I took a quick trip to Cleveland this weekend, to see a few old friends and headline a book reading. The trip was over before it started, it felt like. Anyway, let me rush through the usual summary.
Reason one for the visit was that my company gives us Juneteenth off, which was a Thursday. So I added the 20th and made it a nice four-day weekend. I feel some need to take more short trips like this between my longer journeys, so this looked like a good spot to do it.
The big reason for the trip was John Sheppard moved to Ohio recently, and just bought a house and got settled in near where he spent his childhood. I haven’t seen him since he retired, and wanted to check out his new place. The other big reason was that I haven’t seen Michael Stutz in a long time, and I wanted to see his record store and his house. Also, I twisted his arm a bit and the three of us set up a book reading at the store.
The trip out was easy enough. I booked a direct flight from SFO to CLE, and left at 9 in the morning. It was a bit clogged getting to the airport at rush hour, and I had to jump over to terminal 2 to get through security fast, then jog back to terminal 3. Not a major problem, though. It was about four and a half hours in the air, which I mostly spent messing around on my laptop. It was raining and thundering heavily in Cleveland all day, and while en route, there was argument over if we’d be coming in early or late, but we landed a bit early. John picked me up and we headed over to his place.
I haven’t spent time in Ohio probably since 1999. I stayed in Berea a few days on my moving trip east from Seattle to New York, at Michael’s old place. Also had a funeral later that same year in Cincinnati, and maybe an airport layover here or there. But I’ve met a lot of people in Ohio online since then. I didn’t really have a strong feel for what it would be like, especially because Ohio has become a bit of a punchline in recent years, but has also been going through a lot of upheaval. I wanted some face time with a few people, but I also just wanted to see what things were like these days.
Me and John stopped at his place to drop off luggage, and he’s got a nice setup, a 3br/1ba on a quiet cul-de-sac, basement, yard, detached garage in the back. He just moved in, so the furniture is minimal and he’s just started settling into the place. It’s got a big upstairs with a low ceiling that’s completely empty, but will make an excellent writing cave in the future. He set me up in the Ohio Room, this monument to Ohio sports teams that’s borderline disturbing and hilarious, with a neon OHIO sign on the wall, bright red Ohio State bedding, and hanging flags for the Tribe, the Browns, and the Cavs.
We headed out to Angelo’s in Lakewood to split a pizza, then drove out to Edgewater Park to see the lake and take the requisite picture in front of the big Cleveland sign. Also stopped at a giant grocery to get some supplies, and wandered around a bit before heading back to the house for a few hours of talk that evening.
Friday morning, we got up and running, then headed over to see Bailey and son over in Lakewood. It’s always interesting to meet up with someone who’s been a friend online for like a decade who I’ve never seen face-to-face. Social media’s created this odd parallel universe where you can talk to people every day but not really “know” them – or do you? Anyway, it was cool to chat for a few hours and see the neighborhood where she now lives, and the weather on Friday morning was not bad at all for hanging out outside.
For lunch, we headed over to Canary’s, which was a family restaurant. John was sure the place used to be a Pizza Hut way back when, stripped down to the studs and redone as a diner. It was the type of place with the paper mats advertising local businesses in Comic Sans, cleaning agencies and painting services and cash-for-gold shops. Lots of old folks in the booths, and we got giant menus with 167 items in them. I got pierogis, and when I asked if it came with a vegetable, the waitress said “it has onions on it.” Good food, but a bowl of cheese soup and a dozen cheese pierogis was a bit much. John got an open-faced meatloaf sandwich that looked absolutely crippling. It reminded me of the many places I’d either end up in after a church service as a kid or during a late night with two or three other juvenile delinquents.
We spent the afternoon driving between malls. I don’t give a shit about mall stuff anymore, but it seemed like we had to check out one or two while I was in Ohio. We first went to Great Northern, which looked large but beaten and half-empty. We then went to SouthPark Mall, which is much larger and seemed to have more higher-end stores open. Neither mall was particularly busy on a Friday afternoon. I didn’t pay much attention to the exact layout or details, because I had bigger things to worry about that night.
After chilling out for a bit at home, we headed over to The Current Year, Michael’s record store. It’s in the same building in Parma as Rudy’s, a Polish bakery. The store is a great little space that’s crammed with a large variety of heavily curated albums, from rare records to yacht rock to psychedelic to mood music. There are lots of books (including mine) and collectibles and rarities all over the place. It’s the kind of place that simultaneously makes me wish I collected vinyl and had a turntable, and made me glad I didn’t, because I’d spend way too much money there and quickly form A Bad Habit.
Anyway, it was great catching up with Michael and his wife Marie. He has a small room for readings or bands, and two other themed side rooms for different music collections, plus several warehouse rooms filled to the brim with music and movies and things to be sold. I got all the gear set up and we ate some good Lebanese food Marie ordered, then got ready to roll.
Oh, gear for this trip: the Canon R10 for stills, with a Sigma 18-50; the DJI Pocket 3 for video; two DJI Mic2 wireless mics; and those were fed to a Zoom H5. The store also had a PA system with mic, and both me and Michael were recording on phones.
We only had a couple people show for the reading, but that was expected. This was mostly about recording and hanging out. Michael opened and read some haiku, a bit from Circuits of the Wind, and some of a newer thing he’s working on about Treasure Island. John then read the first chapter from Small Town Punk. And then I read.
I don’t do readings. I don’t like public speaking, and I don’t exactly write the kind of zingers you can rattle off to an audience. The last time I read was in 2005, in Boston, and that was an event where I co-headlined and only read a single non-fiction story from my old book Dealer Wins. So headlining an event was a bit much. I wasn’t sure what to read, and didn’t know what the audience would be like. I don’t know how I did, and of course feel like I didn’t do well at all. But I think I survived. I read a chapter from my next book, Atmospheres 2, and the last chapter of Decision Paralysis. I also did a story from Vol. 13, plus some short bits from Book of Dreams and Ranch: the Musical. I think my total was about 45 minutes, which is probably 35 minutes longer than my longest reading ever.
Anyway, we hung out a bit more and I signed stuff, then we went outside in the night. It was strange to feel the cool air and look up at the Rudy’s sign with RUMORED TO EXIST on it. There’s something about the midwestern night in the summer that’s an immediate time machine for me, and being out after the reading in the darkness reminded me of that.
Saturday: me and John went downtown, which was almost empty, and started at the Science Center. My main goal was to see the Apollo capsule they had there, which is the one from Skylab 3. We also hung out and took a guided tour of the Mather, a 600-some foot long century-old freighter. And we wandered around the area by the stadium and the Hard Rock. Later we went further downtown to see the Arcade, a totally empty and Shining-looking shopping center, and Tower City Center and Terminal Tower. We also poked in the library downtown.
I think my general feel for Cleveland was that it reminded me of Milwaukee with the Wisconsin removed, or maybe the suburbs of Chicago without the Chicago. I liked that, the way it had lots of varying food and good infrastructure, without a lot of traffic. There were the pockets of rust belt abandonment, but there were also some pretty well-restored areas downtown, and clean suburbs that seemed pretty walkable.
But… we picked a bad weekend for walking, because it was insanely hot out, maybe the mid-90s and humid as hell. We got home and I tried to take a quick 20-minute nap before dinner. The second I passed out, the power went, taking the AC with it. That rolling blackout/brownout thing kept going as more and more people put their air on high. I’ve been to some fairly hot countries in recent years, but the sweltering midwest summers are definitely a flashback for me, back to the days when you searched the subdivision for a buddy with a pool.
We went over to Michael and Marie’s place for dinner, and they grilled hamburgers on the patio as we talked forever. Michael gave us a full tour of the upstairs of the house, which is amazing. I can’t do justice to it with a full explanation, but this was a heavy early-60s vibe, a ranch belonging to a former NASA scientist, and it’s carefully laid out from stem to stern with a collection of furniture, appliances, and collectibles that perfectly encapsulate the space age.
After dinner, Michael was ready to give us the full tour of Sunken Studios, his basement lair which is a tribute to several Tiki bars and beaches from the past. This was absolutely mind-blowing. Michael and Marie have spent decades collecting things from Tiki bars, visiting them across the country, documenting and researching and planning, then spent the last dozen years meticulously recreating it underneath his house. I really can’t do justice for the thing Michael has created, but I felt like I’d been stuck in the center of his brain, completely entangled in this world of beaches and Polynesian memories and relics. Absolutely amazing.
Sunday was pretty sedate, and a travel day. Me and John wandered around a bit, and went to another family restaurant called Gene’s Place. It was in a strip mall, and after we headed to a boutique donut place called Peace, Love, and Little Donuts. John bought a dozen of the mini-donuts, and even though I can’t really do donuts anymore, I tried one and they were great.
Most of my luggage on the way out was books I left for Michael, so it was easy to pack up everything and head out. Trip back was a bit of a pain because of a bunch of dumb little things: someone taking up half my seat, charged twice for Wi-Fi that didn’t work, videos didn’t work in my seatback thing. Got back late and exhausted, and had to turn it around and get to work early Monday. But it was a good weekend, a good break, and I’ll have to get out there again soon. Not next, though. Big trip in August, and it’s definitely not Ohio. Stay tuned.
