Scene April 7, 2021

‘THE NEED IS URGENT’ A conversation with Greater Cleveland Food Bank President and CEO KRISTEN WARZOCHA after a year of unprecedented demand B Y

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CONTENTS APRIL 7-20, 2021 • VOL. 51 NO 32

Upfront .......................................5 Eat ..............................................9 Arts .......................................... 14

Music ........................................ 17 Feature ..................................... 18 Savage Love .............................. 22

REWIND: i992 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Publisher Andrew Zelman Editor Vince Grzegorek Editorial Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Visual Arts Writer Shawn Mishak Stage Editor Christine Howey

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Eddie Money had two tickets to paradise on the cover of Scene back in 1992, and with two shots of the Covid vaccine you will too.

| clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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UPFRONT NEWS

No Redface, Native American Headdresses Allowed at Progressive Field This Year

Major Presumed Candidates Still Dawdling in Cleveland Mayor’s Race We’ve got only ten weeks before the filing deadline in the 2021 Cleveland mayoral race, and major presumed candidates still have not officially launched their campaigns. Time, one would think, is of the essence.

Cleveland City Council President Kevin Kelley concluded a wardby-ward listening tour late last

Illustration by Aaron Sechrist

THE CLEVELAND BASEBALL team announced last week that fans will not be permitted to wear Native American-style headdresses or red face paint inside Progressive Field any longer.

Coming in the middle of the franchise’s rebranding process, the move dovetails with the team’s efforts to distance itself from the racism and hurtful imagery associated with the Indians’ moniker and the Chief Wahoo logo.

Owner Paul Dolan has said no decision has been made on the team’s new name but he will know by the middle of this year if it will be in place by the 2022 season.

“As we take the necessary time to determine a new name and brand, the team will continue using the Indians name and branding,” Dolan said in December 2020. “We will also continue to listen, learn, and partner with local civic leaders, including those in the Native American community, to deepen our support of under-represented groups and make a meaningful, positive impact in our community.”

Native American groups and their allies have been protesting the Indians name and the Wahoo mascot for decades, partly because they permitted and even encouraged fans to dress in insensitive fashion dehumanizing to Native Americans. As detailed extensively elsewhere and in Scene, red face is no different than black face, and the team’s acceptance of such behavior was roundly insulting.

This year, it’s finally turned the page.

-Vince Grzegorek

month — a tour for which he received largely negative reviews — but said that he would not make up his mind regarding his mayoral run until he’d heard from residents across the city. He has not yet announced.

Former mayor and congressman Dennis Kucinich has been content to send out holiday mailers and keep his name in the

news with occasional statements sent to the media regarding hotbutton topics du jour. He has not yet announced.

State Senator Sandra Williams, who has openly considered running for the office, has been relatively quiet, but sources say she could be launching in the coming weeks. She has not yet announced.

Ward 7 Councilman Basheer Jones has pulled petitions at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections but has not yet formally announced his candidacy. In a fundraising email viewed

by Scene last week, Jones told supporters that he was “seriously considering” running for Mayor, something he’s been doing for months. | clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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UPFRONT “I love the city of Cleveland.

It’s the City that gave my family shelter. It’s the City that raised me. It’s the City that taught me invaluable lessons as a young man. And it’s a City that I came back to with the hopes of making it a city for everyone,” he wrote. “Cleveland is at a major crossroads at the moment. The current leadership has become too comfortable with the status quo all while many communities continue to be left behind.”

Frank Jackson is meanwhile trying to douse the flames of speculation after Norm Edwards, the stentorian leader of Cleveland’s Black Contractors Group, sent an email to supporters Thursday endorsing Jackson for Mayor and saying that Jackson informed him he planned to run again.

Jackson told cleveland.com that Edwards has misinterpreted statements he’d made over the phone and that he’d “tell the people first” when he ultimately decided one way or the other. Unlike in elections past, Jackson has not been fundraising, and the recent departure of top aides suggested to many that he wouldn’t be seeking an unprecedented fifth term.

Edwards, though, is insistent that Jackson told him he was running. Local veteran journalist Roldo Bartimole wrote in a blog post last week that he believes the Edwards blooper was staged so that Jackson might be able to detect which way the wind was blowing regarding a potential candidacy.

Jackson also made headlines last week by endorsing Nina Turner in the 11th District congressional race, putting him at odds with County Executive Armond Budish and other local leaders who have thrown their support behind Shontel Brown, the Cuyahoga County Councilwoman and Chair of the Cuyahoga County Dems. “[Nina Turner] is battle tested and uniquely qualified to represent us in Washington — not just in her experience but in her commitment to the people,” Jackson said in a statement provided to the media. “I know Nina and have worked and served with her on many complex issues that positively impacted Cleveland residents, including

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greater educational and training opportunities for our children, new business development and safe housing for seniors.”

A statement from Turner’s press office announcing the endorsement said that Jackson’s “fingerprints on the economic vitality and future of Cleveland will be present for generations to come.”

Young executive Justin Bibb and former councilman and mayoral candidate Zack Reed have both launched campaigns and are actively gathering signatures at locations across town.

-Sam Allard

Long Shot Republican Throws Hat in the Cleveland Mayoral Ring While several of the major presumed candidates for Cleveland mayor continue to dawdle, long shot Republican Landry Simmons Jr. is actively campaigning.

The West Park resident told Scene that he formally launched his campaign in March, has pulled petitions at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and has been gathering signatures the best he can, though he admitted it was slow going due to safety precautions and resident timidity due to Covid-19. (He said he had no doubt, though, that he’d manage to get the required 3,000 signatures by the June 16 filing deadline.)

Simmons, 52, is a 30-year veteran of local law enforcement and a current elected committee member of the Cuyahoga County GOP. He said he’s running for Mayor because the state of Cleveland and its leadership is “unacceptable.”

“The crime in this city has gotten worse than I ever remember it,” he told Scene in a phone interview Thursday. “Things have gotten out of control, and I think I can make quick and effective change.”

Some of Simmons’ proposed responses to what he characterized as an unprecedented crime wave sounded simple enough — increased accountability for officers, an emphasis on continuing education at all levels of public safety — but he also espoused more drastic measures.

“If I’m elected,” he said, “I’m getting rid of the Consent Decree.

It’s done nothing but set the city back.”

Simmons had contempt for more than just the settlement agreement with the Department of

Justice. He said he also wouldn’t think twice about altering the police’s pursuit policy — “It’s a no pursuit policy, and it’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen,” he said — and would strive to achieve a level of professionalism akin to the Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department, which he said had much better policies and procedures in place.

(Simmons works for the Sheriff’s Department.) He also rejected the idea of reallocating funds from public safety to other areas of the city budget.

“I’m against that 100 percent,” he said. “Law enforcement is expensive, and funds need to be allocated properly.”

On other topics, Simmons said he was interested in revitalizing Cleveland as a tourist destination and in attracting new businesses to Cleveland via tax abatements and other subsidies. He said that his three biggest post-pandemic priorities were ensuring the vaccination and safety of the city’s most vulnerable, especially the elderly; investing in small businesses to jump start the local economy; and prioritizing schools to ensure that students return safely, effectively and full-time.

Simmons balked at the idea that his Republican party affiliation should be treated any differently than other candidates running for office in Cleveland.

“I tell all people this,” he said.

“It’s not about what party you belong to. It’s about doing right by the City of Cleveland. We’ve got to clean up this city. We’ve got to battle this crime. We’ve got to bring back jobs and bring up the schools. Those issues have nothing to do with your party.”

Like other candidates, Simmons said the status quo simply has to change. But also like other candidates, he harbored no ill will toward incumbent Frank Jackson.

“I know Frank. I know the Jacksons,” he said. “His brother Anthony was my boss at CMHA. Frank’s a nice guy. I tell people, you can’t get mad at Frank Jackson. Frank did nothing, sure, but he promised nothing, so how can you get mad?”

-Sam Allard

Let’s Remember How We Freaked Out about Blockchain Before We Freak out About Quantum Computing The Cleveland Clinic and IBM announced a major partnership

this week that will make quantum computing, and the theoretical research therefrom, a key component of the new Global Center for Pathogen Research & Human Health, itself a cornerstone of the new state-funded Innovation District that pairs regional universities and hospitals with an eye toward R&D and job creation.

Quantum computing can get pretty esoteric in a hurry, so we won’t bother trying to hash it out beyond the basic premise, which is that there are some problems too complex for even the world’s biggest and most sophisticated supercomputers. Quantum computers deal with the sorts of problems for which there’s an almost incalculable amount of data, and in theory can crunch all that data in a hurry.

“Universal quantum computers” — this is from IBM — “leverage the quantum mechanical phenomena of superposition and entanglement to create states that scale exponentially with number of qubits, or quantum bits.”

Evidently, issues surrounding the world’s pathogens, including the ominous horizon of viral global pandemics, are ripe for investigation via this sort of big data computing. The so-called “Discovery Accelerator” program between the Clinic and IBM aims to do just that. The whole point, via press materials released last week, is to accelerate the pace of discovery in medical research.

As part of this partnership, IBM announced that it will install its first U.S.-based private sector “Quantum System One” on Cleveland Clinic’s campus in Cleveland. In a press release, IBM said it also planned to install “the first of IBM’s next-generation 1,000+ qubit quantum systems at a client facility,” also in Cleveland, in the coming years.

Much of quantum computing remains entirely theoretical, and the costs associated with the construction and maintenance of these high-tech machines remain under wraps, but if successful, these IBM machines will facilitate ongoing research in healthcare, and are being touted as key ingredients for medical and pharmaceutical breakthroughs.

Like dozens of other fashionable partnerships and local real estate development projects in recent years, this, too, is being celebrated as an opportunity to put Cleveland on the map.

The partnership comes, however, after both Cleveland

and IBM have had disappointing forays into the arenas of big data and artificial intelligence to solve social ills.

In Cleveland, the Unify Project, a mercurial high-tech nonprofit that was meant to use big data and AI to end poverty (or something), crumbled without ever producing much of anything. It is now Unify Labs, or perhaps Unify Jobs, and appears to have pivoted into an equity and inclusionfocused job board. Bernie Moreno’s Blockland Initiative, in which Cleveland was meant to become the “national epicenter” of “all things blockchain,” has been reduced to a real estate venture at Tower City.

For its part, IBM recently put Watson Health up for sale, the Wall Street Journal reported. This was the company’s “audacious” plan to help doctors diagnose and cure cancer, among other

DIGIT WIDGET 7 Top Cuyahoga County administrators, out of 21 hired by Armond Budish since his first term, who will still be employed by the County as of next month.

22 Daily Amtrak trains through Cleveland, if Joe Biden’s Amtrak expansion plan passes in Congress.

4 Current daily Amtrak trains passing through Cleveland, all between the hours of 1 a.m. and 6 a.m.

15% Workforce at Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock Detroit (about 60 employees total) who were laid off via Zoom last week.

Gilbert meanwhile, has become one of the planet’s richest human beings during Covid-19 and soaring Rocket Mortgage stock valuations.

things, with artificial intelligence.

A report in the medical journal STAT found that mismanagement, rapid turnover via layoffs and departures and a culture where marketing was prioritized over science led to the internal combustion of the multibilliondollar enterprise.

But quantum computing!

In an innovation district!

That’s something else entirely, and something that the overwhelmingly impoverished residents in the zip codes surrounding the Clinic’s campus will no doubt enthusiastically get behind.

“Through this innovative collaboration, we have a unique opportunity to bring the future to life,” said Tom Mihaljevic, President and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, in a press release. “These new computing technologies can help revolutionize discovery in the life sciences.

The Discovery Accelerator will enable our renowned teams to build a forward-looking digital infrastructure and help transform medicine, while training the workforce of the future and potentially growing our economy.”

-Sam Allard

Hudson’s Christ Community Chapel Tries to Close the Book on Randall Scandall, Advocates Object After more than a year since their last update, elders at the Hudson megachurch Christ Community Chapel issued a statement to congregants last week that attempts to close the book on the international sex abuse scandal in which they›ve been embroiled for the better part of a decade, and on which Scene reported in considerable depth in 2019.

The statement arrives after renewed efforts by local advocates to publicize the lingering questions in the case and to solicit calls for a third-party investigation into CCC’s handling of it.

From the CCC statement: “We believe that we have done all that we reasonably can to acknowledge any wrongdoing, seek forgiveness, pursue healing, make corrections as necessary and through this grow to be more effective servants of Christ for His kingdom.”

The elders provided a number of updates on the church’s actions since a 2019 internal review found that physical and sexual abuse occurred at the Sankey Samaritan

Orphanage in the Philippines.

That orphanage was founded by master dissembler and B-list Christian celebrity Tom Randall, who was then in CCC’s employ. It was funded by Randall’s nonprofit, World Harvest Ministries, which was folded into CCC in 2014.

Since the internal review, CCC says it has made strides in four “areas of brokenness”: providing care and support for the victims in the Philippines, many of whom are now adults; auditing nearly $3 million in World Harvest funds; reconciling with local advocates whose sustained outcry led to Scene’s 2019 investigation; and updating CCC protocols around the safety of minors.

The elders — akin to a corporation’s board of directors — said that CCC has sent more than $100,000 to cover the costs of housing, education and care for more than 30 orphans who were living at Sankey in 2013.

On the financial front, the elders reaffirmed what was announced last year. Of the roughly $3 million in World Harvest funds, only about $500,000 remained after a million-dollar renovation of CCC’s Aurora campus, a $400,000 renovation of the Block student ministry building and Randall’s extravagant expenditures in the Philippines from 2014-2019, including legal expenses for the Sankey managers accused of abuse and “hush money” for the orphans to keep them from testifying.

The CCC elders agreed to divvy up the remaining World Harvest money between two local ministries with which they’d worked in the past, Restore Addiction Recovery and RAHAB Ministries.

As Scene reported last year, RAHAB Ministries is an organization founded by Suzanne Lewis-Johnson, the same woman who conducted CCC’s internal review of the Sankey scandal.

As for reconciliation with the local advocates, those efforts reached an impasse last year when the advocates refused to sign non-disclosure agreements as a precondition for reconciliation talks.

The third-party conciliator CCC hired was a woman named Judy Dabler, who a Christian blog recently wrote «has reliably defended ministries against legitimate complaints.» Among her more notable achievements was serving as the ombudsmen for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

In that role she deflected complaints against Zacharias,

a major Evangelical author and speaker who died in 2020, before a massive sexual abuse scandal brought down him and his brand.

CCC was insistent on using Dabler to facilitate the reconciliation, however.

“While the Leadership at CCC was willing to sign the NDA, the advocates were not interested in engaging in the process with the conciliator,” the recent statement read. “CCC Leadership desires healed relationships with all involved in this matter... We desire to live peaceably and furthermore pray that God continues to move in this situation to bring us to that place.”

In an email to Scene, the advocates said they took issue with a number of the elements in the statement, including the ongoing “nastiness and resentment” that they’ve experienced from CCC leadership through the scandal and its fallout. They also clarified information about the World Harvest funds, saying that it didn’t just fall into CCC’s lap in 2014.

“The elder board decided to accept this money and concealed it from the rest of the church until it became broadly known to CCC members in 2019,” [due to Scene’s reporting and the internal review.]

“And how well did this money serve God’s kingdom if hundreds of thousands of it were used to defend orphan molesters and buy the silence of the orphans from testifying against their abusers?”

The advocates also noted that of though money had indeed been sent to the Philippines to support many of the former Sankey orphans, it has not been made available to those survivors who were prepared to testify against Randall and the orphanage’s Filipino managers.

“In summary, we Advocates are all tired of the gaslighting, halftruths, and outright lies from an organization that has the temerity to claim, ‘We serve and exist to bring glory to the God of all justice and truth,’” the emailed statement read. “So, we will continue to advocate for real justice and truth to come about for the Sankey victims and for the Northeast Ohio Christian community whom CCC has abused and broken faith with through an independent third party investigation.”

-Sam Allard

scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene | clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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EAT AN INSTANT FAVORITE

Pizzeria DiLauro proves there’s always room for more great pie in Northeast Ohio

I DON’T LIVE ANYWHERE NEAR Bainbridge, so the inside of my car is a hot mess right now. That statement might not make a whole lot of sense until you, too, pick up a few pies from Pizzeria DiLauro, which opened mid-February in that sleepy little Geauga County township.

The thought of letting those slices languish in their cardboard crypts for 25 minutes was inconceivable, so I did what any reasonable pizza lover would do: I arrived home a few slices shy of a pie.

If stepping inside Pizzeria DiLauro doesn’t immediately improve one’s mood, it might be time for a vacation.

Occupying a prime corner spot in a strip mall, the attractive pizza parlor sports a savvy blend of retro-chic and modern functionality. From the CocaCola sponsored black-felt letterboard menu to the classic arcade games, this place feels nostalgic in all the right ways.

Standing at the counter, customers enjoy unobstructed views of the entire pizza-making process, from fabrication to oven-bake to slicing and boxing. Guests also can observe the never-ending flow of foot traffic from those who are ordering, picking up or just poking their heads through the convenient pickup window to say hi.

You’d think that given the recent proliferation of “pandemic pizza places” it might be a challenging time to break into the slice game, especially in a tight-knit community like Bainbridge. But owners Adam and Tiffany DiLauro have been cultivating a following for three years thanks to a mobile pizza truck of the same name. While that woodfired oven on wheels focused on Neapolitan-style pies, the immobile pizzeria moved away from those in favor of Sicilian and New York-style pizzas, both of which travel much better.

Those bicycle tire-size New York pies manage to combine the best elements of both the East Coast and Neapolitan products. The bottom crust is sturdy, crisp and foldable, but the cornicione – or outer crust – is pleasantly soft, airy and chewy, even sporting some spots of char.

In addition to 18-inch pies, DiLauro

Photo by Doug Trattner

By Douglas Trattner

offers more “personal” 12-inch versions. Both are available as build-your-own (starting at $12 and $20) or as pre-designed specialty pies. White pizzas tend to be overly rich, cheesy, oily, garlicky and, well, bland, but not here. These are deliciously savory and balanced.

completely different doughs, proofs and bakes.

In addition to the pizzas, the menu includes fully customizable salads, wings and a mini charcuterie board starring sliced prosciutto, salami, olives, fontinella, assorted pickles and crostini. DiLauro prepares its

PIZZERIA DILAURO 17800 CHILLICOTHE RD., BAINBRIDGE 440-384-3947 PIZZERIADILAURO.COM

And the optional “dollops” of tomato sauce ($1, $3) mean never having to choose between white and red.

DiLauro’s chubby Sicilian style pizza is satisfying in ways that a svelte NY slice can never be. The 12-inch x 16-inch rectangular-cut pan pizza (starting at $20) is capped with ripe, fresh tomato sauce, aged mozzarella and the toppings of one’s choosing. The slightly thick pepperoni slices curl up around the perimeter and fill with tide pools of glorious fat. DiLauro is quick to differentiate his textbook Sicilian pies from the style du jour, Detroit, and the increasingly popular Grandma, both of which feature

mouth-watering meatball sandwiches ($11) not in plush hoagies but soft Italian bread, and by slicing the meatballs and layering them with provolone, red sauce and fresh basil, they have made them infinitely easier to eat. The house Italian sandwich ($12) marries flavorful deli meats like prosciutto and salami with the punch of arugula and marinated peppers.

DiLauro does a nice job rounding out the offerings with a few clutch sweet endings. The crunchy-creamy housemade cannoli ($4) is dotted on one end with crushed pistachio and the other with chocolate chips. That agreeable dessert joins gelato, a gelato

sundae with candied pecans and an affogato (espresso topped gelato).

When the DiLauros finally arrange the post-Covid dining room, they’ll acquire two dozen seats for grab-and-go customers. But the big change will take place in a couple months. That’s when the pizza parlor will expand into the adjacent space (currently home to Tiffany’s spa), which will feature a full bar and dining room that seats another 24.

“I finish up April 15th over there and I’m pretty sure they’re going to be on the other side of the wall with a sledgehammer waiting,” jokes Tiffany.

Adam says that the response from the community since he and his wife opened the doors has been nothing short of gratifying. In six short weeks, the shop has shot to the top of speed-dial lists throughout the neighborhood – and that ringing phone is music to Adam’s ears.

“I opened this as my playground,” says DiLauro. “I never even thought about making money, I just want to make pizza.”

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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Photo courtesy Lola Semo

EAT BITES

Coming Soon: Acqua di Luca, a seafood-focused Italian eatery from the owners of Luca

By Douglas Trattner WHEN THE DOORS OPEN TO Acqua di Luca, the latest restaurant from Lola and Luca Sema, diners will experience an interior that bears almost no resemblance to its predecessor, XO Prime Steaks. For six months, construction crews have been busy stripping away decades of interior accretions, shoring up defective structures, and clearing the way for the finish work to begin.

“We didn’t know it was going to be so much work, but we had no choice,” says Lola.

Crews stripped the 7,000-squarefoot space down to the exposed-brick shell, replaced a majority of the floor joists, removed elevation changes from room to room, installed new HVAC and made the sprawling basement level suitable for prep and storage. Once the space finally revealed itself to the Semas, design plans changed to match.

“We didn’t know it was brick,” Lola explains. “Originally we were going to do an Italian farmhouse in the city feel. But when this was all discovered, we said let’s keep it industrial. These are things you can’t buy anymore.”

In addition to the exposed brick walls, wraparound windows and lofty 20-foot ceilings, there are a pair of sturdy 100-year-old wooden support columns that had been whitewashed. The newly stabilized floor of the 137-year-old building will be covered in fresh hardwood.

In terms of more practical changes, the Semas decided to relocate the main entrance from the prominent corner at W. 6th and St. Clair to the eastern end of the restaurant. The move, says Lola, frees up prime real estate in the main barroom that gets lost to the host stand and come-and-go traffic.

It also results in a larger valet zone.

Inside, the bar will be transferred to the other side of the room, providing those seated there with more appealing views. A large open kitchen is being built in the rear of the dining room. And new accordion-style nano windows will fold out of view to unite the interior

with the wraparound sidewalk patio.

When Acqua di Luca opens in mid-May, it will be a seafood-focused Italian eatery. A daily selection of fresh oysters, specialty pizzas and desserts will round out the menu.

“It will be Italian-style seafood with sauces and pastas,” notes Lola.

“This wouldn’t be the place to get lobster tails and butter.”

As for any similarities between this and Luca Italian Cuisine, which the couple opened in 2013 on the Superior Viaduct, Lola says, “Completely different restaurants, completely different identities.”

The Semas also operate Luca West, which they opened in 2017 in Westlake.

Despite the fact that the opportunity presented itself in the middle of the pandemic, Lola says that she and Luca knew it was the right thing to do.

“I love this spot,” she says.

“There’s no place I’d rather be. W. 6th is the heart of the city. This will be the first time that people can actually walk to our restaurant. At both places, everybody has to drive there.”

With the Addition of Pearl’s Kitchen, Sauce the City Food Hall in Ohio City is Fully Occupied In 2018, Tiwanna Scott-Williams had the confidence to step away from her career as a cardiothoracic surgical nurse to pursue food fulltime. After juggling careers as a registered nurse and owner of PearlFlower Catering, the effervescent entrepreneur decided to put all of her eggs into a single basket.

“I had to make a decision,” she explains. “The side hustle gradually took over.”

A proponent of slow and steady growth, Scott-Williams took her first tentative non-catering step as a participant of the Launch Test Kitchen program at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. In 2018, the chef’s Pearl’s Kitchen concept was

bumped up to a full stand for the following season. Of course, the season after that – 2020 – proved to be a bust for all vendors.

But then Victor Searcy Jr. of Sauce the City invited ScottWilliams to join him and his colleagues at the Sauce the City Food Hall (1400 W. 25th St., 216795-5033), formerly known as Ohio City Galley. Since taking over management of the food hall, Searcy recruited Good Meal Jane and Twisted Taino to also set up shop.

Pearl’s Kitchen officially turns on the lights Thursday April 1.

“Starting at the Sauce the City Food Hall is really good for me because it’s pretty turnkey; it’s like a food court kind of similar to what was going on inside Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse,” she says. “It’s not just me in a stand-alone brickand-mortar restaurant.”

Scott-Williams says that fans of easy-going comfort food will love her cooking.

“I like to call my style of cooking comfort food, but I don’t like to give comfort food a definition,” she explains. “I think it’s just food that makes you feel happy and feel good.

It’s simple in preparation.”

Diners can look forward to flavorful Southern-inspired dishes like blackened shrimp rice bowls, blackened salmon BLTs, shrimp and grits, loaded chorizo chili sauce fries, mac and cheese, and bourbon bread pudding.

“It’s not a huge menu; I wanted it to be short and sweet,” she adds.

“I’m always about quality over quantity.”

As Sauce the City Food Hall continues to gain traction and attract foot traffic, it might once again be able to fire up the adjacent barroom. Searcy says that he has applied for a liquor license that would make way for a “totally new bar system never seen in Cleveland.”

The Black Pig in Ohio City to Permanently Close After April 11th The Black Pig in Ohio City will permanently close as of April 12th, Chef Michael Nowak announced last week.

“We have operated for almost 9 great years, and are excited to end with a week of positive energy, great food, and familiar faces,” he said in a statement. “Our decision to close is not financially based, or related to the pandemic. We decided about a year ago that it was the right move for my family, as we are looking to relocate to the New England area.

We have sold our real estate, passing the torch to the next operator to look over this historic building in Ohio City.”

Easily agreed upon as one of the best restaurants in Cleveland, the Black Pig made its mark in not one but two Ohio City spots, rounding into its own in 2015 after a move from its former home on West 25th among bustling bars to a quieter post on Bridge Ave. Its legacy includes not just the exquisite meals turned out from the kitchen but the various chefs who made their way through that kitchen and onto other gigs around town.

“We have loved our years in Cleveland and are proud of the restaurant and reputation we have created. I am looking forward to my next steps, with a focus on my family,” Nowak said. “We are excited to close on our own terms, not dictated by finances or poor performance. We have had so many great employees over the years, and have met so many great people. We hope that we have left a positive mark on the city, and the amazing food scene here.”

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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Photo by Shawn Mishak

ARTS ARTS DISTRICT

Local artist Edward A. Raffel executes exhilarating conceptual works at the new Tinnerman Lofts

By Shawn Mishak BORN IN CHICAGO BUT raised in Akron, prolific artist Edward A. Raffel was commissioned to conceptualize a significant amount of artwork in the common area of the new 51-unit Tinnerman Lofts, complementing the already interesting visual experience that is this posh communal gathering place for tenants and visitors.

One centerpiece in this room is a self-symmetrical piece called “1040 Extended.” The 8’ x 11’ room-dividing screen is one of over 100 pieces of art by more than 60 artists with multiple works included in Dalad Group’s expanding collection under the advisement of President and Principal Owner Neil Viny, who is responsible for Dalad’s 2.5 millionsquare-foot real estate portfolio in Northeast Ohio, and Liz Maugans, curator of the Dalad Collection displayed at both Tinnerman Lofts in Ohio City and at Worthington Yards in Cleveland’s Warehouse District.

Dalad’s model of buying and renovating industrial complexes in Cleveland and furnishing their halls and common areas with local artwork is turning heads in the development community as well as among potential renters. The concept offers artists a platform to exhibit and sell their work while injecting a sense of community and history into the complexes making them attractive to potential boarders.

“1040 Extended” is made from polycarbonate wine glasses, which have part of their tops surgically reduced and then fused together atop one another. The glasses are filled with assorted colors of resin to resemble different types of wine or champagne. A multitude of varying colors of ping-pong balls in a calculative arrangement were carefully selected and placed inside the glasses. The visual orchestra of triangulation and variation seduces the viewer’s eyes to dance delicately between the visual stimuli like a honeybee bouncing nimbly from

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one flower to the next. When the light pours through the skylight just right, the piece has a prismlike luminescence complementing the playful, two-story lounge.

It is called “1040 Extended” because there are 1,040 wine glasses and was such a laborintensive and time-consuming project to take on to achieve its stunning effect. Raffel and his studio assistant, Fei Duan, calculated roughly 50,000 procedures and 1,600 man-hours in this monumental undertaking.

“The glasses piece came about because when Neil was at my house he liked a built-in mirror box piece with around 540 tiny plastic party favor champagne glasses in a selfsymmetric arrangement entitled ‘Perpetual Addiction, tiny bubbles version,’” explains 62-year-old Raffel. “They needed an 8’ by 11’ room dividing screen so I offered to make a life-size version with real wine glasses (polycarbonate), not realizing how long it would take.“ The tops of the glasses were used to make another, smaller screen including black and white ping-pong balls arranged in a predetermined order and displayed adjacent to “1040 Extended” in aim to balance off the vivid color of the other screen with something more subdued. This is called “Googly Eyes,” because it reminded the artist of those plastic eyes with floating pupils one might find in a craft store.

Raffel is a self-described autodidact who is proficient at a number of things including jewelry making (mostly lost wax casting), sewing and tailoring, painting, drawing, interior design, space planning, architecture and sculpting. He is fairly well versed in materials like wood, metal, plastics, but says he can’t weld “yet.” Construction-wise he can do framing, finish carpentry, cabinet making, electrical work, gas lines and pipe fitting, plumbing (rough and finish), HVAC work, tiling and hardwood floor installation and refinishing, basic masonry work,

drywall work and painting.

This might seem like an impressive resume in itself for any one prolific individual, but on top this myriad of skill-sets somehow, not-surprisingly, Raffel practiced dentistry for 17 years. His exacting nature is ever-present in his works, which one can assess take an incredible amount of skill, time and foresight.

“I have always been very fussy and meticulous regarding anything I did, even from a very early age (5),” says Raffel. “My bad mental health even made this worse as my perfectionism really became almost an illness. I would spend over an hour on one filling, driving my patients crazy and insuring I would make no money. If anything I did wasn’t perfect I used to berate myself in an abusive way.”

One of the most technically innovative and surprising pieces among the many of Raffel’s displayed at Tinnerman is a diorama called “Tiny Disco with Plus-Plus Painting,” encapsulated in a wall of the common area behind a brass-plated peephole next to another sound hole where tiny dancing figurines, a real disco ball and a miniature guitar on a miniscule stage, all painstakingly constructed by the artist, dazzle the childish curiosity of the viewer.

There is a rotation of popular dance songs playing out of another unassuming hole in the wall abreast of the peephole. The sound

and lights are triggered by a magnetic reed switch when sliding the peephole cover. It is a wild surprise for any viewer curious enough to take a peek into this inconspicuous portal.

“Everything has beauty in it, so it doesn’t take much for me,” says Raffel. “A little piece of junk could do it. I switched to sculpture after renting a studio in the Left Bank building in the flats and found some boxes of old stamping that became my first sculpture, a minimalistic pattern piece called ‘Gear Shroud Monolith.’ I became interested in minimalism after many discussions with Rob Gibbons and also Joe Fruce, a sculptor friend. Regarding artist statements, I always thought there were primarily after-the-fact bullshit that tried to make the work sound ‘deep’ or important.

Conceptual work does need to be explained sometimes but if the viewer reads it first it completely eliminates any chance of them using their own intelligence to figure it out. Granted that is a smaller percentage of folks, but it kind of takes the fun/challenge out of it. Process-wise, sometimes I get ideas then make the product based on the concept, otherwise I just look at my junk and see what I can make out of it. It has to be beautiful though, at least to me.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

| clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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Photo by Norman Seef

MUSIC RAINY DAY MEN

James Taylor and Jackson Browne to play Blossom in July

By Jeff Niesel INITIALLY, JAMES TAYLOR AND Jackson Browne postponed their joint 2020 tour to 2021 and set June 11 as the date they’d roll into Blossom. Given continued COVID concerns, the duo has now pushed that date to July 31.

“We want to thank all those who have graciously held onto their tickets; we appreciate your continued patience as we navigate these unchartered waters,” Taylor and Browne say in a joint statement.

“We didn’t want to have to cancel this tour that we’ve been waiting so long to perform together, so we’ve been working to get these dates rescheduled to a time period when the U.S. is reopened and safe to gather for a concert. Of course, we will be keeping a close eye and abide with all health and safety protocols throughout each venue and state. We can’t wait to get back on stage and see you out there soon.”

The dates support Taylor’s 2020 album, American Standard. It’s Taylor’s 20th studio album and his first release since 2015’s Before This World. The album features covers of 20th century classics.

“I’ve always had songs I grew up with that I remember really well, that were part of the family record collection — and I had a sense of how to approach, so it was a natural to put American Standard together,» explains Taylor in a statement. «I know most of these songs from the original cast recordings of the famous Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, including My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, Carousel, Showboat and others. In terms of how they were performed and recorded before, we paid attention to the chords and melody, but we were interested in doing something new, and in bringing something new to it, we›ve reinterpreted the songs, that›s what makes it worth doing.»

Bop Stop’s Radio Program Gains Traction as Club Announces Reopening Plans During the pandemic, the Bop

Stop began recording all of its livestreamed performances and began producing pilot programs of a program dubbed Live at the Bop Stop and pitching the episodes to stations across the country.

The show now airs on five terrestrial stations, and the Bop Stop has received commitments from other stations that’ll add the program over the next few months.

Global Community Radio will introduce the program to its weekly lineup tomorrow.

“One of the goals of the show is to bring quality live jazz programming to non-commercial stations, and we’re delighted to work with an organization that has the same goal,” says Gabe Pollack, Live at the Bop Stop host and Bop Stop director, in a press release.

Distribution through Global Community Radio adds two additional affiliates to the Program — WRST, the campus radio station at the University of WisconsinOsh Kosh, and KJZX FM, a community FM station providing jazz programming in Austin. They join WBWC in Cleveland, WOBC in Oberlin and WPKM in Parkersburg as affiliates.

The program comes with with a companion podcast of expanded performances.

Season One features Pete McCann, Steve Kortyka, Jackie Warren, Theron Brown, Dave Sterner and Pulse Quartet.

Starting in May, the Bop Stop will begin hosting outdoor shows with limited audiences.

David Gray’s White Ladder 20th Anniversary Tour Now Coming to Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica in July 2022 Due to coronavirus concerns, singer-songwriter David Gray has rescheduled the dates of his 2021 North American tour. He originally intended to tour last summer and then bumped the tour to this summer, but he’ll now perform on July 16 of 2022 at Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica.

According to a press release, original tickets will be honored.

“Dear White Ladder ticket holders, thanks for bearing with all this over the last 12 months,” Gray says in a tweet. “After lengthy discussions, it’s been decided that the only sensible option is to reschedule the entire White Ladder Anniversary Tour & move all dates to 2022. It is hugely disappointing to have to do so, but the key word to keep in mind here is interconnectedness. It’s not enough that some of the dates might be able to happen this year, all of the dates need to happen in order that the tour as a whole makes sense.

This is the third time I’ve had to make one of these announcements, but if I’m being honest, it’s the first time that I feel, with a strong degree of certainty, that these rescheduled shows will actually take place.”

Cleveland Native Madeline Finn Revisits Roots on New Single, ‘Ohio’ Despite the pandemic, singersongwriter Madeline Finn, a Northeast Ohio native who now lives in Nashville, has continued to write and record new material.

She revisits her Northeast Ohio roots and shows off her evocative voice on her new single, “Ohio,” a tune produced by Ben Cramer (Old Sea Brigade) and Owen Lewis (Phillip Phillips, Lady Gaga).

“The song pairs space-filled arrangements with cascading guitar lines, the occasional orchestral

effect, and percussion that twinkles like a clear, starry night,” reads a press release about the tune, which just came out today. “However, as ‘Ohio’ progresses, the song builds in volume and intensity — [Finn’s] voice grows stronger and boasts more conviction, in tandem with robust guitar strums — before subsiding gently into a wistful end.”

Finn wrote the song about relocating to Nashville.

“Moving away from home for the first time is an experience in itself, but moving away from home shortly before a global pandemic is another monster entirely,” she says. “Before I moved to Nashville, I had convinced myself that everything would be better once I got out of town, I’d be able to leave behind all the toxic behaviors and views I carried with me while I built my life in Cleveland.

Writing ‘Ohio’ led me to admit to myself that there was more work to be done than simply a change of scenery.”

Finn says she has fond memories of playing Northeast Ohio clubs, and we bet she’ll route her tours through town as soon as it’s safe to hit the road again.

“While I am grateful for my new home and meeting my partner here, I still miss the comfort of my hometown bar and the people who so often brought warmth to snowy nights,” she says. “I hope this song can bring you some of that warmth, wherever you are.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene | clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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Cutline.

Photo credit

One of the many Muni Lot distributions in the last year

PHOTO COURTESY THE GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK

‘THE NEED IS URGENT’ A conversation with greater Cleveland Food Ban President and CEO Kristen Warzocha, after a year of unprecedented hunger

By Sam Allard THE ECONOMIC CARNAGE WROUGHT BY THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic has pushed Cleveland’s support systems to their limits.

Lost jobs and lost wages have put Northeast Ohio families in perilous financial binds, with thousands wondering how they’ll pay their rent, mortgage, utility and medical bills. More than ever, Clevelanders have also been left unable to feed their families. In this time of historic need, the Greater Cleveland Food Bank has been there. Scene’s Sam Allard talked with CEO Kristen Warzocha about how it’s been able to step up to the plate, and what waits around the corner as the Food Bank gets set to break ground on a new headquarters. | clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021 18

Sam Allard: I’m fully aware that the answer is probably “everything,” but let me start by asking, ‘How are things different for the Food Bank today than they were one year ago?’

Kristen Warzocha: Well, it has truly been an extraordinary year. Last March, when Gov. DeWine issued his stay-at-home order, we had a number of huge challenges thrust on our plate essentially overnight. The first,

of course, was the skyrocketing need. It was like nothing we’d ever seen in our 40-year history. The second was volunteer cancellations.

We had 1,400 volunteers cancel in the first two weeks. Volunteers are critical to our operation. They help us make meals in our kitchen, they help us sort and package donated food. We can’t do this work without them. We usually have 21,000 volunteers in a year. Last year, we

does is provide food to partner agencies, small community pantries and so forth, correct?

had half that. Third, food donations began to slow very quickly. We had about a 50% decrease in our traditional food donations.

Absolutely. We are so proud and grateful to provide food and support to our partners. The majority of the food the Food Bank provides is distributed though that partner network. We also have done some direct service to clients, including the monthly produce distribution and outreach trucks in the community, and other social services. But when the pandemic hit, we stepped in to do more direct service than we’d ever done before.

Why so low?

Because there wasn’t a surplus.

The Food Bank was founded to distribute surplus food from the food industry and serve it to the hungry.

But do you remember going into grocery stores, particularly right at the beginning? There were empty shelves. So we were contending with all those things, plus the fact that a few hundred of our partner agencies were forced to close for safety reasons.

CEO and President Kristen Warzocha

PHOTO COURTESY THE GREATER CLEVELAND FOOD BANK

Out of how many total?

About 1,000. Those are program partners across our six-county service area. These might be programs that provide free meals to kids after school in a school setting, summer meals for kids, senior meals at congregate sites. When so many of them shut down, we had to pretty quickly fill in the gaps.

Like with the muni lot drivethroughs?

Yep! For a number of years, we’ve done a fresh produce distribution the third Thursday of every month. On a busy Thursday, we’d see up to 1,000 people, many of whom were senior citizens with health challenges. So we knew we had to continue to do these, but also knew that we couldn’t have a line in our facility.

It used to be done indoors?

Right in our warehouse. People would come inside and leave with a shopping cart full of fresh food.

So we decided that in March, we’d do the same thing, but as a drivethrough at our facility on South Waterloo. The turnout was incredible.

We had 1,200 families. That’s families, by the way, which are an average of three, not individual people. And based on that turnout, we knew we’d have to do them more often. The next week, we had 1,600 families and – you may remember the news coverage – the line was miles long in every direction.

It was a circus.

Collinwood and the Shoreway were completely shut down. Frankly, for safety purposes, we called the city and asked if we could move our distribution to the Muni Lot, and thankfully they agreed. So the third

week, we did our drive-through there. That week, we had 2,800 families. The numbers just kept increasing. I, truthfully, thought we’d be in the muni lot for a few months. We are still there every Thursday.

To this day? You’re still there every week?

Every week. We’ve been there all year long. We’re going to be down there this afternoon.

Have the weekly numbers gone down at all?

Last week, we had 2,400 families.

The week before Thanksgiving, we served 5,000 families. The numbers peaked in the first couple of months at about 3,600 per week.

They started coming down when unemployment benefits and stimulus checks went out. They leveled out in late spring, early summer at about 1,700 families. And then as stimulus checks ran out, and as additional benefits became unavailable, the numbers started going back up.

Are there restrictions for folks who can receive food?

The Food Bank and its partner agencies serve people up to 200% of poverty. That’s about $43,000 per year for a family of three. We’ve developed an online registration system where people can see their income eligibility and register in advance, which cuts down on communication on site, and gives us a sense of how many people to expect. This is no-touch distribution.

Do you have an end date?

We do not. As long as the turnout remains high, and as long as the city

will have us, we plan to be there.

If your donated food went down by 50%, where did you get all this extra food to hand out to needy families?

Thankfully, the community has been very supportive. That’s been the silver lining of a very challenging year. And we increased the amount of food that we purchased to fill the gap. And then the federal government rolled out a program called the Farm to Families program, which was intended to help farmers survive the pandemic. And these boxes from farmers were made available to nonprofits nationwide. We were able to access on behalf of our partner agencies millions of pounds of free food through that program. And that’s winding down, so we anticipate buying significantly more food this year than we did last year.

I know you received a massive donation from MacKenzie Scott and other major private donations, including a $300,000 grant from the local Covid rapid response fund. Put those numbers in context. How much more did you receive in donations last year than in years’ past?

As an organization, our total revenue was up 74% last year. Philanthropic contributions doubled, which was incredible and has allowed us to do things we never imagined and frankly never thought would be necessary. So for example, we provided 9 million more pounds of food last year than in the year prior and served more than 100,000 more people. Almost 1 in four residents in our six-county service area received food from either the Food Bank or one of our partners last year. It’s heartbreaking.

A huge part of what the Food Bank

Beyond actual food, what sorts of additional support have you provided your partners? Have they seen trickle-down benefits from the overwhelming philanthropic support?

That has been a priority for us. Over about an 18-month period – this is from last March through this coming September – we’re providing about $16 million in support. That’s more than $6 million in disaster kits, which roughly a week supply of food in boxes that are packaged at the Food Bank by volunteers and by the National Guard. We’ve had close to 75 National Guard soldiers at the Food Bank since the end of March when all the volunteers canceled, by the way.

They’re still there?

They’re still here. We now have 49 of them. They’re here full-time, Monday through Friday. And we’re grateful because we still need them. One of the things they’ve been doing is packaging these disaster kits, which are largely purchased food. Many of our partners, just like us, have started some form of drive-through distribution on a smaller scale, so those pre-packaged boxes, while not ideal, are a best case scenario in a pandemic. We also have something called the Backpacks for Kids program – we’ve done $1 million more in that program.

These come in backpacks?

They come in bags, and they’re meant to go home in students’ backpacks. We’re critically worried about these kids in virtual school who rely on school lunches.

Talk about an underreported scandal in Cleveland.

I will tell you, child food insecurity has absolutely skyrocketed across the nation. And one of the main | clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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driving forces – of course it’s the pandemic – is that kids have not been in school where they not only learn, but get critical support like food. So we’ve increased that program and made those available to our partners, just trying to find as many kids as possible.

Our plan is to distribute 58 million pounds of food this year, even without the increased federal support that we received last year.

That means we will need to buy more food than we ever have before. It’s a tall order, but the need is there.

Do you work with CMSD? Some. We have a lot of after school programs with CMSD and have what we call school markets at some of their schools, where we bring in fresh produce at the end of the school day for kids to take home.

When CMSD schools closed, a lot of that food was not available.

anybody who asks about it, and had been planning to announce the project at our groundbreaking in April, and then it went to the Planning Commission, which is of course a public meeting.

Word got out.

will continue to need philanthropic support in the future, but we also know that the need is there, and was there even before the pandemic. Our mission is to ensure that everyone in our community has the nutritious food they need every day. That’s the North Star.

God, Cleveland’s already, what, #1 or #2 in child hunger nationwide? To see that exacerbated is just..

Like I said, we’ve been simply planning and answering questions as we went along.

For sure, but isn’t it true that this year was an outlier, in terms of fundraising?

It’s a crisis for low-income kids.

There’s no doubt about it. So that’s been a big focus for us.

What’s the plan for the current building, then?

For everybody.

Can we talk about this new building?

I saw the Planning Commission Presentation last week and it was basically the first time I’d heard anything about it. Has all the planning been going on in secret?

It has definitely not been going on in secret. The plans have been underway for quite some time. We determined in our last strategic plan, which our board approved in 2018, that we needed additional space. We’d been increasing our distribution every year for the 15 years that we’ve been in our current facility. We have more than tripled our pre-pandemic distribution and quintupled our distribution of prepared meals. We knew that if we continued on those trends, we’d run out of room in the not-so distant future. With the help of a capital advisory committee, we’ve been planning for this project since 2019. And then the pandemic struck and made the space all the more urgent. Now we are completely and totally out of room. We’re renting off-site storage. We have trucks that we’ve leased for storage sitting in our back lot, and we’ve still had to throw some food away, which we absolutely hate to do, but we literally have not had any place to put it or couldn’t distribute it quickly enough.

This is non-perishable food?

For various reasons, it’s a combination. We’re full. We’re more than full. So we’ve been working with our board, fundraising quietly, certainly answering questions from

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So, we are building a new larger community food distribution center on Coit Road, which is about five minutes from our current location.

It’s on a donated piece of property, which we’re thrilled about. Once that is complete, it will serve agencies directly. That’s where agencies will come pick up food and where our larger kitchen will be. Then we plan to renovate the current South Waterloo site and turn it into a client service center.

What would that look like?

For example, we will be adding a large on-site client choice pantry with flexible evening and weekend hours to serve working poor families, who struggle to get to a social service agency Monday through Friday 9-5. We also will be inviting other nonprofit social service agencies to co-locate and collaborate with us. We’ve been referring clients to agencies who are specialists in housing, health care and employment for a number of years now. Those tend to be the most frequent causes of food insecurity.

But in many cases, transportation is a big issue for clients, getting from agency to agency to get assistance, so we plan to offer space to those agencies to remove those barriers.

Are you at all concerned about the expense of maintaining two large facilities? Is that budgeted?

It’s certainly something we need to be cognizant of, something we’ve talked about, and something we’ve developed projections around. We

I think I’d be nervous that this level of support might not be sustainable long-term.

This is something we’re trying to address today and tomorrow in our strategic plan. We know that we need to be good stewards of the funding we’re receiving today, and need to be aware that this increased fundraising will likely not last as long as the increased demand.

That was our experience in the last recession. We had two years where fundraising increased significantly, and that helped us do more for the community, but when fundraising returned to normal, the need was still there for many years.

Are you planning to increase staff size?

Over time, absolutely. We’ll also need to increase volunteers to increase the amount of food that we distribute.

You mentioned that the land was donated. What’s the story there?

Vic DiGeronimo was a member of our capital advisory committee, the group that was helping us explore every option for how we might go about creating more capacity.

After we decided that we didn’t have space at our current property to expand – which had been our first hope – he had mentioned this potential property to us. It was one of about 10 properties on the market that met our needs that were evaluated. Because of its location, it was one that rose to the top. And then he offered to donate it, which is incredible.

And you’re planning to break ground next month?

April 14. And we’re hoping to have the facility constructed and dry storage operable by the end of this calendar year because we need that storage so badly. And then phase two will be building out the freezers, the coolers, the kitchen, the volunteer space. And we’d love to open that facility next year, which we know is a pretty aggressive timeline, but the need is urgent.

What’s the next year look like otherwise?

Our plan is to distribute 58 million pounds of food this year, even without the increased federal support that we received last year.

That means we will need to buy more food than we ever have before. It’s a tall order, but the need is there. And this is necessary. In addition, we are looking for other ways to help our partner agencies build capacity. We announced last week that we are providing $1.2 million in equipment to our partners to help them meet increasing needs. The fact is, just about every organization that provides food in this area gets all or part of their food from the Food Bank, and while there are large organizations that people have heard of, the majority of them are very small volunteer-run agencies with incredibly small budgets.

Anything else related to food distribution that the region should be more attuned to?

Just that it’s been a challenging year.

Today is the anniversary of the day that the World Health Organization declared this a pandemic. It’s been an uncertain year, a scary year, but I am impressed with the way our team and the community has stepped up to ensure that no one goes hungry.

This has required an extraordinary team effort, and it’s not over yet.

We’re planning to be at this for at least five years.

Whoa. Wait, at this level of distribution?

God, I hope not. But responding to increased need, absolutely. The fact is, the pandemic has created economic impacts far beyond the spread of the disease. We’re gonna be busy for years, and we’re planning that way.

scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene

| clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

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SAVAGE LOVE CONCESSIONS

By Dan Savage Hey, Dan: I’m a 29-year-old straight male. I’ve been with my 25-year-old partner for six years. I love her and think that we are perfect for each other. We have all the things that make existing with someone wonderful. But about two years into our relationship, I had a two-week-long affair while I was out of the country. I fucked up. I came clean to my partner, and we’ve done our best to work through this over the last four years, but it has obviously caused some trust issues between us. I’ve never cheated again, and I try every day to work through these issues I caused in our relationship.

There’s also been two recent instances of me breaking her trust.

On a particularly stressful day, I was caught sneaking a cigarette — the sneaking part is the issue — and on another occasion, I did drugs in our communal back garden with a friend after she had gone to bed. I owned up to both straight away. I view both of these as being a symptom of the lockdown/ pandemic prompting me to break with my “normal” behavior. But my partner is no longer comfortable allowing me to have the freedom to go out with my friends and partake in drugs without her express permission, which she already said she’s unlikely to grant me.

The other element to this is we want kids in three years. We’ve agreed that

I will fully abstain from all drugs after we become parents.

My problem is that I’m trapped between a desire to meet the wants of my partner while also maintaining a degree of autonomy. When we discuss these matters — which we’ve been doing frequently lately — her argument boils down to this: “You did a bad thing, you need to make concessions so that I feel safe, you having to seek my permission makes me feel safe.” It’s coming to loggerheads, and I don’t know if I’m the unreasonable one here, especially since I’m arguing for the freedom to do an illegal drug. I would appreciate your external, outside, drug-positive perspective in this.

Don’t Really Understand Girlfriend’s Sentiment I had some emergency dental work done this morning, and I’m a little strung out on … what are those things called again? Oh, right: drugs. Last night, I selected the letters I wanted to respond to in this week’s column, and I really didn’t expect to be on powerful painkillers when I sat down to write my responses today. In all honesty, I probably shouldn’t be operating advice machinery at the moment, but deadlines are deadlines. You should take my advice with a grain silo or two of salt, DRUGS, and everyone else should just

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| clevescene.com | April 7-20, 2021

skip this week’s column entirely.

OK, DRUGS! Here we go! My outside, external, drug-positive-but-with-caveats (see below) perspective on your dilemma boils down to this: Do not make babies with this woman. Don’t scramble your DNA together with hers — not unless it makes your dick hard to think about begging this woman for permission every time you wanna smoke a little pot with a friend or take a fucking shit for the next 40 years. (And, trust me, you’re still going to want to smoke pot after the babies come.) If that kind of begging excites you, great. Have all the fucking babies. But if that doesn’t excite you … dude … run the fuck away.

Yeah, yeah, you did a bad thing.

You had an affair four years ago, and you made the mistake of telling your girlfriend about it, even though (1) she most likely was never going to find out about it and (2) you quickly came to regret it. Your regret wasn’t instantaneous — like you, DRUGS, your regret took a couple of weeks to come — but the fact that you haven’t cheated on her since is a pretty good indication that your regret was sincere. And now here you are four years later, DRUGS, waking up every day and getting back to work on those trust issues. Because you’re still in trouble. Because you made the mistake of telling your girlfriend about an affair she would’ve never known about if you’d kept your mouth shut.

But you know … come to think of it … maybe it was a good thing that you told your girlfriend about the affair, DRUGS. Not because honesty is always the best policy. The famed couples counselor and author and podcaster and Ted Talker Esther Perel urges people who’ve had affairs to consider the “burden of knowing” before they disclose. If you sincerely regret the affair and it’s not going to happen again and your partner is not in any physical risk and is unlikely to hear about the affair from a third party, sparing them the burden of knowing is the secondmost loving thing a person can do. (Not cheating at all would, of course, be the most loving thing a person can do.)

So to be clear, DRUGS, I don’t think telling your girlfriend was the right thing to do because all affairs must be disclosed. I think telling your particular girlfriend was the right thing to do because she’s telling on herself now. If she doesn’t feel like she can trust you ever again — and if she’s constantly on the lookout for new reasons why she can’t trust you — then she needs to end this relationship. But she hasn’t ended the relationship, DRUGS, and you need to ask yourself why she hasn’t. I have a hunch: She hasn’t ended it because she likes it this way.

Someone who cheats and gets caught and discloses and wants to make it right

can expect to spend some time, well, making it right. They should expect to spend some time in the doghouse and, to extend the metaphor, they should expect to spend some time on a short leash. But a person can’t spend the rest of their life in the doghouse. A cheater has to take responsibility and be considerate about insecurities the affair may have created or worsened. But if a cheater has done all that and years later the person they cheated on won’t let them out of the doghouse — or is constantly finding new reasons to keep the cheater in the doghouse — then the doghouse is where the cheated wants the cheater.

Forever. Which means instead of being angry you cheated on her, DRUGS, on some level your girlfriend is delighted you cheated on her. Because the wrong thing you did allows her to control you for the rest of your life.

But it shouldn’t. And if she insists it does or that it should, DRUGS, you should leave her.

About those caveats: You don’t specify the drug you used in the backyard with your friend, but I’m gonna assume it was weed — which is legal where I live but not where you live. There is, of course, a big difference between stepping out to smoke a little pot after the girlfriend has gone to bed and sneaking out to smoke a lotta meth.

And if you’re an addict and a little pot has led to a lot of harder drugs in the past, your girlfriend’s zero-tolerance policy might be justified. But if we’re not talking about hard drugs and you don’t have addiction issues, DRUGS, you shouldn’t have to beg your girlfriend’s permission in advance — which she’s denied in advance — to smoke a little pot with a buddy.

Hey, Dan: I’ve been listening to old episodes of the Savage Lovecast while working from home. Yesterday I heard you explain to straight male listeners that their straight female partners would say “yes” to sex more often if “sex” didn’t always mean the woman getting fucked. That really resonated with me, a straight woman with a male partner. When my husband came onto me the next night and I didn’t feel like opening up to get basted, instead of saying “no” I offered to jerk him off while he sucked my tits. It was great — for both of us! Total win! Thank you, Dan Savage!

Joyfully Enjoying Relevant Knowledge You’re welcome, JERK! It’s always nice to hear from folks who’ve taken my advice and didn’t regret it!

mail@savagelove.net t@fakedansavage www.savagelovecast.com

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