Do Cleveland Like a Local
I grew up in Cleveland, and remain a huge fan of the various local sports teams, especially my beloved Cleveland Indians baseball team. I took my opportunity to see the Indians last week when they played the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards. Between innings I found myself waiting in a line for concessions with another guy decked out in full Indians gear, and like many members of the Cleveland diaspora, we found ourselves talking like old friends. I mentioned that when I left Cleveland in the mid-2000s there wasn’t much in town for a twenty-something to do. My fellow fan looked at me and just said “Well, not anymore!”
And he’s certainly right. Cleveland still has a reputation around the nation as the “mistake by the lake”, a frigid and rusting backwater left behind by the modern age. In recent years, however, the city has definitely experienced a renaissance, with a completely revamped downtown attracting young people to both live and work. There are many, many worse places to spend a fun weekend than Cleveland.
The first Cleveland tourist spot most people think of is the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. It’s certainly worth seeing: there is a very cool museum housed in a striking I.M. Pei building cantilevered over Lake Erie. But you won’t find many locals there, at least not ones who aren’t escorting an out of town visitor or two. Among other things the Rock Hall is simply out of the price range of your average Clevelander. If you want get the real Cleveland experience, it is a town full of well-kept secret spots where you can mingle with the locals.
West Side Market
This is probably the best spot to taste everything that Cleveland has to offer. This indoor market is full of dozens and dozens of vendors, where you can buy everything from pig hooves to pierogis. The building dates from around 1900, and many residents of the surrounding Ohio City neighborhood still buy their groceries here. Today the vendors reflect the diverse community, including tenants of Irish, German, Slovene, Italian, Hungarian, Greek, Polish, Russian, and Middle Eastern descent, among others. It’s become less of a secret in recent years, though, and was even named “America’s Best Food Lovers’ Market” by Food Network.
Edgewater Park
In Cleveland-based Comedian Mike Polk’s viral “Hastily-Made Cleveland Tourism Video”, among lines like “Cleveland leads the nation in drifters” and “Our economy is based on LeBron James”, the singer urges viewers to “Come and see our two buildings.” Maybe the best place to see the two buildings, along with at least a few others, is this park, which, as the name suggests, is right on the water. Lake Erie’s polluted reputation is at least partly deserved, but you don’t necessarily need to go swimming to have a good time. For a cookout on a nice summer day, you couldn’t do much better.
Lakewood
More than in a lot of cities, a lot of Cleveland’s daily life is in its dozens of independent suburbs, each with its own personality. Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights have been more established as fun areas to visit, but Lakewood has gained cachet over the past several years as a great place for younger people. I personally would recommend to our geekier readership a bar owned by a friend of mine, Side Quest, where you can play Munchkin while sipping a Butterbeer. In the same area there are locations of Melt, where the grilled cheese sandwich has finally been perfected after a million years of human evolution, and Barrio, which has some of the best and most creative tacos I’ve tasted.
Cruising Cleveland
Cleveland is a city defined by its location along Lake Erie. Locals define directions as towards the Lake or away from the Lake, your average day will feature icy wind and/or lake-effect snow, and during the cities industrial heyday it was via the lake that iron and coal would arrive in the harbor via massive ships and steel would leave. Today, you can cruise those same waters in the Goodtime III, which leaves from the dock next to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Any good Cleveland boat ride won’t just travel along the lake front, it will travel up the Cuyahoga River. This skinny river is so curvy that large ocean-going vessels, which still frequently attempt the passage, can barely make the turns. In fact, the name means “Crooked River”. There is still a certain industrial splendor of human achievement, but the reduction in recent years also means that the river is clean enough that it hasn’t caught on fire in decades. Yes, that was a real thing, but today it is limited to the realm of local legend (you can buy “Burning River Beer” if you want to participate in the tradition).
Feel Classy on University Circle
The University Circle area on the East Side of Cleveland is still the fine arts capital of the region. It’s hard to imagine today, but Cleveland was once the home of numerous rich industrial magnates, including the Rockefellers. The legacy of the Roaring 20s in Cleveland are its thriving cultural institutions that were endowed by the upper class of that era, many of which are located in this area. The Cleveland Orchestra is considered one of the “Big Five” symphony orchestras of the U.S., and the orchestra’s home at the ornate Severance Hall, a 1931 greek temple to music, is worth a visit in its own right. Just around the corner, the Cleveland Museum of Art will be heaven for more visually-oriented art lovers. The museum has works from basically every famous artist you can think of, including Picasso, Van Gogh, Dali, Rubens, Goya, Warhol, Pollock, and Botticelli are all represented in one of the most valuable art collections in the country. Many of the works are now displayed in a massive new modernist addition that opened in 2010.
Whether you’re a foodie, an art lover, or just like hanging out on the water, Cleveland will have something for you, at prices that won’t break your budget compared to many other American big cities.
