Downtown Observations

[So, I know I said I was going to post the results of my research on job growth in NEO, but stumbling on this (which was reiterated here) made me realize that I want to do some research with an actual reference collection in front of me. Please believe a librarian when she says not everything's on the Internet. For all the unflattering things I say about working in public libraries, it really does make my heart ache to not be near a reference collection every day.]

Anyway, I went downtown for the first time yesterday. I went to the Communities of Choice forum at the Levin College of Urban Affairs. I saw a lot of people wearing suits and even got to meet Carole Cohen. A good time was had by all.

I had not been downtown since December 2005, and I had not been to Cleveland State since 2000 when I graduated. I got off the bus at Public Square and walked down Superior to East 6th (had to pay my respects to the library), then turned right and continued down Euclid.

Here's what I thought.

1. Downtown is really freaking cold. New York winters really made a wuss out of me. But you know what? Bracing cold winds are good for you. Put on a wool hat and get outside. Unless you are homeless. Then get inside, get something to eat, and stay warm, please.

2. About this Euclid Corridor thing. I remember hearing about it for the first time when I was at Cleveland State about 10 years ago. If I'm not mistaken, an earlier plan included a tree-lined median with a streetcar, like Van Aken or Shaker Blvd. Sigh. The sort-of finished part near Cleveland State put me in mind of the Boulevard of Death, which is what I'd been picturing.

3. That's the Breuer Building?!? So, duh, all this time I've been picturing not just the wrong building but the wrong location. The visual effect of stumbling upon the Breuer building, with the Cleveland Trust Rotunda in front of it, is truly stunning. Not only was I stunned by it yesterday, but deep in my subconscious lay a memory of being stunned by it many years ago as a wet-behind-the-ears college student who knew nothing of a) the world or b) architecture and its place in the process of urban renewal. The Cleveland Trust Rotunda would be beautiful enough on its own, but there are so many other good looking buildings nearby that it really needs that lovably hideous tower behind it to give it that extra punch.

4. To repeat: there are so many beautiful buildings in downtown Cleveland. It's astounding to me that this place ever fell on hard times while ugly places like where I lived in New Jersey manage to thrive. At moments like these, I want to write those people off as unsophisticated cretins. (My New Jersey friends would be mad at me, though, so I won't.)

5. Even Cleveland State is so ugly it's almost beautiful. Rhodes Tower is simply an icon of 1970s utilitarianism. Besides, I have a weakness for the interiors of 1970s buildings. (Yeah, I know.)

6. There is an awful lot of parking downtown. And not just the surface parking that was the main reason we decided not to move to the Warehouse District. It seemed like there were whole blocks devoted to parking garages.

7. Guess how many people asked me for money? Exactly zero. Don't stay away from downtown because you are afraid of panhandlers.

Should I Go To Library School?

I feel compelled to add this to yesterday's review of Free for All.

If you get to this post by googling "should i go to library school," the answer is: if you want to work in a public library, read this book. It will give you a really accurate portrayal of what life in a public library is like.

There need to be more people going into the library profession who thrive on this kind of stuff - it's not good enough to just tolerate it. Tolerance just leads to eventual burnout and digestive problems.

Here is a short list of who should not be a public librarian.

People with short fuses should not be public librarians.

People who can put on a happy face while dealing with angry taxpayers while suppressing the kind of rage that will ultimately lead them to go postal (or at least, beat their dogs) should not be public librarians.

If you are prone to despair, you should not be a public librarian. If you ever, ever tend to think that society's made up of a bunch of idiots, you should not be a public librarian.

If you want to work in a public library, you need to like yelling at unruly kids, you need to think encounters with weirdos will make charming stories someday, you need to be thoroughly enamored of the human condition, warts and all. I think it might help to be a Buddhist monk.

This public service announcement was brought to you by: someone who cares about the future of public libraries in America.

Career Advice

At my last day at Facts on File, my supervisor came up to me and said, "you're going to be hard to replace. It's really hard to find good people."

Now that I've found myself in an economy that's saying the exact opposite, I'm taking a long, scrutinizing look at what I can do to make this place work for me. It's daunting to consider scrapping every bit of your formal education and starting over.

On the Cleveland-plus side, at least now I know that it's not just me. Back in 2004, before we left, both Jim and I were starting to take the lack of jobs really, really personally. We thought Cleveland hated us.

At the further risk of sounding like a cranky old man, I've started compiling a list of career advice for my future-children, which probably won't be applicable by the time they start looking for jobs and which they probably won't listen to anyway. So far, it consists of:

1. Don't go to library school.

2. For your first career, do something that you don't hate that pays a lot of money and save that money like it's going out of style so you will have more flexibility later.

3. Do some research on whether the career you're considering actually has a future.

4. Don't pick a career with a limited future.

5. Don't "do what you love" and expect the money to follow. (This may sound very cynical, but at the close of my twenties, I've concluded that the marriage of money + what you're really all about is dangerous territory). Do something that pays well enough that you don't have to do it a lot and do the stuff you love in your off-time.

I realize that #5 is essentially a reiteration of #2, but I feel like it's very important. And, as such, it's probably the bit of advice that my future-children will reject the hardest.

I've spent this morning using my librarian skills (okay, I guess library school wasn't totally worthless) working on #3.

Specifically, I'm trying to figure out which career path has the brightest future in Northeast Ohio. I think it might be manufacturing.* I'll condense my research and post it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, any ideas?

*note: joke

Free for All

Over the holiday weekend, while Jim's family watched copious amounts of college football, I sat in front of the fireplace reading Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library, the new tell-all library confidential by Don Borchert.

I'd been looking forward to this book for a while. My friend who works in acquisitions tipped me off to it as soon as it became available for pre-ordering (I think her exact words were, "omg i'm putting a hold on this right now.") My first thought was, "crap! Someone beat me to it!"

(If you aren't a public librarian and have no idea what kinds of antics go on in the public library, either read this book or check out the long-running Tales from the Liberry. Be sure to scroll through the Rogues Gallery.)

Then I started to wonder in earnest why no disgruntled librarian had ever written a book like this before.

Ten pages into the book, I realized what was going on.

Don Borchert is not a librarian.

Don Borchert is a library assistant. He did not go to library school, and so he had no lofty, library school ideals going into this job. For him, it is exactly that - a job, equal to his previous jobs selling records and chopping down Christmas trees (he's just managed to stay at this one a little longer).

He is not a member of "the profession," and thus there was no risk of being shunned by "the profession" if the book turned out to violate some kind of library patron confidentiality code. He didn't feel beholden to any professional standards. (Library Journal asked him if he's a member of the American Library Association, to which he replied: "No.") As he suggested in another interview, he is just a writer that works in a library.

I haven't looked or asked, but I'm guessing there are probably a few librarians out there who are mad that Borchert misrepresented himself as "one of them." Well, okay, I did kind of look, and found this quote attached to a 1-star Amazon.com review:

I couldn't wait when I heard there was a book coming out about a librarian's life of public service! Then I got the book, and found that not only was this not by a librarian (he's a library assistant), but it was a dry and boring read. It's nothing more then a memoir by a cranky old man who discovered too late in life what he wanted to be when he grew up; if that sounds funny, then you are mistaken--it's not.[emphasis mine]

(FYI - it's not a "dry and boring read," it's hilarious and totally accurate. And if Don Borchert is a cranky old man, well, then I am a cranky old man, too.)

The bottom line for me: sometimes I wish I hadn't gone to library school. I was happier just being someone who worked in a library, rather than a librarian. Thanks, Mr. Borchert, for reminding me of that.

PS - There is no way I could have disliked this book, as Chapter Two begins thusly: "When I was a little kid, my mom and dad took us to the public library on West 119th Street and Lorain Road in Cleveland...."

Authenticity, Part Two

After spending Thanksgiving weekend in southwest Ohio, I've come up with a working definition of authenticity.

It came to me while we were in the car, driving back to Cleveland. I was grilling Jim about his thoughts on the subject.

"Are donuts authentic?" I asked, as we pulled into the Tim Horton's in Delaware.

"Yes," he said, probably thinking he was putting an end to the matter.

"What about Timbits?"

"No. Timbits are not authentic."

"What about eating Timbits in a rainy parking lot listening to a staticky rendition of 'It Wasn't God Who Made Honky-Tonk Angels' on the radio? Is that an authentic experience?"

Anyway. Here's my definition:

Authenticity is the desire to pursue and/or recreate activities that would just be part of a normal day for people whom you perceive to be of a lower social order than yourself.

It's this last part that's the key. But authenticity is not just a more urbane, politically-correct way of saying "slumming it." It's also about the desire to recreate the experience of slumming it without having to be around all those "lowlifes," and at a real premium to boot.

(To be absolutely fair, I've never been to the Corner Alley, but it strikes me - no pun intended - as an example of this latter phenomenon.)

To illustrate, I ask you to consider the following scenarios:

Scenario A
I drive to Kroger's on Friday night to pick up a six-pack of Christmas Ale (which they did not have, of course, making me grumble irritably).

This is a normal, everyday experience for me, and as such, is NOT an authentic experience. It will never make a charming story, and if I did for some reason decide to tell my friends about the experience, they will accuse me (rightly) of wasting their time.

but

Scenario B
A Manhattan socialite who is (heavens!) stuck in mid-Ohio for Thanksgiving weekend drives to Kroger's to pick up a six-pack of Christmas Ale and is so charmed by the cornfed folks in hunting caps that she's not put off at all by the lack of holiday brew and buys a twelve-pack of Miller High Life (in cans!) to celebrate her solidarity with the common man.

This anecdote represents authenticity in all its glory, and may in fact end up in the kind of pretentious fiction written by people who smoke clove cigarettes and wear $25 vintage t-shirts.

What do you think? Am I on the right track here?

Authenticity

After reading about it in Cool Cleveland this morning, I put Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want on hold at CPL.

At the risk of eliciting a "yeah, sure you were" from the peanut gallery, I'd been thinking about the concept of authenticity all week. No, for the past three weeks, since I've been back from exile.

Authenticity is something you only become aware of once you've experienced not outright inauthenticity (i.e., the obvious fakeness of Michael Jordan telling you how great his new underwear is) , but rather someone trying to recreate authenticity. It's an elusive distinction, I know.

Before you've experienced this, authenticity is just, well, how things are.

Speaking of Sesame Street

Did you see the story about Old School Sesame Street DVDs including a "viewer discretion advised" warning?

I caught myself just before grousing something about society going to hell in a handbasket. Whatever -- times are different now, and besides, my well-adjusted nephew and my well-adjusted friends' kids watch Old School Sesame Street and haven't turned into raving freaks (yet) so I know it can't be that bad. If people nowadays want their kids to watch sickly sweet Elmo - whom I despise - fine. I don't care.

I just wanted to share this quote from the article, because it exemplifies how I felt about Sesame Street as a child, and how I feel about it now:

People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading. Don’t tell the kids.

Yes, Go to Liberty Books

I feel compelled to reiterate John Ettorre's comment here:

After driving by [Liberty Books] several times, I finally made it in there for a two-hour visit last week, and found it to be easily among the best bookstore experiences in the Cleveland area. Everything about it is appealing--from the massive magazine section, to the high ceilings and free coffee and tea to the staff that doesn't bug you. Just a first-class experience. [emphasis mine]

Liberty Books is located at:

19300 Detroit Rd

Rocky River, OH 44116

You can call them at (216) 458-5860

It's in Beachcliff Market Square.

Here are driving directions.

Christmas shopping season is about to start, folks.....

On Crocker Park, Part One: Teens

Like I said the other day, places like Crocker Park fascinate me. I think people like lifestyle centers because they feel new. And if there's one thing we love in this country, it's a bright, new, shiny thing.

That newness means that the lifestyle center is, at least at first, untouched by certain "undesirable" factors. Namely, shoppers want to avoid:

• Teens
• Poverty
• Travel
• The perception of crime

Let's take the issue of teens first.

Consider this quote from "A Breath of Fresh Air" in the 5/6/05 issue of Brandweek*:

"At The Grove in Los Angeles, guests can shop for an iPod at the Apple store, pamper themselves with items from L'Occitane or Bodega chocolates, and browse trendy retailers like Anthropologie or Abercrombie & Fitch. A trolley car transports customers across the 600,000 square-foot shopping center--complete with a park and man-made lake--to a nearby historic Farmer's Market.

Welcome to the lifestyle center, an antidote for moribund mall shopping in the 21st century. Unlike traditional malls, which are enclosed havens for teens, lifestyle centers offer a pleasant adult shopping experience thanks to their expansive open-air settings, amenities such as cinemas and architectural reminders of Main Street USA."

But the malls close because they can't compete with the lifestyle centers. And then the teens start going to the lifestyle centers for the same reason teens end up in libraries -- because it's the only place to hang out, as I saw last Friday at Crocker Park.

Then adults stop going to the lifestyle centers, because they want to avoid the teens, whether they pose a real "danger" or not (most likely not). What happens then is that the adult-to-teen ratio takes a nosedive, and suddenly there aren't enough adults around to keep order when things do get out of hand. And then the lifestyle center gains the bad reputation that the mall once had.

What do you think?

*I accessed this full-text article via Cleveland Public Library. One of the many benefits of having a library card!

The Vernacular

Did you notice that in my previous post I used "CLE+" much as one would use "BFE"?

(For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it's a very rude and un–politically correct way of saying "the middle of nowhere.")

We didn't mean for this to happen, but Jim and I have noticed that CLE+ has crept into our vernacular this way.

Has CLE+ entered your vernacular? If so, how do you use it?

Where We Ended Up Going

So, despite your many good suggestions, we ended up going to Blake's Seafood at Crocker Park (our friends live somewhere out in CLE+, which was somewhat of a hike for us but still shorter than my Queens - Manhattan daily commute).

It was meh. I probably wouldn't go back.

But before you throw rotten tomatoes at me for going to Crocker Park, let me defend myself. I think places like Crocker Park are fascinating. On Friday nights, they transform into these fake villages full of milk-fed, identical-looking teenagers. It's like a movie set - I kept thinking about the 1950s town square in Back to the Future.

A friend's mom once commented to me that she didn't like Sesame Street because she thought it was much too NYC-centric, that it didn't represent most American kids' lives because most American kids live in the suburbs, without stoops and corner stores and (although this part remained unsaid) diversity.

Thing is, when I was a kid watching Sesame Street I longed for those things. I wanted to go live on Sesame Street and I didn't care if I had to rent a garbage can to do it.

Is this the same impulse that drives places like Crocker Park?

Where is the Indian Food? Good Question...

Here's a comment from Michelle on yesterday's post about where I should eat:

I'm new to Cleveland. Where is the good Indian food?

This is an issue of vital importance to me because a) I can't remember and b) I think I never really found anyplace as good as the Clay Oven, which the city of Fairview Park replaced with a parking lot. The only one that ever came close was Raj Mahal in Cuyahoga Falls, and that is quite a hike. (Although in combination with a trip to Krieger's or the CVNP, I could justify going out there. Wait, no. I could justify going out there solely to get Indian food.)

Fully realizing that I might get a lot of hate mail from this, I have to say - I've just never liked Cafe Tandoor. Sorry if this is your favorite Indian restaurant. Please don't recommend it to me, I will never like it.

I do have some preferences when it comes to Indian restaurants:

1. Free pappadums.
2. The trifecta of chutneys served with said pappadums has to be thus: tamarind, mint (and it's got to be the glowing green of fresh mint - I can tell if it came out of a can), and fire-engine-red onion.
   
3. Rice or bread has to be included in the price of the meal.
4. The Clay Oven used to offer a vegetarian dinner for two that came with soup (oh God! the soup...), samosas, two curries, saffron pullao, naan, raita, dessert, and coffee. I loved this.
5. If you order something mild at an Indian restaurant, it should be medium. Order medium, it should be hot. Order hot, and suffer the consequences. The spiciness should also have some depth, not just heat.

So, where do you like to eat? Are there any new places that have opened up in the last three years that I should know about?

And does anyone know of any secret plans to open an Indian restaurant in Ohio City?

Where Should I Eat?

I'm going out to dinner with some friends this weekend, and there are just too many choices. Seriously, I'm like a kid in a candy store. Too many options, I can't pick one, and all four of us are horrible deciders.

So I'm taking recommendations...where should we go? I want to be adventurous and get out of Ohio City. Just pretend you're recommending your must-go restaurant to someone who's only going to be in town for one weekend. (Unless your must-go restaurant is in Ohio City, that is. Then pick something else.)

Move to Cleveland Instead

This is an excerpt from The Embers of Gentrification, about the failure of Red Hook (a relatively isolated corner of Brooklyn) to follow the pattern of "viral gentrification" -- which starts with poor artistic types moving into low-rent areas and ends with 14 Baby Gaps -- that's consumed a large part of New York:

Greg O’Connell is a former police detective who started buying in Red Hook in 1982; he now owns four massive waterfront buildings, including the pre–Civil War–era coffee warehouse that’s home to the Fairway grocery store. Partly out of necessity, and partly out of temperament, he’s also become a bit of an amateur urbanist; one resident described his role in the neighborhood as "part Andy Griffith, part Boss Hogg." When he arrives to meet me in his battle-scarred pickup truck, there’s a copy of Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities lying among a scatter of papers on the dashboard—part of his homework, he explains, as he’s been invited to participate in a panel at the Municipal Arts Society called "The Oversuccessful City, Part One: Developers’ Realities."

O’Connell’s reality is that he’s done very well in Red Hook, thank you very much. But he’s also worked to nurture the area, offering subsidized spaces to artists and carpenters and craftspeople who live and work in the neighborhood. He’s no bleary-eyed romantic when it comes to the city’s past; he remembers patrolling boarded-up blocks on the Upper West Side in the late sixties, in neighborhoods he describes as "real buckets of blood."

But even he thinks that a recession—in essence, a gentrification stop-work order—would be welcome. "It used to be that if you were from Okefenokee," he tells me, "and you were the best dancer in the world, the idea was that you could come to this city to make it. You’d live three in a room if you had to. But now the three-in-a-room places are disappearing. And you need that balance or you choke the life from the city." He worries that New York will eventually price out the people who started this cycle in the first place. "If I were a young man with a lot of money," he says, "you know where I’d go? Buffalo." He’s not kidding. He’d buy up a lot of underused waterfront property on the cheap, then sit down with the local politicians and community groups to draft a plan for attracting the creative types who reinvigorate neighborhoods, block by block.[emphasis mine]

My sentiments exactly.....

Take Your Swordfish Dessert and.....

Now that Michael Symon is The Next Iron Chef, the potential for culinary tourism in Cleveland is pretty ripe.

So...try this experiment: Google "things to do in Cleveland."

Are you happy with the results? Did you notice that Cool Cleveland doesn't come up in (at least) the first three pages of hits? (Note to people who've reached this page by Googling "things to do in Cleveland": just go here.)

[Bonus points: can anyone spot the error on the Positively Cleveland page?]

Now...what happens when you Google "food Cleveland"? Are you happy with those results? Does anything seem to be missing?

If you were a culinary tourist bent on visiting the home of Michael Symon, what would you want to see on your first page of Google hits?

Answers will be graded on penmanship....

Cleveland Things I Have Been Desperate To Do

The movers were here on Wednesday and now I've almost got my household in order (which must mean I'm sitting on the floor eating Spaghetti-O's because I enjoy it, right?)

Anyway, I'm itching for the weekend because I want to do some of the Cleveland things I used to daydream about in Rat Hill.

1. The Czech Holiday Fair. I was so happy to read that it's this weekend! Excursions that involve historic buildings (see a photo of Bohemian National Hall here), pretty garnet sparkly things, pork & dumplings and Czech literature buying opportunities score big in this household. Here is the blurb from the PD:

CLEVELAND

Czech Holiday Fair slated

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Prague at the Bohemian National Hall. The landmark hall, a tribute to old Prague, will be the setting for the annual Czech Holiday Fair on Saturday. Crystal, dolls and pottery from the Czech Republic and Slovakia will be for sale, as well as Christmas breads and dumplings, pork dinners and Czech beer. The fair, sponsored by the Czech Cultural Center of Sokol Greater Cleveland, runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the hall, 4939 Broadway, Cleveland.

2. The Metroparks. From there, I want to take a walk in the Metroparks with Trees of North America. (Jim hates it when I whip out Trees of North America. We're both terrible at identifying trees. Everything is a tupelo to us.) I love Central Park, but it's just not natural. There are no deer in Central Park. I can't tell you how much I've missed this incredible asset.

3. The Cinemathèque. Even with all the movie-going opportunities in NYC, the Cinemathèque at the Cleveland Institute of Art is probably my #1, wish-I-could-go-there-but-it's-500-miles-away daydream destination. I don't even care what movie we see. For me, it's often less about the movie than the theatre itself. For God's sake, we spent money to see the abysmal Michael Clayton at the gorgeous Latchis Theatre in Vermont.

Stay tuned for the Summit-Portage edition of Things I Have Been Desperate To Do.

The Only Thing I Can't Find

When I was trying to talk myself out of moving back to Cleveland, I was wandering around the Chelsea Market whining things like, "but where will I buy quail eggs?"

(For the record: I have never purchased, much less consumed, a quail egg in my life. Anyway, you can buy them at the West Side Market.)

I'm puzzled though because I haven't yet found a source for Ibarra. Does anyone know where to buy Ibarra around here? There has to be someplace nearby. My friend Rebecca, who is from San Antonio, got me hooked on this stuff when she was planning library programs for Hispanic Heritage Month a few years back.

Any help is appreciated. And, I'm not as into the Nestle Abuelita that you can buy at Giant Eagle - thanks.

Did You Hear Me?

They read an excerpt from my email comments on The Sound of Ideas this morning! I wrote in yesterday, responding to the conversation with PD editor Susan Goldberg.

Here is what I said, in its entirety (I've highlighted the parts they read on the air - interesting that they left off the last point, seeing as Dick Feagler was a guest....):

I've heard a lot about how print media is having
trouble attracting and keeping younger readers...I'm
30 years old, I prefer reading my news in print rather
than online, and here's what I want:

I want investigative reports and hard news.

I don't want human interest stories. 

This may be a "sports town" for sports fans, but I'm
not really a sports fan, I don't want to have to skip
over half of the front page because I'm not
interested.

EXPAND THE OPINION PAGE WITH LOCAL VOICES - I can read
Maureen Dowd elsewhere. I want to read op-eds by
Cleveland people on Cleveland issues.

Please add some younger columnists. I respect the
columnists that you already have, but they're in a
different phase of life than me and have different
issues and concerns.

Exceeds Expectations, or, Back from Exile: Days 1-4

I am currently sitting in my new apartment with no furniture, no job (yet!) and lots of time to write and think about things (which is good). So here are some of my first impressions about Cleveland.

1. Ohio City is beautiful. Tree-lined streets, brick alleys, stately Victorians with wrought-iron fences....There is NOTHING like it in New York City. The best part is that Ohio City is a prime example of how revitalization in Cleveland is working. When I was a kid and we'd come to the West Side Market, this place looked like absolute crap.

2. Small world. Visiting my sister in the small English village where she lives, we'd walk down the street and everyone would wave to her. I was jealous. Within the first few hours of living here, we'd already run into two people we knew.

2a. People are friendly. This surprises me because a) I am not friendly and b) I remember people here being more like me. But it's nice. It's nice to have a joke with the nice man selling me a $3 sammich. Nice nice nice.

3 The sky is big. Montana is Big Sky Country? No. It's Ohio. Sorry for the cliche, but the sunset last night over the lake was absolutely breathtaking.

4. I can breathe. Breathing helps you live.

5. Shrinkage is good. Sort of. The drop in population density was instantly palpable, and inside, Jim and I both went "ahhhhh....."

6. Life is good. Our standard of living has gone up so sharply that we almost feel dizzy. Let me count the ways:

Restaurants. In Rat Hill, our eating options were mostly limited to forgettable Chinese takeout and pizza. (Although if you can get to Kabul Grill at 138-11 Queens Blvd, you should - it was our favorite.) Here, we have Phnom Penh, Great Lakes, Nate's Deli, Johnny Mango, Momocho, Lelolai, Bier Markt..... In fact, I was just talking to the building manager and he assured us that soon we'll be fat-and-happy alcoholics.

Shopping. The West Side Market is right there. I mean, right there. I don't have to get on a bus or a train, and in fact, I could probably get away with going there in my slippers. Is there anyone reading this who doesn't already know the benefits of the West Side Market? If so, I'll try and explain it like this: I feel like taking every person I meet on the sidewalk by the shoulders, shaking them, and yelling, "I JUST SPENT THREE BUCKS ON A WHOLE POUND OF HUNGARIAN SAUSAGE!!! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FREAKING CHEAP THAT IS????"

There's also Dave's. If you're someone who lives out in Westlake or Solon or wherever then Dave's might seem tiny and quaint, but if you have lived in Queens, Dave's is like a shopping mall or perhaps a small, self-contained culinary universe. Remember the Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns tried to do his own grocery shopping? ("Ketchup...catsup...ketchup...catsup....") Well, that's how I feel. When I come home from Dave's, I have to lie down. (Plus, I still can't get over being able to buy wine AND cheese in the SAME STORE. Seriously, you people don't know how lucky you have it here.)

Our apartment. I can't count my chickens before they're hatched - there are surely things I will H.A.T.E. about the place (already, the water pressure is a bit disappointing....) but the place is quite visually impressive and it's pretty solid - the only noise we hear is from the street, and that should get better when we've got the drapes up. And the price! This apartment would probably sell for $5 million in Manhattan. Suckers!

All in all, Cleveland is exceeding my expectations to the point that I'm kicking myself for having stayed in New York for as long as I did.

I was a fool!

Back from Exile

Population of Cleveland on October 31, 2007: 444,313

Population of Cleveland on November 1, 2007: 444,315