Marcella’s Ristorante, Pizzeria and Wine Bar, located two blocks north of the Greater Columbus Convention Center at 615 N. High St., is modeled after a traditional Italian cafe and has a selection of 50 wines and an open kitchen, the restaurant operator said.
Marcella’s seats up to 120 with prices ranging from $10 to $19 a plate.
Speaking of Cameron Mitchell, I found a six-pack of Columbus Pale Ale at the corner convenience store. I’ve been to the Columbus Brewing Company restaurant a bunch of times, but I never noticed their beer for sale at stores before. I guess I wasn’t looking. I rate it pretty good.
The Ohio Department of Agriculture announced a quarantine for all of Franklin County as a result of the discovery in the tree at the intersection of Larrimer Avenue and Schreiner Street West….
It is not expected that the city will clear cut the ash trees, as was done during early days of the infestation in other states.
That approach was expensive and did not work, said Worthington parks and recreation director Bill Poling.
Instead, he expects the city to remove only those ash trees that have become hazardous.
NBC4i is reporting that fewer people died on Ohio’s roads this Memorial Day weekend than last year:
There were nearly a dozen deaths on Ohio’s roadways this past holiday weekend, but law enforcement officials said that number is down from last year’s totals.
According to the State Highway Patrol, 9 crashes resulted in 10 deaths over the weekend, NBC 4 reported.
The Patrol said 15 people were killed during Memorial Day weekend last year.
Now that such trite media stories are over, it should be safe to drive like a maniac- at least through the 4th of July.
A writer from coastal New England thought she’d fly to Columbus for ten bucks. She reviews Skybus and Columbus:
The entrance to uber-artsy Short North is marked with black arches over High Street, just north of downtown. Lights on the arches awake after dark, as does the nightlife. The sidewalk tables of tony and bohemian restaurants started filling up after quitting time, and Bar Louie Tavern & Grill on Park and Spruce streets was packed by 6:30….
Still, it was German Village for me. Set just south of downtown, the area of immigrant houses built in the 19th century includes The Book Loft — a 32-room bookstore, one of the largest independent bookstores in the country. Nearby are restaurants, bakeries and beautiful Schiller Park, where you can sit with your Cup O’ Joe coffee and book and soak in the heat….
It may not have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but this ugly stepsister holds her own as a tourist destination.
Ugly!? It’s a good notice anyway. It’s interesting to see the city from an outsider’s point of view. There’s also a before and after the interview video with the reporter, Gina Carbone.
Clearly Skybus will be a growing benefit to the city.
The changes involve more than economics. When I started, print journalism required two basic skills: reporting and writing. Now, journalists are expected to be multimedia utility players, feeding Web sites, posting videos and doing TV. Up to a point, this is valuable: finding new ways to engage and inform. But it’s also time-consuming and detracts from reporting.
Coincidentally- or not- the local newspaper outfit ThisWeek has been doing videos lately. In addition to occasional special videos, they’ve been posting a weekly “vodcast” since April 6. Here’s they’re eighth from yesterday- if my counting is correct:
It’s clear if you’ve looked at a few of their videos that they’re still experimenting with the format and technical aspects. Here’s their first weekly video:
It may seem a bit odd that their first video is more polished than their most recent, but I think they’re actually moving in the right direction. The earlier video seems to be mimicking TV news, what with the anchor chair and graphics. The most recent video is much more casual, and I think it suits the web better. There are a couple of issues with the latest videos that they need to address however:
Lighting: while they don’t necessarily need a dedicated webcasting studio, they definitely need better lighting on those deskside shots. I like the deskside idea itself. But the windows in the background cause the camera lens to close down an f-stop or two, making host Chris Bournea’s face, with his dark skin, pretty obscure. Poster-sized white card stock reflecting more light on the subject might help here. Or get those bright windows out of the shot.
Sound mix: is bad. The keyboard-tapping intro is way too loud compared to the voice tracks. I had to turn up all three or four volume controls on my PC (and isn’t that annoying) to just hear what they were saying.
Tone: too stiff. I’m guessing that these writer/reporters don’t have a lot of video experience, but they need to loosen up a bit. They all sound like they’re reading a script, which of course they are. But it shouldn’t seem like they’re reading. They need to get away from the reporter/audience mindset. How would they talk about these stories if they were relating them to a neighbor or to their grandmother? Differently. Be more casual and conversational.
Humor: this is a delicate one. They shouldn’t be going anywhere near Jon Stewart territory, but a little bit of humor can go a long way. And I don’t mean that horrible happy-talk that local TV news engages in. It’s a subtle thing, and I doubt that I’d be able to immediately get it right, but something is needed here.
Outro: the anchor shouldn’t thank the reporters from the video segments after the segmant, as in “Thanks for that report, Jim.” We know they’re recorded separately and that the segment guy is not hearing the anchor thanking him. It’s too phony and TV.
Regardless of any complaints from me however, I think the vids are a good idea. As the future unfolds, everyone who works for a newspaper has to realize that they’re not in the newspaper business, they’re in the news business. The Dispatch should be doing video too. Seeing as how the Dispatch owns ThisWeek, maybe they’re experimenting with the smaller property with an eye towards expanding it later.
And speaking of the Dispatch, I’ve written about how their website was broken before, but now their site seems to be in total meltdown. Their front page at www.dispatch.com is reporting 404 file not found. Geez! Maybe they’ve scheduled this holiday weekend to perform some much-needed upgrades.
UPDATE: Via Jeff Jarvis, here’s a longish UK video review of the print-to-video efforts on that side of the pond. The local paper efforts look a lot like what you can find in the US.
Columbus introduced a color-coded restaurant inspection scheme today. Signs will be posted in the window or conspicuously by the front entrance. From NBC4i, which has video too:
“If you have a green (sign), it’s very good. It is has a red (sign), stay away,” said Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman.
A yellow sign means that the business has uncorrected violations, while a white sign indicates that the restaurant is on probation, but is working hard at correcting problems.
It may be a while before your favorite restaurants are included however.
But inspecting all facilities in Columbus will be no easy task. The city only has 20 health inspectors.
“We have 8,000 that we need to distribute throughout Columbus, so it’s going to take a full year for our specialists and sanitarians to do the inspections and get the signs passed out,” said Bob Kramer, of Columbus Public Health.
The new rating system also applies to markets, swimming pools, tattoo parlors and camp grounds.
It’s a pretty good idea. Here’s a Columbus Public Health page that has more info on the signs. You can also search for current inspection results by restaurant.
Bryan at Buckeye State Blog is very unhappy with Sen. Sherrod Brown’s vote to provide funding for the war in Iraq without a timetable (or as I like to say, a date certain):
Yesterday, Sherrod Brown voted for Iraq war funding with no timeline. He voted for the bill George W. Bush wanted. Unfortunately, Sherrod, you made the wrong choice…..
Senator Brown, this damned vote is a sad repudiation of a year’s work of sweat and tears by Ohio’s rank-and-file Democrats. We did not fight for a goddamn debate! We did not take back the House and Senate so Democrats could kowtow to the failed policies of the Republican administration.
Senator Brown, you can do better – and, frankly, we all deserve better.
Later he added an update:
I’m not happy w/ Sherrod’s vote, but some people are downright pissed. Check out here and here to see what eating your own really looks like.
From that second link:
Oh, and one more thing…. Screw You Sherrod Brown. Paul Hackett wouldn’t have betrayed us like this.
Mayor Coleman is looking into a London-style network of police cameras to deter and catch criminals in Columbus. From the Dispatch (via RetroMetro):
Coleman said he’s looking for another crime-fighting tool, one other cities say has been useful.
“We have not decided whether we’ll have an expansive camera program. We’ll explore it, pilot it, test it,” Coleman said yesterday. “This is no silver bullet against crime, but you have to have an arsenal.”
Others wonder whether the cameras could intrude on people’s privacy.
“None of us wants to be the subject of constant surveillance,” said Jeff Gamso, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.
Now, Mayor Michael Coleman is asking a task force of technology experts, police and neighborhood leaders to consider pilot programs which could expand the use of the $5,000 crime-fighting tool.
“Where cameras go up, there’s a reasonable expectation of safety,” said Ian MacConnell, of the University Area Commission.
“Now, we’ll be able to tell who did what where to whom and how,” said Debera Diggs, of the Southside Community Action Network.
“If it catches one murderer or rapist, it’s worth it,” said Justin Boggs, of the South Ogden Avenue Block Watch….
Coleman said there are financial and legal issues to consider, but he is keeping the bigger picture in mind.
The notorious Woodland Meadows apartment complex, 52 acres of squalor, crime and misery on the East Side, soon will be part of Columbus history. The city’s contractor began demolishing the first of 122, three-story brick buildings yesterday, to the delight of nearby residents.
“That land has been so abused and mutilated with drugs, crime, murders. Now this is the final mutilation, and maybe the land can come to rest and heal,” said Dorothy Lupo, who lives in the nearby North Eastmoor neighborhood.
The Buckeye Institute Blog has an interesting angle on Strickland’s moves to shore up political support:
First Strickland tries to kill the EdChoice voucher program which basically gives working class people the chance to for a decent education for their children while still living in our big cities and without having to move to a suburban school district in order to escape the failed urban school systems.
Then he advocates for political interference in gasoline markets with the intent of driving gas prices down. The mayors should ask themselves how much more attractive does living and even home ownership downtown or in city neighborhoods such as Columbus’s Victorian Village or Cincinnati’s Hyde Park or Cleveland’s Tremont look to people when gas is $3.50 a gallon compared the $1.50 a gallon or whatever the Governor is seeking?
I wonder what some of our local urbanists would say about that. Does Democratic populist pandering like the above make the suburbs more attractive than they ought to be? If cities are more efficient, and in most ways they are, then urbanists should be against deforming markets in these ways.
UPDATE: Scott at Pho’s Akron Pages has linked to this article. He doesn’t respond directly to the observation that pandering on gas prices “artificially” favors the burbs, though he kind of admits that it’s pandering. And he agrees with my and Right Angle Blog’s criticism of the Democrats’ lack of a coherent energy policy. So that’s something. Anyway, read his post yourself, which concentrates on concealed carry and HB 225.
Incidentally, he refers to the Buckeye Institute Blog writer, linked above, as my “friend”. Maybe he meant that in an ideological sense, because I don’t know anyone over there.
Breaking news straight from Cedar Point’s press office, their new 2007 roller coaster, the Maverick, will open sooner than anticipated. In fact, it will open this weekend!
As reported earlier, the Maverick was scheduled to open when Cedar Point did for the 2007 season, but after some initial test runs, the park determined three sections of track would have to be replaced. As a result, Maverick was not expected to open until June at the earliest.
Here are parts two and three of ThisWeek’s series on growth in Columbus’s southeast suburbs, the 33 corridor. From part three:
In the next 25 years or less, the population of the greater Canal Winchester and greater Pickerington areas could nearly double, along with the number of jobs.
According to projections prepared by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission and the Ohio Department of Development, the number of residents in Canal Winchester, Pickerington and Violet Township will grow from the 2005 combined total of 48,590 to 77,992 by 2030. Estimates show the number of households increasing from 17,048 to 30,255 over that same period.
The articles talk about the region’s growing pains, but as interviewee notes, “pangs of growth are better than those of decline”.
“(An) issue that was of concern to over 80 percent of the interviewees is the lack of local cooperation within the county; especially between the cities of Lancaster, Canal Winchester, Pickerington, and Fairfield County,” according to [a study by RDG, a Dublin-based economic development planning company]….
Also, the study reports interviewees feeling “a lack of clarity and focus regarding economic development initiatives,” and a “general uncertainty of how Fairfield County fits into the Greater Columbus region and how it can position itself to benefit from the emerging ‘new economy.’”
Starting Monday, it will hold an online vote to determine what the former Wyandot Lake should be called when it reopens next year. With help from an advertising agency, the zoo has narrowed the field to five exotic-sounding finalists: Kisawa Waves, Katoomba Lagoon, Zoombezi, Kahuna Island and Tahiti Tides.
Officials say write-in suggestions also will be considered. The voting will close June 17th.
Wow, those names really sound like they came from an ad agency. I say vote for the worst. Name the lake Sanjaya.
Gov. Ted Strickland and AG Marc Dann arre making noises about gas prices. Strickland first:
With gas prices in Ohio reaching $3.50 a gallon for regular unleaded, Gov. Ted Strickland has joined 16 other Democratic governors in signing a letter to President Bush urging him to take action to help address rising prices at the pump.
“We are calling on the president to stand up for consumers and help alleviate the heavy burdens facing Americans at the pump,†Strickland said in a release. “I join my fellow governors in urging the president to act on our concerns and begin working with Congress and pressing oil companies to find a long-term solution to this issue.â€
State Attorney General Marc Dann told Tribune news partner WYTV 33 News he is watching the pump price fluctuation closely.
‘‘Well, we’re looking at it, our consumer protection and anti-trust division looks at the gas prices, every day, and where or not there is manipulation in the market, whether there is vertical restraints on local retailers,’’ said the Liberty Democrat.
Dann also said he thinks more time needs to be spent, looking at alternative fuel sources.
What are Democrats doing about long-term solutions? Matt at Right Angle Blog has this to say:
Dann should keep a closer eye on his fellow Democrats who raise gas taxes, have made it impossible for more refineries to be built, and have opposed domestic oil drilling. When it comes to increased gas prices, the blame belongs to the Democrat party.
Don’t forget about fighting nuclear power.
Democrats are really insane on this issue. Energy use is bad, because of the environment, because of Global Warming and our greedy little lifestyles, so they don’t want people to use too much of it and they want to do things to discourage energy use. Then when prices go up, forcing people to use less energy, that’s bad too, because it hurts consumers. So energy should be really cheap, and we should use very little of it. They’re above supply and demand.
As far as I can tell, the Democratic position is that the energy sector must be tightly controlled- just not by the market.
People won’t be putting their hands on alcoholic beverages at the state fair or on dancers at Ohio’s strip clubs, Gov. Ted Strickland decided yesterday.
In separate actions, Strickland decided to allow a controversial bill imposing new restrictions on strip clubs to become law without his signature and said he won’t support a change in policy to allow the sale of alcohol at the state fair.
Thanks Rev. Strickland- Oops, I meant Gov. I forgot for a second there. Yes. He’s the governor. And not a reverend.
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