Proud of Cleveland (Cleveland)

Member Name: Cammij

Product:	Cleveland
Date:	17/12/01 (139 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Diverse, Whole spectrum of activities, Rock N roll HOF

Disadvantages: East Cleveland , Mayor Micheal White

I never thought of Cleveland as my home until today. And it is hard to stomach the idea that this universal joke of a city, the mistake on the lake (Erie) could be my beloved home but it is. And I am proud.

Cleveland is basically known for having the most polluted environment in Ameriica. Everyone seems to recall the Lake actually caught on fire in the 1960s and they seem to recall the torso murders, the serial killings in the 30s that drove the heroic Eliot Ness, the man who brought down Al Capone, to despondency and an early death due to frustration. Nowadays we have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a Hard Rock Cafe and not too much else. The big news in our city is the demise of TRW and LTV steel and the joblessness and decay.

So why am I so proud? Well today Cleveland totally got robbed, at least the 52 boys on their football team did. Some irrelevant mistake by the referees in their match cost Cleveland the game. So how did the Cleveland fans handle this outrage? Like the proud tough feisty men we are. Put it this way, the refs ran out of the stadium with a police escort while being pelted with bottles and batteries. The opposing team Jacksonville had to sprint out of the stadium one by one, running a gauntlet of flying debris, Thermos bottles, pieces of the stadium and bottles. It was great. We easily topped the Scottish and German Football hoodlums with our display of devotion to our team.

Sure the mayor and coach will be on TV telling us how dissappointed they are and the Jacksonville coach will bad mouth our city and say we have no class. But I am proud to say that no one is going to come into Cleveland and rob us and walk away. Let me tell you folks what kind of people are in Cleveland as the only person you probaly ever heard of was Ivan Demanjuk the Nazi camp guard who got blamed for being Ivan the Terrible. Cleveland was settled by people who were awarded land in Ohio after the British army burnt down their farms and
homes in Connecticut during the war we refer to as the War of 1812. These were tough people, survivors, and they came out to the West and built Cleveland. Nowadays it is just a bunch of blacks who came up from Mississippi during the early 1900s as all the whites moved out in the 1960s when they started desegregating the schools by busing. personally I live in Parma. That is the largest segregated city in America. There are just Italians, Germans, Irish and Russians here. It is adjacent to Cleveland but it is all white and Parma always makes national news with Cross burnings in lieu of a welcome wagon for minorities moving into Parma. We are a neat little town, where we have an entire street where you can only tell what the businesses are if you read Serb or Ukrainian. We have the nicest Orthodoxy churches in America in Parma (it used to be we would go to the church that the wedding in the Robert DeNiro film "Deerslayer" took place in but now it is not safe for us to go into that neighborhood just as it is not safe for them to come into Parma. Parma is all ethnic like, with each of the ethnic groups having their clubs and restaurants, there is even a German Speaking Masonic lodge and one of the best Irish dancing troupes in America.

Cleveland used to be a proud port and the largest city in Ohio but now Columbus is bigger as all the gay people in America are moving there (that is true). We still have a fine college, John Carroll University, a bustling night life in the rehabilitated Industrial flats area where you can buy overpriced drinks amongst pretentious yuppies, but Clevelands top attractions are our totally kick ass aquarium with all sorts of swimmy sea things in it and our Science and Industry museum. We have a good theater scene, top notch music venues like the Odeon, good artsy cinemas and the biggest and best "Old World" style market in America where 500,000 square feet of market space is filled by sellers of good old fashio
ned farm raised produce, Amish cheese and home made Slovenian meats.

Cleveland won't even be a biggest tourist destination or a mecca for conventions. We just have too bad of a reputation and stigma. Most people just can't think of any reason to come here and they are right. We have a graet boutique laden Mall downtown and a whole street full of IRA oriented pubs where a person can drink their Guiness listen to the Chieftains and donate money to the nationalist paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland if that is your thing. One pub even openly advertises their monthly support meetings for the political arm of the Continuiancy IRA. Seems odd that there is also a British Consulate downtown.

Cleveland is not a nice city but it is my city. It is where I work and where I play, where I stay and where I pray (St Sergius Russian Orthodoxy Church incase you wondered). We probaly deserve our reputation as a town full of heathen steelworkers, railroaders and welders drinking draft beer in a dingy pub, watching our beloved Cleveland Indians and Cleveland Browns play. We are real me, tough guys that make our kids play football not your football but the sport where kids routinely get paralyzed and killed and otherwise maimed for life. We are only behind Boston as having the highest per capita concentration of Purple Heart, Silver Star and Congressional Medal of Honor winners. As a town we may not be rich, we may not be sophisticated, and we might not have the best educations but we know who we are and we like what we are and do not hide what we are all about.

I can't advise anyone to come here on Holiday (if you are a hot woman and come here on holiday come down to a pub called Fagans in the flats and look for a big beefy boy with tattoos across his knuckles and a GRed Helly Hansen Ski jacket because he is really good in bed)but Cleveland would be a good place to come for a co-op or perhaps a semester of college if you want a feel of the
real middle America. We are near great Amusement Parks, A Sea World, Skiing, boating, fantastic fishing (Lake Perch). We have a more diverse population than any city in America (we actually had serb vs croat violence here in 1994) we have Gypsies, and Letts and Hungarian communities and it overall is a nice and interesting place to be. Just for the record Cleveland does belong to the Hells Angels if you are a biker so do not fly any other colors here.

If you visit Cleveland you may not enjoy it, but not all travel is a holiday but all travel is a journey of the mind and soul and Cleveland will be interesting in that regard. And if you do come looking for that guy in the red jacket at fagans and want to buy him a drink he drinks Killians Red.

Summary: