Week in Review

Here are some headlines from my week.

1. PD Peddles Panic, Reader Gets Jaded
Nowhere in this story did the reporter capture the sentiment that was expressed repeatedly in our block club: namely, that this kind of crime can happen anywhere, and that we weren't "terrified."

2. Breaking News: Cleveland.com Still Sucks, Just in Different Way
Have a look at the site redesign for yourself. Does anyone know a good way of figuring out what's going on in Cleveland? Because the local news outlets are becoming unreadable/unwatchable. I might just have to start reading the city council minutes.

3. Supermarket Closing, Neighborhood To Become Less Walkable
While stopping off for a loaf of bread after our semi-regular pizza night at Papa Nick's in Edgewater, we noticed a sign on the Giant Eagle across the street: "This Giant Eagle will be closing permanently on September 10. Please visit our pedestrian-unfriendly megastore near the I-90 onramp." (It didn't say that explicitly, but that's what it amounts to.)

4. McCain Taps Barracuda, Nader Supporter Fills with Angst
In choosing the exact kind of person I can't stand as his running mate, Grandpa McCain might have singlehandedly wooed me out of the Nader camp. However, I don't like emotional manipulation, so stay tuned.

The Seven Houses of John McCain

I found myself watching with horror as David Brooks, on the NewsHour last night, vocalized much the same sentiment I'd said to Jim an hour earlier.

(Horror because I've had a longstanding negative visceral reaction towards David Brooks - you know like if you eat curly fries and throw up, you can never eat curly fries again? Something like that.)

Namely, will most Americans care if John McCain has seven houses? Isn't there something in being so affluent that you forget how many houses you own that we're all supposed to be aspiring to, in the name of the American Dream?

Just wondering

Has anyone else received an awfully lot of scratched, cracked, or otherwise unplayable DVDs from Netflix lately? Yesterday I opened one that looked like it'd gone through the laundry. I'm not sure how it even made it to me without getting reported!

RIP Stephanie Tubbs Jones

My congresswoman died last night. She was young -- only 58 -- and had a promising future. She was the first black woman elected to Congress from the not-always-progressive state of Ohio.

And what a lonely, undignified way to go: she passed out after having a ruptured aneurysm behind the wheel of her car.

How awful that her years of public service ended in such a way as to be subjected to ignorant, uninformed comments on cleveland.com suggesting that maybe she'd been drunk or maybe there'd been some kind of cover-up.

She's going to be hard to replace.

Block club meeting roundup, 8/19

As I posted last week, the Bridge/Carroll/Jay block club met last night to hear the proposal for a new "gay-friendly lounge" in the Rialto building (the old Moda space) at 1871 West 25th St.

I won't reinvent the wheel here; you can read a summary of the meeting at cleveland.com.

A couple of points and impressions, though.

1. With a couple of notable exceptions, the tone of the meeting was much less hostile than the one in January. I had wondered beforehand if this might be the case -- I don't know how else to say this, but I wondered if a gay club might be viewed as more welcome than a club owned by people who might have hip-hop night.

2. I feel that it's safe to say that the community would rather someone else own the Rialto building other than its current owners. (You'll recall that during the January meeting, the Rialto's current owners scolded the crowd with such unendearing classics as "If you don't like noise, you shouldn't live in the slum," and "You shouldn't be raising kids in the city anyway.")

3. I can agree that Cleveland could probably use an "upscale gay lounge." But despite Beudert's promise to "shrink the space by design," the venue's capacity is simply too large for such a residential neighborhood. I might have considered supporting him if he agreed to get the place rezoned (or whatever) from 550 max to 275 max, but he made it clear that he didn't intend to do so.

4. While he seemed like a generally good guy, I felt like he spent more time stroking the community ego than laying out the particulars of his business plan.

Thoughts?

Things to look forward to next summer

I'm of the firm belief that you need things to look forward to in life. Now that summer's winding down, I've started thinking about what I'm going to look forward to next year:

1. Tecumseh! Jim's brother lives in Chillicothe and for whatever reason, totally failed to invite us down to see the acclaimed outdoor drama despite the fact that he knew I wanted to see it. Ah well, bitterness aside. There's always next year.

2. A visit to the Chautauqua Institute. "The most American thing about America," according to my loverboy Teddy Roosevelt.

2a. And maybe Lily Dale. Where "the energy of the universal life force can be felt, experienced and developed ... in this serene 19th century lakeside community surrounded by towering, old-growth forest."

3. Gardening. I hope that by this time next year, we'll be living in an actual house where I can grow actual food and thus break free from the tyranny of City Fresh. (One thing I will NOT grow in my garden: zucchini. I feel the need here to coin a new onomatopoeic yuck-sound to describe how I feel about the stuff: Fleaaaaachh. Yeah. That's the sound of me throwing up zucchini.)

4. Feast of the Assumption. I've managed, through an unlucky combination of forgetfulness and being-out-of-town-itude, to miss this every year. Although last year I did manage to get to the Festival of San Gennaro in New York. (For those of you who don't know the creepy story of San Gennaro's blood, click here.) So don't worry about me being cannoli-deprived.

5. The much-anticipated eighth Harry Potter book. Sorry, I'm just kidding - no Harry Potter and the College Loans of Doom. I made that up, mostly out of wishful thinking. And maybe I also wanted to boost my Google hits.

21

This summer I've been working with a group of college interns at the "important cultural institution" where I'm temporarily employed. Yesterday they were gabbling excitedly about the upcoming 21st birthday of one of their ranks.

Which got me started trying to remember my own 21st birthday -- though I was quickly overcome with horror that I couldn't even remember my 30th birthday. Which was only a few months ago.

I think it involved a bottle of cheap chardonnay (bleah, how utterly 1990s) and going to see the much-anticipated Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. And probably Taco Bell. I ate probably a literal shit-ton of Taco Bell in those days.

Ah, to be 21. To stare down the long nose of your future and say yeah, I've got time for that. I'll do that later.

I wouldn't want my twenties back, to be honest. As I found myself saying recently to an old friend (hi Kathy!), my twenties were worse than adolescence. This totally blindsided me, too -- as a teenager wishing desperately for independence and freedom, I had never prepared for that possibility.

Crikey, not again

This came in my email today. I'd wondered about it, as the "For Lease" sign had once again disappeared from Rialto's marquee.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Bridge/Carroll/Jay Block Club

Monthly Meeting Announcement

August 13, 2008

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You are invited to attend the next meeting of the Bridge/Carroll/Jay Block Club on: Tuesday August 19th at 6:30 pm The meeting will be at the Carnegie West Library, located at 1900 Fulton Road.

Meeting Agenda

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

• Special Guest: Jason Beudert of Vista Hospitality & Logistics Group, who is interested in bringing "an upscale, alternative lifestyle entertainment center with nightclub qualities" into the Rialto Building (the old Moda space).

• This will be your opportunity to review this business plan and ask questions about the proposed establishment. Members of the block club will be invited to vote via secret ballot on their support or objection of the proposed liquor license transfer to the Rialto Building (1871 W.25th). Please be on time, as the meeting will begin promptly at 6:30 pm.

• Please note the follwing excerpt from a message on this subject from your councilman:

  From: Joe Cimperman
  Subject: Moda
  Date: Friday, August 8, 2008

• Bob, I did not, do not, nor will I, support a liquor license @ that address. Period. End of discussion. I do not believe a liquor license in this facility in any way, shape, or form is a good idea. I feel the need to be consistent here: if it didn't pass muster for the previous owner, if I didn't support Eric and Mac, why on God's Green Ohio City would this be any different? I wlll object until I stop drawing breath. Is this clear enough? Please feel free Bob to forward this to the block club.

  Joe Cimperman, Councilman, Ward 13
  Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

• Please tell your neighbors to attend this important meeting!

Ohio City or Not Ohio City

After a series of conversations with Cleveland Bachelor, I'm left undecided about whether Ohio City is where I want to buy.

I decided to move here because of two things: the West Side Market (without which there would never have been an Ohio City) and the sheer number of public transit options (one of the two best places in Cleveland to live without a car, an RTA insider once opined to me. The other is Shaker Square).

Thing is, I wonder how many other people who have moved here in the last five years moved here for those reasons. How many of them actually shop at the West Side Market? If they do, what are they buying? Are they buying one or two prepared items, or are they walking out with a heavy shopping bag laden with meat and produce? Or are they just going for the atmosphere, to have an "authentic experience?" (See "Meat the Neighbors" from the Scene vault; scroll down for the article).

And how many of the people taking up space in this transit-friendly neighborhood are operating car-free? Maybe it shouldn't matter, but it irks me. How can we have the kind of business district that comes with transit-oriented development if everyone who lives here has a car?

The answer seems to be we can't. Ohio City is turning into another entertainment district a la the Flats, albeit a higher-priced, ostensibly "classier" one. The Warehouse District II, I guess. Which is disappointing to me -- it seems like a real missed opportunity. I don't think an entertainment district is a long-term solution, really.

On the other hand, I love the beautiful houses here. I love the overstuffed, postage-stamp-sized gardens. And I do love the West Side Market. I love nipping down there 2 or 3 times on a Saturday just because I can, because it's so close. I love the sheer cheapness of all the raw ingredients; I feel thrifty and powerful because I know how to cook. I love how shopping at the Market is like thrillseeking in New York -- you never run out of things you haven't tried.

What do you think?

My own four wheels

Jim and I are thinking about getting one of these.

I've been daydreaming about what it'd be like to live in a place where this is the main mode of transportation, instead of the automobile.

Obviously, it wouldn't fly around here -- it doesn't look like a winter-friendly vehicle.

But if we bought a house in Ohio City that was *just* a bit farther than we wanted to haul our melons and potatoes and fifteen pounds of Slovenian sausage back from the West Side Market, I think this would be an excellent alternative to walking, at least in the summer.

I've seen a guy riding an adult tricycle around the neighborhood, and I saw a girl in Tremont riding one to the farmers market. But I tried to ride one of those suckers once and it was pretty hard to steer. I felt like I was going to tip over at any moment.

Why not just get a bicycle, you ask? This isn't much of a secret because I've revealed it before, but I can't ride a bicycle. I never learned how, because as a kid I had a mortal fear of falling, skinning, breaking, and/or bruising something. (I also had a mortal fear of dirt, food with "spots" in it, volcanoes suddenly erupting from beneath my feet, ET, and -- inexplicably -- shoes. Yeah, I was like baby girl Monk.)

In fact, I remember that on one of our family vacations (probably in Michigan or Canada -- we didn't really go anyplace else), we stayed at a campground where you could rent one of these. And they were great fun.

Some people like urban decay

What do these cities have in common?

My husband has had, by turns, an obsession with each and every one of them.

Inspiration

Rediscovered this via even cleveland. I remember watching this as a kid and thinking it was the most profound thing I'd ever seen -- yes, little children can definitely experience profundity.

In fact -- without being too histrionic -- I think this piece has underscored every creative thing I've ever done.

Noise

I came home on Sunday night much to my surprise and chagrin to find that loud people had moved in downstairs from me. The previous tenants were so quiet I never even knew they'd moved out.... I literally never heard any sound coming from their apartment.

I'm really disappointed. Not only had I been enjoying the privacy and relative seclusion afforded by this place (I've lived in at least 10 places since 1996 and this was the only one -- the only one -- where I'd never heard a peep from my neighbors), I'm at a point in my life where I just want to be surrounded by other people like myself, and not people who don't realize how unacceptable it is to play loud music at 11 PM on a Wednesday.

As I discussed recently with Cleveland Bachelor, Ohio City has noticeably changed just in the last year or so that we've both lived here, and not always in a way that we like. When I look out the window, for example, and see the party bus pull up to the Bier Markt and two dozen drunk suburban bridal shower attendees spill out, I wonder why I didn't just move to the Warehouse District. At least I'd be marginally closer to work.

Maybe it's not Ohio City. Maybe it's just West 25th. In which case, I want to get off West 25th and deeper into the neighborhood, where my neighbors will at least be over 30.

Five Things I've Been Enjoying This Summer

1. Cracker. This old British crime drama starring Robbie Coltrane (aka the guy who plays Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies) is the best. A big fat deeply flawed criminal psychologist wheedles his way into the minds of society's most disturbed members. I wish I would've watched this show before I went to library school -- I think I would've been a better reference librarian then. If you catch my drift.

2. Vanilla bean lemonade. Get this at the Juice Garden at the West Side Market, across from the chocolate-covered-everything and popcorn stand.

3. Madeleine L'Engle. Most people only ever read A Wrinkle in Time. Which is a good book, don't get me wrong, but there's so much more. Her books are charmingly didactic and companionable and full of wonder. I love them.

4. Badminton. I like to play in a long skirt, like some Gilded Age heroine.

5. Queen Anne's lace. I know this stuff is technically a noxious weed, but it reminds me of my earliest childhood in a neighborhood gone slightly to seed. I love it growing wild next to the train tracks (earlier in the season, there was a ton of honeysuckle blooming wild on old, sagging chain link fences, too). There's such a sense of wilderness here in Cleveland, unlike in New York where everything's perfectly manicured.

Resurrection

Hi. I'm not dead, I'm just not motivated to write in the summer. It's too hot, even with A/C -- I can't handle temperatures above 80. I usedtacould, as Jeff Foxworthy might say, but I can't anymore and so that makes me wonder what kind of fatal disease I've acquired that's making me so sensitive to heat.

How is your summer going?