How do you f--- that up?
I grew up in northeast Ohio and, after a few years in Europe, returned to live in downtown Cleveland and, later, in one of the gentrifying neighborhoods for a couple of years before finally leaving for good about a decade ago, so I think I have a pretty good perspective on why Cleveland isn't great.
First of all, you mention the lake. Ohh boy, let me tell you about the lake, and more specifically the Cuyahoga river. The lake has been and still is, pretty disgusting. When Cleveland was being built no forethought was given to wastewater treatment, and it was done as cheaply as possible. There are no discrete storm sewers, so whenever there is heavy rain all the surface runoff flows into the sanitary sewer system and overwhelms the wastewater treatment plants, The solution was to build a giant steel door in the cliffs on Lake Erie to pump raw sewage into the lake about 100 yards from the only usable beach space in the city. After heavy rain, the beach is unusable for days because it's literally filled with piss and shit. The river is even worse, it's lined with steel mills and chemical plants which polluted the river to the extent that it caught on fire multiple times in the 50s and 60s. There has been much done to remediate both of these issues, but, as I understand it, there is still a long way to go. There is a ton of potential east of the river along the lake for parks and other development, but it never gets off the ground because it currently holds a municipal airport that is used by the 3 millionaires who live in Cleveland for their private jets. The land on the river on the west side of the Cuyahoga, on hills overlooking the lake, is a very poorly maintained public housing project that was frequently featured on the TV show "COPS". Every other major city has learned that concentrated poverty is a horrible idea, but Cleveland, last time I checked, is still doing huge warehousing of its poor.
Secondly, it's the rust belt, so it's experienced a significant brain drain over the past 30-40 years. Economic opportunity was virtually non-existent, so the people that could left for bigger cities with more opportunities. Half of the people I meet in Chicago grew up in and around the Cleveland-Akron-Youngstown-Canton areas. I tried to return and make a difference after living abroad and found it entirely frustrating politically, economically and even socially. It's boring running into the same five people everywhere you go and all anyone can talk about is how shitty the Browns are.
That being said, my partner and I made a quick visit two summers ago on our way to the east coast and it seems some improvements have been made at Edgewater Beach and the Detroit-Shoreway and Ohio City neighborhoods, but it seems very much like white gentrification as opposed to any kind of equitable development. We are going back for a longer visit this summer to see her favorite band (tickets are about 1/5 of Chicago prices) and to catch a Guardians game (I am a die-hard Cleveland baseball fan) and am eager to see what has changed in the past ten years. I will always be rooting for Cleveland, the city and the baseball team, I just can't live there anymore.
Great explanation. All of this shit in the Rust Belt/ Midwest and northern Appalachia with former industrial regions is so depressing, but in a weird way it makes me love this place all the more. Being from Pittsburgh with all the fallout of our history causing health issues for my family, all my neighboring cities like Cleveland, Youngstown, Cincinnati, etc being deindustrialized and sharing these similar anxieties; it all makes ya feel this acute sense of being screwed over together.
It sucks there is less solidarity here than there was when the exploitation was at its most blatant, but damn if I don't love my hollowed out rust belt culture. Like its a polluted, aged, trending conservative, hopeless place, but its our polluted, aged, trending conservative, hopeless place. It also makes getting angry about capitalism easier when you can physically see the rot and abandonment of these places that gave everything to produce all that wealth and never benefited from it. They took and took and took, and left us with the destruction, the health-defects, and parents and grandparents with lingering disabilities or in my papap's case, dead.
Rovics is not from here iirc but he nails it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgZGFrwU7o4
nice summary! i was looking at google maps while reading this.... and noticed this absolutely absurd geographic carve-out called "Bratenahl" which appears to be just a section of coastal, mostly residential property that belongs to very rich people who don't want to be part of the cleveland tax base or something. it totally looks like "the place to loot" during a revolution.
Accurate. If your car cost less than 50k you will get pulled over if you try to drive through Bratenahl.
Thank you for sharing this! I have lived just about everywhere in the rustbelt and upper midwest but for Ohio and had just always heard the jokes without actually doing my own investigation. Detroit is pretty similar in terms of having a combined sewer overflow facility and absolutely no usable beach.
If you ever make it through Cleveland, you can take a fun little tour of US radicalism if you make the 45-minute drive down to Akron. In Akron you can visit the John Brown home and museum, JB worked a sheep ranch with his sons in Akron for quite a long time, and from there you can visit the spot where Sojourner Truth gave her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech and also the site of the first national convention of the Students for a Democratic Society. Pop on over 30 minutes to Kent and visit the May 4th memorial.
Totally agree after living there a couple years, I will say however that to its credit, Cleveland has the best punk bar in the country - Now That's Class
Holy shit, is that place still open? That's awesome. I went there a few times. There were also some good metal bars out that way on the Lakewood/Cleveland border. I spent most of my time at The Phantasy/ The Chamber/Symposium because I was a goth kid. I made out with a lot of girls in the bottom of that pirate ship.
Deindustrialization plus massive amounts of historical pollution.
But at least we're not Detroit!
We're not Detroit!
Actually, I think Detroit is slightly better on the pollution front, at least their river isn't known for catching on fire.
There’s actually a pretty fun little beach on belle isle in the Detroit river where tons of people swim. Clean enough as far as I know. Far cry from the filthy cuyahoga at least. Couldn’t speak to the water quality further downriver though. My guess is bad.
As our leaders work hard to erode all regulations, I wonder which city will be the first to have its river catch fire again. Will the Cuyahoga fight to regain its title? Or will a new contender take the stage?
Ah yes, another of our nation's fine rivers that used to occasionally catch fire. A strong contender for sure!
Lake Erie is still probably the most fucked up lake I've seen in the US. The beaches around Sandusky, where there's a big theme park, were loaded with dead fish. It confirmed miasma theory when I went there. Lakes Superior and Michigan can be lovely but Erie is a wasteland.
Dead fish washing up on the Lake Erie beaches used to only happen in the late winter/early spring when the lake thaws and all the fish that were frozen in the ice would float to shore. These die-offs are natural but less visible since hardly anyone goes to the beach in March, and scavenger wildlife just coming out of hibernation or migrating back north quickly snap up any carcasses as soon as they wash up.
But fish die-offs are starting to become more common in the summer due to algae blooms. Fertilizer runoff from farms in Indiana and western Ohio flows down the Maumee River into the lake, which causes algae growth to explode and remove any oxygen in the water and make it toxic. Fish end up dying en masse from suffocation or poisoning. Animals won't touch these carcasses so they just pile up on the shores and rot.
Since the algae thrives in warm water the problem gets worse and worse every year as the summers get hotter and the winters get warmer.
The local libs call it "trashtabula" because white people with trucks live there.
looks like I was saying it wrong this whole time but it's still fun the new way
Oof I am way closer to Ohio than I ever considered. :pain:
Completely wrong end of the state, Skyline is "Cincinnati" style chili, from, you know, Cincinnati.
In I wanna say Milwaukee, there is a large flat roof that passenger planes often pass where someone put up large block letters that say "WELCOME TO CLEVELAND" as a bit. It's been there for decades iirc.
Milwaukee is what Cleveland could be if it got rid of the rock and roll hall of fame
From Buffalo, my wife got a rope burn then we went to the beach and that night the burn turned green and started really stinking. The Gross Lakes.
