New York Times Travel Section: 36 Hours in Cleveland

This is my favorite part:

"Clevelanders remain, by nature, a self-deprecating lot. But before long, calling their town hip, cosmopolitan - even splendid - won't sound so ironic."

Hurrah! I couldn't have said it better. Here is the story; I'm sorry they make you log in.

The New York Times > Travel > Escapes > 36 Hours: Cleveland

I would have included some other things that I consider more important, but I guess that's what this blog is for, isn't it?

So behind!

Aw, man, I am so behind on posting! I've been in New England for a cool and cloudy visit with my parents, family, and friends. And before that, there've been projects: buying furniture, working in the yard...and then getting ready to go away.

But the weather's beautiful here. Sunny, warm. Walking the dog in my neighborhood last night and then this morning, it's so peaceful. Things are in bloom, there are birds and bunnies. Friendly neighbors. It's good to be back!

One last post/therapy session for tonight

When I was in college in Connecticut, after having grown up in Connecticut, I spent a summer in San Francisco. While I was there, I was amazed by how just generally psyched the people there were. And I noticed that while people in Connecticut had an attitude of, "Well, this is where I am, I don't really like it, but, you know, I can't really go anywhere else," the people in SF, where it's sort of a novelty to find a native, were more like, "Hey! I'm here because I came here, and I wanted to come here, and wow! it's cool. I wait tables at a cafe and share an apartment with 5 other people, but here I am! Yahoo!"

I guess you could make a case that there is more inherently cool about SF than Connecticut, but to me, that didn't seem to explain it all.

I feel the same way about Cleveland and Austin, and I won't believe it comes entirely down to the weather. No one in Austin is from there (it seems)--and there's actually a movement to keep new people out (motivated, I think, mostly by transplants), to keep it small and retain its character. But the people there that I saw working in the airport in the middle of the night seemed to have that, "Hey! I came here because I wanted to be here, and now I'm doing my thing here at the airport at 12 am! Yahoo!" In contrast, I've noticed that when I tell (some) Clevelanders that I moved here from California, after the first wave of "Are you nuts?" there's sort of a wistful, "Yeah, I'd really like to go there to check it out, but I'm stuck here" thing. And I want to say, "Go! Visit! Move! You can do it! Have some faith in yourself! Have some confidence!"

But then maybe that brings me back to that last post about who am I to say something's not actually keeping people here against their will. Economics, for example. I don't know. I just want to help.

My friends who visited over the weekend were all amazed at what Cleveland had to offer. They felt there was a lot of potential here, just like I do. Maybe we just need to have an exchange program, where we bring in some people from other parts of the country who will appreciate Cleveland, and send some Clevelanders to Arizona and California so they can maybe get some notion that Cleveland's not so bad after all.

But then we'd get into the whole problem Austin's having, where as people move there, the cost of living goes up, hurting the people who lived there in the first place. Except maybe for the people who bought their homes in 1980 for, what, $70K that would then be worth $500K?

I don't know. I just want Cleveland to be all it can be!

I really am rambling now. Time for bed.

Third post tonight, this one on Cleveland's possible inferiority complex

For a while now, I've been noticing that while I (and others I've met both in person and online) feel that Cleveland has tons to offer, the rest of the country has ultra-low expectations of it (the image of burning river rather than plentiful streams in parks, for example), and many of the people who live here, well, they just refuse to appreciate what they have going for them.

Which brings me to another thing that's slowed me down with the posting (see previous two posts). I get frustrated with this attitude typified, I think, in one reaction to us almost breaking the snowfall record before we actually ended up breaking it (darn, I can't find the Plain Dealer column I'm referring to!). Anyway, the columnist was all, "we can't even win when we're competing with ourselves, how lame is that? Plus, who wants to win something like having the most snowfall? We can't even win something we don't want to win." Or something along those lines. And I was like, Geez, we just can't win with an attitude like that, can we?

So I did a search and found this article about Cleveland's inferiority complex:
Cleveland on the Couch

But then, recently, a native told me that there are people here who miss the yellow haze of pollution that used to hang over the city, because that meant there were jobs here. I was shocked that anyone could even think such a thing.

THEN, I started to get disgusted with myself and my attitude of, "Oh, you silly Clevelanders! What are you moaning about? I mean, *I* moved here from a more expensive part of the country, and *I* have job, and *I* think Cleveland's great!" I started to make myself sick, and I couldn't stand the thought of inflicting myself on anyone via the blog.

Another reason I haven't posted, besides being busy

Another reason I haven't posted in a while (other than being busy) is that for a few days in there, I was sort of over Cleveland, and I felt my enthusiasm, over the winter often bordering on hysteria, waning, and I found myself feeling a little disgusted by everything I saw. This started just before my trip to Austin, and for a few days, I was shocked that I could have ever wanted to leave Austin.

I have pretty much always felt about Cleveland (well, since I got here) that it has the potential to be this really cool place, a lot like Austin. A liberal haven in a possibly less liberal state, strong local culture and arts and music scene, things to do outdoors, ethnic and regional food variety, etc.

But I've had some thoughts about this. In fact maybe too many thougths for one post. Maybe here it will suffice to say that maybe Cleveland doesn't want to be Austin. (Have you ever heard the song by Dar Williams called "Southern California Wants to be Western New York"?) But Cleveland just seems so sad, and I can't help trying to find ways to help it be happier. When I arrived in the Austin airport in the middle of the night, I noticed that the people working in the airport looked so happy. Is this only a product of the weather? I just don't think so.

Where have I been?

Well. Where haven't I been?

No, really. I went to Austin for a long weekend. Austin, where I haven't been since I moved from there almost 3 years ago. It was so good to see friends (and friends' babies!) and see the city where I spent 8 1/2 sometimes intense and formative years. I ate more than is morally defensible, and on the last day it was like, "Ok. We'll go now to get a barbecue sandwich; then we can leave for the airport, and on the way we'll stop at Taco Cabana for tacos to eat on the plane!"

It was so lovely to be in a city where I know so much about what to do and where to go. Restaurants? libraries? books? hiking? swimming? views? zoo? friends? holistic doctors? I know where to find it. Not the case here (yet), never the case in California, and no longer the case in Connecticut.

I got to see friends from massage school, library school, and work, and it was awesome.

Then, this past weekend, two other library school friends came here to Cleveland with their S.O.'s. We did lots of fun stuff that I hope I can get around to blogging about, and they seemed to come away with a feeling that Cleveland is pretty cool and has a lot to offer.