Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog

Apparently director John Waters — who made super-overweight transvestite Divine eat dog shit in one of his movies — was in Ohio today. Hitchhiking.

Lucky for him, he was picked up by indie-rock band Here We Go Magic instead of a psychopathic Hairspray fan with a thing for sixtysomething movie directors with skeevy facial hair.

There's a whole bunch of info here, including photos of the band chilling with Waters in their van.

The Brooklyn rockers are on tour and were hitting the on-ramp to Interstate 70 — which cuts across the middle of our state, not like you'd ever have reason to travel it — when they saw a guy hitchhiking.

A couple members instantly recognized the Pink Flamingos director and picked him up.

Here's the best part: Waters carries his own mixtape for the ride.

We're still not really sure what the fuck is going on here or what to make of it. Waters hasn't directed a movie in eight years, and the band is still relatively unknown outside of music blogs that fawn over Brooklyn-based indie-rock groups like this.

So maybe it's all a put-on.

Or maybe Waters is making some sorta movie or social experiment.

Then again, he's kinda odd, so maybe he has nothing better to do in mid-May than hitchhike across Ohio. —Michael Gallucci

Recent events have left the local Occupy movement sporting a black eye, prompting rumors and mounting evidence that the Cleveland protest movement is dying a quiet death some eight months after its launch in conjunction with Occupy Wall Street.

Earlier this month, the city pulled up stakes on the group’s Public Square tent, which had been an ever-present if unsightly reminder of Occupy’s mission: to instigate backlash against America’s wealthy institutions, primarily through daring displays of facial hair.

Two days earlier, news broke that five morons caught trying to blow up a Route 82 bridge were members of Occupy Cleveland.

These days, the group’s website, for months updated regularly with Occupy news, is now overrun by spam advertising Prada and Chanel knockoffs, which, incidentally, don’t look half bad onscreen. No actual news has been posted since May 5, and calls and e-mails to once-responsive media contacts have gone unanswered.

The only signs of activity are a few tweets from a BreaKBeatJunkee and a JuiceBoxJuss saying the group is holed up at the Walton Avenue Warehouse, where it rents space.

This is a far cry from a few months ago, when Occupy announced plans to turn its single tent on Public Square into an entire tent city for the summer.

Nonetheless, somebody named Jonnie answered the phone formerly associated with the tent this week. He insists those plans are still under way.

“We aren’t going anywhere soon,” he says somewhat cryptically, adding that the group is still holding assemblies every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 6 p.m. where the tent used to be. And within a couple weeks, Occupy members will decide on a plan of action so that they can, y’know, occupy something again.

“It might be a battle with the city to establish a permanent place [on Public Square] for us to be,” says Jonnie. “Frank Jackson’s already shown his disdain for the movement.”

The city says it didn’t renew Occupy’s tent permit because the tent “will hinder the increased use of Public Square by the public in the spring and summer,” according to a letter it sent to the group. That sounds more like a casino issue than a disdain issue.

For now, Jonnie’s answer is, “a permit’s not really a necessary thing.” The city might possibly see otherwise.

Cuyahoga County has earned praise for its systematic reclamation of derelict properties, which are often reused for urban green space or check-cashing stores. Our friends in Youngstown may have found an even more efficient means of clearing the dead weight.

In an eight-day stretch last week, the city’s fire department was called to blazes at 11 abandoned houses — all of them arson, according to the department’s chief, John O’Neill.

So far, there doesn’t appear to be any master plan behind the fires, which leads O’Neill to guess that a single pyro isn’t holding all the matches. “They’re sporadic,” he says, explaining that the calls dispatched his men to all points of the compass citywide, though a number of the fires did occur in clusters.

“On the south side, three times this week we had two fires going at the same time in the same relative neighborhood, within 10 city blocks of each other,” he says. “Those, I got to say, are likely the same person.”

O’Neill says the department usually handles around 5 to 7 garden-variety fires a week. A handful of theories have surfaced to explain the recent action in abandoned real estate — everything from squatters who aren’t very good at lighting cigarettes to gang initiations.

Also on the suspect list: Neighbors tired of staring at eyesores who may be dabbling in a bit of guerrilla activism.

“Once the weather breaks, these vacant houses look worse with the high grass around them, and people get frustrated about them,” O’Neill admits.

The controversial 806 Wine Bar on Literary Road in Tremont, which attracted a litany of complaints from neighbors for years, is now the Barrio, a Mexican restaurant owned by Joe Kahn, the former manager of Edison’s Pub just up the street.

Though there’s no word of complaints over the house specialty — tacos — the tensions and conflict that dogged 806 seem to be trailing Barrio like toilet paper on a shoe.

On the restaurant’s opening day earlier this month, Kahn and building owner Tom Leneghan sought court help to prohibit a planned city inspection of the place to make sure it was in compliance with its permits, a routine measure for any new business.

The twist: Their request wasn’t just for a temporary delay to avoid having inspectors mingling with Cinco de Mayo diners. They’re seeking a permanent exemption from being inspected.

Cuyahoga Common Pleas Judge Eileen T. Gallagher temporarily honored their request; a hearing to consider a permanent injunction has been held off at the city’s request.

If Barrio’s bid is successful, says Henry Senyak of the Tremont West Development Corporation, it would open the door for any business to block city workers and police from performing inspections or enforcing regulations — and eventually to a lawless state in which feral dogs would run loose in the streets, lapping draft beer straight from bar taps and prank-calling pizza shops to order pies they have no intention of picking up.

A Leneghan spokesman, who asked not to be named, says that’s not it at all. “We said they can come in and issue a citation if we’re in violation. But the guy at the zoning board called us and said, ‘We’re going to show up on your opening with police, fire, building inspectors, and a SWAT team.’ That’s like taking a sledgehammer to a fly. It’s disruption of a lawful business.”

Your guide to living in fabulous Cleveland.

Bar Wars?: Beginning May 21, the Abbey Road bridge will allow traffic from Tremont to Ohio City — but not the other way around. It’s either a hassle caused by Innerbelt Bridge construction or an ingenious plan by Sam McNulty to soak up the rest of Tremont’s bar business.

All Class, No Act: Kyrie Irving wins the NBA’s Rookie of the Year Award. The humble guard thanked everyone from his parents to coaches to teammates — and even Savannah Brinson, noting that it’d be nice for someone to publicly thank her for something just once.

The House Wins Again: The City of Cleveland announces plans to install fueling stations for electric cars in three locations around town. Drivers will be charged the going rate for the juice, plus a
$35 parking fee for Dan Gilbert.

This Week's Index: You're on your second night at the casino, which means now's a good time to remind you this paper doubles as a pillow and can be eaten in moderation.

• Goodnight, sweet princes.

Man, today you feel that lump in your gut? We sure do. It's like we're at the end of something, unmarked on the calendar but palpable nonetheless. We've been trying to hunt down the feeling all day, and it took awhile for the realization to float to the surface. Nope, it's got nothing to do with a new casino or Cavs players you can actually get behind or even – and it seems strange just typing it out – the idea Cleveland is becoming a “cool” locale for young folk, a possible Brooklyn baby-stepping into hipness. That's all in the air, but what's really gently poking our nerves today is the idea that the county corruption scandal is finally in the rearview mirror, getting smaller and smaller.

We know, we know, a federal grand jury slapped former Cuyahoga County nabob Jimmy Dimora with a guilty verdict months ago; Frank Russo is still parading through area wine bars. But today's decision by the court to release sensitive material related to the corruption investigation shows the Feds are going through the closing motions of the circus that started with a bang one morning in 2008.

And you know what? We're a little bummed. Today, seeing Dimora in Vegas or the pictures of Jimmy's municipal employee side beef, that old smile settled in, the good times started following back. The zebra-striped shirt, the Tiki hut, the flat screens, “Fucking you is a beautiful thing,” J. Kevin Kelley, the Karl Rove-Plain Dealer conspiracy, the Stonebridge slam pad, anti-tapping devices, free dinners, hookers in Vegas, and so much, much more.

After being spoon fed this kind of ridiculousness on a daily basis, it's going to be hard to reset at the new normal. The county seems to be in capable hands; the entire town is glowing with upswing. We're probably not going to see morally-twisted, greed-tweaked public officials dragging themselves through the shitpile of reprehensible behavior for at least an election cycle or two.

And what are we going to do? What's a new day without a tiki hut joke to set the mood?

• Baby, you are looking fine.

A local waterway has ended up on the list of the country's most endangered bodies of water, an ignominious blackeye that the granola establishment say is all thanks to Big Frack.

The Grand River, which shimmies up from mid-Ohio before dropping into the lake at Fairport Harbor, was parked at #6 on the annual list complied by American Rivers, according to the News Herald. It's important to keep in mind that the list isn't of the dirtiest pieces of H2O in these United States, only the natural bodies most likely to be fouled in the future. The Grand is sandwiched between Wyoming's Hoback River at #5 and the South Fork Skykomish River in Washington state.

The big befouling sword hanging over the Grand, American Rivers claims, is the possible uptick in hydraulic fracking the natural gas industry is pushing for.

At an announcement event Monday at Hidden Valley Park, Kathryn Hanratty with the Network for Oil and Gas Accountability and Protection said the process damages the river by withdrawing millions of gallons of water and also by polluting it.

"Even when everything goes as planned, toxic fracking fluid blows back at high pressure as part of the process," Hanratty said. "This routine step has the potential for contaminating fields and streams."