Photos Of Other Cities

Hello. I know I have been absent from this blog. Unfortunately, I have to say, do not expect this to change any time soon.

In the meantime, here are some photos of trips to New York and Chicago.

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Grand Central Station

We were lucky enough to run right into a Free Tibet march, fake prisoners and everything.

Lunch in Bryant Park.

 

Central Park.

Looking uptown.

Looking downtown.

 

By sheer coincidence, we found ourselves in Times Square during Earth Hour, when they shut off all the big screens.

A secret burger joint!

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At night, this American Gothic couple comes to life and cleans garbage off the streets.

At the Museum of Science & Industry, in one giant room, they have a giant train set model of the entire country!

High atop the Sears Tower.

   

The Museum of Natural History is pretty freakin' cool.

 

From Navy Pier.

Cincinnati Impresses: ShareThis.com

At a recent OINK-PUG meeting, the accessible folks from ShareThis.com talked about their ubiquitous Javascript button and their server infrastructure.

If you aren't familiar with ShareThis, they provide the sharing button that appears at the bottom of this very blog post. Every page I go to these days seems to have the little green button. Occasionally I find myself wanting to share a page that uses not ShareThis but one of the alternatives, and I find myself cursing because I do not have immediate access to my contacts. (Thank goodness I have the ShareThis Firefox add-on to fall back on.) I bet that there are a lot of people in Cincinnati using the button on their web properties, and don't even know that the company is based right here in the Queen City.

ShareThis started in Columbus, moved to Cincinnati, and now has an office in Mountain View, California. They boast a number of accomplishments to be envied by any company in any city, the least of which being $21 million in venture funding. A $21 million dollar funded consumer internet company, in Cincinnati?

But equally impressive to those in the industry is the raw technology that powers their infrastructure. ShareThis was one of earliest case studies on Amazon Web Services, and the Rightscale demo given that night was memorable (maybe that says more about Rightscale).

They've got that hockey stick growth according to relevant traffic measures, so I'm excited to see what happens from here onward. Let's downplay that Mountain View office, and keep the PR coming from Ohio.

Cincinnati Impresses

This is the intro to a series of blogs coming up that all submit the same theme. Perhaps it will become a longer series.

I have observed or have been sent a few things lately that keep sticking in my mind. Each of these sticks in my mind because they are or imply, well, super awesome things about Cincinnati. When I think about them, I think, "Wow. That's incredible. Is this happening in other cities?" And I am left to wonder. (The answer is probably yes, but still it feels good to wonder.)

And these aren't impressive in an obvious way, the way that maybe we have sports teams that dominate, or the way that our modern art museum is architecturally significant. These impress in a more subtle way (at least they're subtle to me). Or perhaps they impress only to the niche that I find myself playing in these days.

Streetcars & Pecha Kucha

Some short notes on a couple items in Soapbox this week. First, an excellent opinion on the streetcar.

It should be noted that the proposed Mill Creek Expressway/I-75 project will essentially add one single lane of freeway in both directions of I-75 between the Western Hills Viaduct and Paddock Road, while also revamping on/off ramps, and will cost an estimated $642.5 million. That's an extra lane of freeway for 7.9 miles, plus revamping interchanges.  ...In addition to the $642.5 million Mill Creek Expressway project, the Through the Valley project will engage in an additional widening exercise from Paddock to I-275 at the cost of an additional $149 million (at least).

...Coincidentally enough, if the full stretch [of the streetcar] to the zoo and back were implemented, it would be a route of roughly 7.9 miles, the same stretch of widening on I-75.

So we have critics carping on the profligacy of spending $185 million versus a whopping $800 million for freeway widening.

 

The second item I noticed was about the apparent success of the first Pecha Kucha night in Cincinnati.

"PK Vol. 1 was such a huge success," says official organizer, Greg Lewis. "It demonstrated that the same desire that got PK started in Tokyo six years ago is present here in Cincinnati today."

Uh, I don't mean anything negative, but I know that technology groups around the region have been doing these presentations for last two years.  They may not have been as flashy, and certainly none were in as cool a venue as the CAC, but they have been around.  You may have heard them mistakenly referred to as Machu Pichu talks, or Pikachu presentations, but PK has been present in Cincinnati for a while now.  So thanks for participating.  :) 

Storm's A-Comin'

Tornado sirens sounded on and off as a high wind advisory lasted throughout the day and into the night.  But the afternoon was actually pretty calm, except for a few isolated torrential rainstorms that stopped as soon as they started.  Here's the end of one of those rainstorms, looking at Bellevue and Dayton.

And those two pictures stitched together...

A Word On Consumption

One thing I love about CityKin is that I get all this great information from urban/green media, but don't have to track any of it. In a post about efficiency vs. sustainability is this quoted quote:

Driving a car that is 10% more efficient uses the same amount of gas as driving 10% less.

It's a sentiment I've dwelled on before. Sure, it's great if that new pair of shoes is made locally by workers paid a living wage with sustainable materials, but do you really need a new pair of shoes? (Forgive me if my example offends those of you who love your shoes.)

I don't consider myself particularly green with the stuff I have, but I have a compulsion to own as little as possible. (Or maybe I'm just cheap.) I have a coat that used to be my dad's. All my shoes are at least 6 years old. I pretty much own things until they are run into the ground. Then I try to sell them on eBay or give them to Goodwill. Unfortunately, the more I look around, the more it feels like we live in a disposable world.

I don't know if it's my training, or if I'm just lazy, but I am also very anal about energy and time trade-offs. I hate sitting in traffic. I hate braking on hills. I love walking because even though it takes more time, I benefit from the activity and from saving gas. I meticulously load every corner of the dishwasher, and usually hand-wash pots and pans. I break down every box I throw away or recycle, not only to save landfill or bin space, but also because it means I'll have to take out the garbage less.

I like this quote from CityKin's post a lot too.

Living in a place where you can get to all the daily necessities of life by walking, biking or driving gives you much more freedom than living in a place where your only choice is driving.

I don't get to drive much, so sometimes I just like drive around at night aimlessly. Especially in the summer. At first, I felt guilty about it, like I was wasting gas, but eventually I realized the same thing in that quote. Being green is about freedom just as much as it is about anything else.

Third Least Popular? Sure.

The Enquirer points out a Pew Research Study on Social & Demographic Trends that place Cincinnati third from the bottom of a list of cities people would most like to live.

I started this post by trying to point out the flawed methodology in the study, as I usually do for negative reports.  But the methodology was pretty solid.  So I looked at the part of the phone survey that gathered data for this list of cities.  The question went like this:

As I read through the following places, just tell me your first reaction: Would you want to live in this city or its surrounding metropolitan area or NOT want to live there?

First, …[INSERT ITEM; RANDOMIZE]

READ IF NECESSARY: What’s your first reaction? Would you want to live in [INSERT ITEM] or not want to live there?
IF RESPONDENT SAYS THEY CURRENTLY LIVE IN THIS AREA, PROBE ONCE: “If you had a choice, would you want to live there, or not want to live there?”

So it really becomes a gut answer.  I say a name, you give me your first reaction.  And when I think about what my answers would be, all the superficial reputations I have for cities, good or bad, bubble to the top.

When I hear...	I immediately think of...
New York City	Way cool, way hard to live there.
Cleveland	Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. River caught on fire.
Dallas	Hot, flat, crowded. Um, Texas.
Minneapolis	Quite nice. Lakes and forests.
Orlando	Hot, flat. Disneyworld. Lots of young people.
Portland	Hippies wearing hemp and riding streetcars.
Sacramento	Hot, flat, desert. Near Tahoe.
St. Louis	Uh, they got that big arch.
Pittsburgh	Very scenic. Hills and rivers.
San Diego	Beach, beach, beach. First line of defense from Mexico.
Detroit	Robocop.
Houston	Even hotter than Dallas.
Las Vegas	Desert. Water shortages. The Strip of course.
Los Angeles	Way cool. Sprawling. Traffic.
San Antonio	The Alamo. The Riverwalk. Um, Texas.
Philadelphia	East coast, but not too east coast. Still expensive.
Phoenix	Desert. Retirees.
Seattle	Beautiful scenery. Lots of childless couples with dogs.
Tampa	Beach. Retirees?
Washington, D.C.	Lots of interesting things going on. Expensive.
Atlanta	Big city. Southern hospitality.
Baltimore	Inner harbor. Armpit of Washington, D.C.
Boston	Scenic waterways. Lots of young people and colleges.
Chicago	Scenic lakefront. Big city. Midwestern sensibilities.
Denver	Mountains, mountains, mountains.
Kansas City	Funny that Kansas City is not in Kansas.
Miami	Expensive and pretentious. Pro athletes. Celebrities. Nice weather though.
Riverside	Riverside? California? Isn't this just part of L.A.?
San Francisco	Gay people. Liberal bastion. Technology.

 

I put those up very quickly. Now what about Cincinnati?  Obviously, I'm biased, but if really tried to pretend I was an outsider, what are the first things that spring to mind?  WKRP.  Rain man. Conservative.

And that's the problem we, and the likes of Detroit and Cleveland, face.  Of course, Cincinnati is a great place to live for all sorts of people.  But how would you know?   That's the work that's never finished. 

So I believe that Cincinnati might finish third from the bottom in a survey like that, even if I know it's not true.