A Smattering of Links

Quite often of late life in Ohio City has put off postings in Life in Ohio City, but no sense blabbing on about that when there are many posts on other blogs about our fair neighborhood:

A post that shows others are looking at Ohio City as a model for citizen-involvement.

This isn't exactly about Ohio City, but since it is on the west side of Cleveland, and it's about Chips Ahoy and a drug bust, how can I not link to it?

Tattoos at Voodoo Monkey on West 25th.

Light Bistro is dropping Saturday lunch and adding Tuesday lunch.

A glass of beer at the Bier Markt.

A zen garden in the OC.

Sentencings for a couple of taggers. They need to catch MiHo and Berf now, as they are ruining the Market Square area with their idiotic spray painting.

A chef returning to Cleveland, and the OC in particular.

Why do we not know these people? Life in Cleveland recounts an excellent pub crawl in Ohio City and Tremont.

This weekend featured a Police Appreciation Day this afternoon, which was well-attended by neighborhood residents, police, and some vagrants looking for a free meal; a keg party hosted by friend V with help from friend L (impressive, and not so impressive, beer pong skills were on display); a neighborhood potluck party; and a fun game night at J and M's that included Cranium, Fluxx, and good eats.

Summer in the Neighborhood

We ended up having a nice dinner last week at Fat Cats in Tremont, but the start of last Saturday night was a bit more surreal as we rode our bikes down into Clark-Fulton and went to the 93rd St. Rocco's Fest. It was pretty chaotic on the streets with too many cars both moving and parked. Inside the fest, it was carny-city with rides and typical carnival games, and many people looking like they needed to shower sooner rather than later. I think we spent maybe 12 minutes at this kids and Nascar-fan event and then rode east on Clark to Tremont.

In Tremont we wound our way to College St. and walked up to the Polish Fest. It couldn't have been more opposite of the St. Rocco carnival tone. It was so quiet at the Polish Fest we seriously were not sure where to enter. We walked behind some rather old people in beige slacks and then up to the beautiful church. The inside of the church was truly stunning, and this comes from a heathen in gym shoes. Quite an amazing structure. We walked out of the cathedral and stood in a line winding out of the door of the hall where the food was being served. A wrinkled lady with falsely red hair and a bingo-loving look in her eye told us that Sokoloswski's was serving a wide range of dinners for $9.00. We looked at each other and decided we just weren't in the mood for a family style meal with people we didn't know and so we left that silent fest and rode down to street to Fat Cats where we had a fine meal highlighted by sweetbreads and halibut.

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We got a first coat of paint, finally, on the front porch floor and it looks great. A second coat will make it stupendous.

The neighborhood has seen increased police presence at the library park, which is welcome. I have no problem with homeless people being there, but belligerent drunks can find somewhere else to hang out and hassle people.

Summer is hanging on with weather around 90. I am ready for fall, although an informal poll tells me that I am one of the only people with such an opinion in Cleveland. I guess I can deal with continuing summer if it helps the Indians to keep winning, right on through the playoffs.

Happenings on the OC

This past Saturday was the 6th annual City Xpressions, which is a graffiti arts fest, hip hop MC competition, b-boys dancing (break dancing), and an open street market all in the Market Square park across from the West Side Market. The hosting MC, Q-Nice, did quite a commendable job keeping the event flowing smoothly, even when the sky opened and we all got soaked to the skivvies.

Down the block from Market Square park is McNulty's Bier Market, where they are serving the new Chimay White Trappist Monk ale. It is excellent.

City Buddha has decided to leave Ohio City after 10 years. Maybe people around here have decided they just don't want to decorate their house like a dorm room after all. I am sure the City Buddha that recently opened in Coventry will do fine with many college students in that area.

Fore Shoes also closed a month or so ago. I was always dubious about a place that sold any and every pair of shoes for $20.00. It seemed like a really large trunk of someone's car, if you know what I mean. Anyway, it has been replaced by an auto insurance place that, unless it is a front for something else, does not seem like it is the kind of business that will last, but hopefully I will be proven wrong.

Kan Zaman is moving, but just closer to the lake. It will be in the building just north of Lutheran Hospital on the west side of 25th. Not sure when that will be happening, but it is evidently in the works.

Most of the condo projects in the city (country even) have been put on hold with the mortgage market correction that is taking place (this had to happen eventually), and the OC is no different. The Jay Lofts and 3000 Bridge are stagnant right now. However, it seems as though the YMCA on Franklin is still being worked on.

Speaking of condos, a recent Grady Sizemore sighting in the neighborhood. He was pulling out of his parking garage in the Fries-Shule building and let N and I pass on the sidewalk before he zoomed off in his black Porche.

After days of rain, and a morning bike in the rain down by Edgewater park, it is sunny and beautiful outside. The heat and humidity have moved east. The Browns and Indians both won last night. Change happens, of course, but there's always a positive angle to every day if you just look for it. Today that angle is outside in the lovely late-August air.

The Bachelor Weekend

With N out in NYC visiting GT, it was a bachelor weekend for me and the dogs. It started out with shopping, of all things, but it was solid man-shopping as I bought a new grill and a new TV.

The grill is just the size and type I wanted. Charcoal/wood with a side firebox for smoking, and a grill top big enough to cook a suckling pig. The TV is the price I was shooting for, $500.00, which these days gets you a 26" HDTV flat panel with a PC input. Steelyard Commons is where I threw down the cash, and let me say that I really like having the Home Depot, Target, Best Buy and other places so close to home.

I hooked up the TV and was amazed to find that this new one can pull in HD channels through our rooftop antenna. I thought you needed cable or a dish for HD, but you do not. So now we have more channels than before and the HD and DT (digital, but not HD) channels come in crystal clear. So, we now have even less reason to even consider a dish or cable, because we can get everything we need (not want, but need) out of the free air. The HD channels are also not just copies of the analog broadcasts, but there are also weather/news channels, four different PBS channels, and even a music video channel that actually plays music videos.

The grill required assembly, which was how I spent part of Saturday. It was actually not too bad to complete, and I was able to do so on a pretty much perfect weather day--sunny, mild, and breezy. While I worked on the grill, the fence guy installed our new fence out front, and will put up the gates on Monday night, letting the concrete set for a couple of days. The fence looks great, but it is pricey. Combined with the TV and the grill, it was debt-inducing weekend to be sure.

So, I tried to eat like a pauper/bachelor, heating up leftovers that N had stored away and even eating them right out of the pan to avoid having to do too many dishes. This seemed to amuse the dogs.

Speaking of the dogs, they had a celebrity moment today. It rained all day and they were in big time cabin-fever mode, so I walked them in the rain around the library. For some reason, I went one extra block and stumbled on the Doggie Dip day at the Studio Salon on Fulton. For $5 they washed your pup for you and also helped out the Animal Protective League with the profits. Surprisingly, Zoe really enjoyed her tea tree spa bath, while Sammy was not quite as interested, as I am pretty sure he has never had a bath before. Add to that the fact that the Plain Dealer was there taking pictures, and Sammy was freaked for a spell as he is quite afraid of cameras and electronics of any sort. Zoe, though, literally and figuratively soaked it all in, and might quite possibly have her picture in the paper with the seven ladies all around her scrubbing away. Amazingly, Zoe never let out one growl and even licked one of the girls, which is as shocking as anything I've witnessed in a while.

Despite the rain, I fired up the grill and burned off any dangerous Chinese-sourced chemicals prior to smoking some ribs for a good six hours. Gotta love the smell of hickory smoke on a cool, wet day. I also made chicken stock, which is just one of the best things ever to make your house smell great. Combine that smell with the hickory smoke and you have just about the best cologne ever.

The pups miss N, and I miss her every moment she is away, so it will be great to have her home tonight. When you've got a woman you love, the bachelor life just doesn't cut it. Hopefully she's in the mood for some chicken broth and ribs.

Exercise is Fun. Beer is More Fun.

Tonight after work N and I decided we needed some exercise. Weights or yoga seemed pretty boring, so we decided to ride our bikes to Edgewater Park and throw the frisbee around. Edgewater is a great park and we are always happy to see how busy it is even on a weeknight with people biking and fishing and rollerblading. We tossed the Steal Your Face frisbee into the wind (with little success) and with the wind (more success), our aim being off just enough to cause us to run. This running, with the biking, justified a couple of beers at the Old Angle.

Usually we would feel bad about leaving the pups for the evening, but Zoe is pretty lazy anyway and Sammy spent the day at the Mutt Hutt and needed some good napping after playing with his best bud Gunner all day.

So, we biked to one of our favorite places, the Old Angle, and hung out with our favorite bartender, A, who must certainly be the sweetest bartender in Cleveland. I had the flatbread pizza (olive oil, garlic, artichokes, crab) and N had the roast beef sandwich, which featured the excellent fries and pickles at the Angle. Everything was splendid, especially when accompanied by Dortmunder Gold and Labbatt Blue. N and I always have a great time at the Old Angle--such a comfortable place with great people there--and we always enjoy our conversations with A, who seems like a friend of many years even though we have only known her a couple of months. Old souls mingling, I say.

We coasted the bikes home through the alleys and talked to G on the phone, the pleasant beer buzz making it all very mellow and fun, just like Ohio City itself.

Saws

Tonight after N and the pups met me coming back from the train, there were a couple of drunks in the library park hassling a couple of women. Usually this is restricted to whistles or comments, but tonight we saw the man walk after the women, clearly bothering them. I called the police as I not only found this to be unacceptable, but we are also trying to get the police to recognize this as a nuisance site to get extra attention to it. I was pleasantly surprised that someone had already called and reported the issue.

Later this evening we walked to our friend S's to help her move in a couch found by our friend V. S was at work, but had determined the legs had to be sawed off of the discarded couch and so had borrowed a saw from us. But a bow saw does not work well on furniture, so I walked down with N, a wood saw in hand. I imagine that there were people who saw me and wondered what I would be doing walking down the street with a saw. Surely this could not be for an altruistic purpose (even though it was), but thankfully the police were not called (or never arrived).

Well, the legs came off, and the couch was hoisted over a deck railing on the second floor to enter the apartment, all with good safe intentions. Success was ours. Beers were opened. And we walked home with two saws in hand.

Rich, Green, and Bloated

Sounds like a headline for a sleazy Elvis movie, but the title of the post today refers to this weekend's events.

Though this blog originates in Ohio City, we traverse the city of Cleveland and beyond, and on Saturday we drove out to the ridiculous world of Bratenahl, with mansions built back when there was no income tax. We went out to nose around the Gwinn Mansion, built 100 years ago for William Mather, one of the barons of Cleveland's gloried, grimy industrial age. The house is actually somewhat cozy, if you can say that about a place with no fewer than 12 bathrooms. No one has flushed a john here for 50 years, as that's when the widow bit the dust and none of the kids or grandkids wanted to live on these glorious 5 acres with a stunning view of Lake Erie. Oh, did I mention there are 30 acres across the street that also go with the house?

Well, I guess we are lucky to have visited because a young (24 years old) couple has purchased the place and it will no longer be open to the public after September 1st. This will disappoint anyone who likes to look into medicine cabinets because this place has the widow's medicine cabinet preserved as it was in 1957. But, purely for archiving and historical purposes, I have taken several pictures that you can see here (also the amazing gardens, the house itself, the seawall that has more concrete than Euclid Avenue--probably literally now that I think of the state of Euclid Avenue).

After this tour of excess, we drove back to the glorious West Side Market and then our little worker's cottage in the OC (we have two bathrooms, thank you very much, and one crummy medicine cabinet that you can snoop in next time you visit).

In the afternoon/evening we went to the Great Lakes Burning River Fest, down in Wendy Park on Whiskey Island. This is an environmental event where you can drink beer and eat good food at reasonable prices. They also had some decent (and not so decent) bands. It was pleasantly busy but not crazy-crowded, and we had a lovely time with friends J, M, and S who are just the best friends anybody could hope to have. We wandered around and soaked in some sun, paid a bit of attention to the folks who were earnestly trying to make an environmental point or sell some goods. I am not sure they had much success with our group, but S did have an amusing confrontation with a dork who was arguing that we should not vote on the taxes for the Medical Mart. Thankfully she is energetic and smart enough to keep us in the loop on this kind of stuff. We left with S as J and M floated off into the sunset for a cruise on a sailboat.

Midday today we had a Brunch Club event at the Parkview Nite Club. The eight of us who showed had a good time at event deuce of the Brunch Club. I must admit that I preferred our first brunch at the Touch Supper Club with the excellent DJ, cheap eats, and bloody mary bar, but the Parkview serves up a decent mess as well. The waitress was a bit too busy texting and not doing enough pouring/delivering grub, but it could have been worse. S and L worked out the pinball machine, and the rest of us did some excellent chair and jaw workouts, as my Mom would have said "chipping our teeth." Not sure what the next spot is for the brunch club, but the South Side and Lucky's are two good possibilities (look out Tremont, here we come), but right now I am still too bloated from brunch to think about another one.

Elsewhere, the Indians are tanking, the Browns actually won a game, and the weather is warm as August should be. Soon enough the leaves will start to turn, the ACs will go silent, and the schools will be abuzz with kids wondering what ever happened to the summer. Just wait until they get older and work all year, when they realize the game for adults is to cram a bit of that summer into every weekend moment--the eating, the naps, the laughing, the lying on the cool grass, the dreading of the coming work.

We're all kids to some extent, and we're sometimes green with envy for things we do not have, just as kids are, not always realizing the richness of what we have: a good place to live, great places to eat and drink, and friends who make the weekends a shiny summer all year long