How Cleveland Made Me Stop Listening to People

Cleveland, even when it was the cold, grimy, and depressing Cleveland of perception, was my type of place.

I had heard it all over the years, and in 2017, my desire to live the hype firsthand reached the point of action.

Through a fortunate quirk of geography, even though I lived two states away, The Mistake on the Lake was a mere four-hour drive from home base. One simple highway, hugging the aquatic border between Canada and the US, would take me to the (un)promised land.

So I cued the standard storyline.

Cleveland rose to prominence as a port city, thriving where the Cuyahoga River meets Lake Erie. A series of canals—followed by the railroad—made the Forest City a natural center of manufacturing. A magnet for Europeans and African American migrants from the South, by 1920, Cleveland was the fifth-largest city in the US, trailing only New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit.

Then, some time around 1960, came reality, also known as population hemorrhage.

Modern-day Cleveland has 40 percent of its peak population, leaving—according to the oft-told tale—only lake-effect snow, abandoned factories, and crime.

For decades, the national conversation surrounding The Land centered around a few high-profile items:

• The burning of the Cuyahoga River in 1969, an unmistakable sign of widespread pollution in industrial centers like Cleveland.
• The disastrous 1986 Balloonfest, in which an attempt to set the world record for mass balloon release (about 1.5 million balloons) resulted in nothing but more mockery.
• The suboptimal performance of its professional sports teams, even inspiring a fictionalized version of one of them (the real-life version of which still hasn’t won a World Series since 1948).

 

Visiting athletes, like Joakim Noah, were known to take ruthless digs at C-Town.

But having moved to the much-maligned upstate New York a few years prior, I was unfazed. In fact, I was galvanized.

To answer Mr. Noah’s question, yes, people do vacation in Cleveland. I know, because as mentioned, that was the destination of our 2017 family getaway. We could have gone to New York City, Toronto, or Washington, DC, but I wanted to go somewhere interesting, somewhere that would compel me to learn its story.

But much to my chagrin, the story I would end up learning was…happy.

The place, after all, had birthed arguably the best hospital system in the country, also known as Cleveland Clinic, the region’s largest employer.

And despite tough times, the original home of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company still knew how to do business, explaining why Fortune 500 companies like Progressive, Sherwin-Williams, Parker-Hannifin, and KeyCorp (KeyBank) were going strong.

In the face of an overemphasis on population loss, the metropolitan area still boasted 2.1 million residents, and the combined statistical area that extended south and west brought that number to 3.7 million, good for number 17 in the US—between Minneapolis and Denver.

The Rock and Roll Capital of the World was home to the waterfront Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, designed by I.M. Pei, the same dude who designed the Louvre Pyramid.

It was also home to the Cleveland Museum of Art, one of the wealthiest and most visited art museums in the US.

I drove past Playhouse Square, the largest performing arts district in the country after New York City’s Lincoln Center, and Severance Hall, home to one of the best orchestras in the world.

I noted the light (and heavy) rail system, aka The Rapid, and an extensive parks system surrounding the region. Somewhere around there was the resting place of hometown product James A. Garfield, victim of one of four presidential assassinations in American history.

As it was a family trip, we skipped that darkness in favor of another kind—sunset on the beach at Edgewater Park.

It was no wonder that elite creatives—the likes of Tracy Chapman (“Fast Car”), Toni Morrison (Beloved), Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Arsenio Hall, and Halle Berry—spent years in Cleveland. (Even famous boyfriends like Travis Kelce and the fictional Ted Mosby from How I Met Your Mother are from there.)

But, you might ask, how did the place look?

It was, of course, still the US, the undisputed capital of urban blight. Hiding among the smattering of empty buildings, however, was a palpable spirit, one fostered by those who ignore naysayers and in more recent times have been recognized by The Washington Post for coordinating the nation’s best example of downtown revitalization.

In other words, in 2017, I learned that the Cleveland of perception doesn’t actually exist.

And thanks to my vacation in The Mistake on the Lake, I learned one more thing: Don’t listen to anyone, unless they know what they’re talking about.