Eevery city has its ugly secrets — its mysteries that begin to reveal themselves only with time spent in residence there. Cleveland is no different.
Despite our progressive times and our unsurpassing good nature, there remains one indelible divide in our otherwise civil society.
You’re a Clevelander? What side you from?
No local citizen in recorded history has successfully uttered the name of his home city without meeting with this critical rejoinder.
And what sides might those be? Simply East or West, determined by the course of the mighty Cuyahoga River, which flows north from Akron and empties into Lake Erie just west of downtown Cleveland.
What’s the difference? Plenty, and the myriad distinctions have been scientifically formulated through generations of slinging half-assed stereotypes from one riverbank to the other. It basically goes like this:
WEST SIDE
The West Side of Cleveland is home to the region’s earliest settlements. Many of its neighborhoods mesh together into a proud patchwork of working-class ethnic enclaves that still thrive today. That melting-pot mentality seeps across the resolutely middle-class communities that predominate further to the west, and even to the more upper-crust denizens whose homes line Lake Erie for miles west of downtown.
The West Side is distinguished by its countless small businesses, only three-fourths of which are friendly corner taverns. The near West Side is also Cleveland’s foremost hub of gentrification: Here, what had been ramshackle old houses mired in decay only 10 or 20 years ago are now rehabilitated hotspots and cultural epicenters.
EAST SIDE
The East Side, meanwhile, evokes a more diverse range of associations — and a more stark contrast between poverty and prosperity. Just east of downtown are some of Cleveland’s most hardscrabble climes: downtrodden neighborhoods that suffered from racial unrest in generations past, but these days mostly just await their turn for rebirth.
The region’s ultimate bastion of high culture, University Circle, is also the East Side’s symbolic ground zero, home to institutions like the world-renowned Cleveland Museum of Art and Severance Hall, home of the acclaimed Cleveland Orchestra.
Beyond the stately homes of Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights, the East Side gives way to a land of suburban sprawl, of fine dining and shopping, and a brand of cosmopolitan bustle that stands in contrast to the more deliberate pace of the West Side. At its farthest reaches, the East Side sidles up next to pastoral rolling hills and the tranquility of Amish country.
Amid this morass of contrasts, then, where does reality reside? Which is the truly proper side to call home? Why, it’s really not so puzzling at all. Those most wizened in the ways of Mother Cleveland know that the best, most unmistakably superior side of town is the
This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2011.
My mom grew up on East 130th back in the 50’s and My Uncle lived there up on North Taylor Rd all the way up to the 90’s. He lived his whole life there and we were always going out to the East Side. I loved going with my mom out there, it was awesome,still have cousins in Mayfield Hts. My dad was from the west side West 130th is where he grew up and moved to Cleminshaw and attended John Marshall before joining the Marines. When they married and my mom had my sister Cheryl,my grandparents moved to Lakewood and we meshed lives betwen the East Side and West Side as my Grandma’s sister lived out off of North Taylor in Cleveland Hts. I am proud to know both sides and thanks to my Unlce John,he has kept the 2 sides together. I would have to write a book about my experience if anyone cares to read. It will be called A Girl named Sue in honor of Johnny Cash and should be available when I get my life back as I am raising a 10 and 14 yr old and am 50 working at Continental Airlines full time and then some. Living in Strongsville right now where John D Rockefeller grew up and loving life here on the West Side. Sue Mazzone Strongsville
I grew up in the outskirts of CLE myself, in the burbs of Middleburg Hts, Fry Road. My Grandparents lived downtown off of Clark Ave, and my other Grandparents off of Woburn by St. Mary’s in Brooklyn. So guess we were West Siders. It was magic going to their house at Christmas and for some reason both Grandparents, and probably every Italian household, had an aluminum Christmas Tree with the 4 colored lights rotating on it. That was back in the 60s, but I still remember it vividly. Little did I now that the mountain of gifts were all cigarettes and booze from one gomba to another, ha, ha! I never really visited the east side until after joining the Air Force and leaving Cleveland for a 28 year vacation around the world. Now I come home 2 or 3 times, and plan to retire there. Who wouldn’t :). I really enjoy Nighttown, the public library, the Arcade, and other aspects of the East side. But East or West, Cleveland is Best!