The longer I spend in Cleve­land, the more like Cleve­land I become. This first man­i­fested itself years ago, when I started append­ing “or what­ever” to the end of my con­ver­sa­tions. Hav­ing suc­cess­fully bro­ken myself of that habit, I’ve now noticed that I’ve inter­nal­ized, to some extent, the Cleve­land ten­dency to find things to com­plain about, espe­cially if I’m […]

I went to the 2010 Cleve­land Dragon Boat fes­ti­val with Bram on Sat­ur­day. We had a tough time get­ting there because I for­got just about all of the bridges in the Flats are closed, so we missed part of the open­ing cer­e­monies. And then we ended up leav­ing early because I got an inch long splin­ter in my […]

Last week, I posted on the fol­low­ing on Face­book: Cleve­land and LeBron should be two, respon­si­ble, con­sent­ing adults, and if it is time to move on, the last thing Cleve­land needs to be is the co-​dependent, I’ll-debase-myself-if-only-you’ll-stay, undig­ni­fied, crazy ex. I’m not going to debate the mer­its of what­ever deci­sion LeBron makes. That’s up to him. What […]

Yes­ter­day Bram and I spent most of the after­noon at Whiskey Island, fly­ing an owl kite, and get­ting the lit­tle bear com­fort­able play­ing in the waters of Lake Erie. He enjoyed his “swim­ming” les­son. The dude is also a chick mag­net, as evi­denced by the fol­low­ing photo. I took Bram to Train Day today. I intended to take him to […]

On 13 May 2010, I went to the Front Room Gallery for John G’s Cave­man Diaries 7 ‘zine release; Megachurch’s album release & show with Clan of the Cave Bear and Swindlella. Great crowd, great exhi­bi­tion by John G, and great music. Unfor­tu­nately I for­got my earplugs. For­tu­nately, I got my mitts on CMD7, the Megachurch album (which […]

Das Schnitzel Haus Udupi East Coast Orig­i­nal Cus­tard Korea House (The Bibim Bam is as awe­some as I remem­bered) Punk Rock Soft­ball Cave­man Diaries/​Megachurch CD Release (more to come) Paint upstairs apart­ment Eat southern-​roasted turkey, polenta and roasted red onion & avo­cado salad with neigh­bors Jack Frost Donuts (I’ve had the donuts plenty of times, but never […]

Yes­ter­day I went to the Sach­sen­heim for Cirque Imag­i­naire, a trav­el­ing art gallery. There were a lot of arts & crafts packed into the hall, and I squeezed through the throngs with a giant mug of beer. Two booths really caught my eye, the t-​shirts from Psy­cho Rein­deer, and Erin Carek’s science-​fiction col­lage work. I picked up the set of rock­et­man coasters […]

On Thurs­day, after work but before I went to my Applied Quan­ti­ta­tive Sta­tis­tics class at CSU, I spent 3 hours at the Cuya­hoga County Ombudsman’s Office mak­ing phone calls to Char­ter Tran­si­tion vol­un­teers. Along with other mem­bers of the Pub­lic Engage­ment Com­mit­tee, I was call­ing vol­un­teers that we’d iden­ti­fied as likely to not have heard from a spe­cific work­group. The […]

This was the open­ing week­end for the epony­mous Bắc, the new Asian food place in Tremont. I’d spent most of the day yes­ter­day tramp­ing around Cleve­land in the snow, so it was a wel­come change of pace to spend some time in a warm room with great atmos­phere and cute wait staff. The change in the space […]

Just about every Sat­ur­day morn­ing, early, I take Abra­ham to Dave’s to do the weekly gro­cery shop­ping. Just about every Sat­ur­day morn­ing, Dave him­self is there, and never fails to greet the kid and I with a nice word and a smile. It isn’t really Dave Saltz­man in the flesh [that would be gross]. The man­ager just hap­pens to […]

The eas­i­est way to get peo­ple who live in Cleve­land and have a bad opin­ion of Cleve­land to have a bet­ter opin­ion of Cleve­land is to get them to pay atten­tion to dif­fer­ent things, and to pri­or­i­tize that atten­tion. This evening I could have dwelt upon how empty the down­town was, but instead I mar­veled at the Christ­mas lights […]

Today I would have had three great phở­tos if I’d had my cam­era with me. The empty-​socketed win­dows of the Schofield Build­ing on East 9^th and Euclid, (it looks noth­ing like this any­more), a sod­den couch and smashed bigscreen TV sit­ting in the mid­dle of a vacant lot next to a shut­tered porn shop on West 25^th — like some­thing out […]

Pretty much right after I shut down Tremon­ter, I was con­tacted by a local guy who was inter­ested in start­ing a new weblog for the Cleve­land area. He brought me on board for sev­eral rea­sons: my famil­iar­ity with Word­Press, my pas­sion for Cleve­land, my knowl­edge of the local blog­ging com­mu­nity and my writ­ing abil­ity. I’ve sort of been his […]

My adven­tures with the 23 con­tinue. Last week I essen­tially raced it home every day. Three con­sec­u­tive days I passed it at the cor­ner of Carnegie and Ontario and caught up with it on the other side of the bridge. I’ve got no pseudo-​math to throw at this exper­i­ment, but my gut tells me that, at least […]

While I was watch­ing the Celtics/​Bulls game, some­one set fire to the aban­doned build­ing just cater­corner from me on Holm­den Court (the alley behind my house). Either the fire started back up around 3am or the arson­ist came back to fin­ish the job because the street was clogged with fire trucks. This is the sec­ond arson […]

A month or so ago I was talk­ing with Pultz about all of the things two bearded, over-​educated, Cleve­land trans­plants are likely to talk about when forced by neces­sity to drink in a bar they nor­mally wouldn’t fre­quent. I admit to my snob­bery. One of the top­ics that came up was the impend­ing Saint Patrick’s Day Ama­teur Drinking […]

I went for a run for the first time in a dog’s age today. Put in a lit­tle over 3.5 miles at 11 min­utes a mile. Not so good, but not that bad for a 28 year old with an arthritic knee, a 9 month old, and a year plus of mostly seden­tary liv­ing. My knee hurts, but the weather is beau­ti­ful. What the hell, […]

Times are tough. Com­pared to mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, times aren’t that bad for my fam­ily; but in some ways we’re poster chil­dren for the social, infra­struc­tural and eco­nomic chal­lenges that the coun­try cur­rently faces. For instance: My home has decreased at least 15% in value since I pur­chased it due to the fore­clo­sure cri­sis. Refi­nanc­ing my […]

I’m sens­ing new kinds of life in Cleve­land; or at least com­ing out of my year-​long infant-​induced social hiber­na­tion. In the past cou­ple of weeks I’ve got­ten my mitts, mugs and mallei prepo­si­tioned by all kinds of var­i­ous NEO.neo-creativity. Of course, I’m sure behind the times with a bit of most of it. My schtick seems […]

I smelled smoke just a bit ago yes­ter­day and saw quite a bit blow­ing past my win­dow. Turns out a fire had just started in an almost empty house a block south of me. The down­stairs res­i­dents had vacated a week ear­lier, and the upstairs fel­low got out before the fire started. The address is 3279 West 17^th Street, just […]

The best RTA route in Cleve­land is the 23. This is my third year rid­ing it, and I could set my watch by the morn­ing bus; if I wore a watch. The dri­vers are friendly, deft and will put on the brakes if they see some­one hoof­ing it after them, and the bus doesn’t stop every two feet […]

The most com­mon semi-​smarmy ques­tion I get about rid­ing my bike to work is: “How many MPG do you get with that thing?” So I decided to do more bike math. There are 2080 calo­ries in one gal­lon of 2% milk. Using the calo­ries burned count from last year [220 calo­ries per day [6.6 miles per day]] I get […]

This year it seems like it is tak­ing for­ever to warm up. I was rid­ing to work ear­lier this week, head­ing north­bound on West 25^th when I noticed that the flags on my side of the street were blow­ing at me. Which is nor­mal since I usu­ally ride into the wind on my way to work. On the […]

There are some good inter­ac­tive util­i­ties out there for deter­min­ing hous­ing afford­abil­ity based upon var­i­ous met­rics. The Cen­ter for Neigh­bor­hood Tech­nol­ogy has a Hous­ing + Trans­porta­tion Afford­abil­ity Index and the New York Times has a cal­cu­la­tor that deter­mines whether it is bet­ter to rent or buy based upon selec­table cri­te­ria. There’s also WalkScore, which deter­mines the walkability […]

Not only did my crazy yelling neigh­bor get evicted, but the dude that lives upstairs, a relaxed and friendly guy, just got taken away by the cops on sus­pi­cion of gun pos­ses­sion. Based on what his dis­traught girl­friend was yelling from the bal­cony, some­one gave a false report about it and she blamed the folks who live […]

While most of the rest of the county focuses on the vote counts tonight, I’m up late with a few fel­low crew-​members mak­ing sure that the web­site runs smoothly and doesn’t crash. Look­ing at the same page but see­ing dif­fer­ent sto­ries. Really, I’m the least crit­i­cal night-​owl, I just have to make con­tent updates if requested. The […]

$110 will get you approx­i­mately 250 items of sec­ond­hand baby clothes. No one needs to buy us any­thing resem­bling a baby cloth for at least the next 9 months. The Bobby web­site acces­si­bil­ity val­ida­tor is no longer avail­able online. It is now bun­dled into a piece of IBM soft­ware for pur­chase only. This makes it harder, not easier, […]

I pissed off a cop today. He was sit­ting at the inter­sec­tion of West 20^th and Lorain at the light and chat­ting with a car in the other lane on West 20^th. I was two cars back. The light turned green and they just kept talk­ing, so I honked my horn. The car in the other lane got the […]

These signs have been around Down­town for a month or so now. I still don’t quite know how I feel about them. I don’t know how bad the homeless/​panhandling sit­u­a­tion is here in Cleve­land, and whether or not it war­rants a cam­paign with this level of blunt­ness or scope. It is sup­ported by The Home­less Grapevine, and var­i­ous other homeless-​targeted […]

This past Fri­day was an event that I’d been look­ing for­ward to for sev­eral months. Tower Con­trol Records’ CD Release Party for The X Bolex and Jerk. 12 bands, $5 cover and free food pre-​show. It was super-​well orga­nized, no chance to miss a band’s per­for­mance and just enough time in between them to snag a smoke if […]

I was talk­ing with an employee at the Steel­yard Best Buy over the week­end and was told that they’re doing much worse than cor­po­rate had set for them, about $10k-​less-​than-​estimate-​per-​week it sounded like. I was also told that other busi­nesses down there are hurt­ing too, they’re all wait­ing for Wal-​Mart to open in the hopes that […]

I got an unex­pected free hair­cut today from the ladies who run the Gentlemen’s Bar­ber Shop in Tremont. Appar­ently they’ve got­ten some busi­ness from my Tremon­ter post­ing about the place. I tried to talk them out of it, but there was no dice. They wouldn’t even take a tip. I’m just glad to know that I helped out […]

On my walk to work today I saw that another busi­ness on Euclid Avenue is clos­ing. Before long the only things that are going to be open along Euclid are the House of Blues and the bowling alley.

Down­town is inter­est­ing. For the most part Euclid Avenue is rem­i­nis­cent of an empty tomb, just about every building-​front is empty and dirty, with trash col­lect­ing where the wind blows it. There is also a con­stant of home­less peo­ple, they’ve each got their own ter­ri­to­r­ial cor­ner and they tend to place them­selves right where it is […]

Almost a year ago I made my first Google Map for the redesign of the TWiFi site. I didn’t touch the API again until I finally started redesign­ing Tremon­ter a few months back. The idea for cre­at­ing a neigh­bor­hood map for Tremont had been rat­tling around in my head since I first started the site, but I knew how tedious the work would […]

This was another ridicu­lous week­end of music, art and poetry in Cleve­land. Last night I went to C-​Space and lis­tened to a few local women poets fol­lowed by the double-​barreled fea­ture shot­gun that is Alixa + Naima [MySpace page]. The poem Being Human [read it here], made me tear up. I snagged their CD and a sweet DIY silkscreen […]

Here is the link to the bal­lot [PDF] I’ll be vot­ing on in the upcom­ing elec­tion. Here is how I’ll be vot­ing on the issues and why: Issue 1: Ref­er­en­dum on Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion: Although I might be miss­ing some nuances to this leg­is­la­tion, espe­cially in light of Bill Peirce’s stance against BWC, it appears to me that […]

On Fri­day I spent about 5 hours on the Art­Walk, includ­ing judg­ing a Mutts­quer­ade, and on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day I spent much of my time on the redesign of Tremon­ter. The design itself is pretty much fin­ished, and now I’m just tweak­ing the con­fig­u­ra­tion, adding more con­tent and a bit more func­tion­al­ity. If I can just fig­ure out how to get […]

When I first moved to Tremont almost two years ago I only knew two peo­ple in the neigh­bor­hood. They’ve since moved to New York City, greener pas­tures, and bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ties. As I’m not very good at mak­ing friends, I decided that a good way of meet­ing peo­ple in the neigh­bor­hood would be to start a weblog and forum that would […]

I swung on up to Ohio City last night for some sushi from Kimo’s before going to the last night of inter­views for this round of Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions Grant-​making. Kimo’s was closed again. The third time in a row this has hap­pened to me. I know he does the sushi for the Indi­ans, and that its a big […]

The night before last I met a rel­a­tively new Tremont res­i­dent for beer and tacos at the Lin­coln Park Pub. We spent nearly two hours chat­ting about the var­i­ous places we’d lived in Indi­ana, job prospects and how to fix Cleve­land. Yes­ter­day I was going to write more about this, but due to a power out­age, I had no internet […]

Last evening was the sec­ond night of inter­views for the sev­enth round of Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions grant-​making. We had six inter­views on the sched­ule, but one can­celled due to ill­ness. The other inter­vie­wees pre­sented on beau­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­grams, safety pro­grams, and edu­ca­tional pro­grams. One thing that I’ve started to notice, from attend­ing the Tremont Strate­gic Invest­ment meeting […]

I’ve got so much web-​based work to do that I’m con­sid­er­ing drop­ping the $50/​mo it would cost to have inter­net access at home again. The redesign of Tremon­ter is mov­ing fit­fully, I’m hav­ing to teach myself much mySQL, and Dru­pal’s doc­u­men­ta­tion assumes a cer­tain level of devel­oper exper­tise that I’m just now get­ting. The inter­ac­tive Google […]

The first night of inter­views for Round VII of the Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions grant pro­gram was last night. I didn’t have to haul ass out to Mt. Pleas­ant this time, since my group was meet­ing at St. Ignatius. We were sup­plied with cof­fee and tea which was great since I was fight­ing some sinus stuff. We had six […]

Since I know a bunch of peo­ple who do Meet The Blog­gers they asked me to come to their silent auc­tion and read some poetry along with 10 other folks. The space was in the amaz­ing Tower Press build­ing, which also houses Artefino. The first floor artist spaces are reduced rent [$625/​mo], but for the most part […]

The Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions grant-​making com­mit­tee met again last night to start the fall round of grant dis­cern­ment. We had deli­cious food from Luchita’s. This round only had about 60% the num­ber of pro­pos­als com­pared to the spring round. This is, appar­ently, typ­i­cal. But it means that you have a bet­ter chance of being funded if you […]

I had a full and excel­lent week­end, full of superla­tives. I had sushi at Pacific East because Kimo’s was closed for the Indian’s game, watched A Mur­der of Crows by Mac Well­man at The Lim­inis and had a Pisco Sour and Bour­bon Daisy at the VTR. A Mur­der of Crows [I’m prob­a­bly going to go see it again to make […]

Last night at The Church I saw three bands. Slack­jaw [soon to be Early Girl] was a folky-​moving-​toward-​rock band from Cleve­land that put together a decent sound but I seem to have caught them in the awk­ward part of the tran­si­tion. The vocals are still folky and get over­whelmed by the music. Amy Kasio was a two-​piece elec­tronic out­fit with poppy lyrics […]

So it looks like I’m not going to be able to afford a house in Tremont. With only one excep­tion, every house that I researched [about 2 dozen] would sell for sig­nif­i­cantly more than what I can get a mort­gage on. There was one house on Auburn, pur­chased in 1997 for $13k, that was sold in 2004 for $134k. It […]

I went to the Grove­wood Tav­ern last night to meet Chas Rich and final­ize the site design for his rein­car­nated Pitt sports weblog: Pitt Blather. George Nemeth showed up as well and hooked me up with the CDs I won at Blog­ga­palooza and in trade I finally got rid of gave him my lava lamp. I had BBQ […]

I went to the Grog Shop last night to see my friend’s band Humphry Clinker and Tim Fite and Taran­tula A.D. and drink a few Newcastle’s. HC put on a good show, but the sur­prise of the evening for me was Tim Fite. He’s got a pas­sion­ate South­ern feel to his music, a bit of twangy Appalachian and a great sense […]

I was asked a good ques­tion yes­ter­day. How well do you deal with ambi­gu­ity? Which prob­a­bly only seems like an ambigu­ous ques­tion to some­one like me. It is clever in its self-​reference. I think I answered well enough, and even moreso if the ques­tioner real­ized that I applied my way of deal­ing with ambi­gu­ity in for­mu­lat­ing the answer. I […]

It was almost like a weblog­ger meet-​up last night. Quar­rel With The World came up from Akron to go see the curated show by Erie Effu­sion where we ran into the Ferris’s, Beer and Cloth­ing and a red­head with a MySpace account. Later, we went to the Lit where we ran into What’s in the Bag and Cleveland […]

My 4^th of July would have been dead all day if it weren’t for Tremont busi­nesses who were open. I dropped off Carl Sagan’s The Demon-​Haunted World at the Library and ran in to Steve and Kathy Smith and Steve Gold­berg on the way. I stopped in to Scoops and got a Wild Cherry-​Cranberry smoothie while I checked my […]

I got up early this morn­ing and rode my bike from Tremont to the Mem­phis Drive-​in for the flea mar­ket. I killed about an hour and a half brows­ing through all the booths, eat­ing some soft-​serve and shoot­ing the breeze. I ended up buy­ing Dr. Mario and Pro Wrestling for my NES for $5. Then I went from Brooklyn […]

My con­tract with Ver­i­zon Wire­less is almost up, and since I’ve had con­sis­tently bad expe­ri­ences with them when I got my con­tract two years ago I switched to T-​Mobile. Not only did Ver­i­zon not send me the rebate for my phone, they fudged up my num­ber trans­fer and had ridicu­lously crappy cus­tomer ser­vice. Oh yeah, they also […]

•The Cleve­land Plan­ning Com­mis­sion has this awe­some inter­ac­tive map that I was shown last evening while plan­ning the 2007 Cleve­land Lead­er­ship Sum­mit. If you like play­ing with sta­tis­tics, or try­ing to get an overview of basic city sit­u­a­tions, this is the site for you. • Here is a 2004 pdf from Juve­nile Court with data on juvy […]

I just called the Cleve­land Munic­i­pal School Dis­trict to request some pretty gen­eral data about the dis­trict; specif­i­cally, the num­ber of schools in the dis­trict and how they break­down between ele­men­tary, K-​8 and high schools. I need this data for some of the prepara­tory work for the 2007 Cleve­land Lead­er­ship Sum­mit. The recep­tion­ist who answered the […]

I got sauced this week­end, since I orga­nized and fol­lowed through with a tour of all the ritzy drink­ing estab­lish­ments in Tremont. The Vel­vet Tango Room was by far my favorite, and I’m going to have to stop in for their com­pli­men­tary sushi on Tues­days. All the reviews start here and plenty of pic­tures are here.

I just spoke to the board of Neigh­bor­hood Hous­ing Ser­vices Cleve­land [whoa 1994 site design!] about my trip to Nashville. They footed the bill so it was only right that I tell them about it. The board has folks from all kinds of Cleve­land ser­vices as mem­bers and the City Coun­cil Chair­man Mar­tin Sweeney was there […]

I went to the Cleve­land Metroparks Zoo this week­end and took a bunch of pic­tures. For just $1 extra on the ticket price I got to see the Touch exhibit and feel up some rays and sharks. Did you know that the zoo is free to Cuya­hoga County res­i­dents on Mon­days from 10:00 until 4:00? Still it is a somewhat […]

I’m home now, and I’ve finally man­aged to upload all of my pic­tures. You can view the set here. On Sun­day the Cleve­land Con­tin­gent met to cre­ate an action plan for a project here in town. We didn’t have very long to work, but we decided to struc­ture a sur­vey to be sub­mit­ted to Cleve­land youth in […]

A group of folks from all over the coun­try was in town learn­ing about the small grant pro­gram spon­sored by The Cleve­land Foun­da­tion. You know, the one I’m on: Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions. A few of the com­mit­tee mem­bers [and one lucky alter­nate] were asked to go along for a neigh­bor­hood tour yes­ter­day and then share din­ner at Fire […]

Despite the fact that at any given time there are around 10 security-​enabled WiFi con­nec­tions, one can in fact get free WiFi by Claes Oldenburg’s FREE stamp if you hold your mouth just right. Thanks CaseGuest! You can also watch the lake and the plane from Burke pro­mot­ing Christie’s Cabaret.

Since the local media is going through its monthly “Cleve­land has a self-​esteem prob­lem” schtick, I thought I’d point out some­thing that makes me wrys­mile every time I see it. Cleve­land stop signs pro­vide a sub­lim­i­nal neg­a­tive mes­sage. They all say “Stop Cleve­land.” Yes, the “Cleve­land” is very very small, but that only makes the plot more insid­i­ous. Think […]

I received over a ream of Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions grant pro­pos­als by courier yes­ter­day. I have a week and a half to review 41 pro­pos­als from Cleve­landers who have ideas for improv­ing their neigh­bor­hoods. And here I thought I was run­ning out of stuff to read. I think I know what I’ll be doing this weekend.

Recently I’ve been doing my laun­dry in the evenings, and there is always a very old lady play­ing lot­tery with scratch off tick­ets the entire time I’m there. It doesn’t mat­ter which day, or what time, she’s there. She only scratches off one ticket at a time, then leaves the table in the laun­dro­mat, goes out­side, walks […]

I’m cur­rently at the Phoenix on Lee [Where is Jeff Hess?] apply­ing for jobs. Ever since George posted my frus­tra­tion, I’ve got­ten quite a heart­en­ing response from folks in the area. I just fin­ished a meet­ing with a fel­low blog­ger about apply­ing to his com­pany. You peo­ple are the rea­son I love Cleve­land. I’m start­ing to hope that I might actually […]

I feel a bit mer­ce­nary doing this, because money isn’t the only rea­son I’m seek­ing a non-​dead-​end job. But while I’m craft­ing my online State­ment of Ambi­tion as it per­tains to my career, I might as well dish out some basic met­rics for what cer­tain salaries would mean to my lifestyle; at least in Cleve­land. I’ve tried to […]

Life in Cleve­land is becom­ing increas­ingly unful­fill­ing for me. I have spent the last 9 months look­ing for another source of employ­ment in this area, and have been most unsuc­cess­ful. This is my third Cleve­land win­ter, and in the time I’ve been here I feel that I have offered plenty of myself to Cleve­land through time and effort, yet […]

Girl and I had din­ner at Opa! over the week­end. It was both a tasty and nice time. We started out with an Octo­pus Salad which was a bit too smoky and olivey for our tastes and I had Pulled Lamb over Penne and Girl had Cherry and Apple glazed Pork, both of which were quite tasty. For dessert […]

I watched just over half of the Super-​boring Bowl [com­plete with lame-​ass com­mer­cials] and then headed over to the Beach­land Tav­ern to hear a few bands. I saw two locals, The Dri­ven High and my friends Humphry Clinker and a band from Boston called The Beat­ings. All three bands had chick leads, which was nice. I also had an Irish […]

The house across the street from my apart­ment is for sale for $50k. The house pay­ment would be cheaper than my rent, but upon look­ing at the inside I esti­mated another $50k would need to be invested just to make it liv­able. I don’t have the time, money or incli­na­tion to do that kind of work on […]

In which Adam receives notice that he has been selected as an alter­nate to a Neigh­bor­hood Con­nec­tions Grant-​making Committee.

A poetry night recap.

In which another entry is made into the annals by our hero con­cern­ing poetry, pot and delib­er­ate word abuse.

In which Adam describes an evening spent learn­ing about air pollution.

In which Adam repro­duces for pos­ter­ity a Craigslist post he made.

In which Adam tries to fig­ure out where he can dis­pose of dead batteries.

In which the author, for the gril­lionth time, rumi­nates. Specif­i­cally, on movies shot in Tremont.

In which a bunch of weblog­gers get together and mouth off about lit­i­ga­tion, help­ing NOLA folks, tips for new blog­gers, copy­right, hit counts and sundry other thingers.

In which Adam attends a local open mic night, runs in to a bunch of neigh­bors and rumi­nates on community.

There is too much to do around here. Seri­ously. Things I would like to do this Labor Day week­end: Inge­nu­ity Fes­ti­val Taste of Cleve­land Cleve­land Air Show St. John Can­tius Pol­ish Fes­ti­val Pat’s in the Flats 60^th Anniver­sary Bash Notre Dame Game Watch at The Blind Pig I can prob­a­bly man­age to get to two of these […]

When I went to get my laun­dry out of the dryer at the laun­dro­mat, raw sewage was float­ing out of the main doors. And the guy that man­ages the places what squeegee­ing shit down a drain. Bonus.

If you go over to Tremon­ter you can check out the pro­gres­sively drunker reviews I did for all the places in Tremont that have Guin­ness on tap. This post links to all of ‘em. I was alone for most of the tour, but Jeff Schuler caught up with me at The Tree­house. He’s a cool guy, just moved […]

Last evening was the per­fect evening to be out­side. So I hopped on my bike for a nice leisurely ride, intend­ing to explore Ohio City. I never made it out of Tremont. I ran into Lou Muenz, com­ing from the Lin­coln Park Pub and their $1.25 taco night. We rode around the neigh­bor­hood a bit, caught sight of Steve Goldberg, […]

Last night was some sort of weird art nir­vana in Tremont. For the 150^th Art­Walk no punches were pulled. I started out at Inside-​Outside where I ended up buy­ing a small paint­ing, then I headed over to the Scran­ton Gallery for some poetry read­ings, then I stopped by the park for some Sum­mer Shake­speare, then I went to the Ukrain­ian Museum […]

In my ongo­ing quest [pre­vi­ous reviews: Heck’s; Swenson’s] to find the best burger in Cleve­land, I took a trip out to Euclid with Five Dol­lar Beer last night to check out Stevenson’s Ham­burg­ers. We learned about this place from the hon­or­able Food­Goat. This was a damn good ham­burger, def­i­nitely the win­ner from the three burger-​centric places I’ve been […]

I’ve been spend­ing a lot of time hang­ing out at the local ice cream place. I killed a cou­ple of hours there early Fri­day evening, shoot­ing the shit with the folks that work there and a cou­ple more hours yes­ter­day, where one of the work­ers directed me to the site of her semi-​nude phở­tos. [!] I think I know every­one that […]

Being bred a Hoosier, 4^th of July fire­works in Indi­ana typ­i­cally aren’t any­thing all that impres­sive. Most of the cool ones are ille­gal, so my child­hood was filled with those lit­tle snappy bug­gers and those grow­ing snake thingys, with a wimpy foun­tain thrown in now and then. As I grew older, my uncle and cousin would pur­chase some […]

Where in Cleve­land are men’s cloth­ing stores? I need to buy some black pants before Wednes­day. I’m picky. I want flat fronted, heavier-​than-​dress-​pants mate­r­ial, black pants. I was at Express­Men and Kohl’s the other day [which is where I usu­ally shop for clothes] and they didn’t have any­thing even approx­i­mat­ing what I wanted. I real­ized I should try to buy clothes from […]

I had lunch at Swenson’s Drive-​In in Seven Hills. It was unlike Kunkel’s Drive-​in in Con­nersville, they didn’t have the old boxes to call inside, instead you turn on your lights. The carhops run to and from the vehi­cles, I imag­ine they stay in good shape doing this. One of the carhops looked like she was […]

I got invited to attend three days of com­mu­nity lead­er­ship train­ing and last night was the first night. We did a lot of dis­cus­sion on what makes a com­mu­nity, what makes a neigh­bor­hood, what makes a stake­holder, what makes a leader. Since I’ve been to sev­eral lead­er­ship work­shops, camps and all that it was a good refresher. Unfor­tu­nately, when they start […]

From a Plain Dealer Edi­to­r­ial: There’s much to crit­i­cize about Wal-Mart’s busi­ness prac­tices, but let’s be hon­est: Wal-​Mart is already in this mar­ket. City res­i­dents reg­u­larly trek to its sub­ur­ban stores. Why shouldn’t they be able to shop closer to home — in stores that employ their neigh­bors and pay taxes to sup­port city ser­vices — if they choose? A full-​service […]

The Blog­ger Meetup was last night, and when we got most of the gos­sip out of the way, we started in on Wal-​Mart and pos­si­bly using this issue, which a few of us feel quite strongly on, to test our effi­cacy as a blog­ging com­mu­nity. See if we can’t make a dif­fer­ence instead of just talk­ing. If you’d […]

I’m heart­ened by the ini­tial response I’ve got­ten with Tremon­ter. I’ve received an email from a pro­fes­sional phở­tog­ra­pher who would like to take some pic­tures for me, an email from a Tremont res­i­dent who has B&W phở­tos that she’s will­ing to have posted, encour­age­ment from fel­low blog­gers and most impor­tantly, vis­i­tors I’ve never heard of.

I ate at Johnny Mango’s. In my com­pli­cated inner ratio of quan­tity and taste ver­sus price they score very highly. It also helped that I’d not had much to eat before­hand. I plowed through my plate like those dogs in kib­ble com­mer­cials. Well, maybe not that bad. I got the Mush­room, Tomato, Gar­lic Bur­rito Big Plate and […]

I went salsa danc­ing with a friend for the first time last night. We went to Modä and took advan­tage of the the offered lessons we dis­cov­ered through cleve​land​salsa​.com. I think this is some­thing I could become addicted to, see­ing as I woke up this morn­ing with the salsa beat still churn­ing through me.

Well, I’m fin­ished putting together my Tremont spe­cific weblog and bul­letin board. I was going to wait till May to tell every­one, but since I’m only left with the nev­erend­ing “adding of con­tent” phase, I thought I might as well get it over with. Now I’ve just got to get the word out around Tremont. The site is […]

Noth­ing glam­orous hap­pened at the weblog­ger meetup last night. We talked a bit about putting together a Cleve­land Wiki, but other than that we just schmoozed, which, while not glam­orous, was still impor­tant. We can build a bet­ter rap­port with each other if we know each other more per­son­ally. The Ter­mi­nal Stout at Rock Bot­tom was pretty tasty too.

The Auburn Block Club is a whole dif­fer­ent beast than the Professor-​Thurman-​Valley View club. I guess my ini­tial con­fu­sion as to which I belonged to was well-​founded; My build­ing sits right on the dividing line.

The week­end is here and in cel­e­bra­tion, I’m going to put together as much Cleve­land Poetry [and per­haps a bit of music] infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble. Maybe you can catch some­thing on the flip side.

This was a big meet­ing last night and the upshot of it is that I finally dis­cov­ered which block club I’m sup­posed to be going to, offi­cially. It ain’t this one. No big deal though, because both block clubs have stuff to do with my street and I’ll take any excuse to visit Lucky’s.

I had din­ner with Five Dol­lar Beer last night. We went to Heck’s Café over on Bridge Avenue, because they appar­ently have the best burg­ers in town. The burg­ers were good, but if they are the best burg­ers in town then Cleve­land sorely needs a really good burger joint. Some­thing akin to CJ’s out of South […]

I went to the Cleve­land Film Fes­ti­val on Fri­day for a show­ing of six short films. Short reviews of each, and spoil­ers of course, past the jump.

The com­bined blog­ger/​pod­cast­ing meetup last night was the best yet. There were so many peo­ple there that we broke up into three small groups: one for pod­cast­ers, one for blog­gers and one for peo­ple to dis­cuss with Denise Polver­ine [who paid for the beer!] how cleve​land​.com can incor­po­rate more blog con­tent into their site. I didn’t […]

These are a few of the fine folks that were at the rather huge blog­ger/​pod­cast­ing meetup. The list is incom­plete, as some peo­ple might’ve signed up after I left. If I mis­spelled your name I apol­o­gize. Mike Baker @ Cleve­land Yucks Tim Bakke @ Geek Zen Will Kessel @ Col­li­sion Bend Bruce Kratofil @ Bug­blog Chas Rich @ Sardonic […]

I just got back from the March Professor/​Thurman/​Valley View block club meet­ing. Coun­cil­man Cim­per­man was present to lis­ten to our con­cerns and to tell us a bit about what is going on with Steel­yard Com­mons and other items of Tremont interest.

The Cleve­land Art Museum is slated for a $258M expan­sion in the com­ing year. I’m glad that they’ll have a chance to get more of their large col­lec­tion on dis­play, but I can’t help but think that $258M dol­lars [and the $8M chipped in by the state] could do a lot more good else­where. Yes, pri­vate donors can […]

Today is the first day that peo­ple in the Mid­west [includ­ing Ohio!] can take advan­tage of The Fair and Accu­rate Credit Trans­ac­tions Act of 2003. You can now get a free credit report on your­self once a year. Just make sure you print it out right away, at least from Equifax. They only give you once chance […]

Now that I’ve opened my eyes and started look­ing around, I’m really amazed at how much there is to be involved in around the Greater Cleve­land area. It makes it hard to choose. I’ve gone to a cou­ple blog­ger mee­tups and they have been quite eye-​opening in regard to eco­nomic devel­op­ment in this area. While I’m […]

The Feb­ru­ary 2005 Cleve­land Blog­ger Meetup was last night. Most of the group was dif­fer­ent than last time, although Will Kessel, Jeff Hess and I, not to men­tion George, were all there again.

I went to a block club meet­ing for Tremont res­i­dents last evening. It doesn’t mat­ter which block club because appar­ently I can go to any block club I want to go to and every­one will wel­come me. As expected, most of the mem­bers there were older, the youngest prob­a­bly being in the late 30s to early 40s, except […]

BFD posted a notice for The Daniel Thomp­son Poet Stone Fund ben­e­fit that is hap­pen­ing on Feb­ru­ary 12, in Lit­tle Italy. Here are some of his poems and some other press. The event is free, billed as “an evening of poetry, polemics, and per­for­mance,” and the rest of the details are past the jump. I’ll see […]

After spend­ing three hours at H&R Block on Sat­ur­day, fig­ur­ing out my taxes with the guy there, I needed a nice bit of relax­ation. I also needed a hair­cut. So I finally tracked down this hereto­fore unnamed but very well rec­om­mended bar­ber shop on Madi­son in Lake­wood and when I went to The Great­est Bar­ber Shop in the World: T.D. & […]

Awhile back a friend of mine told me how I could sign up for the North­east Ohio Per­form­ing Arts List­serv [NEo­hioPAL]. A gen­tle­man named Fred Stern­feld main­tains it, and mem­bers of the list­serv send in events in which they are involved, audi­tions, cast­ing calls, free or dis­count shows, you name it. It is heav­ily theatre-​centric but also has […]

I had The Great Lakes Brew­ing Com­pany’s lat­est con­coc­tion last night, the Black­out Stout. I don’t know much about beer, but stouts are my favorite, and I truly appre­ci­ate a place that can pour a good pint of Guin­ness. Here is a link to peo­ple who seem to actu­ally know what they are talk­ing about when they review the Blackout […]

I went to the Cleve­land Blog­ger Meetup last night. It wasn’t quite what I expected it to be because it exceeded my expec­ta­tions. I was, of course, the youngest buck there, but the dis­cus­sion that took place has inspired me to mildly but sig­nif­i­cantly change my present style of blog­ging into some­thing a bit more use­ful to the […]

On Fri­day I went to a Cool Cleve­land event and then saw the Momix dance group put on a mod­ern dance per­for­mance enti­tled Opus Cac­tus. I’d never been to a dance per­for­mance before and this par­tic­u­lar one was a good cherry-​popper.

I received a hair­cut yes­ter­day. I think the bar­ber was drunk. I’d never been to this place before. Joe’s Bar­ber­shop in Lake­wood. Right next to the crap­pi­est fenc­ing club in Cleve­land. I walk in and the place is dead quiet. Empty.

Wednes­day evening was the annual com­pany ‘event.’ Since no one really knows if it is a Christ­mas din­ner or a fall party or what, it is just known as the ‘event.’ It was at the Craw­ford Auto Museum, so I pretty much only went to see the antique cars. I saw an elec­tric car from 1906 and a mag­netic car […]

Over the past year I’ve done quite a bit of bitch­ing about my apart­ment. That will all soon end, since I now have a new apart­ment else­where that is loads bet­ter than my present leaky shoe­box. Rejoice ye chil­dren of Ctown. Ver­ily I say unto thee, w00t! Any­way, on with the description.

Finally picked up my Spencer Tunick print from MOCA Cleve­land this week­end. Now I just have to get it framed. If you can find me in this photo you are lying since I’m noth­ing more than a lit­tle splotch way up in the dis­tance. Click the pigs for some con­text. Click the peo­ple for a larger picture.

Base­ball is near the pin­na­cle of bore­dom but I’ve gone to two games in five days and not had a terrible time.

I went to Jimmy Daddona’s for din­ner some­what dri­ven by this review in the Free Times. It wasn’t very good at all. Now, I’ve gained a lit­tle knowl­edge at the ways of foodie-​ness just by hav­ing prox­im­ity to Five Dol­lar Beer, so I am using some of his cri­te­ria in this review [or, what I think he criteria are].

I went to Half Price Books on Fri­day and man­aged to not buy the whole store. Instead I bought three illus­trated books of fables and folk­tales. All brand new and all rather cheap.

Help me write my for­mal let­ter of com­plaint to my apart­ment build­ing. I’ve got the gist below, but it needs some tweaking.

I have absolutely lost every last smidgen of patience when it comes to deal­ing with inte­gral busi­nesses and their busi­ness hours. Let me tell you about the title bureau. Pre­tend it is Andy Rooney speaking.

There was a Metafil­ter meetup this Sat­ur­day over on the east side. There was a grand total of 3 of us there, which is about what I expected judg­ing from the num­ber of MeFis nearby. It was pretty laid back. I sorta felt like I was talk­ing too much but I sup­pose if I really think about it, I’m prob­a­bly always talk­ing too […]

Took the day off from work yes­ter­day and cel­e­brated the hol­i­day with Liam and Mike, who were seniors when I was a fresh­man. I got my mop chopped at some weirdo wig salon [the hair looks fine thank­fully] and then skedad­dled over to Liam’s apart­ment for a break­fast of eggs and Jame­son. I had to show Liam how to crack […]

I went to the Cleve­land Auto Show today and checked out what is going on the in the world of auto­mo­biles. Boy was it a zoo. I don’t like crowds that con­sist of myr­iad groups of peo­ple all going in dif­fer­ent direc­tions with atten­tions not nec­es­sar­ily directed in the direc­tion they are direct­ing them­selves, all mov­ing at […]

I’m some­what back in the sad­dle when it comes to film­mak­ing. For the next two weeks, as my sched­ule allows, I am going to help out on a Super 16mm film called Saves the Day, which con­cerns itself with a boy who thinks his older brother is a super­hero. I’m just a PA, and the posi­tion is unpaid, but this […]

I went to the Cavs/​Knicks game last evening with Liam and Anne, and Amy. This was my first time actu­ally being present at pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball game. We bought the tix from a scalper for 20 bucks a pop [they were reg­u­lar priced at $65] and I am sure glad I didn’t pay full price. The game was pretty boring. […]

cleve­land has been good for the muse. in the approx­i­mate month i have been here i have writ­ten around 5 poems and have jot­ted down a ridicu­lous amount of ran­dom things that sound cool. words have begun to lose their mean­ings for me again, and this is most def­i­nitely good, because i’ve to remem­ber what i want them to mean. […]

1. I ran my car into a tree. 2. WCSB is a hel­luva good col­lege radio sta­tion. They stream too. 3. Come hell or high water, Glazen Cre­ative will hire me. Believe it or not all of these are related. I was dri­ving my reel to Glazen and lis­ten­ing to WCSB as I was exit­ing I-​90 toward East 9^th Street. […]

i am mov­ing to cleve­land. thus forc­ing myself to become gain­fully employed. then, i will cease being that guy who lives at home with his mother. the apart­ment is known as an ‘effi­ciency’ which i believe is a syn­onym to micro­scopic. but it is all i need. apart from a job that is. but that will come. what i am seek­ing is […]