The Cleveland-set movie Welcome to Collinwood is about small-time criminals on a quest for a “Bellini” — a theft so lucrative that the crew with the brains and the guts to pull it off will be set for life. Of course, it doesn’t work out that way. Whether writer/directors Anthony and Joe Russo intended it as a metaphor for their hometown isn’t clear, but it could be. Cleveland has chased a lot of Bellinis over the years, mostly unimaginative tax-dollar-supported developments — new stadiums, a convention center, fancy streetscapes, a casino named Jack (seriously). None ever seem to deliver all the jobs and economic growth that were promised.
The Republican National Convention was another Bellini. But it worked! We beat out seven other cities, and OK, two were also in Ohio, but Dallas! Phoenix! And Vegas, baby! No one had ever chosen Cleveland over Vegas for anything. Suck it, Sin City!
And then the GOP primary process belched out a candidate so preternaturally divisive that there is genuine concern about rioting and bloodshed in the streets. It’s a turn of events that may once and for all claim the disputed title of “most Cleveland thing ever.”
The really weird thing, though, is that Cleveland, for once, doesn’t seem resigned to yet another disappointment. The Cavaliers recently won the NBA championship in historic and dramatic fashion, which, as you may have heard on ESPN a few thousand times, ended a 52-year drought. An estimated 1.3 million people jammed into downtown for the parade, and not a single car was overturned or set ablaze. It was a moment of pure joy, arguably unrivaled in Cleveland history. And then the Indians started winning, and kept winning, and everyone was like, What is this feeling? Is this that optimism thing other cities are always going on about? It’s … kinda nice.
For once, the nickname “Believeland” does not prompt eye rolls.
These are the main things you’ll hear about in the national media’s obligatory reports on the host city. You’ll also hear the word “renaissance” a lot, almost always referring to the restaurant scene and the new downtown hotels and mixed-use developments. You’ll see shots of the newly redesigned Public Square, which does look pretty damn good. And maybe the Crayola-colored animal sculptures scattered around for, well, some reason. At least one of every three reports will include the phrase “Cleveland rocks.”
You might hear a mention of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old gunned down in a park by a Cleveland cop in 2014. It’s “timely” again — a local judge recently used Tamir’s death as a cautionary tale for two boys caught playing with BB guns outside. The suggestion that Tamir was culpable in his own death is as common as that one photograph that the media have of him and repost with every new mention of his name. The judge probably didn’t mean anything by it, but many vehemently insist that the little thug had it coming. (Never mind that the cop had been dismissed from another police department for being “weepy” and untrainable.) Cleveland.com, online home of the daily Plain Dealer and notorious haven for anonymous trolls, stopped allowing comments under stories about Tamir, as they always devolved into a “cesspool” of racism and hate.
You probably won’t learn that preparing for the GOP convention has delayed progress on the consent decree that the city had to sign with the U.S. Justice Department in 2015 over police misconduct. Because the slaying of Tamir Rice wasn’t the first incident to raise serious questions about the Cleveland PD’s hiring and training practices. Consider the stats from a 2012 chase: 60 police cars, speeds of 125 m.p.h., 23 minutes, 137 bullets, two dead civilians with zero guns between them. An officer who fired 49 of those shots — including 15 while standing astride the hood of the by-then-halted Chevy — was charged but acquitted.
There’s little chance the national media will pick up on the shocking prevalence of lead poisoning in low-income communities — far worse than in Flint, Michigan. The crisis was decades in the making, and solutions might take that long as well, and that just doesn’t play well on TV.
Recovery from the mortgage foreclosure epidemic, which was ravaging neighborhoods in Cleveland long before the national media caught on, will be just as slow. It would be difficult to overstate the damage this inflicted on the city — economic, physical, psychological. Tens of thousands of residents were scattered; stable communities were depleted in mere months. After years of demolition, there were still more than 5,000 unsalvageable vacant houses in the county that needed to be torn down as of late last year. But it’s a safe bet that no one will ask Dan Gilbert, who owns the Cavs and leases the arena where the convention will take place, about accusations that his company, Quicken Loans, engaged in similar predatory lending practices. Or Trump about Trump University’s peddling foreclosures as a get-rich-quick scheme.
You probably won’t hear anything at all about one side effect of the forced migration, the underground “deconstruction business” of metal scrappers.
There are a lot of people and places you won’t hear about but should, the drivers of the real renaissance, hard-working dreamers who could’ve fled but didn’t, whose crazy ideas have bolstered old communities or spawned new ones. Like Mansfield Frazier, who operates a winery in Hough, one of those neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures. And Cindy Barber and Mark Leddy, proprietors of the Beachland Ballroom music venue, the heart of Collinwood. And Ramon Rivas, who is almost single-handedly building a comedy scene. And Lyz Bly and Rafeeq Washington, founders of Guide to Kulchur, a bookstore, ’zine workshop and “incubator for emerging and marginalized voices.” And Sean Watterson, Eric Williams and the late Sean Kilbane, co-owners of Happy Dog and Euclid Tavern, homey bars known for hot dogs, eclectic speakers series and performances by Cleveland Orchestra musicians.
To name just a few.
In his poem “Global Warming,” George Bilgere describes Clevelanders watching the news, all of it wearying, in a bar on a scorching summer day. The last verse seems especially meaningful right now: “So now I must pop the heavy hatchway / leading from my pressurized capsule / into a heat that is breaking records / in a dying city at the end of the world / where, despite everything / we’re all reasonably happy.”
This article appears in Jul 14-21, 2016.
