All About Cleve
The top of Rock Mountain.
So, on Wednesday, Jesse and I went to Playland. That has nothing to do with our trip to Cleveland, which is what this entry is really about, but Playland is awesome so it deserves mentioning.
On to the real reason for this entry: Labor Day Cleveland 2006. Woo! Somehow I don't think it'll ever be a Girls Gone Wild-type vacation destination. That's good, because we were trying to stay away from those kinds of scenes.*
The only reason to visit Cleveland is, of course, the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and we indeed spent hours there getting lost in music video ephemera, John Lennon's doodles, Hanson's clothing, and frightening set-pieces from The Wall. The third-floor "Hall of Fame" part is actually a multi-media video presentation that plays songs and interview clips from the inductees. It was fun, but Jesse and I were the only two who reacted to the music, even a little. No one else winced at The Pretenders or half-danced during other songs, not even when "Pump it Up" came on. Come on, people! This is Rock 'n' Roll! You're supposed to want to rip out those uncomfortable, publicly funded benches and throw them out the I.M. Pei-designed windows! Or, at least look at some of the inductees on screen with a modicum of recognition. Either way. Upstairs was a two-floor exhibit on Bob Dylan. The highlight of that was running into an eccentric man who first forced us into a listening booth and made us listen to "Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands" (which, fine, is a really pretty song, but damn, it's eleven minutes long), and then offered to give us a private tour of the city. We declined, but we did pick his brain for other fun things to do in Cleveland that don't involve the history of Rock 'n' Roll.
It's a good thing we did, because, as it turns out, it's hard to find other fun things to do in Cleveland that don't involve the history of Rock 'n' Roll. To give you an idea of how small the scope of the city is, let me tell you about our Lolly the Trolley tour. Usually on tours like these, the guides drive by points of interest, dole out some historical facts, and make some corny jokes. Our guide did all of that, in addition to pointing out all of Cleveland's corporate headquarters, government buildings, hospitals, new restaurants, renovated houses, available condos, and-I swear-even some parking lots. Can you imagine if they tried that in New York? The guides wouldn't have a chance to breathe. Another Cleveland characteristic I find strange for a small city: The whole place turns over at 7 pm. After our trolley tour, Jesse and I decided to do dinner and a movie. We went to pick up tickets at the theater, which was located in a big, bustling mall smack in the center of downtown. We chose a later time, figuring that we would go eat dinner, come back, explore the mall a little, then go to the movie. We headed off to dinner (at Fat Fish Blue, the delicious Cajun restaurant that may or may not be the one that Craig recommended in my last post), and returned to the mall promptly at 7:00. All the stores were closed-and it was a Saturday night! We had no choice but to exchange our movie tickets for earlier ones and go home sooner than expected. When we left the theater at 9:00, it looked like it was midnight.
Hipsters haven't really made it out to Cleveland yet. We kept looking for them every time we went to a neighborhood that we heard was hot (the seedy Flats, the trendy Warehouse District, etc.). We saw lots of sports fans-there was a mass city migration over to the stadium when the Browns were playing, and even when they weren't there were flocks of people in town to see the Wisconsin Badgers-but no hipsters. Finally, we spotted a couple on our last day in an out-of-the-way neighborhood called Coventry Village, a place described to us as the "Greenwich Village of Cleveland." It was only a couple blocks long. Of course, the hipsters were all hanging out at the store that was selling Ninja Turtles, Rainbow Brite dolls, She-Ra action figures, Strawberry Shortcake dolls, NES games, and lots of other toys I remember from my childhood. Nostalgia is to hipsters as dusk is to mosquitoes. Of course, where there's young-and-hip-but-gentrified urban neighborhoods, there's good ethnic cuisine, so we had Thai food as our last meal in Cleveland before driving down the road less traveled back to our hotel. Our unseemly route back was mostly a bad idea, but I did get to see a time-and-temperature sign outside a funeral home, which I find mostly hilarious. ("It's a shame about Aunt Mary-and damn it's cold.")
Speaking of driving through the rough streets of Cleveland, I was shocked about how easy it was. I'm usually very skittish about driving in cities. Normally, I just refuse to do it. But after a few trips in and around Cleveland-including a side-trip to Valley View, a desolate town with nothing but a 24-screen movie theater and a restaurant named (and I am not making this up) Hoggy's Barn and Grill, marking the second time Jesse has dragged me someplace undesirable to see a Jason Statham movie-I found out that traffic is actually heavier and more aggressive in White Plains. That's not really true. There's actually no traffic in Cleveland. At all. Unless, of course, the Browns are playing, but that's an exception. It was lucky for us that driving was so easy, because we got to explore more of the area outside of downtown. Much of what we did in our last couple days-including the less-than-groundbreaking Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Louis Comfort Tiffany-designed chapel in the Lake View Cemetery, up-and-coming suburban Shaker Square, and Coventry-were too far to walk but quick, easy driving trips away. We would have been totally bored without them. Parking is also plentiful, and averages about two bucks an hour (again, imagine that happening in New York). It was so easy to drive through the downtown area that Jesse and I drove to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, saw how much of an (uncharacteristic) ripoff the parking was, hung a u-turn, drove back to the hotel, parked there again, and walked.
Our easy driving karma extended to the trip home. We hit a little bit of traffic coming through the Poconos on the way to Cleveland, but it seemed mostly rubberneck-related. ("A cop car pulled over on the shoulder? Well golly! Slow down!") Going back, on the other hand, was smooth sailing the whole way. Even in New Jersey. Even over the Tappan Zee. Even during rush hour (meaning the rush home from Woodbury Commons and the Palisades Mall, not home from work). That left us free to concentrate on plowing through the megamixes. You will all be judged!
*This is a Hold Steady reference. I told you to like them so you can get jokes like these.