Sidewalk: Recent Episodes
Sidewalk
Monthly audio stories about people and places in the Buckeye, Mount Pleasant and Woodland Hills neighborhoods.
Our conversation continues with Tiffany Graham and David Wilson of LAND Studio and Wayne Mortensen of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress. Plus, we discuss clips from speakers at public meetings who feel passionately about what should — and shouldn’t — happen in Shaker Square’s future, including the possibility of closing Shaker Boulevard through the Square.
What’s the future of Shaker Square? Join planners Tiffany Graham and David Wilson of LAND Studio and Wayne Mortensen of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress as they talk about the process that’s shaping what will happen here in the future — including ideas to make the Square greener and more park-like. Can a place that’s separated both people and neighborhoods now unite them?
On this episode, we move from Shaker Square’s past… to its present. We hear from the Square’s current owner, Peter Rubin of The Coral Company, about why the Square is 100% leased for the first time in 15 years — and about what’s still not working on the Square. Also, Donita Anderson of the ever-popular North Union Farmers Market; Joe Dawson and Brandon Chrostowski of Edwin’s Restaurant and Leadership Institute; patrons at Dewey’s Coffee Shop; and Fourth District Cleveland Police Commander Brandon Kutz.
As Shaker Square opens, the 1929 stock market crash threatens its future. Then, starting in the 1950s, social changes in the neighborhoods around the Square alter who feels “welcome” there - an evolution that is still unfolding. A developer reflects on his late-1990s attempt to remake the Square as a high-end lifestyle center. Features interviews with Ludlow residents Sylvia Clayton and Shelley Stokes Hammond; Ulysses Glen, owner of the East Side Daily News; and developer Randy Ruttenberg of Fairmount Properties.
On this episode, the mysterious Van Sweringen brothers, builders of Shaker Square and Shaker Heights. Who were these self-made rich guys who never married and hated “girl food”? What were their goals for Shaker Square? Plus, architectural designer Ben Herring helps us unpack an early planning document about the Square.
Inhabited by people for more than 13,000 years, the area that’s now Shaker Square has a strong heritage of attracting believers and dreamers. This episode explores native settlement up through the arrival (and eventual abandonment) of the area by the Shaker religious sect, which embraced celibacy and racial and gender equality. Features interviews with Dr. Brian Redmond of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Dr. Ware Petznick of the Shaker Historical Society.
Unedited interview with Dr. Brian Redmond of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History about native settlement in what’s now Northeast Ohio.
Cleveland has more than 2,200 streets, and many more street corners. Sometimes, something really special is happening at one. Features produce seller Joe Lynch and artist-activist Amanda King.
Two men in Buckeye who’ve recently changed careers share their stories. Demetrius Williams is a barber who’s close to becoming a lawyer. Fahmeed Afzal is a computer scientist who’s becoming a grocer.
Public Square is the place where East meets West, the very heart of Cleveland.
But just because it’s a place of union doesn’t mean everyone sees it the same way. In this audio piece, we hear from people stopped at random in the Square and asked to give their reflections on what they’re experiencing. The point? To get a sense of how different people view the same place. Produced for The City Club of Cleveland in conjunction with their summer forum series "For the Love of Cleveland."
Councilwoman Jayne Zborowsky remembers her tumultuous experience representing the Buckeye neighborhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Then, she and I walk through the neighborhood as it exists now to talk about what’s changed - and what hasn’t - over the past half century.
Playfulness is a key way to stay healthy and relieve stress. How can our neighborhoods encourage people - especially adults - to have fun?
On Mother’s Day, moms reflect on the importance of Zelma George Roller Skating Rink as a community gathering place and a constant in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood.
Bernard Long of Mount Pleasant jokingly calls himself “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” He works and hangs out in an old Catholic Church that’s now a social services center. Instead of ringing a bell, though - he drums.
Dry cleaners don't usually have associated parks. But this one will. Eric Warren, owner of Henry's Dry Cleaners on Kinsman Road, gives a first-person account.
A year ago, Michael Payne didn't feel like leaving his house. Today, he's cowriting and costarring in a play. How did he get there? What does his story tell us about the growing epidemic loneliness and how to overcome it?
Joe Daniels enjoys meeting "the different kinds of people" he encounters in his job as a "cart guy" at the Dave's Supermarket in Shaker Square. The work helps, he says, with his minor depression. He also talks about how the closure of the Giant Eagle on Buckeye Road has increased traffic at the store.
The fatal shooting of a 12-year-old suburban boy may have received more attention than any other story from Buckeye last year. In this episode, I talk to some kids about the shooting and how they believe it affects people's perceptions of the neighborhood. I also talk to a police officer and a foundation program officer about what's being done to stop incidents like this in the future.
An impromptu drumming lesson with Mama Fasi of Fasi's Cultural Experience, who gives people no choice but to drum.
Why is it so hard to buy that vacant house next door to me? So I can fix it up and help save my neighborhood?
Getting to and from work is usually a slog. But when you're lucky, the train commute from Downtown might include live poetry.
Back in the 1950s and 60s, the saying was that Buckeye had the largest concentration of Hungarians in the world outside Budapest. Ernest Mihaly was one of them. But Mihaly is different from most of his neighbors from back then. He stayed. At 91, he still lives in the same house off Buckeye Road that he’s owned for 60 years.
Join us as we hike the little-known Doan Brook gorge, smack in the middle of Cleveland's East Side neighborhoods - and talk to nature advocate Dudley Edmondson about why people of color often believe public space "doesn't belong to them."
A little more than two years ago, I moved into the Buckeye neighborhood for a month. The idea was to get an on-the-ground view of the place. Recently, I moved back for another month, to see what’s changed and what hasn’t. That’s this episode — the sounds, the stories of coming back.
For these grandmothers, rest isn't in the cards - at least not yet. They're raising kids all over again, and they couldn't do it without each other's support.
For Kimberly Archibald Russell, yoga isn't just a personal practice. It's a way to lift up her neighborhood.
Parkview Avenue has been Donald Wilson's home for decades. Some people, though, see it as one big trash can. He and his neighbors are fighting back.
The relationship between police and low-income communities of color has been strained for a long time. Cops are under scrutiny. In Cleveland, they’re still walking their beats, patrolling the city’s neighborhoods — but now they’ve got new company. On this episode of Watershed, an urban hike. Led not by naturalists or boy scouts or teachers, but by uniformed cops.
Keith Buckhanon, 16, talks about how music and playing piano have changed his outlook on life.
Neighborhood roots. What does it mean to have them? What kind of responsibility does the past give you to the present? Musician Ryan Easter, grandson of baseball great Luke Easter, talks about his own deep roots in Mount Pleasant and how they will or will not affect his future.
I believe that you only get one shot at life. I don’t believe that folks come back from the brink of death or that there is even an afterlife. Of course I could be wrong, and some days I really hope I am.
It’s on days like the one I experienced with Justin, that I sincerely hope that I am absolutely wrong.
It was the day I attended my second-ever fish fry, at Benedictine High School located on MLK Jr. Blvd.
Established in 1927 by the Benedictine Monks at St. Andrew’s Abby, Benedictine High School is a Roman Catholic all boy’s high school located just 5 minutes walking distance from my front door.
I suppose there was always an air of mystery surrounding the school for me. When we first moved into our home the cafeteria was our local voting location, but for reasons unknown – and unasked – the location switched to the local rec center just a bit down the road. So before the fish fry excursions I had been in the building once, maybe twice.
The first time I went to the Lenten fish fry was sort of a fluke. My cousin tagged me in a post on Facebook with an article on Cleveland.com listing all of the fish fry’s in the area. They were listed alphabetically and as such the Benedictine information was near the top of the list.
I eat a lot of fish this time of the year, I even observe an annual fast of sorts – this year I’ve given up stuff and everyday for forty days I fill up a bag of stuff and get rid of it. However I’d never attended an actual church fish fry.
I went with my family and a close friend who also happens to be a neighbor and her children. We had a blast! The food wasn’t great. It's kind of what I expect to come out of a school cafeteria. But how many times in life does one remember food exclusively? I tend to think that we remember the experience more.
The following week I went back, armed with a journalist who had a giant microphone and headphones. I was completely worried that we wouldn’t be welcomed, or seen as some type of exploiter.
However, none of that happened, everything in opposition to that happened. Justin and I were greeted warmly by the priests, laypersons, families, and regulars, folks wanted to know what the name of the show was. Justin went in the back of the kitchen and spoke to Father Anselm. I stayed at the dining table and spoke to members of a family supporting one student at the school. One faction of the lively crew drove from Lakewood to attend and another faction had the most adorable toddler that seemed to make a living out of giving her mother a hard time.
Justin introduced me to Father Anselm, a near 50 year resident in the community. The Benedictine monks - there are 17 of them - take a vow of stability. They vow to live and stay right where they are: The corner of MLK Jr. Drive and Buckeye Road. There is something so demystifying in that knowledge, something humbling and satisfying, and something moving that I haven’t emotionally unwrapped just yet.
I know it’s 6:10am every morning because I can hear the bells that chime signaling Morning Prayer for the monks. I am usually up to hear the delightful tolls and measure whether I'm on time by that sound.
By the time the bells ring, Father Anselm has been up and at ‘em for at least 90 minutes!
I sit up most mornings and stare out my window and listen to the sounds of Buckeye. I listen to the birds chirping and the grind of the train hauling some unknown material down the hill, I listen to dogs barking and the hallow billowing of the rapid traveling between the East 93rd Street and East 116th Street stations, and then I listen to those bells. The full toll takes about one minute.
I used to wonder what they meant. Now I know, and that means something.
It’s a crazy warm day in February, in Luke Easter Park - on 116th and Kinsman. 60 degrees, a little overcast, no wind.
Tania Griffin, 33, and her two-year-old son are out for the afternoon. She follows him around as he motors his tiny, army-green truck over random twigs and ruts in the grass.
"He’s riding around on his four wheeler, power wheels," she says, "and he loves it. I love it too because it keeps him occupied. But he’s going to have a fit when it’s time to go. Once that battery runs out, we’re gonna have issues."
She calls out to encourage him.
"It’s OK. There you go! There you go, try it one more - "
The power wheels gets stuck on a branch.
Griffin laughs. "There you go! You gotta turn your wheel, go on!"
The truck pops free.
It’s pretty much the first chance he’s had to ride it outside since Christmas, she says, when he got it.
"What he’s doing is he’s learning his surroundings," she says. "He’s also learning how to operate his toy far as maneuverability versus me trying to coach him."
Griffin has been working at a security company for a little over a year. She likes it - not too easy, not too hard.
And she has a very distinctive hairstyle: a red mohawk, with just a hint of white in the front.
"It’s different," she says, with a laugh. "It’s very different. I haven’t seen many people with the actual color red mohawk from front to back but it’s the best."
So far, she's loving motherhood.
"This is my first time being a mom so it’s exciting for me," she says. It’s very educational for me - something new every day, I learn being a parent and to me it’s like the best feeling in the world.
"I used to always say 'oh no I’m not having kids! No, no, no. I’m like everybody’s babysitter, but to have my own was something different."
Her son gets stuck in the mud - a burnout without the smoke on his tires.
Griffin calls out as he maneuvers forward and back.
"There we go! Put your feet up, put your feet up!"
She pauses.
"It’s exciting, it really is. Being a mom. I would tell anyone in the world."
You know the feeling. I’ll just watch one episode. I’ll just stay for an hour. I’ll only keep the job for a year. And then an hour, a day, a year goes by — two years, three years — and you’re still doing the same thing. You like what you’re doing. You’re happy. You’re staying. That’s what happened to Marilyn Burns. When she moved into Cleveland public housing, she thought it was temporary. Just a chance to get back on her feet. That was 12 years ago. Today, she’s still there — and happy.
Join Shavon Colston as she works with a group of children during the after-school program at Woodhill Homes Estate.
We visit Woodhill Homes Estate to learn how public housing - despite its faults - remains a place people can start out or start over.
Welcome to Watershed, a podcast about life in a group of neighborhoods on the East Side of Cleveland. Our agenda is simple: Show real life.