Posts tagged “Cincinnati”

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Ronny Salerno wrote a great post at Queen City Discovery about the efforts to bring the 2012 Olympic Games to Cincinnati:

This city is often overlooked and under appreciated, even by those that live here. [Cincinnati 2012 President] Nick Vehr dared to challenge the public perception of Cincinnati. He dared to dream big. Cincinnati 2012 may not have brought us the Olympics, but it did bring a sense of civic pride to the city. […] While in recent time, Cincinnati has certainly been on the rise, Vehr’s Olympic story shows us that you can combat the naysayers and change the perception — Cincinnati is a city worth fighting for.

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I wrote to Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown regarding Representative Steve Chabot’s attempt to overturn the will of Cincinnati voters and insert an anti-earmark against bus and rail transit into a federal transportation funding bill.

Fortunately, Senator Brown sees the danger of the amendment, and replied:

I appreciate hearing your views on how important it is to fund transportation initiatives in Cincinnati. Recently an amendment was offered to the House appropriations bill that would restrict funding for light rail or “fixed guideway” systems in the City of Cincinnati. I share your concerns about this potentially overbroad language.

Should relevant legislation come before the Senate, you can be sure I will keep your concerns in mind.

On the latest episode of The UrbanCincy Podcast, we discuss Rep. Chabot’s amendment, which would ban future federal funding for any sort of light rail, commuter rail, streetcar, freight rail, bus rapid transit (BRT), or other “fixed guideway” system in Cincinnati.

We also discuss how the extreme politicization of transportation issues results in politicians “selling out” their own constituants and costs taxpayers much more in the long run.

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Bunbury, Isle of White

CityBeat’s string of whiny editorials continues.

This time, Kathy Y. Wilson, author of the column “Your Negro Tour Guide,” complains that last weekend’s Bunburry music festival didn’t have any bands that “vaguely interested” her, despite her claim that she’s a fan of “all kinds of music.” She’s also upset that it was full of so many darn white people!

Wilson also takes a number of weak jabs at festival founder Bill Donabedian, who put his personal reputation (and probably his credit score) on the line to organize this ambitious event. The first annual festival drew headliners Jane’s Addiction, Weezer and Death Cab for Cutie, and met attendance expectations of 55,000 people.

I didn’t go to Bunburry this year. I was out of town for one of the nights; I’ve already attended one three-day music festival this summer; and there weren’t any bands I wanted to see enough to justify buying a $46 one-day pass. But it would be absurd for me to dismiss this festival because it didn’t cater to my specific musical tastes.

I love the first comment from an anonymous reader:

If you couldn’t find one artist in the lineup that interested you then you’re not a fan of “all kinds of music”; you don’t like alternative/indie rock music, which was the genre of this festival. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but there are different genres of music, and sometimes festivals cater to a specific one.

I’m not sure what CityBeat’s new owners are thinking, but they must be attempting to reduce the publication to tabloid-quality journalism. They should’ve kept Kevin Osborne and laid off Kathy Wilson instead.

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The Cincinnati Enquirer has posted a photo gallery of Cincinnati’s re-opened Washington Park, which consists of other people’s photos found on Instagram, Flickr, and Twitter. (Maybe they no longer employ any photographers of their own.)

Unfortunately, they either threw this thing together quickly or didn’t realize that Cincinnati isn’t the only city with a Washington Park. Their gallery currently includes a shot of Washington Square Park in New York (pictured above). I assume they will go back and remove it as more people point this out to them.

(Thanks to Jake Mecklenborg for the tip.)

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deeodoront’s cincinnati rant:

Way I see it, the reason it sucks for us kids is because of this lack of communication between where-it’s-at and everywhere else. Public transit in this city is notoriously bad, from the half finished subway to the proposed streetcar (when pigs fly amirite?) to the hit or miss bus system. To get anywhere worthwhile you either have to take 75 or 71 by car, which is time consuming and can be dangerous, PLUS who the fuck ever wants to DD?

It’s funny I found this Tumblr post moments after I posted about CityBeat’s editorial on driving and parking downtown.

I agree with a lot of the things in deeodoront’s “rant”. However, things are changing fast. Yes, a lot of lifelong Cincinnatians still hold a grudge against the city or falsely believe that our urban neighborhoods are “dangerous”. But a lot of lifelong citizens, like myself and many of my friends who grew up in the outer Cincinnati suburbs, now love what downtown has to offer. And by fast, I mean downtown’s population has jumped 12% in one year.

To clear up one point in the deeodoront’s quote above: The streetcar is happening. It is under construction right now. We have all of the funding we need to build it. Streetcar opponents have tried to stop it two times, and voters supported the streetcar in 2009 and 2011. I look forward to riding in in 2013. And I look forward to some future date when it connects to additional rail lines linking downtown with other city neighborhoods.

Deeodoront, I invite you to check out sites like UrbanCincy, Over-the-Rhine Blog, Cincinnati Blog, 5chw4r7z, Building Cincinnati, and UrbanOhio to see the what’s happening in the city.

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CityBeat’s whiny rant about driving and parking downtown

This week, CityBeat published a bizarre editorial about how hard it is to drive and park downtown. It appears the author was unaware that Taste of Cincinnati—an event attended by approximately 500,000 people every year— was going on, and was shocked to find that Fifth Street was closed and all the parking garages were full or expensive.

Brian Griffin of Cincinnati Blog writes:

Get out the big box of tissues! CityBeat’s Maija Zummo is upset about the Pony she got. Her pony, in this case, is the vibrant Downtown/OTR we had last weekend, with about a thousand things to do. She had two things she wanted to do and didn’t seem to be aware of the other 998 things going on, and therefore is pissed that traffic and parking were problems for her.

As downtown Cincinnati starts accumulating more things to do, parking is going to keep getting harder. This is especially a problem for older cities like Cincinnati that were planned before cars existed and simply don’t have enough room for every resident and visitor to park a car. The answer, of course, is that we need quality transit to move people around quicker and easier.

CityBeat was sold to new owners in March, and they’ve already made some staff changes. It’s possible that the new owners are intentionally trying to focus less on downtown and cater more toward suburban readers. That would be terrible timing, since even the most extreme anti-city media outlets are finally admitting the success of downtown.

Still, a part of me thinks this article was a work of satire.