School Districts Should Gear Up For a Big 2013 Hit
The sad state of residential real estate in Cuyahoga County is the topic of an in-depth Businessweek report today. It comes on the heels of a 60 Minutes segment that aired Sunday highlighting foreclosed and vacant homes in Cleveland. But Businessweek focuses on yet another harbinger of doom: The county real estate reappraisals that will…
Cleveland Group Thinks Casino Will Give Rise to More Sex Trafficking
News broke last week that the FBI is investigating the case of a 15-year-old runaway who says she was forced to have sex for her captor’s profit in Westlake, Mentor, and downtown hotels, as well as at an East Side barber shop. The girl managed to escape and seek help at a West Side home…
A Very Metal Christmas Benefit
Feel like doing something good for your fellow Clevelanders and rocking the fuck out one last time before Christmas? The annual Iron Ingo Cleveland Metal Holiday Food Drive happens Friday night. Unfortunately, you’re gonna have to head to Parma for the volume-powered benefit concert, to the Saw Concert Club, which used to be the Jigsaw…
Pic of the Day: A Roof On Browns Stadium
Thoughtfully designed by cre8ive_juice:
How Not to Get Your Husband to Have Sex With You
Gets really mad if refused sex More advice for the women here—we just can’t pass this one up. There are tried and true methods to get your husband to have sex with you: Start talking about the things he’s good at, an impromptu and relaxing neck and shoulder massage, maybe dig that sexy garter-corset-fishnet ensemble…
“Shit People Steal” Features Noodlecat Cat
Chef Jonathon Sawyer’s places, Greenhouse Tavern and Noodlecat, are getting even more national press. Last week Sawyer made a Time top-ten list. Today, the restaurants are featured in the “Shit People Steal” column over at Eater.com. Not as prestigious as last week’s nod, but a fun read. The most desired object among dining thieves was…
Purse Versus AK-47: Purse Wins
Everyday assault rifle. Disclaimer: Ladies, Scene does not recommend you try this at home. The best course of action for all your assault rifle encounters is to hand over the money. If you have no money, hand over your credit cards. If you have neither money nor credit cards, well, maybe store a brick in…
Bowls Will Be Boring for Buckeye Fans
The Columbus Dispatch is reporting that the NCAA will knock the Buckeyes out of any chance at playing bowls, Big Ten, or National Championship games next year. The beloved OSU team will also forfeit four scholarships over the next three years; this in addition to the five already lost. And, there’s more, although the Buckeyes…
Another Drunk-Driving Mom: 1-Year-Old In Front Seat
Way too much work for drunk parents. We have yet another candidate for parent of the year: Amy Seward of North Canton was arrested over the weekend for driving drunk with her kid in the car. Actually, she wasn’t driving. She was passed out, slumped over the steering wheel in the middle of the road.…
What do TSA, Gnomes, Free Gift Wrap, and Santa Have in Common: Hopkins
Find one at Hopkins and win. Well, this is just plain nice. There will be all sorts of things going on at Hopkins Airport tomorrow and Thursday to make the holiday travel experience less of a stress. You know how you can’t go through security with wrapped gifts because they might be unwrapped? No problem—save…
News Flash from 60 Minutes; Cleveland has a foreclosure problem!
Yesterday, CBS news magazine show 60 Minutes shared with the country a gloomy aspect of Northeast Ohio that isn’t going to surprise anyone here: its glut of worthless, abandoned and gutted houses left in the wake of the ongoing foreclosure crisis. Reporter Scott Pelley adopts the requisite masquerade of concern as he chats with former…
Rotten Meat Gallery opens Friday
Euclid Tavern back in the day shot by Keith Marlowe The name may not be the most inviting thing you’ve ever heard, but Rotten Meat Gallery promises to be a valuable new addition to the local art scene. The gallery at 1814 E. 40th Street, Suite 4B, opens this Friday, December 23, with a 6-11…
Christmas Ale Drinkers Annoy Phildelphians
For years now, we Clevelanders have sung the praises of Great Lakes Brewing Company’s Christmas Ale. We delight in picking apart the palate-pleasing flavor nuances of each season’s unique batch. We go on and on throughout the holidays hypothesizing the reason for the sudsy quasi-hallucinogenic vibe we’re sure the local brew bestows upon us. In…
Cleve Biz Gives Boost to Local Designers
Kimberley Osborne-Milstein’s studio says a lot about her latest fashion endeavor, Textile Republic. The studio on the third floor of her suburban Cleveland home is bursting with colorful patterns, fabrics, belts, and ribbons. With a degree in fashion merchandising and design from Ursuline College and experience as a model, Osborne-Milstein has more than 20 years…
“Lack of Physical Control” Charge Takes on New Meaning Near Dayton
If you’re going to drink that much, wear one. Police in the town of Clayton charged a man with “lack of physical control” after finding him passed out and smelling strongly of alcohol in his vehicle. Their first clue something was amiss involved the vehicle being parked in a front yard, rather than the more…
Rock Hall Induction Ceremony Tickets Are All Gone
“Yeeaaahhhh, boooyyyy!” Hope you got your tickets for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony happening at Public Hall on April 14. Because they’re all gone. Sold out. And you’re shit out of luck. Tickets to the public went on sale less than two hours ago, and they sold out in less than…
New York artist says Black Keys stole her ideas
Are the Black Keys idea thieves? Wronged artist or publicity hound? It’s always hard to tell in cases like these. But a New York-based performance artist/model/filmmaker who calls herself Bon Jane (real name: Rachel Brennecke) is claiming that she submitted a video treatment to Akron’s Black Keys last year which she says they really, really…
Cleveland Cinemas & Key Bank Say Happy Holidays With Free Movies
Have plans for tonight? You do now, because Cleveland Cinemas is offering free admission to any movie after 6:30 at any of its theaters. It’s part of the local theater chain and Key Bank’s way of saying “happy holidays.” Tickets are only available at the box office, so you can’t hog a bunch of them…
Blowing Up Fruitcakes
In case you wonder what all the noise coming from the Great Lakes Science Center lately is about—it seems they are blowing up fruitcakes. This is evidently a practice session for the Center’s 7th annual New Year’s Eve Eve party slated for December 30, where they will offer exploding fruitcakes as an educational activity. We…
Occupy Cleveland Emergency Theatre Collective debuts tomorrow
Theater of the 99 % An informal ensemble of Occupy Cleveland members called the Emergency Theatre Collective will present its debut performance at 6 p.m. tomorrow evening in the vicinity of the Occupy tent across from the northwest quadrant of Public Square. The December 17 date commemorates two events: the suicide last year on that…
New Book Spreads the Love on C-Town
In Julia Kuo’s world, every hood is sketchy. When Julia Kuo moved from L.A. to Cleveland in 2007, she found a city that felt vacant and cold. Even after landing a job at American Greetings, she considered the new place rough around the edges, notable mainly for harsh winters and really bad sports teams. At…
Cloud Nothings release new single, announce national tour
Dylan Baldi performs at Music Saves on Waterloo last summer Little Dylan Baldi has come a long way in just over a year. The 20-year-old Clevelander, who makes music under the name Cloud Nothings, earned tsunamis of praise for his debut single released in October 2010 and his debut album, Cloud Nothings, released this past…
Go to the Beachland free in 2012
Of Montreal coming to the Beachland March 29 If you’ve ever envied those VIPs who sail past the doorman at the hot club shows, now you can be that person, thanks to a contest sponsored by the Beachland Ballroom & Tavern and Heineken USA. The winner of the Beachland Ultimate VIP Pass Sweepstakes will be…
Drink, Then Shop, Then Drink Some More—That’s Really The Only Way to Do It
If you have more shopping to do, consider sandwiching it between happy hours during tonight’s Ohio City Cash Mob. Not only that, the owners of the still-a-secret local business chosen to be mobbed is offering a 10 percent discount to anyone bringing along a can of food to donate. Cashmobbers will meet at the Market…
Sixth City Diner Down For the Count
There was a lot of optimism in the Warehouse District that Sixth City Diner (1265 W. Ninth St.) would be a worthwhile replacement for Waterstreet Grill, which closed its doors this past June after almost nine years in biz. That does not appear to be the case: Sixth City Diner is no more. Owner Daryn…
Need a Job? Things Are Looking Up….And Down
If it’s time to adjust your job search strategy, here is the good news, the bad news, and the neutral: Come January, 11 percent of companies in the Cleveland/Elyria/Mentor area will hire more people, according to survey results reported in Crain’s Cleveland Business. Those jobs will probably be in manufacturing, transportation and utilities, financial services,…
Jonathon Sawyer Named in Time’s Year-End Top Ten Issue
Cleveland’s Jonathon Sawyer has made it into Time Magazine’s endless list of year-end top-ten lists. The Greenhouse Tavern and Noodlecat chef’s made-from-scratch vinegars and bitters nabbed him the number seven spot in the Top Ten Food Trends of 2011. Here’s what Time has to say: The one thing you generally expect of new, laboriously made…
MTV Names Machine Gun Kelly Hottest Breakthrough MC
Cleveland rapper Machine Gun Kelly has been named MTV’s Hottest Breakthrough MC for 2011. MGK snagged the title after getting the most votes in an online poll. So yeah, it’s more of a popularity contest than an actual gauge of what MTV tastemakers think about the rapper (yes, we know there’s no such thing as…
Rock Hall Induction Ceremony Tickets Go on Sale This Weekend
Don’t come knockin’ if this place is rockin’ Tickets go on sale this weekend for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s induction ceremony at Public Hall on April 14. The last time the ceremony was held in Cleveland, in 2009, tickets sold out pretty quickly. So if you want to see Beastie Boys, Red…
Ever Want to Shoot LeBron? A Cautionary Tale…
Don’t talk to him — don’t even look at him. Walter Iooss Jr. has shot all the big stars as a photographer for Sports Illustrated and other prominent athlete-coddling outlets. In a recent series for Deadspin, Iooss shared his most memorable moments. And that single most memorable moment in a long and distinguished career? The…
Please Stop Making it Look Like This Lady’s Reindeer Decorations Are Having Sex… Or Don’t
Hey, you, the person or persons who think it’s funny to trespass in this woman’s yard and rearrange her festive and innocent reindeer Christmas decorations so that the plastic animals look like they’re having sex… she doesn’t think it’s funny. (We do.) Via the Parma Heights police blotter: VANDALISM, DELROSE DRIVE: A woman called police…
The Quality of Cleveland Life Report
Your guide to living in fabulous Cleveland. A Friend to Flash Mobsters: Mayor Jackson ignores city council’s bid to criminalize smartphones and other electronic devices, in a rare display of solidarity with every other human being on earth. Given that he is the mayor, his silence led to the measure’s passage anyway.Modesty, the Best Policy”…
CD Review: HotChaCha/Summer People
On this split EP with Ithaca, New York’s Summer People, HotChaCha favor noisy, experimental post-punk that blends Wire’s prickly power with Pere Ubu’s post-industrial malaise and Mogwai’s hypnotic throb. The band’s guitars bristle with scrappy punk intensity, but their tone is dark, moody, and menacing. Jovana Batkovic affects a sultry, indifferent strut on her group’s…
On View This Week
At William Busta Gallery: Ohio Lands Forever Originally from the U.K., artist Brinsley Tyrrell is truly enchanted with the woods around Kent where he taught for nearly 30 years, and he draws us into the spell as well. Rendered in glass enamel painstakingly baked onto steel sheets, his landscapes reflect his loving encounters with nature…
On Stage
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat: Dressed to Thrill at the Beck A box-office smash during its 2010 run, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is back at Beck Center through December 31. One of the earliest collaborations between Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics), the campy musical — a humorous retelling of…
At the Arthouse This Week
Happy, Happy We’ve never thought of Norway as a particularly funny country (blame it on the vikings — always so fucking serious). But in this new dark comedy, it’s a very funny place indeed. A frustrated housewife realizes how dismal her life has become when the perfect couple moves next door. The movie scooped up…
Get Out!
Thursday | 15 Family Fun A Kwanzaa Celebration at Severance Hall The Cleveland Orchestra celebrates Kwanzaa this morning — and you can too with a 10 a.m. performance in the Reinberger Chamber Hall. The program features orchestra percussionists and a bass player, along with renowned storyteller Donna Willingham from the Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers.…
Burger Meister
Shawn Monday’s culinary ambitions are heating up. In the 18 months since he left his post at Hudson’s Downtown 140, the chef has opened the village bistro One Red Door and his next-door gourmet-burger joint Flip Side. Next month, along with his wife and partner Tiffany Monday, the chef will open his second Flip Side,…
Dark Days for the Black Arts
Terrence Spivey still recalls his first visit to Cleveland back in January 2003, when he had been hired as guest director of Karamu House Theater’s staging of Little Tommy Parker. The production manager picked him up at Hopkins Airport and delivered him to the East Side of town. “We turned the corner of 89th and…
Drink of the Week
Come wintertime, there are more crowded places you could knock back a cold beer than Shooters on the Water. But there may be no place more central to the rebirth of downtown than this summer hotspot on the west bank of the Flats. Perched just up the pier from the aquarium that’s slated to open…
Concert Calendar
The Birthday Massacre The Birthday Massacre formed a dozen years ago at an Ontario college, where singer Chibi and guitarist Rainbow met as fine-art students. Originally called Imagica (a nod to a Clive Barker novel), the band rechristened itself after a song on its demo to avoid conflict with a similarly named metal band. Although…
The Younger Games
Guys like me are born loving women like you,” says Patton Oswalt’s Matt Freehauf, the portly sci-fi geek and onetime classmate of Charlize Theron’s former prom-queen-turned-trainwreck, Mavis Gary. Although the line is meant to comfort Mavis at a particularly vulnerable moment, it’s delivered with pitch-perfect resignation: Life would be much easier for guys like him…
Stay In!
The second of our special, slightly expanded gift-giving editions of Culture Jamming. This week: video games. Battlefield 3 (EA) The first of the season’s two big war games is definitely giving Call of Duty a run for its money with its best outing yet (for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, and Wii). The playing…
Film Capsules
The Descendants (R) — Matt King (George Clooney) is away on business when he gets word that his wife is in a coma after a boat accident. Suddenly he’s responsible for not only raising two troubled daughters, but also telling family and friends that he’s taking his wife off life support. Plus, he finds out…
Home Movies
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Twentieth Century Fox) This prequel starts at the very beginning of the apes’ saga, when lab chimp Caesar (played by Andy Serkis, the guy who gave Gollum life in The Lord of the Rings) gets a dose of experimental medicine that makes him smarter than anyone else onscreen…
Heart of the City
I’ve been impressed, disappointed, and wholly unmoved by restaurants. But rarely have I been as confused as I was with Pura Vida, chef Brandt Evans’ new bistro on Public Square. My confusion began before the spot even opened, when Evans pulled a last-minute switcheroo on the intended name, swapping the descriptive “Butcher’s Block” for something…
Shredding for Santa
Know what makes Neil Zaza’s annual One Silent Night infinitely cooler than similar-themed holiday projects by Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra? It’s homegrown, for one thing. For another, it actually rocks. The virtuoso guitarist celebrates the 10th anniversary of his not-so-silent Christmas concert by reworking some old favorites, adding new mash-ups to the mix, and…
Savage Love
Dear Dan: My boyfriend of five years had a one-night stand with a much younger woman. In some ways, it’s a good thing — we’re having conversations we should have had a long time ago, he’s seeing a therapist to deal with his issues (his idea, not mine), and somehow I know more than ever…
CD Review: The Who
Pete Townshend has always preferred his 1973 rock opera over the more celebrated Tommy. It’s easy to hear why on this remastered box. The story’s central theme — basically, teenage angst split into four distinct personalities — isn’t as straightforward as the one about the deaf, dumb, and blind kid, but it’s a richer work,…
CD Review: Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd’s 1975 opus — and follow-up to The Dark Side of the Moon, which made them global stars — features more musings on fame, psychosis, and alienation. But the songs here, especially “Shine on You Crazy Diamond” and the title track, are stronger and more focused. The latest special-edition release in the overhaul of…
CD Review: The Smashing Pumpkins
The Smashing Pumpkins celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album with expanded versions of their first two records. Gish is still a messy introduction, overcrowded with fuzzy guitar attacks, songs that go on past their breaking points, and Billy Corgan’s incomprehensible rambling. The follow-up, 1993’s Siamese Dream, is much better, pulling back on most…
We Get Mail
Envious Eyes on Pittsburgh If Cleveland and Cuyahoga County had any brains, they would have used this opportunity of the economic downturn to start investing in things like the lakeshore [“Wet Dreams: The mayor’s lakefront plan is lacking in just one crucial way,” November 23, 2011]. One of the things I admire about Pittsburgh is…
Local Band in Focus
Meet the Band: Dru Streicher (music) and Matt Bowen (visuals) Game On: Using computer programs like FamiTracker and Little Sound DJ, Streicher (pictured left) creates music from the sound chips found in original Nintendo Entertainment Systems and Game Boys. Given their love for retro gaming and electronic music, it’s a perfect fit. Keep It Minimal:…
