Best Views of the City?

So City Council commissioned a $75k report on the best views of the city, "intended to help city planners formulate development guidelines within those view corridors." The 229 page plan was put together by Human Nature, a landscape architecture firm and The Hillside Trust, an advocacy and land conservation group. If you visit the first link I have here, you also get a nice Yahoo Maps guide to great views of the city. Some of the photography is so-so, but it gives you some great starting points for a fun day trip to take your own collection.

On one hand, I like that they spent the time to study these views and that there is the intention on using this info in urban planning. But $75k seems pretty steep to me for this report (and yes, I have actually read it). I applaud The Hillside Trust and their efforts over the years. I guess I'm more skeptical of the city actually using it in their planning and future development. I just hope this money wasn't wasted and that the report comes to good use.
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Hot eats late after a cool performance

So my new buddy Shawn over at Cincinnati Arts blog just updated (he gives credit to his intern for the html legwork) his Eating After the Show page. I have to tell you, I've been using this resource for a while now, ever since I found it about six months back.

It's got detailed listings of the hours of operation of the kitchens of various food-serving establishments in and around downtown. He even just added a new section for Clifton/University Heights.

The page is part of a number of pages on CincinnatiArts.com that are designed to help break the ice for the arts-uninitiated, including info on convenient eating after an evening performance, what to wear to certain types of arts events, etc.

They could probably go a step farther and add a page on parking, but that's a bitch to maintain so I understand if they don't - I'm sure it's hard enough keeping the restaurant list up-to-date. I bring up the parking only because I hear people bitch about parking downtown more than any other complaint - and honestly, parking downtown is a breeze, most people are just STUPID and don't pay attention (I'll save this for another rant another time).

Cincinnati Arts is part of a group of websites by Enjoy the Arts, a great organization that helps get people into the arts by providing various memberships that get you free and discount tickets to tons of cool stuff all over the area. It used to be just for students, but these days there's a membership level for every age group. I highly recommend getting one - you save a ton of money and find out about lots of cool sh*t you wouldn't normally hear about!
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