Does the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Hate Transit ?

A couple times a year The Cincinnati USA Chamber of Commerce shuts down the main bus transit hub in Cincinnati, Government Square for Taste of Cincinnati and Oktoberfest. With the addition of the Streetcar to the basin, their festivals will now cut into streetcar service.
Why?
"That's what we've always done"
Looking at the Chamber's board members, they seem to be less interested in promoting business than maintaining their old school power base and A. they don't use transit and B. their businesses are around Fountain Square.
Thing is, there's this new park & non essential road down by the river that would be perfect for festivals of this nature. It also offers better transit options with the streetcar & buses at the Transit Center. But, yeah, transit doesn't matter.
The small businesses around the events suffer during these events as booths are set up curbside and the sidewalks in front of the businesses are used for storing trash.
The boys at UrbanCincy think moving events to the riverfront makes sense, but, of course they don't own multi million companies with offices around Fountain Square.
Moerlein has a tent set up to celebrate Oktoberfest and there's no reason not to tap the keg on Fountain Square & maintain a beer garden there & at Findlay Market for people wh don't have much tolerance for crowds. And all those locations can be tied to mass transit. crap - I keep forgetting....
It just seems short sighted, petty & vain.

Gateways

Marijuana is not a Gateway Drug. Marijuana Prohibition creates a Gateway Crime.
Caffeine gets you high. That doesn't mean it's a gateway to heroin which also gets you high. But when you buy a joint, you are entering the black market & engaging in the criminal underworld where all sorts of stuff is bought & sold.
Going to the grocery & picking up some Coke does not introduce anybody to the whole criminal underworld thing.

Leave It Alone

As I watch Cincinnati's mayor torture his city, playing cruel games that only he can find twisted sport in, I am reminded of the demented hunchback dwarf, Fritz, in the movie Frankenstein.
John Cranley's latest scheme is to transform Burnett Woods in Clifton. A perfectly fine park that provides some forestry in an otherwise paved & over developed community. But Cranley finds the woods 'scary' & wants to screw with nature some more. The return on such a project would be minimal if not a loss.
heck, Burnett Woods doesn't even get mentioned in The Windbag's $782M squandering manifesto.
A much better plan would to develop Wesleyan Cemetery and actually generate some revenue as outlined here.
Cranley's strategies of borrowing, giveaways & torture for no apparent reason will bankrupt this city & leave it's citizens burning it down in waves of fear & anger.
Torturing the monster didn't end well for old Fritz & didn't help the relationship between Dr Frankenstein & his monster. I urge John Cranley to put down the whip & use the torch to illuminate and lead instead of satisfying some angry craving.

Is Daredevil In The Golden Dawn ?

nonononono not that Golden Dawn, this Golden Dawn.
Sure, he had a hot Greek girlfriend in college, but Matt Murdock is Roman Catholic not Greek Orthodox. You people slay me.
Anyway the shot, above, in the opening credits of the new Daredevil series shows a symbol very similar to the occult group's symbol
DD was no stranger to esoteric mystic poop but he never went the GD route when I read the comic. Maybe he did in later years. Maybe it's a new path for the little screen series.
Maybe it's a coincidence.
MAYBE they could introduce a right wing militant Elektra!

Ethics & Sexbots

The boys over at Robot Overlordz talk to John Danaher about ethics and the use of sex robots and how prostitution might actually grow as people are forced out of the traditional workforce & need to find other ways to make money.

4/25 in Hell Town

Wondering what to do this Saturday?
Here's an idea - get thee to enigmatic Northside where I74 & I75 come together and channel Kentucky bound motorists into the meat grinding death trap of a bridge over the angry swirling waters of the Ohio River.
But why do that when you can spend the day in the lush pleasant valley along the banks of the cool & easy Mill Creek.
What's there to do you ask? Well, you can pull garlic mustard from a nature preserve, pick up trash with the Great American Cleanup, check out the annual record fair at North Presbo, take a carriage ride in Spring Grove Cemetery, check out the liquidation sale at the soon to open Northside Yacht Club, groove to the Queen City Soul Club Dance Party at the Northside Tavern or swoon to the sweet tempos of Kid Stardust at the Comet.
Urban Artifact opened Friday. There's plenty of grub at Golden Tajine, Melt, NYPD, The Kitchen Factory, The Blue Jay, Park Chili, D'Jango Western Taco, Barrio Tequileria (?), Tacocracy, Taco Hell, White Castle, Boswell's, The Littlefield, and more
Don't let the postponement of the cemetery bulb pulling get you down, there's still lotsa fun stuff to do in Section 28!

Happy Birthday, Bettie!

< 1923 - 2008

The Covered Girl Challenge

Teenage Muslim girls wanted to get non Muslim girls to wear a hijab for a day in far off Mason, OH. The school announced it like it was a school event and the xenophobic parents went all jihad on the school for trying to convert their kids to Islam. The principal freaked out and the liberty loving patriots prevented their kids from making the free choice to wear a hijab or not.
Why? Would they object to the head gear or clothes of Christian sects?
Some people compared wearing the head gear to forcing a non Christian to wear a crucifix on a necklace. The crucifix is a completely religious symbol. Anybody can wear a scarf.
People, mainly males, claimed the hijab represented the subjugation of women. These same men wanted to prohibit the girls from wearing the hijabs for a day - pretty much subjugating them for their freedom.
yeah, I don't get it.
Here's the deal, tho. Our society is, if not just getting more secular, it's moving from the sacred to the profane. People aren't dressing up and going to churches dripping in symbolism but going to rehabbed warehouses, hardware stores & movie theaters while wearing their street clothes. They don't listen to sacred music, they listen to crappy rock music.
Maybe wearing a 'sacred' garment, from any religion might get a person to examine his spirituality a bit more.
Meanwhile I'm looking forward to the boys wearing a long beard for a day at school.

Read more at The Fishwarp

Happy 420 Day!

It's looking like legal marijuana finally might have a chance. There are competing measures to legalize marijuana in Ohio. The best one looks like Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis, not to be confused with Responsible Ohio.
Responsible Ohio gives all production rights to 10 lucky farmers, doesn't allow for home growing and appears to address the employer testing nor people incarcerated for simple possession. It does stipulate the distribution of tax revenue & provide for testing/quality control.
Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis addresses the employer testing nor people incarcerated for simple possession, allows for home growing and uses simple licensing for production. Their tax rate is lower & no stipulations are made for tax revenue distribution.
Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis's plan is a lot more free & competitive than Responsible Ohio's, but I don't think home growers should be selling and I like Responsible Ohio's provisions for quality control.
Unfortunately, Responsible Ohio is getting a heap of press and Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis is getting fairly ignored. This seems to indicate BIG $$$$ is behind Responsible Ohio and, as such, a money grab. Using a name so similar to the original's is kinda stinky, too.
Hopefully people ill consider these 2 bills and vote for the one that seems better and not just go off & spastically vote for the first bill to come along.

Hometown Sunset

Happy Birthday Loretta Lynn

The Best Reality Your Tax Dollars Can Buy

That's right, folks, it's time for the annual liquor license renewal challenges.
Some of the poop going down in Cincinnati bars and stores is nothing short of a real treat. People selling stolen property, guns, dope...
People who say they can't speak English when they can. People getting into fights with police and inspectors...
And speaking of police? The way they report crime & force business owners into paying CPD overtime rates for security is like watching old time gangster movies with seedy gang bosses in the protection racket.
I'm always forgetting when to watch. Hopefully it won't be as bad as when Janke presided over the police side but Clown in Charge, Chris Smitherman & committee member Winburn should offer some possibility for antics.
The next meeting will be Monday April 13 @ 10AM
You can watch it here on a Windows computer or plug this into VLC (under File/OpenNetwork) on anything, mms://citicable.cincinnati-oh.gov/citicable.
And, of course it's on Slime Warner cable if you waste money on that crap.

Taco Hell Delivered

What could go wrong ?
Taco Hell has announced it is thinking about delivering their Juadaperras, Tuscomeenos, Grande Supremos and other delicacies to your door but thy are not sure how.
Since crispy corn tortillas tend to dissolve in grease over time, some dishes would only make it out to the sidewalk. Other dishes in flour tortillas lose their heat rapidly and wouldn't be hot pretty much after they made it to the sidewalk. The thing is, they don't serve hot food in the stores.
So, what to do?
Make the food in the delivery vehicle? Like - like a taco truck ?
Yes, roaming taco trucks using the stores as commissaries would work and, given the popularity of the Hell, they could offer subscriptions! A piping hot spudilla at your door every Tuesday at 7PM !
yay
and you are welcome Taco Hell.

Read more at HuffPo

Clowncil

After discussing trails & sister cities the Transportation Committee of Cincinnati City Council went back to bickering & nit picking over the Cincinnati Streetcar.
Pretty amazing. SORTA sent a guy to address the committee who was unprepared and had nothing to present. Dude couldn't even divulge the number of RFPs received. It was reminiscent of when the old head of SORTA claimed Mayor Luken had likened himself to Jesus. I guess the arrogance & incompetence of the organization ain't changed much.
Seelbach accused Murray of 'picking on' the streetcar but Murray assured him she wants to scrutinize everything. But she failed to make any motions to scrutinize the MLK interchange that supporters claim will create 6,000 jobs nor the driveway to Cincinnati State that will shave a mile off students' commute.
Towards the end, motions that might be pertinent if they had any idea what SORTA was doing got bogged down into arguments over procedure. Ultimately enough hot air to heat the public school system for 6 years. And that's without the Windbag.
Meanwhile I was left wondering why we have no sister cities in Central or South America. Jacmel? Santiago? Buenos Aires?
The Mill Creek folks are working hard on recreational trails they think are transportation.
EDIT:
Lest I get too negative, one of the bright spots of the meeting were 2 speakers - individual young men who had transplanted to Cincinnati in the past 4 - 6 years. In a city struggling with it's population, these are exactly what we should want, young socially active citizens joining this community.

Lon Chaney Sr

1883 - 1930
Happy Birthday, Lon