On a recent rainy, gloomy Saturday, I had to get out, but a walk on the Towpath wasn’t going to work. The new SPACES gallery just opened in the Hingetown District in January, and I was excited to see Esther Teichmann’s Heavy the Sea exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Transformer Station. So my husband and I got in the car and drove, but I quickly discovered that I had to be open to possibility.
The gloomy day became brighter when we got off track. Paul suggested we go to the West Side Market too. Good idea! We parked the car by St. Emeric’s Hungarian Catholic Church, which my husband’s family attended for generations, and pulled our hoods over our heads. Our path took us right past the Ohio City Urban Farm, where we stopped to envision how it will look when it’s green with vegetables, our fingers gripping the metal fence, faces full of gladness that this garden is happening in our city.
We turned around, headed for the West Side Market, and there we saw it — the sign. Brewery tours every hour at the Market Garden Brewery’s young production facility (it opened in 2016). The next tour was in ten minutes. The space inside is touristy, with a place set aside for photos and six packs of beer for sale. The wood is beautiful, the high ceilings exhilarating, and our tour director was fun. She knew how to tell us about beer, history, and how much Brad Pitts likes Market Garden beer.
We sipped Prosperity beer while fingering hops and malt and tasting the nuttiness of the raw product, including Pilsner malt, the base of every beer. We sipped Progress pilsner while getting acquainted with the brewery cat Trouble, who takes care of any mice. We admired the wood at the bar from a church that burned while drinking Citramax and Midnight vorlauf. We learned that Andy the brewmaster used to be at Great Lakes and likes to experiment and collaborate in his lab. The champagne bottling line requires four to five workers. We drank Scotch ale, which is not hoppy but smooth while looking at rows of steel. Market Garden produces 80,000-100,000 barrels of beer each year, half of what Great Lakes brews. And now when we pick up a six-pack of Citramax at Giant Eagle, we have some context.
As you can see, we got off track. It was 2pm and the galleries were only open until 5. We sent off some pictures to our daughter Allison, who lives in the Warehouse District with son-in-law Alex, and Allison texted, “We’ll meet you at the market.” We were still on track with our plan but I saw how it would go. We began filling up our bags with fruits and vegetables in the outside rows at the market, sharing memories of how we’d drive up from Kent when we were still in college, making sure the strawberries hadn’t already started to brown and that the avocados weren’t too soft and that the kale was crisp.
Inside, we walked quickly past the whole fish and out into the great hall of our beautiful landmark that does quite a bit of business on a Saturday afternoon. I don’t mind being jostled while checking out the pastas, herbs, cheeses, sausages, breads and pastries. Yum. It’s a big candy store of foods and faces from all over the world, a melting pot of humanity.
Lunchtime, and more beer — Nanobrew. What happened to the galleries? The four of us drank beer and noshed at another favorite spot that celebrates brick and open spaces and bicycles and local beer, not just their own beers, but Thirsty Dog and Platform and Great Lakes and others. There’s lots of choices, lots of tasting to do, and tater tots.
I love the feeling of the spot. Did you know the City of Ohio was founded in 1818 and was originally part of Brooklyn Township? Just two days before the City of Cleveland was incorporated, the City of Ohio became its own independent city, on March 3, 1836. At that time, the City of Ohio had 2.000 citizens and Cleveland had 6,000 and they were fierce economic competitors. In 1836 Ohio City residents fought to prevent the use of Cleveland’s Columbus Street Bridge because commercial traffic to Ohio City was disrupted by it. The cool thing about everything we did that afternoon is that was against a historical backdrop.
Four pm came fast upon us. We had half an hour in SPACES’ new environs and felt the lightness and openness and the ability to really see the art. We met a woman with a dog. We hurried through the exhibits, trying to soak in what the artists were trying to do and figure out whether they accomplished what they set out to do. I am particularly impressed by how SPACES is encouraging people to use art as therapy during Art Therapy Thursdays and FamilySPACES. Current exhibits include the art of Yoko Inoue, the Vault, and the particularly engaging The First 100+ Days, which shows how artists respond to Trump’s immigration policy. SPACES showcases musicians and puts on events like the upcoming Engage! Cleveland’s 2017 Spring Mix happening at SPACES and Bop Stop at the Music Settlement on Thu 5/25 @ 6-9pm.
By the time we arrived at Transformer Station, it was closed. Transformer Station was getting ready for its next show — THEM!, which runs through Sun 8/ 13. THEM! takes its title from the 1954 science fiction film THEM! It features photographers who are musicians and who express their creative genius through photos, video, and music. Hours are Wednesday 11-5, Thursday 11-8, Friday thru Sunday 11-5. Don’t get distracted by the breweries — go there first. It’s what I plan to do!
Sometimes we just have to let a day unfold as it was meant to be, without expectations. Those days are magical and lovely, gifts from the universe. And there’s so much to do and too little time to do it, in Cleveland town.
Cool Cleveland contributor Claudia Taller wrote about Cleveland and the North Coast in her non-fiction book Ohio’s Lake Erie Wineries and her novel Daffodils and Fireflies. Find out more at claudiajtaller.com/.
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