Posted November 5, 200915 yr So, I was looking at a post by Randy over at www.urbancincy.com where someone mentioned Mark Twain in the comments. Randy responded with, "There is a strict no Mark Twain reference policy here at UrbanCincy." It got me thinking about how topics that are taboo at the dinner table change from place to place. So, I invite you to share people, topics, and events that are unique to your area. NOTE: PLEASE TRY TO AVOID POLITICS. UNLESS A POLITICIAN DID SOMETHING OFFENSIVE THAT WAS NOT RELATED TO POLITICS (Like Cincinnati Mayor Mallory shaming the world of Baseball) PLEASE DO NOT POST IT! Please give the city, the topic, and a brief description of why you shouldn't bring it up. Here's my shortlist: Milwaukee Jeffrey Dahmer: He killed 17 people and terrorized the gay community in the early 1990s. Many people will just refuse to talk about the subject. In my house, "Dahmer" was considered a derogatory word and would result in an ear-flicking. Ed Gein: You know what, just avoid the topic of serial killers in general. We've got a few. Chorizo Sausage: There is a sausage race at every Brewers Baseball game. It's a fun old tradition. But in 2006 they added a Chorizo Sausage to the race presumably to appeal to the large Hispanic population in Milwaukee. Well, it's been kind of a touchy race related issue ever since. Just avoid it. Illinois Drivers: You know, I can't believe the pent up aggression I feel whenever this gets brought up. We've got a large population of people driving through the city from Chicagoland. And because Chicago is bigger, richer, and "better" than Milwaukee they all feel that they own our roads and can create their own driving laws. If you're ever in a car with someone driving behind an Illinois car or you're in a crosswalk and an Illinois car doesn't stop for you, you're almost guaranteed to hear someone yell "FIB!" or "FISH!" This is our polite way of exclaiming "F--king Illinois B@stard!" or "F--king Illinois Sh!t Head" Cryptosporidium: Oh goodness, just avoid the topic. 400,000 people got sick from this stuff in 1993. Unless you want to head endless stories on bowel movements and vomiting just stay away from this one. It was not pretty. Brett Favre: JUST DON'T DO IT!!! It's amazing how emotional people are about this one. I've never seen so many butch men cry in my life than right after our beloved Brett Favre got traded to our arch enemies, The Vikings. You will now see shits all over the place that simply say, "Brett Who?" Now you know what NOT to talk about when you visit me in Milwaukee. I want to know what Not to ask next time I visit wherever you live. Just remember to avoid politics, PLEASE.
November 6, 200915 yr Cincinnati: 1) Mike Brown 2) Chris Smitherman 3) Chris Finney 4) Maybe Si Leis, or at least the whole Maplethorpe controversy There's not a lot of people that Cincinnati loves to hate. We tend to protect our own, so even people that are hated/looked down upon by the rest of the country are kind of loved in Cincinnati. Jerry Springer, Marge Schott, Lary Flynt, etc. They might be scum bags, but they're our scum bags, and we love them just the same.
November 6, 200915 yr Here's mine for Cleveland. 1) Art Modell - Stole the Browns 2) John Elway - Broke the Browns Hearts 3) Ben Roethlieberger - Ex-Ohioan that kills the Browns (also I went to Miami and everyone there despises him too) 4) Michael Jordan - Broke the Cavs Hearts 5) Every Single Person that thought bulldozing the Euclid Mansions from 1900-1950 would be good for the city. (and I know that's not just me) Naturally, most of them have to do with sports from our sports crazed/deprived city.
November 6, 200915 yr Columbus: Anyone and everyone from the mitten part of Michigan. Except Kid Rock and ICP though it seems. The U.P. to gets a free pass as well.
November 6, 200915 yr Prok, it's funny you should mention Illinois drivers in Wisconsin. When I was still in St. Louis, we used to say the opposite thing about Illinois drivers because all of them around St. Louis are small townie people, so they drive slooooooooowwwwwww as hell. We're more screaming to the drivers to get the eff out of the way!
November 6, 200915 yr Jeffrey Dahmer: It's too soon to tell but Anthony Sowell might have this distinction in Cleveland. I found out this summer that one of my father's business partners was Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment leasing agent. I know totally random and dumb, but it was bizarre dinner conversation that came to mind.
November 6, 200915 yr Judge Alvin Krenzler in Cleveland. I know he's a politician, but he is also an investor, real estate developer and moreso, a demolitions expert -- including demolishing the Hippodrome Theater before anyone knew what was happening and before anyone could stop it. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 6, 200915 yr Jeffrey Dahmer: It's too soon to tell but Anthony Sowell might have this distinction in Cleveland. I found out this summer that one of my father's business partners was Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment leasing agent. I know totally random and dumb, but it was bizarre dinner conversation that came to mind. Wasn't Jeffery Dahmer from Bath (Cleveland/Akron) If I remember correctly, he was, and his parents still live there.
November 6, 200915 yr Jeffrey Dahmer: It's too soon to tell but Anthony Sowell might have this distinction in Cleveland. I found out this summer that one of my father's business partners was Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment leasing agent. I know totally random and dumb, but it was bizarre dinner conversation that came to mind. Wasn't Jeffery Dahmer from Bath (Cleveland/Akron) If I remember correctly, he was, and his parents still live there. He was. He actually went to my high school (Revere), well before I went there though. My eighth grade science teacher had him in his class back then. Said he was just a quiet kid.
November 6, 200915 yr Clevelanders love to hate Clevelanders. Touche! How did we manage 16 hours without that response!?!
November 6, 200915 yr Here's mine for Cleveland. 1) Art Modell - Stole the Browns 2) John Elway - Broke the Browns Hearts 3) Ben Roethlieberger - Ex-Ohioan that kills the Browns (also I went to Miami and everyone there despises him too) 4) Michael Jordan - Broke the Cavs Hearts 5) Every Single Person that thought bulldozing the Euclid Mansions from 1900-1950 would be good for the city. (and I know that's not just me) Naturally, most of them have to do with sports from our sports crazed/deprived city. Good list. Art Modell is far and away #1. Dude won't even set foot in the city for fear of imminent death. And Roethlisraper grew up in Findlay and was a 49ers fan...for no specific reason. One of my largest pet peeves is people who root for sports teams they have no affiliation for (i.e., they were good when you were a kid, so hop on the bandwagon). I also hate Bill Belichik for A) trading Kosar B) sucking while being a coach here and C) suddenly being the best football coach ever in new England.
November 6, 200915 yr Detroit: Ohio, William Clay Ford, Matty Moroun (owns the Bridge and a lot of the city), Woody Hayes (both because of the obvious UM rivalry and because he screwed MSU and got them on probation)... There are others that are extremely polarizing...Kwame Kilpatrick, Bo Schembechler (MSU fans and Tigers fans hate him), Coleman Young, L. Brooks Patterson, etc.
November 6, 200915 yr I think a lot of Clevelanders love to hate Dennis Kucinich. I certainly don't, but a lot of people seem to.
November 6, 200915 yr Art Modell and nobody is even close in second place. However, if the NY Media has its way in the summer of 2010 (highly doubt it)... Lebron could rival Modell's status 'round here.
November 7, 200915 yr NCR's Bill Nuti isn't the most popular guy in Dayton. Or that guy from Forbes. Throw Rhine McLin and basically anyone connected to GM or Delphi into the mix, as well.
November 7, 200915 yr Art Modell and nobody is even close in second place. However, if the NY Media has its way in the summer of 2010 (highly doubt it)... Lebron could rival Modell's status 'round here. I think albert porter is a very close second. The man was power hungry! I probably wouldn't have grown up where I did if he had succeeded.
November 7, 200915 yr True. I hate Albert Porter more than I hate Art Model. Art destroyed a local sport. Albert destroyed an entire city. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 7, 200915 yr --Vernon Stouffer for not selling the Indians to George Steinbrenner when he wanted to buy the team. Could you imagine? --Frank Lane --Gil McDougal
November 7, 200915 yr Art Modell and nobody is even close in second place. However, if the NY Media has its way in the summer of 2010 (highly doubt it)... Lebron could rival Modell's status 'round here. I think albert porter is a very close second. The man was power hungry! I probably wouldn't have grown up where I did if he had succeeded. Who? This Albert Porter? - Albert Gallatin Porter (1824-1897), was an Indiana governor, and United States Congressman I have lived in Cleveland my whole life (besides college) and I have never heard of Albert Porter.
November 7, 200915 yr Albert S. Porter is the one you're looking for. He is the one everyone is talking about when they reference the never built east side highways. Additionally he wanted to destroy the "Guardians of Transportation" statues on the Lorain-Carnegie bridge for extra lanes.
November 8, 200915 yr Albert S. Porter is the one you're looking for. He is the one everyone is talking about when they reference the never built east side highways. Additionally he wanted to destroy the "Guardians of Transportation" statues on the Lorain-Carnegie bridge for extra lanes. Albert Porter was Cuyahoga County Engineer for 30 years until 1977. He is famous for: + Being a proponent of using highways to demolish what he called the squalid conditions of low-income tenements, without considering relocation plans for their residents. One of the most notable were neighborhoods southeast of downtown leveled by the Willow Freeway (today's I-77). Many of those residents overcrowded into Hough, creating the tinder that ignited into the riot a decade later. + Saw highways as being the tool to remove "substandard" or "deficient" structures. In practice, that meant historic homes and buildings, including those built in dense settings that made auto use difficult and unpopular. Porter was a student of the land use principles espoused by the big car manufacturers and oil companies, like GM and Shell which unveiled their "Futurama" visions at the 1939 World's Fair. + Porter was also a student of Studebaker President Paul Hoffman, who wrote in the Saturday Evening Post in 1939: "If we are to have full use of automobiles, cities must be remade. The greatest automobile market today, the greatest untapped field of potential customers, is the large number of city people who refuse to own cars, or use the cars they have very little, because it's such a nuisance to take them out." To get at that urban market, Hoffman continued "We must dream of gashing our way ruthlessly through built-up sections of overcrowded cities." + Planned to build the Clark Freeway through the Shaker Lakes, calling them "two-bit duck ponds" but his plan was stopped. + Planned to build U.S. Route 6 (Clifton) through the swanky Clifton Park neighborhood in Lakewood. The City of Lakewood fought it all the way to the Supreme Court (don't remember which one) and lost. + Planned to demolish the historic town center of Olmsted Falls to build an interchange style intersection between Columbia and Bagley roads. At a public meeting at which school children displayed their own drawings of the town center and a little girl spoke up "Please Mr. Porter, don't destroy our town" -- Porter responded by ripping the little girl in front of everyone. + Required that Cleveland Transit System remove the city's last streetcar lines in exchange for support from Cuyahoga County for the proposed east-west Rapid Transit line (today's Red Line). + Opposed the bond issue passed by 65 percent of countywide voters in 1953 to build a downtown subway. Porter got the county commissioners to put so many requirements on the project, including an assurance that there would be no cost overruns, that there was no way the subway could be built. + Advocated numerous other freeway projects that bisected and destroyed Cleveland neighborhoods, significantly eroded the city's taxbase by demolishing homes, businesses, turned private properties into public properties, made it easier for people and businesses to move farther away, thereby spreading the taxbase thinner and over a broader area -- ie: sprawl. Porter was an advocate of it. + And his last straw - he left office in disgrace when it was learned that he required employees of the county engineer's office to contribute to his re-election campaign. That happened at about the same time he chewed out the little girl in Olmsted Falls. The public had had enough of Albert S. Porter. "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 8, 200915 yr Thank God that psycho is gone and homes in Cleveland Hts., East Cleveland and Shaker Hts. are historically protected.
November 8, 200915 yr Columbus: Anyone and everyone from the mitten part of Michigan. Except Kid Rock and ICP though it seems. The U.P. to gets a free pass as well. LOL! At least people from Columbus can identify where those people are. Michiganders: "I hate OSU! Where's Columbus, is it near Cedar Point?"
November 9, 200915 yr LOL! At least people from Columbus can identify where those people are. Michiganders: "I hate OSU! Where's Columbus, is it near Cedar Point?" "Haha, i saw your team lost last night" "No, my team won, i went to Michigan State" "whatever, i don't give a damn about the whole state of michigan...etc..." Yep...both states have stupid band-wagon fans. At least Michigan has a second university to split them up.
November 9, 200915 yr Arsenio Hall, Charles Barkley--Cleveland Arsenio?? People love him. I'm just remembering when everyone was on him for some remarks he said about Cleveland back in the day. I tried to google up some examples but couldn't find any. He gave Cleveland lots of love so my guess everyone decided to forget about it.
November 9, 200915 yr Wasn't there a little list of people who trash talked Cincy after the riots? I thought Bill Cosby was one of them.
November 9, 200915 yr Wasn't there a little list of people who trash talked Cincy after the riots? I thought Bill Cosby was one of them. I still boycott Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, and Smokey Robinson because of their positions in the boycott of Cincy after the riots. When I was in NYC once, I turned down free tickets to some Broadway show because Whoopi was starring in it. I've been known to turn off TV's or change channels whenever I see someone watching the Cosby Show, etc.
November 9, 200915 yr Wasn't there a little list of people who trash talked Cincy after the riots? I thought Bill Cosby was one of them. I still boycott Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, and Smokey Robinson because of their positions in the boycott of Cincy after the riots. When I was in NYC once, I turned down free tickets to some Broadway show because Whoopi was starring in it. I've been known to turn off TV's or change channels whenever I see someone watching the Cosby Show, etc. I love whoopi! She keeps it real. Real real. I thought the opinions of cinci were in line.
November 10, 200915 yr Wasn't there a little list of people who trash talked Cincy after the riots? I thought Bill Cosby was one of them. I still boycott Bill Cosby, Whoopi Goldberg, and Smokey Robinson because of their positions in the boycott of Cincy after the riots. When I was in NYC once, I turned down free tickets to some Broadway show because Whoopi was starring in it. I've been known to turn off TV's or change channels whenever I see someone watching the Cosby Show, etc. I think Cosby apologized? Several of those people broke contracts to avoid the city.
November 10, 200915 yr Intersetinghow many sports figures there are in this discussion. A lot of Cincinnatians don't care for Mike Brown. Maybe they will like him more if the Bengals can keep winning.
November 10, 200915 yr Sports are one of those things an entire city can rally against. Local politicians are still going to have some supporters, and murderers are too obvious. How about a thread about people the city hates to love....like Mike Polk
November 10, 200915 yr like al porter, robert moses gets the majority of nyc hateration. aside from his many bullying pro-suburban moves, he also clear-cut neighborhood brownstones and had them replaced with bland modern people boxes. for example: yikes, this life magazine photo is 215e68th street in manhattan in 1959! :-o :whip: http://gothamist.com/2009/11/10/flashback_last_brownstone_standing.php
November 11, 200915 yr ^Wow, that is horrible. In Mansfield people generally hate Don Nash...or maybe that is just me. He is one of the people responsible for the demolition of The Leland Hotel. Same corner today:
November 11, 200915 yr ^Man, that must have been one of the largest buildings in Mansfield. :cry: Yeah, but at least our other two towers and the Westinghouse Complex are still around. But this Al Porter guy from Cleveland sounds pretty unmatched in terms of destruction. Reading all the excerpts in this thread is terrifying and it's quite frustrating to think he accomplished so many of his destructive goals. What a monster, he must have been in the pockets of an oil company or something... Totally agree.
November 11, 200915 yr But this Al Porter guy from Cleveland sounds pretty unmatched in terms of destruction. Reading all the excerpts in this thread is terrifying and it's quite frustrating to think he accomplished so many of his destructive goals. What a monster, he must have been in the pockets of an oil company or something... Totally agree. of course. they were all backslapping and yukking it up together back then. it was the 'mad men' era.
November 11, 200915 yr It feels nice to slap a boogie man label on someone and think that it is because he is just corrupt. But it's important to note that Porter was completely in step with the contemporary thinking of architecture and planning of his time. That anything we would consider urban was overcrowded, unsightly, and unhealthy and required urban clearcutting was just common sense to the people who made the decisions in 1950.
November 11, 200915 yr well porter is much, much more than a cleveland boogieman and anyway no one said he was just plain corrupt. certainly porter and moses and the like were more than one dimensional, but their destructive side is what gets them the dubious honor of getting named checked on this thread.
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