A week in the life
We found ourselves on 77 and drove until it ended, somewhere on the busy streets of Cleveland. It was going to be a warm summer week, and we glanced nervously at each other, wondering how we’d pass the time. We saw that 10 (!) different neighborhoods had organized a Garden Walk, so we strolled the front and backyards. picking up tips for our own little yard back home. We didn’t know there was a national park between Akron & Cleveland, but we cruised through to see a cool poetry installation by U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón.
Of course we hit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and were happy to see that some local bands were serenading visitors like us: Maura Rogers and the Bellows and Charity Evonna. Then we headed along the coast to hear reggae in Fairport Harbor, right on a lake that, I swear, looked as big as an ocean.
In fact, there was music everywhere: someone told us about Middle Bass Island just a few miles west of town that was putting on a family-friendly music festival. Closer to home in Ohio City we caught two eclectic Wednesday concerts: a Mexican electronic/Latin roots artist named Pahua and a week later, Haitian-Canadian musician Wesli, for free at a sweet open air street party. At the other end of the spectrum, the famous Cleveland Orchestra was playing Eastern European music led by a young female conductor from Ukraine. In fact, the whole city felt like a bustling mid-sized European capital with a schizophrenic identity complex. In a good way.
But there was more. We tasted Italian food and culture at Our Lady of Mount Carmel’s Italian Festival, we saw the work of 140 artists at the Cain Park Arts Festival, and we found ourselves back on that massive lakeshore doing yoga. And the place never sleeps: we danced to jazz & funk at the Akron Art Museum’s Downtown @ Dusk concert, then went shopping at the City Goods Night Market in Hingetown. Call us impressed AF, but we were basking in the summer heat and the bizarre thrill of non-stop non-mainstream culture. That interesting statue on the Mall that reaches to the sky haunted us all week. We’re def coming back, but first we’re going home to rest up.
–Thomas Mulready