coming back to cleveland

i'm torn. cool cleveland has listed two events i want to go to equally badly tonight. my choices are:

1. Fifteen Cleveland women are profiled in a documentary film for TV Slovenia. 100% Slovenian: Stories of Slovenian Women in America makes its Cle debut at the Euclid Library on Thu 6/19. C-town is the country's Slovenian capital; the film was well-received in recent European festivals, and nominated for a Slovenian "Emmy" award. Call 496-4646 or visit http://www.euclidlibrary.org/Public/home.asp.
 

i'm greatly interested in this doc (i'm all slovenian), and don't know when i'd get the chance to see it again. plus, my grandpa, a lifelong euclid resident, might even want to go.

or

2. HOT Coventry Street Arts Fair It's a party like no other Thu 6/19 from 6 - 9PM, featuring a spectacular slate of arts and culture events. Check out the band Vital Mines, laugh with the Something Dada comedy troupe, bop with the Cleveland Jazz Project and hear the iconic Harvey Pekar at Mac’s Backs! The Cleveland Museum of Art will be running family art projects during the evening and Coventry merchants will hold their traditional "Sidewalk Sale." Grab some nosh from Coventry restaurants and check out local artists, farmers, and vendors. Spend Your Summers at the Coventry Street Arts Fairs! http://www.coventryvillage.org/events.html.

harvey pekar reading from his new book?! i've never seen him in person before, and he's one of my idols.

hmmmmm......

 

 

 

i just signed up for the eddy's bike shop sweet corn challenge, which takes place july 27th in richfield. there are four rides to choose from--all start and finish at the same point: the 10-mile family ride, the 25- and 50-mile routes, and the 100-mile route, known as a century in the biking world. i (maybe mistakenly) checked that last box. i'm not big on training, so hopefully i don't die. there's no better way to see a place than by bike.

this will be my first time doing an organized ride. if you have experiences with any of them in ohio and would like to share, please do. century cycles has a good listing of local rides and tours here.

 

in the past few weeks, three friends from nyc have told me independently that they are coming to cleveland to campaign for obama. (edit: make that four. my old co-worker in ny just told me she is taking a leave of absence from her job in belgium to spend a month in ohio with me campaigning.) and i am sure there will be more. more people who've never been here before that i get to show around! and hopefully foil some notions about the you-know-what on the lake.

i realized that it's kind of like when i was back in ny, where i worked with a girl from delhi. she was sort of my personal ambassador of india, always taking me out for chaat at holes-in-the-wall in midtown, teaching me hindi words and about indian mythology, describing bombay, calcutta, goa, the tea plantations of kerala. she looked so happy whenever i spoke positively about india or mentioned how much i wanted to visit. and i do. i think i know how she feels, at least a little bit anyway.

i am very excited to be going to cambodia and vietnam this october. i've been wanting to try cambodian food. my fiance said he and his co-worker almost ate at phnom penh on w. 25th st. once, but they were wary of its emptiness so they crossed the street to bar cento instead. i can't seem to find much about it in the way of reviews, which might not be a good sign...

 

my fiance frank is half-puerto rican, half-cuban. he is a spanish/caribbean/south american food aficianado, and had been missing his plato montanero and arroz con pollo pretty badly since we moved. cleveland's culinary scene seems to be lacking in this one area. we like ohio city's very cute and delicious puerto rican lelolai bakery, but he was looking for more of restaurant. so a nice man working at lelolai a couple of months ago came to the rescue and tipped us off to rincon restaurant. rincon is in detroit shoreway, and has weird hours (don't bother showing up after 7 p.m. or on sundays) and no web site, but the food and atmosphere are just what we were looking for. so are the prices. most of the entrees cost $5-10, and side dishes are super cheap, $1-2. though there isn't much for a vegetarian like me, i love plantains and rice and beans and am content ordering just those. when frank found rincon, it was like obama just offered him the vp slot.

someone mentioned to me that some good spanish places might just be hiding...possibly in lorain. anyone have any ideas?

 

it's been weird acclimating to spending so much time in a car again. i haven't driven this much since i was 17 and blasting my crash test dummies tape all over mentor in my dad's chevy sprint. that car had this button horn you pressed like a computer key, and it sounded like a skipping record of an animal facing down death. the blinkers flashed on and off about three times too fast. and my car and steep inclines: a bad combination (i loved getting stuck on the little italy hill that one time). oh, but i didn't care, because at least i could drive. my friends called it "the rollerskate." and what cracks me up more now than anything is that back then, putting five bucks in my tank meant i was going all-out: a near fill-up. something i rarely attempted, yes. my usual was two dollars; three, tops.

right after college, i moved overseas and then, of course, to new york--where owning a car is fun if you don't mind alternate-side parking rules, getting ticketed and towed for reasons unclear, and having your windows bashed in once in a while, all of which i discovered during one misguided year in a yuppy neighborhood in brooklyn. at any rate, i hadn't planned on driving so much. but then, landing a decent job very nearby turned out to be...challenging. alas, i work 26 miles from my lakewood home, in oberlin. thankfully, it's a beautiful town, and the commute is against traffic--and actually takes less time than my old 5-mile slog to times square on the N/W line. 

in prior years, if you'd cried out, "gas is $2.65 a gallon!" it'd have meant as much as telling me that the president of uzbekistan enjoys r&b. all i knew was that i paid just under $1 a gallon in high school, and i was glad my tank woes were long over. over the eight months that i've become re-acquainted with car culture, the price has rocketed by more than $1. like mostly everyone else here i monitor every flutter in the price of gas, down to the ridiculous 10th of a cent, and am always on the prowl for the cheapest station. (so far, i've determined that to be the warren avenue speedway in lakewood or costco in avon). reminds me, i still need to get around to seeing that documentary, "who killed the electric car?"--because i know that it wasn't the average american citizen. renewed gas price worries aside, i've few gripes with my daily drive on 90. it's a cakewalk compared to any highway on the entire eastern seaboard. my one complaint is the people (i.e., women talking on their cell phones) who hover around 60 in the fast lane, and refuse to move. i've also found this in portland, oregon. but there, it's everyone that is oblivious.

speaking of oregon...and i'm going off into a tangent here...but ever since the prius hype exploded, i could have sworn those cute bean-shaped cars got 100 mpg. if i paid $20k for a depreciating asset whose claim to fame was its "hi mpg"--as the vanity plate boasted on one i spotted yesterday--i'd hope it got at least that much. then i heard somewhere that they only averaged 45 to the gallon, but surmised that couldn't really be true. but then i read it again, and googled a bit to confirm. my geo metro/suzuki swift/chevy sprint-obsessed dad (refer to first paragraph) has been bettering that since the late '80s. and i would bet my first born he never paid more than a grand for any of them. i get 37 with my just fine '94 corolla that i bought for a relative pittance when i came back to cleveland. clearly, none of the aforementioned cars look even remotely cool as does the prius. what are you gonna do? i guess you could become one of these.

 

so, my new job and home remodeling projects have officially rendered me useless when it comes to updating this blog. i have a couple of things, though: our good friend from new york and his girlfriend are coming to visit us in two weeks. they have never been to cleveland before. we have some ideas. obviously, the west side market, tremont, little italy, e. 4th street, and biking in the rocky river reservation and along lake road. and we're taking them to see one of my favorite singers, jaymay, play b-sides in coventry. 

we are also pondering chartering a sailboat, something we've never done. his girlfriend wants to check out case--one of her potential grad school options--so this would be the perfect opportunity to show them what it's like living on the beautiful lake. i have had some difficulty finding a company that isn't specifically geared toward fishing. we'd like to leave from anywhere between fairport harbor and marblehead. j.e.o. sailing sounded promising, but unfortunately he's booked with a full-day sailing lesson the day we can go, june 14th. i think i'll give fair wind sailing a call, though i can forget it if that $395 rate they quote is per person. anyone have any tips? sailing experiences they'd like to share? (much appreciated).

and, what are the top 5 restaurants and top 5 bars you'd take first-time cleveland visitors? nothing too fancy; i.e., dante. on my restaurant list: hunan coventry--best chinese ever, lucky's cafe (for brunch), trattoria on the hill, the moosehead, and maybe momocho--which i have yet to try but always hear about. bars: tremont tap house, winking lizard, prosperity, the beachland, and flannery's or harry buffalo.     

side note: i was in new york two weeks ago for the first time since i moved back. we arrived to a line for a cab at laguardia that might as well have snaked to jersey, in the pouring rain, and no hot water the next morning in our friend's apartment. welcome to new york! i couldn't count the number of days i've spent in that city in buildings with boilers about as reliable as a 13-year-old boy--and i am ever so grateful i don't have to deal with it again (at least on a permanent basis).

i was happy as a clam to have seen many of my wonderful friends again, who even threw me a welcome-back party. but after four days in apartments the size of my living room, crazy-crowded streets and the soundtrack of honking horns and sirens on repeat, i knew with certainty that moving to cleveland was one of the best decisions i ever made. i wanted to get home. to my house. with a yard. near the lake. it took approximately four days to recover from the parties and lack of sleep.

 

i had yesterday free after a morning meeting, and without thinking much about where i was headed from downtown, i ended up in detroit shoreway, in all of its sun-transformed glory. i felt like doing some exploring beyond my drive-bys over the winter that i hope. is. now. over.

traipsing around, i thought of the way williamsburg, brooklyn looked in early 2000, when the neighborhood was just on the cusp of morphing into a full-blown hipster haven. thankfully, we here in cleveland will not all be masquerading as rock stars to go to our day jobs, as they do in williamsburg, quite literally. but, there were some seriously great little places i hadn't noticed before, and i can see this fast becoming one of my new favorite parts of the city. momentum around it seems to be picking up pace lately (i.e., the plain dealer's latest feature, "raising cleveland's 'hip quotient.'")   

a new destination of note is room service, a fetching, quirky housewares, clothing and accessories shop that mixes vintage and modern style; there was hardly anything in sight i didn't covet. 

upside-down umbrellas hanging from the ceiling, vintage paint-chipped chairs, a rainbow of '50s-ish kitchen and garden wares, modern wall decals, cute japanese trinkets, design books, doggie stuff, clever cleveland- and ohio-themed gifts, loads of homemade cards, and a wall covered in lovely art prints and photos by independent artists all characterize the shop's fantastic mix-match design. it's a welcoming place and not overpriced. (i took home a green "infinity mpg" bicycle t-shirt from threadless.) most importantly, i had the pleasure of meeting room service's owner, danielle, who was very gracious, especially when my giant purse embarrassingly nearly destroyed a vase. twice. danielle told me that she had lived in los angeles for five years, where she worked as a merchandise buyer, and had just opened her store the day after thanksgiving. she explained that she rarely re-orders the same items, but prefers to get a constant flow of new things in. i'm not surprised her approach seems to be working well.

right next door is another appealing modern home decor store that also opened the day after thanksgiving, called duohome. slightly more upscale and furniture-oriented than its neighbor, shopping at duohome was an equally pleasant experience. run by seasoned design pros scott suskowicz and tim kempf, the store also offers a full range of interior design services. the website says that the "goal of the retail aspect of duohome is to offer well-made, high-style home furnishings/accessories at a competitive price point as an alternative to 'big box' stores."

i was smitten with the eye candy that is their architec kitchen line, and bought a stack of bowls in different shades of green for only $3.50 each. it's evident that these people have really put their hearts into their businesses, and i wish them much continued success in the neighborhood.

and, finally, i paid my first visit to gypsy beans & baking co. the open, sunny space and huge comfortable wooden tables, free wi-fi and that delicious appalachian trail coffee drink will lure me back -- easily.