CENTRAL CINCINNATI
July 29 2008
The Peace Bike and the Eyewitness Cam lobbied for yet another Roads Scholaring. So we bipped over to downtown Cincinnati!
As evidence of this street's safety, it's US 42, part of the U.S. numbered highway system. (Then again, that doesn't make US 27 in the Campbell County suburbs any safer. I'm more afraid of suburban Campbell County than I am of Central Parkway.)
So that's what's monitoring everyone? I bet getting the camera implanted hurt! But seriously, this is northwest on Eggleston Avenue, opposite Sentinel Street. This is under I-71, and the overpass up ahead is the Gilbert Avenue Viaduct.
Right on the edge between low-crime and high-crime neighborhoods. I took this photo from the end of Central Parkway, which itself is very safe, so don't get too worked up. This is north on Broadway as it enters one of the most dangerous parts of town (where the crime rate soared under Bush). Still, I felt much safer here than at Brossart, so I don't care to hear any ravings about dangerous neighborhoods after I was deprived of safe schools for 6 years.
This does not scare me. Not one iota. This is west on Reading Road towards Bunker Alley. Not a bunker blast, but Bunker Alley. US 42 uses most of Reading Road, but here US 42 branches off to the left onto Central Parkway.
South on Sycamore Street from Central Parkway. The walkway over the street links the courthouse and the jail.
West on Central Parkway, which opened in 1928 along the path of a canal that was abandoned years earlier. This street separates downtown from the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Dare I say it, I'm actually on the Over-the-Rhine half of the street. But this is Central Parkway and not a side alley, and it's very safe. On the left side of the street, you see the Kroger skyscraper.
Want more safety? This is a video of the Peace Bike traveling on Plum Street from Central Parkway south almost to 6th.
Under the reign of the hated 3CDC, Fountain Square instituted a bike ban in the mid-2000s. So what did the Peace Bike do? Why, it chose to violate this Allowed Cloud! Here's the Peace Bike enjoying the southeast portion of Fountain Square.
From 2nd & Main, this is a parking garage that was being demolished. I think the garage was at 3rd & Sycamore and was being torn down for what was slated to become Cincinnati's tallest skyscraper.
From Mehring Way & Broadway, this is looking up at a Toyota Tundra resting atop the rim of the Reds stadium.
Also from Mehring Way & Broadway, this is a Ride the Ducks tour boat - which looks like an old TANK bus submerged in the Ohio River! It really is a bus/boat hybrid: I later saw it tooling down Mehring Way.
Northeast on a path under one of the arches under the approach of the Newport Southbank Bridge. This path goes to Bicentennial Commons. (Cue the "Read On!" fife music!)
I think this is my fave photo in this set! This is northeast on the rail line along US 52. US 52 here is also known as Riverside Drive, which had been renamed from Eastern Avenue a year or two earlier. According to CityBeat of 2/14/07, the name change was sought by developers and residents of swanky new condos - and took place without input from nearby working-class residents who wanted to keep the old name. (This road was Front Street even before it was Eastern.) The elevated road near the upper-left corner of the photo is the ramp from Columbia Parkway to Martin Drive.
This is an old Cincinnati Fire Department building at US 52 & Adams Crossing. At this intersection, US 52 changes from Pete Rose Way to Riverside Drive. Adams Crossing (the street on the left) was part of Martin Street not too many years before. What is now US 52 used to be Pearl Street here.
The wonders of a zoom lens! This is the pedestrian walkway over Columbia Parkway that runs from somewhere in the Adams Crossing area to around Hill & Celestial in Mount Adams.