Beneath The Kemper St. Bridge

Traveling To Chicago? Try Megabus.

Once upon a time in high school, a buddy of mine and I took a Greyhound bus down to Florida for spring break. It was the thankfully the last Greyhound experience I ever had. The bus ride itself was long and uncomfortable, and the ridership that frequents Greyhound bus travel is interesting to say the least. It was just too much for a 9th grader.

In an earlier post I mentioned visiting Chicago and didn't even mention the bus option. Well, I had known about Megabus, having seen one of them on the road a few times, but forgot about it — I must have blocked it from my mind due to my Greyhound experience — until I read this Megabus review.

I was still really skeptical. Why am I considering taking the bus? A lot of times buses between large cities, at least here in the states, are for people who cannot afford other methods of transportation. There's a social stigma the industry HAS earned. You know what, I'm a little guilty of that thought and wanted to beat it out of me. So I decided to be logical, figure out dollars and time considerations. There is a bit of an emotional reason as well: I want to believe that travel in our country can be accomplished on a bus. I want to believe there are great and greener alternatives to flying or driving. Outside of the US it's pretty common to take buses or rails around a country.

Read the rest.

Twist on 4th St.

Went to Twist for a birthday party last week. Somehow ended up ordering Sarah a $12 glass of wine. Dammit. C'est la vie.

What Message Does Cincinnati Send?

I've linked to Paul Graham before. In Cities and Ambition, he says:

Great cities attract ambitious people. You can sense it when you walk around one. In a hundred subtle ways, the city sends you a message: you could do more; you should try harder.

How much does it matter what message a city sends? Empirically, the answer seems to be: a lot. You might think that if you had enough strength of mind to do great things, you'd be able to transcend your environment. Where you live should make at most a couple percent difference. But if you look at the historical evidence, it seems to matter more than that. Most people who did great things were clumped together in a few places where that sort of thing was done at the time.

No matter how determined you are, it's hard not to be influenced by the people around you. It's not so much that you do whatever a city expects of you, but that you get discouraged when no one around you cares about the same things you do.

I wonder what message Cincinnati sends?

No Dial-Up For You

From CityBeat:

The Cincinnati Enquirer's Web site has experienced a double-digit drop in traffic since its parent company recently forced a format change that many users have complained is slow and cumbersome.

Slow and cumbersome? Really? I think people are being unreasonable in demanding a website that is not a mile long, does not scroll on forever, and contains less than a whopping 1.1MB of files [YSlow on Cincinnati.com]. Seriously, people. That's what broadband is for.


In any case, I do not envy print media like Gannett these days. They have their work cut out for them. I believe that "newspapers" will thrive and succeed in the Internet age, but the profits will definitely never be as big, and the newsrooms never be as crowded as they once were. The heyday of newspapers as we are familiar with them are long gone.

But at least they are trying to change, rather than just suing and charging everyone to keep things the same like some industries.

Who... Dey...

The head coach is under attack for some questionable decisions and clock management. The star wide receiver has as many drops as catches. The high-powered offense has scored one touchdown in eight quarters. The defense just lost another starter to a serious injury.

Sound familiar? At first I thought that was about the Bengals, but it's from a story about the Browns. The state of parity in Ohio pro football is strong!

I had a serious post about the Bengals in mind, but really, what's the point?

Mad Max Beyond Walnut Hills

In Mad Max, Mel Gibson wanders a war-ravaged future where fuel has become the only thing of value. Seeing all the long lines at gas stations on the news today sort of reminded me of that. Sort of.

Anyway, since everyone else has been posting their storm photos, I may as well too. We were fortunate enough to not have been affected at all really by the storm. Our cable and internet went out in the early afternoon, and was restored in the late evening. But power never went out. Incredible, considering both streets on either side of us lost their power. And a giant motherf'in tree fell down right in front of our building:

Park Ave. and Victory Pkwy.

Wm. Howard Taft and Park Ave.