This blog, Pete’s Big Adventure and formerly Peewees Big Adventure, is dedicated to my car-trip visits to our National Parks and National Treasures. Over the last three years I’ve traveled across North America to see our parks, attractions and landforms of our Great Plains, Great Basin and Pacific Coast, Florida, Maine and the Maritimes and most recently, to see Alaska via the Alcan. At the moment (February 5, 2016), I’m not in my jitney driving cross-country; it’s too cold to put the top down and besides, there’s snow on the ground. Nonetheless I’m today enjoying a bit of Cleveland. This world-class city is not my hometown but it’s my town. I live here.
What is a world-class city? What are its attributes? It can be said that such a city boasts of great architecture, natural beauty, parks and gardens, a neighborhood-based culture all its own, performing arts venues, museums, outstanding opportunities for education, a healthy economy, an effective local government (or a seat of a state or federal government), competitive sports, availability of good medicine, thriving suburbs and of course, tourism: attractive places to go, things to see, events to enjoy and for sure, good food.
Examples. Right here in the USA there’s New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Anchorage and Honolulu. In Canada there’s Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver. Europe? There’s London, Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, Rome and Florence. Elsewhere there’s Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Beijing, Bangkok, Sydney as well as Cairo and Cape Town.
Well now. Cleveland certainly has all the above attributes. It is indeed a world-class city. Folks come here from around the world to get their ailments treated at the Cleveland Clinic. We’ve got great schools like Cleveland State University, John Carroll, Case Western and the Cleveland Institute of Music as well as museums like The Cleveland Museum of Art. We indeed have opportunities to enjoy world-class arts – drama, music and dance – performed in any number of venues like Playhouse Square, the outdoors Blossom Music Center, Severance Center, CIM’s Mixon Hall, GroundWorks Dance Theatre and our Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Every summer we can enjoy the three-day JazzFest sponsored by Cuyahoga Community College; in the past featuring stars like Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole and Viktor Schreckengost.
This fine city boasts its Cleveland Botanical Garden and Cleveland Metroparks Zoo as well as its wonderful park system called the ‘Emerald Necklace’ which surrounds the city with a ring of outdoor greenery and autumn color. It’s got a good selection of fine golf courses and three major-league ball teams (if only one would bring us a title, pretty soon?). Sports fishing for walleye and perch is huge here with Lake Erie at our northern doorstep.
Architecture? Our downtown Lake Erie shoreline is bedizened with it. Check out the traditional versions in our City Hall and County Court House which straddle a blocks-long green promenade. The West Side Market is just across the Cuyahoga River from downtown. Modern versions can be seen in the Great Lakes Science Center and Case Western’s Weatherhead School. Cleveland’s busy Public Square is currently being renovated and will be ready for the 2016 Republican National Conventions held here in July; below are both the old and new versions.
Neighborhoods and suburbs. Wow, there’s lots here: Coventry Village, Ohio City, Little Italy, Tremont, University Circle, Edgewater, East Fourth, Gordon Square, Shaker Square, the Warehouse District and the Flats. Check them all out at: http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2014/01/13/12-of-the-most-walkable-neighborhoods-in-cleveland These and other diverse ethnic communities are havens for their residents. Exotic local traditions and events abound all across town, especially in the summer. Cleveland’s municipal population is 390,000 but Metropolitan Cleveland zooms up to 2.1 million souls, to include suburbs like our charming (please pardon my bias) Chagrin Falls. Cleveland’s roots, its ethnicity and history are similar to the much larger Chicago (9.7 million) and similarly-sized Milwaukee (1.6 million). The city’s culture runs from grit to sophistication.
Infrastructure. Cleveland has it, old and new. Bridges span the Cuyahoga River. Getting around, both within as well as in and out of the city is made easy thanks to our Interstate Highway System and Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Lodging is plentiful. Cleveland’s newest hotel is the Metropolitan at the 9 built around the old Cleveland Trust Bank building; it sports double-take details paying tribute to the past. And opportunities to enjoy good cuisine abound. See for example the following reference to Fresh Water, a Cleveland weekly e-magazine to see their feature on five of the city’s ethnic culinary hotspots: http://www.freshwatercleveland.com/features/fiverestaurants021116.aspx Lodging and good food? Hey, why else would the GOP not hesitate to congregate here?
Tourism. Check out more of our prime attractions at: http://www.planetware.com/tourist-attractions-/cleveland-us-oh-c.htm
Lastly (no pun intended) and in connection with tourism, is Lake View Cemetery. Thousands of travelers, from all over the globe, visit every year to view this historical, horticultural, architectural, and geological gem. President James A. Garfield lies here as does John D. Rockefeller, Eliot Ness, and Carl B. Stokes; Lake View is the final resting place for members of President Lincoln’s cabinet, Civil War generals and Revolutionary War soldiers, not to mention twenty-two Cleveland mayors. On memorials throughout the Cemetery, names like Sherwin, Morgan, Mather, Severance, Hanna, Blossom, and Brush, all synonymous with Cleveland, can be seen.
Now then. Sit down in your easy chair with a beverage of your choice and pull up this catchy musical ditty by B. Ryan. It’ll put a smile on your face and get your feet to tapping. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJvzIkuVCaU And, there’s another excellent video done by Progressive Insurance, one of the top places to work in the city. The video: http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2016/01/20/video-this-is-our-town-progressive-insurances-ode-to-cleveland
Cleveland. Not just a city but a world-class city. Not just a place but a collection of hundreds of places, things to see and do and to enjoy. If you live here, you gotta love it. If you don’t, come visit. Cleveland. A National Treasure.
Best thing for me about living in Cleveland? My family lives here too.
Pete's Big Adventure 
Pete: Well done, but you missed your calling! You should be a representative for the Cleveland Visitor’s Bureau or at least join the volunteers who will be giving advice and guidance to visitors during the GOP Convention this summer.
Marty, Yea, I’m thinking the same thing. Actually I wrote it because I like to write. But I can’t jump in my car and see different places and write about them so I settled on commenting on what’s happening here in town. Turns out there’s a lot to do and see right here. Gotta love it.
I was just now at the Cleveland Magazine website and noticed they’ve done a list of 50 Things Every Clevelander Must Do. Levels from Newbie to Classic Clevelander. A paragraph of two on each one. These are excellent. Check it out at:
http://www.clevelandmagazine.com/ME2/dirmod.asp?sid=E73ABD6180B44874871A91F6BA5C249C&nm=&type=Publishing&mod=Publications::Article&mid=1578600D80804596A222593669321019&tier=4&id=9BE74BE35B8646F2BBEE9644244F48FA
Very cool, Pops. Needs to be published! July will be exciting when the RNC is here and give Cleveland a nice stage for all to see the positive changes.
For sure John. Exciting to have the GOP here. I’ll bet the TV networks, and local stations, as well as local organizations and publications will be all over it. Cleveland will get a lot of national coverage. Good for Cleveland and good for the local economy.