Vote “No On 9″ Cincinnati

My “No on 9″ yard sign was delivered today.

I’m not typically one for yard signs, but this issue is an exception for me. I think the final straw was when I was driving down Ridge Road and saw a yard sign that said “Vote Yes on 9. Stop the Streetcar”. And, if there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s misleading propaganda. Yes, if Issue 9 passes, the streetcar will stop in its tracks (sorry for the pun). But, if Issue 9 passes, it will effectively kill the possibility of passenger rail in this city for the foreseeable future.

I dig the streetcar idea myself. I’ve used the streetcar in Memphis to get around. I walked over a bike trail next to streetcar line in Seattle and thought I was in heaven. But I understand people who don’t support it. And, my purpose right now isn’t to argue for the streetcar. I’m more interested in arguing against Issue 9.

Cincinnati is an adopted city for me. I love how the city has festivals for obscure local meats. I enjoy that the world’s largest chicken dance takes place here. The neighborhoods, like little towns, are unique and wonderful. The cost of living is absurdly and wonderfully low. I’ve met the nicest people here. I met my husband here. I now have wonderful friends and family that are just minutes away.

One of my big gripes is the city’s track record with transit, as I really think most people here view public transit as the option of last resort for the “have nots”.  So, if we leave all transit initiatives up to a public vote, nothing will pass until the traffic situation here is so intolerable that no one can stand it anymore. We elect our public officials to look ahead and make bold decisions for our city’s future. That’s one of the reasons our founders liked the idea of representative government. It allowed individuals elected by the people to become informed on the issues and make decisions on our behalf. If you don’t like the people who are making these bold decisions, vote them out of office. Make sure you do research on the candidate’s positions before you vote and don’t just read yard signs.

People will start to move to cities that have their infrastructure act together, if we continue to focus on moving cars and not people. Transit, in my opinion, is the final piece of the puzzle for making Cincinnati the perfect Midwestern city.

If you vote yes on Issue 9, you hurt the future of transit in the city. Forget about the streetcar for a minute. Take a look at the bigger picture. Even Bill Cunningham and I agree on that point — which is amazingly hard to believe. Typing it actually freaks me out a little.

Long story short: If you hear someone refer to Issue 9 as the “streetcar issue”, call them out on it. We need make it clear that Issue 9 is about more than streetcars; it’s about progress.

UPDATE: If you want to see a great piece outlining the myths about Issue 9, go check out CityKin’s post on the subject.

Drink Local: Elk Creek Vineyards

Drink local with wines from Elk Creek Vineyards this Halloween

Elk Creek Vineyards recently gave me the opportunity to try and review their very fun line of Halloween wines. Since they’re located just an hour south of Cincinnati, I jumped at the opportunity to try out this local wine. After all, most people don’t think “wine country” when they hear “Northern Kentucky”.

When I opened the box and pulled out my bottle of Ghostly White Chardonnay, I knew I had found the perfect item to take to the crazy Halloween Party we always attend at Jon’s cousin’s house. We never come close to winning the costume contest, but we always shine when it comes to food and beverage contributions.

Now, I’m not a wine expert, but I know what I like. I generally go for dry white wines, and the Chardonnay definitely fits the bill. We tried it with a light pasta dinner and it was great. Someone with a better palette than I described it as “evoking bobbing apples with a hint of citrus thrown in for good measure.” I’d say I agree. I was definitely pleased with this local, Northern Kentucky wine. I may have to take a drive down to check out the full operation, I hear they have a lot to do down at the vineyard — live music, art shows, dinners, etc.

Anyway, the winery also offers a Bone Dry Red, and a sweet white that I can imagine having with dessert when my sweet tooth gets the better of me.

Want some? The wines are available in coffin displays at the winery and Elk Creek stores, including Florence Mall, Rupp Arena, Fayette Mall, and the Mall at St. Matthews. The wines are also available at Kentucky Kroger Liquor stores, Party Town, Party Source, and Jungle Jim’s.

Want a deal? The generous folks at Elk Creek are giving Laura’s Carbon Footprint readers a special discount on these and other great wines. If you choose to buy online at http://www.elkcreekvineyards.com, you can use code SCARYWINE for 10% off 3 wines, or code SCARYCASE for 20% a case (any varietal) and free shipping. The coupons can be used on any type of wine – not just Halloween. We are currently unable to ship to the following states: AL, AK, AR, DE, IL, IA, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, NJ, NM, NY, OK, PA, RI, SD, TN, UT and WI.

Happy Halloween! Now that I’ve got the wine covered, what in the world am I going to dress up as this year? Hmmmm…

I don’t know where I find this stuff…

I have no idea how I get on the mailing lists I do, but I recently received this pretty cool notice about green pizza boxes. Seriously. I would definitely give preference to a place that used these. Getting to break down a pizza box into useful parts! Awesome. From an article on PizzaMarketplace.com:

ECO Inc., a maker of environmentally friendly and multifunctional packaging, will debut its first product, the GreenBox, on Monday in Manhattan. The Greenbox is a pizza box made from 100 percent recycled material that also breaks down into serving plates and a storage container for leftover pizza.

The article also states that 2.4 billion pizza boxes are circulated each year and that they typically aren’t made from recycled materials. I had never really thought about the waste produced by pizza boxes, but it makes sense. Check out the video they have in that article I linked above. It looks pretty easy to me.

Hey Papa Johns, it would be awesome if you would deliver my beloved cheese sticks in one of these.

Great Streetcar Video

I believe it’s really important to vote “No on 9″ whether you support the streetcar or not.

I happen to support the streetcar and am a big fan of this video offering the facts about the proposal. Having recently spent time in Seattle and seeing bike lanes, bike trails and streetcars together making downtown easy and convenient to navigate, I have to think we can pull that off here.

So, not sold on the streetcar? Watch this:

Betting on Transit

I’m a fan of horse racing. I’ve been going to the track and placing bets on the ponies since before I was legally allowed to take my cash up to the ticket booth. I’m no expert on horse racing by any means – I don’t read through the detailed stats for the horses in the program. I pick horses with good odds, a cool name, flashy silks, and nice look. I rarely go for the long shot, unless I’ve already placed a bet on a favorite.

So what does this have to do with public transit in Cincinnati? Here it goes. If you were placing bets, would you bet on Cincy? Not as an insider who knows the game, but as a casual gambler who looks at the odds and the flashy silks, or who maybe always picks the gray horse.

I, as an optimist and an insider, am betting on Cincy. I am hopeful that the Cincinnati Streetcar will happen as planned. I believe the Cincinnati bicycling community is on the right track making Cincinnati streets safer for everyone. I can’t wait for the Ohio River Trail to be complete. And, I love – and ride – Metro.

Some would argue that Cincinnati is great as it is, and I would agree. But, as someone who’s very insightful told me the other day, “it’s not where we are right now that bothers me; it’s where we’re going.”

Cities across the country are betting on transit. Seattle just opened the central line for its light rail system and has multiple branches in the works to open over the next 10 years. At least 40 other cities are planning streetcars across the country. Denver, Portland, Salt Lake City, and even Charlotte have them.

Eventually, when young professionals take their cash up to the ticket window and place their bets on the city they want to win their energy and talents, we’re going to have to hope there are plenty of people who like to bet on the long shot. As more cities embrace robust public transit, we’re going to be seen as behind the times on a basic urban amenity. That coupled with the news featuring the public transportation naysayers in Cincinnati – the city’s odds don’t look good, and the silks aren’t so flashy.

Regardless, I still plan to put $2 on Cincinnati for the win.

The great home carbonation experiment

By Jonathan (the husband)

Laura and I found ourselves consistently spending serious bank on sparking water products and overflowing our recycling bin with the empty cans.   Settling for tap water may have been an option, but we figured there must be a more sensible way to continue consuming our delicious lightly-fruited bubbly!

Lacroix water, how I love thee.

The solution came to me when my home brewing friend and co-worker asked if I wanted to go in on an order of Cornelius kegs.  These multipurpose metallic godsends are tall and slender 5-gallon kegs retired by soft drink companies in the midst of a trend toward the use of “bagged” cola syrup.  They can be found for purchase on a variety of home brewing sites or on ebay for $30-$35.

Not being an expert, I took my newly ordered Cornelius keg and headed to my local Cincinnati home brewing store (shout out to Listermann’s @ http://www.listermann.com) where I was guided to purchase the requisite fittings and hose.  I already had a CO2 tank for my kegerator so I split the gas line between the beer keg and the soda water.  Momentarily ignoring my beer keg, the complete carbonated water system looks identical to this kit diagram which I lifted from kegconnection.com.

The setup. Image from Kegconnection.com. A place to go when you need information on kegs.

Basically you just throw 5 gallons of water in the keg, snap on the CO2 fitting and turn the gas on.  Since I only have one pressure regulator and am splitting between kegs, I’ve set the pressure to a conservative 10psi so my beer doesn’t foam over on every pull.  However, on a dedicated soda system I’d guess 15psi or so would be optimal.  We’ve found the CO2 diffusion can be slow at 10psi.  I’ve heard rolling the keg on its side can help to distribute the CO2 but I haven’t tried this.  A patient person should have no problem – 3 days and the carbonation will have settled throughout.

So far we’ve only tried lime and lemon water but we couldn’t be happier with the results.  This involves using one of those plastic juice squeezer things on fresh limes/lemons and dumping the concentrate into spring water.  No artificial sweeteners or preservatives!  The product is delicious, we’ve cut our costs nearly in a third and are using far less packaging.  Not to mention the flavor possibilities are endless.

Adventures in flooring

A while back I mentioned how Jonathan and I were on a quest to improve the indoor air quality of our house. One of the first things we identified was getting getting rid of the nasty, and I mean nasty carpet throughout the house. Since money doesn’t grow on trees, we had to start slow, which meant tackling the first floor first. After some discussion about what exactly we should do, we decided to try to refinish the original hardwood flooring that lay under a layer of carpet and some old tile adhered with tar. We really wanted to make sure we tried to refurbish what we had in order to not waste any resources. But, in a worst case scenario, if the floor looked too bad, we’d lay new hardwood flooring (maybe bamboo, we hadn’t decided) over it.

This noble effort led to one of the most obnoxious and terrible home improvement experiences of all time. We had to chip away the tar adhered tiles one by one. And, know that most didn’t come off in one piece. It would sometimes take 15 minutes to chip up a single tile.  It was truly a miserable experience. By the end we ended up hiring Jon’s brother, who just graduated from UC to help us out while he was job hunting. He scraped most of the living room.

Jon chipping off the tiles. Can you see the joy in his face?

The tar covered floors looked so crappy, we started to think there was no hope for the finished product, but friends and family encouraged us not to give up until we talked to some refinishing experts. Luckily, despite how bad the floors looked to us, the company we ended up hiring said they’d refinish just fine with a few replacement boards. And like magic, we had new floors.

Toga checking out the gleaming new floors. The picture doesn't do their beauty justice.

Walking in to see the new floors was the most exciting thing to happen to us in months. The floors looked so good we were giddy. We spent last weekend just sitting in the living room admiring their ebony brown wonderfulness — and inhaling a crap ton of VOCs…

… which brings me to where I screwed up. I never even thought to ask the flooring guys about finishes with low VOCs. I know they exist, or at least search master Google tells me they do. That newly finished floor smell is just now starting to fade a bit. It was so overwhelming that the cat refused to spend time with us downstairs. That can’t be a good sign.  It’s a good learning for the future though — there’s something unhealthy and sinister in that new floor smell.

In the end, I’m excited we were able to salvage what we have and come out with a beautiful product. Next floor-related project — the even nastier carpet upstairs. I think we may go with carpet of some sort on that floor, but we’ll choose something that may be a little easier to keep clean. We’re still debating that.

I think I’ll go in my living room and admire my original, now beautiful, hardwood floors now.

Complete Streets for Cincinnati

Streets are the largest piece of the public realm. If we design them for people, they'll be used by people! Photo Courtesy of stock.xchng

Last week, while attending a Queen City Bike meeting, I had the opportunity to listen to Cincinnati City Councilmember Roxanne Qualls discuss the concept of Complete Streets. If you aren’t familiar with Complete Streets, it’s a simple concept. Design city streets with all users in mind — pedestrians, drivers, bicyclists, etc.

That seems like a no-brainer, but if you’d ever been in a subdivision with no sidewalks, you know that designing roads for everyone apparently isn’t as easy as it sounds. And in Cincinnati’s case, while we’ve got a number of very pedestrian and bike friendly areas, the task becomes how do we make roads that were not previously designed for people traffic more people friendly? I don’t envy the folks in our transportation department. They’ve got a big job, and have been integrating items like sharrows to make bicyclists like me feel a little safer on the road. I’m sure they’ve got big plans for making Complete Streets a reality for a lot of our neighborhoods, but like anything, these things take time.

Anyway, when Councilmember Qualls was talking to us about the concept of Complete Streets in Cincinnati, she said something that stuck with me and really, to me, encompasses what Complete Streets is all about: “If you design streets for cars and speed, you get cars and speed. If you design for people and bicyclists and community, you get people and bicyclists and community.”

I don’t know about you, but I want people and community. Walking and biking around my neighborhood, which is one of the city’s most bike and pedestrian friendly, is the biggest contributor to my quality of life. The more Complete Streets — and in turn — Complete Neighborhoods we can create here, the more people are going to want to live and work here. And making Cincinnati a desirable place for people to live is a good thing for us all. So if you live in a neighborhood that could benefit from better sidewalks, bike lanes, benches, etc, you should contact someone on city council and let them know you’re interested in Complete Streets for your neighborhood.