The Really Bad Cleveland Accent Philosophy

I've been doing this blog for over two years now, longer than I've ever been at any job.

This is my 200th post, so I thought I'd lay down the RBCA philosophy.

It's about two things, really:

• how people perceive you, based on the way you talk, and
• taking where you come from with you, wherever you go.

It's not a big secret that people judge others based on their accent. If you have a British accent (and it doesn't matter what kind, either), when in America, your assumed IQ goes up about 10 points. And if you're from the South, your assumed IQ goes down about 100 points, if you're talking to someone from the Northeast.

So, what kinds of assumptions do others make about you if you sound Cleveland?

I've been thinking about what it means to have a Cleveland accent ever since, as I described in my first post, I happened upon my west-coast roommate at Oberlin making fun of the way I talk.

Now, you don't want to hear about glottal stops and stuff, and despite having excelled at my linguistics classes at Cleveland State, I don't want to or feel terribly qualified to talk about them. So for the nuts-and-bolts of what a Cleveland accent sounds like, go here.

Instead, I'll try and describe its bouquet, if you will, such as one might describe a rustic Beaujolais, or in this case, perhaps Two Buck Chuck:

The Cleveland accent's dominant note is outrage, underscored by a sharp tang of bristly disbelief, suspicion, and distrust. To ears of pretension it might sound slightly unsophisticated, uncultivated. Not corn-fed, but rust-fed. Pierogi-and-cabbage fed. There's a definite note of "fuck you and the foreign car you rode in on" there, too, and "you're not going to pull the wool over my eyes, you bigshot bastard."

And from that, comes its power.

It's my belief that we ought to harness that power for good, rather than let it suck us down into the helpless despair of the Monday Moaner (all of whom, undoubtedly, are afflicted with terminal RBCAs).

And it's my belief that, though it may be unfashionable to talk about national or regional character, Clevelanders are smart people who are used to sifting through heady promises and lies and who simply don't have the patience to listen to anyone's bullshit.

They say Northeast Ohio is in the midst of a Brain Drain, and have the maps to prove it. So, apparently, all of these other regions are experiencing an influx of people with RBCAs.

We ought to retire that old saying, "you can't go home again," because it's ridiculous. You take home with you, wherever you go - even if you escape the frigid grasp of the Great Lakes for the cheap and easy allure of the Sun Belt. You take with you all the misgivings and misconceptions and sorrows that come with growing up someplace scarred by such overwhelming forces as globalization and the persistent, hurtful misunderstandings between white people and black people, and yet you still manage to drum up some nostalgia for Angelo's (large artichoke pizza - $10.95!) and Big Chuck and Little John and you still manage to hope that this year really will be the Tribe's year. Even if you don't like baseball.

You take the power of the Really Bad Cleveland Accent with you, too.

Use it wisely.

Cleveland+ , Ideastream, and the Corniness of "Branding"

I've been thinking this morning about two "brands" that have been, and will be, bandied about in Cleveland -- namely, the new marketing slogan, and the name of a certain non-profit, public service, multiple media organization based in Cleveland, Ohio[, that] was formed in 2001 to deliver high quality public broadcasting and related services to Northeastern, and North Central Ohio.

I wasn't crazy about the Ideastream thing in the beginning - I was suspicious of it, I thought it was replete with vaguely space-age Kenny G overtones and frankly kinda corny. But geez, who am I to talk about corny? I sit around on weekend afternoons watching Antiques Roadshow, drinking cheap fruit wine, and turning bad 80s hits into odes to my cat (think: "two of cats - two cats that beat as one...").

This morning I came across this quote from Ideastream's 4th Listening Project report, in response to the question "what do people see as the role of local public broadcasting?":

PBS is corny, but it's great. We're so geared toward the flash and slick preproduction (on commercial television) - but once you get past that, public TV is phenomenal.

I don't know much about this brandjacking business, but I do know that branding doesn't seem slick or cutting edge to me, it seems corny. So what if attempts to make fun of Cleveland+ sort of, well, worked in its favor? I mean, maybe Cleveland is sort of a corny place that should embrace polka, bowling, and kielbasa.

Regionalism and Libraries

Thanks to Clevelandada for tipping me off to the PD's new series about regionalism in Cleveland. Especially because I probably wouldn't have found it otherwise, what with being totally unable to stomach cleveland.com.

I'm divided (ha ha) on the issue. The division is between the urban enthusiast in me, and the librarian in me. On one hand, I see the benefits of shared services. On the other hand, there's the possible Barnes-and-Noble-ization of the region's libraries.

Out of the wide range of services that a municipality provides, I think that there are some that probably are more, I don't know, personal. Libraries are one of those services.

For the uninitiated, here is an ultra-brief description of how libraries get filled up with books.

Books just don't arrive on the shelf. Someone has to order them. If the library is a large one with many branches, it would be chaos for librarians in every branch to be ordering books. So there's usually a centralized collections department that orders for the whole system. Oftentimes, librarians in the branches get a say about what gets ordered, but often, the collections department, who may or may not have any experience with the communities served by the branches, (and who may or may not have any experience working with the public at all), is the ultimate decision-maker. The end result is that all the branches end up receiving varying quantities of more or less the same stuff.

In a smaller library, it's usually the librarians who have contact with the public who do the ordering of books. The collection gets specialized to the needs/desires/demands of the immediate community.

(There are exceptions to this, of course. Cleveland Public Library, for one. Cleveland Public Library has an hugely diverse collection.)

So if you take away local control and squish all the libraries under one bookish umbrella - say, the Cuyahoga County Library system - you could end up with a more homogenized collection: a lot of choices, perhaps, but not a lot of selection. I say could instead of will because it depends on what that new Pangaea-esque library system's collection policy would be. I won't lie -- the trend now in public libraries is to buy more of what's popular -- John Grisham, The Secret -- than what's useful, traditional, or a "staple of literature."

Why? Because libraries have limited budgets.

Funding for libraries is generally doing one of two things: shrinking or stagnating. In Ohio, libraries get more state funding based on how many items they circulate. Do you see where this is going? If the library buys more popular items, they get more circulation, and the library gets more money.

What's wrong with that? you might ask. Well, the trouble is - and this is where the Library Establishment and I seem to disagree - that while DVD-borrowing patrons might think of the library as a "free Blockbuster," book-borrowing patrons do NOT think of the library as a "free Barnes and Noble." They expect the library to be a repository, at least sort of a complete archive of the human record. They expect the library to have things that they can't find at Barnes and Noble (e.g., obscure plumbing manuals), or which they can't afford to buy tons of at Barnes and Noble (e.g., children's picture books).

A consolidated library system in Cuyahoga County would have to take that into consideration.

Cleveland+, Plus

And anyway, why did the Greater Cleveland Marketing Alliance hire a Detroit-based advertising agency to handle the campaign?

Because there are no creative people in Cleveland?

Because of that old lame-ass excuse that Clevelanders can't be trusted to talk up their own city?

Because it thought an out-of-town company would be better suited to market Cleveland to outsiders?

Maybe that last one has an element of truth in it, but I still think it's based on a misconception. I think your average Joe Blow in Cleveland probably doesn't have much perspective on how things are elsewhere, but you know what? Your average Joe Blow in New York doesn't either, or on the Jersey Shore, or probably anywhere else. I mean, it's not like handing your marketing campaign to your 80-year old neighbor Mr. Brezinski, who's got an IQ of 2 and doesn't have anything good to say about the place. But surely, the smart, snappy, creative types who choose to base their efforts here instead of leave could be trusted, right?

Eh. Maybe I'm getting too paranoid. Detroit's in the Great Lakes, at least.

About Cleveland+

So I couldn't help but be curious about this mysterious Cleveland+ thing....

There's a tendency, I think, in this country, to assume that everyone who's not us is going to do their job badly. Like, a marketing agency charged with improving the region's image, for example. So, of course, I was suspicious about it, prepared not to like it, prepared to formulate a tirade about it.

[Full disclosure: I don't know anything about marketing, really, except what my lifelong friend who works in marketing tells me, and basing my opinion on that, all I can say is that marketing sounds vaguely scummy.]

Personally, I was put off by the whole brand thing. If I were casting around for a place to live, I would write off any that tried to "brand" themselves. The thing is, though, that I'm not exactly the target market for the Cleveland+ campaign. Thus, I really have no grounds on which to say yes, this will work, or no, this won't. So one could question whether or not my opinion really counts. I'll give it anyway, and let you be the judge.

The name
Although I support the regionalist tone therein, I think the actual name, Cleveland+, is vaguely insulting toward the "+." (I mean, it's one thing for some jerk in New York to go on about The Other Ohio, but to take the superior attitude in a marketing campaign....)

Why didn't they go with something incorporating the acronym NEO (NorthEast Ohio), which is widely used in the local technosphere? Wouldn't that theoretically make is sound sort of progressive? I mean, I like NEO and I don't like anything.

Could've been worse, anyway, I mean, how about the CVB's icky "Just Add You" slogan, or Seattle's just-plain-weird Metronatural? Or what about something like Cleveland: The Knuckles on the Fist. You know, like that open-hand, fingers-together, thumb-out thing Michiganders do to show you where they live (look here if you don't know what I'm talking about). Try it: make a fist with your right hand. It sort of looks like Ohio. (Now pretend you're hitting me for coming up with something so stupid.)

The video
Again, my lack of marketing knowledge - should the video have actually said something? Or was it all about the images? If so, I thought the video was all right. I mean, this is coming from someone who hasn't actually seen NEO for, God, what, almost a year? So, you know, I forget about things. I thought the video made the region look really good. Attractive. I would look at it and think, God, that place isn't such an ugly dump. That says a lot, really it does.

So, for the most part, I'm going to reserve judgement until I see the Cleveland+ logo on the billboard outside my office window.

North south east west

Urban Ohio is a favorite site in our household, so I was pretty interested to see this description of the now-infamous New Yorkers in Cleveland tour. [via jay-c via the gross report.]

These two statements in particular:

"I was given the east side, which is where I work and where I grew up. This was deemed a weakness on the part of the rest of the tour department...."

Umm, excuse me, can you say that a little louder? Did someone just say "the west is the best"?

"...everyone that wanted to take a second look at a place or sign a lease was doing so between W. 25th and E. 13th."

Interesting.

Day of the Dead, Cleveland-Style

I thought it appropriate, what with today being Dia de los Muertos, to honor a few of my favorite defunct Cleveland landmarks. RIP, you guys.

Clay Oven
I know I've eulogized the Clay Oven before, but the ultimate demise of this Indian restaurant is, in my opinion, a Cleveland tragedy worthy of They Died Crawling. The Clay Oven was originally located on Lorain and 205th in Fairview Park, but closed because the city decided an office park was a better use of the space. The Clay Oven did a fantastic business at their original location - it was always full, and with a very cosmopolitan mix of people. It didn't do so well at its next location, next the DMV in a Parma strip mall, and even worse at the Budget Inn on Brookpark Road. The Clay Oven was way better than Cafe Tandoor, which for some reason unknown to me always wins "Best Indian Restaurant" in the Free Times even though it's not that remarkable. If anyone hears anything about the Clay Oven re-emerging, please let me know. It may be the catalyst which ensures that my next leap will be the leap home.

Danny Boy's Farm Market
I'm actually still in mourning over this one, which came as a total shock. Danny Boy's had been on that same corner in North Olmsted for 50+ years. It was the only place to shop, as far as I'm concerned, for locally-produced foods. They had all manners of heirloom and hard-to-find vegetables, Amish baked goods, Lake Erie wines...there was just nothing else like it. It closed in 2004 because, as I recall, the owner professed an interest in doing something different with his life. Which is fine, although in a puzzling and somewhat maddening twist, it appears he's now a produce buyer for Heinen's.

Fenn Tower Deli
Well, it's doubtful that the Fenn Tower Deli could really be called a landmark, but this tribute is for that one person who at some point in the future will google "Fenn Tower Deli." I'm not exactly positive that it's gone, but I'm assuming it is given that Fenn Tower has apparently been turned into housing for students who are no doubt indifferent toward the building's recent past, even if its recent past was somewhat of a decline from its "original 1929 grandeur." The FTD was the only eatery I could stomach on the campus of Cleveland State, and to that end I only found it upon the recommendation of a professor whose uncharacteristically elaborate office (it was an old dorm room, and featured not only a bathroom but a bathroom with a shower) was located in FT. (In the classroom where he taught, there was a raised set of steps that led to nowhere, which allegedly once led to a swimming pool, although I'm not sure about the veracity of that claim.)

The FTD was located in a large atrium, (I want to say) on the sixth floor (googler of the future, please correct me if I'm in error). You ordered from a hole in the wall that resembled a Punch and Judy stage, from people who resembled Punch and Judy. The food was passable and cheap, and the coffee was, er, useful for those of use who did their student internships in 18th floor windowless offices.

Miller's
Miller's had sticky buns. It had a tree growing inside the lobby. I got to drink Shirley Temples. Miller's burned down. These are my memories of Miller's.

Cleveland Aquarium
I only have dim memories of the Aquarium, which closed in 1985, and most of them involve my sister and I fighting over a wax koala (?) from the gift shop, but one of the things that makes me pause when I consider moving back is the lack of a good place to view large fishies. (Although there seems to be an effort to resurrect it.)

Franklin's
I have a feeling this is one of those places nobody remembers but me. Franklin's was an ice cream shop at Lorain around W. 212th. They sold what eventually became UDF ice cream (ahh, those nondescript pink-and-orange packages of yore). I'm not sure when it closed, but I think it might be a plastic surgery or a day spa now.

The Fairview Cinema
It seems strange that I might be nostalgic for a second-run theatre in a strip mall, but I am. First of all, the strip mall in question was an early, pedestrian-friendly model, with the bulk of the parking located behind the shopping center, instead of in front of it. I remember the area as somewhat of a gathering place, the nearest little Fairview Park could come to a "downtown." I liked it because your basic needs could be met there: there was the movie theatre for entertainment, a Revco, Conway's grocery store, Santo's pizza. The whole shebang was torn out in the mid-90s and a new-style strip mall, with a Tops grocery store and ample parking in the front, of course, was put in, making that part of Lorain Road a pedestrian nightmare. Brilliant!

Puritas Springs Park
OK, I don't remember Puritas Springs Park at all, but I'm intrigued by it. I grew up within spitting distance of Puritas Hill, which I didn't know was there until they opened it back up for traffic sometime in the 90s. What? There's a mysterious unused road somewhere nearby? Fascinating. In light of my recent experience living due south of creepy, crumbling Asbury Park, I'm also pretty piqued by the idea that you can still go rooting around in the thick underbrush of the Metroparks and find bits and pieces of a roller coaster that they just let drop off into the valley.

Memphis Drive-Out

Inspired by this BFD discussion, I decided to compile my own list of "Real Cleveland" landmarks - those places you aren't likely to take your chic out-of-town guests (if you want to impress them).

And thus I found that yet another icon of my childhood has dissolved into history. I'm sure that I would have known about this sooner, had my parents not been in England lo these last few weeks. Cleveland loses an historic drive-in theatre, but it gains a larger corporate park complete with a Starbucks. Yahoo!

I can't say I'm too surprised - who cares about drive-in theatres anymore, after all. But that was precisely what I loved about it. There you are, driving around in a clearly urban environment, and poof, how weird, a drive-in. Très bizarre!

Well, at least I'll have my memories of being curled up in my Miss Piggy sleeping bag in the back seat of our Ford Fairmont, while my sister threw popcorn in my hair until I shrieked for mercy, watching Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, or maybe Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Where Would I Live? Part One: Ohio City

So I've been giving some thought to where I'm going to live when I move back to Cleveland. It's not happening yet, but eventually paying $975 a month for paper-thin walls and the kind of bathroom where you can hear the people above and below you peeing will strike a fatal blow to my peace of mind, and I will uproot myself in the night, never to be glimpsed by the 212-set again.

Naturally, my sense of what's a good price and what's not has gotten a bit warped, so it seems that paying $825 a month for a 4th floor loft at the Merrell Building might actually be a pretty good deal. I'm not entirely sure I'd like to live in a loft apartment. But I'm so tired of living in overpriced crapshacks that living in something so luxurious and, by East Coast standards, so cheap, would be my way of proving that New Jersey sucks. (At least in New York, you get something for your money.) Not that I'd have much trouble convincing most people of New Jersey's suckitude, but I'm still obviously feeling dirty and wounded by the whole exurban experience.

Let's look at it in terms of what I require:

Walking distance to groceries? The West Side Market is across the street. So...check.
Where's my bank? Oh, look, it's on the first floor!
Direct public transit to downtown? Check.
Public transit available to my parents' house? Wow, check. Wouldn't even need a transfer.
Microbrew and coffee in walking distance? This might be the only place in Cleveland where I could check those both off....

But. OK. Who lives in these lofts? Would my quiet weekend evenings be thwarted by hordes of pretentious cocktailers who crank up the trance music and pretend they're in SoHo? Would the walls be solid enough to muffle this?

Anyway. If you or someone you know lives at the Merrell Building, or in any other Ohio City loft for that matter, please let me know what the noise culture is like.

Well, That Was Embarrassing (or, Truffles Lives!)

The Superbarista just emailed me to tell me that Truffles did not close after all. So I did what I should have done in the first place, after hearing that rumor: I called them. Nope, not closed. Nope, not closing.

Now, my former lament still rings true, though perhaps I should go back and change all my tenses and put them into the conditional (if Truffles should ever close, this is how I would feel....) But I'm terribly embarrassed that I did exactly what, as a librarian, I would never have done: I relied on a source that was inaccurate and I didn't check out the facts. If I'd been at home and I'd heard that Truffles was closing, I would've immediately gone there. But I'm in New York, and for some reason - perhaps because I don't really use the telephone anymore - I didn't think to just call and ask.

This whole thing really did illuminate one point, though: I like New York but I don't care about it so there's no reason for me to be here. I knew I felt that way but I was waffling about it. After I thought another of my beloved Cleveland institutions was on the chopping block I found myself telling Jim I wanted to go home, and I meant it.

Shopping Local and the Death of Truffles

Part One in the Death of Truffles Series

In a way, my lamenting the demise of Truffles coffee shop in Edgewater would seem a bizarre case of reverse NIMBYism, since I haven't lived in Edgewater since June of 2000. It's a big regret of mine that in the 3 post-Montana years that I was living in Northeast Ohio I didn't just move back to Edgewater: it was always clearly the place I wanted to be. The fact that I lived in Ravenna, and then Cleveland Heights, and then Shaker Heights, was really a measure of how willing I am to torture myself into not having what I really want.

The comment directly under mine in George's post set me to thinking: shopping local really isn't the magic panacea that its proponents - and that includes myself - wish that it was.

While I was in library school at Kent State, the venerable and historic Brady's coffee shop shut down amidst rumors that the building was going to be torn down and a gas station built on its ruins. (This never happened; a Starbucks moved in instead.) Brady's was never empty. My Generation, that old record store of choice for grungy hipsters, was never empty. Danny Boy's farm market was never empty (granted, I know the owner just wanted to do something else with his life, but when I was home last month I didn't see a new independent vegetable market in its place). And, even though I wasn't around for its last days so maybe I should shut up, I don't remember Truffles ever being empty. The last time I went there was last July and I had to just take my coffee to go because there was nowhere to sit.

When I told my oldest friend, Ruth, about Truffles closing, she was completely shocked. She and her sister had worked at Truffles and never had a moment to spare for would-be distractors (i.e., me). In fact before I moved to New Jersey, Ruth and I had our final, "I'll miss you, you'd better call all the time" session at Truffles. It was filled to the gills.

This is why I never actually considered the possibility that Truffles would close. In fact, I always pictured the World's Ugliest Starbucks across the street closing before Truffles, or maybe the newer place (is it Metro Joe's?) where Sai Woo used to be, that (when I peered in last summer) looks like it's inherited all of Sai Woo's unfortunate non-ambience.

Now, I don't know what happened to Truffles, but I do know what happened to Brady's and My Generation. Despite doing a good business, the people that owned the building wanted a higher rent. Same thing happened with the Stone Oven, didn't it? The owners of that building wanted to charge a higher price for that corner spot, so the Stone Oven got squeezed down the block. When I lived in Cleveland Heights in 2002 and 2003, there were many times I had to take my piece of pizza or my tiramisu-in-a-cup and go, because there was nowhere to sit.

My point is that you can shop local all you want, but local businesses will almost never be able to pay the same kind of rent that a multinational megacorporation can. And the multinational megacorporation will, and they won't care if they have to close up shop in a few months if nobody goes there because where those people really wanted to go was the place that was there before, and then the storefront which was once a thriving community gathering place will be empty.

Is my bottom line simply "blame it on greedy landowners"? No. There's certainly a plurality of issues at work here: you'll have to watch out for Death of Truffles, part two. A big part of me simply feels like shit that all this time I've been pretending that I'd fit in better in New York, or Portland, or Pittsburgh, or wherever, and meanwhile the one tiny, tiny scrap of land that I care about most is languishing in disrepair. I guess part of my bottom line then is "blame it on me." Blame it on all the young people who run away from Cleveland and then romanticize it from afar but still don't come back for some reason.

Maybe my Saturn Return will prompt a move back to Cleveland, too.

To Gain or Retain?

Give me the genius of the year award for saying the issue of Cleveland's future is complicated.

I've been considering both Cleveland Brain Gain, the nonprofit started by Hawken student Madeline Bruml, and a certain reaction evoked therefrom.

Oh, I guess a part of me wishes I wasn't so sensitive to linguistic nuances - I shudder at the term "brain gain" because of what it implies: bringing in smart people from elsewhere, because the locals ain't smart enough to know what's good for 'em. (An ex-elitist myself, I cringe when I sense it in others.) Part of the reason I called this blog Really Bad Cleveland Accent is because, well, that's what I want to hear when I'm in Cleveland, and if you're reading this from your Warehouse District loft or your house in Slavic Village and you don't think there is such a thing as a Cleveland accent, that's good, you definitely have one, stay put. Stay where you are, don't move. Don't sell your house to some displaced east or west coast agent of gentrification, because when I come home (and I am going to come home - how many other expats who've lived in New York are going to say that?) I want to serve "cahffee" to those who've been waiting "in line", not "cwawfee" to those who've been waiting "on line." (yes, they say that here, isn't it weird?????)

It's really a measure of my pride in Cleveland that I think it could "Californicate" like western Montana has been since the dotcom bubble burst. I, like Kossuth, don't want Cleveland to fall into the hands of yuppies disguised as hipsters. I don't want mixed-use neighborhoods like the West Side Market district in Ohio City, which have been so painstakingly restored, to be usurped by the false gods of Crocker Park. I don't want it to get discovered. Or, I want it to get discovered, but like former Oregon governor Tom McCall (who was so instrumental in rebuilding Portland), I want them to come, look around, spend their money, and get the hell out.

What worries me is that the price of real estate on the coasts is so outrageous that sooner or later, anyone with half a brain is going to have to realize that living there is unsustainable. And they'll look around for cheaper pastures. For New Yorkers, New Jersey used to be it. Now New Jersey is as expensive as New York. It's only 500 miles to Cleveland, folks, and let me tell you something, Cleveland has a lot more going for it than most of New Jersey.

Let them come, you might say: we need the business! But consider the effect their arrival would have on our fair city.

Two years ago I looked at a gorgeous, prewar Tudor-style apartment on Edgewater Drive. Brick, patina, vines, the works. It had no less than 18 windows, some of which had stained glass, I believe, a fireplace (granted, not in working order), and all the original details. One bedroom, huge kitchen, more closets than you need. You could see Lake Erie. The asking price? $500 a month. How long do you think those prices would last with hipsters flooding in from expensive elsewheres? How many apartments do you think exist for that price in Greenwich Village?

Still don't believe me that big Metropolites will ever discover Cleveland? Every week I get one of those email newsletters that lists all the last-minute airfares. During the winter, especially, there are frequent fares of $68-98 roundtrip between New York and Cleveland. Every time I've tried to buy one of these fares, they're sold out. But wait...there's more. This is typically the only route on the list that's sold out. And it's sold out within hours.

God, I feel like I'm telling a younger sister who's finally grown into her "unique features": yes, you are pretty. People like you.

The thing that encourages me about Madeline Bruml's Cleveland Brain Gain is that it doesn't, technically, aim for gaining brains. It aims for retaining brains, which is entirely different. I suppose I can forgive her for not carrying a dictionary to all of her genius sessions the way language uberdorks like myself would. After all, she attained the unfulfilled dream of my high school self: she went to Hawken, a school which, for all its hoity-toity debate about whether it's located in Gates Mills or Chesterland, is actually an academically rigorous, progressive school that encourages its students to make a difference in the world, rather than encouraging them to buy their prom tickets early, which is about all my high school could manage.

Madeline Bruml, for all her youthful folly (as my fellow blogger, not I, might claim), actually does appear to believe in the locals. Hooray! We tear at our unwashed hair and bang on our rocks with glee! And she, like me, is poised to "grow up" (i.e., go away for awhile) and come back.

The thing I want to point out to those who might consider Bruml a "childish" proponent of Cleveland's economic future is that she gets what's happening with suburban sprawl. It's evident from her Cool Cleveland interview that she gets that her friends - yes, probably from well-to-do suburban families - are dreaming their futures out in Solon or Avon Lake "starter castles", taking their Baby Gap-clad future children to Champps for some freedom fries, leaning slightly left in their voting habits but resolutely avoiding the city because it's crammed with scary poor people. But she sees that that shouldn't necessarily be the American Dream for her generation, and is cheerfully willing and able to kick them in a direction that this New Urbanist is pretty pleased about.

The thing is that there are an awful lot of issues at play in Cleveland's stagnation/rejuvenation cycle, and they interact in unusual and messy ways. Of course we have to understand and preserve everything that makes Cleveland not "like New York", but there are reasons why Cleveland's young people go to New York and Chicago and Boston and San Francisco.

But I'm hungry, this post is long enough, and I'd like to give some of those reasons due attention rather than just lipgloss. If you are or if you know any Cleveland expats, bid them drop me a comment about such.

Insane Things

Today's earlier rant, coupled with reading some awfully lukewarm rah-rahs about Frank Jackson, made me revisit my old Borne for Mayor platform. This was originally intended to be just a heap of tongue-in-cheek, soapbox suds. But it's occurring to me - slowly, laughably - that I could actually do this. I feel that one should live their life doing really insane, but socially productive, things. This is an insane thing that I could actually do.

I could spend the next 12 years figuring out possible solutions to Cleveland's problems. I wouldn't be rushing into this and have my idealism shell-shocked out of me. I don't even think I have any idealism left - idealism isn't the word for what I have. Outrage is the word for what I have.

But seriously. If I think about who I'd most like to vote for for mayor of Cleveland, it'd have to be someone who's done some extensive traveling, who's lived in the Pacific Northwest and New York, who's got a real handle on how to find solutions to problems (hello! my whole profession is about finding answers for people's often poorly articulated, difficult-to-negotiate questions), someone who people will look at and think, now there's someone we haven't seen before, someone who will be one of the most eccentric, memorable mayors ever, someone who will do things completely different. Someone with a giant sense of compassion but who's frigging surly in all the right places.

Why not me?

If I...

...could tell Frank Jackson one thing, it's that I, as a young person who's moved away from Cleveland multiple times, would like to see Cleveland stop trying to recruit people from elsewhere and get focused on the people who already live there, and try to improve their lives instead. Is that radical or what?

"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.

Borne For Mayor 2017

How many of you responded to this call from the Policy Watchdog Group? I'm still thinking. And I'm starting to think feverishly. What the hell does Cleveland need? What would I do to it if I were mayor?

If I were mayor.... Hmmm. I was born in the City of Cleveland while Dennis Kucinich was in charge - a peculiar but significant horoscope indeed. Could I, in a few years' time, come back and be elected as Cleveland's Girl Mayor?

So, friends and neighbors, let's pretend. Let's pretend it's 2017 (I'll be 39 then, old enough to be wise but young enough to not start in with the indignant, tiresome "things aren't like what they used to be") and I'm kicking off the Borne for Mayor campaign.

Now let's have some lofty campaign promises:

As mayor of the City of Cleveland, I vow to:

1. Seek out those experts in progressive public education and let them run a huge experiment on the Cleveland Public School system. The system will become a trendsetter in modern urban education, and will be unlike any public school system in the history of public education
   
2. Assess what community groups are already out there doing good work and unite and work with them instead of recreating the wheel
   
3. Actually live in a different city neighborhood during each successive year of my tenure as mayor, while also retaining a centrally located house, which I would open up on a monthly basis to community members to enjoy a free, 100% organic dinner
   
4. Improve community health by instituting a ridiculously massive urban organic gardening program. I want to see heirloom eggplants growing out of the cracks in the sidewalk on Clark Avenue
5. Improve community health by creating car-free neighborhoods which are designed to encourage walking, biking, and using public transportation (which will also be massively improved)
6. Speak frankly and not tiptoe around the sensitive and explosive issues that divide us in Cleveland - namely race and class, but also the "us vs. them" mentality that divides the political left and right - and conduct a citywide campaign to encourage others to do the same (following the Conversation Cafe model)
   
7. Create scholarships and initiatives to encourage young Clevelanders to go out and explore what other places are doing right, and bring their new ideas back to Cleveland
   
8. Create a WPA-like entity for Cleveland that ensures jobs for all and contributes to community improvement projects
9. Ensure that Wal-Mart and other big box retailers do not decimate the city's small businesses by instituting an aggressive Shop Local campaign
10. Completely swarm Cleveland with so many progressive, optimistic-yet-entirely-practical visionaries that those who deride Cleveland as just a plum will be sent adrift, whining and wringing their newsprint stained little hands, on an ice sheet into the depths of Lake Erie in the dead of February.
    

Look, don't ask me how I'm going to finance these projects. I'm a 27 year old reference librarian who has no other experience doing anything except working in the natural foods business and slinging fancy espresso drinks. But let me use those four things that I am to my advantage, please:

1. I am a librarian, and librarians can find anything, including ways to finance insane civic projects.
2. I have twelve years left before I run for mayor, so I can use those twelve years to learn how to best fulfill my ten campaign promises (let's just hope there's not a whole other, much worse list of problems to fix by then)
   
3. I am a big believer that simply changing one's lifestyle to include constant healthy eating and exercise will take care of a whole host of other social ills - perhaps that's a hallmark of someone born under Dennis "Hot Water and Lemon" Kucinich's mayorship
4. Fancy espresso drinks are just part of life in Portland, and Portlanders seem to be doing just fine by their city. Perhaps there's civic gold in them thar lattes.....
   

You're Clevelanders, I know how you are, reactively naysaying is your favorite game. It's mine too. But I want to ditch that game somewhere out here on the sprawling wasteland of central Jersey - it's time for its battered old box to get squished by someone's H2 barreling too fast through the old Asbury traffic circle.

No one will miss it, and we're all better off playing more creative games, like Pretend.

10 Things Cleveland Should Be Proud Of

The skies are grey, there are grumpy Monday Moaners all around you, and it's snowed 98+ inches so far this winter. You're ready to relocate. There's absolutely nothing good about Cleveland.

If you tend to find yourself in that frame of mind, take some advice from someone who's left (twice, in fact.) Cleveland has a lot to offer. Here are a few assets you won't find anywhere else:

1. Cheap public transportation that gets you pretty much anywhere. Where else can you pay $3 for an unlimited daily pass?

2. The City Club Forum is the "oldest continuous free speech forum in the country." They've had speakers from George Bush to Dennis Kucinich, illuminating bigwigs and little people alike on national and regional issues. Most impressive is their longstanding New Leaders program, designed to mold young professionals into effective community leaders.

3. The Civic Innovation Lab supports, mentors, and funds programs that help Cleveland pull itself up by its bootstraps, ones that haven't been done before, ones that encourage those young creative types to try something new...something that might just help their little old hometown morph into something great. Take a look at the Urban Scrawl project for an idea of what I mean.

4. A bevy of alternative media outlets, such as the Free Times, Cool Cleveland, and Brewed Fresh Daily. Seriously, folks, don't take these guys for granted. You don't know what you're missing until you end up someplace without a decent local substitute.

5. Edgewater Park. It's free. Where I live, you have to pay $85 for a season pass just to get on the beach. Plus, Edgewater has an unparalleled view of the Cleveland skyline.

6. Rent is cheap and apartments with character are plentiful. It's pretty hard to find a studio for $1,000+ in Cuyahoga County.

7. The Cedar Lee and the Cinematheque. Trust me, there are lots of places in this beautiful land where you can't see an art flick without driving (and driving, and driving).

8. The West Side Market - move somewhere else, and you'll probably not be able to find 5 lbs. of zucchini for $1.

9. The Cleveland Metroparks. Central Park certainly can't boast hundreds of miles of hiking trails.

10. The CLEVNET Libraries. Maybe I'm a little biased, what with being a librarian and all, but the CLEVNET collection spans 30 library systems and 9 counties. It's completely free to use, and I never once requested a book that they didn't have somewhere in that vast network. If you're literate in Cleveland, take a moment to be grateful for CLEVNET.

Feel free to add your own....

Old Cleveland, New Cleveland

This past week I was in Cleveland just long enough to grab a PD and run down to Terminal A for a Burning River.

The Arts & Life section featured this story about the Old Cleveland image vs. the New (or, rather, wannabe) Cleveland image. Here's my letter to the editor, reproduced here in the event they don't publish it:

A recent casualty of the "brain drain", I chanced to be at Hopkins Airport the day of the "Old Cleveland, New Cleveland" story.


Speaking as someone who plans on coming back once I've made a quick and easy nest egg elsewhere, I can't decide if I'm annoyed or amused. So, let me get this straight: you want Cleveland to be full of Yuppie poseurs? I try my best to talk up Cleveland to my East Coast friends, but you're making it hard by presenting your dream image as exactly what New Yorkers think Midwesterners think New Yorkers are like.



What's more, I'm a librarian. Talk about a profession that's been maligned by that old stereotype of the harsh, shushing marm. Lately, though, we're plagued by the stereotype of the "next gen" librarian - a pierced, tattooed, intellectual, counter-culture ex-geek who'd just as easily Goth the night away as perform a knock-your-socks off Story Time the morning after.



Frankly, both are tiresome. What's most genuine is when you take the old stereotype and put a refreshing spin on it. Think of a young woman with a bun (dyed pink), glitzed-up sensible shoes, and a T-shirt that says "Marian [the Librarian] retired. I'm in charge now." Wouldn't we, as Clevelanders, rather take creative ownership of our grumpy, beer-guzzling heritage than become some hideous caricature of modern urban renewal?



I think so. It's actually pretty easy to twiddle your iPod in one hand while holding a Polish Boy in the other.

Who's Got a Really Bad Cleveland Accent?

Welcome to my new space.

You may have found me via NexGen Librarian, which is my professional face, or perhaps you Googled "Cleveland accent."

The title for this blog came from something I overheard my roommate freshman year at Oberlin say about me in the hall, i.e., "My roommate has a Really Bad Cleveland Accent."

Which I do. And hopefully you'll "hear" it fairly often here.