View a full page version here. Photos by Peter Larson unless otherwise noted.
The Voice: Ahmaad CrumpPA Announcer, Cavs; Radio Host, 93.1 FM; Beer Money Host, SportsTime Ohio
Back when Ahmaad Crump was growing up, his friends knew that even if they were out in the neighborhood and playing on a Saturday morning, Crump wouldn’t be joining them until noon. That’s because The Price is Right didn’t end until then, and Crump was a gameshow junkie.
“I loved them all,” says Crump. “But my friends knew not to knock on my door until it was over.”
He knew then that he wanted to have a mic in his hand for the rest of his life, and things have turned out that way in more ways than he could have imagined. Not only did he finally get a chance to host his own gameshow — Beer Money on STO — but a good portion of his year is spent, mic in hand, entertaining more than 20,000 Cavs fans at Quicken Loans Arena.
“I probably would have been hustling regardless of that opportunity,” says Crump of the Cavs gig, “but never did I imagine being front of that many fans each night.”
Crump was working as a records clerk at Ulmer & Berne, a big downtown law firm at the time, back in the mid-2000s. He wanted to be a lawyer after graduating from Central State University. But his dreams changed course, leading him back to the mic. He was on the Cavs’ scream team in 2003 and 2004. When Dan Gilbert bought the Cavs, he wanted to start over with a fresh crew — new dance crew, new excitement, new everything.
“I saw an article on Cavs.com that said they were looking for PA announcers so I tried out,” says Crump. “And I bombed the audition. There were three judges, and there was a simulated game, and they gave you a script but you had to memorize it as best as possible. I wasn’t used to that.”
One night in 2005 when current in-game partner Nicole Cuglewski called in sick, the Cavs called Crump to fill in, and after a few jittery moments, he nailed it. And he finally got his shot at the PA gig for the 2006-2007 season — a perch he hasn’t relinquished since. From the start, one of the employees suggested dropping a mic from the ceiling, a la boxing matches. It’s become part of Crump’s routine as he blares out, “Annnnnnd from St. Vincent St. Mary …”
Each player gets Crump’s little touch — Mo Williams, returning next season, was one of the few players with a specific request, asking Crump to introduce him as MoGotti — and there’s a certain specialness in announcing No. 23, but Crump is equal opportunity with the flare.
“When LeBron announced he was coming back last summer, I think the next day I started practicing for that first game at the Q,” says Crump, who’s been married for three years and recently welcomed a daughter to the family. “But at the end of the day, as great a player as he is, it’s all about the team.”
Crump, incidentally, hasn’t missed a single game, and his streak — currently at 445 straight games — is almost at another Cleveland milestone: the Tribe’s sellout streak.
By: Vince GrzegorekThe Fixer: Brian GlazenFounder, Think Media Studios
At the Mayfield home of Think Media Studios, Brian Glazen’s employees are quick to crystallize their founder’s reputation:
“Around here, he’s known as the guy who can pull off the impossible,” says marketing & sales VP Mary Hipp. “If something can’t be done, Brian can do it.”
Sitting across from a world map with pushpins identifying site locations for T.M.S. projects, Glazen admits that the impossible is what has always excited him. It’s what keeps him coming to work every morning.
“I like to fix things,” Glazen says. “If you tell me something can’t be done, that’s exactly what I’m gonna go do. And that’s really the core of what a producer is.”
Working at a media studio, producing often means liaising with powerful people, working nimbly on one’s toes among competing entities. Sometimes it means telling Shaquille O’Neal that he’s going to have to dump a 5-gallon bucket of water over his head one more time.
“Shaq looked at us and said, ‘You get one pour,'” Glazen says as he chuckles, recalling shooting the first Cavs intro video that Think Media produced back in ’09. It was the scene where Shaq emerges from Lake Erie to join his XL teammates. “We did the one pour and it didn’t work. He started choking on the water … he said we could have one more pour.”
Glazen, born and raised in Cleveland, fled the Lake Erie shores in his early 20s to seek fame and fortune in Hollywood, which he promptly found. Due to tenacious networking, Glazen managed to work with industry luminaries on projects for HBO, Showtime, Fox … no biggie.
But Cleveland’s siren call was too seductive, and when it came time to start a family, Glazen knew where he belonged.
“I always knew I would come back,” he says. “This place is home.”
Though he worked for a spell at his father Alan’s company, Glazen Creative, Brian soon wanted total creative control and set out to form Think Media Studios.
“The market for what we do has been more open-armed than I expected,” Glazen says.
What they do is incredibly high-quality productions: Every time you see the Cavs’ intro videos, or sleek corporate promos for CSU, Playhouse Square, Progressive or Smuckers, chances are it’s a T.M.S production. The corporate projects have been the company’s bread and butter, and that makes sense, because Glazen’s personality is hardwired for meaningful, client-first relationships. But Glazen says he’s “aggressively expanding.”
The next horizon is original content. Last year, their second-ever feature film Fishing Without Nets took home Best Director honors at Sundance. They’ve received offers for two features in the next year, and they’re pursuing documentary content as well.
“I see a lot more of that, but no less than the other,” Glazen says, championing his staff’s commitment to quality production from concept to the studio to the editing bays regardless of the project. As for Cleveland, he knows what it’ll take to keep the positive filmmaking momentum going.
“We need to continue being an incredible place to shoot, with good, reliable crews; accessible, state-of-the-art gear; and people who are eager to have productions here. We’ve got most of those covered already.”
By: Sam AllardThe Classical Ambassador: Amy LeeViolinist, Cleveland Orchestra; Member, Ensemble HD
Amy Lee was only 12 when she decided that the violin should be something more than a hobby in her life.
“That’s when I decided this is what I wanted to do; I totally fell in love. I wanted to become a violinist,” says Lee, now the associate concertmaster of the Cleveland Orchestra. So she asked her parents if they’d move from Korea to the Philadelphia area so she could be around the music conservatories there. The very next year they made the move. In short time, Lee won a competition and soloed with the Philadelphia Orchestra – at the tender age of 15. At 16, she enrolled at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music. After her bachelor’s there, she got her master’s degree at the Julliard School in Manhattan.
“Right when I was finishing up my grad school, and started looking around for what positions were available, this was one of them,” she said. “I came here totally not expecting to win such a great position out of school, but they were so nice and gave me a chance.”
Soon after arriving to Cleveland in 2008, she met her future husband, the orchestra’s principal oboe player, Frank Rosenwein. They married in 2012.
Together, they’d excel on stage and in front of packed crowds at Severance Hall and New York and across Europe, but they’d also take part in fun side projects, like the Ensemble HD, an idea born by principal flutist Josh Smith and the Happy Dog’s Sean Watterson. The idea was simple: A small group from the orchestra would perform at the westside bar.
“We thought, look, let’s connect with these people who would otherwise never get to hear what we do, and let’s show them that this is something they can enjoy as much as other genres of music,” says Lee. “We went out there to the bar, put on a show, and it was so successful. People loved it. We were like rockstars playing Beethoven; it was so great.”
Lee and Rosenwein are also part of a Cleveland-based group called PAND (Performers and Artists for Nuclear Disarmament), putting on shows to raise awareness of the dangers of nuclear weapons. They are both professors too — Rosenwein at the Cleveland Institute of Music, Lee at Kent State. And Lee also performs with a group called the Omni Quartet with three other orchestra members, who also happen to be her best friends and bridesmaids.
In seven years, there are many memories, but Lee’s favorite moments so far in the Cleveland Orchestra happened during European tours. “One was Rusalka, the opera by Dvorak, that we did in Salzburg. Every concert was an out-of-body experience. It was so beautiful, so amazing, and I will never forget the experience. After that, doing Brahms’ Deutsches Requiem in Vienna, that was just a very special experience. The orchestra just really came together in this beautiful hall where Brahms had performed it.”
From where Brahms performed his masterpiece to where you eat hot dogs and tater tots. No big deal.
By: Doug BrownThe Teacher: Cassi PittmanProfessor, Case Western Reserve University
Earlier this year, Cassi Pittman took the stage at the East Cleveland Public Library to deliver a powerful analysis of the debate over annexation: Should the city in which she grew up agree to a merger with the city of Cleveland?
It’s a question that’s sparked debate for years. Now, both cities are inching toward more realistic conversations and petition-signing processes. There’s a sense on both sides of the political boundary that this could happen. But, joining many others in her outlook, Pittman isn’t sold. For one, she’s a native East Clevelander. Born and raised, before heading east to the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, and returning to her post now as a professor at Case Western Reserve University, she’s rooted here. And she’s not sure that handing over the reins of the city to another political body wracked with the same troubles is the best idea.
“Some of the things that are going on in East Cleveland — it’s such a case study of so many different issues,” she says, referencing the concentration of political power, the diminishing tax base, the decline of city services and more. She used her time during the keynote speech at the library to illuminate how East Cleveland’s problems are mirrored almost perfectly by issues plaguing Cleveland’s Glenville neighborhood.
Pittman started out at East Cleveland Public Schools. In fifth grade, she transferred to nearby Hathaway Brown, where she had a front-row seat to the social inequalities that drive politics and economics in this country.
“Some of my [East Cleveland] classmates, I just remember them being so brilliant,” Pittman says. “We would have science fairs, and everyone would have these super creative projects. Then, when I left for HB, I felt like there was this assumption that because I came from East Cleveland I would be behind.” Whereas students at Hathaway Brown were told that they could do anything they wanted as they grew up, her former classmates in East Cleveland were hit with the hard realities of bleak graduation rates and the too-often out-of-reach goals of college and careers.
Pittman, thankfully, has made of her life what she wanted. Now teaching in the sociology department at Case (teaching criminology and economic sociology), she is determined to study how best to improve the urban core of Northeast Ohio. She’s hoping to teach an actual class on Cleveland and its socioeconomic past and present in the future.
For as diverse a region as it is, she says, the racial and class-based divides run deep. As we talked in the cafeteria at the Tinkham Veale Student Center, it was hard not to remember that physical and structural disrepair exist in almost every surrounding neighborhood — and while many leaders have spent time championing “regionalism” as political end. It’s one disc in the backbone of rhetoric supporting a Cleveland-East Cleveland merger. “But I can’t understand why we can’t have the benefits of regionalism without necessarily losing our municipality,” Pittman says.
Smart, confident and dedicated to her community, Pittman embodies the sort of New Resident around whom East Cleveland and most cities throughout Northeast Ohio need to structure themselves, no matter the outcome of the debate.
By: Eric SandyThe Grass Man: Chris PowellHead Groundskeeper, Cleveland Browns
There’s a saying amongst groundskeepers to this effect: If nobody is saying anything, everything is great.
Hundreds of thousands of people tune into Browns’ games each fall and winter, and while they watch whatever quarterback has been left holding the hot potato at the time, they are also watching Chris Powell’s handiwork. But they’re not talking about it.
Powell, 47, is the head groundskeeper for the Cleveland Browns and has been since 1999. That means he’s the man in charge of the turf down at the stadium as well as all the turf at the team’s practice facilities in Berea.
“At both locations, I basically designed the fields myself,” he says. “At first, they didn’t let me design the field for the stadium — there was also a time crunch — up to my specs. Basically, for the NFL, you take the United States Golf Association’s specifications for golf greens and that’s what you work with. It’s pretty much sand, with a little peat. I also added 10 percent clay to the mix to help with stability at the practice facility. We didn’t do that at the stadium and there were issues from the first game. There was no stability. It’s thin-cut sod, and it was late June, and it was a very hot summer in 1999. We had some issues with rooting and had to resod and redo it for the next season.”
Since then, however, you haven’t heard so much as a peep about the playing field not being up to par. And Powell says they haven’t had to do a full resod of the complete surface in seven years, though the middle of the field, prone to the most wear and tear from 300-pound bodies, does get fresh turf throughout the year.
What does it all entail? Traveling with the team and making sure any surface they set foot on has the right hardness standards, checking the weather more than a meteorologist, organizing plans for any special events that’ll be hosted at the stadium and thus affect his precious sod, and dealing with fickle kickers.
“Phil Dawson’s a great guy,” says Powell of the departed Browns kicker. “I don’t want to say we had a love-hate relationship, but … . He had very good success in Cleveland. We had lots of conversations through the years. He’d want to know how much sand was at the top of the soil, how that changed what cleats he might wear, he’d ask about the top dressing of the field — he was very in tune to everything we did.”
Back when he got out of high school, Powell’s dad told him to get a job for the summer. So he got the best job he could find: working at a golf course. He saved up, went to the National Guard, went to Central Missouri State and got to work on athletic fields and golf courses and network. Which is how he got hooked up with the Browns’ groundskeeper back in 1992. He was in Cleveland for a year before heading to Kansas City to work with groundskeeper guru George Toma, a legend in his line of work who has been the groundskeeper or assisted with groundskeeping at every single Super Bowl since the first one in 1967.
“I learned the high intellectual end of groundskeeping from some of the people I’ve worked with and the old-school stuff from George Toma,” Powell says. “I like to think I’ve come to a sort of balance.”
By: Vince GrzegorekThe Dirt Guy: Dan BrownCo-Founder, Rust Belt Riders
Dan Brown and his future business partner Michael Robinson were trying to run a garden on East 40th and St. Clair. They had one big problem: The soil was no good. They had to truck the stuff in to make do.
“We realized we were more farmers of soil than farmers of food and basically got really into composting,” he says. And that’s when they realized they could perhaps make a little bit of money while doing some good for the community.
“We were working at restaurants at the time and saw how much food was going out the back door, and realized we could capture some of that and just bring it to our garden to mix into our compost bins and pump out healthy soil,” he says. “Extrapolating from our own situation, there are like 200 community gardens in Cleveland, all on really shitty, highly compacted soil, and all of them would benefit from having access to free compost.”
And that’s how Rust Belt Riders would start, funded with just $2,000, on June 1 of last year when their presentation at SOUP Cleveland, a sort of informal business incubator, was selected as the winner and recipient of that month’s kitty.
“The idea was to basically make composting easy, make it free at the gardens, and assign a value to the waste that comes out of restaurants.” They’d charge restaurants and homes a flat fee to pick up compostable waste — solely on bikes, at first (thus, the name “Rust Belt Riders”) — and then deliver it to nearby community gardens for free.
Brown, a 2007 St. Ignatius grad, met Robinson, an Illinois native, during college in Chicago. Brown studied ethics at Depaul; Robinson studied history and philosophy at Loyola.
“We’re not business gurus by any stretch of the imagination,” says Brown. But with a year of trial and error under their belt, they’re beginning to understand how to make a sustainable business. They’ve since moved away from residential pickups (“We needed a tremendous amount of density to make that pricing model work”) and now charge by the pound. They’ve also started using cars more — ever since the restaurant compost hauls grew to more than the 250 pounds that the bikes could handle. The 400 pounds of waste they pick up twice per week from Beet juicebar, for example, just isn’t feasible to move via bike, he explained.
Things have gone well enough that Brown recently made the “terrifying” move to leave his internship and restaurant gig to give this a go full time.
“When we started we had like three or four clients and had no idea what we were doing; we just threw out random prices,” he says. They started just bringing compost to their near-eastside garden. Now they work with 20 businesses and bring compost to 15 gardens around Cleveland, hauling an estimated 80,000 pounds in the first year.
By: Doug BrownThe Party Start: Don WojtilaLead Singer, Schnickelfritz
Wojtila, who’s a “very young 60,” as he likes to point out, had been playing polka for decades. His dad had moved to the U.S. from Czechoslovakia and settled the family in a little pocket of Slovenians off Buckeye Road before moving to Euclid. His mother was an accomplished pianist and teacher, and music was always around. So, naturally, he picked up instruments and learned how to play Slovenian polka. He made recordings and did TV appearances and played weddings, but it was a side gig, a lovely hobby that filled the time when he wasn’t raising his family or running his bakery in Euclid.
“We played variety and Slovenian and we learned all aspects of music, not just polka,” he says. “We learned pop for the weddings that we played back in the day.”
He’d still be playing with his brothers and assorted musicians at weddings for the most part, catering to a fervent but older crowd, if not for the arrival of the Hofbräuhaus in Cleveland.
“They scouted us and basically that’s how we ended up there,” says Wojtila. “So we just carried through what we did there. We’re a mainstay now.”
Schnickelfritz is the de facto house band at the giant beer hall and garden, taking the stage during peak times: weekends, from 9:30 p.m. to 1 a.m. or so.
When you enter the giant hall, for those who haven’t yet been, you walk into a packed room filled with hundreds of people standing on benches and bellowing the words to songs at the top of their lungs, clinking their steins and dancing. And Wojtila is the center of it all, singing and playing accordion, dotting the atmosphere with polka standards like “Roll Out the Barrel,” “Who Stole the Kishka” and “Too Fat Polka.” But alongside those standards come polka variations on “Hang on Sloopy,” Bon Jovi songs, even Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”
It’s Oktoberfest and a wedding and a dance party all rolled up into one, every single night.
“It rejuvenated our career because it’s not just old-people polka,” he says. “We kind of fuse polka with rock and pop. It’s a very, very unique situation. It’s very fun, something like I’ve never seen before. As soon as you walk into the place, you’re accepted, it’s a warm feeling, and everyone is just happy and smiling and dancing. So we have to think very carefully about what we play.”
The six-member group holds court amidst the pretzels and sausages and shotskis (basically, shot glasses attached to a ski, filled with your choice of liquor, and downed simultaneously by whomever you happen to be sharing it with).
German beer halls and gardens are enjoying a bit of a renaissance, and so too are the people who play traditional Eastern European music. A couple have opened in Cleveland, and another — Hansa brewery in Ohio City — is slated to join the crowd. Which means more polka than Cleveland’s enjoyed in awhile, and that’s just fine with Wojtila. It’s music for the people, and he’s happy to lead the party.
“There was a woman last week who was celebrating her 95th birthday,” he says. “And I introduced her and she stood up and waved and the whole crowd applauded and wouldn’t stop. It went on and on. It was amazing. That’s what this is all about. It’s a people place.”
By: Vince GrzegorekThe Doyenne: Dorothy SilverActress
“I’ve been letting myself grow old for years,” Dorothy Silver says. “I’m very confident in my age. Also, it helps me be competitive in getting many stage and film roles, since so many older actresses try to take years off their age.”
Silver, the grande dame of Cleveland theater at 86, is nothing if not confident. From her movie roles in The Shawshank Redemption and Promised Land to her local stage appearances over many decades, Silver has defined the essence of talent and grace.
Of course, Silver was often paired in many people’s minds with her husband of 65 years, Reuben, who passed away last year. They were “ReubenandDorothy” long before other celebrities began using playful uni-names for their bonded status. As Dorothy says, “We grew together over all those years. He was so supportive of my work, as I was his. I’m very grateful for the time we had together.”
They were both pillars at the Karamu House and at Cleveland State University, directing and acting in countless productions there and elsewhere. “My first love is theater,” says Silver, “because that’s where you actually act. If you act on film, you’re in trouble. Everything has to be done in miniature.” Her favorite stage role is Claire Zachanassian in The Visit by Friedrich Durrenmatt, a part she created at CSU in 1991 (it was helmed by another Cleveland theater icon, director Joe Garry). And she also enjoyed playing opera diva Maria Callas in Master Class at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood.
Even though Reuben isn’t here in the flesh, he’s still with her. “I feel strongly that he’s around me. He’s often leaving the room or calling me. And I have discussions with him. Of course I know how he thinks, after all those years, so the discussions are really quite productive.”
Even now, Dorothy is continuing to work on stage and in film. She will be playing Goody Nurse in The Crucible during the Cleveland Play House’s 100th anniversary season, in October of this year. And she is slated to star in The Revisionist at Dobama Theatre next April.
As Dorothy notes, “I’m glad I’m still here, and so glad this is such an extraordinary city. It’s essentially a blue-collar town where top-flight arts institutions such as the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Karamu House and the Cleveland Play House have endured and thrived for 100 years, or close to it. I think that’s remarkable!”
By: Christine HoweyThe Casual Curators: Erika Durham Anthony KochCo-Founders, Canopy Collective
Founded this spring in Ohio City’s Lorain Avenue antiques district, Canopy Collective is an antique and regional art consignment boutique, gallery, artist studios, classroom, screening room and more. As co-founders Erika Durham and Anthony Koch explain, the space is really whatever you wish it to be.
“I think what makes us different is most easily understood by being in the space,” explains Durham. “There are many great shops in Cleveland where you can buy handmade art, crafts, vintage items and antiques, but what sets us apart is our ability to morph the space into just about anything. We are so excited to continue to meet new artists and creative minds and grow this fantastic community of people. One of the nicest compliments we receive is that our space feels very comfortable and ‘like home,’ which is what we were aiming for all along.”
Canopy, which populated the old Buck Buck gallery space, hosts an eclectic variety of classes including painting, tango, movement exploration, yoga, digital photography, three-dimensional design and children’s art classes. So it’s sort of a shop and sort of a gallery and sort of a studio for just about anything the duo are into. It also hosts the PenPal Social Club every other week in collaboration with online publication The Red Heart Press.
“We are both from Cleveland, and our families are here,” says Durham. “We also have been part of the growing arts scene in a variety of ways and were so excited to see how much support the people who live here are willing to give to artists and artisans. It seemed like the right time to jump into a big creative project.”
They have nine studio artists that run the gamut from writers to muralists to photographers to wood workers. That end result stemmed from a vision for the Collective that the two had in the initial planning phases.
“We started working with eight other people last year with an idea to start a non-profit focused on music and art, with community events and classes,” recalls Durham. “After looking at a few spaces for that specific project, we started to realize that it was going to be incredibly difficult to meld the worlds of ‘practice space’ and ‘fine arts space’ because of noise and scheduling issues. Once we came to the conclusion that it wasn’t a feasible project, we branched off with two friends (Adam Jaenke and Lisa Paulovcin) from the group and changed gears to a for-profit business focused on the art aspect. The idea morphed over time and came to be what it is now.”
Moving forward, Durham and Koch have a full schedule planned through May 2016. In the coming months, Canopy will host a number of special events featuring many emerging local artists.
By: Josh UsamiThe Sidekick: Erika LaurenCo-Host, Alan Cox Show
Now a mainstay on Cleveland radio — from 3 to 7 p.m. on 100.7 FM WMMS’ Alan Cox Show — Erika Lauren has taken a circuitous route to land in her buzzworthy role. Springboarding from her stint on The Real World, she’s been developing a career in radio and music. And with the North Shore as her backdrop, her creativity seems to expand with each passing year.
Lauren was led to Cleveland more than six years ago, moving here for love with little in the way of job prospects. She reached out to a few radio stations, soliciting interviews about her time on MTV’s The Real World. A former producer at WMMS ended up offering her a part-time job with the Alan Cox Show, running admin work and screening calls. Six months in, they left her mic on and encouraged her to contribute to the show.
“It was kismet,” she says. “I had studied radio in college and interned at a radio station. I always thought I would be on the promotions side or working behind the scenes, but I grew up listening to talk radio.” Often, she says, she’d pick up tardy slips in high school after gluing her ears to DreX in the Morning out in the parking lot.
“I’ve always been drawn to that, but I never thought that I could or should or would do it,” Lauren says. “I always tell people I just fell ass-backwards into it.”
Well into her tenure on the show, she’s long been a natural fit alongside Cox’s biting wit and co-host Bill Squire’s everyman sarcasm and wordplay. It’s been an adventurous ride where each day brings something different — like a recent lost bet that had her drinking Malort on-air (think “gasoline and wood shavings,” Lauren says, flavor-wise) while Cox tried and failed to eat an entire stick of butter.
In short, her work in radio affords her a nice blend of fun and those endless horizons of learning. “I still have so far to go, but I feel like I’m at the point where things are starting to make sense and I’m starting to get the hang of it,” she says. “As a co-host, you’re there to support. You’re there to follow the vision of the host of the show. It’s just following Alan’s lead and chiming in when the timing is right. Timing is everything in radio.”
Elsewhere in Cleveland, and per her own vision, Lauren fronts Hawkeye, a local “rocktronica” outfit that blends an EDM base with high-energy dance structures. The band came together amid hazy conversations about how best to fuse these exciting strains of rock music. The crowds have been growing at their shows over the past few years, and it’s those crowds — the audiences at her concerts, the audiences tuning in each afternoon — that sustain her talents.
“What I’ve learned is that the people make the city, and Cleveland has the best people,” Lauren says. “The way I explain it is: If you walk down the street in Chicago and you ask for directions, nine times out of 10 that person will either a) pretend like they don’t speak English or b) have their earbuds in. In Cleveland, not only will they stop and give you directions — if they don’t know the directions, they’ll call a friend, they’ll look it up on their phone. There’s a camaraderie here. Everyone is out to support one another.”
By: Eric SandyThe People’s Artist: John Rivera-Resto
Muralist
You may not know John Rivera-Resto, but you’ve probably seen his work. The dashing, Cleveland-born Puerto Rican muralist and armchair philosopher steps into his black Mazda MX5 in the heart of Lakewood’s Gold Coast and dons his sunglasses, “J. Rivera-Resto” inscribed on the side. He is armed with leather man-purse and dresses the part of the exotic artiste: long black hair, black pants, the billowing white blouse of a pirate or Don.
He is taking Scene on a tour of some of his local work, “some of” being the operative words — John Rivera-Resto has been commissioned by so many local clients with such a diverse array of success stories that any complete tour is necessarily incomplete.
First, we cruise up through Lakewood to the Madison Avenue Panorama Travel Agency to see his mural therein. Rivera-Resto painted an interior wall to capture the lush blues and greens of East Asia and the Pacific. It’s a magnificent and highly detailed piece that took him four-and-a-half months to complete.
He was commissioned to paint the Panorama mural when the agency’s owner, Vladan Blagojevic, saw the dancing painter working on the massive CMHA mural on West 25th Street and demanded a business card.
But no time for details; we’re off to Independence and another John R-R production: the interior of the recently opened Slyman’s Tavern, the famed deli’s first franchise restaurant since it opened more than 50 years ago. Rivera-Resto designed it all. With a small army of dedicated assistants, he painted the central Three Stooges mural that greets patrons as they enter. He selected the wood for the tables, the stone for the bar, the stained glass above the doorways, the Cleveland skyline above the crown molding. It is as comprehensive a project as Rivera-Resto has ever worked on, and he walks among the tables and the luncheoners like a king among his people.
Onward to Clark and West 25th, to pay homage to what might be Rivera-Resto’s masterpiece: “It’s Up to Us,” the mural that he painted in the scorching summer sun and bitter autumn chill of 2012 and 2013. It is an immense achievement, located along a prime corridor where development is expected to boom in the coming years. Among the quirkiest trivia tidbits related to the mural’s creation: Orlando Bloom’s face was used as the model for the police officer.
Rivera-Resto doesn’t often dip into sentimentality. He is as much a businessman as he is an artist, and he’s not gooey about his work. He says, in fact, that the act of painting is his least favorite part. He’s a thinker, a conceptualizer, a dreamer. He’s got copies of The Jungle Book and The Once and Future King in the library of his cluttered studio on West Boulevard, alongside calculus textbooks and beer. He is an eccentric artist of all trades — a sculptor, a painter, an actor.
He says he often performs for clients to win their affection and their offers. He can do a Texas accent and several Spanish varietals. But Rivera-Resto has no business phone number. He is not a member of the so-called “arts” scene. He does not advertise, nor does he schmooze. So how does he keep getting commissions? Word of mouth, he says, and a portfolio website which doubles as a wormhole of his life and work.
“But most of all,” he says. “The secret of being employed is working cheap and working fast.”
By: Sam AllardThe Stylish Duo: Cori Imbrigiotta Anne Rutter Proprietors, Haven Style House
Three years ago, Cleveland native Cori Imbrigiotta pushed a rack of clothes onto a small patch of sidewalk at the annual Chagrin Falls Sidewalk Sale and set up shop. Flash forward to 2015 and the 27-year-old is still there, only she’s moved indoors, purchased a sign, and launched one of the region’s most successful women’s lifestyle brands and retail outlets with her business partner and co-owner Anne Rutter.
Since opening in March 2013, Haven Style House has become an epicenter for fashion and style throughout Northeast Ohio. A community experience more than a store, women flock in for the chic, classic inventory, but return time and time again for the style advice and warm, social atmosphere.
“A woman’s style and body is a very personal thing,” Imbrigiotta says. “We wanted to develop a space where women can feel comfortable and can interact with other women, with no pressure to buy.” In other words: a haven.
Such a unique concept might flounder in other major metropolitan areas with high rent or a thirst for international couture, but Cleveland’s love for local has given Haven the foundation and customer base it needs to thrive. “There’s such loyalty here that doesn’t exist in other cities,” Rutter says. “It’s so infectious and so rare and so invaluable to a shop like ours.”
Word of mouth has been the duo’s biggest asset, and it’s not hard to see why. Spend 10 minutes in the store and just try to refrain from texting a gal pal about the Orange Street gem that feels more like a friend’s carefully curated closet than a retail outlet.
Imbrigiotta and Rutter are the shop’s lone employees, which means the women are both the CEOs and the ones who sweep the floor at night. “We don’t have investors. We don’t have employees. We do every single thing ourselves,” Rutter says.
That includes putting on small events, like sip & shops or even bridal showers. “The majority of the time these parties are thrown by people we know or customers who’ve become friends,” Imbrigiotta says. “They’re proud of us and want to show us off to their friends. There’s a real sense of comradery that’s not always typical between merchant and customer.”
While Rutter takes the lead on the majority of the marketing initiatives and Imbrigiotta handles the business side of things, both women come together to hand-select each item they debut in store from online and independent retailers.
“We gravitate toward the same pieces, but put them together differently,” Rutter says. Both women describe their styles as classic and structured, Imbrigiotta being the edgier of the two. “The magic is in the mix,” Rutter says. “When we come together, the result is always better two ways than one.”
By: Alaina NutileThe Feisty Politician: Jeff Johnson
Cleveland City Councilman
“We expect our politicians to be thoughtful, levelheaded, calm under pressure, all that,” says Jeff Johnson, seated in his ward office in Glenville, twirling a Huntington Bank pen as he talks. “But we also expect them to have feelings.”
Johnson is speaking on the subject of his Cleveland City Council reputation: as a challenger, a hothead, a guy who doesn’t stop fighting even after he’s lost.
“Mrs. Jones in my ward,” he says, referencing his favorite theoretical constituent who often appears in his council-meeting remarks, “she doesn’t have access to the bully pulpit of City Hall. So if she’s angry, it’s my job to express that anger.”
Johnson seems like he’s been angry all year. Ever since former council president Martin Sweeney conspired to remap Cleveland’s wards in 2013 in an effort to unseat Mike Polensek (impossible) or Johnson, the eastside politician has seemed to have a chip on his shoulder, and some would say he can’t be blamed.
Johnson prevailed over Eugene Miller, the profanity-prone Sweeney sycophant (and recent City Hall hire), and now governs the long, thin Ward 10, which spans St. Clair-Superior, Glenville, Collinwood, Euclid Park, and Nottingham Village. In what was something of an unprecedented alliance, Johnson teamed up with Councilmen Kevin Conwell and Polensek to form a Northeast Bloc. Together, they’ve been singing the song of inequitable resource allocation. They feel that the city’s northeast section is being neglected in favor of downtown and destination neighborhoods.
Johnson was also frustrated by council’s lack of preparation for the Department of Justice consent decree with the city.
“We put ourselves in the hole by not preparing for it,” says Johnson, who urged his colleagues to set aside a pool of funds during budget discussions.
He sees the challenges of implementation as a three-headed beast: 1) The ability to fund everything, obviously. 2) Expecting current leadership — the leadership that oversaw the systemic failures in the police department — to see change through. “It’s problematic and it’s short-sighted,” he says. And 3) The power of the union, which will no doubt nibble away at the goals and spirit of the consent decree and blunt its impact.
For now, though, Johnson is excited to be planning the 37th annual Glenville Community Festival and the upcoming development projects in his ward: the St. Clair Corridor and a new grocery store at the East Side Market location on St. Clair and East 105.
But the big question with Jeff Johnson is whether or not he’ll run for mayor in 2017. The press has speculated that he’d be a frontrunner ever since Frank Jackson was elected for his third (and presumably final) term in 2013. Some of Johnson’s colleagues have even suggested out of the corners of their mouths that Johnson’s inflammatory rhetoric in council is a conscious tactic to publicize his platform.
“I’m considering it,” Johnson says, of a mayoral campaign. “If I announce, it would be after the presidential election in 2016, but I won’t be coy. I’m definitely looking at it: figuring out costs, figuring out strategies.”
One of which will likely be differentiating himself from the measured, and some might say boilerplate, leadership of Frank Jackson. Johnson says he has agreed with Jackson on a number of issues — he thought he handled the consent decree negotiations well, if less so in the media — but maintains that the mayor needs to speak up for the city and its frustrated residents.
“He was too quiet on Tamir Rice,” Johnson says. “I’ve got a different style.”
By: Sam AllardThe Musicians: Village Bicycle
Liz Kelly, Karah Vance, Debbie Randazzo, Ty Craerner
The Davenport Collective is a loosely organized community of artists, musicians and poets from Cleveland who all call the studio space in a Lakewood office building their home. That’s where local indie rockers the Village Bicycle got their start.
Back at the beginning, bandleader Liz Kelly was one of only a handful of women to be part of the collective.
“I had been part of the Davenport for a long time,” says Kelly from the kitchen of the Old Brooklyn home where the band has assembled for an early evening rehearsal. “I played in the Dreadful Yawns and several other groups. For the most part, I was one of maybe three women. There were so many guys.”
She says the group didn’t start out as an all-female group but evolved into it by circumstance. As a result, it makes the band sound “grittier,” as keyboardist Karah Vance puts it. A song like “Turtle Dove” is a good example of the band’s distinctive sound. It starts with hushed vocals and R2D2-like synthesizer bleeps and blips. Eventually, the tempo escalates and the layered vocals become more animated as the guitars become louder. The Breeders make for a good reference point.
“We also like the Raincoats and Elastica and Britpop,” says Kelly. “Nineties female-inspired bands are our go-to sources for inspiration.”
Since forming in 2010, the band has shared bills with acts such as Bleached, the Black Belles, Gardens and Villa, Cloud Nothings, Death of Samantha, Rubblebucket, La Luz, the Suzan and Herzog. To date, the band has released only one single and one album, but as anyone who’s caught their live shows will testify, the small catalog doesn’t matter.
Recently, band members realized they have “hard-hitting, fast, punk-y songs” but not much in terms of slower material, so the group is trying to work on its dynamics. It’s just completed a music video for the single “She’s a Hero,” a song about Kelly’s experience recovering from a car accident in which she broke more than a handful of bones. The folks at the local studio Bad Racket handled production duties for the music video.
“It’s been tumultuous,” says Kelly when asked about the band’s tenure so far. “We were stalled for a while. Two of the band members decided to move on so we had to scrap an entire album and move on. We still play some of the songs live.”
But despite being part of the city’s male-dominated indie rock scene, the women say the band has been well received.
“We want to be noticed for our talent and not our looks,” says Vance. “The name of the band has a real irony to it. The name of the band addresses what it’s like to be a woman playing music.”
By: Jeff NieselThe Voice of Reason: Lea Kayali
College Student, Activist
Many people experience racism. Few actually do something about it. Recent Shaker Heights High School grad Lea Kayali is one of the exceptions. Winner of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage’s Stop the Hate: Youth Speak Out essay contest, she’s an activist who knows more about international relations than your typical teen working a summer mall job at American Eagle.
“People have been on the victim side,” Kayali says, explaining why she was prompted to speak out against racism one afternoon at the Maltz Museum. “It knocks them down and it’s hard to get back up when you feel like the world is against you. I chose to do something about it because I felt encouraged and supported by my community. Shaker Heights is very diverse and welcoming. I could reflect on that in my essay. I had adults I trusted. I’m in a group on race relations. I could talk with people who cared about ending racism.”
A Palestinian-American who’s often mistaken for Hawaiian because of her name, Kayali regularly has to explain her ethnic background. She attempts to simplify the geography and cultural issues for those who want to lump all Arabs together by explaining that being Arab is like being European and being Palestinian is like being French.
“That’s important for me to tell people,” she says. “It’s difficult for people to grasp the idea. Being Palestinian is unique. People see the whole Middle East as one. I can understand that. It’s more difficult to be Palestinian than Egyptian or Lebanese because of all the things you hear in the news. It’s all terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It’s a big misperception to think that all Arabs are violent or even that all Arabs are Muslim.”
Kayali has posted about her “desire to counteract the hatred that accompanies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” branding herself with the hashtag, #IStandWithPeace.
“I had a blog called I Stand with Peace,” she says. “It’s what I saw last summer over the war in Gaza. It was more about how the world was reacting to it. I shared it and I was surprised at how much response I got. It inspired me to do more with it after this experience with Stop the Hate.”
She also spoke about the conflict in classes at Shaker and led the school’s 300-member human relations group.
“I tried to answer some questions in a few classes because I was studying it for a 20-page paper I wrote for the International Baccalaureate Program,” she says. “I wrote about the wall between Palestine and Israel. I’ve become an expert on this one small aspect. What I took away from talking in class was that I realized people were confused about the basics, which is totally understandable. I had to go back to the drawing board. I can’t just jump into every human rights violation. I need to start from scratch. I learned a lot.”
Now Kayali says she’s working on a new “empathy network” website.
“If people have trouble understanding something, they can go to the site and read personal testimonies. I think true, personal stories have a more profound effect than if you just Google something.”
This fall, she’ll start college at Pomona College in California using the $40,000 scholarship she won in the Stop the Hate contest.
“I’m planning to study international relations,” she says. “I wanted to do this since sixth grade.”
By: Jeff NieselThe Lyricist: Matthewmaticus
Rapper
“I’m too old for this,” says Matthewmaticus while sitting on the patio at Gabe’s, a westside deli near his home. With specks of gray in his cropped beard and hair, he could be on to something. But the 34-year-old hip-hop artist has a youthful enthusiasm about him, especially when he talks about his music. Or when he talks about his various influences.
The son of a steelworker, he grew up on the westside of town before moving out to the one-stoplight burg of Spencer, OH. Despite the change in scenery, he found solace in music.
“My earliest memories are of driving in the car with my dad, listening to 105.7 when they played early rock and roll and R&B — all that Phil Spector and British Invasion stuff. My aunt was a college rock chick. She played the Smiths and the Pixies and Echo and the Bunnymen,” he says. “They whet my whistle for music.”
When hip-hop exploded, he was on it, buying DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince’s Rock the House on cassette from a record store at the mall.
“All those influences, which to this day I think are important to me, were formed early,” says Matthewmaticus, who went to college at Kent State and played in a band that he says had a Tribe Called Quest dynamic. “I was into writing and poetry and put the music down and focused on that for almost a decade.”
After what he calls “a bad marriage,” Matthewmaticus started going to the Tuesday night showcases at the B-Side Liquor Lounge in Cleveland Heights to hone his skills. He officially rebooted his career last year when he dropped the mixtape The Job Will Not Save You. Earlier this year, he followed up that album with The Sanctified Tape. The EP’s opening track, “A Meditation” features undulating beats courtesy of LTHEBLACKPRINCE while Matthewmaticus asks, “What am I really doing?” The track certainly lives up to its title, especially as it closes with a refrain about goals and plans.
“I’m working on what I think of as a musical collage and I want to pull from different places,” he says with a mischievous grin that makes you think whatever the next project turns out to be will be decidedly against the grain. “I’m going to make a big, crazy hip-hop album in mono with a lot of reverb and a very lush sound. I’m going to take as long to do it as I need to. And I’m going to do it until it sounds exactly like I want it to sound.”
By: Jeff NieselThe Pastry Artist: Michelle Mattox
Pastry Chef, EDWINS
These days, she adheres to the strict technique of classic French cuisine, but the path leading up to today hasn’t always been straight and narrow for Michelle Mattox. The same might be said for EDWINS, the upscale Shaker Square restaurant that doubles as a re-entry program for formerly incarcerated adults and those who have been touched by the justice system, where Mattox currently serves as head pastry chef.
When Mattox first learned of the program, which launched with the mission to provide job skills and immersive resources to those looking to make a change, it immediately resonated with her. She knew right where she needed to be.
After two decades of working fast-paced line cook positions around Cleveland, she enrolled in EDWINS and found herself gradually falling for the process-intensive craft of pastry making. Mattox emerged as a rising star in the classroom and in the kitchen and was hired on just before her graduation in July 2014.
“I do have plenty of patience,” she says, punctuating it with a grin. “But I also make the best soufflé. It’s all about timing.”
Timing is everything to a patissier, just as it has always been an important part of the EDWINS mission to offer time for readjustment, time for growth and time for learning. And like the dozens who have passed through its doors and gone on to work in the bistro itself or other acclaimed restaurants throughout the city, Mattox’s road was not without its obstacles.
“I had a lot of struggles of my own in my life, but also a lot of understanding and forgiveness,” she recounts. “To be able to come here and see I wasn’t a failure and have people look at me like a leader, that’s a big step for me. I keep getting better every day.”
Education does win, as the EDWINS moniker intentionally suggests, in Mattox’s world. These days, one of her most important duties is to teach classes for incoming students.
“There’s just this look on their faces when they finally get that perfect crème brulee or that perfect pyramid,” Mattox says of finding her footing in mentorship. “I encourage them every time; I tell them ‘I knew you could do it.'”
Mattox says that one day she might like to turn her skills toward her own entrepreneurial endeavor, just like her boss Brandon Chrostowski did when he founded EDWINS. But for now, she reflects fondly on the staggering difference one year can make.
“All I wanted to do was be successful and follow my goals,” she says. “I came a long way from where I was and I think I’m doing all right.”
By: Nikki DelamotteThe Music Man: Mike Shea
Publisher, Alternative Press
Mike Shea has been the publisher of Alternative Press since he started the national music mag some 30 years ago in Cleveland, where it is still based. That time has seen more than a few shows; Shea can still remember his first.
“I saw Blue Öyster Cult at Blossom Music Center,” he says. “It was the first time I smelled pot. I was 14. I might have been hauled to a concert by my mom before that, but that was the first concert I went to with my friends on my own.”
From that point on, he was hooked.
“Before I graduated high school, I hung out with my punk friends,” says Shea. “We were Coventry kids but we were going to Pop Shop and Cleveland Underground and the Agora.”
When the Smiths announced U.S. tour dates in the late ’80s and didn’t include a Cleveland stop, Shea, the former editor of his high school newspaper, was pissed. He wrote to the record label to complain. And he decided to start a music magazine so he could publish an editorial decrying the oversight. Ultimately, though, he says he started the magazine because he was fascinated by musicians.
“It’s like people who are film critics and they write books about [director Martin] Scorcese in order to understand how he comes up with his films,” he says. “In the same way, I’m fascinated by musicians. Not how they wrote the song but I’m more interested in them. So much of art is created by insecurity. Did I expect I would be a music journalist? No. It’s always changing. It never gets boring. The genres keep changing and the bands keep changing. AP is a community. It’s all family. It doesn’t matter if you work at AP or Fearless Records. It’s all part of us. It’s like going to a family reunion every time a band is in town.”
Being based in Cleveland might come off like a disadvantage in the music media world, but the truth is the exact opposite.
“There have been plenty of times when we wondered if it was good to be here,” he says. “Spin and other magazines wrote from a New York-centric point of view. It’s ‘been there, seen it, done it.’ They have a snobbish attitude. We were writing from a Midwest kid’s perspective. We were down to earth and more real. The upper echelon of music journalists looks down at us. They dismiss us because we weren’t legitimately writing about Paul Westerberg every other time. We weren’t allowed in the cool cats club, but we outlasted all of it. We weren’t writing for fellow music journalists. We were writing for these kids who followed us who lived in the suburbs and wanted to listen to music they felt connected with them. We weren’t writing about the coolest thing that somebody saw in a bar in the East Village. And now, Cleveland has amazingly turned around and it’s so alive.”
By: Jeff NieselThe Accidental Restaurateur: Isabel Montoya
Manager, Bartender, Host, Moncho’s Bar and Grille
Isabel Montoya’s life did not turn out the way she had planned, and for a fastidious arranger of actions and consequences like her, that’s pretty remarkable. Of course, after some detours, she ended up precisely where she wanted to be.
A Colombian native, Montoya moved stateside when she was still in elementary school. The charming, outgoing newcomer had no trouble at all fitting in with her suburban classmates in Rocky River and, later, Lakewood, where she played sports and was on the cheerleading squad.
After graduating from high school, Montoya opted to stay close to home and family, attending Cleveland State University, where she majored in Spanish and education. She had every intention of becoming a teacher, but instead landed in finance, where she remained for five years. But her education never stopped, with frequent study abroad dropping her in Mexico, Beijing and Spain, to name a few.
It was while she was immersing herself in the foods of Spain that her father thought it would be a good idea to buy a restaurant and bar.
“My brother and I had always had the idea to open a restaurant together, but not until we retired,” explains Montoya. “But my dad bought the property while I was traveling and we just rolled with it.”
So a career in finance soon morphed into a multifaceted job in the family restaurant, where Montoya and her coworkers — father Ramon, mother Cristina, brother Mario — dish up Colombian comfort foods to enthusiastic diners. One year in, things are going so well that the team renovated the space to focus less on the “bar” and more on the “grill.”
“We have people coming in from Columbus, Pittsburgh, even New York, just on word of mouth,” she says.
They come to watch futbol, drink some hand-pressed mojitos, and snack on tostones and salsa, chimichurri-topped steak, and bandeja paisa, a platter weighed down with various cuts of meat, rice, beans, arepa, plantain and avocado.
This summer, Montoya will be changing her last name to Sweeney, when she marries her fiancé right downtown on Mall C. They selected the location based upon a shared fondness for their hometown, which is also why they are postponing the honeymoon to a “more sensible” time of year, climate-wise.
“We’re waiting until the sub-zero temperatures hit,” Montoya says. “There’s no way you can get me out of Cleveland in the summer.”
Though the bright and affable Montoya acts as the face of Moncho’s, working as host, manager, bartender, bookkeeper and more, she’s quick to credit the entire clan.
“The success of Moncho’s wouldn’t be possible without my family,” she says. “They are the people who drive the business every day.”
By: Douglas TrattnerThe Archivists: Cleveland SGS
Artists, Filmmakers
There are five current core members of Cleveland SGS, the loosely knit collective that’s documented the city’s street signs and businesses, along with creating original art installations, since 2006 after a sort of spontaneous formation conjured by people who shared the same interest in commercial design, filmmaking, music and fiction. In general, the group has a “shared interest in using creativity as a form of escape from the burdens of daily life.”
We will not be using their names here, not because we don’t want to tell you, but because the group opts for anonymity.
Along with that anonymity comes the veil of secrecy, which is also why the picture accompanying this blurb is of a little girl and not any of the members. There’s a reason for that, a philosophy and worldview that has shaped their work.
“Who we are is unimportant,” one member says. “It is our creative works that we would like people to focus on. If you think about it, Western individualism has taken a toll on art. Now, before looking at a person’s work we first think about their story: where they were raised, who they are married to, and what they tweeted while drunk on New Year’s Eve. In a way, a person’s life story has become a perverse form of art in and of itself.”
Which makes the decision to include the group in the “People” issue seem like an odd choice at first, but we’ve learned about tons of amazing Clevelanders thanks to SGS over the years, like signmakers Harry Bell and Mr. Wonderful.
They’ve brought them to our attention through their early Flickr page, which documented corner store signs, through exhibitions at SPACES and other galleries, and their recent “Behind the Signs” video project (which to date has featured Don McMahan of McMahan’s Wrecking and Earl Phillips of U-Need-A-Sign Co.).
“Various interweb users were asking questions about the places shown in the images; places that were right in front of them; places that they never bothered to acknowledge in the flesh,” says the member. “The initial interest in SGS compelled us to explore new avenues of creating our own work through various mediums. The film projects evolved from the countless sidewalk conversations that we’ve had with local business owners while taking photos of their signage. Over the years, we have been fortunate enough to get to know many shopkeepers and it became obvious to us that each and every business had their own unique story to tell. The culture of a city is always defined at the ‘block level.’ Over time, neighborhoods and small businesses develop a character that has value; others seek out that character and consume it until nothing is left. So long as there is such a thing as land developers, there will always be a fast-casual restaurant ready to wipe away the memories of a generation. This we believe to be a universal cycle that cannot be stopped. It is not a concern; it’s just the way it is.”
By: Vince GrzegorekThe Rec Engine: Rachel Schlather
Writer, CLEFashionista.com
Rachel Schlather first launched her fashion and lifestyle blog, CLEFashionista, on a whim.
“I worked in digital marketing, and coming out of college I knew nothing about it,” says the 26-year-old Strongsville native. “So I started a website where I could play around and learn more about my day job. It just took off from there. People other than my mom were reading it.”
Two years later, Schlather (pronounced schlought-er) now works at Rosenberg Advertising in Lakewood by day, and by night crafts blog posts that tackle everything from local fashion trends and sales, to how to pack a bag for a beach day at Marblehead and where to dine and shop along the way.
“It’s a two-part mix: Cleveland and fashion,” she says about her blog. “I write about things to do in Cleveland, places to eat and drink and hangout, as well as fashion for the every-day Clevelander.
She describes her own style as classic and budget-friendly, two characteristics that have made their way into many of Schlather’s posts. “I want it to be accessible, not just runway styles,” she says. “I want to offer people options at reasonable price points and give someone who maybe doesn’t consider themselves to be ‘fashionable’ some tricks to try,” she says.
While her audience consists primarily of Northeast Ohio women ages 20 through 40, Schlather’s site has an even broader reach, grabbing the attention of tourists planning trips to Cleveland, and even some national brands, such as Shopbop and True Religion, who’ve asked her to test and review their products.
As her blog has evolved, Schlather says she’s had to become more selective about the companies she works with, but that by a landslide her favorites are always Cleveland based. “If the company is local, I’m an automatic customer,” she says. The Wandering Wardrobe, Banyan Tree, and CLE Clothing Co. are just a few of her favorite local shopping haunts.
“It’s an exciting time to be part of Cleveland,” she said. “There are so many great events and I’ve gotten to meet so many cool Clevelanders.” Just this February, for example, she modeled in the Hunger Network of Cleveland’s annual All About the Bag Fashion Benefit that helped raise over $70,000 to feed local families. “It all circles back to Cleveland, which is awesome,” she says.
When she’s not being invited to attend events or cataloging fashion trends she’s craving on her blog, the local fashionista says she enjoys drinking pinot noir, watching crime shows, and spending time with her husband. She also knows how to appreciate a fine pair of sweatpants. “I wear them every night,” she says.
By: Alaina NutileThe Yuckster: Yusuf Ali
Comedian
Cleveland is many things, but it is most definitely a comedy town. The crowds know that, judging by the attendance at the daily comedy nights that dot the calendar every week; and, of course, the comedians — locally and nationally recognized alike — know that too. Yusuf Ali has risen with the tides since 2009, growing his artistic vision as the city has grown its comic scene in the same span.
Come October 13, the lifelong Clevelander will have been in the game for six years. As for origin stories, he performed for the first time during the Tuesday comedy contests at the Funny Stop in Cuyahoga Falls.
“The growth from 2009 to now is crazy. There’s somewhere to go literally every night, Sunday through Thursday, if you want to,” he says.
He was working in a porno warehouse at the time. “It was an interesting job,” he says. “We had everything. Everything that anybody is seeking, it came from there. All those stores on the side of the freeway — it came from there.”
But the job was boring, so Ali took to scrawling jokes on scratch paper in his spare time. His cousin was doing standup around town, piquing Ali’s interest. So he called around, asking places like the Improv and Hilarities for their open-mic nights. Of course, those spots don’t just bring in anybody, so Ali had to turn to lesser-known, more dubious circles to get into the game. So he picked up an issue of Scene. (Aw, you’re making us blush.)
That led him to the Funny Stop gig and they gave him five minutes — no cussing — and Ali killed it. No one believed it was his first time. “My heart was beating through my chest,” he says. “Once I took the mic off the stand, it was like something went over me. It was like I was in a bath. I was so comfortable.”
Winning that first contest meant he was allowed back the next week. Then, the lighting guy tipped him off on a Friday night show. Soon, Ali fell in with the crowd at the now-defunct Bela Dubby, which gave him his Monday night outpost. Lakewood Village Tavern filled in Wednesdays. (Check out his Facebook page weekly for his current schedule.)
Onstage, he grounds himself in topical jokes, working to not repeat himself in his opening sets while staying away from, like, well-trodden Browns humor. He reads the news, gleaning historical perspectives, current events and “weird animal facts.” He’s got a new one about a spider that has two dicks, if that’s any indication of what you might hear.
In his car, Ali rotates five CDs, all curated for his professional development: Patrice O’Neal, Martin Lawrence, two Richard Pryors and Hannibal Buress. He falls asleep to that stuff too. Like air, the comedic stylings of Ali’s heroes surround him at all times. When he was growing up, Ali’s father was encouraging him to feast on Eddie Murphy Raw while other kids were forbidden from that sort of stuff. “I knew that word-for-word when I was, like, 11,” Ali says.
Ali says Cleveland is one of the best possible places to cut your teeth as a comedian. We’ve got tough crowds, smart crowds, engaged crowds. When people here like your stuff, they really like your stuff. Ali knows this; he rejoices in their splendor and, when his material doesn’t stick, he returns to the mic to hone his craft some more.
By: Eric SandyThe Parlor Trio: Ben Haehn, David Spasic, Nathan Murray
Proprietors, Superelectric Pinball
When Scene arrives at the corner of Detroit and West 65th, the former Yellowcake storefront that soon will be the home of the Superelectric Pinball Parlor, Ben Haehn and David Spasic are planing some lumber. It’s going to be used for the shuffleboard table-turned-bar.
Along with partner Nathan Murray, Haehn and Spasic are the visionary wizards behind the hotly anticipated vintage arcade concept, an outgrowth of their studio and pad at 78th Street Studios. The artist trio intends to have their parlor opened and fully functioning by the end of August.
The three buddies, all of them in their 30s, met in college at Bowling Green and have been working collaboratively at 78th Street for almost eight years. Pinball’s a more recent development for them. It arose out of their work on film sets. They’ve all had gigs off and on in art and prop departments — Ben once had to make five identical sandwiches for a Kyrie Irving commercial — and one film script required a working pinball machine.
“My parents had an old one in their basement,” Haehn says, “and I worked on it for almost a month. I just fell in love with the process.”
“Pretty soon, we were playing nonstop,” adds Spasic, “mostly just to hang out. We started buying machines to work on them, thinking that we’d resell them and buy new ones.”
“We laughed when we got up to 20 games,” says Haehn. “Now we’ve got 65.”
As they prep their new parlor location, which will serve food and beer as well, they’ve got pinball machines in their bedrooms, in friends’ basements, at the Blazing Saddles bike shop. They continue to accumulate games to rehab from as far away as Texas. Often they purchase from individual sellers, older folks who’ve had a machine in their basement since the ’70s and are happy to see it in passionate hands.
And even though arcade bars like 16-Bit and board game bars like Sidequest and Tabletop have become popular, the Superelectric guys don’t see themselves as occupying the same niche.
“We are pretty much strictly pinball,” says Haehn, “and that’s a lot more challenging for operators because of the time and effort of the maintenance. We’re also very community-involved, which means our days and our evenings are very full.” Haehn mentions that they often host field trips for youngsters to teach them the science behind pinball and to let them experiment with designing art for a machine of their own creation.
“Part of it also is that we all still identify as artists,” says Spasic. “That’s a huge part of how we approach this, and everything we do.”
Haehn agrees, and as he walks Scene through the space, he articulates a vision that’s much more than a bar with a marketable gimmick.
“I want people to feel the way they did when they were 16 at the local pizza parlor playing with their friends,” Haehn says. “Some people, yeah, they want a beer in their hand. But for a lot of people, that’s not the kick. We’re creating an environment.”
By: Sam AllardThe Dancer: Roxi DellaDonna
Co-owner, Cleveland Exotic Dance
The business idea came as a happy accident. Roxi DellaDonna was at a party, a little get-together with some friends, when a gal pal of hers started a conversation about stripteases and her boyfriend. She didn’t know what to do or where to start.
DellaDonna did. She’d performed in Cleveland gentlemen’s clubs off and on for seven years, starting at the age of 19. And now, some years removed, she did some dance moves.
“‘Didn’t you used to work in clubs?'” one of them asked, she says. “So I showed them some things and the women were smiling and laughing. It was fun.”
Not too long after that, she was in a bookstore and spotted a book called The S Factor: Strip Workouts for Every Woman, written by Sheila Kelley. It contains basically what the title says: ways in which dance moves from strip clubs could be used for workouts.
“I thought, ‘Wow, maybe I could do this,'” she says. “I researched where to get a pole and I found out that there were poles for homes. It’d been a couple years since I worked in a club, so I started to piece together what I did, breaking it down into how you would teach it.”
She started with some of her friends, setting up the pole in her living room and giving basic classes. The trial classes gave way to bringing the pole — it’s portable, after all — to bachelorette parties. That gave way to women asking if she had a studio where she gave classes. She didn’t, but soon found a space in Midtown with two rooms.
“It really just was something I was doing to help finish funding my undergraduate degree,” she says. “But it turned into a business and it continues to grow.”
With more students came more instructors, and with more instructors came more classes: belly dancing, pole dancing, burlesque, hula hopping, even twerking. Along the way, Cleveland Exotic Dance became more than a place to work out. She’s recently focused on other aspects of instruction that the open atmosphere of the organization have created (as well as a baby she and her husband have on the way).
“We do classes that are adult-oriented,” she says. “They’re pleasure-based, but also about information. Over the years, women have found a home here, somewhere they feel comfortable. So they started opening up to instructors about boyfriends and husbands and questions they had, and we’ve had people who are transitioning ask us about how to be more comfortable walking. There’s really a need here, and it was logical to take it a step further. Some classes are fun — there’s the “Blow Him Away” class — but there’s also stuff about women’s anatomy and not just stuff like what Cosmo says.”
When she talks about how all this started, back when she was in her early 20s, you can understand how she makes her students and instructors feel so welcome.
“I guess you’d call me an extroverted introvert now, but back then I was an introvert. Working at the clubs got me out of my shell, but it was more about stripping and being on stage,” she says. “You really have to talk to people. And as far as the body image issues go, you realize that what you’re sold on TV and in magazines isn’t really the truth. The cookie-cutter image of a stripper… those aren’t necessarily the successful ones. All women are beautiful and different, and you appreciate that and you celebrate it together.”
By: Vince GrzegorekThe Thespian: Darius Stubbs
Performer, Cleveland Public Theatre
There aren’t many actors who can play both a wife and the gruff, cigar-chomping team owner in Damn Yankees. But that’s what Darius Stubbs did in his second show in high school. Of course, it helped that Darius himself was on the cusp of a gender change at the time.
Now, as a performing artist with the Cleveland Public Theatre, Stubbs is experiencing life in his true gender and playing the male roles he feels he was always destined to play.
Born female as Erica Loriel Stubbs, Darius had a fairly uneventful early childhood, convinced that either his body or mind would adapt and lead him to some measure of gender peace. But that didn’t happen and, after puberty hit, Darius began being tormented by much confusion. That’s when he made his first of several suicide attempts, as he had a hard time fitting in anywhere, including with the lesbian community in college.
After his doctor abruptly stopped treating trans patients and ceased giving him testosterone, Darius spiraled down into some serious mental anguish. Fortunately, he’s always had theater to fall back on. He first took roles that could be gender-neutral, such as the stage manager in Our Town, before he got back on the male hormones that have helped give him the equilibrium he always sought.
To date, Darius has performed on several stages in the area including Great Lakes Theater, CPT, Huntington Playhouse, Near West Theatre and the Beck Center. And he recently led a stirring conclusion to the Station Hope street celebration on the near westside, performing a piece he wrote with the assistance of CPT executive artistic director Raymond Bobgan.
Off stage, Darius feels strongly about coming out publicly as a transman. “I think those of us who can live relatively easily as transgender individuals owe it to others to be visible and active in the community. This is how we can break down barriers and make it easier for those trans people who are still afraid to live as they would want.”
Describing himself as a transgender advocate, Darius now enjoys a close relationship with his father Eric (after whom he was initially named). But like many trans people, he finds some familial relationships remain fraught. Darius and his mother have a distant connection, maintained only through greeting cards at birthdays and holidays.
“Being an open transgender person is shaping my life in new ways,” says Darius. “Our existence renders the gender binary null and void, and allows people to talk about the real dynamics of gender in a new way. Hopefully that can lead to more freedom for everyone, wherever they are on the gender continuum.”
By: Christine HoweyThe Brewer in Waiting: Pedro Sarsama
Assistant Brewmaster, Buckeye Brewing
If things had been different, we all could have been enjoying a refreshing pint of Earlybird Pale Ale by now. Last year at this time, home brewer Pedro Sarsama was gearing up to open the adorably named nano brewery Earlybird, to be located near the border of the Ohio City and Stockyards neighborhoods.
But babies, apparently, don’t want us to have any fun.
“I have a 2-year-old daughter and another kid on the way,” Sarsama tells me when I check in on his progress. “I’m trying to be fairly risk-averse, which is different from the answer I would have given you two years ago.”
Whereas Chancy Sarsama was all gung-ho on starting his own brewery, Cautious Sarsama decided to work for the man, who in this case happens to be a brewery a few thousand times larger than Earlybird.
“I decided to scrap my plans of having my own brewery and taproom and took the position of assistant brewmaster at Buckeye Brewing,” Sarsama says. “It was a combination of having to be a fiscally responsible parent and also having to be an astute small business owner. The beer market is crowded, and shelf and tap handle space is at a premium.”
Before you start feeling sorry for the guy, consider this: His boss lets him brew his very own beer on their equipment. Not only that, they are going to let him sell it in their own taproom, Tapstack, which is located at the production facility in Cleveland.
“Everyone at Buckeye has been so supportive,” he says.
Look at Sarsama as kind of like the gypsy brewer who wouldn’t leave. After he punches out for the day, he brews on a small one-barrel system normally used for pilot brews and yeast propagation. Whereas Buckeye Sarsama beers stay pretty true to the style guidelines, Earlybird Sarsama beers get a little bit funky, with saisons, session wits, and low-alcohol pale ales among his repertoire.
“You can take more risks when you’re doing 30 gallons as opposed to 500 or 600 gallons,” he says.
As in the case of the gypsy brewer, who relies on the kindness — and really expensive equipment — of strangers, Sarsama enjoys many of the rewards and few of the risks associated with launching his own operation. But the arrangement isn’t without its shortcomings.
“It’s great because I have the benefit of being in a large-scale brewery without having to have made the sort of capital investment that there’s no way I would have been able to afford,” he says. “The downside is that I’m not reaping the benefits of that investment either.”
Instead, Sarsama will punch the clock, draw a salary, and look forward to the day when his babies are a little older, he’s set aside a little nest egg, and much of his competition has gone belly up.
“Right now, some of the big players are crowding out some of the smaller players,” he says. “But at the same time we’re seeing as a response to that growth a return to the very small-batch brewery. I think the shakeout will pass over the nano movement, where the neighborhood crowd is coming to support a neighborhood brewery like Earlybird.”
When that time comes, we’ll be the first in line.
By: Douglas TrattnerThe Gym Teacher: Anne Hartnett
Founder, Harness Cycle
“Nowadays, there’s a boutique fitness studio next to every Starbucks in Manhattan,” says Anne Hartnett. “But a few years ago it was still very new.”
Spinning was certainly a foreign concept to a lot of Clevelanders. Until Hartnett took the entrepreneurial splash with her spin shop in Ohio City, she’d been a consultant for Hyland Software. She was working a long-term project in NYC and fell in love with spinning as it was taking off there and all over the East Coast.
Back in Ohio, after she graduated from Bad Girl Ventures, an organization that invests in women by helping them create and optimize startup business plans, she found the space on the corner of Detroit and West 29th Street (now known as Hingetown) and knew instantly that she’d found the home for her concept.
“After my husband and I had rehabbed our home in Ohio City, I knew that we could do it here,” Hartnett says from the basement of Harness as the beat of a class in progress pumps through the ceiling.
Hartnett, who’s 31, recently moved out to Rocky River with her husband and young son. They’re expecting another child later this year. But even though her house is now in the suburbs, she feels deeply a part of the community she helped create and lived in since 2010. In fact, she argues that the mission of Harness is much more than just trendy exercise.
“Our mission is to build community through movement,” Hartnett says, “and even more than that, to kind of activate a culture that traditionally doesn’t exist in Cleveland, which is that people get out of work and then go move instead of the alternatives. We have so many phenomenal natural resources in the city, and with all the young people coming back, I think there needs to be places like Harness facilitating opportunities to make those things happen.”
Case in point: a weekly bridge run culminating in the Ohio City Stages concert space in Harness’ front yard. Events like that — “sort of our poster child,” Hartnett says of the weekly run — bring people together.
Hartnett is also an instructor at her studio and she concedes that her playlist isn’t exactly traditional.
“I don’t do a lot of the electronic dance music,” she says, gesturing to the music above. “With me, you’ll get a lot of Mumford & Sons, classic Bruce, Coldplay. I’ll definitely do remixes, but I’m a big fan of alternative rock.”
She’ll continue rocking (and attracting new business) with the attitude that working out should be fun.
“At Harness it’s as much about being social and active as it is about getting exercise,” she says.
By: Sam AllardThe Helping Hand: Sara Elaqad
Volunteer, Minds Matter; Law Clerk, Margaret Wong and Associates
Sara Elaqad was just 7 years old when she fled home with her parents during the Bosnian War, landing first as a refugee in Arizona and then spending the next decade moving from city to city before making her way to Cleveland in her early 20s to attend law school at Case Western Reserve University.
It was here on the shores of Lake Erie that she developed an interest in immigration law, a specialty she’s now pursuing professionally at Margaret Wong and Associates. It’s also where she was introduced to Minds Matter Cleveland, the local branch of the national non-profit that assists area high school students from low income families achieve academic success and land at schools like Harvard, MIT, and Stanford.
“Education has always been near and dear to me,” Elaqad says, “Education — and family — are really the only things you have when you’re stripped of all your worldly possessions like many immigrants are.” That value system, paired with the belief that everyone — regardless of social circumstance — should have the opportunity to reach academic excellence, is what first led her to seek out a volunteer position with Minds Matter and eventually propelled her into a leadership role as senior vice president of programs.
“Everyone has basic human dignity, and we all have this potential that we’re born with. It shouldn’t matter that you’re born across a city border,” she says. Lack of access “can have a terrible impact on [a student’s] life and can prevent them from getting the education they have the potential to get. That’s something I can definitely identify with.”
Now, two years after joining the organization, the 28-year-old oversees all local Minds Matter programming, which includes the mentor program, summer program, student affairs, alumni relations and college admissions, to name a few. Pair that with a law clerk position at Margaret Wong — where she also assists people with high-stakes, high-reward cases — and the rest of her obligations, and it starts to feel like a marathon. Did we mention she’s training for one of those too?
“I’m super organized,” she says with a laugh. She’s visibly passionate about the work she does for both organizations. Her one-on-one work with Minds Matter students is one of the most rewarding aspects of her volunteer position, she says. “Really getting to know the kids, and getting to the grit of it: That’s how you can make a difference on an individual level.”
Continuing to build these relationships with students, as well as those between volunteers and the community, is one of Elaqad’s long-term goals for Minds Matter and for herself. “I’m planning to stay in Cleveland and continue building up the things that I’m involved in.” If her track record is any indication, she undoubtedly will.
By: Alaina NutileThe Farm Guy’s Guy: Trevor Clatterbuck
Founder, Fresh Fork
In 2008, Trevor Clatterbuck concocted a no-fail model for connecting chefs and farmers. The enthusiastic Case Western Reserve University business student devised an Amazon-type marketplace where chefs could order fresh, seasonal ingredients from multiple farms 24 hours a day and have them delivered right to their kitchen door.
What could go wrong?
“I learned that the most logical thing doesn’t always work; it didn’t work for the customer and it didn’t work for the farmer,” Clatterbuck explains. “That was not the norm in the industry, where chefs still pick up the phone and call their produce guy. It’s about relationships.”
Undeterred, Clatterbuck shifted gears – and shifted customers. Rather than focus on wholesale restaurant accounts, he zeroed in on the retail segment: home cooks and their families. Fresh Fork became a farm-buying club, where the consumer gets a bundled package of farm-fresh ingredients at an exceptional value. For their part, farmers can plan their crops a year in advance and know that everything will be sold through Fresh Fork.
Sure, Fresh Fork’s reach has ballooned to 3,500 subscribers. But, as Clatterbuck would say, “It’s not just groceries: It’s a farm-to-consumer package that includes education, community and food.”
Fresh Fork’s frequent pop-up dinners, farm tours and cooking classes not only add value to those weekly grab bags; they help advance Clatterbuck’s original mission of supporting small family farms throughout the region. As the saying goes: “Teach a man to cook venison and he’ll never send back his weekly allotment along with an angry letter.”
“The events help the farmers sell food, and they help the consumer better understand the seasonality of food.”
The next big chapter for Clatterbuck and Fresh Fork will begin this fall when Ohio City Provisions opens up in Ohio City. The dual-purpose storefront will feature a full-service butcher shop run by chef and partner Adam Lambert and a retail market selling local produce, grains, meats and dairy.
Consider the grocery an extension of Fresh Fork that is geared to those customers for whom the subscription model doesn’t fit.
“I have to be careful not to cannibalize the business that has done well,” Clatterbuck stresses. “But our grocery program, where I select all the food and you pick it up in a parking lot, doesn’t fit everyone’s lifestyle, which naturally leads to a grocery storefront model. The flipside of that is that it puts me in the same ballpark as other retails in that you hold inventory, have more overhead and risk spoilage.”
By having Lambert as a partner, Clatterbuck greatly reduces his exposure. Not only will the meat, grain and dairy inventory carry the business through the lean months, but Lambert’s prepared foods menu will utilize those perishable products long before they, well, perish.
By: Douglas Trattner Photo by: Tim Harrison
