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Girlhood, the Indians, and Ugliness

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What It Means to Be Ugly
by Susan Petrone 

Nine is not only one of the magic numbers of baseball, I would argue that it is the optimum age to fall in love with the game. You’re old enough to play and watch the game with some level of skill and understanding. Things like sacrifice bunts and pitch choices and infield shifts start making sense and you begin to understand why it’s called “the thinking man’s game.” However, if you’re a dorky nine-year-old girl, you wonder whether that definition can be expanded to thinking girls as well.

I was nine in the summer of 1977, and I lived and breathed the Cleveland Indians with my brother, Mike, and Michael and Ann Duhigg, two kids who lived behind us and were close to our ages. Every morning I would wake up with the prospect of 15 hours of daylight stretching out before me like the ribbon on a birthday gift. We were all at the tail ends of large families—six in ours and seven in theirs. It was the 1970’s, and our mothers didn’t have the worries of missing children on milk cartons or poisoned Tylenol or pornography on the Internet. Nobody missed us or worried too much about us when we were out. We were free to spend each day of the summer as we wished. We would play baseball or whiffle ball all day with the Duhiggs, then my brother and I would watch the Indians on WUAB, the local, non-network channel. That was when I learned the game, and that’s when I fell in love with the Cleveland Indians.

The 1977 Indians were not a very good team. In the 112-year history of the Cleveland Indians franchise (beginning with the Cleveland Blues in 1901), the ’77 team ranks 95th  with a .441 won-loss average. They had some fine players. It was my hero, Andre Thornton’s, first year with the club. He batted .263 that season with 28 home runs—not his best season but certainly respectable. Future Hall of Famer Dennis Eckersley was on the pitching staff. He only went 14-13 that season, but did pitch the 200th no-hitter in modern baseball history (i.e., since 1901). I didn’t know it at the time, but he already problems with alcohol, and his best friend and teammate, Rick Manning, was sleeping with his wife. My father was sleeping with someone other than my mother, but I didn’t know that either and wouldn’t for a few more years. Baseball has a way of hiding secrets and acting as a balm for the truths we’d rather not face.

The ’77 Indians were ugly both figuratively and literally. Their road uniforms were especially atrocious—red jerseys and red pants that made them look like tall glasses of Hawaiian Punch. I was ugly too. For some reason, that was the summer my parents decided to cut my hair short. I was a tomboy, but until that point, I had long straight hair. It got tangled, as the hair of an active little girl will do, so my parents convinced me that I should have short hair. The haircut itself was an unglamorous affair. My great-grandfather had been a barber, and apparently someone thought the barbering gene passed to my oldest brother John. It didn’t. So I had a bad, boyish short haircut, thick glasses, lots of hand-me-down clothes, and did I mention I was a little chubby at the time?

Our brother John worked as a soda jerk at a place called Meither’s Ice Cream, which was one of the last remaining soda shops on the east side of Cleveland. My brother Mike and I would ride our bikes up, get ice cream, and play pinball. I fancied myself a pinball wizard. I was not. Like the Indians, I had flashes of brilliance and great games, but mainly I just lost quarters. One day, while playing one of my better games, a girl a couple years older watched me for a minute and commented on my score. My brother said, “Yeah, she’s doing pretty good.” The older girl took in the bad, bowl-like haircut, old T-shirt, and cut-off shorts that had once belonged to my brother and said with disgust: “She? That’s a girl?”

I would like to say that I had a quick and cutting reply.

There was a ballgame on that night—in the childhood of my memory, there is an Indians game every day—and I watched it and dreamt of being the first woman in the major leagues. I knew I wouldn’t be. I knew no women played in the majors and that I would have to be spectacular to be the first, and I wasn’t. But I watched the game with my brother and learned a bit more about baseball and felt a bit less ugly, a bit less awkward. I’ve watched my Indians go from ugly duckling to graceful swan and back again several times since I was nine. Each time, I believe the metamorphosis is permanent, but it never is. I have my bad hair days. They have their bad seasons. That is what baseball does: It gives us moments of grace when we most need them, it teaches us unconditional love. Even the least talented among us is worthy of being loved and admired. Even the ugliest among us can still become beautiful.

Susan Petrone grew up in Cleveland Heights as one of those punk kids who hung out on Coventry. She’s moved away a couple of times but always comes back and now lives in South Euclid with her husband and child. She still loves the Indians and writes about them at ItsPronouncedLajaway.com, an ESPN SweetSpot blog. Her short fiction has been published by Glimmer Train, Featherproof Books, The Cleveland Review, Muse, and Conclave. Her first novel, A Body at Rest (2009) takes place in and around the Coventry area. You can read more of her work at: susanpetrone.com.

Anorexic Vampires and the Pittsburgh Potty: The Story of Rust Belt Chic

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“Rust Belt Chic is the opposite of Creative Class Chic. The latter [is] the globalization of hip and cool. Wondering how Pittsburgh can be more like Austin is an absurd enterprise and, ultimately, counterproductive. I want to visit the Cleveland of Harvey Pekar, not the Miami of LeBron James. I can find King James World just about anywhere. Give me more Rust Belt Chic.” Jim Russell, blogger at Burgh Diaspora

National interest in a Rust Belt “revival” has blossomed. There are the spreads in Details, Atlantic Cities, and Salon, as well as an NPR Morning Edition feature. And so many Rust Belters are beginning to strut a little, albeit cautiously–kind of like a guy with newly-minted renown who’s constantly poking around for the “kick me” sign, if only because he has a history of being kicked.

There’s a term for this interest: “Rust Belt Chic”. But the term isn’t new, nor is the coastal attention on so-called “flyover” country. Which means “Rust Belt Chic” is a term with history–loaded even–as it arose out of irony, yet it has evolved in connotation if only because the heyday of Creative Class Chic is giving way to an authenticity movement that is flowing into the likes of the industrial heartland.

About that historical context. Here’s Joyce Brabner, wife of Cleveland writer Harvey Pekar, being interviewed in 1992, and introducing the world to the term:

I’ll tell you the relationship between New York and Cleveland. We are the people that all those anorexic vampires with their little black miniskirts and their black leather jackets come to with their video cameras to document Rust Belt chic. MTV people knocking on our door, asking to get pictures of Harvey emptying the garbage, asking if they can shoot footage of us going bowling. But we don’t go bowling, we go to the library, but they don’t want to shoot that. So, that’s it. We’re just basically these little pulsating jugular veins waiting for you guys to leech off some of our nice, homey, backwards Cleveland stuff.

Now to understand Brabner’s resentment we step back again to 1989. Pekar–who is perhaps Cleveland’s essence condensed into a breathing human–had been going on Letterman. Apparently the execs found Pekar interesting, and so they’d book him periodically, with Pekar–a file clerk at the VA–given the opportunity to promote his comic book American Splendor. Well, after long, the relationship soured. Pekar felt exploited by NYC’s life of the party, with his trust of being an invited guest giving way to the realization he was just the jester. So, in what would be his last appearance, he called Letterman a “shill for GE” on live TV. Letterman fumed. Cracked jokes about Harvey’s “Mickey Mouse magazine” to a roaring crowd before apologizing to Cleveland for…well…being us.

Think of this incident between two individuals–or more exactly, between two realities: the famed and fameless, the make-up’d and cosmetically starved, the prosperous and struggled–as a microcosm for regional relations, with the Rust Belt left to linger in a lack of illusions for decades.

But when you have a constant pound of reality bearing down on a people, the culture tends to mold around what’s real. Said Coco Chanel:

“Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity”.

And if you can say one thing about the Rust Belt–it’s that it’s authentic. Not just about resiliency in the face of hardship, but in style and drink, and the way words are said and handshakes made. In the way our cities look, and the feeling the looks of our cities give off. It’s akin to an absence of fear in knowing you aren’t getting ahead of yourself. Consider the Rust Belt the ground in the idea of the American Dream.

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Photo credit: Sean Posey
Of course this is all pretty uncool. I mean, pierogi and spaetzle sustain you but don’t exactly get you off. Meanwhile, over the past two decades American cities began their creative class crusade to be the next cool spot, complete with standard cool spot amenities: clubs, galleries, bike paths, etc. Specifically, Richard Florida, an expert on urbanism, built an empire advising cities that if they want creative types they must in fact get ahead of themselves, as the young are mobile and modish and are always looking for the next crest of cool.

These “Young and the Restless”–so they’re dubbed–are thus seeking and hunting, but also: apparently anxious. And this bit of pop psychology was recently illustrated beautifully in the piece “The Fall of the Creative Class” by Frank Bures:

I know now that this was Florida’s true genius: He took our anxiety about place and turned it into a product. He found a way to capitalize on our nagging sense that there is always somewhere out there more creative, more fun, more diverse, more gay, and just plain better than the one where we happen to be.

After long–and with billions invested not in infrastructure, but in the ephemerality of our urbanity–chunks of America had the solidity of air. Places without roots. People without place. We became a country getting ahead of itself until we popped like a blowfish into pieces. Suddenly, we were all Rust Belters, and living on grounded reality.

Then somewhere along the way Rust Belt Chic turned from irony into actuality, and the Rust Belt from a pejorative into a badge of honor. Next thing you know banjo bingo and DJ Polka are happening, and suburban young are haunting the neighborhoods their parents grew up in then left. Next thing you know there are insights about cultural peculiarities, particularly those things once shunned as evidence of the Rust Belt’s uncouthness, but that were–after all–the things that rooted a history into a people into a place.

Take the Pittsburgh Potty. For recent generations it was about the shame of having a toilet with no walls becoming the pride of having a toilet with no walls. From Pittsburgh Magazine:

We purchased a house with a stray potty, and we’ve given that potty a warm home. But we simply pretended as if the stray potty didn’t exist, and we certainly didn’t make eye contact with the potty when we walked past it to do laundry.

The Pittsburgh Potty is basically a toilet in the middle of many Pittsburgh basements. No walls and no stalls. It existed so steel workers can get clean and use the bathroom without dragging soot through ma’s linoleum.

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Photo credit: Brookline Connection
Authentic: yes. Cool? A toilet?

Only in the partly backward Rust Belt of Harvey Pekar and friends. From the twitter feed of @douglasderda who asked “What is a Pittsburgh Potty?” Some responses follow:

“I told my wife I wanted to put ours back in, but she refused. I threatened to use the stationary tubs.”

“In my house, that would be known as my husband’s bathroom.”

“It’s a huge selling feature for PGH natives. I’m not kidding. We weren’t so lucky in our SS home.”

“We’re high class people. Our Pittsburgh Potty has a bidet. Well, it’s a hose mounted on the bottom, but still ….”

Eventually, this satisfaction found in re-rooting back into our own Rust Belt history has become the fuel of wisdom for even Coastal elites. Here’s David Brooks recently talking about the lessons of Bruce Springsteen’s global intrigue being nested in the locality that defines Rust Belt Chic:

If your identity is formed by hard boundaries, if you come from a specific place…you are going to have more depth and definition than you are if you grew up in the far-flung networks of pluralism and eclecticism, surfing from one spot to the next, sampling one style then the next, your identity formed by soft boundaries, or none at all.

Brooks continues:

The whole experience makes me want to pull aside politicians and business leaders and maybe everyone else and offer some pious advice: Don’t try to be everyman…Go deeper into your own tradition. Call more upon the geography of your own past. Be distinct and credible. People will come.

And some are coming, albeit slowly, unevenly. But more importantly, as a region we are once again becoming–but nothing other than ourselves.

Authenticity, reality: this was and always will be the base from which we wrestle our dreams back down to solid ground.

American splendor, indeed.

By Richey Piiparinen

One Man’s Porn is Another Man’s Chic

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by Benno Martens*

One of the hallmarks of ruin porn is witnessing the city’s past juxtaposed to its present – the faded paint of an old advertisement on the façade of a building, the decay of a long-abandoned train terminal, the boarded up factories of a once-thriving manufacturing district.  Just as important, though, is the ability to see not only the city that no longer exists, but also that which may rise from the rubble.  This is especially important in a city like Cleveland.

For example, consider Cleveland’s Warehouse District neighborhood:

This photo is an aerial shot of the neighborhood during the 1960s.  Cleveland had just begun its decline at this point, from a decennial population high of roughly 915,000 in 1950.  The building density in this shot tells a story of a city that has no idea how far it will fall.  The Cleveland on display here is still that of an economically robust urban center.

This second photo shows the same neighborhood today.  If the sight of these two images, side by side, does not qualify as ruin porn, I do not know what does.  The second photo tells the story of a city that has lost over half of its population in half a century.

Cleveland now has fewer than 400,000 residents, according to the most recent census figures.  This story of hollowing out, this migration of people to the suburbs and exurbs and out of the region entirely, is rendered in the absence of buildings, the loss of density, the sea of asphalt that became necessary so that commuters could park their cars all day long before vanishing from the city in the evening.  This is the story of a city that saw over half a million residents flee.

It is a story of ruin.

But this is only one part of the story.  Where ruin porn ends, Rust Belt chic begins.

Herein lies the distinction between ruin porn and Rust Belt chic: how do you view these two photos?  Do you fixate on the destruction, the yesterday, your eye drawn immediately to the shadow of what used to be?  Or, do you see the opportunity, the tomorrow, your pulse quickening at the promise of what can arise from the ruins?

 

It isn’t about novelty or “finding our cool.”  Cleveland is not Chicago or New York, nor should it aspire to be.  Rather, the city’s focus should be three unmistakable Rust Belt traits: perseverance, ingenuity, and a predisposition to community.  Rust Belt chic is, at its core, about the opportunity to organically create a new sense of community in the face of adversity.

I look at a city like Detroit, perhaps the only one hit harder by decay, disinvestment, and recession than Cleveland, and see swarms of young people descending with the hopes of rebuilding and revitalizing.  For these new urban pioneers, the opportunity inherent in Rust Belt chic is too much to pass up.  The possibility to create a new community from scratch, to rehabilitate a badly injured urban center, is what this phenomenon is truly about.  To fixate on any other aspect is to cheapen the work that is being done, both in Detroit and in Cleveland.

Yes, the city of Cleveland as a whole continues to hemorrhage population.  But to leave it at that, as the majority of the national media is wont to do, overlooks the quite remarkable resurgence of the downtown neighborhoods.

Over the past two decades, fueled largely by an influx of young professionals, Gen X-ers and now Millennials, downtown Cleveland has doubled its population.  With nearly 10,000 residents today, downtown has grown at a faster rate than suburban Cuyahoga County.

With rental occupancy of downtown apartments currently hovering around 96%, demand is far outpacing supply.  As a result, developers are working feverishly to increase the number of units, with retrofits and conversions of old office buildings and warehouses leading the way.  Businesses are relocating downtown to take advantage of the growing knowledge worker cluster.  And amenities unseen in at least a couple of decades – neighborhood bars, posh restaurants, and even a bowling alley – are popping up to cater to existing residents and provide a lure for new ones.

This is a trend that urban theorists like Richard Florida and Alan Ehrenhalt have been reporting on for years.  A shift is taking place, being driven by the desires of young professionals for urban living.  City centers in the Rust Belt are regaining population and affluence even as cities as a whole are shrinking.  The role of Rust Belt chic in this shift is of great importance, as the opportunity to increase quality of life, to breathe new life into local economies, and to be part of a great resurgence is surely helping to fuel the shift of population back to the city center.

In short, communities are being rebuilt.

*Benno Martens is an urban planner living and working in Cleveland.  He is an alumnus of The Ohio State University’s graduate program in City and Regional Planning.  For more of his thoughts on planning and Cleveland, follow him on Twitter.

Photos accessed from Rust Wire article

Cleveland Arts Prize, Ted Sikora’s Videos & The Triumph of Sophistication over Sentimentality

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Last night I attended the Cleveland Arts Prize awards ceremony and teared up 10 different times: the El Sistema kids playing Pachabel’s Canon, Garie Watlzer standing on stage beautiful and moved, Jonathan Kurtz’ embarrassment at the long (and great) video that preceded his entrance on stage, the Inlet Dance group’s sexy display of male strength. The calm assurance all the presenters and award-winners expressed.  Not for them that somehow lessening tic, that “can you believe it here in Cleveland good stuff?” trumpeting we all hear too much of. Those knee-jerk assertions  serve only to deflate the city, lessen its narrative. They are apologies in the guise of boosterism. That’s the opening we all can go ahead and delete, the event said, save one “Cleveland Rocks” comment.  Just start with the story itself, that this town is a sophisticated and fertile one. Enough with the throat clearing already.

And I am, still, today, watching what I’ve missed on the Cleveland Arts Prize channel on vimeo.  There are videos about previous year’s winners. It’s a double whammy watching these artists on display, shot so smartly by director and editor Ted Sikora. Sikora somehow avoids the talking head PBS style of documentary that has become so expected and formulaic. I can’t talk about film very well, so bear with me, but it’s something in his angles, his long shots of people working, his ability to get artists to speak intellectually yet personably about their work.  Sikora exhibits a rare ability to resist sentimentality. And resisting sentimentality is integral to what we’re trying to do here, and what I admired about the Arts Prize event. These are not homages, these videos: they are arts criticism, art works themselves. Now look: I’m tearing up again.

Watch to see what I mean.

–Anne

 

Somewhere Between Pretty Waterfalls And Burning Rivers

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The Cleveland Land Bank has been buying foreclosed homes and demolishing them to create green spaces. But now the question becomes:  what to do with the vacant land? Urban farms are popular. But twist that idea a notch and you get the idea behind Thriving Communities.
The Thriving Communities Institute was founded by the Western Reserve Land Conservancy. Usually we conceive of land conservation groups as focused on preserving natural beauty. But the Western Reserve decided that urban landscapes could be part of their mission, too. So they hired Jim Rokakis, who founded the Cleveland Land Bank and has been active in Cleveland’s housing crisis for over a decade, to spearhead this program.
As the houses go down, this otherwise traditional conservation program is on the forefront of figuring out what might be next, innovating a new marriage between the “outdoors”  and cities.
What do know more? Just ask Jim. 

1872: Isaac Joseph Arrives in Cleveland, Finds It Cold

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Isaac Joseph, who would go on to found Joseph & Feiss, one of the largest of Cleveland’s many garment businesses, arrived in Cleveland on December 16, 1872.   This is the city he found:

The winter of 1872 to 1873 was the coldest on record…and when I landed in Cleveland and was driven in a hack up Superior Street I thought I had arrived at the North Pole, for the city was buried in snow. It was about 8:00 p.m., and the stores all along the street were still lighted up for business but all the show windows were frosted from top to bottom and it was impossible to determine the kind of business carried within…At the time of my arrival in Cleveland the city sprawled out in three directions over a very large area and had a population of a little over 100,000. Its principal streets were laid out on a very generous plan, many of them unpaved.  There were only a few prominent buildings, there were of a nondescript style of architecture. Those in the business district were of brick three or four stories in height and generally in a ramshackle condition. The streets, however, were liberally planted with trees which somewhat softened the ugliness of the structures. The business activities of Cleveland were confined to two streets: the wholesale portion on Water Street (now West 9th) and the prominent retail stores were located on Superior west of the Square. There were also a few small shops on Ontario Street and surrounding the Square itself.

Cleveland sprawling on both sides of the Cuyahoga River was like a very large overgrown village and only in the Spring was it transformed into a beautiful spot because of its wide streets and wealth of fine shade trees which entitled it to its popular name “The Forest City.” In winter, however, it was wind-swept, gray and dreary. On moonlight nights even the street lamps were not lighted and as the moon does not always shine according to schedule the city was often plunged into absolute darkness. No attempt was made to remove the snow from the streets in any part of the city nor the slush and mud that came with the occasional thaws.

Here’s a much more idealized view of Superior Avenue from 1872:

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Joseph & Feiss would go on to employ many Clevelanders, and the garment trades were one of the first businesses to employ women. Most were immigrants from Eastern Europe.  Here’s what the factory looked like in 1907: 

The factories are gone. But it’s still cold.

 

We Are All Clark Kent: Cleveland, home of Superman

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Cleveland is the birthplace of Superman–as Ohio license plates might soon proclaim, if the Siegel and Shuster Society get their way. 

The first superhero  was concocted by two Jewish boys in Glenville:

“In 1933, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster dreamed up the comic strip hero with superpowers. Both boys were from immigrant Jewish families and lived down the street from each other in Glenville, then a booming, overwhelmingly Jewish, middle-class neighborhood, with kosher markets selling Yiddish newspapers on nearly every street corner. At the time, Cleveland was the fifth most populous American city, and a forward-thinking one at that, being the first to install public electricity and trolleys”

For too long, people tried to restore Siegel’s childhood home and make it into a landmark or tourist destination. It was not easy:

In his will, Siegel asked that half of his ashes be donated to the city of Cleveland; his widow also wanted to donate some of his belongings to the city, such as his typewriter. She visited Cleveland to find a home for them, and [Michael] Sangiacomo escorted her around town. “Nobody wanted them,” he remembers. “It was a low point. I felt horrible for her and mad at the city.”

But some grassroots efforts by comics lovers finally helped raise momentum for restoring Siegel’s former house. The longtime owners of the house agreed to renovations. And then the block on which it stands, having seen better days, was also improved:

The city finally took notice. [Neighborhood advocate] Tracey Kirksey had been trying, like Sangiacomo, to have the city tear down abandoned houses, ‘but it never seemed to be a priority.’  With the Siegel house restored, the city has now demolished seven houses on Kimberly Avenue, Kirksey says, and is now looking to “green-up the lots and replace those houses with new developments.”

Read the rest of the Superman genesis story and the story behind restoring the  Superman house here .

Cleveland surfs? Damn right.

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Who knew surfing and Cleveland had such a rich intertwining? Well, I did. And now you will too.

Lets begin with the Euclid Beach Band. In 1979 they released the song “No Surf in Cleveland” that was a great “representation of the Cleveland sound” according to the You Tube description from ClevoScienceProject.

Of course these guys ain’t having it. Because, well, they are surfing in Cleveland. I see them often when its grey and empty and the Lake is curling with foam. They will do this shit in January, don’t matter.

And finally there is the underground music website doing its little thing called No Surf in Cleveland. It catalogs the musical releases of Northeast Ohio, USA. Here’s some description from the site:

This site is set up a little like the junk store. I don’t separate genres, so you’ve got soul and gospel music next to punk rock and garage bands. Music is music, is music.

The site has some choice live links as well. Here is Cleveland’s Dead Boys playing NYC in  1977. Yeah, New Yorkers were secretly on our jock back then too.