Scene February 10, 2021

“He gave me his phone number scrawled on a matchbook, put his shades back on, and walked out. Every head in the bar turned to follow.”

ADELE

BERTEI shares an excerpt from her book, PETER AND THE WOLVES, on the brief, brilliant life of Peter Laughner

2

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

3

CONTENTS FEBRUARY 10-23, 2021 • VOL. 51 NO 28

Upfront .......................................5 Feature ..................................... 10 Eat ............................................ 14

Music ........................................ 17 Savage Love .............................. 18

REWIND: i997 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

Euclid Media Group Chief Executive Officer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Officers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP Digital Services Stacy Volhein Digital Operations Coordinator Jaime Monzon www.euclidmediagroup.com National Advertising Voice Media Group 1-800-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com

Copy Editor Elaine Cicora

Cleveland Scene 737 Bolivar Rd., #4100

Advertising

Cleveland, OH 44115

Senior Multimedia Account Executive

www.clevescene.com Phone 216-505-8199

John Crobar, Shayne Rose Creative Services Production Manager Haimanti Germain Editorial Layout Evan Sult Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace

E-mail scene @clevescene.com Cleveland Scene Magazine is published every other week by Euclid Media Group.

Verified Audit Member

Business Business & Sales Support Specialist Megan Stimac Controller Kristy Cramer Circulation

Cleveland Distribution Scene is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader

Circulation Director Burt Sender

Copyright The entire contents of Cleveland Scene Magazine are copyright 2020 by Euclid Media Group. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Publisher does not assume any liability for unsolicited manuscripts, materials, or other content. Any submission must include a stamped, self-addressed

248-620-2990

Printed By envelope. All editorial, advertising, and business correspondence should be mailed to the address listed above.

Subscriptions $150 (1 yr); $ 80 (6 mos.) Send name, address and zip code with check or money order to the address listed above with the title ‘Attn: Subscription Department’

...The story continues at clevescene.com

4

The Cavs have talented young guards these days but Sexton and Garland have yet to be a Scene cover star like Bobby Sura was 24 years ago.

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

Take

SCENE with you with the Issuu app!

“Cleveland Scene Magazine” COVER BY EVAN SULT

Photo courtesy Cleveland Planning Commission

UPFRONT

NEWS

Cleveland to Give Rocket Mortgage Another Handout, Economic Development Brain Worm Thrives THE CITY OF CLEVELAND will give Rocket Mortgage roughly $1 million over the next five years as part of a so-called job creation incentive package. The grant is now a standard offering, one of the city’s go-to tools in its economic development toolbox. It is equal to 0.5 percent of a company’s new payroll.

Rocket Mortgage, the Detroitbased mortgage lender formerly known as Quicken Loans, is housed under Dan Gilbert’s Rocket family of companies. It plans to expand its Cleveland headcount by roughly 700 employees. The new hires will work on the fourth and fifth floors of the Higbee Building downtown, above the JACK Casino, and will expand the company’s fintech (financial technology) division.

According to Rocket’s Clevelandbased director of government affairs, Wendell Robinson, these

positions will not require a fouryear college degree and will pay, on average, $75,000 per year.

In a city council committee meeting last week, which consisted largely of council members prostrating themselves in gratitude before Rocket Mortgage, the city’s legislation was revealed to be a formality.

Robinson told Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland that Rocket was already recruiting for these new positions and intended to begin hiring immediately. The company had received a pledge from the city that they’d get the grant, Robinson said, and wanted to hit the ground running.

City council was just the rubber stamp, in other words. Everything had already been ironed out by the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP), Ohio Means Jobs and other partners who assembled the picnic basket of subsidies for the

mortgage giant. Everyone was confident that city council would raise no objection of any kind.

They didn’t. Tuesday morning, the city’s elected representatives took turns heaping praise on the mortgage lender. They declared that the deal was “Christmas in February,” (Councilman Joe Jones).

It was a wow-worthy “big win for Cleveland,” one that “the entire city should be celebrating,” (Blaine Griffin). Indeed, Griffin said it was one of the best deals he’d ever seen on council. Downtown councilman Kerry McCormack offered his “enthusiastic support,” and Phyllis Cleveland said Rocket’s expansion represented “an investment in human capital in our community that we haven’t seen the likes of in quite some time, if ever.”

Basheer Jones called the deal “very very exciting” and told the city’s economic development director, David Ebersole, that he “continue[d]

to hit home runs.” (No word on how the deranged 60-year TIF for the Flats East Bank project affected Ebersole’s batting average.)

Unlike the Q Deal, which was praised by a majority of city leaders in equally outlandish terms, the current job creation grant is actually contingent upon new jobs being created. It will be disbursed annually, based on Rocket Mortgage’s new payroll, and will be capped at $975,000 over five years. The city is not bonding out tens of millions of dollars up front based on wildly optimistic projections, as Cuyahoga County did for Dan Gilbert in the Q Deal, increasing its substantial debt burden and downgrading its bond rating in the process. (Mayor Frank Jackson nevertheless saw fit to call the Q Deal the best deal he’d ever seen as an elected official as he signed the city legislation authorizing nearly $100 million | clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

5

UPFRONT from Cleveland’s coffers for the arena renovation. Surreal stuff.)

The current grant for Rocket Mortgage will be defended on these grounds and others, most notably that the company could have expanded its footprint elsewhere. That logic should be familiar. It was applied by more than 200 cities across the country during the Amazon HQ2 sweepstakes, the most profound and embarrassing race-to-thebottom spectacle an American corporation has yet devised.

Rocket might have expanded at the Quicken headquarters in Detroit or grown its operations in Phoenix or Charlotte, Robinson told council. He said that as a lifelong Clevelander, he campaigned hard for the expansion in Cleveland and worked with GCP to “put [their] thumb on the scale” to help the city land these jobs.

The jobs are a juicy prize, make no mistake. Seven hundred new people working downtown, once the pandemic recedes, is a boon for the economy of the central business district. And as Kerry McCormack correctly noted, the increased payroll is only one way that new jobs benefit Cleveland.

All these new employees will also use their paychecks on local goods and services, including downtown stores and restaurants that will benefit from the increased foot traffic and may themselves hire new workers to accommodate. At least some of these new Rocket employees will be moving to Cleveland from elsewhere and will presumably be renting apartments or buying homes in the city.

All that is true. It’s why cities have taken such stupefying financial risks to attract new jobs, and have created such outrageous incentive packages to lure big companies, and, in general, have espoused such ill-advised policies that aspire, above all else, to something referred to as “business friendliness.”

But this is a despicable governance framework — it’s a neoliberal framework, if that’s helpful — in which impoverished cities like Cleveland dole out precious public dollars to wealthy corporations like Rocket, which happens to be presided over by one of the planet’s richest men.

All people, certainly the city’s own elected representatives and

6

those who purport to be concerned with equity, should be militantly opposed to such ugliness.

And yet, just as during the farcical Q Deal, Rocket Mortgage was exalted Tuesday morning for its commitment to Cleveland. The hearing is worth watching on YouTube to witness the fanatical scope of this reverence. One after another, council members raised their hands to offer their personal commendations. At most, some of them said they hoped arrangements would be made to “create pipelines” so certain constituencies — CMSD students, Tri-C students, African Americans, felons, immigrants, the functionally and financially illiterate — could have access to these new jobs, or at least access to the opportunity to access these jobs. (The fact that the new highpaying positions do not require college degrees may have been misconstrued; it’s not as if the city’s most marginalized will suddenly become mortgage bankers and fintech software developers.)

The general vibe was that thanks to the almighty Quicken/Rocket, Cleveland can become the financial services capital of the world.

All of this jubilation was by the way in the context of greenlighting a subsidy for a major corporation.

It’s a small subsidy relative to something like the Q Deal. And one can argue — as virtually everyone does — that 0.5 percent of a company’s new payroll is a small and necessary price to pay for economic growth.

On the other hand, it’s a substantial subsidy: $975,000 is, for example, more than half of the total money disbursed as loans to Cleveland small businesses for operating support during the Coronavirus pandemic. Unlike Rocket, which will get its “job creation grant” in the form of a no-strings-attached cashback each year, the 161 struggling Cleveland small businesses get their survival funding in the form of $10,000 loans. (The city did, for the record, provide roughly $280,000 in grants to 39 small businesses to pay for damage sustained after the civil unrest on May 30.)

Unmentioned and unexplored at the council meeting was the question of whether Rocket would have expanded in Cleveland even without these dollars. In economic development circles, this is sometimes referred to as a “butfor” provision. Would Rocket have moved elsewhere but for the jobcreation grant?

It’s hard to say. Amazon, for

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

one, has mastered the art of securing incentives for locating fulfillment centers precisely where they would have anyway, (near transit arteries in vacant facilities with ample square footage). And while Wendell Robinson said that Rocket is “constantly evaluating” its expansion opportunities in all of its locations, it certainly had available space to expand in the Higbee building and will soon have a brand-new aerial pedestrian bridge to a brand-new parking garage over Ontario, (the planned construction of which has already shuttered one of the last good dives downtown.)

Even if there had been legitimate debate by Rocket execs, and Robinson sauntered over to GCP with his hand out in order to “put [their] thumb on the scale” for Cleveland, every local elected leader should have stared these goons in the face and reminded them the public is right this moment forking over more than $100 million for the renovation of the arena. The Cleveland Cavaliers are also housed under Gilbert’s Rocket corporate umbrella. And thanks to Covid, admissions tax revenue will be drastically lower than projections for another consecutive year. The public will be paying off the upgrade until 2034 and will likely have to exhaust all available reserves in the short-term.

Notwithstanding Gilbert’s fortune, the recent stratospheric growth of which makes ongoing public subsidy for his companies a moral abomination in the poorest big city in the USA, Cleveland cannot continue to play this economic development game and expect to get ahead. Watching this same script play out year after year is enough to make a citizen go insane.

The alternative, of course, is investing in the city itself, creating a healthy place, with healthy people, where companies want to locate and expand. Not because the city is paying them hand over fist to do so in spite of the ghastly quality of life for most residents, but because of successful public schools, robust public transit infrastructure, widespread health and human services, a lively cultural scene and unique small businesses that give any region its flavor and soul. That’s what will move Cleveland forward.

But Cleveland’s leaders are unable to dislodge the economic development brain worms living rent-free in their heads. Their views have been so warped by GCP and

the business-friendliness cabal that not only do they continue to hand out public money to companies like Rocket, which are only too pleased to pit poor cities against each other to maximize the private take; they thank those companies for the privilege. -Sam Allard

President of Local Cop Football Team Resigns After Loehmann Controversy A week after local and national

DIGIT WIDGET 81 Zip codes in the United States where more than 25% of the individual properties are underwater. Twenty of those zip codes are in Ohio.

Six are in Cleveland.

7 Ohio Companies that rank among the 100 worst Greenhouse Gas polluters in the United States. They are: American Electric Power (No. 5), FirstEnergy (No. 15), Marathon Petroleum (No. 16), Ohio Valley Electric (No. 55), Buckeye Power Co (No. 73), Murray Energy (No. 79), Cleveland-Cliffs (No. 83).

132 FirstEnergy outages in 2020 caused by foil balloons, the company announced this week. That’s 25% more than in 2019.

$28,000 “Seed money” that local restaurateur Tony George and his family provided to Dennis Kucinich for his potential mayoral campaign.

The George contributions represent more than half of Kucinich’s total fundraising to date.

media stories revealed that the Cleveland Warriors, an amateur football team made up of area first responders and police officers, had welcomed Timothy Loehmann, the former Cleveland cop who shot and killed Tamir Rice, onto the team in recent years, the squad’s president has allegedly resigned.

That’s what president Bill Sofranko texted a former player who had organized a protest at a Warriors practice, as first reported locally by Ideastream.

“You win, I resign now back off for the good of the team. Call off your people,” he said.

Ideastream additionally reported that Loehmann is no longer part of the team.

His inclusion was the subject of stories, including by the New York Times, and the subject of concern by former players, all of whom are Black. While some alleged the team took some effort to conceal Loehmann’s identity, others knew and played alongside the former police officer for at least two years.

One former player and current coach who is also Black told the Times, speaking anonymously, “I got to know Tim personally. He was remorseful. He was apologetic.”

Sofranko has said he didn’t question whether Loehmann should have been allowed to play and that Randy Knight, the protest organizer, raised the Tamir issue after being told he couldn’t play on the team any longer since he was no longer an active corrections officer.

While Loehmann continues to fight to get his job back with the Cleveland police after being fired for lying on his job application, he also doesn’t currently work in law enforcement.

Knight, meanwhile, said that six players, all Black, had been forced off the team in the past two years after voicing opposition to Loehmann’s place on the roster.

-Vince Grzegorek

Westlake-based Hyland Software Lays Off Nearly 150 Employees, Outsourcing Jobs to India, Poland Westlake-based Hyland Software, a perennial “top workplace” in Northeast Ohio, has laid off nearly 150 employees in its product delivery department. The mass axing “came out of left field,” according to a former employee, and was communicated to unsuspecting remote workers in a pre-recorded Zoom message on

Wed. Jan. 27.

The layoffs reduce the department by an estimated 1/8th, with software developers, quality assurance specialists and testing engineers all unceremoniously getting the boot. Hyland is seen as a “shining star” among tech companies headquartered in Northeast Ohio, (a region which desperately wants to become an innovation hub), but the layoffs confirmed for many current and former employees that the company’s corporate values are waning, its #hylandlife reputation souring.

“This has shaken up the culture of Hyland and absolutely compromised our trust in the company,” one employee said. They and others said the company was coming off a record profit year.

Hyland sent Scene the following statement after our initial reporting appeared on CleveScene. com.

“Hyland is in the midst of a multi-year strategic initiative to build a cloud-first platform for the future while supporting our customers’ success today. A component of this strategy is to hire more than 300 additional technologists and increase our overall employee count by 15 percent in 2021. As we focus on innovating our platform and strategically expanding our global footprint, we have made the difficult decision to eliminate some positions on our current Product Delivery team. We are providing affected employees with assistance in their transitions.”

Current and former employees who spoke to Scene anonymously said that the layoffs felt like a betrayal, especially after Hyland has invested considerable financial resources into HR and marketing to create a corporate brand that emphasizes a “family” culture.

CEO Bill Priemer joined Hyland as the VP of Marketing in 1997 and touted the “family” dynamic of Hyland in a recent local magazine profile.

For employees within the large product delivery department, two Zoom meetings were announced for the morning of Jan. 27 with the vague header “Product Delivery Update.” Those who were given a link to a 10 a.m. meeting were greeted with a pre-recorded message from Hyland’s Chief Product Officer John Phelan giving them the bad news.

The 10:30 a.m. folks were also greeted with a scripted message.

It assured them that their

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

7

UPFRONT

MEDICAL MARIJUANA CARDS

BE FREE FROM

• For Medical Marijuana Cards & Treatment Plans • Cards available same day!

COMPASSIONATE BOARD CERTIFIED MD MIDDLEBURG HEIGHTS

DRUG ADDICTION Suboxone Clinic

WELLNESS CENTER 440-580-4998 8

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

positions were safe but noted that a restructuring was afoot. This would include, among other things, local layoffs and a significant ramping up of workforces overseas at Hyland’s offices in both India and Poland.

Over the next 24 hours, employees — virtually all of whom have been working from home during the pandemic — experienced a “collective freakout,” said one employee. They were scrambling to figure out new responsibilities on existing projects with the realization that massive workloads loom, all while trying to delicately ascertain who was “separated,” the preferred lingo of Hyland HR. One employee noted to Scene that while “ethics” was removed from Hyland’s core values in 2020, “family” still remains. (“We care deeply for one another and help each other achieve maximum personal potential while maintaining a healthy work-life balance,” the Family entry on Hyland’s core values page reads.)

It was in that spirit that multiple employees reached out to Scene to decry what they viewed as a rotten way to part with their colleagues, many of whom had been at Hyland for 10 or more years.

“Hyland has been acquiring companies left and right for the past few years, making money hand over fist for its majority owner [the private equity firm Thomas Bravo],” one former employee said. “And with acquisitions, you always suspect that people will be let go. It’s unrealistic to expect otherwise.

But it’s the method that has people spooked. You might expect this at a GE, but not at a company with humble beginnings like Hyland.”

The lack of clear communication from Hyland leadership has led to rampant speculation and conspiracy theorizing. Back in June, 2020, CEO Bill Priemer announced that due to Covid cost-cutting measures, employees wouldn’t be able to roll over vacation time from 2020 to 2021.

Did he know that layoffs would be forthcoming?

The most common view, employees said, was that Hyland simply made the decision to save money. After all, software developers in Katowice, Poland, make, on average, less than half

the annual salary of developers in Cleveland. (Though the office scuttlebutt holds that, relative to other local tech companies, Hyland’s programmers and engineers are criminally underpaid.)

“From a numbers standpoint, maybe it makes sense,” one current employee said. “I guess you’d expect a company to look out for its own bottom line over its employees. But you have to understand, Hyland’s whole thing is that we’re not a company. We’re a family. Well, we got screwed.” -Sam Allard

Irishtown Bend Demolition Underway, Will Reveal Dramatic Downtown Views The demolition of two buildings on W. 25th Street to clear the way for the Irishtown Bend project began Monday.

Scene reported in July that the Cleveland Metroparks would manage the demolition with funds obtained by the nonprofit LAND Studio through the Clean Ohio Fund.

As we reported then, the demolitions will be the “first major visible step” in the project to create a premiere public park in Cleveland. It aims to stabilize and reimagine the Cuyahoga River hillside along the bend just North of W. 25th Street and transform it into a 23-acre park.

The former Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) administrative building, and the former CMHA multifamily housing complex known as “Big 8” are the two structures to be demolished. The Big 8 facility was the first to be demolished Monday.

A statement from LAND Studio said that the demolition would clear the way for “dramatic views” of the river and downtown Cleveland which are now obstructed.

“The clearing of these buildings will now give the community a better sense of the incredible potential this space offers,” said Joel Wimbiscus, LAND Studio project manager, in an emailed statement. “Once razed, the curtains will be drawn back to open up a dramatic view of the Cuyahoga Valley and downtown allowing Clevelanders to reunite with a vista that has been hidden for more than 50 years.” -Sam Allard

scene@clevescene.com @clevelandscene

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

9

FEATURE “THIS IS WHERE IT ALL HAPPENS”

An excerpt from Peter & the Wolves on the brief, brilliant life of Peter Laughner

By Adele Bertei IN 1974, PETER LAUGHNER, the legendary musician from seminal local acts Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu, wrote in the Plain Dealer that, “I want to do for Cleveland what Brian Wilson did for California and Lou Reed did for New York.”

Chasing and emulating those stars, Lester Bangs wrote three years later in an obituary for Laughner, who passed away at the young age of 24, was in some small way part of his demise: “Peter Laughner had his private pains and compulsions, but at least in part he died because he wanted to be Lou Reed. The ‘new wave’ can boast its first casualty.”

Laughner’s brief but influential career has experienced a revival in recent years, including through a five-LP box set from Smog Veil Records released in 2019 that brought previously unpublished recordings to light.

Smog Veil has also recently republished a memoir from Adele Bertei, a musician, writer, actor and artist who was friends, roommates and bandmates with Laughner. She first self-published the book in a limited run in 2013.

In a New York Times article on the “excavation of a rock ‘n’ roll tragedy,” Bertei said, “If he had been able to sober up and shake off the whole Cleveland attitude and stigma that hung around him and just really concentrated on his music and gotten the hell out of there, I think he really would have been one of our major talents in America.”

In Peter and the Wolves, named after the band Laughner and Bertei were in together, she “recounts her friendship with the late great Peter Laughner, Cleveland’s answer to all things underground and punk in the 1970s. The book is Bertei’s intimate recounting of the musical education she received from Laughner; of their complex artistic kinship, and the vivid trajectory of the ‘live fast die young’ ethos that extinguished the light of a radiant rock and roll heart.”

Bertei decamped to New York shortly after Laughner’s death. There, she began what’s become a lengthy and notable career, beginning with the Contortions and a prominent role in the early No Wave art and music scene of late 1970s NYC. She was also a member of The Bloods, considered to be the first all-out, allfemale rock band, before European DJ adventures and a return to the States and a record deal with Geffen as a solo artist. She’s sung backup vocals

for the Culture Club, written songs for the Pointer Sisters, made films and, in recent years, has published columns and her memoir.

In this excerpt, republished with permission, Bertei talks about her early friendship with Laughner, shares her memories of Laughner’s private life compared to his public persona in the local scene, and gives insight into a singular talent lost far too soon.

Peter and the Wolves is available now at smogveil.com.

I’D HEARD ABOUT A PLACE IN Cleveland Heights where local musicians held blues jams on Friday nights. Cleveland spawned many great musicians, yet few would propel themselves out of the local scene. Blues bands and cover bands were the norm. Legendary Robert Jr. Lockwood (rumored to have been the stepson of Robert Johnson) played often. The Mr. Stress Blues Band didn’t really impress me, but the Tiny Alice Jug Band sure caught my attention. Their fiddle player could burn a circle around Paganini, and foxy little singer

Peggy Cella stood out on lead vocals.

15-60-75, also called the Numbers Band, featured stunning musicians backing charismatic singer Robert Kidney. From the Akron and Kent area, the band included Chrissie Hynde’s brother Terry, a beast on the saxophone.

While bussing tables at Isabella’s restaurant in University Circle, one of the waiters told me about a local blues jam; if the players approved the look of you and you knew a song in their repertoire, they’d let you get up and sing. I picked something I imagined they might know, “Piece

of My Heart” by Janis Joplin, and rehearsed until I felt secure enough to try my luck.

I made my request to the bass player. When the band kicked into a version close to Big Brother and the Holding Company’s, I grabbed the mike and started to wail. It was an out of body experience, and the applause of the small crowd signaled I’d actually pulled it off. I collapsed into a chair, shaking, ready to drink my nerves away when a guy in a black leather jacket approached our table.

He had pale skin, dark wavy hair, eyes masked by Wayfarer

sunglasses. A lean figure in tight indigo Levi’s, his new white t-shirt peeked from beneath the open leather. I noticed a little space between his front teeth as he smiled, and he removed his shades, exposing mischievous eyes searching mine as he said, “You’re really good. ” I blushed and thanked him. He told me he played guitar, humbly, assuming I didn’t know who he was.

“Do you wanna hang out and uh, maybe sing with me sometime?

Maybe with the new band I’m putting together?”

I’d hardly forgotten Peter

10

Adele Bertei in 1977, as captured by Nan Goldin

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

performing at the Change as lead singer, guitarist, and point of focus in Cinderella Backstreet. Three years later, there he was in the flesh, telling me he liked my voice. He gave me his phone number scrawled on a matchbook, put his shades back on, and walked out. Every head in the bar turned to follow.

No other guy in Cleveland struck as cool a style as Peter Laughner.

The Plaza is an apartment building on Prospect Avenue. A jumble of several architectural styles, the Plaza served as the alternate nexus to Coventry for artists and musicians.

It was Cleveland’s poor stepsister to New York’s Chelsea Hotel, hence a natural fit for Peter, who lived at the Plaza with his ex-wife Stella for a time. The building had been constructed to house the mistresses of Cleveland’s earliest millionaires, John D. Rockefeller among them.

I lived there for a short time and had met several people Peter had played music with. I’d heard the stories. He was the most talked-about musician in Cleveland, notorious due to his brilliance on guitar, his transgressions with drink, drugs, and guns, and for leaving every band he’d ever begun in a trail of bad blood. Twenty-two years old and he’d already served as catalyst to three of the best-known underground Cleveland bands: Rocket From the Tombs, the Dead Boys, and Pere Ubu. He incited strong opinions and stronger epithets; Peter the Genius, Peter the Asshole, Peter the Legend, the Drunk, and the Fool. The legend didn’t compute with the guy I met that night, who was sweet and humble. A true gentleman.

I guess you could say we made a good match when it came to our reputations. No other girl on the scene had as bizarre a reputation as did I. Before I met him, I’d done time in detention homes and foster homes, on the streets, in reformatories.

Held jobs at a Veteran’s Hospital, on the assembly line at Ford Motors in Lorain, reading to the blind, sorting clothes at Sally Army. Twenty years old and I carried more stories than Pliny the Elder, with not a chip but a brick of attitude on my shoulder.

Behind the airtight mask of a little OG, I was intact and impervious to hurt. Or so I thought.

Beneath the swagger I was petrified of people I admired, especially an artist like Peter, and it took a few days for me to call him. In case he’d meant what he said about my voice, I had to follow through, take the chance. I pulled my nerves together and dialed. He invited me over to his place in Cleveland Heights, off of Coventry — a block

I’d heard the stories. He was the most talked-about musician in Cleveland, notorious due to his brilliance on guitar, his transgressions with drink, drugs, and guns, and for leaving every band he’d ever begun in a trail of bad blood. away from where I lived.

I arrived at the appointed time buzzing with nervous energy. Peter greeted me with a warm smile, gesturing me into an empty living room adjoining the large dining room where his entire life was set up. A life clearly devoted to music.

“This is where it all happens,” he said.

PETER’S APARTMENT WAS spotless, and I held cleanliness in high regard, having learned to appreciate order after my mother’s cyclone of destruction. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd drummed it into me as well; at Marycrest, we had to wash the floors beneath our beds on hands and knees. Every morning, a nun would come by with a glove — a white glove! — and run a fingertip across the tiles, and woe to thee if a speck of dirt appeared on the cotton of Christ’s bride. A tortuous exercise yet perverse as it may sound, it gave me a feeling of comfort. If you can’t control what life pitches at you, cleanliness grants a semblance of control, some order to fall into when life knocks you off balance.

Against one wall was a nubby 1950s couch and lining the other, an elaborate stereo system and music gear — a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a few assorted amps, and a collection of guitar pedals. The focal point was a lineup of stunning guitars.

He had a classic Stratocaster, a Telecaster, two beautiful acoustics, a Les Paul, a Gibson ES-335, and a Dobro. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an instrument as impressive as that Dobro. It seemed more precious art object than musical instrument — until I heard Peter make it sing.

Peter introduced his guitars as if they were human; this one was made in 1959, the headstock is yadda and the fingerboard yadda. . .. All Greek to me, but fascinating to hear him recite details about each instrument as if they were intimate friends.

Fronting two stacks of records were Patti Smith’s Horses and Fripp and Eno’s No Pussyfooting.

A 1950s blonde coffee table held neatly stacked magazines: Creem, Crawdaddy, and Punk on one side, opposite a local DIY newspaper called The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail.

Peter wrote for Creem, a gig he’d scored not only with his writing chops but also through his friendship with the reigning bard of rock and roll journalism, Lester Bangs.

To the air between us he offered up a pretty guitar with reverence, as if it were a holy artifact. A guitar with a rosewood neck, like Tom Verlaine’s, he said proudly. Verlaine was the lead singer and guitarist in the band Television.

I hadn’t yet heard their music, which set Peter to shuffling through a pile of 45s as I continued inspecting the room. Above the stereo equipment was a black and white photograph nailed to the wall by a switchblade. A skeletal man.

An Auschwitz inmate? It was Lou Reed in his Metal Machine Music phase. On another wall, he’d stapled a slip of paper with a scrawl; “It’s so cold in Alaska.” The Alaska line was from Lou’s Berlin LP — the most depressing rock and roll album ever recorded, yet compellingly poetic.

The maiden voyage of punk cabaret.

Books were piled neatly around the room. Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Dylan Thomas, Anne Sexton, Burroughs, Malcolm Lowry, Kerouac, Patti Smith. Scanning his record collection, I saw the Kinks, Richard and Linda Thompson, Nils Lofgren, Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man. Robert Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf, Phil Ochs, Tim Buckley, Laura Nyro, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, the Stones’ Exile on Main Street, Dory Previn, Lotte Lenya, Roxy Music, Eno. Peter’s taste ran the gamut. I’d learn that Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Gram Parsons, Television, and Richard Thompson were always given precedence when whatever high he was on reached its ultimate peak. He was into jazz too, but it didn’t feature much in our friendship.

Soon enough, I’d experience an instructional jazz moment through someone Peter would introduce me to in New York City.

He snapped a plastic disc into the opening of a 45 and placed it oh so carefully on the turntable.

The stereo system was high-end. A Marantz. Parents Luke and Margaret Laughner lived in the tony suburb of Bay Village, and price tags were insignificant when it came to their

only son’s desires.

“Television’s first single,” he grinned, cueing up.

As the room filled with Fred Smith’s eerie bass line, Peter beamed, motioning for me to sit in the center of the couch — the perfect listening position for the speakers to bring forth the magic.

The track was “Little Johnny Jewel,” and from the first pings of Tom Verlaine’s guitar, I knew I was in for something extraordinary. I closed my eyes, imagining a flock of birds pecking notes from starlight in this brand-spanking-new music, an otherworldly rock defiant of genre or label. Billy Ficca kicked in with the beat and the guitars began to chime like church bells, with Richard Lloyd’s notes echoing Fred’s bass line and Verlaine’s voice coming on all awkward and angular, like the voice of puberty cracking.

Words of boy-longing tumbling from a brain strung out on Mickey Spillane, science fiction paperbacks, and symbolist poets. The music perfectly matched a voice that didn’t have much to do with singing and everything to do with poetry.

I glanced over at Peter. He was nodding in bemused approval to the lyric, “I want my little winghead!”

AFTER THE RECORD FINISHED, he asked if I wrote songs. I happened to have the lyrics to a song I’d written about my ex-girlfriend, a simple melody with a girl-group kind of chorus of da doo ron rons. When he asked how I started singing, I told him the story of Grandma Jo, teaching me how to harmonize to the Boswell Sisters.

Grandma Jo played stride piano, a highly rhythmic style popularized during Prohibition. She had that driving left-hand of stride, keeping the beat on the bass with a volume that could cut through the ruckus of the speakeasies. How my Irish Grandma learned to hammer the keys like that was a great mystery, but boy, could she play, by ear and like a soul possessed. She’d pick up a melody with her right hand after hearing it only once, her mean left pounding out a bass line worthy of Fats Waller. She may have met some traveling musicians making their way east to New York in the 1920s and decided that stride was the rhythm for her. I once thought she was a boogie-woogie player in the style of Meade Lux Lewis. That is, until I heard Fats. I can see her now, bouncing on the piano bench, black pin-curled hair, and bright red lipstick staining a dangling unlit cigarette. She was created for music.

Her hands tap-danced over the keys | clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

11

with irresistible rhythm.

Grandma Jo was a single mother, raising my mom on the tips she made playing piano in the speakeasies.

Imagine being a single mother in the 1930s. Unless you were a streetwalker or a scullery maid, you were out of luck and in line at the soup kitchen, making Grandma Jo as professional a musician as they came. She took my toddler mom to the speaks with her, sat her in a basket beneath the piano where her little hands hung on to a piano leg, feeling the vibrations of Grandma working the keys. Kitty’s dance steps no doubt resonated with those early rhythms. Grandma Jo taught me about rhythm when I was old enough to hold a hand of playing cards. We’d play gin rummy, trading beats on the kitchen table with our plastic cards, she pushing me to beat out a cross-pattern to hers and we’d go on happily for hours. Rhythm is in the blood, she’d say with a wink, signaling that I was in on the secret.

My musical education continued at Blossom Hill. We had the choice of attending Catholic or Baptist services, a no-brainer. I loved reading stories of the Catholic saints, but it was gospel music that showed me the way to march those saints right on in. And then, to pull them up and out by the roots — the saints transfigured into notes and the notes, my Holy Grail.

Peter enjoyed hearing these stories, would coax them out of me as the drink flowed. I felt comfortable telling him about the antics in reformatories where we queer girls called our kind of love “playing the game.” The “game” made it easier for straight girls to play along — if it was just a game, then no harm done when you’re emancipated and return to your boyfriend on the “outs.” But for many of us, it wasn’t a game. I told him about Blossom Hill, where we created families from the same need as the darlings the world would later discover in Paris Is Burning and Pose.

On the flip side of my l’il Pimpin’ act was the pathetic waif act I could never have pulled off with my OG sisters on the Hill. Marycrest, a convent school for “Wayward Girls,” was run by the same order of nuns responsible for Ireland’s Magdalene laundries — the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Same order as Baltimore’s convent reformatory, House of the Good Shepherd for Colored Girls, once home to teenage Billie Holliday, where she received tutoring in choral singing. At Marycrest, my playing orphan worked like magic. Sister Veronica loved hearing me sing the embarrassing “Where Is Love?” and “Who Will Buy?” from Oliver! These wide-eyed, pathetic performances

12

Being so close to a master musician, the torque of notes moving from his hands, through the guitar and into my nervous system felt like the earth reversing its turn.

To play like that — how much time had he spent practicing? meant an extra dessert, another hour of clarinet practice, an amorous hair brushing by Sister V. — and a burgeoning lesbian pedigree. Maybe it was my comfort around telling these stories that allowed Peter to reveal his gentle side — the lonely that clung to his edges. Despite our vast childhood differences, we connected on the same terrain of lonesome.

PETER REMINDED ME OF NAN as we talked through the nights.

Although I was trying my best to catch up, I was painfully uneducated compared to him. Reformatories don’t exactly have well-stocked libraries, or in the case of Blossom Hill, classes above a junior high level.

The childhood loss that enraged me most had nothing to do with being abandoned — it was the lack of a decent education that haunted, leaving me in a constant state of resentment with an I can take care of myself attitude that forbade a reach toward formal education. This would have shown vulnerability and need, two feelings abandoned kids work hard at obliterating. My approach was based on following my curiosity, whatever shimmer of interest on the page proved capable of pulling head and heart. I thought, to hell with the GED, to the poverty and laziness of intellect I imagined it signaled.

In truth, I was petrified I’d fail the GED, since I knew nothing of maths and sciences. My outside bad-ass was inside more Jude the Obscure, yearning for Christminster.

Once emancipated from the Hill, I hit the library and read everything I could get my hands on — the Brontës, Hemingway, Henry Miller, Maya Angelou. Violette Leduc, Nikki Giovanni, and Rita Mae Brown — Rita, a mandatory balm for every budding lesbian in the 1970s. The exhilaration of Rimbaud arrived courtesy of Patti Smith. Other poètes maudits awaited my discovery via Peter. Delmore Schwartz, Bukowski, the French Decadents. I was crazy about all things French. I’d later discover certain guys in the music scene were reading Ayn Rand, getting off on her sexed-up capitalist white male superiority, while Peter was reading Walt Whitman, James

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

Baldwin, and Anne Sexton.

PETER DESCRIBED THE Buddhist Third-Class Junkmail Oracle as the brainchild of a Cleveland poet named d.a. levy. levy had been arrested several times on obscenity charges for handing out copies of his poems to minors. One of his works — “Suburban Monastery Death Poem” — is a compelling rendering of Cleveland during the 1960s, its themes still prescient today. levy bore a striking resemblance to Rasputin; imprisoned and shell-shocked, he gazes toward us from a photo as if asking, WTF am I doing here? Unable to acclimate to this world, he shot himself at twenty-six years old.

I read levy’s agit-prop poetry while Peter set up his Telecaster, plugging into his Fender Twin amp. He played a series of ballads. All mournful.

The dark “Baudelaire” reflected a weary isolation, yearning for mysticism and secrets in the presence of sylphic beauties. “Sylvia Plath” skated between serious and crass, and “Amphetamine” could have been lifted from a Velvet’s rehearsal, with the opening line, “Take the guitar player for a ride, never in his life been satisfied.” Another of his songs, “Rock It Down” had a verse about two sisters “doin’ it.” I tried not to blush while telling him how cool the song was. Being so close to a master musician, the torque of notes moving from his hands, through the guitar and into my nervous system felt like the earth reversing its turn. To play like that — how much time had he spent practicing? When he showed me how to play scales on the guitar, I understood how mastering an instrument, or any art form requires a commitment to a solitude I was not ready to embrace.

Peter strummed a few chords and asked me to try out my lyrics.

We wrote a song there and then, recording it on his reel-to-reel tape recorder. Aside from a bit of cognac, the night was excess-free, with none of the aggression, gunplay, or assholery tied to his rep. That night I met a true artist, a guy who lived for music, literature, and poetry.

And shocking as it felt, he seemed genuinely interested in what he heard in my voice, and the stories I

had to tell.

I’D PLACED MY COPY OF JEAN Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers on Peter’s coffee table to impress him. And before my departure, he played an Édith Piaf record, Non, je ne regrette rien, and gave me a paperback bio of her life. I fell in love with her voice at first trill. He asked if I wanted to meet up again that same week... to listen to music, to make more of our own.

Having arrived at his place around four in the afternoon, I left after midnight walking on ether, a new constellation of lights shimmering beneath my skin.

I’D TAKEN A JOB AT MY SECOND Salvation Army and began hanging out with Peter. One night while we were listening to music and drinking cognac, I took my first bump of methedrine. He didn’t offer — I saw him snort a line, so I asked, eager to try anything he’d lay claim to. The night became a jag of intense conversation, white lines on the table like so many guitar strings.

I played rhythm guitar, rudimentary E-A-D chords beneath his lead, the meth coursing through my head and hands as I shaved the strings in a blur as fast as hummingbird wings. I liked the drug’s effect, the race of shiny thoughts bursting to be expressed in the moment. My stories wrestling with his for airtime, we laughed as the words bumped and shimmied between us.

He played a track from the Roxy Music album For Your Pleasure, “Editions of You.” I’d heard noisemusic before, like the Velvet Underground discord of “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” but not like this. Peter explained it as the genius of a Brit named Brian Eno, unleashed on an electronic box of assorted oscillators called a synthesizer. For Your Pleasure’s foldout album cover featured Eno dressed as a Cruella de Vil faerie queen. Mesmerized by Eno’s image and sound, I needed to hear everything, and Peter owned most of Eno’s recordings: Here Come the Warm Jets, No Pussyfooting, Taking Tiger Mountain, and a new release, Another Green World. As the speed progressed on its course, the music became more heated, Iggy and the Stooges style — “Down on the Street.”

He showed me how to pedal a lethal guitar chord along with the track.

Next came the MC5, founders of the White Panther Party screaming, “Kick out the jams, motherfuckers!” from the turntable. He told me they’d broken up and were all junkies.

Guitarist Wayne Kramer had gotten busted selling drugs to a Fed and

was now in jail. Peter opened Punk magazine and pointed to a photo of Patti Smith. She wore a large button that read FREE WAYNE KRAMER. Dawn followed that shiny night with the speed wearing off and my first Valium nose-diving the energy. The music followed suit, downshifting to Richard and Mimi Baez Fariña’s petrifying ballad of white supremacy, “Bold Marauder” from Reflections in a Crystal Wind.

Joni Mitchell’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde. Watching Peter dozing, the Gibson hollow-body in his arms while I daydreamed of the new possibilities provoked by him and the music I was hearing. He looked content. Innocent. A far cry from the raving, drunken maniac of myth.

I wanted to smooth his cheek in a gesture of thanks but didn’t dare. I left him to the sound of Eno singing “Everything Merges with the Night.”

I NEVER FELT ANY SEXUAL tension around Peter. He treated me like a friend from the very beginning, was never condescending, and didn’t objectify women in person, although occasionally he did in song due to boy’s-club groupthink. His girlfriend at the time was a quiet librarian. Ex-wife Stella was a fellow rock journalist and brainiac. People say she and Peter were quite the volatile pairing. When I met Stella, she launched into a monologue about the Peloponnesian War, my brain scrambling to understand why.

Stella clearly operated from the head, where Peter steered more from the heart. His women were the antithesis of the rock and roll groupie-types you’d imagine a legendary rocker bedding. If he was a womanizer, he sure kept it hidden during our friendship.

Some claim he was into S/M. I’m not buying it. He was a dedicated follower of rock fashion, hence the nods to bondage. Then there was Lou Reed — days and nights when he lived and breathed Lou Lou Lou — only Lou. He fetishized Lou. If it were something he thought Lou might get up to, Peter would damn well try it on, sartorially and otherwise, hence the photos of him trussed like a turkey in a jacket of chains. The idea of sexuality defining the everything of a person’s being — he seemed to resent it as much as I did — and my being queer was a non-issue. I’d be surprised if he had much sex at all in his short lifetime. Peter was a melolagniac. He got off on music.

FLYING YOUR 1970S FREAK FLAG before dark in Cleveland was never a

smart move. One of the drag queens I performed with at the Change was murdered by her ‘straight’ married plumber boyfriend in the parking lot of a gay bar called Twiggy’s. No matter how Lou Reed’s Transformer may have cavorted with Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust in the airwaves and on stages, once you stepped outside of your gay ghetto, you were treated like vermin, especially when it came to family. I had a foster sister beat the whites out of my eyes when she discovered I wasn’t just nipping into the parent’s booze at our allgirl pajama parties. Some boys in Cleveland’s rock scene played dress-up glam gay — as long as it was counterfeit. For those of us who resisted daytime camouflage as our authentically bent selves, we were treated like glittery dust mites; fascinating for a moment, but not enough to keep the crowd from kicking you deeper beneath the bed.

The über-straight punk and avantgarde music scene of Cleveland never would have accepted a fag in their midst, just as a faerie bairn never could have walked beside Peter’s father, the hard-drinking WWII army colonel Luke Laughner. Some nights I’d gaze over at Peter and notice how graceful he looked, especially when we were listening in deep to an incredible piece of music. Sometimes he’d knot a kerchief around his neck, like the Belleville thugs of Brassaï.

Or lounge around cat-like in a kimono, reading. And I’d wonder if being queer was the biggest secret he carried, his bisexuality a Calvary cross he had to bear in secret due to the scene’s homophobia. He’d allude to it sometimes, went as far as telling me he’d been with a guy, but I never mustered up the nerve to delve into it with him. Loving girls — well, my preference never blinded me to beauty. I see him as I did then, a parallax view of St. John the Baptist as rendered by Caravaggio; lithe upper torso and milky white skin, St. John gently cradles a lamb while raising aloft a crown of flowers.

Savior and lamb, on earth in wolf’s clothing.

Playing along to Lou Reed’s Transformer, singing together on the chorus of “I’m So Free,” crooning “Perfect Day,” the joy coming off of him was visceral. Sometimes, as the night rolled away from us and his melancholy entered the room through his voice, his guitar, I imagined him feeling the sentiment of another watcher — the boy in Bowie’s “Lady Stardust” who sings, “I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

13

EAT SPRING PREVIEW

After a difficult 2020, a slate of new openings await Cleveland

Photo Courtesy Immigrant Son Brewery

By Douglas Trattner

2020 ESSENTIALLY WAS A “lost year” for Cleveland chefs and operators bent on opening a new place. Projects that were on pace to open last spring are right back where they started. But that’s good news, not bad. Despite getting bumped to the end of the line, these long-planned restaurants on the brink of opening are evidence that diners have a reason to be optimistic.

Chatty’s Pizzeria Any day now, Matthew Harlan will open the doors of his casual Italian eatery in Bay Village. The longtime Michael Symon Restaurants chef and manager – “Chatty” to his mates – has reshaped the former Vento la Trattoria space within the Metroparks Huntington Reservation. The familyfriendly bistro will feature two styles of pizza along with charcuterie boards, burrata salads, and meatball sandwiches. The food will be accompanied by a short but sweet beer, wine and cocktails list.

The Last Page Pinecrest’s latest addition, The Last Page, is a “modern American concept” that will open on February 16. The well-appointed restaurant is owned

by Majestic Steel CEO Todd Leebow, who is branching out from his “day

14

job.” No expense was spared to create a theatrical space to showcase an eclectic cuisine that takes cues from around the globe. The pho French dip alone sounds worthy of a visit. A stylish front patio promises to be hot property come the spring thaw.

La Fiesta Mexican Restaurant After 67 years in business, La Fiesta was forced to shutter its decades-old Mexican restaurant in Richmond Heights. Fourth-generation partner Brian Adkins thought he had secured a new home for the restaurant in Beachwood, but those plans collapsed.

Luckily for La Fiesta fans, the welladmired restaurant is just weeks shy of starting its next chapter in Highland Heights. When it does, it will offer a menu flush with the sort of homestyle Mexican foods that founder Antonia Valle enjoyed back home in Michoacán.

Pizzeria DiLauro This month, Adam DiLauro will open the doors to this namesake pizzeria in Bainbridge. He’s banking on the good will that he’s accumulated over the last three years by selling pies from a food truck of the same name.

He’s also banking on the demand for a real-deal, East Coast-style slice shop in the burbs. “We couldn’t find it, so we

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

decided to open it,” he says. In addition to the 18-inch New York-style pies, DiLauro will offer square-cut Sicilianstyle pizza, a few salads and starters, and a trio of hoagies.

Juneberry Like many operators who were in the process of opening a new spot, Karen Small lost an entire year to the pandemic. But Juneberry, her breakfast-focused bistro in Ohio City, is back on track and quickly approaching the finish line, she says.

“It’s really close.” Currently taking shape in the former Jack Flaps space, the casual eatery will complement comfort food dishes with boozy beverages. Small has said that she hopes to bolster the all-day breakfast format with occasional wine dinners.

Immigrant Son Brewing This time last year, Andrew Revy was eyeing a spring opening for Immigrant Son, Lakewood’s first brewery. The large-scale project is now on track to open this spring in the former Constantino’s Market. When the dust settles, the 9,000-squarefoot building will house a 10-barrel brewery, 200-seat bar and restaurant, and patio. The head brewer is Cara Baker and the head chef is Vinnie Cimino, a formidable pair that almost

guarantees perfect pairings. On tap will be 20 house beers, but also a full cocktail program and wine list.

Goma After considerable delay, Dante Boccuzzi is now full steam ahead on his ambitious new downtown project.

Originally bound for Pinecrest, Goma currently is coming together inside the former Chinato space at the corner of Prospect and E. Fourth. When it opens in spring, the destination aims to be a high-energy Japanese-fusion eatery that pulls from the chef’s experiences cooking around the globe.

A central and sizeable sushi bar will anchor the room, which now is largely open from front to rear. Downstairs, a Japanese craft cocktail club called Giappone will add sophisticated entertainment to the mix.

Batuqui Chagrin Falls Another project that was hobbled by the pandemic, Batuqui Chagrin Falls is back on track and headed for a spring opening. Carla Batista and Gustavo Nogueira currently are renovating a stately brick Victorian just steps from the falls as the backdrop for their captivating Brazilian-inspired fare. This latest edition joins the six-year-old original on Larchmere, home to dishes like cod

fish croquettes, xim xim, and feijoada, all washed down with summery caipirinhas.

A.J. Rocco’s Providence landed in the lap of A. Brendan Walton in the form of a new lease on life for A.J. Rocco’s, the café/bar he closed after 18 years.

The second chapter presently is taking shape practically next door, in the former Huron Point Tavern (and Alesci’s) space. That 150-yearold three-story structure is being completely renovated to accommodate a full-service bar and restaurant. A.J. Rocco’s will still open bright and early for coffee lovers, but will roll right through lunch, dinner and post-game cocktails.

As-Yet-Unnamed Luca Project Luca and Lola Sema knew that the timing wasn’t ideal to expand their restaurant portfolio beyond Luca Italian Cuisine and Luca West. But they also knew that the XO space downtown was too good to pass up. “I’ve been wanting something downtown for a long time,” says Lola.

Work quietly has been taking place behind the brown paper-wrapped windows, while the owners finetune the as-yet-unrevealed concept.

Diners can look forward to a spring

unveiling.

Filter Kyler Smith is stepping out of his comfort zone (he’s the founder of Sauce Boiling Seafood Express) to open this splashy 120-seat restaurant and bar in the Warehouse District. Formerly home to Take 5 Rhthym and Jazz, the space is getting an ultra-modern makeover that promises to make a lasting impression. “The art, decor and dishes are designed to push the limits of normal dining,” says the owner. The menu will be under the control of chef Jarrett Mine, whose client list as a private chef includes top athletes from the Cleveland Browns.

Look for a late-spring opening.

Cent’s Pizzeria We knew that we’d have to wait awhile to check out Vince Morelli’s new wood-fired pizza concept. When the project was first announced two years ago, Cent’s future home was largely untouched from its days as a window shutter supply company. But the sturdy brick building on the eastern edge of Detroit Shoreway (or is it the western edge of Ohio City) is nearing completion, and when it gets there, Morelli finally will get to show off the skills he acquired while working at famed Roberta’s Pizza in Brooklyn.

Those naturally fermented pies will be joined by self-serve beers and natural wines.

Cute for Coffee/Sandrine Artist Chris Schramm snagged some of the most prime real estate in Cleveland for a pair of design-minded concepts. His canvas: 4,000 square feet in the Harbor Verandas, just steps from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the E. Ninth Street Pier. When complete, the space will contain two separate businesses, Cute for Coffee (a coffee/gift shop) and Sandrine, which Schramm likens to an upscale hotel lounge serving small plates.

Flats East Bank Further out on the horizon is a trio of new projects that will expand the offerings along the river. The former Magnolia nightclub currently is being transformed into a 1970’s-style disco called Goodnight John Boy, new construction will house an Asian-fusion concept from XO Steaks founder Zdenko Zovkic, and a musicthemed club will likely join them.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

MARCH 29-APRIL 4 2021

CLEVELANDMACNCHEESEWEEK.COM | clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

15

from Kate’s Fish and the jam from Home Pantry.

The current menu features strawberry jam and butter with bee pollen on pain de mie, avocado, greens and lemon zest on sourdough, and smoked salmon with whipped cream cheese, capers and onions on dark rye. In the oats department, there’s oat-seed-and-nut granola topped with yogurt, fruit and “raspberry dusting” and milk-soaked oats with chia pudding, yogurt, fruit and honey.

Prices are between $3 and $7.50.

EAT

Photo Courtesy Hot Chicken Takeover

BITES

Hot Chicken Takeover announces new Strongsville location, downtown delivery-only kitchen

By Douglas Trattner SINCE LAUNCHING SEVEN years ago as a weekend-only pop-up in Columbus, Hot Chicken Takeover has continued to expand its reach throughout the state. With the recent opening of its Westerville location, there now are four stores in Central Ohio. Crocker Park, the first shop outside Greater Columbus, opened in late 2019.

Next up for the Columbus-based restaurant that specializes in Nashville hot chicken is Strongsville, specifically the Royalton Collection development on N. Royalton. The goal is to open in April.

“We’re excited to be in Strongsville and we’re excited to keep growing in the community,” states Joe DeLoss, Founder and CEO. “We have a growth strategy plan for Northeast Ohio that includes suburban and city center opportunities. This plan is really contingent on the availability of real estate.”

Originally, the new Northeast Ohio location was to open back in fall, but Covid pushed those plans back. Not surprisingly, the global pandemic has forced management to reconsider the design and operation of some of its newest stores, explains Liz Dickey, Marketing Director.

“This location will be configured differently from our Crocker Park location,” she says. “The dining room is smaller in square footage. We’ve had to switch to doing carry-out only since March and that has worked well for us, so we decided to design our new interior to mimic the current trend that we’re seeing.”

Come spring, Hot Chicken Takeover fans in Northeast Ohio will

16

have a third location from which to order. In addition to Crocker Park and Strongsville, the company announced plans to open a delivery-only kitchen downtown. The site was selected to improve accessibility for customers.

Now Open: The Sleepy Rooster in Chagrin Falls Following nine months of work, the majority of which was completed by family, Craig and Sarah Fitzgerald recently opened The Sleepy Rooster (5210 Chillicothe Rd., 440-557-5212) in Chagrin Falls. The attractive diner is open for breakfast and lunch Tuesday through Sunday.

After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu Institute of Culinary Arts in Pittsburgh, Craig worked in fine dining in Pittsburgh and Florida before returning to Northeast Ohio, where he worked with the Gamekeeper’s group. The Sleepy Rooster is the realization of a careerlong dream to open a place of his own.

“We’re not reinventing the wheel,” says Fitzgerald. “It’s all food that people know. It’s very comforting food, but done with good ingredients and technique.”

Biscuit fans will appreciate the fresh-baked ones served here. They land in dishes like breakfast biscuits, biscuits and gravy, and eggs Benedict.

The Sleepy Rooster is one of the only Northeast Ohio restaurants to make and serve goetta, the German breakfast meat made with pork, beef, steel-cut oats, onions and spices. “You just griddle it crisp and serve it with some eggs,” says the chef.

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

Some breakfast items, like a section of toasts topped with arrangements like avocado and sea salt, chorizo and goat cheese, and smoked salmon, dill cream cheese and onion, are available all day. The arrival of lunchtime ushers in sandwiches like a griddled PB&J, fried bologna and onion, and a BLT with pork belly.

For now, the diner seats about 45, half of its 90-seat capacity. While diminished, that dine-in service has been surprisingly robust, says Fitzgerald.

“Business is going well,” he reports. “Everyone from the community has been very supportive and it’s been amazing. It’s not the ideal situation, but people have been great.”

Duck-Rabbit Coffee Rolls Out Limited Food Menu at Ohio City Cafe After four years in Duck Island, Calvin Verga relocated his popular coffee shop, Duck Rabbit, to a new home in Ohio City. That shop (4160 Lorain Ave.), located across the street from Platform Beer, opened in October of last year. His roasting operation remains just east of downtown.

The goal was to launch with retail coffee sales at the 1,600-square-foot shop and later add dine-in café service for about 30 guests. The dine-in portion of the equation will have to wait, says Verga, but he has rolled out a small, spare breakfast menu for take-out.

“It’s a simple and approachable menu revolving around toast and oats, but I think it’s an interesting menu offering some elevated and refined takes on things people are familiar with,” explains Verga.

While the specifics might change from time to time, customers can always expect a sweet toast, a savory toast, an avocado toast, granola and oatmeal. The breads come from Leavened Bakery, the smoked salmon

Cleveland Kitchen Adds Kimchi to Line of Fermented Foods Products Since its inception, Cleveland Kitchen (formerly Cleveland Kraut) has made it its mission to spread the love of probiotic-rich fermented foods. Popular sauerkraut products like Gnar Gnar, Classic Caraway and Whiskey Dill are available nationwide in the nowfamiliar stand-up breathable pouches that allow the natural fermentation process to continue.

Now, after teaming up with Cleveland native and Korean chef Heejung Gumbs to develop the recipe, the company has rolled out another fermented cabbage dish: kimchi. This variety is prepared with fresh garlic, greens, crunchy carrots and Korean gochugaru peppers for a touch of heat.

“Our team is looking forward to presenting our version of kimchi to consumers as we were introduced to the dish at a very young age by our Grandmother who loved to share the flavorful cuisines of the region with our family,” states co-founder and CEO Drew Anderson. “Our hope for this spicy, fresh and authentic interpretation is to offer another entry point into gourmet fermented foods to those who are curious about the unmatched flavor and health benefits they provide.”

Gumbs, who is also the recipe developer and chef of Korea House, her family’s restaurant, says she was thrilled to partner with Cleveland Kitchen on the project.

“Our family has had a strong relationship with the founders of Cleveland Kitchen for over a decade and I was immensely excited when they asked to work together on this special project,” she explains. “Kimchi is a true treasure of Korean cuisine.

Working with Cleveland Kitchen and being able to share my community’s healthy and tasty culinary staple in America has been a very fun and rewarding experience.”

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

art prints and autographed vinyl.

Currently, the site features one-ofa-kind items available from Welshly Arms, Mr. Gnome, Mollo Rilla and more.

MUSIC

New Apple Music Playlist Highlights Under-the-Radar Midwest Rappers

Photo Courtesy Infinite Twelve

C-NOTES

Local duo Infinite Twelve adopts retro approach for new album

By Jeff Niesel A LOCAL BAND THAT PLAYS A mix of indie rock, neo-folk, blues and soul, Infinite Twelve features singer/ lyricist/instrumentalist Guy-Vincent and veteran multi-instrumentalist Brian Alan Hager.

With its second release, The Stone Angel Sessions, the group aims to take listeners on “a lo-fi musical journey about love, loss and redemption.” “[Album single] ‘Wild Times’ is a poetic journey about holding onto your dreams and memories during turbulent times,” explains GuyVincent in a press release. “It’s about challenging yourself to keep moving forward, despite facing seemingly daunting obstacles.”

Hager says the band took a lo-fi approach to achieve the right stripped-down sound.

“Guy-Vincent and I found ourselves having conversations about the warm sounds of analog recordings and how the inherent limitations would push our creativity, especially with the 4-track cassette recorder,” he says. “The large studio with wood floors and high ceilings helped create a warm natural reverb.

The process of making this recording spanned over a few years. Recording on cassette is slow and methodical.

The tape needs to be constantly rewound and forwarded to exact locations in order to punch-in new parts. Ultimately, we created a sound that pays homage to earlier times, allowing us to challenge and express ourselves.”

For the music video for “Wild Times,” the group used a variety of filters to change and distort images

of a live performance.

“For the video, Brian and I wanted to contrast the retro aspect of the recording style by visually alternating between analog and digital imagery,” explains GuyVincent. “Vibrant bursts of visual elements transition into short dreamlike scenes of cities, nature and abstraction. It’s this visual interplay that helps develop the overall flow and vibe for the video.”

Local Indie Rockers Sonder Bombs Team Up With PhillyBased Producer for New Album Last week, local indie rockers the Sonder Bombs released Clothbound, the follow-up to 2018’s debut Modern Female Rockstar.

Modern Female Rockstar, “an allcaps attack against a male-dominated scene brandishing a ukulele and dry wit as chosen weapons,” as it’s put in a press release, got the band out of Cleveland for relentless touring.

Clothbound, like the title suggests, weaves a different narrative—one of loss, letting go and “losing patience with losers.” If the first record introduced unapologetic sensitivity, Clothbound searches for the root causes of close-mindedness.

Produced in Philadelphia during quarantine with Joe Reinhart (Hop Along, Beach Bunny, Modern Baseball), Clothbound highlights vocalist/ukulele/guitarist Willow Hawks’ “exasperated kiss-offs.”

“It really pisses me off when someone won’t admit they’re wrong,” says Hawks in a press

release. “Especially when other people get hurt. Doubling down stunts the growth of your soul. I think as musicians with platforms, it’s our duty to be examples for accountability.”

35 Local Artists Contribute to Cleveland Verses Foundation Charity Album A non-profit founded in late 2017 by the local indie rock group the Modern Electric, Cleveland Verses Foundation aims to practice “responsive grant making.” Its mission is to “band together local musicians and music-lovers to benefit lives in the Cleveland community” and “make a better Cleveland through the power of music.”

In order to further that goal, the organization will release its first charity album, a compilation of Bob Dylan covers, on Feb 5, It’ll feature 35 local artists, including Herzog, Cities & Coasts, Front Porch Lights, Hollin Kings, Vanity Crash, Beach Stav and more.

“The covers range from faithful re-workings to extravagant reimaginings in a multitude of genres,” reads a press release about the compilation. “Acoustic singersongwriter tracks sit alongside pop-punk, shoegaze and even experimental electronic offerings.

Well known hits like ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ are represented as well as Dylan’s lesser-known gems like ‘The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo).’”

All funds raised from streaming/ downloads will go to local performers and venue employees recovering from the pandemic’s impact.

In addition to the compilation, clevelandverses.org hosts an online marketplace where you can find unique merchandise donated by bands, such as personalized songs,

Video killed the radio star, but these days, streaming playlists are the new hitmakers in music.

To dig deeper into local indie music scenes, Apple Music launched a series of new curated playlists last week. One of them, “The New Midwest,” highlights lesser-known Midwest rappers.

Well, lesser-known to the rest of the world, that is. “[With] the occasional exception (Eminem, Big Sean), Midwest rappers have mostly lived — and thrived — in their own hyperlocal bubbles, creating idiosyncratic substyles that have branched far off the evolutionary trunk of mainstream hip-hop,” Apple Music says of the new playlist. “Calling back to the days when Michigan and Ohio were the funk capitals of the country, this playlist celebrates the voices, flows, and humor of one of the busiest — but most underrepresented — regions in rap.”

“Launching these three new regionally-focused playlists allows us to shine a light on the vibrant local communities producing some of the most progressive sounds in hip-hop, Ebro Darden, Apple Music’s Global Editorial Head of Hip-Hop and R&B, says in a statement. “It’s always been a priority to connect with artists and listeners at the community level as we champion discovery and emerging artists from across the map.”

“Regional hip hop scenes have only grown in importance over the years and we’re confident these new playlists will help spotlight tomorrow’s superstars by giving them a global platform,” Apple Music Hip Hop programmer Cyle “Zini” Tahsini adds. “We’re excited to accelerate discovery and connect artists with new fans.”

Not only are cities like Detroit and Chicago well-represented on the playlist, but also cities like Flint, Louisville, Chicago, Columbus, and more. Like Apple Music’s other curated playlists, this one will be regularly updated, so be sure to “Add” it to your library.

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel | clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

17

SAVAGE LOVE TOY BOY

By Dan Savage Hey, Dan: I’m positive you’ve written something about this in the past. I have searched your archives but have only managed to find people arguing in the comments about this topic when what I want is your advice. My sixteen-year-old son is stealing our sex toys. My son took my husband’s handheld toy a several months ago. I found it where it shouldn’t have been and let my husband know. He talked to our son and told him these are personal items, like a toothbrush, and that he needed to stop taking them. A few weeks ago I noticed my dildo was missing. I thought I had misplaced it or that my husband hid it somewhere. As it turns out, our son took it. We talked with him again and stressed that these are personal items and not something to be shared. I want to get him his own toy so he stops taking ours.

My husband is squicked out about it and I agree it’s weird to have your parents buy a toy for you but he clearly wants one. I don’t want to pick it out. I want to give him a prepaid gift card and have him pick out what he wants from the website of a reputable shop. Is there a better way to handle this?

Mama In Houston Teenagers. Going into their rooms for even a second — even just to leave clean and folded laundry on their beds — is an unforgiveable invasion of their privacy, a world-historical crime on a par with the Nazi invasion of Poland, an atrocity that should land mom and dad in a cell in the Hague. But that same kid will tear their parents’ bedroom apart looking for mom and dad’s sex toys, any cash mom and dad have at home, mom and dad’s secret stash of pot, etc. Because while they’re entitled to absolute privacy, mom and dad — or dad and dad or mom and mom — aren’t entitled to any privacy at all.

(And your son may never forgive you for the embarrassment you caused him when you asked him not to steal — and not to use — your dildo.)

How do you handle this?

You could forbid him to go into your bedroom. You could even put a lock on your bedroom door. But you’ll forget to lock it one day or one day he’ll learn to pick the lock and before you know it he’ll be back in your bedroom picking through your

18

sex toys.

You could run out the clock.

Your son is 16 years old and he’ll hopefully be out of the house in less time than it took to get him out of diapers. Twenty-four short months, hundreds of millions of COVID vaccinations, and a few college applications are all that stand between you and having your house all to yourselves again. At that point you and your husband won’t have to worry about your son stealing your sex toys — hell, at that point you can make a lovely centerpiece out of them for the dining room table. But while running out the clock allows you to avoid some squickiness, you’re still gonna have to worry about him swiping your sex toys or — even worse — swiping one, using it, and then putting it back without cleaning it properly. Most sixteenyear-old boys can’t clean themselves properly; the odds that your son is capable of sterilizing your dildo after using it on himself are very, very low. (The odds that your son can make you wanna jump in a time machine and go back seventeen years and sterilize yourself? Very, very high.)

You could buy him some sex toys. I think this is the best option.

Get your son a gift card that he can blow on some toys for himself at a reputable sex toy shop. Or you could pick out a few for him — you already have a pretty handle on the type of sex toys he finds appealing — and leave those toys for him on his bed next to his clean and folded laundry. Having a few sex toys of his own won’t necessarily stop him from tearing your bedroom apart — there’s still your pot and cash to find — but it will make him less likely to tear your bedroom apart looking sex toys. And perhaps most importantly, buying your son some sex toys will allow you to suspend your disbelief and pretend your son isn’t looking through your sex toys long enough to help him fill out those college applications.

Hey, Dan: A few weeks ago in your column, you were responding to a guy who was unsure about his relationship because his boyfriend’s kinks didn’t match up with his own. You said that kinks are “hard-wired” and that, for someone who has them, acting on

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

their kinks is necessary for them to have a fulfilling sex life. Wow. That leapt off the page at me.

This is something I’ve struggled with most of my life and that made things so crystal clear. From the time I was first sexually aware, I knew I was gay and that I was attracted to BDSM. I am five years out of a twenty-year relationship. My partner and I dabbled in BDSM but I never felt like he was really into it.

He was just doing it for me. When I asked what I could do for him, he’d always say “nothing.” That made it even more disappointing. The relationship didn’t end over this stuff, but I regret sticking with it, and an unfulfilling sex life, for so long. The kink stuff started so early for me. Hard-wired doesn’t even begin to describe it. Pre-puberty I was fascinated when I saw guys getting tied up on TV, in comics, and in movies. But now here I am, single and 63 years old. I haven’t dated anyone since my relationship ended.

I don’t want to date purely vanilla people or people with kinks that aren’t compatible with mine. I’m just not sure what to do. Any advice?

I’ve No Clever Acronym In the column where I described kinks as hard-wired — which they are for most people, INCA, although some folks do manage to acquire them — I didn’t advise kinky people to date only other kinky people.

So long as a kinky person isn’t 1. being shamed and 2. is allowed to enjoy their kinks with others who share them, a mixed kink/vanilla relationship can work. So don’t limit yourself to dating only guys who are into BDSM. Date vanilla guys you meet through mainstream dating apps but be open about your kinks from the start and be clear about your intent to enjoy your kinks with guys who share them. And date kinky guys you meet on kink dating apps — there are plenty of guys your age on Recon, the biggest personals site for kinky gay and bi men, and guys of all ages who are into guys your age. Good luck.

Hey, Dan: Gay boy here with a new boyfriend. We’ve been together for almost two months and I TOLD HIM that I want an open relationship but I AM NOT comfortable with

him dating other men. I MADE THAT CLEAR. A week ago he ohso-casually drops that he’s been meeting up with a guy for EIGHT FUCKING YEARS! I told him he had to STOP this but he REFUSES to stop it. He says they aren’t “dating” so he didn’t betray me. I looked at their text messages — GOING BACK YEARS — and this guy will send him a message once every few months and my boyfriend hurries over to his house to blow him. My boyfriend thinks it shouldn’t matter that he’s “servicing” this one other person since we both fuck around.

My problem is the “ONE OTHER PERSON” part of the equation! I am NOT interested in monogamy but I am STRONGLY opposed to MY BOYFRIEND having an ONGOING THING with another man! If our ages matter: I am in my mid-twenties and VGL, my boyfriend is in his mid-thirties and VGL, and this guy is in his LATE forties and TOTALLY AVERAGE LOOKING. I do not see why my boyfriend won’t GIVE UP this man for me.

Really Angry Guy Into No Games I can almost see why your boyfriend wouldn’t want to give up this guy for you, RAGING. I mean, if I squint I can almost make it out…

Look, your boyfriend has been servicing this guy for almost a decade. If they wanted to date, they’d be dating. If they wanted to be together, they’d be together.

And if you force your boyfriend to choose between the DEMANDING INSECURE CAPS BOY he’s known for a little less than two months — that would be you — and the guy he’s been servicing for a little less than a decade, you’re going to lose. If you wanna be with your VGL boyfriend, RAGING, offer to grandfather the average guy in, i.e. agree to him continuing to service this impossibly old fart on the condition that your boyfriend doesn’t add any new “regulars” to his rotation.

But on the off chance your boyfriend also reads my column: OMG, DUDE, RUN.

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

Phone Lines

HOT LOCAL URBAN SINGLES!

Are looking to hook up now!

Try it FREE! 18+ 216.367.1010 / 440.424.0303 www.metrovibechatline.com

CALL NOW, MEET TONIGHT!

FREE to try! 18+ 216.626.7777 / 440.325.7777 Other Cities: 1.888.257.5757 www.questchat.com

100’s OF SEXY LATINO SINGLES

Get your FREE TRIAL! 18+ CALL The Night Exchange NOW! 216.502.4388 440.499.6400 www.nightexchange.com

Massage - Certified

CARING MASSAGE

Days & Evenings, weekends.

Warm candlelight atmosphere.

Lakewood/West Suburbs Linda 216-221-5935

HOME BUYERS!!!

FREE MONEY!!!

DOWN PAYMENT PROGRAM*

BUY YOUR DREAM HOME!!! Plus Get Up To $100k + More* (for new kitchen, new roof, new carpet, appliances, paint, basement waterproofing, windows, heating & cooling)*

NEVER EVER EVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO BUY A HOME!!!

Great Low Fixed Interest Rates* When YOUR dreams come true... OUR dreams come true!!!

440.342.7355 (SELL) To Buy...or Sell

Call Grizzell *Some restrictions will apply *for those who qualify... we consider...

Se Habla Espanol

GOOD CREDIT • BAD CREDIT • BANKRUPTCY

clevescene.com

Phone Lines

EXPLICIT CHAT WITH SEXY LOCALS

Meet Hot Latin Locals!

Get your FREE trial! 18+ 216.626.7777 | 440.325.7777 www.questchat.com

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021

19

20

| clevescene.com | February 10-23, 2021