town:

 

 

 

 

Pretty much the lowest railroad bridge clearance in the United States. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ugly:

 

There is a crossing gate just for the bike trail:

 

Goth?

 

This is the low-clearance bridge:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A touch of post-2010 Nashville:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s like the yuppie inverse of Yellow Springs. 

2 hours ago, BigDipper 80 said:

It’s like the yuppie inverse of Yellow Springs. 

 

With a lot of Harley bikers providing a 50-mile buffer.  Two of my aunts are members of the pictured Loveland Eagles hall.  The crowd in there is borderline rough - not many bikers but a lot of people whose brothers are bikers. 

I grew up in Loveland and we lived in the "old" part of the town that you photographed. It's crazy how much a small town like that can change over the course of a decade or so. When I was a kid, the "old" part of Loveland was considered to be the poor part of town. Unless you lived outside of town in a McMansion you were pretty much lower class. The newer buildings right by the bike trail were an active seed and feed for the entirety of my childhood. They'd still get bulk grains delivered via rail siding. The rest of the "downtown" didn't have much going on. What's now Montgomery Cyclery was a bingo hall and was by far the most popular destination. Bond Furniture has somewhat low-key existed for a very long time in the buildings right across from that - surviving through the eras of stripmalls and then the internet.

6 minutes ago, Ram23 said:

I grew up in Loveland and we lived in the "old" part of the town that you photographed. It's crazy how much a small town like that can change over the course of a decade or so. When I was a kid, the "old" part of Loveland was considered to be the poor part of town. Unless you lived outside of town in a McMansion you were pretty much lower class. The newer buildings right by the bike trail were an active seed and feed for the entirety of my childhood. They'd still get bulk grains delivered via rail siding. The rest of the "downtown" didn't have much going on. What's now Montgomery Cyclery was a bingo hall and was by far the most popular destination. Bond Furniture has somewhat low-key existed for a very long time in the buildings right across from that - surviving through the eras of stripmalls and then the internet.

 

What was the driver of change / development? 

54 minutes ago, YABO713 said:

 

What was the driver of change / development? 

 

West Side expats like my aunts married guys who made a ton of money. 

 

6 hours ago, YABO713 said:

 

What was the driver of change / development? 

 

I think the city government wanted to increase population, but didn't have any paths to annex land from surrounding townships. The city's perimeter was all developed by about 2000 or so, and no property owners really wanted to be annexed because it would have resulted in a municipal earnings tax. They had been trying to rezone and add density for years but met opposition. Eventually they pulled it off and added a few hundred apartments in the middle of the city - right around the time the larger cultural shift from chain restaurants and malls to small shops and independent restaurants happened. Although, without the bike trail running right through the city I don't think any of this would have happened. It is a great asset and they did a good job capitalizing on it. When I was young it was a good place to ride your bike but there was not much of anything else to do along the way. That Hawaiian Ice stand opened sometime in the 90s, I think, and was the only trail facing business around - second only to the bar at the US-22 bridge that housed a beer drinking, cigarette smoking monkey.

okay, I just had to look up Cindy's Friendly Tavern🍹

 

https://www.yelp.com/biz/cindys-friendly-tavern-loveland

17 hours ago, eastvillagedon said:

okay, I just had to look up Cindy's Friendly Tavern🍹

 

https://www.yelp.com/biz/cindys-friendly-tavern-loveland

 

I haven't been in that place but that's the general mood all long the bike trail - what in a college town would be called "Town-Gown" friction. 

18 hours ago, Ram23 said:

 

I think the city government wanted to increase population, but didn't have any paths to annex land from surrounding townships. The city's perimeter was all developed by about 2000 or so, and no property owners really wanted to be annexed because it would have resulted in a municipal earnings tax. They had been trying to rezone and add density for years but met opposition. Eventually they pulled it off and added a few hundred apartments in the middle of the city - right around the time the larger cultural shift from chain restaurants and malls to small shops and independent restaurants happened. Although, without the bike trail running right through the city I don't think any of this would have happened. It is a great asset and they did a good job capitalizing on it. When I was young it was a good place to ride your bike but there was not much of anything else to do along the way. That Hawaiian Ice stand opened sometime in the 90s, I think, and was the only trail facing business around - second only to the bar at the US-22 bridge that housed a beer drinking, cigarette smoking monkey.

 

Buddy of mine says that they took the monkey off booze and cigarettes cold turkey and it went nuts.

Somebody uploaded a drone video of the area:

 

1 hour ago, GCrites80s said:

 

Buddy of mine says that they took the monkey off booze and cigarettes cold turkey and it went nuts.

 

I'm pretty sure that the current Monkey Bar is a completely new structure.  The old one was a typical cinder block biker bar, from what I remember.