What We’re Reading in Cleveland This Morning: Feb. 7
– The Cleveland Leader reports that the Ohio House is considering legislation to end the Ohio Department of Natural Resources lease on Cleveland Lakefront State Park – a string of six lakeshore beaches. With an estimated $16 million in deferred maintenance and a lack of staffing throughout, the park system is in need of fresh…
Ya Can’t Keep The Cleaning Fairy Down! (Ugh.)
WEWS is reporting that the notorious and seemingly self-absorbed “Cleaning Fairy” from Elyria has been arrested once again. She was arrested, like, just a few weeks ago for shoveling her neighbors’ driveway without consent. This time, though, Susan Warren, 53, was accused of beating her 22-year-old son with a homemade weapon described as “having a…
What’s Fresh at: Luxe Kitchen
With the passage of each new month, chefs and restaurants are blessed with a fresh crop of seasonal ingredients. By cooking with the seasons, they not only keep things fresh on the menu, but they keep customers coming through the door to taste what’s new. One such restaurant is Luxe Kitchen and Lounge, where owner…
Stark County Taxpayer Challenges Criminal Fine Being Sent To Newtown
Thomas Marcelli, on behalf of Stark County’s taxpayers, is challenging a move by Judge Frank Forchione. The judge sentenced Jackson High School basketball coach Scott Studer to five years in a prison and a $5,000 fine after the man was found videotaping boys in the locker room showers. That $5,000 was then sent as assistance…
Texting or Talking While Driving May Become Primary Offense
As early as March first, new legislation could penalize anyone using a “handheld electronic wireless communications device” while operating a vehicle. It’s an amendment to an earlier texting-while-driving law and would make any infraction a primary offense. In other words, a police officer could flag you down expressly for being on the phone. It’s not…
Car Thieves Love Dodge Caravans
In a heated public safety meeting this morning at City Hall, sandwiched between comments about integration of fire and EMS services and the media-fraught November police chase, Safety Director Martin Flask and Police Chief Mike McGrath presented council with information about auto thefts in Cleveland. There were 4,225 instances of Grand Theft Auto in 2012,…
Vaya Con Dios, Brah: Great Lakes Releases Surf-Themed Beer
Young, dumb, and full of JESUS IT’S FREEZING We’re super amped about the impending release of Great Lakes’ seasonal(ly inappropriate) surf-themed beer, Alchemy Hour Double IPA. According to GLBC’s press release, “alchemy hour” is the time of day when waves are sicker than usual; the label art features a lone surfer goofy-footing an uncharacteristically gnarly…
League Park Reincarnated and More Morning Reading: Feb. 6
– The New York Times is featuring a great little article on Cleveland’s former League Park and the neighborhood blight that rose up in its wake. The grassy field at East 66th Street and Lexington Avenue in this city’s Hough neighborhood has a rich baseball past. League Park, a home to the Cleveland Indians until…
Meet the New ‘Big Cheese’ of Lake Erie Creamery
Since early January, Lake Erie Creamery has been under the new management of Brian Moran. The award-winning Cleveland-based artisinal creamery was started in 2006 by the husband and wife team of Jerry Onken and Mariann Janosko, who will stay on in advisory roles, says Moran. Moran, a fine gardener by trade, was a fixture for…
24-Hour PaRTAy People: Regional Transit Sobers Up
Every party has a pooper, and that’s why we invited Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell to finally put the kibosh on the heady, freewheeling nonstop bacchanal that has disgracefully masqueraded as “regional transit” in the area for far too long. Conwell Prompted by a surge in RTA passenger misconduct, including the altercation that provoked the…
Prosecutors Want Life Sentence for Fringe Amish Bishop
Federal prosecutors argued today that Samuel Mullet, the Jefferson County bishop who coordinated a series of beard cuttings against members of his radical Amish sect, should get life imprisonment for his crimes. Their argument hinges on the belief that Mullet’s cohorts wouldn’t have engaged in “violent or obstructive behavior,” if not for the influence of…
Rock Hall announces new lecture series
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has announced plans to launch a new weekly Gallery Talk in the Museum every Tuesday at 1 p.m. The series begins this afternoon as docent Frank Smith will talk about key items in the Grateful Dead exhibit currently…
Lakewood Five Guys Abruptly Shutters
Despite a highly visible location in one of Ohio’s densest neighborhoods, Five Guys Burgers failed to make it much past the three-year mark. The store, located on Detroit Avenue in the heart of Lakewood, abruptly closed its doors on Saturday, Feb. 2. What’s more surprising is that in addition to being a restaurant location, the…
Frightened Rabbit’s “Pedestrian Verse”: New Music Tuesday
Last September, Scottish indie rockers Frightened Rabbit dropped a tidy little five-song EP titled “State Hospital.” With a standout opening track (we’ll get back to this in a sec) and a round of hearty tunes from across the Atlantic, the release stirred up noted fervor for the forthcoming album. Yes, “Pedestrian Verse” was released today…
Horseshoe Casino is Giving Away a Sweet-Ass Car Every Day in February
If you’ve been scrimping and saving as strictly as we have to afford the 2013 Porsche Boxter, you may be intrigued by an alternative method of acquisition: Horseshoe Casino is giving away a brand new car every day this month. Except you can only get a Boxter on the weekends. Monday-Thursday, all they’ve got are…
Foodperks Madness And More Morning Reading in Cleveland: Feb. 5
– Giant Eagle, perennial grocer of choice for many in Northeast Ohio, announced that it will discontinue the Foodperks program, per The PD. A spokesperson claimed the program had become too complicated to maintain, citing customer concerns. It’s not a huge loss, as any Giant Eagle devotee would likely explain, but before your heart seizes…
Rob Frost: Cuyahoga County’s Own Gossip Girl
Frost: “Hey guys, I’m trying out this new ‘soulless Seann William Scott’ look. Dig?” Cuyahoga County Republican Party Chairman Rob Frost, who backed out of the GOP race for 9th Congressional District seat in 2011 when he saw Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher’s formidable buttcrack at a tea party luncheon, recently slammed County executive Ed…
City Councilman Westbrook to Retire
Jay Westbrook, councilman for Cleveland’s Ward 16, will officially announce his plans to retire at the end of 2013 today. Westbrook has served on city council since 1980 and served as president from 1990-99, when a coup ousted Westbrook and instated Mike Polensek. Ward 16 is really bizarrely shaped: It’s the anorexic Africa of Cleveland’s…
Ohio Shale Summit To Welcome Industry Glad-Handing Tomorrow
Tomorrow, Crain’s Cleveland Business, WVIZ and WCPN will host the Ohio Shale Summit, a meeting of minds as supposedly diverse as former Shell Oil Company President John Hofmeister, Western Reserve Land Conservancy CEO Rick Cochran and viewers like you. “The Utica Shale and Ohio: Getting it Right” is a daylong conversation about the who, what,…
Two New ‘Cue Joints on Horizon
For just over two years, Fat Casual in Macedonia was the place to go for genuine and delicious slow-smoked barbecue. But lengthy road and bridge construction cut the business off from its customer base, eventually to the point of closure last month. “The road was closed for 517 days,” explains co-owner Scott Slagle. “We lost…
White City, White Heat And More Morning Reading: Feb. 4
– Mentor earned itself a spot at the top of a rather alabaster list: cities with the highest percentage of white people. Good time to review this now-defunct blog. (Via Reddit) – The PD’s Stephen Koff has the details on a post-election arms race review regarding the campaign spending of Josh Mandel and Sherrod Brown.…
Concert Review and Slideshow: Blackberry Smoke at House of Blues
On a tour that finds them switching between arenas and clubs as they alternately open for Zac Brown Band and headline their own tour, the guys in Atlanta’s Blackberry Smoke appeared clearly enthused to be playing before a sold out crowd at House of Blues last night. Southern rockers who proudly carry on in the…
Candlelight Vigil Tonight For Abused, Neglected Dog
As Forrest’s story continues to reverberate across Northeast Ohio, the reality of other animals’ plights is becoming more and more publicized. Herbie, a pit bull, was found abused and neglected on the side of a road in Lorain County last year. He is alive, but still recovering from his former abuse. A candlelight vigil and…
USPS to Cleveland: “Bite It, You Scum”
The badasses at the U.S. Postal Service are sticking it to the City of East Cleveland by refusing to pay two school-zone speeding citations and five red light violations totaling almost $700. USPS Senior Litigation Counsel Jennifer S. Breslin sent the city a chilly letter citing the Postal Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the…
The Stories of Carl Stokes and Barack Obama
With the advent of Black History Month upon us, it’s worth checking out Roldo Bartimole’s Cool Cleveland story about the parallels between former Cleveland Mayor Carl Stokes and President Barack Obama. “Both Obama and Stokes had to face attacks not based solely on politics but on the color of their skins,” Bartimole writes. In each…
Everyone’s Really Psyched about the New Art Space in Ohio City
Ever have that nagging suspicion, before your Bounce/Union Station junkets, that your evenings lack a certain high-culture quota? Not anymore you won’t. Tonight, the renovated Transformer Station opens on W. 29 St. in Ohio City as the newest art exhibit space in Cleveland. Private art collectors Fred and Laura Bidwell, of Peninsula, have pumped a…
We Made It to the Super Bowl, You Guys!
As glamorous liaisons with pro athletes go, manufacturing the Superdome’s Super Bowl field paint ranks way above being Ray Lewis’ deer antler spray dealer and a little below—no homo!—patting Chris Culliver’s ass in a congratulatory and definitely not-gay way. But hey, at least we’re there! Well, kinda. Gracing the Superdome this Sunday will be none…
The JobsOhio Lawsuit: Kasich Refers Litigants To ‘A Higher Power’
Gov. John Kasich said the people suing him over his privatized economic-development agency “are going to have to answer to a much higher power than me.” That comes from The Columbus Dispatch’s Joe Vardon, who reported on the Associated Press-organized news conference relating to JobsOhio’s sale of $1.5 billion in bonds to fund a lease…
Michael Symon Crushed by WSM News; Planning a Way to Help
Michael Symon might be in New York this week taping The Chew, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t following the news of the West Side Market fire with a heavy heart. “It’s just horrible, especially for the vendors,” he told me. “At my restaurants, if we shut down, we have insurance for lost sales. A…
On The Difference Between Great Legacies And More Heinous Debris
It’s Friday and the week is slouching toward a snow-ridden close. Good time to thrust the whole Art Modell business to the surface again. Cleveland Frowns forms an argument along and against the spine of the classic “You can’t write the NFL history without Art” line. It’s not about Cleveland being “bitter,” it’s not about…
Report: US Mens Soccer vs. Belgium in Cleveland in May
A report out of Europe claims that the US mens national team will be dropping by Cleveland in late May to play Belgium in an international friendly. That would be good news for Cleveland soccer fans and evidence that Jimmy Haslam and company plan on using the empty, empty stadium for more than a grazing…
What We’re Reading As We Sit In Standstill Traffic This Morning: Feb. 1
– First off, a bit o’ national news: The almighty jobs report dropped earlier this morning. The numbers fell short of most estimates, though December and November reports were edited and increased with fresh data. On a semi-related note, Ohioans are actually getting poorer as our economy continues to trudge along. – Are you looking…
U2 Conference Coming to Cleveland
U2 isn’t just a rock band from Ireland. The group has been a cultural force for over three decades now and inspires the kind of worship that borders on fanaticism. This year, we’ll get to see just how much people can geek about the band when the annual U2 Conference rolls into town on April…
Rock in a Hard Place
Two years ago when Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl went to purchase the mixing board out of Sound City studios in California, he decided to take a camera crew with him to document the process of extracting the massive console, one of only four that were ever built. So he called up friend Jim Rota to…
Opening: Amour
The sparse and lovely Palme D’Or winner from writer/director Michael Haneke has garnered 6 well-deserved Oscar nominations. It’s an unblinking portrait of a woman (Emmanuelle Riva) in physical and mental decline, cared for by her pragmatic, stalwart husband (Jean-Louis Trintignant). It’s bleak and somber and ferociously monotonous, and yet it’s saved from its tedium by…
We Get Mail
On: “We’re Gonna Get Your Knives” I want to thank Sam Allard for writing his article in last week’s Scene. He encapsulated in one article the cause of most of our problems in America today: the belief that government can save us from ourselves. His argument recycles the same hackneyed premise regurgitated by talking heads…
Band of the Week
Meet the Band: Laurie Caner (banjo/vocals/songwriting), Ed Caner (fiddle/viola), Brent Kirby (songwriter/guitar/vocalist) and Bryan Thomas (bass). Mountain Music: Though the band plays an approximation of bluegrass, members describe the music on their new album, Honey Man, as “Appalachian Americana.” The Americana side of things comes through clearly in a track like “Already Down,” which turns…
CD Review: Cereal Banter
cerealbanter.bandcamp.com This is a weird one. The Cleveland duo’s new EP opens with “Free Midgets/Nutrients,” a clangy electro number that sounds like something from the soundtrack of an old sci-fi flick. With its clashing cymbals and muffled vocals, it could easily play during a spaceship crash scene or when a giant prehistoric creature comes after…
Bramble On
Singer-songwriter Tift Merritt originally set out to write short stories. But near the end of her undergraduate education, she decided to pursue songwriting instead. Though she says she only has nine hours of classwork left to graduate, “it felt very important that I didn’t need someone to give me a piece of paper to tell…
The Second Coming
Toward the end of a short phone interview in which he’s discussing the rebirth of his emo-punk band The Jealous Sound, singer-guitarist Blair Shehan pauses to simply say, “It’s funny how time moves so quickly.” That’s certainly been the case for Shehan, whose 20-year history of playing indie rock is fraught with its fair share…
Lez is More
When Lez Zeppelin formed some ten years ago in New York, there weren’t too many female hard rock cover bands on the touring circuit. The musical landscape has changed — now female acts pay tribute to acts such as AC/DC and Metallica. But back then it was a completely novel idea. In a recent phone…
Forrest vs. The State of Ohio
A bull mastiff named Forrest is enjoying life at his new home in Solon, eagerly embracing his new family and unknowingly garnering fame across Ohio and the Internet. A man named Raymone Clements, meanwhile, is langoring in federal custody following arraignment as a felon caught in possession of ammunition. Their stories are intertwined – riddled…
Top Pop Culture Picks for the Week
TOP PICK Seven Psychopaths (Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) Irish playwright Martin McDonagh (In Bruges) delivers again with this film about an Irish screenwriter (Colin Farrell) who finds himself in a bit of trouble after his friend (Sam Rockwell) kidnaps the dog belonging to a local thug (Woody Harrelson). Local Natives Hummingbird (Frenchkiss) This L.A. act…
Half Man, All Amazing
In cities throughout America, fracturing infrastructure and safety force cutbacks have opened fissures through which deer, raccoons, coyotes, and other wildlife can return to the land which was once theirs. The Galleries at Cleveland State University would have its visitors believe the borders between myth and metaphor and fact have also opened, letting impossible animals…
When I Dip You Dip We Dip
Former Parma City Councilman Roy Jech retired on December 31 to collect increased pension benefits. It’s a familiar and oft-decried maneuver in these parts, but Jech has tried to distance himself from double-dipping’s reprehensible image. Effective this month, a new law stipulates that all future pension increases will be based on data from the Bureau…
Opening: Warm Bodies
The world certainly doesn’t need another zombie flick. And yet Warm Bodies puts such a unique spin on the genre that it’s hard to dismiss it just for relying on a tried and true formula. The film centers on R (Nicholas Hoult), a zombie who is so out of that the only thing he remembers…
“Good Energy”
I’ve arrived at FirstEnergyCorp.com and I’ll be goddamned if it’s not the most soothing bit of graphic design I’ve seen in weeks. There’s nothing all that remarkable about it, really. It’s just extremely clean. The text boxes are rounded at the edges and this strikes me as a courtesy. I’m taken, somewhat abruptly, with an…
Art Listings
Akron Art Museum The Anniversary Show: Commemorative Art Through the Years. Closing this weekend, this 90th anniversary shows off some of the institution’s most remarkable commissions throughout the years, including photographs from its impressive collection by Robert Glenn Ketchum, Andrew McAllister and Penny Rakoff. Through February 3. Adolph Gottlieb: Sculptor. The Abstract Expressionist’s sculptural experiments…
Savage Love
Dear Dan — I’ve been a fan of your Savage Lovecast for a long time, but I had to write after hearing Marty Klein’s awesome talk about the fallacy of “sex addiction.” I am 27, and for most of my adult life, I have suffered from complete sexual dysfunction with partners. I was ashamed and…
Italy in Bay
It is hardly a coincidence that former Coast Guard captain Di DeRubba’s quaint restaurant, nestled between the Huntington Playhouse and BAYarts center in Bay Village, overlooks the lake. Lake Erie was the primary reason DeRubba chose Bay Village as her landing spot when she decided to move back home. No longer on the high seas, DeRubba…
Screens
The Time Machine (1960: Amazon Prime VOD): This first cinematic adaptation of H.G. Wells’s eponymous 1895 novella stars Rod Taylor as the writer Herbert G. Wells. What stands out most when revisiting this now fifty-year-old classic is just how well it holds up today. The completely entertaining yarn involves Wells’ travel through time to a…
Opening: Bullet to the Head
Veteran director Walter Hill (48 Hours) tries to put together a gritty good cop/bad cop flick here falls far short of the mark. Based on a French graphic novel, the movie stars Sylvester Stallone as Jimmy Bobo, a hit man with a rap sheet a mile long. Jimmy partner Louis Blanchard (Jon Seda) have just…
Stage Listings
Opening Bell, Book and Candle Cleveland Play House This revival of a 1950 play (and its 1958 movie version), about a female witch who longs for human love, is a bit of a soggy biscuit. The plot, which is not much more sophisticated than an episode of the old sit-com Bewitched, telegraphs its conclusion from…
The Ruhlman Rules
If you Google Michael Ruhlman, it’s obvious this nationally recognized, “accidental” food writer’s success is really no accident. Ruhlman has made few, if any, mistakes in his career or life. He even manages to pick the best week to go to Florida. It was 74 and sunny in Key West and seven frigid degrees in…
Deep Water
Some (including this reviewer) have said that devised theater—theater created by the directors, performers and key designers during rehearsals—is self-indulgent, pretentious claptrap. This negative dynamic is usually worsened by adding more and more people to the creative mix. Ominously, in Water Ways (Part One of the Elements Cycle), a production of Cleveland Public Theatre in…
Opening: Stand Up Guys
Yet another movie starring a bunch of old actors who poke fun at their senior citizen status, Stand Up Guys doesn’t live up to the kind of expectations you’d attach to a film with such a stellar cast. Al Pacino stars as Val, a criminal who immediately hooks up with his old pal Doc (Christopher…
5 Under $10
The gateway to Cleveland’s eastern neighbors, Cleveland Heights is rich in culture, history and food. You can connect them all and fill up for less than $10. Our choices: The Inn on Coventry Breakfast your thing? (Of course it is.) Well if you have lived, worked or dined in Cleveland Heights in the past 30…
