Daytonnnnnn, OHIO (Cincinnati, Marion: how much, house, neighborhoods)

[nickolaseposter]

Dayton. I see this city as one of the many great cities in America. I’ve witnessed the artistic and creative ingenuity that this city bleeds out everyday. I’ve seen the small initiatives we have that have become good successes and firm beginnings to a stronger Dayton. I’ve seen the history that many cities just don’t have. We have a spirit in this city….a spirit of being different. At a very young age, I could already recognize I was different. For many particular reasons, I always stood out. Sometimes it was because I was the best at picking up on things, and sometimes, its because I didn’t play by the rules. And at a very young age my mother would begin to tell me about Dayton. I would be around my family who was raised in the area and I would always hear stories of bars and restaurants and shops and activities of Dayton’s past. But growing up in the 1990’s I knew something was wrong. Whenever I heard stories about all the fun times in Dayton that my mom and dad and aunts and uncles always had, it seemed that they always remained in the past…as if that didn’t exist anymore. When I became old enough to ride the bus downtown by myself, I began to explore the city and I learned a lot about it’s culture, its heritage, its gloominess, its loss. Its funny how in Dayton almost every historic building downtown has some fantastic story associated with it. But I have to say….that was before I was even born. Now this may make me look young, because for a lot of people it wasn’t that long ago Rikes was open. It wasn’t that long ago everybody’s dad worked at a factory and came home to sit down at dinner every evening. But I have to say that as a nearly twenty one year old who never got to see those days, it was a long time ago. And in the past ten years this city has decided to move on its own, without her people. The manufacturing is over. The type of economy we had…is over. Its done. And its not happening again. And the people of the city of Dayton need to wake up to this. The leadership and the communities and the neighborhoods need to wake up to this. We need to quit being so lazy with our approach to things. The current approach to fixing Dayton is to somehow make it what it has been by revitalizing the past. This is a lie. Manufacturing is not a Dayton issue. Its an American issue. And I can guarantee you Dayton does not have the firepower to change the American economy, possibly the world economy. But Dayton does have the power and the responsibility to change its own economy. Dayton is a lot like a blind date, we need to take Dayton on romantic date and really discover who she is. We have to be sweet with her, humorous, willing to make fun of ourselves. Then when we take her home, because she hasn’t had any real action in a while, we are gonna walk her in her house and make things happen that she hasn’t seen in quite some time. And as really bad as that whole hyperbole is….I really feel that it makes sense.

[Zathras]

This is a handy tool you can use to magically create paragraphs...

(sorry... couldn't resist )

I think the point of your message is that the days of industrial manufacturing are gone, and that Dayton needs to find something new. This is true of many upper midwestern cities.

[Dayton Sux]

So, nickolaseposter, how's NYU?

(BTW, if more people felt as you did, see the potential you see, Dayton would be a better place. Just not enough people here who feel that love ... a lot of cultural factors at work as much as economic ones that bring the place down).

[Ohioan58]

Originally Posted by nickolaseposter

We have a spirit in this city….a spirit of being different. At a very young age, I could already recognize I was different. For many particular reasons, I always stood out. Sometimes it was because I was the best at picking up on things, and sometimes, its because I didn’t play by the rules.

Perhaps Dayton changed substantially between the time you grew up (1990s-2000s?) and when I grew up (60s-70s.) I never, ever saw Daytonians as valuing personal uniqueness. In fact quite the opposite.

Dayton of my youth was prosperous but it was lock-step conformist and very antithecal toward creativity and free thinking. The creative kid in the class was the one who was ostracized, picked on and called a f@gg@t repeatedly. Non comformity in Dayton of my youth as a kid was a ticket to being an outcast. Most of my public school teachers were doctrinaire "do it the way the book tells you to" types.

If you want a reality check on what I'm saying, the writer Harlan Ellison gave a series of talks in Dayton in the early 70s, and he was shut down by the local educational establishment for his liberal views and profanity. He documented much of what happened to his tour in Dayton in a book called "The Glass Teat".

Dayton when I was growing up felt like how Japan's national culture is often described: keep your mouth shut, do what you're told, and maybe someday, there will be a place for you as a cog in a machine that was devised by far better people than you'll ever be.

So I can never quite get in tune with the "Dayton Originals" advertising logo that places like Marion's Pizza are slapping on their doors. I have too many scars and too much cynicism about what Dayton was really like at its height.

I think the reality is that to be successful in Dayton you have always had to be harder than nails tough. A story like the one about the violent Univis strike of the late 40s is much more typical "Daytoniana" than the fable that Dayton was papered with this magical openness toward invention.

I'm 2.5+ times your age. Yet in your post you nailed the rest of it exactly with great insight and awareness.

Yes, everything you describe related to Dayton's vitality is long ago in the past, and that older culture has slowly evaporated. I got similar stories from my mother about the 30s through the 60s. Dayton was yesteryear's Silicon Valley. Dayton in its day was a mini-New York.

LOL at the analogy with taking Dayton on a blind date. Quite funny and in a way so true.

Great post, again.

PS: I'd rep you but this dooshy forum software is scolding me that I have to spread some reputation around. Don't wanna. Oh, well.

[SmartGXL]

Originally Posted by Ohioan58

Perhaps Dayton changed substantially between the time you grew up (1990s-2000s?) and when I grew up (60s-70s.) I never, ever saw Daytonians as valuing personal uniqueness. In fact quite the opposite.

Dayton of my youth was prosperous but it was lock-step conformist and very antithecal toward creativity and free thinking. The creative kid in the class was the one who was ostracized, picked on and called a f@gg@t repeatedly. Non comformity in Dayton of my youth as a kid was a ticket to being an outcast. Most of my public school teachers were doctrinaire "do it the way the book tells you to" types.

If you want a reality check on what I'm saying, the writer Harlan Ellison gave a series of talks in Dayton in the early 70s, and he was shut down by the local educational establishment for his liberal views and profanity. He documented much of what happened to his tour in Dayton in a book called "The Glass Teat".

Dayton when I was growing up felt like how Japan's national culture is often described: keep your mouth shut, do what you're told, and maybe someday, there will be a place for you as a cog in a machine that was devised by far better people than you'll ever be.

So I can never quite get in tune with the "Dayton Originals" advertising logo that places like Marion's Pizza are slapping on their doors. I have too many scars and too much cynicism about what Dayton was really like at its height.

I think the reality is that to be successful in Dayton you have always had to be harder than nails tough. A story like the one about the violent Univis strike of the late 40s is much more typical "Daytoniana" than the fable that Dayton was papered with this magical openness toward invention.

I'm 2.5+ times your age. Yet in your post you nailed the rest of it exactly with great insight and awareness.

Yes, everything you describe related to Dayton's vitality is long ago in the past, and that older culture has slowly evaporated. I got similar stories from my mother about the 30s through the 60s. Dayton was yesteryear's Silicon Valley. Dayton in its day was a mini-New York.

LOL at the analogy with taking Dayton on a blind date. Quite funny and in a way so true.

Great post, again.

PS: I'd rep you but this dooshy forum software is scolding me that I have to spread some reputation around. Don't wanna. Oh, well.

OMG, what I highlighted in bold...this is 169% accurate. This is an AMAZING, spot-on, description of daytonians and the Dayton area in general. This is EXACTLY the same vibe and feeling I got growing up and living there in Dayton. I was born there, grew up there, and went to Wright State, and all my life, this was all I saw. My own DAD told me things like this. Amazing. I am glad to see that I am not the only person who sensed this. I escaped Dayton in 1998, and never looked back. Trying to change Dayton into something more cosmopolitan is a hopeless waste of time, sad to say. The people are way too cynical, way too angry, and way too provincial for it to be anything great. Its rendezvous with destiny was the period of innovation from a hundred years ago. That rendezvous occurred, and is over now. Kind of like the girl you dated for six months; it was "meant to be", and it did happen, but it was only "meant to be" for those six months. And then you realized there are better women out there, you broke up, and you moved on. The world thanked Dayton for its inventions, but has found greater things.

I laughed when I saw the "Dayton Patented" thing as well. I think this is a copy-cat PR campaign, stolen from Austin TX's "Keep Austin Weird" campaign, which promotes localism and local businesses. For all the great inventions that came from Dayton back in the day, there isnt much "local" about dayton that has been produced that is really worth mentioning. The only thing I can think of, would be some local food/pizza culture, namely Cassano's/Marion's and a few sub shops. Maybe Landes Meats and maybe two or three local breweries and that's it. Everything else is either chains or other things that come from places like Cincinnati.

Over the years, I knew people who would tell me the stories about Dayton's glory days...the days of taking the trolley down Main Street, to shop downtown at Rike's or whatever. I had teachers, relatives, etc tell me all about it. But I think those days are gone, and never coming back. I never even experienced them myself, to tell you the truth.

[Ohioan58]

I get accused of sweeping generalizations when I post things like this. It's quite sad that they are corroborated so clearly.

I am old enough to have shopped at Rike's as a kid and a lot of elements of the glory days of Dayton were still present and/or in living people's memories.

I think what happened, starting in the 60s, probably, was that a "cloud of smug" had enveloped Dayton. The local narrative went - we had been on top, and we would ALWAYS be on top. I think that was the seed of Dayton's decline over the next three-four decades. I sort of remember that virtually every employed adult I knew as a kid had a sort of swagger of always being right.

I think the local smugness lead directly to exceptional, bland conformity. Things are great, so don't go being different. I suspect that it was in the 60s that the "rot" started.

I think the bitterness you see in locals of (say) my generation and later is knowing just how much the local region has declined.

Yeah, that "rendezvous with destiny" metaphor really rings true. Everything lined up for Dayton for a period of increasing prosperity, and things were great, but then the region became too smug and entitled, and meanwhile, other regions surpassed it.