Salerno’s Plans for W. 25th Grow Thanks to Recent Purchase
In February we reported that Fabio Salerno, the chef and owner of Lago, Gusto, Grotto and now Reddstone, had acquired one of the few vacant spaces on W. 25th Street in Ohio City. Along with his business partners, Salerno was planning to invest $1 million or so to transform the former Blooms (1909 W. 25th…
Power Ranking: The Five Most Important People in Town Right Now
A Scene weekly feature ranking local newsmakers. 1. Bill Mason Even though he’ll soon be riding off into the sunset, the prosecutor isn’t shying from fights, most recently with Judge Nancy Russo and Sunny Simon. 2. John Betts An Ohio man lost his son in a bus accident, but spun activism out of tragedy, pushing…
Northeast Ohio’s Beaches Are Kind of Disgusting
While local officials wrangle with Governor John Kasich about turning over three state-run beaches — Edgewater, Euclid, and Villa Angela — to the Metroparks in hopes of better maintenance, it’s easy to miss a fine point: No number of improved restrooms, new grills and picnic benches, or more frequent trash pickup will make these beaches…
The Quality of Cleveland Life Report
Your guide to living in fabulous Cleveland. We’re in the Wrong Business: Dan Gilbert’s Horseshoe Casino grosses $42.6 million in its first seven weeks. You didn’t even have health insurance after your first seven weeks at your job. Check, Please: Fairlawn Mayor Bill Roth plans on asking Obama’s campaign to reimburse the city for expenses…
Pic of the Day: Columbus Freight Train Derails, Goes Boom
This AP snapshot is making the rounds right now. Last night down in Columbus, a freight train hauling ethanol derailed in an industrial part of town. As a result, flames shot up into the night sky. This all happened around 2 a.m.
Portman Powwows with Romney’s Veep Vetter
“Six meetings? Just chatting, really. Nothing special.” Ohio Senator Rob Portman has been a regular in the speculation over who Mitt Romney might taps for the shotgun seat in his ride toward the White House. Up until now, a lot of that has just been idle What-Ifs tossed around by the press corps. But recent…
Cloud Nothings at Rock Hall Tomorrow- Free
CLoud Nothings Cleveland’s Cloud Nothings have become world travelers, leaving at the end of July for a month-long jaunt that will take them to festivals in Japan and Europe. Last Saturday, they played in New York’s Central Park as part of its SummerStage series, and they’ll be back in New York Thursday for an appearance…
“Son, Did You Pay For That Dildo?”; Teen Caught Shoplifting Sex Toys
If money is the issue, you can always go secondhand. The teenage years are a time meant for personal experimentation. Tastes and preference, comfort levels and inclinations, all of it should get worked out in that headlong hormonal rush toward adulthood. Got to learn how to do you. If that means messing around with some…
Help This Man Who Fell Asleep on the Sidewalk Find His Phone
By rule, this picture must accompany every story about someone falling asleep drunk. This little nugget from the Craigslist lost+found section came to our attention yesterday. Honestly, who hasn’t fallen asleep on a sidewalk downtown and lost their phone? Be a pal and help this guy out if you can. Fell asleep on west 6th,…
Concert Review: Sleigh Bells at House of Blues
Brevity can be a good thing. While Sleigh Bells only played for about an hour last night at the House of Blues, the Brooklyn, New York-based band left more of an impression than many bands that play twice as long. The group, which had previously only played the much smaller Grog Shop (something singer Alexis…
Video: Ninja Robs Ohio Hotel
A man dressed as a ninja robbed a Cincinnati-area hotel with a gun this week, which proves that he’s not a ninja — ninjas don’t need guns. Anyway, police released the surveillance tape, which you can watch below. Cops are looking for him, and we’re guessing real ninjas are, too, for besmirching their good name.
Mahoning County Shreds A lot of Legal Documents, Legally
That takes care of the fine print. The Mahoning County court just offloaded a whole bunch of old documents, according to Vindicator. About 800 pounds of space-wasting dead tree material was shredded by a mom-and-pop Cortland outfit that specializes in erasing the antiquated public record for $160 a ton. The material isn’t gone for good.…
Prayers Answered
St. Casimir, at Sowinski and E. 82nd in Cleveland’s Superior-St. Clair neighborhood, was one of 50 Northeast Roman Catholic churches axed by Bishop Richard “The Closer” Lennon in November 2009. But as we related in the June 2, 2010 issue of Scene, St. Casimir’s parishioners were determined not to go quietly. Soon after the closing,…
Warren Pays Tribute to Dave Grohl With Some Big-Ass Drumsticks
Warren unveiled a pair of ginormous drumsticks over the weekend in tribute to the most famous dude who ever lived there for a couple years, Dave Grohl. The Foo Fighters frontman (and former drummer for Nirvana — duh) wasn’t around to check out the 900-pound sticks in person, but he tweeted some love to the…
Concert Review: Elizabeth Cook at Beachland Tavern
Looking at singer-guitarist Elizabeth Cook, who took the stage at the Beachland Tavern last night wearing a pretty pink dress and big black boots, it’s easy to see why major country music labels in Nashville wanted to sign her to a deal shortly after the Florida native moved to town. The petite blonde could pass…
Concert Review: Fiona Apple at Cain Park
On her first tour in more than five years, singer-songwriter Fiona Apple braved the blistering heat on Friday night to put on one of the most anticipated shows of the summer at Cain Park. From the moment she skipped onto the stage, Apple had the audience completely captivated. The tiny, 34-year-old singer packed an enormous…
Concert Review: Def Leppard and Poison at Quicken Loans Arena
In some ways, pairing Def Leppard and Poison together doesn’t seem like a good idea. Leppard is a British act associated with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement. Poison is an American act that emerged out of the ’80s glam metal scene. But these two bands (they also toured together last summer) do…
Backstage Pass: Lita Ford talks about her runaway life
Singer-guitarist Lita Ford first joined the Runaways when she was only 16 years old. Now, at age 53, Ford is still at it. She just released her new album, Living Like a Runaway, and is on a summer arena tour with Def Leppard and Poison. We caught up with her (and her two adorable Chihuahuas)…
Free Dave Hill Show in Ohio City Tonight
If you have no evening plans yet, you might want to head over to Bonbon Pastry and Cafe in Ohio City at around 8-ish tonight. The social media rumor mill has it that native Clevelander and funny guy, Dave Hill, is home from the Big Apple for a visit and will host an unannounced, and…
A Festival Weekend for Cleveland Headbangers
Bill Peters on air It’s a gala weekend for Cleveland area heavy metal fans who’ll have the chance to hear 14 of the area’s best bands in the genre over two nights at shows put together by long-time area metal maven Bill Peters. Tonight at the House of Blues, the WJCU Metal on Metal 30th…
No One Got Killed at the Shaker Heights Fireworks Celebration
What Shaker Heights fireworks looked like. Basically. San Diego took the cake for best fireworks display on Wednesday when 15 minutes of fireworks all shot off in 15 seconds. Lakewood took home the poop sandwich for worst display when the whole shebang was called off because of a computer malfunction. Shaker Heights was somewhere in…
President Obama Will Not Arm Wrestle You for Your Vote
A flurry of national pols scurrying through Ohio the last 24 hours, including President Obama, has a lot of political-type stuff dominating the headlines. Unfortunately, these little campaign bus tours offer little news, especially when the President totes out almost the exact same speech at every stop in between bites of mom-and-pop diner food and…
Woman Calls 911 Because Boyfriend is “A Jerk”
For emergencies, like your boyfriend being a jerk. Your boyfriend not living up to your standards, ladies? You can just leave, or chew him out. Sure, those are options. But that won’t get you a star turn in Cleveland.com’s police blotters. To land there, you need to get drunk, call 911 to tell them the…
Concert Review: Brandi Carlile at House of Blues
Thirty-one year old Brandi Carlile has been performing since she was a child, and that experience really came through during last night’s show at the House of Blues, where Carlile and her band displayed some terrific, old-fashioned showmanship. Throughout the 90-minute concert, the singer-guitarist casually bantered with the capacity crowd, telling the background story behind…
The Dope Show
Sex. Drugs. Violence. How can you possibly go wrong? In Savages, director and co-writer Oliver Stone shows us some of the ways in which a good idea turns bad. A Mexican drug cartel becomes interested in an extremely powerful brand of chronic distributed by a pair of California potheads. When they refuse to go into…
Jane Scott Comes Alive at Rock Hall
Today the Rock and Roll hall of Fame and Museum unveiled a statue dedicated to legendary Plain Dealer rock music writer Jan Scott, who died last Fourth of July. The lifesize, lifelike bronze statue, sporting Scott’s trademark red glasses, was created by area sculptor and past president of the Cleveland Institute of Art David Deming.…
Power Ranking: The Five Most Important People in Town Right Now
A Scene weekly feature ranking local newsmakers. 1. Frank Jackson & John Kasich Ohio’s favorite bi-partisan bromance was finally consummated this week when the governor came to town to ink “the Cleveland Plan.” Next up, dinner with the in-laws. 2. David Boone Jr. The once-homeless, now Harvard-bound high-school senior was given a shoutout at last week’s…
Rant: Everyone’s Parking in The Flats Again, and It’s Annoying
They were the Golden Days of the East Bank. Nope, we’re not talking about the years when the structural integrity of bustling clubs was threatened by the awkward ass-backing of suburbanites singing along to “Country Grammar.” No, the real halcyon period for the Flats happened later, when river wind was already pushing through the broken…
Home Movies
Barbarella (Paramount) — Barbarella isn’t a very good movie. It isn’t even very good when it comes to the whole cheesy/sci-fi/sex-romp/shagadelic-’60s mash-up it falls into and may be the sole representative of. But the 1968 fantasy — directed by Roger Vadim and starring his then-wife Jane Fonda in one of the most awesomeriffic, if not…
Local Band in Focus
Meet the Band: Billy Webb (keyboards, samplers, bass, and vocals) and Shannon Klauer (vocals). Christmas Present: Webb and Klauer formed Wild Orphans last September and played their first gig the day after Christmas. Webb writes all of the duo’s tunes, having honed his skills in local bands like Safari over the years. Virgin Territory: All…
Scratching a Niche
Henry Ford is credited with the oft-repeated line, “People can have the Model T in any color, so long as it’s black.” Walk into a restaurant these days and you might feel like Ford is now crafting menus instead of motors. At Happy Dog, you can order anything you’d like, so long as it’s a…
Days of the Dead
Even though the Grateful Dead officially called it quits after Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, the band’s spirit lives on. And it’s a very good week to be a fan. The four-day Dead celebration Gratefulfest, now in its 14th year, takes place at Nelson Ledges with artists like Rusted Root, David Gans, and Melvin Seals.…
Film Capsules
To Rome With LoveThis year’s annual Woody Allen movie sorta picks up where 2011’s Midnight in Paris, his best movie in years, left off. It’s once again set in a romantic European city overstuffed with history and camera-ready, on-location sets. It’s populated by an ensemble of Woody-rhythmic actors, including Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg, and Alec…
Q&A: Johnnyville Slugger
Johnny Smatana rockets around his West 25th Street store like a rubber ball that’s been side-armed into a phone booth by Randy Johnson. The garrulous, high-energy founder of Johnnyville Slugger embodies the all-in ethos that once made him successful in the air and freight business. Bat making was never a dream he quietly stoked. Sure,…
CD Review: Flo Rida
The melody is annoying but infectious. The lyrics are kinda awful, but you can’t help singing along. “Whistle,” the opening track off Flo Rida’s fourth album, is easy to hate on, for sure. But the formula has worked wonders for the 32-year-old rapper over the past four years, landing him in the Top 10 more…
Culture Jamming
TOP PICK The Three Stooges Ultimate Collection (Sony) Need to wash the taste of the recent big-screen revision out of your mouth? This 20-disc DVD collection is filled with almost 200 shorts featuring Moe, Larry, Curly, Shemp, and, um, Joe Besser and Curly Joe Derita. Two feature-length Stooges movies make their DVD debuts, plus there’s…
Cheap Eats
For Kelly and Sandy Waddell, running a food truck is a lot like marriage: lots of stress, sweat, and tears, but still strangely satisfying. The couple owns and operates the two-year-old Nosh Box food truck, which specializes in comfort food. “We got the idea from the first season of the Great Food Truck Race,” says…
Youth & Beauty
Histories of the last century’s art typically tell a linear story of increasing abstraction. The Cleveland Museum of Art, in collaboration with the Brooklyn Museum, complicates this narrative with Youth and Beauty, a survey of American art of the 1920s which places art’s emphasis back on the realistic human form. The show documents societal reactions…
Web of Life
Anyone who has seen more than a half-dozen movies in the past 10 years is asking themselves the same question: Isn’t it a little soon to be rebooting Spider-Man? After all, it’s been only a decade since director Sam Raimi and star Tobey Maguire teamed up for one of the best superhero movies ever made,…
On View This Week
Proximity Tectonics. Cleveland native Paul Yanko draws on the imagery of geometric abstraction and commercial design, using techniques borrowed from painting, drawing, and collage to create dense patterns meant to project outward from the two dimensions which contain them. (That’s a work from his “Radius” series, left.) An opening reception will be held Friday, July…
We Get Mail
Nuge Scratch Fever I just finished your Nugent interview [“Motor City Madman,” June 27]. He talks a lot of shit about freedom, gun control, and other American ideals. Are you aware that he is a draft dodger? When his number came up in the wee early 1970s, he went to the draft board and faked…
At the Arthouse
Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope Super Size Me smartass Morgan Spurlock’s latest documentary takes on the costumed geeks at the world’s largest annual comic-book convention in San Diego. It’s an easy target, no doubt, but Spurlock is too busy being fascinated by the various Yodas, Supermans, and Gandalfs walking around the place to mock…
CD Review: Linkin Park
If there’s one thing Linkin Park fans don’t want, it’s a politically charged concept album that’s every bit as pretentious as U2’s most bombastic work. They pretty much told the band this after the release of 2010’s A Thousand Suns, which still managed to hit No. 1 despite the general confusion with the record. So…
Cheap Eats
Tucked into the dingy — and we mean that in the most positive of ways — inner workings of Sachsenheim Hall, that century-old building on Denison, is one of the best Taco Tuesdays you’ll find in town. Everyone slings bargain tacos one day a week, but Sachsenheim is one of the few that serves up…
CD Review: The Offspring
Not much has changed since the Offspring’s mid-’90s peak. They’re still playing melodic SoCal punk with a shot of alt-rock self-importance. They’re still angry smartasses softened by occasional flairs of cheese. And they’re still skirting the line between muscular and meathead. Days Go By, their ninth album and first in four years, makes the usual…
Summer in the City
The Rock Hall’s Summer in the City series was always intended as a showcase for rising area talent, says Lisa Vinciquerra, who organizes the annual free shows on the Rock Hall’s outdoor plaza (They move to the Lobby Stage in case of bad weather). This year’s four-concert lineup kicks off at 7 p.m. Wednesday, July…
Savage Love
Dear Dan: I’m a straight guy and I’m really into having my balls sucked — it’s one of my favorite things and just thinking about it turns me on. But whenever I’ve had my balls sucked, it hurts, and ball pain is not a kink of mine! It hurts enough to override any pleasure, and…
Concert Calendar
Brandi Carlile Thirty-one-year-old Seattle singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile offers a grand measure of storytelling in her work that arcs from tender to soaring — from Joni Mitchell-style quiet introspection to Janis Joplin-like balls-out rocking. Once she gets started, she’s like a Harrier jet taking off for flight. And she’s capable of delivering it all with a…
On Stage This Week
At Porthouse Theatre: And the World Goes ‘Round A collection of Broadway’s best with a comic twist, this musical showcase focuses on songs by Kander and Ebb from hits like Chicago, Cabaret, and New York, New York. Featuring the talents of recent theater grads from local universities who make up the Porthouse Theatre Young Professional…
The Dork Side
It’s always cause for mass celebration whenever a new store opens that caters exclusively to the geek crowd. It’s positively King-Kong-bananas time when two new shops open their doors within weeks of each other. Comics Are Go! in Sheffield Village celebrated its opening in May, appropriately on Free Comic Book Day. They were one of…
CD Review: Lovedrug
No surprise Lovedrug sound tougher than they did a few years ago. Despite several records filled with piano-anchored alt-rock, the Canton band never quite took off beyond its core audience. Wild Blood is a stab for mainstream acceptance: U2 and their stylistic followers are major influences on the album’s reverb-soaked riffs, soaring choruses, and atmospheric…
