guide to living in Dayton

If you’ve been in Dayton for any length of time, you’ve come to realize that we don’t have 6 degrees of separation, we have about 1.2. You’ll see it in your connections on LinkedIn and Facebook. Hardly any of my 1,500 friends on FB in Dayton only have 1 friend in common- and people who [...]

I live in little Afghanistan. Starting a few days ago- and for the next week- I’ll have to listen to fools setting off fireworks, shooting guns, and generally being jerks. The fact that fireworks are sold around here when the closest state where they are legal is Missouri is still a mystery. The police do [...]

Shameless self-promotion here. Since 2005, I’ve been supplying Dayton with the best forum on issues, insiders, politics and news on esrati.com. This site is read by the people who want to know what the Dayton Daily News is either too understaffed to cover, lacking in institutional knowledge to cover or connect the dots (since Cox [...]

Yesterday, the president, our first black president, finally took the correct stand on gay marriage- to support it. It’s not about god, the bible or religion, it’s about equal rights. The same equal rights that were so long in coming to the black community, are starting to have a chance for the LBGT community. On [...]

On April 15th the Dayton Daily news reported that the city of Dayton began a tow on sight program, targeting cars with unpaid parking tickets and camera violations. Immediately after I started hearing from people- “you have to do something”- and “write about this”- which I would have loved to do, but, you have to [...]

Full Disclosure: my business, The Next Wave, does limited amounts of graphic design work and printing for the Sidebar and Brian Higgins. His websites for both the Columbus and Dayton restaurants are on our server. Front page, center, top of fold. Multiple photos. Even when Mayor Clay Dixon took me outside to be his punching [...]

Had a scare in the house this morning. Came downstairs to see the natural oak  kitchen floor was mottled black and oak. Looked like someone had tried to tie dye it. Turns out, the 12 year old had broken a thermometer on the floor and “cleaned it up.” It was out on the kitchen counter [...]

Nope, this isn’t a post about my 2012 congressional campaign, I’ll win that. This is about those resolutions you made last night while swinging from a chandelier yelling “I love you, man!” Yep, Americans love to head to the gym every January on a quest to lose weight and get in better shape. Most of [...]

I just got back from a tasting at Olive, an Urban Dive. I don’t think I’ve ever had so many delicious, amazing, different bites of food in my life. 30+ tastes of dishes- with two rounds of Jeni’s  Splendid Ice creams in between. I took photos- with the iPhone, but I’m here to tell you [...]

All on my own, I managed to kill my mower (can’t blame the little brother this time). I tried to fix what I could- cleaned the carb, got a new governor spring, changed the filter, plug and oil. Nada. But, I had forgotten about my post- about lawn mower repair (luckily my girlfriend reminded me): [...]