We do have the best Air Force museum in the world.
And it, fortunately, is located far from the giant jeebus that, at night, rips itself free from its earthen pit and stalks the earth devouring souls!
If it’s not to late to contribute, I grew up and went to college in Dayton, and, if I could find a job in my field there, I would consider moving back – or at least close by.
Interesting fact: Dave Chappelle lives on a farm near Dayton.
One thing that’s true about Ohio is that there only one city with real night life, and that’s Cleveland. Despite all the vintage three-decades-old jokes, Cleveland is a pretty nice place. The other cities, including Dayton, have small but decent local music scenes, if you’re into that.
However, if you’re of a certain age or a certain disposition, night life might not be important to you. If you’re into the geeky clubs, like Mensa, S.C.A., etc., there are large, active groups there, as well as in nearby Cincinnati and Columbus. You could almost consider the whole of southwestern Ohio as a unit, because it’s pretty easy to get around on the major Interstate highways. There’s a Renaissance Faire within about 30 minutes drive on the way to Cincinnati in Waynesville.
My favourite things about Dayton are actually outside of the city. My favourite neighbourhood is Yellow Springs, about 15-20 minutes into the countryside. It’s an old hippie village, with all the hippie things, like cool book stores and organic food shops, and Ha-Ha’s Pizza, which makes whole wheat pizza (with soy cheese, if you like), but hippies are pretty wealthy these days, so you have your mini gourmet deli and the like. And a fantastic little cinema, the Little Art Theatre. Just outside the village is the large and often crowded Young’s Dairy, where you can have a yummy ice cream sundae mere yards from the cows that gave their milk for it (don’t worry, they’re in a separate building).
Dayton has at least one really nice new book store – Books & Co. in Kettering. I’m not sure, but Borders or Barnes & Noble have probably made the scene since I left. There used to be several used or rare book stores – in Yellow Springs as well as in the Oregon District downtown.
The Oregon District is a two-block restored section adjacent to the city centre with several trendy bars, clubs, and restaurants and a cool old record shop (“several” meaning “two or three”). It’s where all the hip youngsters go for Halloween, etc. There is also some interesting stuff in the University of Dayton campus area. (A few years ago, the university bought up the surrounding “Ghetto” and is fixing up the trashy firetrap student housing.)
Downtown proper has been deserted by retailers and there is an attempt to renovate some of it and bring in some upscale city residential areas and arts (the Victoria Theatre (formerly “Victory Theater”) was renovated about 10-15 years ago).
The economy is devastated by the demise of American manufacturing. Dayton used to be a place where things got invented and made – General Motors, National Cash Register, Mead Paper, etc. There is some high tech because of the Air Force base.
Dayton is a lot more conservative now than it was when I was growing up in the 1970s and 80s. But it’s still a lot less conservative than Cincinnati, which is a Bible Belt town.
In suburban Fairborn, which is dominated by the Air Force base and Wright State University (largely a commuter campus) is my favorite comic book store, the Bookery Fantasy.
About an hour’s drive is Columbus, which has a series of cool things – like a store dedicated to Star Trek, several nice comic book shops and, best of all, in German Village, just south of downtown, Katzinger’s Delicatessen and the Book Loft. Just fantastic.
If you drive out to the country, there are a couple of outdoor historical dramas – Yellow Jacket, near Xenia, and Tecumseh, near Chillicothe. Chillicothe, about 2 hours’ drive, also has a fantastic little pizza joint – Joe’s on South Paint Street. If you go there, though, I have to warn you, the town stinks like a giant boiled cabbage because of the paper mill.
Most of the living and commerce has moved out to the suburbs, and the places to be are to the east and south of town. The western side of Dayton proper is the traditionally African-American part of town. It’s also where a lot of drug crime takes place. (Because of Dayton’s location at the junction of Interstates 70 and 75, it’s a major transit point for illegal drugs.)
Real estate is cheap, cheap, cheap, and if you’re going to Dayton on a Los Angeles salary, you’ll be able to afford some major housing. The McMansions are in suburbs like Beavercreek, Centerville, West Carrollton and further out. The old money mansions are in Oakwood and Kettering. Yellow Springs is the home for liberals, old and young, and college professors (and Dave Chappelle and his family).
The traditional working class and lower middle class suburbs, like Huber Heights in the northeast, are dying because of the loss of good jobs. A combination of factors, including the faltering economy I believe, has resulted in the increase of evangelical Christianity throughout the region, but you will still find pockets of liberal culture. (The strong Roman Catholic influence in the area, including the Marianists at the University of Dayton, has traditionally been a counterweight to conservative Protestantism, but Catholics are starting to switch sides, so who knows?)
There are a handful of good restaurants in the area, but you really have to seek them out. It’s not like you can walk out the door and find a nice sushi bar or anything. The Shuckin’ Shack in north Dayton is a great seafood restaurant/raw bar. I know, oysters in Ohio? But, hey, I never got sick there.
I love Yellow Springs! ascenray has it right. Also, on my last visit I found the Sunrise Cafe, which has great, great food.
As for Chillicothe (my hometown):
Jerry’s, not Joe’s. And in my recent visits the smell, while not gone completely, is quite attenuated. My father, who spent his career as a chemist with Mead Research in Chillicothe, tells me they put on some improved filters a few years back.
I discover something new and fun on every trip to Yellow Springs.
Yes! Exactly! I knew I was getting something wrong. I’ve never had pizza like that anywhere else. A light, crispy crust with the toppings chopped into tiny, tiny pieces, allowing the flavours to mingle. And I like the way they slice the pizza into strips instead of wedges or squares.
Well, when I lived there from 1991-94, it was strong, and it was still noticeable the last time I visited in 2003. Although, I couldn’t say whether it was less than it had been 10 years earlier.
I’d say a downgrade from strong to noticeable in that timeframe sounds about right.
Ya shoulda smelled it in the 70s. On the plus side, we always knew when rain was coming.
“Average” pretty well nails it. If you’re a regular reader of the Onion, any of their stories with a Middle America setting gives you a flavor for what Dayton is about. “Area man does whatever,” and all that. As people have pointed out above, there are some cool and distinctive things about Dayton that furnish the foundation stones of local boosterism. But setting those aside, you’re left with a pretty sedate middle-class and lower-middle-class suburban lifestyle. And the suburbs continue their inexorable march outward from Dayton. You see it as you go to Yellow Springs, through what used to be a continuous belt of farmland between Fairborn and Yellow Springs proper, and you especially see it to the South, as you head for Lebanon, say. I can never quite understand why there’s so much building 20 or 30 miles out. But it does mean that housing prices are probably a fifth what they are around LA.
A few more random observations about the Dayton area:
People there are considerably fatter than they are here in Massachusetts, and probably out on the West Coast.
Dayton is surprisingly Southern in some respects. Lots of Kentuckians have moved up over the years, and make up a white lower middle class. You can hear it in the accents of a lot of people.
The whole-wheat crust at Ha-ha Pizza is pretty lousy.
I can’t believe I forgot the Ren Faire. I’ve only been there the last 5 years. :smack:
I was telling a friend about the cheese jesus and he coined the nickname “Cheesus”! He is soooo going to hell for that one but it cracked me up.
:mad:
Oh, well, de gustibus, after all.
I live in Dayton, in the Dayton View Neighborhood.
I’m from Chicago (born and raised) and I’m terminally homesick. That having been said, the best friends I’ve ever had are here, and i will miss this place when I leave.
Pros:
The Dayton Dragons, the best time that could be had at a baseball game. It’s a blast even if you aren’t a sports fan. I have Cincinnatians who prefer the Dragons over the Reds.
The Air Force Musuem at Wright Patterson, possibly the best Air Force Museum in the the world.
The Dayton Art Institute, for a city this size, it’s very, very good, and regularly hosts traveling exhibits.
Glen Helen & Clifton Gorge There is a fair amount of good hiking & nature stuff around just outside Dayton. These two are in Yellow Springs, a very cool little town. Someone mentioned the Sunrise Cafe. It’s a great little cafe in a cool little town—I eat breakfast there 3-4 times a week. Two weeks ago I was there and there was just a few people (it only seats around 40 people or so) and among the 4 or 5 people there was David Chapelle.
Good Indie Movies The Little Art & The Neon Movies consistently have good small run movies.
Cheap Housing I bought a 90 year old house in an urban neighborhood that needed renovation for less than $30K. I couldn’t buy my brothers garage in Chicago for that. Houses in the city in good stable neighborhood can be had for $75-160K–and $125-300 in the burbs. The prices will be 1/3 of Chicago, LA.
Close To Cincinnati, Columbus and Indianapolis. there is lot to do in all these cities, a lot. 45-50 Min to Cinci, 60-70 Min to Columbus, 75-120 min to Indy.
No traffic. If you’re from LA or Chicago, you’ll feel like you’ve been marinated in Traffic Teflon.
I was told of an absent-minded Ohioan who wasn’t sure if he was datin’ a girl from Eaton, or eatin’ a girl from Dayton.
I grew up there and wouldn’t move back. I do miss Marion’s Pizza so I have to stop there when I go home to visit the folks. I don’t know why your friend is thinking about moving there and what kind of a job it is. But it will be a hell of a change from LA. No more beaches or beautiful scenery, But you can buy a decent house fror $200K which might get you an 800SF bungalow in Compton back in SoCal.
The growth of the city is very slow or even negative, meaning that if you ever lose a job, you may be having to move somewhere else to get a new one. The local economy just doesn’t produce a lot of jobs. And it isn’t getting any better. Over the next five years, Dayton will end up paying for their over-reliance on GM and Delphi. I think a lot of jobs and tax revenue will be vanishing thanks to those two firms and their related support firms. Not the fault of the local residents, but its reality.
The cost of living is quite low so your wage dollar goes a little further. There are a fair number of cultural attactions, such as the Philharmonic and the Art Institute, in many cases of higher quality than some larger cities. The city has some decent colleges, but you could do ok on that count in many places.
Downtown is pretty grubby and the large department stores bailed in recent years. Shopping is fair depending on which side of town you live on. Couple of regional malls. Of course 20 years on and the old Arcade still hasn’t been rebuilt.
There was a lot of racial tension in the area before I left and the city is still pretty segregated. It never got as bad as rioting like Cincy. But a spark could always change that.
Some of the school districts in the burbs are pretty good, but I couldn’t give a learned opinion since its been a while since I was in school. Old friends have told me that my old district is worse these days but Centerville and Beavercreek are still decent I think.
Personally, I am not a huge fan, but I can see why some folks go for the slightly less pressure lifestyle. For the record, I couldn’t live in LA either. I’ll take Philly over both of them.
Well, to each his own.
I don’t see any of that, and I live in the city. The city is not flourishing, but it’s not in a free fall either. It’s a typical midwestern mid size city.
I just don’t see the sky falling in the way the you describe. In the last 10 years hundreds of new housing units have opened downtown, the river was redone, the Shuster Center was opened, the Cannery and the Dayton Dragons came to town. The downtown is still in need of more, but I don’t see “grubby”, and in the time I’ve lived here I’ve actually seen significant improvement.
I’m from Chicago and would move back there in a minute if I could, but I’ve met the best friends I’ve ever had in Dayton, and I’d rather live here than LA.
I’ve never been to it, but Dayton hosts one of the largest ham radio conventions around.
Briab
Not to hijack the thread too much, but raindog, what is Dayton View like? I’ve really only been through that part of town briefly a couple of times. For a long time I was the typical suburban (Beavercreek) kid who didn’t pay much attention to the central city, but in the last year or two I’ve become much more interested in learning about the various inner neighborhoods. Probably bad timing, since I’m in Wisconsin now. :smack:
Yeah, if anything, downtown is deserted, which makes it pretty clean, not grubby.
I grew up in Dayton. Well, not actually in Dayton, but in Washington Township, which is adjacent to Centerville (a southern suburb).
I went to college at the University of Cincinnati, then afterwards moved back to live in a suburb of Dayton (Kettering). Today we live about 45 minutes north of Dayton.
I currently work at Catholic university located in Dayton. I won’t tell you which one. 
Dayton is famous for the following:
Hometown of the Wright Brothers. You know, the guys who invented “powered flight.”
A really big flood that happened in March of 1913.
Inventions. Lots of famous inventors hail from Dayton.
National Museum of the United States Air Force, which is the world’s largest and oldest military aviation museum.
Hamvention / Hamfest, which I believe is the largest regularly-scheduled ham radio convention in the world.
Wright Patterson Air Force Base. WPAFB was the home of the Dayton Peace Accords on Bosnia. It’s also one of the most important AFBs in the country, and is the home of the Air Force Research Lab.
Dayton is (was?) the hometown for the Amateur Trapshooting Associating. (And guess where they shoot? Where else but the airport!)
NCR headquarters.
The Dayton Air Show, which is one of the largest air shows in the country.
While I’m at it, I should also mention that the City of Dayton is famous for having one of the worst public school systems in the country. It’s also a very racially-divided city, with (for the most part) blacks living on the west side of the river and whites living on the east side.
Some funny/interesting things about Dayton:
The Great Miami River snakes its way through downtown Dayton. Interstate 75 crosses over the river five times over a distance of roughly five miles.
The Great Miami River is an “invisible river” in Dayton. No one seems to acknowledge its existence.
We don’t have a major sports team.
Everyone that lives here wants to move to Florida.
Around the Dayton area, jobs are plentiful, the homes are nice, and the cost of living is low.
I’m with Raindog. Dayton has done a lot in the last ten years to revitalize the city. The entire RiverScape was redone in conjunction with a new baseball field. The Dayton Dragons Park sits in what was once a factory brown-field area (Frigidaire). It’s below grade level and you can drive by during a game and see them playing. It’s really a beautiful stadium and very family oriented. Next to it is a river area that was built as a tribute to the city’s history and is a delight to walk through. The historic representations are really neat on this walkway. They have things like a giant cash register where the keys are seats and they play different notes when touched. There is a kid’s walk-through fountain that squirts hundreds of jets up to music. Where the canal ran through the city they have a series of reflecting pools. They have 5 huge river fountains that can reach 100 ft and are linked to a LASER that can project images against the falling water like an outdoor TV. All of this can be tied to a Dragon’s game or other events such as the 4th of July where fire works, lighted fountains and LASERS all work together.
The recent addition of the Schuster Center complements the Dayton Art Institute and gives the city a culture edge beyond its size. The Dayton Art Institute just completed a run of Treasures of Ancient Egypt and is currently running a program on Princes Diana for those people interested in such things. Beyond that it is a pretty good art institute by itself. Dayton also houses a restored Opera House that gets some decent shows (rough on tall people).
The park system is probably above average because of the flood control project established after the 1913 flood. It consists of 5 huge dams and their corresponding flood plains. It is a locally funded civil project that is studied the world over. When added to the normal mix of metro parks they contribute a substantial amount of recreational land. There are a number of historical parks such as Carillon Park which houses many of Dayton’s historical mementos such as an original Wright Brothers plane.
Wright Patterson AFB is steeped in local history and the Air Force Museum is probably one of the largest of it’s kind in the world. They get a lot of the prototype aircraft so they have the Stealth Bomber, Stealth Fighter, F22 Raptor, SR-71(with matching D-21 drone), YF12A, XB-70 Valkyrie, X-19, etc…. along with a lot of test bed drones and lifting bodies such as Tacit Blue. The Annex holds all the presidential airplanes along with other overflow aircraft. Ohio is also an excellent place for aircraft owners due to the number of small airports.
Compared to the traffic-congested nightmare found in virtually every large city, Dayton is a slice of heaven. You don’t have to speak Spanish, housing is cheap, and you aren’t dodging forest fires all summer. What will be missing are the ocean, surfing and any thought of driving to a mountain to snow ski.
Everyone wants something a little different wherever they live.
I was born and raised in and around the Dayton area. The majority of my adult life was in the metropolitan area until I moved away about ten years ago.
Dayton was a vibrant city until they started electing funeral directors to run things. What does it say about your city when it’s run by funeral directors? Could it be a slow death? It certainly seems that way in the case of Dayton.
We got a minor league baseball team. Big deal…How about actual baseball fields for kids? But not many kids want to play baseball anymore so I guess that’s a wash.
Air force museum? Let’s celebrate being able to drop bombs on innocent civilians.
Dayton began dying when the big industries began leaving town with little to nothing to replace them. It seemed like the only growth industry in Dayton for quite some time was funeral homes and hospitals. Hospitals are good to have, but if the employment rate is tanked even hospitals don’t mean much if most of the people in the city can’t access medical care. Downtown, like many cities was hollowed out to the point that it seemed like downtown was good for going to the symphony (few actual city residents could go), a bus stop (lots of poor people take buses) and the country and city jail. So you can take the bus, visit someone in jail then go to the symphony afterwards… Well that’s a big draw…
City neighborhoods were left to rot and the streets to crumble. Neighborhood taverns were mostly shut down leaving few places for the people to gather and discuss the issues that made or changed lives.
Most of my family began moving away one by one and now I have one sister and her kids still living in Dayton and they mostly plan to leave as well.
I’d love to see Dayton make a comeback because it once was a great place to live and raise a family, but those days are over for me and my family and nearly all of my old friends are gone as well. It’s rare that I hear of anything positive coming from Dayton. Nearly all the news I hear about from Dayton involves drug dealers, death and overdoses. I still read up on my home town, but very little that I read gives me hope that the once beautiful and vibrant city will change for the better.
Perhaps somebody else can give me hope for Dayton because it’s well overdue. I’m sorry for being so negative about my home town, but that’s the way I view it.
I have just perfected my Time Machine — soon I will be in Dayton, Ohio, in the spring of 2006! Bwaaaa-ha-hah!
You say these things as if a person or persons in charge of the city wanted to do things like “hollow out the downtown.” Almost all the things you mentioned were part of larger social and economic trends that have affected the whole country, not the result of a handful of idiots trying to screw Dayton up.
Just to take one example, why did downtown hollow out, like the downtowns of many cities across the country? Well, white flight from desegregation had a lot more to do with it than the implication in this post that it was a handful of dunderheads in charge.
As for the “funeral director” crack, that’s really just a cheap shot and it seems to be one lightly masking racial and sex-based resentment against someone who was mayor for eight years, out of the 50 years of stuff that has led up to today.
As for downtown being like a jail, I’ve been to downtown Dayton recently. There are signs of the possibility of innovation and growth—third-wave coffee shops, farmer’s markets, organic restaurants. It’s very empty in a lot of places, but it’s not like a jail.
There are people in Dayton like Nan Whaley, who are opening the arms of the city to people who need a home. And there are also assholes like Rick Jones, Rob Scott, and Tony Hovater, who are trying to push the region further into the darkness.