This week, CoolCleveland CULTURATI columnist Liz Maugans imagines what might happen if standup comic Amy Schumer showed up unannounced at a Cleveland arts meeting to deliver her own Top 10 List for improvements. And she nails it. Everyone knows we can do better.Next, CoolCleveland’s Thomas Mulready interviews BW professor Tom Sutton as he unpacks his new study on our county’s massive $11B Leisure & Hospitality (arts, sports, food and drink) industry. And the two raise some uncomfortable questions about the lack of support for the 90K jobs supported by our leisure & hospitality sector, while professional sports receive billions of our tax dollars without the same economic return. We should know better by now.
Let’s help ourselves, and our community this week by checking out Food Strong’s Cornucopia benefit to improve food access for everyone. The Urban Film Festival reveals Black life in a week of film. The Armenian Festival celebrates their unique culture. The Ride for Sylvia honors the memory of the Americorps volunteer working in Cleveland who was killed on her bike. The free Inkubator writers conference is one of the largest free writing festivals in the world. The LGBT Community Center holds a forum on recent state legislative attacks. Sometimes we need to rescue each other.
After 47 years of touring, dozens of recordings, and nine Grammys, the Emerson String Quartet gives one of their final concerts on Oberlin’s Artist Recital Series, Fri 9/22 at 7:30PM. The group formed while students at Juilliard, and features Cleveland native, violinist Phillip Setzer. The occasion brings a bit of sentiment.
They’ll open with Mendelssohn’s second quartet homage to Beethoven, continuing with Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Drink the Wild Ayre, the last piece they commissioned. The closer is one of Beethoven’s last works—his widely emotional six-movement opus 130 quartet. Tickets: $10-$35. Read more.
The standup comic Amy Schumer walks into a Cleveland Arts and Culture community meeting unregistered on Eventbrite and hopes there is an open bar with some arts and craft-themed cocktail. It is unlikely and the girl working the check-in with her lanyard on sits alone with merch buttons from the organization hosting. Amy is here on a recognizance mission preparing some materials for a schtick for her next tour.
In the first five minutes of this meeting, she has all the material she needs. The hosting staff are paraded out one by one as they each mumble the info from the PowerPoint verbatim, with typical asks like, donate money here, be a member of our team or updating the crowd about future snore meetings like this one…
The community is invited to the next Cuyahoga Arts & Culture Community Meeting on Wednesday, September 13 at 4PM at the Cleveland Public Library Louis Stokes Wing, 2nd Floor, Conference Room B, 325 Superior Avenue. Save a seat for Amy.Read more.
When the City Club held its first forum in 1912, it hosted the mayors of Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo. For its debut forum at its new Playhouse Square home Friday September 15, it’ll have two of the three: Cleveland Mayo Justin Bibb and Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval. It’s sold out but it’ll be livestreamed. Read more.
The good folks at BOP STOP are transforming the traditional jazz venue into a nightclub of doom, featuring life-size animatronic werewolves (with glowing eyes!), ghouls, boiling cauldrons, scary clowns, spiders, witches, skeletons, and some displays too frightening to mention. Cleveland’s favorite goth glam punk rockers Vanity Crash will host, with dancing to DJ Death, a costume contest and more, in part benefiting non-profit animal causes Tails From the City and Neighborhood Pets. Read more.
In The Land where culture is celebrated, you can see it in everything from food and art to music and sports. Join us in celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, September 15 through October 15, as there are plenty of ways you can enjoy the celebrations; from tasting the authentic flavors at Hispanic-owned eateries to attending one of the many events hosted this month.
Join in today at thisiscleveland.com/hispanicculture and check out the new Spanish-language edition of the Cleveland Official Insider Guide from Destination Cleveland for travel info and planning tools, it’s the go-to guide for sightseers to The Land. Read more.
Baldwin Wallace professor Dr. Thomas Sutton, Ph.D. discusses his recent report, The Economic Impact of the Leisure & Hospitality Sector in Cuyahoga County, with CoolCleveland’s Thomas Mulready.
They discuss the county’s huge $11B leisure & hospitality sector (food & drink, arts, sports) that supports 90K jobs, about 10-15% of our local economy. And they raise these issues: Has this sector fully recovered from the recent pandemic? How do we justify the billions of dollars of subsidies provided to professional sports facilities? Why there is a lack of support from the City of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County for such a major sector of the economy? Read more.
