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"If You Love Cleveland So Much, Why Did You Leave?"

No one has ever asked me the above question outright, but the comment from my previous post jumpstarted my recent blogging sloth a little bit. So, just in case anyone should ask it, here's my attempt at an answer.

OK. First, I have a guilty confession, and this goes out to all my Cleveland friends who have to lurk on RBCA to keep abreast of my goings-on because I'm lousy at returning phone calls or emails. This guilty confession is especially for you, Ruth, because I was actively deceptive with you last night on the phone, and a public apology is the only way I can clear my conscience.

I confess: I was in Cleveland last weekend and I didn't call any of you. I'm sorry. I wanted to spend all my time with Kevin, who was also in town, and whom I hadn't seen in over a year. I promise I'll call you all next time.

So. One of the first things Kevin and I did when we got in was go to Edgewater Park. Which was looking fabulous - much better and cleaner and less unwholesome than it did six years ago when I lived there. We walked out on the pier, and saw a group of old men grinning proudly and toothlessly around the biggest fish I'd ever seen come out of Lake Erie. We walked on the path around the picnic area, watched families barbecuing and more old men playing chess. We saw surfers and sailboats and couples flying elaborate kites and small children building sandcastles. We sat at a picnic table and watched the sun sink low over the water. And I said to Kevin, there is nothing I love more than this. There is nothing I love more than the Cuyahoga Valley in the fall, there is nothing I love more than taking a day trip to Holmes County just to get a loaf of bread and some pumpkin butter. There is nothing I love more than picking up the PD and seeing an outraged Clevelander frowning at me from the front page.

So, I asked out loud, why am I somewhere else?

There are the obvious reasons, like the fact that the library job market in Northeast Ohio is so glutted that I - having egregiously less experience than most library job seekers - wasn't able to get a new position to save my life. One has to survive, and I've been able to save more money here in the last year than I'd been able to save in my entire life. What would scraping by on a pauper's income in Cleveland really have proved?

Or, there are more complicated reasons, such as the fact that I want to see Cleveland be the best midsized city in the good old U.S.A., but that I feel somewhat powerless to help due to my lack of perspective. What do I know about positive urban rehabilitation? Apart from my year in Montana and my year+ in New Jersey, I lived in Cleveland my whole life. There's a big part of me that needs to explore how other cities "do it right" before I can ever come back and pretend to be the slightest bit wise. And over this past year, I've visited shining examples of doing it right: Baltimore, Providence, Portland, Red Bank (NJ), Princeton, Trenton (talk about a city that's had problems), Asbury Park, Philadelphia, New Haven, and even (begrudgingly) New York. I've also been very lucky to have a boyfriend who is as interesting in cities and urban revitalization as I am, who will point out articles I've missed, and who will get me books such as America's New Downtowns: Revitalization or Reinvention? and Revitalizing Urban Neighborhoods from the outstanding collection at the Queens Borough Public Library, which he has access to and I don't.

But. One thing I've learned over the past year is that after a certain point, relocation isn't as much of an adventure as it is just daily life in another place. Which can actually be more disappointing than the tedium of daily life at home. Perhaps, then, it's time for me to slap some calamine lotion on this constant itch to pick up and go.

So, here. As I told Ruth, who's always scheming to get me home somehow: find me suitable job to apply for in Cleveland and maybe I'll think about coming back. It doesn't have to be a library job. I'd prefer to work for a Cleveland-based organization that does good work in the name of Cleveland. I have a Master's degree. And although my minimum salary requirement is $40K, I could significantly fudge it based on the cost of living in Cleveland.

Maybe.

Response to a Puzzling Comment

Today I received this comment from Katie on my March post 10 Things Cleveland Should Be Proud Of:

IVE LIVED AROUND CLEVELAND MY WHOLE LIFE AND THERE ISNT ANYTHING BAD ABOUT IT ... IVE BEEN TO NEW YORK CITY CHICAGO MYRTLE BEACH AND OTHER CITIES THAT HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM WE DO AND WE DONT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT. CLEVELAND IS IN A LITTLE BIT OF A RUT BUT IT IS BEING TURNED AROUND. IF YOU KNOW THE CITY....AND I MEAN REALLY KNOW THAT CITY THERE ARE A TON OF GREAT RESTAURANTS AND A REALLY GOOD NIGHT LIFE. YOU JUST HAVE TO KNOW WHERE TO LOOK. SO BEFORE YOU CRITICIZE OUR CITY GET TO KNOW WHAT THERE IS TO DO HERE. WE HAVE THE GUND , JACOBS FIELD, THE ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME, THE SCIENCE CENTER, BEAUTIFUL TOWER CITY WHCIH IM SURE YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN BEEN IN AND A LOT OF OTHER THINGS. GROW THE HELL UP AND WORK ON YOUR OWN PROBLEMS AND GET A LIFE BECAUSE ITS REALLY PATHETIC THAT YOU WOULD MAKE A FRIGGIN WEB PAGE ABOUT HOW BAD CLEVELAND IS. [etc...]

While normally I wouldn't respond to something like this, I'm a bit puzzled as to how anyone could think this site is about how bad Cleveland is. Anyone who knows me knows I am fiercely proud of and deeply in love with Cleveland, I love my "really bad" Cleveland vowels, and I love the fact that I am probably the only one on the Jersey Shore who knows what a) a treelawn is and b) goes into a Polish Boy. I'm actually saddened by it a little, because anyone who's read this post in its entirety, as well as this post and this post and this post and this post, would know how much I champion Cleveland and all of its many, many undervalued assets.

That said, I want to point out that I can - and you all should as well - appreciate the fierce spirit that went into this comment - the attitude of "don't you dare say anything bad about Cleveland, because it's great and I love it." I've had many similar exchanges with people here on the East Coast, including snapping at a coworker that they had no right to say anything bad about Ohio because they'd never been there.

So Katie, I'm sorry if you misinterpreted the intent of this site. We're really on the same side, and I'm so glad there's at least one other person out there who seems to love Cleveland as much as I do.

Keep loving it. It needs you.

Well, Someone Finally Said It

After listening to me go on and on about how unsatisfied I am in life, and how unsatisfied I might potentially be after yet another adventure in relocation, my boyfriend just said, "It doesn't matter where you go. If you're far away from Cleveland, you're going to hate it."

On Hating Places

A lot of people hate Cleveland. Or say they hate Cleveland. These people range from those who complain about Cleveland and say they want out but don't (or won't, or feel like they can't) ever really go, to those who visit Cleveland and think it's a dump (although, frankly, I've never talked to anyone who's visited who hasn't been pleasantly surprised), to those ignorant people who've never been to Cleveland and know nothing about what's happened there in the last 30 years but spew hate talk about it anyway.

I've been thinking a lot about hating places lately. It would be easy for me to hate the place where I am now. After all, I'm as much of a sucker for some good city infrastructure as many women are for things like pink roses and bubble baths (an aside: blecccchh!), and Ocean County, NJ has seen much poorly managed growth over the last 20 or 30 years.

But what really gets me started thinking about hating places is a visit to New York. I keep going there, telling myself, give it one more chance. You might like it this time. I never like it. I don't like the throngs of people, I don't like the glitz of Broadway and Times Square, I don't like the inexplicable wafts of rotting milk smell that seem to come from everywhere, whether you're around a garbage can or not. I don't like how blocks and blocks of stores selling expensive junk turns quickly into blocks and blocks of stores selling cheap junk. And I've been to those places that everyone seems to love, like Chelsea and Greenwich Village, and even Central Park, and I'm just filled with a sense of "that's it?" Seriously, if there's something I'm missing, tell me, and I'm willing to try again.

Being from where I am, I am very sensitive not to totally slam someone's beloved hometown. I'm sure New York is great for those who love it. But hating New York has taught me something valuable: don't plan to love a place that you think you might love.

Ostensibly, doesn't New York have everything that I think I want? Doesn't it have culture, and great restaurants, and can't I get around there without a car? Isn't the Creative Class alive and well in New York?

So what is it?

Maybe it's that New York is constantly referred to as "the City", as if it's the only city in the world. Maybe it's the ridiculous real estate farce that keeps people earning modest incomes in cramped apartments with too many roommates. Maybe it's the fact that everyone seems to want to cram themselves into Manhattan and Manhattan is so freaking small, if you look at it on a map.

That's it: everyone seems to want to be in New York. As if there are no other places to be.

But there's more. I try and live by the concept of "enough." New York feels like "too much." Too many people, too much monetary excess, too much hype. Maybe even too many entertainment options - my God, how many Saturday nights does one have? I suspect there are other people who feel this way, who just don't want all this excess, people for whom a nice mid-sized city somewhere in between the coasts might be a nice option.

If only I could think of one.....