29.) There for a Moment - Cleveland

29th Stop.  I’m doing a lot of traveling this summer, so I’ve decided to share the moments, the places I found unique and special.  I’m calling them ‘There for a Moment’ because as I travel I’m not just experiencing a place, but I’m experiencing that place at that particular time.  If I went back two years later, both that place and myself would be different and I would see and experience it differently.  I want to share these experiences with others so that maybe they will be inspired to see a place they might never have thought would interest them.  Due to my travels I don’t always have instant access to internet, so some of these might be posted on top of each other, my apologies in advance. 

So I was going to skip Cleveland, but then I was talking to someone in Nova Scotia who was from there and he told me that it was only a couple more hours past Buffalo and it got me thinking.  I have never heard anything good about Cleveland and this is especially from people who live in Cleveland.  It’s just got a boring reputation, but I figured I would never know for sure unless I saw it for myself. 

I set up my third and final couch surfing with a girl there.  I set off driving through the downtown area, and my first impression was that this place was actually nice, stylish.  It had older style signs and billboards that made it look glitzy, there were flowers everywhere in concrete pots that looked like they were dancing, the skyscraper building looked like a big city.  This place looked pretty happening for a place that sucked according to EVERYONE.  Yes there was construction everywhere but surely that wasn’t it. 

Well, I drove through downtown aiming for a food place that a friend of mine told me was a must for the area, a must over everything to see as well.  I love him to death but I am never asking his advice on anything ever again!  It was a fast food chili place, Skyline Chili.  Let me reiterate that I don’t like fast food, I don’t eat fast food, and out of all the places to eat in a city there is no way that a fast food joint is going to be the absolute best thing that I have to do in a whole city.  Well, I decided to try it before I completely judged him for his recommendation.  So at this place there are really only two choices of food, chili on noodles or chili on a potato.  I decide to get chili on a baked potato with everything.  It was alright at best, I didn’t finish it which is saying a lot for a girl on a budget who eats everything or takes it with her. 

Afterward I drove over to my couchsurfing house, this girl lived in the suburbs in a more organic, hippy side of town.  She was incredibly nice and seemed to have already done and tried everything in life.  She told me some good spots to go to, she had to work for a few hours that night but afterward could grab a drink with me.  She wasn’t a fan of the downtown area at all, and said it would be a waste of my time going down there.  She had to admit that Cleveland had such a bad reputation at one point that about five years ago the city spent money to do a huge face lift to get people to think better of it and come into town.  She also told me about this haunted house a few blocks down where a man had done some absolutely awful things before he died. 

She left for work, I walked down to see the house.  For the most part it looked like any other house in that area, but it had a higher fence and there was a vibe about it that caused shivers down my back.  It was hot and humid with a heavy fog hanging in the air but there was something about that house that would have caused anyone walking down the street to look at it a second time even if they had no idea what it was.

I walked back to my car and decided to ignore her advice and start downtown, it hadn’t looked bad earlier but I figured it might not be her scene.  Well, I was wrong.  Here’s a good reason that no one likes Cleveland, first off it’s Cleveland and it’s $14 to park, yeah right, there is no way that’s going to happen.  And Saturday night ten o’clock there was me and maybe fifty other people in the downtown section, any of the sections, trust me I walked around that place for a while.  The theatre section, the little closed off road that became an open alley for restaurants and bars, over by the sports arena, down by the rock and roll hall of fame.  It was almost a ghost town Saturday night at the end of summer which means beginning of school, with far too expensive parking.  What is that Cleveland?!  I have been to towns no one has heard of with more life in it then that!

So wandered around taking pictures of buildings and statues.  Then I drove around for a while.  Then I went back to my couchsurfing house and walked the two blocks over to the main street, which had at least fifty people in one restaurant.  I went to a place called Spice, where she had told me the cocktails were a little pricey but that they were completely made daily with what was seasonally grown in their own garden.  I had something that was ginger, cucumber, tequila, and lime.  It was amazing!!!

I was chilling talking to the bartender when she texted me she got off of work.  She wandered over and we had another drink, they had run out of mine so I tried something else it wasn’t as good.  She got something that she said tasted like a flower it was beet and elder flower and something. 

The next day she took me to this breakfast place across town.  Where you order your taco based on a check list of what you want in it.  There were a couple places she said that had similar ideas but this one was especially good.  So I ordered two tacos for the road and got there French toast bowl.  That was probably the best French toast I have ever had in my life.  At first they set this small bowl in front of me and I kind of thought I was getting jipped for the price but it was amazing and I was full when I was done. 

At one point while we were eating she pointed across the street to a house there.  She said when she was a kid she used to live there.  That what was now a florist next to it used to be a penny candy store run by a man in a wheelchair.  She used to go over there all the time.  When the old man died, it was found out that he was a bookie.  The place sold and someone moved in to renovate to make it into a business, that when he started to break into the walls and floors he found money, lots of money.  He reported it and after an investigation they figured it must have been where the old man kept his money instead of a bank, that the guy who sold penny candy was actually a millionaire.  The man that had bought the house though, bought everything in it, so it actually became his.  So he’d become a millionaire by buying a house to tear it apart to try to make a business.

I didn’t go inside the Rock and Roll Hall of fame, I did get to see it but by the time I left I needed to make some time to get toward my friend in Maryland’s house.  Cleveland is misleading is the best way to put it.  There was some serious money put into the city to better it, and I think they did a great job, but they forgot that a city isn’t just about appearance it’s about people and what they like to do and what gets them out and about.  Driving in Cleveland can be the smoothest roads to the absolute worst.  The downtown area is nicely done but with no attraction to hang around, where the neighborhoods, the suburbs aren’t anything special yet hold the great restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and music venues.  Cleveland is the opposite of every city I’ve been in, where downtown is the sure spot for visitors, for a night out and fun, and the suburbs are the cheap alternative to commuting in.  Somehow Cleveland’s got its food, its music, and its home on the out skirts with the downtown only holding a pretty fa?ade.  That’s a weird problem, and if I hadn’t known someone in the city I would have said the same as everyone else that there was nothing there.