Blogs

Lakewood is often described as the most densely populated city between New York and Chicago. So it would seem that a suburb with such scant green space would desperately cling to what little she has left. But not so in the City of Homes.

Lakewood has approved a $20,000 study to see if baseball and softball games at Kauffman Park can be relocated to another field, thus allowing the city to sell the park to a private owner. It would then be converted to a retail/condo development of undisclosed specifics, an improvement over the strip mall that now fronts the park on Detroit Avenue.

On the surface, it would seem a moronic notion. Most of the city’s 100-year-old homes have yards the size of grapefruits, making its few parks an absolute necessity. Lakewood leaders say the green space will remain, only moved closer to Detroit, though it’s hard to believe a private owner would leave much expensive land undeveloped. And any time a city hires a consultant, buyer beware. They’re often just an expensive way of providing an “official study” that lends credence to a pre-ordained position. Hey, this wasn’t our idea! This is what the experts are telling us!

All of which has residents buzzing that the fix is in. Some believe the study is being delayed until after the elections, so Mayor Tom George won’t take the hit for selling the park. George (who couldn’t be reached late Friday), is well aware of Lakewood’s penchant of rebellion. He won office after former Mayor Madeline Cain tried to use eminent domain – that’s German for “We’re about to take your shit” – to confiscate people’s homes for another development.

But Council President Robert Seelie says there’s no secret plot afoot. The city is merely examining its options.

If Kauffman’s sale brings a handsome price, Lakewood could use the money to rebuild other parks. “How much is the land worth?” he asks. “If there’s millions of dollars to be obtained there, we could improve the other parks dramatically.” Moreover, even if city officials love the idea, it still must go through planning, zoning, and architectural review boards, as well as the city council, says Seelie. That gives residents plenty time to raise hell and find really good bricks to throw.

“Oh shit,” says the council president, “there’s no done deal -- only don’t tell them about the nuclear silos going back there. It can’t be, because we have no idea we can take those activities elsewhere. This isn’t a done deal; this is an exciting deal. This is an opportunity to jump on board and see what we can do, or bring back Bob’s Big Boy and play baseball there every night.”

Unfortunately, he might find out that a lot of residents really miss Bob’s Big Boy. – Pete Kotz

UPDATE: The mayor responds.

I Got Five On It, Touch Supper Club's (2710 Lorain Ave.; 216.631.5200) monthly old-school hip-hop party, with Mick Boogie and Terry Urban, goes down tomorrow. Best party in Cleveland, hands down. -- Joe P. Tone

Scene's Jared Klaus (left) and Joe Tone celebrate their Ohio SPJ Awards.

The Ohio Society of Professional Journalists announced its 2007 awards yesterday, and they were particularly kind to this little rag of ours. We never thought all those unmarked vodka bottles we sent would actually sway the judges, but how else can you explain such a bounty for a gang of unruly (although handsome!) scribes.

Competing against the largest papers in the state, Scene snagged a total of nine awards, including Best Weekly and five other first-place honors. The winners, with links to the offending stories, are:

- Lisa Rab, first place, newsmaker profile; second place, environmental coverage
- Denise Grollmus, first place, arts reporting
- Elaine T. Cicora, first place, arts profile
- Erich Burnett, first place, headline writing
- Joe P. Tone, first place, sports coverage
- Rebecca Meiser, second place, medical/science reporting
- and, of course, part-time kitten-juggler Jared Klaus, second place, children’s issues

The Columbus Dispatch took home the most hardware: 17 awards, by our count, including Best Daily. They must bribe with top-shelf.

By contrast, The Plain Dealer, which enjoys describing itself as the "largest newspaper in the state," used those resources to take home just six awards. They included, oddly, the award for Best Columnist in Ohio, which went to Tom Feran, whose column got taken away by his own bosses ["A day without Feran," First Punch, January 17].

To celebrate Scene's achievements, the powers-that-be, after much finagling, have agreed to let us install a permanent Crocodle Mile in the newsroom. Finally, all the hard work pays off. -- The Management

Why can't LeBron look more like Drew?

The Plain Dealer reported today that Lebron James will be rooting for the Yankees if they face the Indians in the upcoming divisional series. Now some people might respect that LeBron is his own man, arguing that he's allowed to root for whoever he wants. He shouldn’t be forced to support Cleveland’s baseball team, they say, just because he’s the face of our basketball team.

Yeah, that's some bullshit. LeBron wearing a Yankees cap is akin to Brady Quinn getting his face tattooed to look exactly like Terry Bradshaw's. But it's typical, really.

This, after all, is a guy who flew all the way to New York to host Saturday Night Live. Hey SNL Guy: Cleveland has live talk shows too, you know. Ever heard of a little show called Good Company?

Another thing: we don’t approve of you cavorting with Jay-Z all the time. You need to hang out with some of our equally talented Cleveland rappers. Bizzy Bone needs friends too, you know.

So here's a tip, LeBron: Be like Drew Carey. That dude is constantly photographed in Cleveland sports gear. When he takes a vacation, he doesn’t use his ample fortune to fly to St. Tropez in the south of France, but rather jet-sets to his beach estate on the equally elegant shores of Lake Erie. Plus, Carey looks like a Clevelander. He’s pudgy, with a $7 haircut and terrible glasses. Lebron, meanwhile, is 6’8” and in superior physical condition. He dresses stylishly and just got Lasik eye surgery -- yet another slap in the face.

The bottom line, LeBron: shape up or get shipped out. We will trade you for Andrei Kirilenko if you don’t at least pretend to have Indians Fever. And then we’ll see how you like hanging out with Utah rappers. -- Gus Garcia-Roberts

If you’ve been reading Plain Dealer columnist Regina Brett for the past five years, you probably either A) find yourself angrily lashing out at your friends and family for no apparent reason, or B) own at least three sweaters embroidered with kitten faces on them.

You also may remember the column Brett wrote five years ago, on her 45th birthday, in which she listed her 45 life lessons. (Remember those sappy motivational posters in high school classrooms that first inspired you to start wearing black lipstick and drinking your friends’ blood? Yeah, that kind of stuff). ...

More

Gensis plays the Q Saturday.

This weekend’s top arts and entertainment picks around town, from the guy who’s paid to pick them:

Friday: We realize you probably don’t want to start off your weekend by looking at the Maltz Museum’s new downer of an exhibit, Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race, but it’s one of the best displays to come to town all year. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum loaned more than 500 artifacts to the Maltz – including photographs of murdered children, sharp instruments used to measure faces, and yellowed notes that detail some very sinister experiments. They all chronicle the Third Reich’s plans to eradicate European Jews more than 60 years ago through medical means.

Saturday: Sure it’s a bummer that the big Genesis reunion tour doesn’t include Peter Gabriel dressing up like a giant flower. But there’s still plenty of prog-rock pretension in store, since the band is mostly playing 20-minute epics about trolls rather than Phil Collins’ wimp-rock ballads. They’re at the Q.

Sunday: The Flaming Lips’ new DVD, U.F.O.s at the Zoo: The Legendary Concert in Oklahoma City, features staples like costumed fans dancing onstage, fake blood, and lots of confetti. It’s quite a trip and proof that the Lips are among the planet’s best live bands. You can see them tonight at the Agora. -- Michael Gallucci

Mitch Karczewski, owner of Lorain's Red Parrot and former owner of the Flying Machine, died Tuesday. Karczewski was a longtime promoter whose Spotlight Talent had worked with Mushroomhead and organized the World Series of Metal festivals. At his passing, he'd been working with all-girl rock group Level C.

His wake will be this Sunday at Golubski Funeral Home (5986 Ridge Rd., Parma). In the meantime, Chris Akin, host of The Classic Metal Show, offered the below memory of Karczewski. Stay tuned to Scene to read more. And if you have any Mitch stories -- everybody on the scene does -- please post one. -- DX Ferris

“Metal Show, who’s this?” the Warlock called out to a call that rang through on the flashing hotline in WMMS’ on-air studio.

“Hey guys! It’s Mitch Karczewski from Spotlight Talent and Anthony from the Agora. We’re down here with Dokken tonight, and could really use the help getting some people here. Could you guys tell people that if they want to see Dokken, they can come down here and get in free?”

The irony of the call hit me on a lot of levels. ...

More

Psst … Wanna rub shoulders with Cleveland’s culinary elite? There may never be another opportunity as intimate as tomorrow’s Taste America Dinner, part of a series of nationwide benefit dinners sponsored by The James Beard Foundation, to take place on Friday, Sept. 28.

Aimed at celebrating, preserving, and supporting heritage farmers, artisanal food producers, and the country’s finest chefs, Taste America dinners will be held simultaneously in Cleveland, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, L.A., and 14 other cities. In Cleveland, a portion of the proceeds goes to City Fresh, a non-profit organization devoted to building a just and sustainable local-foods distribution system for both urban and rural communities.

The six-course food-and-wine extravaganza begins at 6 p.m., at Sammy’s Metropolitan Ballroom, 925 Euclid Ave. (The view, from the top of the Huntington Building, is grand, and the historic space is lovely.) Tickets are available at the door, or by calling Megan Everitt, at 440-554-0670. The $175 outlay not only entitles diners to some fabulous eats, but also generous portions of celebrity hobnobbing.

Among the top toques who will be both cooking and putting in face time, count Michael Symon and Cory Barrett (Lola, Lolita), Jonathan Bennett (Moxie, Red), Dante Boccuzzi (the soon-to-open Dante), Brandt Evans and Susan Geul (Blue Canyon Kitchen), and Jonathan Sawyer (the soon-to-open Bar Cento and, eventually, Gastropub). Sawyer, incidentally, will be creating a dish he calls the Lake Erie Local, featuring prawns from an Elyria aquafarm, and fresh lake walleye.

Also on hand, as hosts and guests of honor, will be two local James Beard Award winning writers: Cleveland Hts. author, chef, and food authority Michael Ruhlman, and yours truly. --- Elaine T. Cicora

It’s unfair. Evil, even. The moment I discover an amazing new Cleveland spot, I’m belatedly, casually, told that – oh by the way -- we’re closing in two months. The torture!

Such is the case with Peking Gourmet, an addictive, amazing Chinese restaurant located in the basement of a Cedar Road strip mall, across from Whole Foods in South Euclid. Developers are planning on tearing the entire strip mall down in two months, and the shop's owners can’t afford the new rent. This is one hurts -- especially for non-meat eaters like me.

Whereas most Chinese menus have only four or five vegetarian options, Peking Gourmet has an entire six-page menu dedicated solely to vegetarians. They even give it a nice name: “Zen vegetarian cuisine.” (A separate menu is available for carnivores). Their hot and sour soup is tangy with meaty bites of tofu and spongy shitake mushrooms, their Zen “chicken” is crunchy and doused in a sweet, tangy orange peel sauce. Their vegan dark chocolate cheesecake is creamy and cold and chocolate-y and tastes like it has about, oh 5000, calories – though it actuality it contains only 180.

My heart aches at this imminent loss. -- Rebecca Meiser

Gus Garcia-Roberts: Our Mexican.

The bosses issued this press release today. Pretty exciting stuff.

CLEVELAND, Ohio, Sept. 27, 2007 – Further establishing itself as northeast Ohio’s premiere alternative weekly, and sending a clear message that it is committed to workplace diversity, Scene proudly announced today that it hired a Mexican guy.

At the regular staff meeting in the paper’s downtown newsroom, Scene’s editorial staff officially welcomed 25-year-old Gus Garcia-Roberts to its ranks. “Today is a red-letter day,” Managing Editor Joe Tone tearfully told the staff, while taking his turn at the makeshift piñata hanging in the newsroom. “I’d like to thank Gus for checking ‘Hispanic’ on his HR forms. Had he not been so thorough, we would have continued under the impression he was a kinda creepy engineering major, like the Gus I knew in college.”

In an interview after the meeting, Tone said the paper “definitely didn’t hire Gus because he’s a Mexican.”

“But we totally would have,” he added. “We just didn’t know he was Mexican. I swear to God.”

The paper also didn’t know it was supposed celebrate and publicize the hiring of minorities, until the Cleveland Plain Dealer ran a front-page story and picture announcing the hiring of a black managing editor. The paper had been under fire for the ethnic and racial makeup of its newsroom, which is mostly white, except for a few really white people.

Scene later came under fire itself, when a reader wrote a letter to the editor, accusing the paper of having a “staff [that] actually prides itself -- to the point of drunken, public bragging -- on its total lack of diversity.”

“So when we found out Gus’s dad was Mexican, we were like, ‘Sweet!’” Tone said. “To think, we actually interviewed this guy, read his stories. Hell, I almost called one of his references! And all we had to do was look at his last name!”

Originally, Tone said, the editors hired Garcia-Roberts because they thought he “might not suck,” and believed he might be “pretty fun to get drunk with, and whatnot.” The paper did hope Garcia-Roberts would add to the staff’s diversity, not because he was Mexican, but because he came from New York. “We don’t hire many assholes,” Tone said.

The arrival of Garcia-Roberts, a staff writer, is already paying dividends for Scene’s readers. While previous editors failed to fully capitalize on his Mexican-ness, dispatching him to cover such un-diverse topics as midget wrestling, Scene allowed Garcia-Roberts to put his heritage to work, encouraging him to “follow his Hispanic heart,” Tone said. The young writer’s first story for the paper, published this week, is about a historic Ohio wheel company whose shiny rims are now popular among low-rider enthusiasts in California.

“Never in a million years did I think we would be so lucky to get the word vato into the pages of this newspaper,” Tone told the staff, as they scrambled to pick up Double Bubbles and Yum-Yums from the newsroom floor. “Today, we did.”

The Greeks had Plato, the French, Derrida -- but in Akron, we've got the Howie Chizek Show.

If you've never tuned into WNIR's Chizek, then you really should. The man and his callers are full of mirthful insight on everything from deer hunting to the Browns to Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad.

Since Ahmadinejad visited Columbia University on Monday, every news outlet from CNN to WCPN have offered up the same analysis of the "cruel and petty dictator," as Columbia U's president referred to him. They all agree: Ahmadinejad is an incendiary bigot.

But Howie Chizek and friends have a different spin on why the Iranian president has so much
trouble earning respect from the rest of the world. Yesterday, a caller pointed out that Ahmadinejad would be taken more seriously if he didn't look so damn dumpy. "The guy looks like any bum that just walked off the streets," said the caller.

Nevermind that Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier who claims that homosexuals don't exist in Iran and regards women as third class citizens. Chizek's caller claimed that if the dude just got a haircut and nice fitting suit, we'd all realize that the guy might actually have something important to say. And Chizek didn't disagree.

And this is why Howie Chizek's show is the number-one rated talk show in Akron.
Tune into 100.1 FM every weekday from 10 a.m. to noon to hear more genius cultural analysis just like this. -- Denise Grollmus

Plain Dealer scribe Michael Heaton didn’t take as long as he thought to whittle thousands of stories he’d written in 25 years to the 40 tales he chose for his book, Truth and Justice for Fun and Profit: Collected Reporting. He simply thought of one of his fave wordsmiths. “You write all these stories every year, and you know when you have a Hemingway,” says Heaton, a.k.a. the Minister of Culture. “It wasn’t as difficult as you’d think.”

To launch the 298-page read, Heaton – whose sister is Patricia the TV star -- schmoozed with about 100 media types over beer and wine on Tuesday night at Crop in the Warehouse District. Luminaries included WMJI radio jock John Lanigan, Plain Dealer columnist Phillip Morris, and Gray & Co. owner David Gray, who published the book. Screenwriter Joe Esterhasz (“Basic Instinct,” “Telling Lies in America”) also turned out, presumably because he wrote the book’s forward. “Michael Heaton is one whiz-bang lollapalooza of a talented writer,” says Esterhasz. “He is always fun to read, but this book is a celebration of the human spirit. It sings and zings!”

The zingers range from stories about a Flat Iron barmaid with big hair to the 2006 death of longtime sportscaster Casey Coleman to the differences between living on Cleveland’s east and west sides. “On the East Side, people play polo. On the West Side, they play pool,” Heaton wrote in May of 1993. “The East Side is pricy nouvelle cuisine. The West Side is Ponderosa All-You-Can-Eat $9.95.”

Read for yourself in this sample chapter. “There are stories of adventure, and there are stories of laughter,” says Heaton. “There’s war and art and sports. These are stories that will grab people.” -- Cris Glaser

The last time Municipal Waste played town, the young lads that sing “Headbanger Face Rip” (see above) had an after-party at Now That’s Class (11213 Detroit Ave., 216-221-8576). This time around, the crossover revivalists are just playing the club -- no need to follow them across town if you want to tips a few brews with the nation’s leading party-thrash band, who, it turns out are huge fans of C-Town.

“The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame sucks balls,” frontman Tony Foresta told Scene last time. “But the people there are cool.”

This time, he went into some detail:

Who do you know?
[Cheap Tragedies frontman and scene veteran] Tony Erba, he’s a good friend. He’s an evil genius. [Now That’s Class co-owner] John Bomba, we stayed at his house and partied. Jim Konya, from Schnauzer. He’s in Nunslaughter too, and a million other sweet-ass bands. There’s some killer people that live in Cleveland. Every time we go there, it’s crazy. And the Parma kids are maniacs.

How’d the new album shape up?

I like it better. I think it’s more aggressive, and the songwriting’s better.

[Noted metalcore mixologist] Zeuss produced it - that seems like a weird match.
He’s an old-school thrash dude. He was really into it. You could just tell in his eyes: He was really stoked to work with us. That’s a great thing to have. He knew what we wanted, he didn’t try to push his thing onto us. It sounds like a Waste album, but a little bit of a bigger sound.

Do you think that the thrash revival is going to last?
I think in the next five years, it’s gonna get way better. Already, there are so many thrash bands with young kids popping up. It’s getting out of control. You can see it with the kids - more kids are running around in denim with Slayer patches on it. They don’t want to listen to crappy new bands that were inspired by other crappy bands. Kids are like, ‘Damn, I want to listen to the old shit. This is good.’

Why do you think people are suddenly responding to thrash?
The aggression, I think. There’s no bullshitting around. Just bam, bam, BAM. It gets to the point and gets the hell out of there. A lot of people have short attention spans now. No three-minute guitar solos. Just get in, get out. - D.X. Ferris

Oh dear. First Cleveland area school children are being told to hide their cell phones. Now, if things keep up, they’re going to have to keep their iced, vanilla-sprinkle cupcakes locked up, too.
Nationally, school administrators are declaring cupcakes to be “deadly weapons” and banning school children from bringing them into the classroom on account of them being, well, delicious. And children, as we work-obsessed, taskmaster adults know, shouldn’t be allowed to have any fun. (Also, there’s that whole ridiculous side issue about the detriments of empty calories and sugar and such. Pure rubbish, we say).

Kimberly Martin, the owner of Main Street Cupcakes, a Hudson bakery, recently featured in USA Today as one of the best cupcake shops in the country, is perplexed by all this vitriol toward the snack: “What will be next? What else will they attack?”

In the meantime, go to Main Street Cupcakes and totally get her wedding day white cupcake, with almond and vanilla butter cream. To die for. -- Rebecca Meiser

Skeletonwitch guitarist Scott "Scunty" Hedrick has a journalism degree, so the Scene music department is letting him hype his band. Trust us: Everything he says about his squad of hyrbid death-thrash soldiers is true; no need to call his objectivity into question.

Band: Skeletonwitch
Web: www.myspace.com/skeletonwitch
Hometown: Athens, Ohio
Sounds like: "Immortal beating the shit out of Metallica at a keg party."
Recommend for fans of: "Thrash Metal, Garbage-Can Metal, Black Metal, What's-It Metal, and Speed and Heavy Metal."
Fun fact: "Skeletonwitch resided in Cleveland for a year and got our ass handed to us at the Cleveland scene awards. It probably didn't help that we didn't even vote for ourselves."
Playing Where/When: Sunday September 30 at Now That's Class (11213 Detroit Ave.216-221-8576). With Municipal Waste and Toxic Holocaust.
Why you need to see them: "Because you know you love to get drunk every night, and Now That's Class has a great selection of beers. Oh yeah: It's also going to be the most thrash-tastic night of metal in quite some time!" -- Scott "Scunty" Hedrick, guitar