Here’s an essay from 1913 about Cleveland. It is a long but fantastic read. Here’s an excerpt:

If we have given some attention in this Cleveland chapter to the traffic of the Great Lakes, it is, as we have already intimated, because the traffic of the Great Lakes has made her the Sixth City. It has also made the most important of her industries, the very greatest of her fortunes. Your Cleveland man will tell you of one of these before you leave the pier edge. It was the fortune that an old Lake captain left at his death a little time ago the fortune a mere matter of some twenty-eight millions of dollars. The old captain knew the Lakes and he had studied their traffic all his life. But his will directed that his money should not be expended in the building of ships. It provided that at least a quarter of a million of the income should annually go to the purchase of Cleveland real estate. And Cleve-land was quick to explain that it was not that the old man loved shipping less, but that he loved Cleveland real estate more. He had the gift of foresight.

If you would see that foresight in his own eyes drive out Euclid avenue — that broad thoroughfare that leads from the old-fashioned Public Square in the heart of the city straight toward the southeast. Euclid avenue gained its fame in other days. Travelers used to come back from Cleveland and tell of the glories of that highway. Alas, today those glories are largely those of memory. The old houses still sit in their great lawns, but the grime of the city’s industry has made them seem doubly old and decadent, while Commerce has pushed her smart new shops out among them to the very sidewalk line. Many of these shops are given over to the automobile business — a business which does not hesitate in any of our towns to transform resident streets into commercial. But in Cleveland one may partly forgive the audacity of this particular trade in recognition of its perspicacity. For Euclid avenue, rapidly growing now from an entirely residential street into an entirely business highway, is the great automobile thoroughfare of the East Side of the city. And when you consider that one out of every ten Cleveland families has a motor car, you can begin to estimate the traffic through Euclid avenue.

There is a West Side of Cleveland — you might al-most say, of course — but one does not come to know it until he comes to know Cleveland well. The city is builded upon a high plateau that rises in a steep bluff from the very edge of the lake. Through this plateau, at the very bottom of a ravine, wide and deep, the navigable Cuyahoga twists its tortuous way into Lake Erie. It seems as if that ravine must almost have been cut to test the resources of the bridge-builders of America. For it has been their problem to keep the Sixth City from becoming entirely severed by her great water artery. They have solved it by the construction of one huge steel viaduct after another but the West Side remains the West Side and always somewhat jealous of the East. She knows that the great public buildings of Cleveland — that comprehensive civic center plan to which we shall come in a moment — are fixed for all time upon the East. And so when Cleveland decides to build a great new city hall, the West Side demands and receives the finest market house in all the land.

The Sixth City

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The Tremont Resident Advocacy Group has a page of great historic Cleveland photos. They’re great!

Historic Cleveland Photos

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Here’s a great article on the Literary Cafe’s Poetry series, which is coming to an end 4 years after the beginning. I was a regular early on, and it’s been a very long time since I’ve made it back to one of their open mic nights.

Goldberg and Traenkner met by some fate (or perhaps karma) four years ago on a quiet night at the Lit Café. As the only bar patrons for the evening, they quickly found common ground in a mutual love of poetry. Lit Café owner and bartender, Andy Timothy, [sic] entered the conversation, and by evening’s end, the three had formulated a vision for putting on a show.

The Lit’s site has an archive of all the videos from over the years. Great job, Steve, Nick and Andy. I’m glad to know you guys.

Literary Cafe Poetry Finale

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On Sunday, the PD ran an article with the headline: Cleveland’s Euclid corridor project has paved the way to economic development. The article covers a lot of ground, but I had some issues with the content and the enthusiastic picture it painted. So I left a comment laying out my beefs and what I’d like to see. I was pleasantly surprised when Michelle Jarboe (who wrote the piece) replied and we started a conversation. One I hope to continue once I get back from work today. In fact, she’s all over the comment section, addressing various issues and questions that folks have brought up.

I even learned that:

the city of Cleveland is working on an interactive map of the Midtown area, which might be available on the city’s Web site by late January. It sounds like the map will stretch from Carnegie to Chester and from the edge of University Circle toward Cleveland State, and it’s meant to show what’s in progress and available for people and companies interested in becoming part of a health and technology corridor.

That’s how it is done, PD. Please keep up the good work. Kudos go to John Kroll as well.

Now, if only they added obvious permalinks to the comments, so I didn’t have to look at the source code in order to link to them… Pretty sure that MoveableType (The PD’s Content Management System) does that easily.

PD starting to get online interaction

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Diaried at Kos.

This week, Cleveland’s city planning commission denied permission for Nike to replace the giant 10 story Lebron James banner across the street from Quicken Loans arena with this new one…

20fMural.jpg

…for obvious reasons.

Commission member Norman Krumholz called James’ image on the mural “terribly negative.”

James’ grim visage and hardened stance play to a stereotype of young, urban black men as menacing and aggressive, a city design-review official said Thursday.

Stanley Miller, executive director of the Cleveland NAACP, said in an interview Friday that the James mural bothered him.

“The media depict [African-Americans] in a more aggressive, forceful, athletic — combative, if you will — position,” Miller said. “The biggest challenge I have with boys is to build their understanding that there’s more to achieve than being a football player, basketball player or rap star.”

Nike isn’t the only major company leaping across the line of racial sensitivity in Cleveland regarding Lebron James. In fact, this might be the image that captures the reality most accurately.

nike-hope-hate

Like most professional sports teams, the Cleveland Cavaliers broadcast their games on a Clear Channel-owned AM radio station, WTAM 1100, that also airs Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It’s time for Lebron James to address that. Not because he’s a Barack Obama endorser. Not because he’s a star. But because Lebron’s a young black man who unquestionably has the power to stop it.

Most of us are fully aware of the racial hate speech that both Beck and Limbaugh spew on a daily basis. Limbaugh called the NBA “the Thug Basketball Association”

Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association … They’re going in to watch the Crips and the Bloods

…Limbaugh’s called basketball “the favorite sport of gangs.”

Midnight basketball — I mean, we’ve done it all. We’ve taken the favorite sport of gangs, and we put it at midnight to get them on the basketball court.

…said that Barack Obama’s America is a place where…

You put your kids on a school bus you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering ‘yeah, right on, right on, right on.’

…and we all know that Beck called Lebron James-endorsed Barack Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

I took it upon myself to find out how the Cavs, Lebron, and Shaquille O’Neal feel about sharing airtime and revenue streams with this hate speech, in an article last month in Cleveland’s newest alt weekly, The Indpendent.

Beck and Limbaugh may not be on the Cavs roster this coming season, but they are certainly on the same team – WTAM’s. The Browns, Indians, and Cavs are a golden goose for WTAM. All three professional franchises make WTAM their radio home. And as long as anyone can remember, WTAM has also been the home of conservative talk radio in Cleveland. Joining the six hours of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh every day are an array of Cleveland conservative ditto heads.

If the Cavs ever cared about being sandwiched into the nooks between Beck, Limbaugh, and their ilk, it doesn’t show. Both Beck and Limbaugh advertise during Cavs games on WTAM, their voices mixing with Joe Tait’s as Tait brings WTAM out of commercial and back to the game. WTAM milks their golden geese one after the other, the revenue streams almost indistinguishable.

No one from the Cavs, WTAM, the Lebron James camp, or Shaq’s, has commented, nor have they made Lebron or Shaq aware of the issue.

It’s hard to see how Lebron, Shaq, and the Cavs can avoid addressing this for the entire 2009-2010 season. Beck and Limbaugh have proven they are willing to plumb the depths of the long sleeping cesspool of racial hate speech for their own enrichment… Meanwhile, Lebron and Shaq, two very powerful African Americans, each with the influence and support to affect change at WTAM, sit quietly on the sidelines.

The silence indicates the enormity of the stakes. What Lebron wants, Lebron gets. Lebron wanted Shaq - got him. Lebron wanted a new practice facility, it was built. Everyone on earth knows that if Lebron says the word, the Cavs leave WTAM the very next minute. And if that happens, every NBA team on an AM radio station sharing air with Rush and Beck will have the same problem. Which likely explains how freaked out Cavs spokesman Tad Carper was when he called me on the phone, from a game, in a panic.

Before I could even ask a question, Tad launched into what I can only describe as a rant, all of which Tad wanted off the record. He more than once claimed I was trying to “blackmail” the Cavs. Tad wondered if the Cavs left WTAM, when would someone else say something objectionable? Where does it end, Tad begged? You’re making us a pawn in your agenda, Tad howled. People listen to those two, they’re popular, Tad cried. I thought Tad might be a Dittohead.

I’m guessing that both Lebron and Shaq would step up in a heartbeat, but neither probably has any idea how dangerous, incendiary, inciting to violence, and racist the airtime has become on the Cavs radio home. The Cavs simply should not broadcast their games on that air and should not share revenue streams with WTAM, unless WTAM cleans up the air. And if Lebron, or Shaq, says the word, WTAM’s air gets cleaned up, or the Cavs are gone. Period.

So we need to make Lebron and Shaq aware of the hate speech they share airtime with.

I’d like to ask this community to help put the pressure on the Cavs to do the right thing, and end the broadcast of their games on WTAM. This is a tough situation for this hope-filled Cavs fan, but it’s time. Even this Friday night, on my way home from filming Palinbots in Columbus, I had to listen to Glenn Beck’s voice of hate advertising his show on a Cavs broadcast while I was stuck in the car.

It’s not about a difference of opinion. It’s about hate. WTAM’s blowhards can be as wingnutty as they want, and I wouldn’t care that Lebron shared their airtime. A line, however, has been demonstratively crossed, into hate speech.

My hometown hero, Lebron James, who grew up in an inner-city neighborhood that suffers to this day because of this level of hate, doesn’t belong associated with it. Ever. Enough is enough.

So here’s the email address for Lebron’s publicity agent, Keith Estabrook.

keith@estabrookgroup.com

Here’s a list of emails for the Cavs, including owner Dan Gilbert.

dangilbert@quickenloans.com
lkomoroski@cavs.com
gnarain@cavs.com
AMercado@cavs.com
 TCarper@cavs.com

Here’s Cindy Hamilton, Nike spokesperson.

cindy.hamilton@nike.com

Here’s the Cleveland NAACP email.

information@clevelandnaacp.org

And here’s a list of emails for WTAM and Clear Channel, also known as the “no chance, but more pressure is good pressure” list.

news@wtam.com
thebigone@wtam.com
georgeallen@clearchannel.com
michellehurst@clearchannel.com
sharonmoses@clearchannel.com
 rewards@wtam.com

If you feel the same way I do, please email them all this image of Lebron, Beck, and Limbaugh, and ask the Cavs to stop airing their games on a radio station that airs racial hate speech. If your favorite team shares air time with Rush & Beck, post their email contact info in this diary, and hit them up, too.

It’s wrong. And it should stop.

nike-hope-hate

Lebron & Shaq vs. Rush & Beck – It’s time.

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Details coming soon in next week’s Independent!

Plain Dealer’s Phillip Morris threatens to “take it outside and kick your ass” – twice.

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MedMart

MedMart

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It’s been posted all over the Cleveland blogosphere today, but just in case you missed it:

Via GLUEspace -  I Will Stay If… Cleveland Edition

When: Wednesday, 18 November 2009 from 5:30 to 8:30pm.

Where: Underneath the Bier Market, 1948 West 25th Street

How Much: $5 (suggested donation)

What:  Talk about what currently keeps you in Cleveland and what it will take to keep you in Cleveland. Special guests. drink discounts, etc.

I Will Stay If…

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This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

Refrigerators & Chickens at Asterisk in Tremont

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Not. To. Miss.

In short, Gotta Groove was nothing like I expected. I suppose had I taken the time to contemplate what it takes to press a record I would have imagined something a but more industrial, but in my fairytale mind, I imagined a magical place, filled with smooth, agile machines, carefully etching grooves on round mats of plastic. Instead, I was greeted to a room of these hulking, brutish things, reclaimed from an era when vinyl was still king and cutting edge technology actually involved cutting.

Great photos too!

I Rock Cleveland – Inside Gotta Groove Records

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Some publication just named Cleveland’s Little Italy the #3 Little Italy in the world, behind New York and San Diego (?).

Cleveland’s Little Italy made our list for its contributions to Italian culture. In addition to all the restaurants, the area claims a lot of firsts. Cleveland’s Little Italy was the site of the first Italian restaurant in Ohio. The first pasta machine was invented here, patented in 1906. And, if the stories are to be believed, the area was a major base of operations for that other Italian import, the Mafia. Finally, the area is the site of the first restaurant of a major celebrity chef: The one and only Chef Boyardee.

Being the resident Italian here at BLACKHEARTCleveland, couple thoughts. Of their list, I’ve only been to New Yorks’ Little Italy, and having lived in Cleveland’s Little Italy during law school, I am confident saying that New York makes the top of the list on reputation only.

New York’s Little Italy feels like Italian Disneyland.  It’s past immensity is gone, whittled down to a couple blocks of Mulberry Street, as the Italians moved out, and the surrounding Chinatown took over.  (which, btw, is the most incredible Chinatown I’ve ever seen.  If this place was once filled with Italians, WOW.  It sprawls.  Feels like you’re in another country).  But the remaining Italian-ness of the place feels forced.  I’ve eaten at a couple of places on Mulberry Street, and this Guido ain’t impressed.

Some exceptions, of course!  There’s a pizza place named Sal’s at Mott & Broome which is DA BOMB - flattest thin crust pizza this side of crepe paper.  There’s a pretty amazing bakery just off Mulberry, Ferarra, which is as old school as it gets.  Their canoli is great.

However, Cleveland’s Little Italy is still a neighborhood with actual Italians in it.  Murray Hill still has the homes with the Virgin Mary statues, the Feast of the Assumption gets bigger every year.  The restaurants?  Eh.  They’re o.k.  Largely because they can’t compete with the Italian moms and grandmas down the street.

But what really makes Little Italy in Cleveland still genuine is not something this Italian is proud of.  It’s still, to this day, a no go area for African Americans.  I can’t tell you how much this saddens me.  I had numerous run-ins with this during law school, and I fought it like a good law student would, especially one who doesn’t like his heritage besmirched by a bunch of morons living in another century.  Times are changing, though. They can’t change fast enough.

Either way, Cleveland’s Little Italy is the real deal.  New York’s must have been something to behold in the day, but it ain’t “the day” anymore.

Cleveland’s #3 Little Italy in the world – the good and the bad

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Via the Plain Dealer:

Cuyahoga voter approval of Issue 6 could cost four officeholders nearly $700,000 in pay

Four elected Cuyahoga County officials who have publicly opposed Issue 6 stand to lose a combined $700,000 in pay if the ballot measure passes.

Commissioners Peter Lawson Jones and Tim Hagan would each lose nearly $185,000, or two years worth of pay. Treasurer Jim Rokakis would lose 2 1/2 years of pay totaling more than $190,000. Recorder Lillian Greene would take a two-year loss of nearly $149,000.

Via Bill Callahan:

County charter will add $700K to top officials’ payroll cost

If you’re a fast counter, you’ll have noticed that our new, efficient system will swap ten existing political jobs for twelve new political jobs, plus seven new top executives hired by those politicians, for a total of nineteen Charter positions. This 90% increase in top payroll slots is the big reason for the added expense. If you assume that all the salaries for elected offices remain the same for their appointed counterparts, and that the new Fiscal Officer and Law Director each make a modest $90,000 to $100,000, the new system will automatically add at least half a million dollars to the County’s payroll.

I thought this was an interesting juxtaposition. $700k over 2.5 years lost by current office-holders, versus $700k per year in additional payroll costs.

Compare and Contrast – County Reform Payroll

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Please allow me a point of personal privilege to announce that my personal blog, Blogger Interrupted, is closing shop, and I’m moving to the new Plunderbund 2.0.  For the hilarity surrounding the flubbed launch, see this.  I’ll still be doing my thing here, whatever that is!

I’m helping Plunderbund becomes Ohio’s new blog badass

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You have to check this out:

Dear Cleveland Enthusiast:

…

The Rockometer is a uniquely designed and themed retro-tech banquet and multi purpose events facility to further interrelate with Cleveland’s rock music legacy.

Here’s what it will look like.

My mind is blown.

(This is also the guy who sent a cease and desist letter to a local music blogger for using the term Rockometer.)

The Rockometer? Really?

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Posting has and will continue to be somewhat intermittent for at least the next few days, as I’m doing a bunch of work on the Cleveland Independent website.

Here’s a recent Toby Radloff video to help you get by:

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

Intermittent Posting Alert!

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next to Ray's Meat and Sausage shop...yum.

next to Ray’s Meat and Sausage shop…yum.

dem bones

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At some point in the Cleveland’s history, it must have been home to some of the finest stonemasons and ironworkers in the world.

Now that working stonemasons and ironworkers–craftsmen–are mainly a thing of the past, their legacy endures and continues to add character, beauty and sometimes even humor to the Cleveland streetscape.

Rustwire: The Masonry and Ironwork of Cleveland

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I voted against both Issues 5 & 6, but Issue 6 passed big.  So what’s a blogger with a recognizable last name to do? Taking suggestions for council seats to run in next year!  I’m also open to campaign slogan suggestions, Tremont artist donations of awesome graphic arts for yard signs, and a jingle.

Problem is, as I’ve written here before, despite my best efforts, I’ve been unable to determine how many signatures you need to get on this ballot for September, 2010.  Hopefully, there will be a longer window to collect signatures than there was for the new city council seats.  But given the way that county BOE does things, who the hell knows.

Issue 6 passes, creating 11 new districts ripe for a new Russo!

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If this were a presidential election with high turnout in the Tremont area of Cleveland, where I voted today, there’d be chaos right now in at least two polling places.  Because it’s an off year municipal election, it’s only a blog post. But it is HIGH FUCKING TIME the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections get IT’S FUCKING ACT TOGETHER.

Neither I, nor my downstairs neighbor, received any notification of our polling place prior to election day from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections.  So I asked my neighbor where she voted last year, and off we went to Pilgrim United Church of Christ, on foot.  Yippee!

Upon arrival, neither of us were on the list.  We had to visit two separate tables - the one where we thought we were on the list, and from there, we were sent to the “problem” table.  Visions of provisional ballots began dancing in my head, but before my blood boiled, we were told to head to another polling place.  I was prepared, because I’d just changed my registration, but my neighbor was informed that despite voting there last year, her polling place had changed, too.   If there were any lines at all, we’d have been there for some time.  But there were no lines, because there is no turnout in an off year municipal election.  Lucky!

Next, both of us on foot, we walked the extra few blocks to Tremont School.  Again, I had to visit two tables.  My neighbor visited one.  We were both asked which precinct we live in, which is pretty hard to answer when the board of elections DOESN’T SEND YOU A NOTICE OF WHERE TO VOTE.  No lines though, so no problem.  Lucky again!  We both voted, but my neighbor’s ballot had trouble going into the optical scan machine.  No lines, so no problem.  Lucky YET AGAIN!

Now, let’s imagine that both polling places were crammed with voters.  My neighbor was in a hurry - she had a doctor’s appointment, and was trying to squeeze her trip to the polling place into her day.  It is quite likely she never would have voted, among a good many others.

All of this because the Cuyahoga BOE, in an election where polling places were changed by the BOE, in which the BOE was well aware for months that ward boundaries had changed, couldn’t manage to let voters know in advance where to vote.

Jesus Fucking Christ, get your act together already.

No notice of polling places leads to utterly predictable FAIL

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I recommend reading Bill Callahan’s post and Roldo’s repost of Eric Brewer’s open letter. Both posts bring up points I’ve not heard from anybody else; and Brewer’s post rings with the kind of truth-telling only someone that doesn’t have anything left to lose is capable of.

You can find the rest of these link round-ups and my own writings on the County Reform proposals here.

Update! No sooner do I post this then a bunch of other stuff gets posted (and I find a few links that I hadn’t linked to yet).

Here’s an hour long audio file of the old Meet the Bloggers crew discussing Issues 5 an 6. It might be interesting considering that they apparently haven’t been paying much attention to the campaigns. Embedded below for your convenience.

 

Ohio Daily Blog Playlist Interviewing Mike Foley, Harriet Applegate & Brian Wright about Issue 5:

Both City Club meetings about the Issues in one convenient playlist:

From the PD:

And the Cleveland Scene finally weighs in:

A Final County Reform Link Roundup – UPDATEDx2

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