Scene march 15, 2017

The Bracket Story in American of History

(what could be) the Longest Competition Running

By Sam Allard

NCAA

Best Of Cleveland 2017 VOTING OPENS MARCH 16

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| clev clevescene.com leves essceene ne.c .ccom m | March Marrch c 15 15 - 21 21,, 20 2017 0177

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-!2#( s 6/,5-% .O 37 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Publisher Chris Keating Editor Vince Grzegorek

CONTENTS 5PFRONT

Editorial Managing Editor Eric Sandy Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Writer-at-large Kyle Swenson Web Editor Laura Morrison Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Contributing Dining Editor Rachel Hunt Stage Editor Christine Howey Visual Arts Editor Josh Usmani Copy Editor Elaine Cicora Interns Johnny Cook, Lawrence Neil

AT&T accused of “digital redlining” in Cleveland; some county council members vow to delay Q deal; and more

.EWS

Strand of Oaks AT THE "EACHLAND "ALLROOM ON -ARCH

An NCAA tournament pool from Kent might be the longest continuously running in the U.S.

Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive John Crobar, Shayne Rose Multimedia Account Executive Kiara Hunter-Davis

&EATURE

'ET /UT

All the music, map and booze news you need to make it through St. Patrick’s Day in Cleveland

Creative Services Production Manager Steve Miluch Layout Editor/Graphic Designer Christine Hahn Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace Business Asst. To The Publisher Angela Lott Sales Assistant/Receptionist Megan Stimac Controller Kristy Dotson Staff Accountant Margaret Manzo

All the events you should check out this week

Circulation Circulation Director Don Kriss Euclid Media Group Chief Executive Offi cer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating Offi cers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner Human Resources Director Lisa Beilstein Digital Operations Coordinator Jaime Monzon

!RT

Annual Wizard World returns to Cleveland for comic, movie, pop culture fans

www.euclidmediagroup.com

3TAGE

National Advertising Voice Media Group 1-800-278-9866, voicemediagroup.com

A challenging score highlights a subterranean drama in Floyd Collins at Blank Canvas Theatre

Cleveland Scene 737 Bolivar Rd, #4100 Cleveland, OH 44115 www.clevescene.com Phone 216-241-7550 Retail & Classifi ed Fax 216-241-6275 Editoral Fax 216-802-7212 E-mail scene@clevescene.com

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Cleveland Scene Magazine is published every week by Euclid Media Group.

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33

Live-action Beauty and the Beast is a nostalgia fest

$INING

Worker-owned Green City Growers is on the path to profits while giving refugees and ex-cons gainful employment

-USIC

Cleveland native Earl St. Clair reintroduces himself with his new EP

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Map courtesy of NDIA

UPFRONT

POOREST NEIGHBORHOODS EXCLUDED FROM INTERNET ACCESS IMPROVEMENTS

THIS WEEK

WITH THE LONG HISTORY of Ohio’s “cable competition” legislation as its backbone, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance today released a report that shows how AT&T willfully expanded its internet services in Cleveland and left the city’s poorest neighborhoods to languish with sluggish technologies. The organization uses the term “digital redlining,” and a series of maps reinforces the point.

Using records and data provided to the FCC, the NDIA

6

designed several maps that show where AT&T’s highest and lowest internet speeds are offered. As AT&T developed its technology and rolled out improved services, neighborhoods like Hough, Glenville, Central and Fairfax — where the poverty rate runs higher than elsewhere in the city — were excluded. Last year, when the company offered a $5/month deal to its low-income customers, the NDIA found out that, in truth, many of AT&T’s customers in Cleveland don’t even have fast

enough internet access to qualify.

Here’s a brief history. Ten years ago, state lawmakers eliminated the municipal franchising of cable television providers. The theory is that this would foster greater competition, and that the market would work in customers’ favor.

AT&T promised advanced services, the thing that would eventually come to be known as U-verse.

Between 2008 and 2013, according to NDIA, AT&T outfitted Cleveland with optical fiber extensions and VRAD cabinets.

The U-verse technology has fiber cables traveling from one of eight wire centers in Cleveland to a central cabinet in a particular neighborhood. The NDIA shows how AT&T chose not to install that fiber infrastructure out of four of those wire centers, corresponding neatly with Cleveland neighborhoods that have the highest concentration of individuals and families living in poverty.

Indeed, not all of Cleveland or Cuyahoga County is served

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Gary Waters resigns as CSU’s winningest basketball coach of all time. Said he could no longer tolerate “derivative folk rock like the Lumineers” being played in the same arena.

Quicken Loans ranked as a Top-10 place to work by Fortune. Guest writer Armond Budish also included “Dan Gilbert’s house” and “Dan Gilbert’s casino” on his list.

Cheeky statehouse bill wants Gov. John Kasich to intern with public school teachers. Fine-print clause specifically notes that “recess shall not be considered a classroom internship opportunity.”

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

QUALITY OF LIFE You will end up ordering an Lyft for your Uber driver on St. Paddy’s Day.

equally by this fiber-based U-verse infrastructure, despite a state provision that prohibits cable companies from discriminating against a particular customer base: “[N]o video service provider shall deny access to video service to any group of potential residential subscribers in its video service area because of the race or income of the residents in the local area in which the group resides.� Homes with access to internet download speeds of 18 megabits per second (mbps) or more are found in the outlying areas of the county, and most of Cleveland is left with significantly slower access. This discrepancy hampers any number of quality-of-life issues relating to employment opportunities, homework, job training and state bureaucratic activities. The “digital divide� is a real thing.

AT&T has moved on to different types of internet access technology, and by all accounts is no longer deploying that sort of U-verse “Fiber to the Node� infrastructure, meaning that there are no improvements in sight for Cleveland’s poorest neighborhoods.

The areas that were not built out with fiber infrastructure will be unable to join a theoretical future 5G data system. “The national context of this is that AT&T basically gave up on this deployment and changed its business model,� Bill Callahan, research and policy coordinator at NDIA, tells Scene. “There’s nothing random about this. The decision to [build out fiber infrastructure] in some wire centers and not others is a deliberate planning decision. This has nothing to do with customer demand; they had no idea what the customer demand was going to be when they did this. It’s a decision built on the characteristics of the neighborhoods. In general, I would say that means poverty.�

A spokesperson from AT&T responded to Scene : “Access to the internet is essential, which is why we’ve continuously invested in expanding service and enhancing speeds. The report does not accurately reflect the investment we’ve made in bringing faster internet to urban and rural areas across the U.S. While we are investing in broadband, we’re also investing in technologies that will mitigate some of the infrastructure limitations.�

We should note, while we’re here, that this represents the first of multiple stories on the nature of Cleveland’s digital infrastructure.

AT&T, of course, is not the only service provider in the area, and its alleged redlining is not the only problem facing the community. — Eric Sandy

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THREE COUNTY COUNCIL MEMBERS VOW TO DELAY Q DEAL VOTE “Make no mistake about it, we are in a fight,� the Rev. Jawanza Colvin said last week, preaching from the pulpit at Slavic Village’s Elizabeth Baptist Church to a crowd of energized #NotAllInners.

Members of Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC) had just secured commitments from county council members Jack Schron, Dale Miller and Yvonne Conwell to work to delay the vote on the Quicken Loans Arena renovation deal, at least until the release of the state budget on or before June 30. “This round is with the county,�

Colvin said. “The next round is gonna be with the city. And we are fighting above our weight class. Our opponents have deeper pockets, our opponents have a wider network, our opponents have political connections and corporate contributions to influence people’s thinking — enough so that we should’ve been knocked out of this fight a long time ago. One thing I know about GCC is we know how to take a punch; but we also know how to throw a punch.�

GCC members plan to take the fight to Dan Gilbert’s doorstep later this month. A caravan will drive to Detroit on March 21 for a daylong demonstration there.

From the crowd at Elizabeth Baptist, city councilman Mike Polensek chuckled to himself.

Directly behind him, councilman Zack Reed surveyed the crowd.

It was difficult not to be moved

by Colvin’s address; he’s a powerful orator and, as such, is the GCC’s deadliest weapon.

The city’s legislative body will begin deliberating on Cleveland’s contribution to the Q deal soon, but until now, the discussions have occurred at the county level. Both the pro-deal and anti-deal sides have rallied their respective troops, packing council chambers to capacity in recent weeks’ meetings, making them the most highly attended meetings in council’s sixyear history.

The Q discussions continued March 14 (after Scene’s print deadline, mind you). There, council was set to vote whether to advance the Q resolution,

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UPFRONT which authorizes the county to sell $140 million in bonds for the renovations, from the committee of the whole to the floor. After that, barring a supermajority 8-3 vote, the resolution will be subject to a third reading and further discussion before passage.

Amendments to the resolution are permitted at any point during the process. “I don’t think anyone has any desire to move this along faster than normal,� said councilman Jack Schron, in an interview with Scene.

Schron himself certainly doesn’t. He has been among the more vocal council members during deliberations thus far. He has asked probing, sometimes uncomfortable questions of the Cavs’ and Quicken Loans Arena president Len Komoroski and county financial adviser Tim Offtermatt. He has also made no secret of the fact that he thinks a vote on the resolution ought to be delayed until the state budget is released in June, when its effects on the county general fund will be known. That’s a sentiment he reiterated to the electric GCC crowd. “I didn’t equivocate,� Schron said (an accidental reference, perhaps, to a recent Scene cover). “I really believe that we’re going to see an impact on the general fund.�

Schron will no doubt continue to ask tough questions of the presenters at future meetings. “I’m not asking these questions to hear myself talk,� said Schron. “I’m asking them to be probing, and to air these issues in the open.

This is what democracy is about.�

Both Miller and Conwell also

said that they were in favor of delaying the vote too. All three said they would work with the GCC leadership to explore the funding of mental health crisis centers, which GCC has pegged as one of its big targets for funding with a proposed Community Equity Fund. Miller pointed out that he’s open to conversation, but would be approaching those conversations with a desire to better coordinate existing non-profits, as opposed to creating something new.

GCC contacted each council member individually to invite them to Thursday night’s meeting and to brief them on its contents.

Only Schron and Miller were in attendance for the majority of the proceedings. Conwell arrived late, she said, after another meeting in Fairfax. “I want you to notice these empty chairs,� said Colvin, during his remarks, gesturing to the row of seats facing the crowd. “And I want you to notice the pictures on them because they say something.

Some of them, I’m sure, have a very good reason for why they are not with us. But I want to tell you this: We will remember this the next time you need us more than we need you.�

The crowd roared. — Sam Allard

THE INTERCEPT TAKES A CLOSE LOOK AT QUESTIONABLE ANGELA GARCIA CONVICTION In a towering piece published last Sunday, Liliana Segura, of the online investigative news magazine The Intercept, reports on the circuitous tale of how Angela Garcia was convicted of — and later pleaded guilty to — burning down her Cleveland home and killing her two young daughters.

The story reveals deep truths

70 Years Downtown Cleveland

about the criminal justice system in America and about the legacy of corruption and racial tension in Cleveland.

In 2001, Garcia was convicted of aggravated arson and murder during a third trial; a fire at her house on Harvard Avenue had killed her two young daughters in 1999. Later, during an evidentiary hearing in 2016, Garcia pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter as part of an unexpected plea deal. The case was riddled with prosecutorial holes, dubious judicial conduct and more questions than answers.

Prior to the Garcia story, Segura published a feature on the arson conviction of Claude Garrett in Tennessee. He was sentenced to life in prison for a fire that took place in 1992. “It was one of those stories, similar to Angela Garcia’s story, where I started it a long time before I ended up publishing it,�

Segura tells Scene. “It was a long journey ... and over the course of that reporting I just got really, really interested in the topic.� She mentioned David Grann’s 2009 New Yorker story on a questionable arson conviction as a point of reportorial inspiration. “I just kept thinking how many other people might be out there who are locked up on bad arson evidence,� Segura says, citing also the role of insurance companies in developing some bad practices in arson investigation. (While insurance motives drew Segura to the case, that narrative isn’t a major aspect of her final story.)

Among the curious elements of Garcia’s case (which Segura covers deftly), there is an array of junk arson science, long disputed and/ or debunked; a network of snitches in Cuyahoga County, two of whom worked actively for Garcia’s conviction and which one of

whom later walked back privately; bait-and-switch techniques on the part of the prosecutor’s office’s narrative, helmed then

by Bill Mason; an incredibly illinformed judge in Judge Bridget McCafferty, whose law license was later suspended; and the long history of Cleveland’s segregated neighborhoods bubbling to the surface in jury deliberations and subsequent media coverage.

In fact, on that last note, Segura works in a really terriďŹ c overview of Cleveland’s history of racial tension. (Segura lives in Nashville; The Intercept is based in New York.) “I don’t like parachuting into a place I don’t know and drawing sweeping conclusions,â€? she says. “I try to understand the place, to start, through its news coverage.â€? Amanda Garrett’s stories on the original Garcia trials proved invaluable.

Additional reporting from your humble alt-weekly — on Mason’s rise to power, McCafferty’s reputation, and the history of wrongful convictions in Cleveland — ďŹ lled in the systemic gaps. She drove around Garcia’s old neighborhood and caught herself up on development reports that drew a line from 1999 to the present on the city’s east side. (She also happened to be in town during the wake of the Tamir Rice shooting, which, readers will recall, had pushed Cleveland to an incredibly tense point in its history of police and community relations.)

Back to the matter at hand, though, Segura says that these arson cases are of such great interest primarily due to the scant evidence that is usually available.

(The day after the Harvard Avenue fire, Garcia’s home was demolished.) Snitch testimony and prosecutors’ theories end up holding far more weight than they might in a criminal case with eyewitnesses, DNA evidence and

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sturdy public records.

Scene followed the Antun Lewis arson case over the past decade and reported on the role that snitch testimony played in his conviction — and in the granting of his second trial. A third trial was denied, but all along the local network of snitches was quietly pushing that criminal case forward. “The more people that understand that, the better it is for the system,” Segura says.

Former county prosecutor Timothy McGinty organized the Conviction Integrity Unit, which seeks to revisit potentially problematic convictions. Garcia’s application was denied prior to last year’s plea deal. — Sandy

DIGIT WIDGET 375 Number of government entities in Ohio that violated Sunshine Laws in 2016, according to state auditor David Yost’s office.

$9,000 Profit share that each United Auto Workers’ Ford employee received in March for last year’s earnings, the company’s second-best year ever.

(There are 1,600 Ford employees in Cleveland and 1,200 in Lima.)

150 Jobs to be lost at Elyria’s 3M plant, which will be shuttered this summer.

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1,005 Number of Ohio babies who died before their first birthday in 2015.

The state’s overall rate of 7.2 deaths per 1,000 live births is well above the national rate of 5.9.

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U.S. REP. MARCY KAPTUR SEEKS EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS OF RUSSIAN COMMUNICATIONS AT RNC

connections and his family’s business connections related to Russia. We do not know what all of those connections are.�

With that, Kaptur, a co-chair of the Congressional Ukrainian Caucus, explained a spider-webbed chart of how various Trump associates — both in government and not — are connected to, for example, Kislyak.

The brief press conference came in the wake of revelations that a number of conversations between Trump’s presidential campaign advisers and the Russian ambassador likely took place

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U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur last week visited Cleveland, the site of the 2016 Republican National Convention, to urge all residents, political leaders, cab drivers, restaurant operators, passersby and visitors of any stripe who may have been in the presence of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak or any advisers to President Donald Trump at the RNC to come forward and share what they may know.

This marks the ďŹ rst time in her career that Kaptur has made such a request of her constituents and of the American public. â&#x20AC;&#x153;President Trump and I have very different views about the role of Russia in the world today,â&#x20AC;? she said in a small library at the City Club of Cleveland. â&#x20AC;&#x153;[Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s] service is new to all of us. I have many deep concerns based on his public statements, also his business

reportedly gave an address during those events on July 20, 2016.

Scene spoke with Global Cleveland president Joe Cimperman, whose organization hosted a July 19 reception for the Global Partners in Diplomacy at Severance Hall. He could not conďŹ rm whether Sessions was in attendance that night, but did say that about 75 ambassadors from around the world were present. U.S. Sen. Bob Corker gave the eveningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s speech.

But beyond the diplomacy conference, Kaptur made the point that any number of more informal conversations could have taken place in hotels or at restaurants or in cars â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in any number of locations around the city during the RNC. As she and others in the federal government attempt to build out the timeline of events that have brought Trump to this point before the American public, all information will be treated with the utmost conďŹ dence and sincerity.

Anyone with information may conďŹ dentially email Kaptur and her team at eyewitness@mail.house.gov or call 800-964-4699 or send mail to Rep. Marcy Kaptur, 2186 Rayburn Building, Washington, D.C., 20515. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Sandy

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during the RNC. Carter Page, an apparent one-time adviser to Trump, said last week that he had spoken with Kislyak and emphasized the RNC connection: â&#x20AC;&#x153;I never met him anywhere outside of Cleveland.â&#x20AC;?

With Sessions having recused himself from any ofďŹ cial inquiries into Russiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s role in the Trump presidential campaign, the heat is on. Federal government ofďŹ cials are pushing harder than ever for a full-on investigation into just what in the hell has been going on since the budding days of Trumpâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s campaign.

Kaptur sounded the call for important pieces of information â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the connective tissue in a growing timeline â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that may have taken place in Cleveland. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If you were a journalist, if you were a hotel operator, if you operated a restaurant â&#x20AC;&#x201D; or just someone who was in a place where any of these individuals may have been meeting â&#x20AC;&#x201D; itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s really important that you share that information,â&#x20AC;? Kaptur said.

Recent news reports revealed that at least some meetings likely took place at Case Western Reserve University during a series of Heritage Foundation-sponsored panel events dubbed The Global Partners in Diplomacy Conference. Sessions

FRANK JACKSON SAYS WE’VE GOT TO ‘GET UNCOMFORTABLE’ IF CLEVELAND IS TO BE GREAT

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MAYOR FRANK JACKSON forth on the auditorium stage. Bob outlined his policy priorities in a Littman, the president of the City by-the-numbers State of the City Club’s board of directors, introduced address last week. The speech, Jackson, and mentioned several Jackson’s 12th of its kind, gave key issues facing the city: the voters a taste of what they can look controversy on Public Square; the forward to if they elect him to an ongoing implementation of the unprecedented fourth term in office consent decree; the scourges of lead this fall. poisoning, poverty and opioids.

To a packed house of the city’s To the extent that Jackson business and non-profit leaders at addressed those issues, he did so the Cleveland Public Auditorium, mostly in the context of the income Jackson presented “four to five tax increase and its positive effects. core transformative decisions” He went “into the weeds” for a that he would make to address bit, delineating specific ways the the “disparities and inequities” money would be used, including facing Cleveland. They included major enhancements to personnel making progress in the realms of in various city departments: the education, youth violence, diversity creation of a division of Quality and inclusion, Control and ROOM R and neighborhood Performance U development.

Management; ED “The question the hiring of 33 is, do we have the new employees will, do we have the in Building and courage, to engage Housing, 21 in and overcome Public Health, those challenges?” and 93 in the yu Jackson asked.

Department of u S l pd at e o ora His appeal to the Safety. y a n t he M audience echoed one Jackson didn’t he made last year, when he invited mention Public Square at all in the audience to think about how his address. Nor did he mention committed they were to reform. deliberations surrounding the Last year’s address served as a pitch Quicken Loans Arena renovation. for an income tax increase, one He did, in a quotable, feel-good that passed in November and will finale, advise that too many people net the city roughly $83.5 million had “gotten into comfort zones” in additional revenue. Making about Cleveland.

Cleveland a great city, last year, “To be a great city, there will meant getting behind Issue 32. be anxiety,” he said. “We will have This year’s address had another to go beyond what has made us purpose: It was designed to show comfortable. To be a great city, we Jackson as the only leader capable of have to go beyond our self-interests completing the city’s transformation. and focus on the people’s best The national attitude toward interests. That means all of us ...

Cleveland has shifted, Jackson said, we have to get uncomfortable to go “but it’s not enough.” The question beyond where we are and where for the audience, then, was not we’ve been before.” whether they would elect Jackson The traditional City Club Q&A again, but whether they would have followed, but there wasn’t much “the will” and “the courage” and substance. The two most interesting “the sense of urgency” to do so. questions — one asking Jackson’s Jackson’s focus on neighborhoods position on Cleveland Public Power’s could easily have been taken as a “ecological adjustment fee” and one direct rebuke to challengers like asking about contributions from Jeff Johnson, and even Brandon PACs linked to corporate interests Chrostowski, who’ve argued that — came from a table sponsored by Jackson is unduly concerned with the Service Employees International development downtown. The only Union, a labor group that has way for Cleveland to become a great endorsed Jeff Johnson for mayor. city, this year, is to keep Jackson in Nevertheless, Jackson’s rambling office. responses to both questions failed to The themes, though, and even inspire much confidence. — Allard specific bullet points, were nearly identical to previous addresses. scene@clevescene.com Like last year, Jackson spoke t @clevelandscene without notes, walking back and aw l

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| clevescene.com m | March 15 - 21, 2017

Photo by Sam Allard

NEWS SHINING MOMENTS Is this Kent-created NCAA tourney pool the longest continuously running March Madness contest in America?

By Sam Allard ON FEB. 9, 2009, A FINANCIAL advisor from Kent, Ohio, named Tim Trowbridge sent a letter to Bristol, Connecticut. He wanted someone — anyone — at ESPN to confirm or deny that he and two friends had started the very first NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament pool in American history.

“On a wintry February afternoon,” Trowbridge’s letter read, “we found our way to a local pub. The mission was to once and for all determine who knew the most about college basketball ... .

There was no format to follow, but after a few beers, we established the format used in every office pool across the country today.”

These days, Trowbridge works in a well-appointed corner office at the Kent branch of Stifel, a brokerage and banking firm. He’s the senior vice president for investments, but he managed to carve out some time for Scene one morning in early March.

The MAC tournament was underway in Cleveland, and Kent State had just defeated the Chippewas of Central Michigan in a record-setting contest, a game Trowbridge was eager to recap.

(Kent would ultimately take the MAC title, winning their four games by a total of 16 points and upsetting the No. 2-ranked Ohio University and the No. 1-ranked Akron in the semifinals and finals. They drew UCLA in the opening round of the Big Dance.)

It doesn’t take long for Trowbridge to point to the plaque near the door in his office. It used to be housed at the the Rusty Nail, a Kent watering hole: “Trowbridge Hunt & Trowbridge Annual NCAA Tournament,” it’s titled, “est. 1981.” It memorializes the winners in each of the pool’s 36 years.

Back in its inaugural year, the local golf pro Gary Bauer won the pool and Bobby Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers won the tournament. Back then, there were 15 guys paying a $5 entry fee. In 2016,

the Chicago Tribune investigative journalist Jared S. Hopkins, a friend of Trowbridge’s son Wesley, emerged victorious. “I need a new one,” says Trowbridge, holding aloft another wooden plaque with 18 blank name plates. It’ll be affixed to the bottom of the current two, full up with victors.

“The more of these I can put on there, the better life I’ve had.”

Trowbridge hails from Upstate New York, a little town called Carthage in the foothills of the Adirondacks — “God’s country,” Trowbridge avows.

Growing up, he was 90 miles north of Syracuse, so naturally, he’s been a lifelong fan of Jim Boeheim and the Orange. It’s perhaps no surprise that

the only year he won his own pool was 2003, when Carmelo Anthony led ’Cuse to a championship.

“People laugh at me because every year I put ’Cuse a lot farther than I should,” he says. “Everyone out here is all Big 10 and Ohio State. One year, [1987] Syracuse played Indiana in the Championship. ’Cuse was winning, but Indiana came down and made that pass to Keith Smart on the left side of the court with about a second left. He launches one and, boom — Syracuse loses. That’s still a nightmare for me.”

Trowbridge attended Walsh University and after a four-year stint in Florida, moved back to Ohio to open a sub shop in Kent. In 1981, he and his

friends just wanted to find a way for more people to participate in the fun of the tournament. Maybe it’s because he lives in a college town, but Trowbridge still self-identifies as a “college guy.”

“They aren’t all prima donnas yet, and the coach actually has a little bit of influence,” he says, of collegiate vs. pro sports. “And that’s on the court and on the football field.”

In ’81, office pools and family pools weren’t yet popular. There weren’t even cellular phones. But newspapers still printed the tournament bracket every year, and due in part to the personality of Bobby Knight in Indiana, college basketball was becoming increasingly popular. ESPN had launched in 1979 | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

NEWS and in 1980 secured the rights to the early rounds of the NCAA tournament, broadcasting a full slate of games and helping to christen March Madness.

Trowbridge and his friend Jeff Hunt would gather all the papers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; USA Today, the Beacon-Journal, Portage Countyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Record-Courier, the Plain Dealer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and pick the one with the best, most copiable bracket. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d cut it out, copy it, bring it down to size and then run off a bunch of copies.

Then theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d hit the bars. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d got to Dominicâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d go to the Rusty Nail. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d go to the Tavern. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d go to the Country Club,â&#x20AC;?

Trowbridge says, listing off the local dives. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Those were pretty long nights, but not as long as Wednesday night, when we picked up the brackets and the money. Or that ďŹ rst weekend.â&#x20AC;?

The ďŹ rst weekend is of course the onslaught of the tournamentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ďŹ rst two rounds â&#x20AC;&#x201D; nonstop games Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Trowbridge and his wife Ruth would mark off the sheets by hand. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We used magic markers into the wee hours of the morning,â&#x20AC;?

Trowbridge wrote to ESPN. â&#x20AC;&#x153;And a lot of these people were ďŹ lling out their brackets late at night,â&#x20AC;?

Trowbridge tells Scene. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Often you couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even read them. And then youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve always got the guys who just want to use the numbers. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want to take the time to write the name. On top of that, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d be getting brackets in the mail from out of state through the weekend. But as long as they were postmarked by Thursday ...â&#x20AC;?

The newer, digital system is a lot easier, he admits. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s less work for him â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and for his son Wesley, who oversees the tournament these days from Chicago â&#x20AC;&#x201D; and it makes it more convenient for non-locals to participate. Today, the pool gets brackets from participants in New York, California, Illinois, Vermont and elsewhere, but about 70 percent are still from Kent, Trowbridge estimates, and everyone can track their progress in real time. Plus, he canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be accused of tinkering with brackets or making mistakes in tabulating point totals.

(Trowbridge won the pool in 2003, the year after his son did, and he was worried that people might suspect foul play). But there are tradeoffs. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was much more social back then,â&#x20AC;? Trowbridge says, shaking his head wistfully. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You were going to the bars, talking to people, hanging out.â&#x20AC;?

By the fourth or ďŹ fth year, there were more than 200 participants â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the pool was well-known around the

Kent bar scene. A few years later, ofďŹ ce pools became popular and there was a slight drop-off in participation, but to this day the pool gets more than 100 participants.

The Trowbridge Hunt & Trowbridge pool uses the same scoring system as all the major online bracket hosts â&#x20AC;&#x201D; ESPN, CBSSports, Yahoo, NCAA.com â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1 point for each correct pick in the ďŹ rst round, then 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 for each correct pick in subsequent rounds. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s structured so that players who guess the correct champion stand the best chance of winning the pool. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Back when we started,â&#x20AC;?

Trowbridge says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;there werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even 64 teams.â&#x20AC;?

Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right. The tournament featured only 48 teams until 1983, when ďŹ ve more were added. The tournament expanded to its current 64-team structure in 1985, the year Villanova upset Patrick Ewingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Georgetown Hoyas. (No one in the Trowbridge pool correctly picked Villanova that year.)

Trowbridge spoke with Scene before selection Sunday, and said he hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t yet picked a favorite, but admitted that, just like every year, heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d probably advance Syracuse and Notre Dame further than advisable.

(Syracuse ended up not getting a bid.)

He says heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s expecting the number of participants to be about the same. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But whenever new people come into this pool, we always tell them, kiddingly, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in the ďŹ rst pool in the country. We say, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;This was started in Kent, Ohio, in 1981.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; Why I wrote that letter, I just wanted someone at ESPN to look into it, to see if there was any pool that started earlier than we did.â&#x20AC;?

No one at ESPN ever responded, but it turns out thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s at least one.

The bracket craze is thought to have originated in 1977 at a Staten Island Bar called Jodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Club Forest.

According to reports, 88 people entered the pool the ďŹ rst year at $10 a pop. But the Jodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s pool was shut down in 2006 when, with more than 150,000 entrants in a winner-take-all format, the IRS came knocking. So the Trowbridge Hunt & Trowbridge pool may be the longest continuously running pool in the United States.

For the record, tournament pools are legal as long as organizers donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t charge a fee for the service, which Trowbridge certainly does not. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was never about the money,â&#x20AC;? he says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The key is bragging rights.

It was always about the bragging rights.â&#x20AC;?

sallard@clevescene.com t@scenesallard

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ERIN GO LIVE Your guide to live music in Northeast Ohio on St. Patrick’s Day

By Jeff Niesel ST. PATRICK’S DAY UNOFFICIALLY began earlier this month when Cleveland’s Boys from the County Hell, a local Pogues tribute act that makes the most of the holiday, played a special warm-up party at Music Box Supper Club.

Per usual, the Boys will be plenty busy this year. They start off St. Paddy’s Day at 9 a.m. at House of Blues,. where they play an epic threeand-a-half hour set. From there, they head to Flannery’s Pub, where they will turn in another epic six-hour set that starts at 1 p.m. They end the night with a performance at 9 p.m. at the Harp that lasts until the bar closes or they pass out from exhaustion — whichever comes first.

You can also check them out at 4 p.m. the day after St. Patrick’s Day as they play a Survivors’ Party at Stone Mad. The late-afternoon start gives revelers plenty of time to sober up.

The Boys from the County Hell will be just one act at House of Blues, which hosts its 13th annual St. Patrick’s Day Celebration. If you’ve never stopped at the club on St. Paddy’s Day, you’ve got to give it a go. Bands will perform in both the Music Hall and the Cambridge Room. The Prodigals, a regular at the club, always turn in a rousing set.

They perform at 3 p.m. in the Music Hall. DJ Sparky B, Mary’s Lane, Pop Fiction and DJ Gene share the

bill. Because House of Blues doesn’t charge admission, the place will be packed.

Elsewhere downtown, expect all the bars to be part of the holiday’s festivities. Wilbert’s opens at 9 a.m. and features happy hour specials all day long. The local folk-rock act Cats on Holiday perform after the parade from about 3 to 6 p.m.

On the East Bank of the Flats, the Big Bang Bar opens at 8 a.m. with dueling pianos and a DJ. Also on the East Bank, “long-time favorite” Donal O’Shaughnessy will perform at the Flat Iron, which opens at 7 a.m. and offers free shuttle rides to the parade.

Over in Ohio City, Great Lakes Brewing Company will open at 10 a.m. on St. Patty’s Day for its 27th annual St. Patrick’s Day party.

Appropriately, Conway’s Irish Ale and Wolfhound Stout will be on tap, and the brewpub will offer a special menu of “classic Irish cuisine and modern bar eats.” A shuttle will provide complimentary rides to the downtown parade. The local Irish act the Portersharks performs at 2:30 p.m., and the Cleveland Firefighters Memorial Pipes and Drums Band plays at 6 p.m.

Kamm’s Corner in West Park regularly draws a giant post-parade crowd. West Park Station opens at 6 a.m. with “kegs & eggs” and hosts “entertainment all day.” Doors open

at 7 a.m. at PJ McIntyre’s Irish Pub. The first 100 patrons will receive a “commemorative collector’s” T-shirt, and Irish dancers and pipers will perform all day long. The local Irish act Mary’s Lane will play as well.

Both pubs will host survivors’ parties on March 18.

Over in Lakewood, Fireside performs at 6 p.m. at Around the Corner. The venue also hosts special crab races and a DJ at 10 p.m.

Around the corner from Around the Corner, Vosh Lakewood will host a St. Patrick’s Day party featuring performances by Pompous Ass from noon to 4 p.m., Irish Cottage Boys from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. and Harp City from 7:30 p.m. until closing.

The local Celtic music group New Barleycorn returns to Nighttown this year for St. Patrick’s Day. They’ll play shows at 1:30, 5:30 and 8 p.m.

The Grog Shop hosts a daylong St. Patrick’s Day party that commences at 3 p.m. with the fourth annual All Green Everything St. Patrick’s Day Party with Ro Digga, Corey Grand, Ryan Wolf, Steph Floss and One Plus Two. Z107.9 FM will also broadcast live from the Cleveland Heights club during the event. Admission is free until 9 p.m. when local party throwers Secret Soul Club take over, and through a St. Paddy’s Day Silent Disco with KNYCE, Corey Grand, JAMSdavis,

Eso and Jovzilla.

Music Box Supper Club hosts a St. Patrick’s Day Dance Party blowout with the Sunrise Jones, local rockers who claim to be a “live jukebox.” The club will have green beer and corned beef specials too.

The Canton-based tribute act One: A Celebration of U2 performs at 9 p.m. at the Hard Rock Cafe stage in Northfield. Billing itself as “the ultimate tribute to U2,” the band draws well locally even when it isn’t St. Patrick’s Day. In Akron, the Tangier hosts a Put-in-Bay St. Pat’s Bash at 4 p.m. The schedule features comedian Charlie Wiener along with the Flyin Jays, Colin Dussault’s Blues Project and Cats on Holiday. The club promises an Irish menu and there will be a silent auction to benefit the Alzheimer’s Association Greater East Ohio Chapter.

And finally, Brother’s Lounge features Jukebox Heroes at 9:30 p.m. in its Concert Hall and singersongwriter Bill March in its Wine Bar at 8 p.m.

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

Boys from the County Hell | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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19

MOVERS AND SHAKERS (AND STRAINERS) Three of Clevelandâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s best young bartenders

By Billy Hallal KATHLEEN SULLIVAN The Spotted Owl On any given weeknight, you might ďŹ nd Kathleen â&#x20AC;&#x153;Sullyâ&#x20AC;? Sullivan sawing a massive block of ice or testing recipes using spirits from Japan or Peru. It comes with the territory when youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re the beverage director for the Spotted Owl, Tremontâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s premier cocktail destination.

Sullivan, like the Spotted Owlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s owner Will Hollingsworth, is a veteran of Michael Symonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lolita. The difference is that Sullivan didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get behind the bar for about seven years.

She ďŹ rst worked as hostess, back waiter, server â&#x20AC;&#x201D; basically, everything but pouring drinks. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was begging for something else to learn,â&#x20AC;? she said, and so she took on bartending. The focus at Lolita was mostly wine. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t this, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for sure,â&#x20AC;? Sullivan says, gesturing to the Owlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impressive back bar.

After gaining some experience

at Lolita, Sullivan came on as a barback at the then-new Owl. One of her shifts fell on Mondays, the night allotted for â&#x20AC;&#x153;drink developmentâ&#x20AC;? and experimentation. These nights instilled in Sullivan, who was promoted to beverage director in May 2015, a dedication to researching the craft.

Under her tenure as director, the Owl has continued to enjoy a reputation as a destination bar for elaborate cocktails. She waves away the Owlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s reputation, among some, as pretentious: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just really excited to show you what weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve learned.â&#x20AC;?

If the Owlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new Peruvian-themed drink menu is to be taken as an indication, Sullivan has clearly learned quite a lot. With drinks like the Chicha Morada, Sullivan and the Owl crew are striving to recreate a South American atmosphere of leisurely and communal drinking.

Sullivan, ever one to deďŹ&#x201A;ect compliments, is quick to highlight the

contributions her fellow bartenders made to drink development. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m really proud of everyoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work on this menu,â&#x20AC;? she says.

Sullivan is a native Clevelander, born in West Park and a professed â&#x20AC;&#x153;westside girl at heart.â&#x20AC;? The owl tattoo on her arm, she will tell anyone who asks, is just a coincidence. She loves patronizing neighborhood bars, but often doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the time. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to imagine just sitting in a bar enjoying a drink,â&#x20AC;? she admits.

When not at the Owl, she spends her time walking her two dogs and researching new ways to improve the Owlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cocktail menu. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is my life,â&#x20AC;? she says, gesturing to the bar around her. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This and the dogs. But it wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be my life if I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t enjoy it.â&#x20AC;?

ANDY KNECHT Porco Lounge and Tiki Room One thing you can say about Andy Knecht (pronounced like â&#x20AC;&#x153;connect,â&#x20AC;?

he says helpfully) is that heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always game. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the newest bartender at Porco Lounge and Tiki Room, where he pulls double duty as a server.

Born and raised in Chardon, Knechtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s industry experience began at age 15, when he worked the kitchen of a summer camp in Carollton, 40 minutes southeast of Canton. Though he was later made a counselor â&#x20AC;&#x201D; moved, as would often happen in his working life, â&#x20AC;&#x153;from the back of the house to the frontâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; his work with food stuck with him. After college he found himself back in Cleveland with a job he disliked. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m ofďŹ cially the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worst ofďŹ ce employee,â&#x20AC;? he confesses. For a hobby, he started brewing beer. Then the hobby turned into a job. Knecht worked in the kitchen and as a bar back at

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BottleHouse Brewing Company, where he learned his bartending philosophy: “You’re serving customers, not drinks.”

Knecht has enjoyed the switch from slinging beer to cocktails. “There’s so much more to explore,” he says. “It’s in your hands to craft the beverage that person wants right in front of them.” And working a craft cocktail bar like Porco comes with its own set of responsibilities. “Half our job is to be educators,” he explains. If a customer comes in and orders, say, an “Alaskan Thunderfuck Blowjob,” Knecht sees it as his duty to say: “I can do something better for you.”

Like many kids growing up in Cleveland in the 1990s and early oughts, Knecht left for college vowing never to return. And like many of those kids, Knecht is thrilled to be back. “Cleveland is rooted in me,” he says.

KEVIN PATRICK The Speakeasy at Quintana’s After many stints of downtown and westside bartending, Kevin Mayock (better known as Kevin Patrick) has returned to the east side. The Euclidraised mixologist has joined a dream team of bartenders — friends Leanne Kubiez and Molly McSweeny — to revamp the bar program at Prohibitionstyle gem the Speakeasy at Quintana’s, a barbershop and spa that, yes, also has a drinking establishment upstairs. The bar has always had the Roaring ’20s trappings down, as it was designed to. Now, there will be a cocktail menu on par with the decor.

Patrick, already a seasoned veteran

of the bar scene at 28, first entered the industry as a cook at 19. He got his start pouring drinks while working the kitchen at a biker bar in Eastlake.

“During the day, the bartenders would get too drunk to serve,” he says. “I had to bartend at 20.” He must have been good: As soon as he turned 21, they had him running shifts.

For a while, Patrick took on a string of Lake County dives and dance clubs. Some shady dealings with management soured him on the business, and he returned to cooking.

“I wanted a nice bar,” he says.

It wasn’t far in his future. After a stint at Chicago’s Cordon Bleu culinary school, Patrick returned to Cleveland to become sous chef at Collinwood’s well-loved (and mourned) Grovewood Tavern. “It was like dive bars, dive bars, straight to fine dining,” says Patrick.

Grovewood was where Patrick first got into craft cocktails. “Moving from culinary to tending was so easy,” he says. “You know how to mesh flavor profiles. It’s the same as being in culinary when you do the mixology part.”

The syrups and spice mixes Patrick makes behind the bar give credence to his comparison. His passion for and knowledge of the craft of cocktails is evident, and at the Speakeasy, he’ll truly get a chance to shine. And he’s committed to the service bit, too.

“I’m a jerk,” Patrick says, “but I love making people happy.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

Join Us St. Patrick’s Day Opening @ 8am

Expanded Patio, Heated Tent, Cold Beer, Great Food!

Live Music @ 9:00pm

The Boys From The County Hell THE BEST PLACE TO CELEBRATE ST. PATRICK’S DAY We Offer An Extensive Selection Of Irish Beer.

4408 DETROIT AVE. | CLEVELAND | 216.939.0200 | www.the-harp.com | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

21

Presented by SCENE

PRESENT:

The 6th Annual

DOWNTOWN WILLOUGHBY

RIB BURN OFF Saturday May 20, Noon-11p

SUNDAY May 21, Noon-8p

DTW RIB BURN OFF In its 6th year, this event has become the most anticipated event to Saturday, March 11 take place in Downtown Willoughby.

This two-day event is going to Downtown Willoughby 7-Midnight Tickets: $10 rock this town with three stages featuring live| music, plus vendors and Guests Receive A Shot Glass, Apps At Registration. a complete kidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s zone plus beer Koozie, & craftLight cocktails, and, of course, ribs Drink Specials! sceneshamrock.com from participating Downtown Willoughby restaurants & national vendors.

Saturday, May 20 Noon-11p & Sunday, May 21 Noon-8p @ Downtown Willoughby

Presented by SCENE

ALEFEST The 9th Annual SCENE Magazine Ale Fest will feature over 100 beers from around the corner to around the globe. The celebration is packed with your favorite porters, stouts, pilasters, ales, wheats, Belgians, ciders, and lagers just to name a few. This is not just your run of the mill beer event. Ale Fest has live music, interactive games, food booths, local vendors and more. Experience the beer festival that everyone has been talking about for years. We welcome everyone 21 and over. Feel free to bring lawn chairs and pets and enjoy a beautiful summer day at Lincoln Park. Rain or shine.

Saturday, July 29 1p @ Lincoln Park in Tremont

Ninth Annual

A SCENE MAGA ZINE E VENT

ALEFEST

29July

1:00p-7:00P

Lincoln Park TREMONT

F I N D O U T A B O U T T H E S E E V E N T S A N D M O R E AT C L E V E S C E N E T I C K E T S . C O M

22

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

everything you should do this week

GET OUT

Photo by Emanuel Wallace

WED

03/15

MUSIC

David Bowie’s Playlist A series of orchestra concerts featuring music by rock icon David Bowie and the composers who inspired him, What’s on David Bowie’s Playlist takes place at various venues around town from today through Sunday. The program features an extensive assortment of music that both inspired Bowie and was written by Bowie. For the concerts, CityMusic Cleveland Chamber Orchestra will work from a playlist that includes “Bowie XL,” an instrumental suite of seven David Bowie songs, with narration by Ravenna Miceli (of oWOW internet radio) about Bowie’s life and career; five Bowie songs played by the orchestra and sung by Richard Kline, singer for the Bowie tribute band Diamond Dogs; and works by John Adams, Richard Strauss and Philip Glass, all of whom inspired the Thin White Duke. The first concert takes place at 7:30 tonight at St. Jerome Church. Concerts follow at 7:30 tomorrow night at Westlake City Schools Performing Arts Center in Lakewood; 7:30 p.m. on Friday at Lakewood Congregational Church; 8 p.m. on Saturday at Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus; and 4 p.m. on Sunday at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple in Beachwood. No tickets are required; admission is free. (Jeff Niesel) citymusiccleveland.org.

ART

Art Bites Series Mary Urbas’ ongoing Business of Art for Artists lecture series continues this week as part of the Artists Archives of the Western Reserve’s 2017 Art Bites series of professional practices for artists.

Week 2 of Urbas’ series focuses on creating professional images, assembling business tools to sell art (such as business cards and mailing lists), where to show your work, what jurors are looking for at art fairs and festivals, as well as artists’ booth layout and design at these events. Although the program is free, registration is required.

Weeks 3 and 4 are already sold out, and week 5 of this program won’t take place until October; so don’t miss your last chance to learn more about professional art practices

St. Patrick’s Day mayhem comes to downtown Cleveland.

See: Friday.

DANCE

Taj Express Straight outta Film City-Mumbai, Taj Express features “the cream of India’s film talent, dancing in 2,000 sparkling costumes, within a lavish set.” The event combines music, dance and film. The performance takes place tonight at 7:30 at the State Theatre. Tickets are $20 to $65. (Niesel) 1519 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

SPOKEN WORD

this spring, from 6 to 8 tonight. To register, contact the AAWR offices at the number below or RSVP through Eventbrite. (Josh Usmani) 1834 East 123rd St., 216-721-9020, artistsarchives.org.

time period, “Paperback Writer” and “Rain.” The film screens at 7 p.m. today and at 4 p.m. on Saturday at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Regular admission rates apply. (Niesel) 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5411, clevelandcinemas.com.

ART

Black Nerd Problems: Depictions of African Americans in Popular Media From the recent success of Luke Cage to the controversy surrounding nontraditional casting in the upcoming Spiderman film, tonight’s program at the Maltz Museum, dubbed Black Nerd Problems: Depictions of African Americans in Popular Media, addresses how African Americans have “fit, been positioned or sometimes snuck into” the media we digest and how they factor into entertainment. William Evans, the co-creator and editorin-chief of Black Nerd Problems (blacknerdproblems.com), leads the discussion. The talk begins at 7. Tickets are $12, or $6 for Maltz Museum members. (Niesel) 2929 Richmond Rd., Beachwood, 216-593-0575, maltzmuseum.org.

FILM

Deconstructing the Beatles’ Revolver A composer and producer who started putting together Beatles’ lectures in 2011 as a way to entertain his musician friends, Scott Freiman started listening to the Fab Four when he was 11 years old. The Beatles provided Freiman, a classically trained pianist, his first exposure to rock ’n’ roll, and he immediately shifted his focus. In Deconstructing the Beatles’ Revolver, we see him discuss the Beatles’ seminal album as well as two other songs recorded during the same

ART

Drawing Power Once a month, Great Lakes Brewing Company hosts Cleveland’s Drink & Draw Social Club. The event is organized by the Rust Belt Monster Collective and sponsored by Carol and John’s Comic Book Shop. Drink & Draws are an opportunity for artists of all levels to drink, draw, socialize/network and collaborate in very relaxed and welcoming environment. Events take place at 7 p.m. on the third Wednesday of each month, including tonight. At the end of each Drink & Draw, prizes are awarded for various superlatives.

Admission is free. (Usmani) 2516 Market Ave., 216-771-4404, greatlakesbrewing.com.

THEATER

She Stoops to Conquer Tonight at the State Theatre, Cleveland Play House tackles She Stoops to Conquer, one of the greatest British comedies of all time.

The storyline centers on a wealthy Londoner who prefers lower class women and initially rejects the daughter of a rich countryman.

Written by Oliver Goldsmith, the original production dates back to 1773. Tonight’s performance begins at 7:30, and the play runs through March 25. Tickets are $15 to $20.

(Niesel) 1407 Euclid Ave, 216-771-8403, playhousesquare.org.

Think & Drink with the Extinct Billed as “one of the brainiest happy hours in Cleveland,” Think & Drink with the Extinct, a monthly gathering at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, represents more than just an opportunity to get wasted. Rather, patrons actually learn something as the museum’s staff members give interactive demonstrations and talk about science topics. Tonight’s topic happens to be Amazing Species: Life at the Limits, and includes guided exhibit tours throughout the evening. (See the website for details.)

Tickets are $8 but museum members and Case students get in for free.

Great Lakes Brewing Company beers are $5 and a special cocktail by Cleveland Whiskey is $7. (Niesel) 1 Wade Oval Dr., 216-231-4600, cmnh.org.

THU

03/16

MUSIC

All Stravinsky Time magazine once named composer Igor Stravinsky one of the most influential people of the 20th century. His work continues to resonate too, as he embraced multiple compositional styles and revolutionized orchestration.

Tonight at 7:30 at Severance Hall, the Cleveland Orchestra plays four of the works that established him as a musical revolutionary. An hour before the concert, guest speaker Michael Strasser, a professor of musicology at Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music, delivers the lecture, “The Many Faces of Igor Stravinsky.” Tickets start at $29, and the program repeats at 8 on Saturday night. (Niesel) 11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com. | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

23

GET OUT

FRI

03/17

ART ART

ARTneo Preview Party ARTneo presents a sneak preview of its latest exhibitions tonight from 6 to 8. PARTYneo: Ice Cream Social offers an early glimpse into both Cleveland Creates 2017, ARTneo’s second annual regional juried exhibition, and Pop & Circumstance: Works by Andy Dreamingwolf, last year’s Cleveland Creates inaugural grand prize winner. Sponsored by Mitchell’s Ice Cream, tickets are $25 ($15 for ARTneo members) and available through ARTneo’s website, below.

Both exhibitions open to the public during tomorrow’s Third Friday festivities. (Usmani) 1300 West 78th St., 216-227-9507, artneo.org.

Archive Show: Year 3 at Zygote When legendary gallerist William Busta retired in 2015, the local art community knew he wasn’t finished curating local art exhibitions. A new archive show at Zygote Press features prints from Busta’s personal collection alongside prints selected from Zygote’s archive. Opening

FOOD

Fish Fry-Days Prosperity Social Club hosts its fish fry, dubbed Fish Fry-Days,

WED.

3/22 4/26 5/17 5/25

WED.

Thur.

Tupac Live at the House of Blues

MUSIC

& see the new 2017 Inductee exhibit

Lakeland Jazz Fest The annual Lakeland Jazz Festival, which takes place today through Sunday at the college’s Dr. Wayne L. Rodehorst Performing Arts Center (Building D), offers a celebration of jazz music, with performers ranging from up-and-coming students to established veterans of the jazz scene. Since its inception, the festival has aimed to “instill the excitement and magic of jazz education to the younger generation of musicians.”

Over the years, tens of thousands of middle- and high-school musicians from all over Ohio have participated, along with famous jazz musicians from around the country. This year, the festival will honor retired Lakeland Community College professor and music department chair Charles M. Frank, who started the festival 45 years ago. At 8 tonight, the Ernie Krivda Quartet will perform both originals and jazz standards. The locally based Krivda has had international success as a recording artist and released over a dozen albums in his long career.

The Dizzy Gillespie All Stars, which features five established jazz veterans, including two who have played extensively with Gillespie himself, serve as headliners. They’ll lead a

The Punk Singer

Sir Doug and the Genuine Texas Cosmic Groove Celebrating the Summer of Love 50th anniversary

A Hard Day’s Night Beatles. Classic.

CASH BAR available at each film

SPORTS

Cavs vs. Utah Jazz The Utah Jazz might not be the best team in the West, but they’re in the thick of the playoff race and boast one of the best defenses in the entire league. They beat the Cavs earlier this season when the two teams faced off in Salt Lake City. Given that the playoffs are just around the corner and both teams need all the wins they can get, you can expect tonight’s game, which begins at 7 at the Q, to be a real battle. Tickets start at $14.

(Niesel) 1 Center Court, 216-420-2000, theqarena.com.

24

FREE for Members • Non-Members $5.50 1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44114 | rockhall.com | 216.781.ROCK

with a reception tonight from 6 to 8, Archive Show: Year 3 includes Depression-era etchings, linocuts, lithographs, serigraphs, woodcuts and wood engravings, many from the Cleveland Print-a-Month Club. Busta is a founding board member of Zygote Press. For this exhibition, Busta juxtaposes these

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

THEATER

A film about Kathleen Hanna

ALL FILMS START AT 7 PM | ROCK HALL’S FOSTER THEATER

WED.

year, the event received national attention when the home-cooked Big Fish Fry was featured on TV chef Andrew Zimmern’s Delicious Destinations. New this year: Chef Ed Kubitz has added a lemony shrimp piccata pasta to the list of Fish FryDay offerings. (Niesel) 1109 Starkweather Ave., 216-937-1938, prosperitysocialclub.com.

Flanagan’s Wake Now its fifth year running in Cleveland, Flanagan’s Wake transports the audience to a wake in Ireland where villagers tell tales and sing songs for their dearly departed Flanagan. Finding the humor in life and death, the wake acts as a dark backdrop to an otherwise hilarious show in which alcohol fuels the humorous reminiscing. A sort of tragic Tony ’n’ Tina’s Wedding, the interactive and improvised show engages the entire audience as the guests are treated as the friends and family of the deceased. The show starts at 8 tonight and plays again tomorrow night at 8 at Kennedy’s Theatre. Tickets are $26. (Patrick Stoops) 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

SCHEDULE

COMEDY

Ian Bagg If you end up going to see Ian Bagg tonight at Hilarities, you might want to think twice about sitting in the front row. The comic loves to pick on audience members and make fun of their body language or ask personal questions about their sexual preferences. Though he’s not nearly as manic as Robin Williams, he still possesses Williams’ unhinged energy. And he’s a talker. He’s been a regular on all the usual late-night shows and currently hosts his own podcast, the Ian Bagg Show, where he and a couple pals riff on popular culture for two hours at a time. Tonight’s show starts at 8, and performances are scheduled through Sunday.

Tickets are $20 to $25. (Niesel) 2035 East Fourth St., 216-2417425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

prints with Zygote Press’ 20-year archive collection, highlighting both similarities and differences between them. Archive Show: Year 3 remains on view through April 15. Admission is free. (Usmani) 1410 East 30th St., 216-621-2900, zygotepress.com.

every Friday until Easter from 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. The special Lenten menu includes the Big Fish Fry, a seasonal staple that features a generous portion of haddock covered in a fluffy blanket of beer batter and complemented by homemade coleslaw, house tartar sauce and old-school-style mac and cheese. Last

clinic at 4 p.m. tomorrow and then perform a concert at 8 that night.

At 4 p.m. on Sunday, the Lakeland Civic Jazz Orchestra and the Kent State Jazz Orchestra will perform separate concerts. The festival will also feature performances by middleand high-school jazz ensembles from around Ohio. Check the website for a complete schedule and ticket prices.

(Johnny Cook) 7700 Clocktower Dr., Kirtland, 440-525-7000, lakelandcc.edu.

SPORTS

Monsters vs. Texas Stars After a day of partying to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, why not bring things to a close by taking in a Cleveland Monsters game? The Monsters take on the Dallas Stars tonight at 7 at the Q. As part of the team’s 1-2-3 Fridays promotion, fans can purchase $1 Pepsi products, $2 Sugardale hot dogs and $3 beers. The two teams face off again tomorrow night at 7. The first 10,000 fans to tomorrow night’s game will receive an Anton Forsberg bobblehead. Tickets start at $10.

(Niesel) 1 Center Court, 216-420-2000, theqarena.com.

ST. PATRICK’S DAY

St. Patrick’s Day Parade The first Cleveland St. Patrick’s Day parade reportedly took place in 1867. In the early years, the parade marched through the near westside (from the Flats to DetroitShoreway) where the region’s Irish immigrants were concentrated. The songs and dancing were organized by the Order of the Hibernians. Back in 1910, State Sen. Dan Mooney introduced a bill which recognized St. Patrick’s Day in Ohio, turning the parade into a true tradition.

This year’s parade launches at 1:04 p.m. at the intersection of Superior Avenue and East 18th Street. It then heads southwest on Superior Avenue to East Third Street. Expect downtown bars to be jammed before and after. Check out the parade route on the website. (Niesel) stpatricksdaycleveland.com.

ART

Third Friday You’ve spent the day drinking green beer and Irish whiskey. Maybe now it’s time for some art? March’s Third Friday at 78th Street Studios runs from 5 to 9 p.m. and includes the debut of several new, exciting exhibitions. Highlights include the $50 Show at E11even 2 with dozens of original works by local artists priced at $50 each. ARTneo

hosts opening receptions for its latest two exhibitions, Cleveland Creates and Andy Dreamingwolf’s Pop and Circumstance. PopEye Gallery debuts Dan Miller’s Draw Me a Sheep, featuring work based on The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Additionally, Hedge Galley presents new work by local painter Katy Richards, and Forum Artspace hosts the closing reception of Mike Meier’s Man Out of Time; both artists are alums of the Cleveland Institute of Art. Following each Third Friday, Survival Kit presents live music from Stephan Haluska (harp), Rebecca Burcher (dance) and Matthew Ryals (modular synthesizer) on the third floor at 9 p.m. Admission is free. (Usmani) 1300 West 78th St., 78thstreetstudios.com.

4530 COLORADO AVE., SHEFFIELD VILLAGE, OH

JOSEPH

AND THE AMAZING

TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT

NIGHTLIFE

Wizard World After Party Tonight’s “interactive dance party experience” at the Phantasy Nightclub in Lakewood features the return of international DJ/producer DJ Kidd Madonna who’ll serve up “sick beats” and full laser displays for a dance floor that’ll feature inflatables by 3DX and makeup and decor by Theatric. The event serves as an after party for the Wizard World convention hitting town this weekend. Admission is $20 or $10 with a Wizard World wristband.

Doors open at 10 p.m. (Niesel) 11802 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, 216-228-6300, phantasycleveland.com.

SAT

LYRICS BY TIM RICE | MUSIC BY ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER

MARCH 3 - 19

FRIDAYS & SATURDAYS AT 7:30 PM AND SUNDAYS AT 3 PM TICKETS: $10-$18 | (440) 949-5200 OR WWW.METROPARKS.CC/THEATRE SPONSORED BY:

03/18

ART

A Special Brunch Event This spring, the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion international artist residency program focuses on Cuba. For the first time in the program’s history, it will bring together artists from one specific country.

Local organizations will host these artists throughout the spring.

To introduce its resident artist to Northeast Ohio, the Cleveland Print Room hosts a special brunch event with Cuban artist Sandra Ramos from 11 a.m. to noon today. Join Ramos and Cleveland Print Room executive director Shari Wilkins for a discussion about the artist, her work and her home. The event is sponsored by Breadsmith of Lakewood. (Usmani) 2550 Superior Ave., 216-401-5981, clevelandprintroom.com.

TEAM UP FOR

ST. PAT’S DAY! Get Here Early!

PRE-PARADE PARTY STARTS AT 8 AM! FREE Breakfast Buffet!

Drink & Beer Specials All Day Long!

Dueling Pianos & DJ Join us at the Flats East Bank This St. Pat’s Day! | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

25

Jail n Bail Fundraising Event

GET OUT SUN

spin cool tunes too. It runs from noon to 4. (Niesel) 13200 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-521-3280, mahalls20lanes.com.

03/19

MUSIC

Saturday, March 25th

Alive Inside Benefi t The Alive Inside Foundation aims to “empower local communities to create meaningful, shared experiences that link generations, and expand aliveness globally.”

To help the Alive Inside folks out, locally based Little Fish Records has helped organized a benefit concert today at 5 p.m. at Brothers Lounge. It will feature five groups in the main concert hall, including Henrietta Kytten, Angels in Disguise, Zach & the Bright Lights, Carlos Jones & the PLUS Band and the Nate Jones Band. Local radio personalities Kent N Angelica host.

Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. (Niesel) 11609 Detroit Ave., 216-226-2767, brotherslounge.com.

NIGHTLIFE

Monday Night Trivia Do you have tons of obscure music knowledge? Are you a student of fast food menus and their nuanced histories? What say you about the geographic evolution of Scotch whisky? Tonight’s your chance to wow your friends, make yourself instantly more desirable to someone you’re newly dating, and hang with Cleveland’s headiest hipsters and hot dog lovers. It’s the Happy Dog Monday Night Trivia. Starting at 8 p.m., expect themed rounds — it’s a crapshoot — and general knowledge questions that seem considerably trickier than some of the other live trivia locales in town. Obviously, have a hot dog and a craft brew while you’re at it. And arrive early.

The tables fill up quickly. (Sam Allard) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com.

FILM

Do you know someone who spends too much time on WebMD? Are you the person who sings off-key in the shower?

Are you still wearing your neon sweatshirts from the 80’s?

YOU SHOULD BE ARRESTED!!

Get your arrest warrant at the shelter or online at www.cuyahogadogs.com

9500 Sweet Valley Dr. | Valley View | Ohio 44125 26

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

Best of Ottawa Animation Fest Every September, the Ottawa International Animation Festival presents what organizers deem “the world’s most cutting-edge, quirky and important animation.” As a result, Ottawa transforms into the center of the animation universe.

Clevelanders get a taste of what the festival is all about today at 1:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which presents a program dubbed Best of Ottawa 2016. The program features 11 new animated short films from 10 countries. Tickets are $9, and $7 for CMA members, students and seniors. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

MON

03/20

BRUNCH

Industry Brunch Brunch isn’t just a Saturday/ Sunday thing. Over at Mahall’s, you can grab a great brunch on Mondays as the club caters to industry folks who have the day off. Not that you have to work in the restaurant industry to indulge. The menu features items such as Chicken and Donuts, a dish that features three pieces of fried chicken along with two Old Hushers doughnuts. Other staples include the Everything Pretzel and the Creamy Egg Sandwich. A live DJ from WCSB will be on hand to

FILM

Movie Mondays Every Monday, Cleveland Cinemas hosts $5 Movie Mondays, where film fans can catch up on the latest Hollywood flicks for significantly reduced prices; many theaters even offer discounted concession stand items. Participating theaters include Apollo Theatre, Capitol Theatre, Cedar Lee Theatre, Chagrin Cinemas, Shaker Square Cinemas and Tower City Cinemas.

Unfortunately, additional charges apply for 3D movies. (Alaina Nutile) clevelandcinemas.com.

NIGHTLIFE

Wing Ding Doodle Blues icon Howlin’ Wolf famously covered “Wang Dang Doodle,” the old blues tune penned by Willie Dixon. Prosperity Social Club in Tremont has adopted that slogan, calling its wing night Wing Ding Doodle. The weekly event features specials on Buffalo wings and cold brews. Prosperity will not only serve up substantial, $1 whole wings, but it’ll also offering meatless Monday “wing” baskets for vegans.

Discounted drafts and a playlist of vintage-electric blues and soulful R&B curated by local musician Clint Holley will be on tap as well. It happens every Monday from 6 p.m. to midnight. (Niesel) 1109 Starkweather Ave., 216-937-1938, prosperitysocialclub.com.

TUE

03/21

MUSIC

Classical Revolution Cleveland For many years, classical music wasn’t intended for the masses.

Seemingly reserved for quasiexclusive concert halls, classical music hid from the outside world.

Classical Revolution Cleveland helps tear down that wall and once again bring great chamber music to the people. Showcasing a variety of performers in bars, cafes and the like, it’s actually not that different from how people used to listen to chamber music. The third Tuesday of every month, CRC brings its wide array of chamber music to Euclid Tavern. Performers like the Trepanning Trio, Anime Duo, students of Cleveland Institute of Music and even Cleveland Orchestra members grace the stage in these exciting concerts. Full of immensely talented performers, CRC re-instills the relevancy of this vibrant art form. Tonight’s free, all-ages performance starts at 8. (Stoops) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com.

THEATER

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time Winner of five 2015 Tony Awards, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, a new play by Simon Stephens adapted from Mark Haddon’s best-selling novel and directed by Tony-winner Marianne Elliott, centers on a highly intelligent teenage boy suspected of killing his neighbor’s dog. He sets out to prove his innocence and embarks on a life-altering journey in the process. The play opens tonight at 7:30 at Connor Palace, where it runs through April 9. Tickets are $10 to $90. (Niesel).

1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

ART

An Interactive Art Event Tonight from 6:30 to 8:30 at CLE Urban Winery, Graffiti HeArt hosts Graffiti & Grapes, an interactive art event with local artist Rich Cihlar, co-founder of E11even 2 at 78th Street Studios and owner of the Pop Shop in Lakewood. Described as a twist on traditional Paint and Sip classes, the event offers guests an opportunity to participate in making

a collaborative mural under Cihlar’s guidance. At the end of the evening, each participant will leave with a piece of the mural. Tickets are $30 per person, and that includes a glass of wine. Proceeds benefit the Graffiti HeArt scholarship fund. (Usmani) 2180 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 216-417-8313, cleurbanwinery.com.

SPOKEN WORD

Listen Liberal Book Signing Writer, journalist, and cultural critic Thomas Frank will read from, and sign copies of, his new book, Listen Liberal, tonight at 7 at Loganberry Books. Listed by The New York Times as one of “6 Books to Help Understand Trump’s Win,” Listen Liberal examines the consequences on the middle class of the dissonance between Democratic party philosophy and actual policy.

The book draws from Frank’s years of firsthand reporting. A former columnist at the Wall Street Journal and Harper’s magazine, Kansas City native Frank founded The Baffler in 1988, an iconoclastic journal of cultural, political and business analysis. (Lawrence Neil) 13015 Larchmere Blvd., Shaker Hts., 216-795-9800, loganberrybooks.com.

SPORTS

Monsters vs. Chicago Wolves For Tuesday games at the Q, the Cleveland Monsters offer a special deal for college students. Students with a proper ID can buy tickets for just six bucks, and they’re eligible for a $6 College Meal Deal that includes a hot dog, chips and a soda. Tonight’s opponent: the Chicago Wolves. The game begins at 7 p.m. and general admission tickets start at $10. (Niesel) 1 Center Court, 216-420-2000, theqarena.com.

MUSIC

Vinyl Night It’s time again for Vinyl Night at the Jukebox, the music-focused bar in Hingetown where people can hear music of multiple genres, concentrated in a constantly evolving jukebox. The place has partnered with Loop in Tremont so that patrons can hear a new album on vinyl. You can bring your own vinyl and spin it too. It all starts at 7 p.m. (Niesel) 1404 West 29th St., 216-206-7699, jukeboxcle.com.

Find more events @clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

Great Lakes Medieval Faire

CAST AUDITIONS

$

Add the Medieval experience to your acting resume!!

Held at the Feast Hall on the Faire Grounds

MARCH 25 &26 from 11:00-4:00

Every experience level welcome!

(Head-shot recommended but not necessary)

3033 OH-534 Rock Creek, OH 44084 7 Miles south of Ohio I-90 @ exit 218 (Any questions or concerns please contact at glmfcast@gmail.com)

r SCENE10 fo

10.00HalOf FF the Marathon

Find your happy hour.

'RZQORDG 6&(1(·V RԀFLDO happy hour app today! clevescene.com/happyhours

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

27

Mac ‘n’ Cheese Throwdown Crowns Adega King Cheese

By Rachel Hunt

W

hat happens when you combine classic comfort food with high-end ingredients? You get an award-winning Lobster Grilled Cheese Mac ‘n’ Cheese, conceptualized by Nelly Buleje, executive chef of Adega representing the Metropolitan at the 9 (2017 East Ninth St., 216-239-1200, metropolitancleveland.com) during the W.A.G.S. 4 Kids Mac ‘n’ Cheese Throwdown on Feb. 25 at Red Space.

It was a natural marriage, since macaroni and cheese is one of the best, most indulgent carb-loaded dishes that can be spun into sophisticated offerings. The inaugural event attracted entries from Trentina, Greenhouse Tavern, Southside, Melt, Hodges, and Pier W among an array of other bars and restaurants from Cleveland and the surrounding suburbs.

Peppered pancetta, duck, and smoked Gouda were among fancier additions; deep fried mac and cheese balls also made their way onto the menu.

There were 1,500 people in attendance for the fundraiser, including the 20 restaurants competing against one another to make the tastiest, cheesiest pasta of them all. The Judge’s Choice award was decided by Dante Boccuzzi, pasta impresario; Anna Harouvis, clean eating advocate and chef; and Sam Rosenfeld of W.A.G.S. 4 Kids, after a blind taste testing. The People’s Choice award was voted on by guests who had sampled at least 10 of the entrees.

“What we never anticipated was a total sweep by Metropolitan at the 9, showing utter dominance in both categories,” says Sera

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| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

Nelly Buleje, executive chef of Adega Nelson, director of development and special events for W.A.G.S. 4 Kids, a non-profit that provides mobility and autism service animals to children with disabilities in Northeast Ohio.

They were able to raise over $50,000 for the charitable program through ticket sales for the event.

Chef Buleje has held several positions within Metropolitan at the 9 after a decade of fine dining and hospitality industry experience.

Introduced to cooking by his grandmother at age 13, he creamed the competition with a kind of comfort food that must have been part of his repertoire since childhood.

While he was raised in the United States, Buleje’s parents are of Guatemalan and Mexican descent. Buleje has traveled widely from Peru to the Caribbean and recently to the Philippines. He brings a culturally infused cooking style to whatever he does, from teaming up in the back of a food truck in South Carolina to heading one of the top kitchens in Cleveland.

Buleje’s menu at Adega is rounded out with Mediterranean-inspired seafood including Portuguese charred octopus, scallops, Chilean

sea bass, mussels, and jumbo shrimp, so it was no surprise to see the chef use sweet and meaty lobster to get a leg up on his competition. Metropolitan at the 9 was also represented by sous chef Marvi Lou Magbanua Mapa, Paty Zamarippa, and Reina Marica.

This isn’t the first competition Buleje has won with Adega. He was selected as champion of Scene’s “Iron Fork” challenge presented at Flavor in December, and has received numerous culinary awards, including first and second place in Iron Chef Milwaukee, first place in the Taste of the Season Judges’ Choice, and has been a featured in Southern Cooking. The Metropolitan at the 9 also received AAA’s Four Diamond award for the first time in January 2017. They are among only three hotels in Cleveland to earn the prestigious recognition.

Runners up included Two Buck’s “The Rancher” Mac ‘n’ Cheese and Southside’s Chorizo Mac ‘n’ Cheese in the Judge’s Choice category. Wild Eagle Saloon’s Deep Fried Mac ‘n’ Cheese Balls and Deagan’s Kitchen and Bar’s Smokey & Spicy Mac ‘n’ Cheese took home the silver and bronze respectively in the People’s Choice category.

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Photo by Patrick McGough

ART GET YOUR CON ON Annual Wizard World returns to Cleveland for comic, movie, pop culture fans

By Josh Usmani AFTER MORE THAN A YEAR, Wizard World returns to Cleveland this weekend. Cleveland marks the third stop of the calendar year for the year ’round traveling convention, and the third convention the group has hosted at the Huntington Convention Center. This year’s event kicks off on St. Patrick’s Day and extends throughout the weekend.

Just days before the event, celebrities and artists continue to be added (along with a couple notable cancelations), but we’ve got the most comprehensive and updated info to help plan your visit.

“We are excited about the third year in Cleveland, with numerous celebrities who have not been to our show here before,” says Wizard World PR manager Jerry Milani. In collaboration with Carol & John’s Comic Book Shop, Wizard World is once again awarding four ticket packages to local families. During the weekend, Carol & John’s is again hosting its Winston World comic book sale in the shop. For more information on Winston World, visit cnjcomics.com.

Due to a last-minute scheduling conflict, Michael C. Hall and James Remar will not be joining their Dexter co-stars in Cleveland for this year’s Wizard World. However, two superheroes have swooped in to save the day. Anthony Mackie, best known as Falcon in Marvel’s Captain America and Avengers films, and Dean Cain (The Adventures of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman) have been added to the convention’s celebrity roster. Mackie and Cain will appear on Saturday and Sunday to sign autographs and take photos. After filming Captain America: Winter Soldier here, Mackie is no stranger to Cleveland.

Dexter co-stars Jennifer Carpenter and Jaime Murray are still scheduled to appear on Saturday and Sunday. Additional celebrities include Millie Bobby Brown (Eleven from Stranger Things), Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek), Barry Bostwick (Rocky Horror Picture Show), Gene Simmons (Kiss), Keven Sorbo (Hercules), Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk) and WWE’s Kurt Angle and Becky Lynch.

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In addition to celebrities, the event features dozens of artists, writers and creators from the industry, including both local and national talent. Cleveland artists include Matthew Chojnacki, Ryan Finley, Chad Kimes, Perris Mackey (Immortal Nerd), Jeff Ritchie, Erin Schechtman Caruso (Super Group Hugs) and Thom Zahler. National artists include Bob Camp (co-creator, The Ren & Stimpy Show), Tom Cook, Shawn Coss (creator, Cyanide & Happiness), Jordan Gibson, Guy Gilchrist, Billy Martin (artist and lead guitarist for Good Charlotte), Phil Ortiz (artist, The Simpsons) and voice actors Loren Lester and Kevin Conroy of Batman: The Animated Series, as well as PureFandom.com co-founders Liz Prugh and Lindi Smith.

As usual, this year’s event includes plenty of cosplay and programming. Programs include several panels discussing diversity in comics, film and television, including High Heels Optional, Gender and Racial Diversity in Comics, The Diversity Variable: Incorporation of Diversity Representation in Front and Behind the Industry and Hispanics in Comics.

“One of the best facets of Wizard World shows is that they are for everyone,” Milani says. “No matter which areas of pop culture someone likes, or whatever their background, it’s a place to celebrate fandom.

By scheduling panels like these, our programming team is further facilitating discussion among all groups and reinforcing our belief that Wizard World is a place for

members of the local Rocky Horror shadow cast, Clinton Street, for a special screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show at 7 p.m. In partnership with Fox Studios, film producer Lou Adler and the Rocky Horror Fan Club, this event includes a display of original props and

WIZARD WORLD HUNTINGTON CONVENTION CENTER OF CLEVELAND, 300 LAKESIDE AVE., 216-928-1600, WIZARDWORLD.COM

everyone to come together. We couldn’t be prouder to host them!”

The Wizard World Costume Contest takes place on Saturday from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on the main stage. Anyone may enter, and a panel of jurors will award prizes to individuals and groups. Following the costume contest on the main stage, join Barry Bostwick and

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

costumes from the movie. Tickets are limited. General admission to this special event is $15, $35 for Golden Circle tickets and $89 for VIP tickets.

Hours on Friday, March 17, are 5 to 10 p.m.; Saturday, March 18, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday, March 19, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Three-day passes are $75; Friday,

$35; Saturday, $45; Sunday, $40 (additional service fees apply). Fees for celebrity autographs and photos vary. Several VIP and meet-and-greet packages are available as well. For complete details, see Wizard World’s website.

Attending Friday? Phantasy Niteclub (11082 Detroit Ave., Lakewood) hosts the Official Wizard World After Party from 10 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. Tickets are $20 general admission or $10 at the door. Following the convention on Saturday night, Gene Simmons performs a special concert with his band at the Agora. For more information on Simmons and his concert, check out Jeff Niesel’s article in Scene’s Music section.

jusmani@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

STAGE UNDERGROUND MUSIC A challenging score highlights a subterranean drama in Floyd Collins at Blank Canvas Theatre

By Christine Howey Matthew Dolan are to be praised for attempting such a challenging task.

But how satisfying the end result is will depend on your acceptance of this style of quirky music.

After a first act full of rather depressing events, Act 2 begins with a rousing “Is That Remarkable?” This song, performed enthusiastically by three reporters (Robert Pierce, Brian O. Jackson and David L. Munnell) displays witty lyrics as the play satirizes the bloodthirsty types in the press corps that have been attracted to the looming tragedy-in-progress.

And it’s not just the reporters who are craven. As the screens above the stage

moments. However, Knobloch never takes enough chances to register powerfully as Homer, especially when an out-of-town filmmaker visits the scene and, unaccountably, sees Hollywood leading man star power in Floyd’s baby brother.

A number of smaller characters make a stronger impression. Jeff Glover mumbles amusingly as farm owner Bee Doyle, and Pat Miller stands out as “Skeets” Miller, a physically slight newspaper reporter who actually crawls into the cave and interviews Floyd in situ (the real Skeets won a Pulitzer for his efforts).

Amiee Collier and Rob Albrecht work

FLOYD COLLINS THROUGH MARCH 25 AT BLANK CANVAS THEATRE, AT THE WEST 78TH STREET STUDIOS, 440-941-0458, BLANKCANVASTHEATRE.COM

show, there are photos from the time showing tourists gawking and pop-up vendors selling trinkets and trash.

The second act features a couple more melodic tunes, including “Through the Mountain,” sung with quiet intensity by Madeline Krucek as Nellie. And a duet/fantasy sequence with Floyd and Homer (Michael Knobloch), “The Dream,” has effective

well together as Miss Jane and Lee Collins. And as the older neighbor Ed Bishop and young Jewell Estes, John J. Polk and Joseph Daso show how folks of all ages were involved in this event. However Daniel Bush as a blowhard contractor/volunteer overtorques his delivery.

In the title role, Snider exudes a plucky, indomitable spirit as he lays

prone and wedged under a center platform for most of the show. But we never connect fully with his character’s obsession with caves, which should become evocative as he croons into the underground voids and listens for the overlapping echoes.

Director and set designer Patrick Ciamacco once again manages to stage a large-cast production in the cozy confines of BCT, and it’s always clear which characters are above ground and which are somewhere under the turf. One just wishes that the sound levels were managed more deftly, so that Guettel’s defiantly uncompromising music could get the best hearing possible.

Without a firm sense of Floyd’s adoration of the cave world and all its mysteries, we aren’t able to fully appreciate his ironic predicament.

As “The Ballad of Floyd Collins” says, with admirable brevity: “He went looking for his fortune underground/Sure enough, his fortune is what he found.”

scene@clevescene.com t@christinehowey

Photo by Andy Dudik

IF YOU ENJOY PLAYS ABOUT a dream come true, here it is. Back in 1925, a 37-year-old Kentuckian named Floyd Collins decided to find a new entrance to the many caves that riddle the area where he was from. He wanted to create a tourist attraction and become famous. Well, that all happened. But not quite as he had envisioned it.

In Floyd Collins, a musical composed by the fiendishly innovative Adam Guettel, who also wrote the lyrics, we see how Floyd’s dream went tragically down the tubes, almost from the start. On an exploration down a small, barely perceptible hole in the ground, he eventually comes upon a large underground grotto. But on his way back out, his leg is trapped by a boulder and he’s stuck in the dark.

By the next day, his friends and family members have found him (apparently they’re quite accustomed to looking below ground for this cave enthusiast), and they think they’ll get him out in a jiffy. But after another subterranean rockslide, sealing off the tiny entranceway, Floyd’s fate is looking darker than the inside of a raccoon’s butthole.

As the story plays out in the book written by Tina Landau, we see Floyd’s brother Homer, his sister Nellie, and a flock of other local yokels who gather around the site feeling helpless. This tale labors to get going in the first act for several reasons. Floyd’s opening two solos, establishing his love for and bonding with the cave, are weakened due to an amplification system that seemed dialed up to 11. As a result, the words sung by a game Michael Snider came out loud and fuzzy — a result we will assume was not intended.

Before we go on, a note about the composer’s music. It is nothing like you would expect from, say, musical theater icon Richard Rodgers, who happens to be the grandfather of Guettel. By employing unexpected and sometimes atonal musical fillips and surprising rhythms, Guettel fashions songs with a bluegrass feel that often feel jarring and ragged. Trouble is, this is a contemporary musical technique that often veers away from the time and location of this event.

The cast of singers and the conductor

scene@clevescene.com t@christinehowey | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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MOVIES HERMIONE AND THAT GUY FROM DOWNTON ABBEY Live-action Beauty and the Beast is nostalgia fest

By Sam Allard UNCURLING FROM A POSITION of absolute fatigue on the subject of live-action remakes of animated classics, I approached the new Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson as Belle and Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens as the Beast, with perhaps more skepticism than befits an objective alt-weekly movie critic.

But look: I’ve suffered the indignities of Alice in Wonderland and its garish sequel. I sat through Maleficent. I watched Cinderella (and was charmed by it, at times) but nearly ate my hat in the absence of “Bippity Boppity Boo.” I’d rather not dwell on The Jungle Book, other than to say that a CGI-animated remake of a hand-drawn animated film seemed especially redundant. I’ll admit to being curious about the forthcoming Mulan. As we speak, Disney casting scouts are rumored to be excavating every last peasant hut from the slums of Shanghai to the mountains of Tibet in search of a lead. Not so much about The Lion King which, despite having cast Donald Glover as the voice of Simba, won’t be able to escape its essential uselessness.

It’s impossible for me to view these remakes as anything other than cash grabs by Disney™, a global brand that these days seems much less concerned with the magic of movies than it is with the magic of merchandising. I mean, what possible function could a live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast — the paragon of animated storytelling in modern American moviemaking! The first animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture! — serve?

That turns out to be complicated.

Unlike Maleficent, or even Snow White and the Huntsman, both of which weren’t exactly remakes —they gave top billing to characters that hadn’t been fully explored in their source material — and both of which were adapted from films made a very long time ago (1959 and 1938), Beauty and the Beast is more or less a carbon copy of the animated film made in 1991. And indeed, this borderline shotfor-shot faithfulness was supposed to be part of the appeal. (Take a look at the trailer.)

Disney was wise to intuit that they couldn’t take “Be Our Guest” out of Beauty and the Beast. They couldn’t cut “Bonjour.” They certainly couldn’t skip “Beauty and the Beast” itself. And they couldn’t dress Belle, as she descends the grand staircase in the Beast’s castle while a violin first articulates Alan Menken’s iconic melody, in anything other than a golden gown. There would be riots in the streets!

As such, the task set before this remake struck me as uniquely challenging: It must honor a relatively recent original by recreating it —

that is, by representing animated characters and sequences in live action as closely as possible — while also being distinct. Because otherwise, why bother?

Director Bill Condon (Dreamgirls, Breaking Dawn Parts 1 and 2), has modernized the original in ways that should be familiar to people who see a lot of community theater. In fact, the opening 15 minutes view like one of those [Name of Musical] Live! productions on Fox and NBC. The bucolic 18th-century French village is peopled by blacks and gays. The costumes are costumes, not real clothes. The town square looks an awful lot like a sound stage. This is no doubt intentional. We’re already in a fairytale world. There’s no need for the gritty naturalism and handheld camerawork that marked, for instance, Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables. Belle’s father Maurice (Kevin Kline) is here a fine artist, not a wacky inventor.

Both Belle and Beast are given richer backstories. Dan Stevens plays up the Beast’s stuffy, princely elements in his interpretation. LeFou (Josh Gad) is the movie’s most 3-D character. He

nurses affections for Gaston (a pitchperfect Luke Evans) in private. Ewan McGregor as Lumiere and Emma Thompson as Mrs. Potts equals the work of a savvy casting director.

But the savviest casting choice of all may have been Emma Watson as Belle. She is by no means a powerhouse vocalist. She is not even what you’d call a “really good actor.”

One of her finest moments is during “Be Our Guest,” sitting at the head of a table, chuckling sweetly at the dancing plates. No, she was perfect for external reasons, or maybe just one.

That is, she is Hermione Granger. And for viewers of a certain age (those who were very young when Beauty and the Beast came out), seeing a woman who portrayed the girl more central to our childhoods than literally any other girl in cinema now portray a character from an even earlier moment in our childhoods ought to be deeply, deeply stirring. It was for me. I loved watching her up there.

More generally, there’s something about a remake of a classic that is — I hate to acknowledge the success of Disney’s strategy — exciting. Before every musical number, you inch forward in your seat and wonder: How are they going to pull this off? We all revere the past, sometimes too much, and we can’t help preferring originals.

And for the record, this remake is nowhere near as good as the miracle from ’91: Its magic isn’t organic; it’s derived from the original. But it is nonetheless a fair and sometimes stunning homage.

sallard@clevescene.com t@scenesallard

SPOTLIGHT: MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, BLACK & CHROME EDITION SATURDAY AT MIDNIGHT, THE Capitol Theatre will screen the “Black & Chrome” edition of the 2015 high-octane romp Mad Max: Fury Road as part of the Melt Late Shift series.

Director George Miller has said that he prefers the black and white version, a shocker, given that one of the most notable visual aspects of a film noted for its visuals was

its over-saturation of color. A bleak and de-saturated post-apocalyptic landscape this was not. Max (Tom Hardy) and Furiosa (Charlize

Theron) and the five virgins motored through a desert wasteland that was roughly the color of orange pop. The sky was more teal than blue.

But the removal of this explosive palette reduces the film to its barer elements — man vs. hideous wilderness; woman vs. the patriarchy; gnarly post-apocalyptic truck vs. gnarly post-apocalyptic armada — and should be, unlike

some milquetoast “directors’ cuts” that feature one or two meaningless deleted scenes, a new and unique viewing experience.

The film won six Academy Awards in 2016 and was ranked by numerous publications, including this one, as among the year’s best films. The Capitol Theatre is at 1390 West 65th St. in the Gordon Square Arts District. — Sam Allard | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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Photo by Doug Trattner

SEEING GREEN Worker-owned Green City Growers in the Central neighborhood is on the path to profits while giving refugees and ex-cons gainful employment

By Douglas Trattner IT’S A BRISK LATE-WINTER morning in Cleveland, but inside the greenhouses of Green City Growers it feels more like Tampa. The temps are hovering around the 80-degree mark and the air is agreeably thick with humidity. But it’s the lushness that really wins a guy over, with kelly green vegetation as far as the eye can see.

At 3.25 acres, this site is one of the largest urban greenhouses in the country, and it happens to sit in the heart of the economically depressed Central neighborhood.

Inside the state-of-the-art hydroponic greenhouse, some 300,000 plants at various stages of growth float in shallow pools of nutrient-rich water. There are leafy heads of butter lettuce, colorful mixed-green blends, peppery upland cress and fragrant Italian basil.

Opened in 2012, Green City Growers has had a promising, albeit challenging, run. Part of the ambitious Evergreen Cooperatives, which includes Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Ohio Cooperative Solar, the greenhouse was the only one of the three employee-owned companies to not be profitable. That should change this year, says Jeremy Lisy, VP of sales.

“When I came here we had 15 people working and the greenhouse was 60-percent empty,” he explains.

“They didn’t know what to grow

and who to sell it to. Some of the products they were growing weren’t right for chefs.”

As a chef and former owner of the specialty produce company KJ Greens, Lisy reached out to his former colleagues to see what types of products they were interested in. He added different lettuces and blends and beefed up sales. This year, the company is expected to hit $3 million in sales, doubling what it was just two years prior. That is money that would have gone to lettuce growers in California and Arizona.

“Now we’re at 80-percent capacity and have 38 full-time employees, and sales are heading in the right direction. Hopefully, this is the year we break even. Once we get to that point, it’s a life-changing opportunity for a lot of people, because they are 90-percent owners of this.”

Green City Growers provides 38 people with living-wage jobs and a path to ownership. Working with programs like Refugee Response and Towards Employment, the greenhouse employs many people who might otherwise find it hard to secure gainful employment. On the current roster are people with nonviolent criminal records and immigrants from Bhutan, Africa, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

After one year of employment,

workers get to join the co-op, which includes benefits like credit management and car and mortgage assistance. When the company begins to turn a profit, that money goes to the worker-owners in the form of bonuses and savings for retirement.

Laurie “Spike” Cook did a dime in the state pen but she currently is the transplant supervisor at the greenhouse and she sits on the board of the co-op. After leaving prison she searched in vain for a job for a full year until she took a class with Towards Employment. A week later she had a full-time job.

“I haven’t missed a day of work in over a year,” says Cook, who arrives an hour and half before her shift begins every day. “This place gave me a second chance. It makes me want to do better, stay better and do the right thing. Without this job I might have messed up. This job, right here, is the reason I wake up every morning. I plan on staying here until I retire.”

Chef Matt Mytro had no idea that by purchasing Flour’s salad greens from Green City Growers he was helping to support exoffenders and refugees. He buys the products because of their quality and freshness.

“I never knew that, but it’s a really great talking point for our restaurant to know that they are part of something bigger than just

lettuce,” he says. “But to have fresh, local lettuce on our menu is great.

It’s consistent in size, color and taste year-round.”

“Green” is more than a product description at the greenhouse; it’s engineered into the operation. Three 70,000-gallon cisterns capture rain and snow from the roof, providing 80-percent of the greenhouse’s water needs. Also, growing indoors requires one gallon of water per head compared to 30 gallons per head when grown under the sunny Western skies.

For Lisy, the success of GCG can positively affect the lives of so many more people than just those under his charge.

“This is one of the toughest growing regions in the country,” he says. “If we can make it here, become profitable, we know that we can put this into place anywhere in the country and it’s going to be successful. Now you’re not just talking about 50 jobs, you’re talking about creating 5,000 to 10,000 employee-owners across the country.”

Find Green City Growers products at Marc’s, Acme, Buehler’s, Ohio City Provisions and the Tremont General Store.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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Menu Available at 49thstreettavern.com 4129 E. 49th Street | Cuyahoga HTS. 216-417-3102

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

Little Lakewood Pasta Co. is small but mighty

by Rachel Hunt ITâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S AMAZING HOW MUCH pleasure a small serving of lemon ricotta ravioli can bring. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the power of well-textured, al dente dough surrounding a sweet, soft ďŹ lling. Italians have harnessed that power for generations, but even without that heritage Megan Manning has found her calling. At Little Lakewood Pasta Company (15613 Detroit Ave., 216-889-7966, littlelakewoodpasta.com) she marries classic pastas with smart and savory ďŹ&#x201A;avors.

From Chocolate Penne to Sriracha Spaghetti, Manningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s special ďŹ&#x201A;avor selections come in bagged bundles ready to be submerged in boiling water. While the ďŹ&#x201A;avors donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sound traditional, everything about the process is done the authentic Italian way: hand cut with ďŹ ne brass dies and using locally sourced ingredients when possible. Both the fettuccine and spaghetti are veganfriendly and small-batch, using three cups of ďŹ&#x201A;our or less at a time.

Inspired by a recent trip to Italy, Manning feels her ďŹ v-year-old business is on the right path. â&#x20AC;&#x153;As a chef and a cook, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re always trying to strive to do better, so Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m really excited about where Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m at right now,â&#x20AC;? she says, adding that sheâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always experimenting with new ďŹ&#x201A;avors and shapes.

The storefront is true to its name: little but eye-catching, with a bright red accent wall and Manningâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s motto â&#x20AC;&#x201D; â&#x20AC;&#x153;Eat, live & love pastaâ&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x201D; proudly displayed behind the counter. She has rented the space since 2014, after winning the Startup Lakewood Ideation Challenge and securing a loan to start a commercial kitchen.

Located next door to Natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Oasis, she couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have chosen a more prime place for her specialty foods store. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was increasing my business from selling at one farmerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s market to ďŹ ve the following summer and making way too much production out of my home,â&#x20AC;? she explains. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I got

to the point that many food vendors do, where I needed to take my homebased business to the next level.â&#x20AC;?

Manning continues to participate in numerous seasonal markets, however, expanding her clientele and meeting more neighbors.

In an attempt to assist other small businesses with access to production at a low overhead cost, Manning decided to open up her licensed kitchen to other food entrepreneurs.

Several vendors now make themselves at home at the Little Lakewood Pasta Company, which doubles as the Lakewood Community Kitchen.

Pleather, a vegan jerky company, as well as Desperate Measures Baking, JRâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Smokehouse Rub, Trishâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s TrufďŹ&#x201A;es & Sweets, and Rutt Baking Co. all operate out of the space and sell retail out of the showroom. Double ovens, a commercial fridge, freezer, drying racks and plenty of prep area ďŹ ll up the expansive rear space while the basement houses the dry goods storage. The kitchen is impeccably clean for the amount of use it sees. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Not only have we doubled the amount of vendors in the last two years, but their businesses have been taking off,â&#x20AC;? says Manning. â&#x20AC;&#x153;With seven vendors, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to start needing more space and some big ticket items that we canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really afford to get on our own.â&#x20AC;?

No stranger to business pitches and sales, the owner/operator has entered the FedEx small business grant competition in hopes of expanding the community kitchen.

Top prize is $25,000. The top 100 entries, as voted on by internet users, will be announced April 13 and the grant winner on April 25. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We want to supply our vendors with everything they need to make their product to sell to the public,â&#x20AC;? she says.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

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GOOD TO MEAT YOU Saucisson butcher shop opens this Thursday in Slavic Village

By Douglas Trattner “WE’RE OPENING A BUTCHER shop!” Melissa Khoury and Penny Barend shout in unison. “We just passed our last inspection today.”

The long wait is almost over for Cleveland’s “Lady Butchers” as their long anticipated butcher shop, Saucisson, will open on Thursday, March 16.

Since 2013, the butchers’ artisanal cured meats, sausages and other products have been available at various fleas, farmers’ markets and pop-up events around town. Moving forward, the gals have a permanent home base at 5324 Fleet Ave. in Slavic Village, in the former home of Jaworski Meats, which relocated years ago to Middleburg Heights.

“We’re just excited to be open because we’ve been taking about it for so long,” says Khoury. “We’re here and we don’t have to keep telling people to find us at the farmers market.”

“And we also have this really badass facility to process animals in,” adds Barend.

To start, the shop will be open 11 a.m to 7 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays. They will add days as the demand increases.

Shoppers will find a rotating selection of products like fresh-cased sausage, pates and rilletts, nitrateand preservative-free deli meats like mortadella, and popular items like tasso, smoked chorizo, bacon, jerky, and chicharron. All are made with locally raised meat.

“We’re not going to change who we buy from or how,” says Khoury.

Saucisson will also offer a prepared

soup, sandwich or other meal of the day. A freezer will be stocked with soups and stocks, rendered lard, ground meats, soup bones and other items.

“There’s not a lot of places around us to grab lunch, so when we are open, the businesses that are around can come in,” adds Khoury.

Khoury and Barend signed the lease on the building 18 months ago, but construction snags prolonged the process.

“It’s a 110-year-old building,” says Barend. “You find some good charm when you get into these old buildings.”

Saucisson is opening at the right time, fresh on the heels of a $9-million streetscape project. They hope that this is the start of many great things to come for their new neighborhood of Slavic Village.

“We’re really excited to be part of this neighborhood, we’re excited to help with the regrowth of Fleet and looking forward to other small businesses moving in. Hopefully people will begin to see this area in a different light.”

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CHOW CHOW TO CLOSE SHOP IN LAKEWOOD, MERGE WITH PARKVIEW NITE CLUB It’s been a year and a half since Joseph Zegarac opened the popular Southern-styled shop Chow Chow Kitchen in Lakewood, and almost since the beginning the young chef was wondering where it all might lead. Expansion was the obvious choice, given the shop’s almost nonexistent dining room. But where?

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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EAT And with whom?

“After 6 months I started to look forward,” says the fried chickenobsessed operator. “I’ve met with people to discuss partnering up and I just get anxiety about more work just falling on me. I never got the idea that someone would have my back and work with me, until this situation came up.”

“This situation” is a new partnership with Mike Plonski of Parkview Nite Club.

“Our businesses are coming together,” says Zegarac. “Basically, we’re going to take pretty much everything that sells well and that we love doing on both sides and collage it together. I have very few doubts that it will work out. Our menus really aren’t very different to begin with. We’re doing comfort food. They focus primarily on barbecue. But it’s all comfort; it all revolves around a Southern concept.”

Chow Chow at the Parkview is how it’s going to be billed when it comes to life on April 27. The move is a homecoming of sorts for Zegarac, who spent plenty of time cooking in Parkview’s kitchen.

“It’s such a great atmosphere,” he says of the classic Cleveland watering hole. “I’ve never been in a place that did that high of volume that has that great a staff.”

After the transition, Parkview diners will get to enjoy Chow Chow staples on the reg, like Winner Dinner fried chicken and Nashville-style hot chicken, that crimson-crusted and devilishly spicy variation on a theme.

“I want to add some lighter options like a Green Goddess-dressed salad topped with fried chicken,” he adds.

“Plus chicken and waffles with syrup and mac and cheese.” The sad bit, of course, is that Chow Chow will be closing its doors in Lakewood come the first week of April.

“I hate to leave this neighborhood, especially with all that’s been happening lately,” he says. “It’s kind of bittersweet because this is my own thing, it’s been successful and I feel blessed. But to have the opportunity to be more of an executive chef than an operator, to be completely hands-on again in the kitchen, is wonderful. It’s what I love doing.”

WOK N ROLL TO TAKE OVER FOOD OPS AT SIDE QUEST Since Side Quest opened in Lakewood two and a half years ago, it has absolutely crushed it when it comes to providing a fun space for

nerds, geeks and the people who love them to gather to drink, play board games and socialize. It has struggled however, to provide a consistent food experience for its guests. In the beginning, owners Sam Bridgeman and Kelly Rae Griffith did operate a kitchen, but that service has long been replaced by take-out menus and UberEats apps.

That will change starting Thursday, March 30, when Tricia McCune and Matt Bolam take over the food operations. The pair have been running the popular food truck Wok n Roll since 2014, but they will be firmly planted in the Side Quest kitchen Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m.

“They’ve been trying to woo us over to come into that kitchen, and we’re finally taking the bait,” says McCune. “We have this solid customer base who wants our food when they want it and they want to be able to find us easily, so this kind of solves that problem for us and also helps Side Quest now have a kitchen again.”

Fans of Wok n Roll likely know about the Korean Poutine, crispy tater tots topped with cheese, caramelized pork, spicy Korean gochujang and kimchi slaw. The menu at Side Quest will take that poutine concept and expand it into a build-your-own poutine menu, all with a “weird Asian” twist.

The Side Quest/Wok n Roll partnership is a perfect match, says Griffith.

“Tricia and Matt are both pretty nerdy people and they’ve done some events with us in the past and we’ve always had a really good response.

We have a lot of the same crowds.”

Griffith says that folks who visit Side Quest on weekdays won’t be left holding the take-out menu for long.

Starting April 3, they have a new kitchen guy who will be dishing up bar food on the nights that the Wok n Roll crew is elsewhere. Sunday brunch will be added in the coming weeks as well.

“We’re excited about both of them, and super-excited to have food back seven days a week,” says Griffith.

Wok n Roll will be doing a pop-up run at Side Quest the weekend of St. Patrick’s Day, this Thursday through Saturday, when they’ll be dishing up some Irish-Asian fusion like kimchi and corned beef sandwiches and colcannon with Chinese sausage.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

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MUSIC

“I don’t want to be boxed in.

That’s my biggest fear because there’s so much to me as a person and me as an artist.”

HIS NAME IS ...

Cleveland native Earl St. Clair reintroduces himself with his new EP

By Lawrence Neil IT’S THE RELEASE DATE OF his debut EP, My Name Is Earl, and Cleveland native Earl St. Clair (né Earl Johnson II) is in Los Angeles, waiting backstage to perform on James Corden’s Late Late Show.

We remind him of an interview he did in 2012, wherein he predicts that five years from then — in 2017 — he’d be living in Germany, herding sheep, making beats in a barn.

Earl laughs — a long, warm, deep-bellied cackle — and regroups: “Well, let’s update that.”

In 2012, Johnson thrived as a producer, creating within an art form he stumbled upon in his late teens. He got hooked on beat-making software FruityLoops at an Alabama family barbecue shortly before

beginning college in the mid-2000s.

After a semester spent focused on crafting songs rather than essays, he left school, moved back up to Cleveland and began producing in a studio with a small loan from his grandfather.

Johnson rapidly ascended as a producer and put his fingerprints all over recent Cleveland hip-hop lore. Under the name JP Did This 1, he worked extensively with local heavyweights Al Fatz, Royalty Camp, Ray Cash and Ray Jr. He produced Chip Tha Ripper’s 2007 anthem, “I’m Fitted,” and was integral to the rise of Machine Gun Kelly, crafting one of his first hits, “Breaking News,” along with “Hold On (Shut Up),” a single featuring Jeezy off Kelly’s debut album.

Throughout this time, however, Johnson remained behind the scenes and didn’t explore his potential as a vocalist until a serendipitous episode in 2014. He produced two reference tracks (songwriter demos) to send out to other artists and drunkenly decided to record himself for the vocals. Upon arriving at the studio the next morning, he was met by bewildered colleagues. “‘Man, that song you did last night was amazing,’” he describes them as saying. “‘I haven’t heard anything like that.’”

But he remained skeptical and unconvinced by his own talent.

“I didn’t know it was my singing voice. I thought I was just creating another character. All my friends in California were like, ‘Yo, you need to

be an artist!’ I was like, ‘No, I’ll keep doing this, I’m cool.’”

Johnson’s mother passed away shortly thereafter, and he traveled back to Cleveland to spend time with family, continuing to produce out of the Bulkley House Creative Space on Prospect Avenue. “[My managers and other producers] were trying to get me to come back out to California. I said, ‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll be there soon.’

I wasn’t really caring [about being a vocalist]; I was thinking about getting these beats ready, so I could come back prepared.”

In early February 2015, something changed. “I got an email from my manager and he said, ‘This guy wants to meet you, he wants to sign you, he loves you as an artist.’ | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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MUSIC I said, ‘Fuck it; I’m leaving.’ New actions get you new results.”

He flew back to Los Angeles and signed to Circa 13, an imprint of iconic hip-hop label Def Jam, joining a rarefied roster that includes Nas, Kanye West, Big Sean and Pusha T. With label support, Earl seems to have found balance and momentum.

His stand-alone singles, “Man On Fire” and “Good Time,” have hit their marks, along with this EP’s lead single “Feeling Alive.” He speaks with an even-temperedness and exudes a low center of gravity that feels stable, forward-thinking, progressing. He’s come a long way.

Johnson grew up in Cleveland on 58th and Superior and 129th and St. Clair, but spent his summers in his father’s home state of Alabama.

The amalgam of musical influences during his upbringing informs his rich, diverse sound. His father listened to blues and soul, and his mother favored gospel and R&B, providing an osmotic education which he supplemented with early 2000s hip-hop: Southern rap innovators like Houston screw and New Orleans’ Cash Money Records intermingled with Nas, Jay-Z and Kanye West, the genre’s kingpins.

This triangulation rings true to his catalog, one that reaches back to soul and roots rock, built upon his hip-hop sensibilities and deftness. He burrows into this nook, then uses his utterly unique vocal instrument to explore it in different ways.

And his voice is truly an instrument. Its gravelly, rumbling texture, growling range and almost percussive elements evoke Ray Charles, Alabama Shakes’ frontwoman Brittany Howard, Cee-Lo Green and Andre 3000.

He can keep it subdued over simmering bass riffs or stretch it out to Prince-esque shrieks on top of crescendoing brass and church organs. St. Clair has been blessed with vocal chops that don’t confine him and a producer’s mentality that allows him to venture along different avenues.

“I don’t want to be boxed in,” he says. “That’s my biggest fear because there’s so much to me as a person and me as an artist, and I want to be able to showcase everything that I love to do and everything that I’m capable of doing.

I have three albums currently, and they all have completely different sounds.”

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| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

Stepping away from using genres and labels, Johnson describes his creative output through moods and visuals.

“Everything is energy, and energy is everything,” he says. “I believe everything has a heat and color signature. I’d describe [my music] with a painting, a picture; it would be a picture of a guy standing on cliffs full of grass and flowers, with a big apple tree on it, and he has a frown on his face, but he has his eyebrows up, like he’s laughing, with a tear coming out of his right eye, holding a balloon to a blue sky.”

His releases to this point demonstrate that diversity: His work with labelmate Bibi Bourelly is torrid and gritty, as evidenced in their duet on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Johnson has showcased his songwriting ability for high-energy pop and electronic music in collaborations with stadium acts Avicii and David Guetta. This recent EP leans into Earth, Wind, and Fire samples and James Brown riffs, 12/8 time signature robust tracks (think Etta James’ “At Last” or Rihanna’s recent “Love on the Brain”) that harken back to rock, funk and soul DNA. The EP’s sonic landscape ranges from vast, melancholic canvases abutting thunderous, cinematic strings (“Pain”) to groovy, driving rhythms with a Big Band, feel-good pop energy (single “Feeling Alive”).

“I wanted to show people the different genres that I flirt with; hence, My Name Is Earl. This is me.

This is what I do. I wanted people to see the different sides of me.”

His wishlist of collaborators reflects this out-of-the-box, uncompromising approach. Among them are Kanye, Pharrell and Andre 3000, all of whom have also successfully traversed the border between vocal recording and production work. He also lists the iconic Randy Newman, and praises the forward-thinking singersongwriter Lizzo.

Earl St. Clair’s future is uncertain, yet bright. He hasn’t been back to the city that raised him since he left and was signed, but his debut album, Songs About a Girl I Used to Know, will drop later this year, and a tour is in the works.

“Cleveland’s gonna be my first stop,” Earl says with a sense of anticipation. “It has to be: That’s my home.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

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Photo by Maclay Heriot

MUSIC

LIVING ON THE EDGE Indie rockers Strand of Oaks explore new ways to experiment

By Johnny Cook IN 2014, STRAND OF OAKS released Heal, a critically acclaimed breakthrough album which brought the band a wider audience.

Timothy Showalter, the band’s leading writer and musician, used to write folk-oriented songs, but on Heal, he changed the band into a more rockdriven unit.

The album uses Showalter’s life as a backdrop to supply much of the album’s emotional catharsis.

Over the past few years, his band Strand of Oaks went from playing small bars and house shows in Showalter’s hometown to huge outdoor festivals, including Bonnaroo. The group performs at 8:30 p.m. on Friday, March 17, at the Beachland Tavern in a concert that doubles as a Planned Parenthood fundraiser. “[Bonnaroo] was my first and only ever crowd surf moment,” he recounts via phone from his home in Philadelphia. “If I had to retire after that Bonnaroo show, I would be totally fine with that. I climbed the mountain; I got to crowd surf. I was worried I exceeded the weight limit, though; I think I heard a lot of groans in the crowd.”

Even though the album was a breakthrough, Showalter doesn’t want to rehash the same aesthetic. The band is now fresh off the release of its new album Hard Love, which maintains the anthemic guitar rock of Heal but doesn’t rely as much on Showalter’s personal narratives to supply the lyrical content.

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Part of not wanting to go back to Heal’s songwriting style is Showalter’s exhaustion with being “in character” while he’s playing shows. “I think the one feeling that I get from Hard Love that I get really excited about is that I can step away a little bit and add more space and add more of a musicianship instead of a personality,” he says.

“Before, I felt like I always had to be singing, always had to be telling you about something. On Hard Love, I think just being around people, having a good time and living on the edge really brought out a more extroverted music style.”

That extroverted music style is reflected on new tracks like single “Radio Kids,” which features a big, sweeping guitar riff, or title track “Hard Love,” which starts off like an electronic dream. Though guitar and vocals largely drive the record, it possesses a broader songwriting

and that beat just stuck in my head. It was so natural when I got home that all my music decisions changed. I saw all these psych bands and rave bands, and when I came home, I was like, there’s a whole other beat and logic that’s in my brain right now.”

One of the other influences on Hard Love is drug use, but not in a way that feels overbearing or preachy.

“It’s more of the feel that drugs bring you,” he says. “It’s not really that drugs play in the subject matter of the record. I’m very of the mindset that you can do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anybody or yourself. I don’t necessarily want to promote [drugs] or not promote them.

On a song like ‘On the Hill,’ it’s just the feeling you get. You do escape, but you have this hyper-sense and connect to the world a little more, but then you get into ‘Cry,’ and it’s like what happens after that feeling’s gone. If

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experimentation that wasn’t present on Heal. Showalter explains that many of the bands he got to see up close while he was on tour influenced his sense of experimentation.

“When I got home, the experiences from the tour were living in my head so strongly. I saw [’80s electronic group] Underworld play in Primavera,

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

you choose to take that ride, there are very high highs and very low lows that come as a result.”

He also wants the record to give listeners the sense that they’re standing right next to the band.

“I wanted some of these songs to feel like someone just had a recorder up in a field while we were playing

live, and that’s what it sounded like,” he explains. “I wanted the record to already feel like a live experience.”

Some listeners might call Hard Love a psych-rock album because of the album’s themes, but Showalter is a bit worried about being mislabeled.

“I purposely tried to stay away from the word ‘psychedelic’, cause now I hear someone say, ‘Oh, my band is really psych,’ and I’m like, really?

Because it sounds like Maroon 5,” he says, laughing. “It’s like the word ‘indie music’ or whatever that means — it’s become this catchall phrase.

Psychedelic to me though is kind of what’s beyond what you can see or what you can sense, and then there’s one more thing that lives beyond that.”

The album’s dedication to being open to new experiences and living in the present has been part of Showalter’s life for a long time. When asked about the song variation on Hard Love, Showalter explains that having open and diverse musical tastes is very important to him.

“I think it’s just always been there; if we were to hang out, and you were to take a long van ride with me, what I choose to DJ in the ride would be so diverse. The music that I like to listen to and that moves me just kind of naturally just goes into the songs I write. For me, every day, it becomes more eclectic.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

| clevescene.com m | March 15 - 21, 2017

45

MUSIC

Photo by David Bergman

SIGN OF THE TIMES A for-sale sign inspired the theme of the latest Bon Jovi album

By Jeff Niesel IN THE PAST 30 YEARS, ARENA rock acts have come and gone. One staple throughout that period has been the New Jersey-based rock act Bon Jovi.

Shortly after forming in 1983, the band found itself on major tours with the Scorpions and KISS. When its third studio release, 1986’s Slippery When Wet, topped the charts thanks to the success of commercial radio hits such as “You Give Love a Bad Name” and “Livin’ on a Prayer,” the band became arena rock favorites.

It hasn’t looked back.

Despite a recent lineup change that saw the departure of guitarist and songwriter Richie Sambora, who played with the band since the early days, the band remains a huge draw.

So what’s the key? How has it been able to sustain its popularity when other acts from the ’80s have either split up or seen diminishing returns?

“I think for us, really, we say we’re a current classic,” says multiinstrumentalist David Bryan in a conference call with drummer Tico Torres. “We strive to have new records.

We strive to have new songs on the radio. I mean, we’ve [released our] 14th record [This House is Not for Sale].

And that feels really good that we can gain those new fans and [that] our fans have been there with us for some of the ride, all of the ride, to keep on the ride.”

Bryan describes recording and touring without Sambora, who simply

46

didn’t show up for a gig on the band’s 2013 tour and then reportedly told the band’s manager that he didn’t intend to join the guys on the rest of the tour.

“But there’s new life, and I think when you have new people, you have new energy,” he says. “And, of course, the creative process, the way we’ve worked together, is working with each other in the room. And the song dictates. And if everybody’s on the same page, it makes beautiful music.

You know, of course, we had some wonderful years with Richie, but if he wants to move on in his direction, it’s one of those things that you can’t avoid, and we carry on because the premise of this record is the roots and the fact that we’re still together and strong and love playing music together.”

In the wake of Sambura’s departure, Bryan says the band took an oldfashioned approach on This House

was built on trust,” he sneers on the album’s title track, which features calland-response vocals and a beefy guitar riff ready built for arenas and outdoor amphitheaters. “[The songs suggest that] we don’t want this to end,” says Torres. “It’s not going to give it away. And it’s really about integrity. And then it started, like [Bon Jovi] said, it started with ‘This heart, this soul.’ And then at the end, [there’s] this house, which is inviting everybody in. So I think it’s like a journey of the themes, where we’re at is in that record.”

Both Bryan and Torres maintain the album captures a certain moment in time.

“It’s about whatever you’re feeling at the time,” he says. “And it’s a snapshot of where you are at that time; when you’re 21 years old, you’re not going to write like you’re 50 years old. So it’s life experience. It’s your age. It’s all those combinations of where you’re at, just a snapshot. And this one is where we’re at — a different world. It’s the first record, really, without Richie, and we were really built up on our integrity of what we wanted to do. And it’s our choice to stay here. We went into the studio and said, ‘Let’s bang

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is Not for Sale. They recorded at the Avatar, which used to be the Power Station, where they recorded their self-titled debut. As the songwriting process began, Bon Jovi saw a picture that became the album cover and realized the sign, “This house is not for sale,” represented resilience and pride on a larger level. “This house

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

this thing out as musicians looking at each other,’ all of us in the one room together, which we were. And then taking songs and really building these songs and breaking them down and trying them different ways and really making it cohesive, from the band, from us guys, in there making this record. So, yeah, that’s why it feels like

it has that different kind of energy.”

Even if they’re a bit by-the-numbers, This House is Not for Sale tunes such as “Knockout” and “Born Again Tomorrow” possess that larger-thanlife sense of defiance that typifies the band’s back catalog. Bryan says the band tries to slightly alter the set list each night to include new songs, hits and deep tracks.

“I mean, there’s certain staples that people expect and probably deserve,” says Bryan. “I mean, I remember when I was very young and watching three of my favorite bands in one night, I’d want a hit. I want to hear the songs that brought them to that pinnacle of success. And we try to keep those in there. We change our sets just about every night. And we have a big roster to pick from, so depending on the shows, we get to play with them and bring them in and out, which also makes it fresh for us. You know, we try to do as long a show as possible to fit them all in.”

Torres says the band ultimately strives to make music that matters rather than rest on its laurels.

“We’re still going forward, if that makes sense,” he says. “If you look at the past, we’re blessed. If we talk about before Slippery and how we had to tour the whole world just learning. The third record that was so big. It was just the right time. And then, you know, after that, it’s usually, you’re going to try and beat your last record, and it’s a big circle. And I think what we learned through time is in this day and age, just to do what we feel and live more in the present, and it just really helps us to create with a little more freedom.”

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

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47

MUSIC FREAK AND GEEK Kiss’ Gene Simmons to appear at Wizard World and play a rare solo show

By Jeff Niesel KISS SINGER-BASSIST GENE Simmons still bristles when we bring up his infamous interview with NPR host Terry Gross.

In their decidedly awkward exchange that aired more than 10 years ago on the program Fresh Air, Simmons objected to her questions and dismissed her as someone who was “studious and reserved” while she maintained that he has simply adopted an “obnoxious” persona for the sake of the interview.

“I’m well-read myself and was a sixth-grade teacher, and I can bore you to death by reciting existential philosophers like Kierkegaard, Kant and Nietzsche; but when smart folks use it as a battering ram and a holier-than-thou thing, the hairs of my back bristle,” he says of Gross during a recent phone interview from Vancouver, where he had been the keynote speaker at the YPO Conference.

“I don’t go for that stuff,” he continues. “I would not stand for it.

This woman at NPR started with, ‘Tell me about the Kiss.’ I said, ‘Tell me about the NPR, which sounds like a communicable disease I hope I don’t catch.’ I thought, ‘Who the fuck are you?’ If she wants to quote psalm and verse about history, theology and anthropology and so on, I’ll go toe to toe. The best thing when you meet anyone is to cut out the selfimportance thing. Treat everybody as you would like to be treated.

Jews figured out that a long time ago with something called the Ten Commandments, which we gave to the rest of you guys.”

Simmons appears at the comic book convention Wizard World on Saturday, March 18, and Sunday, March 19, at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland. He also performs a rare solo show at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 18, at the Agora Theatre.

48

His rock ’n’ roll legacy dates back decades. Shortly after Kiss formed in 1973, Simmons turned the hard rock band into a merchandising juggernaut that now includes an empire of cruises, golf courses and limousines. Simmons says the various Kiss-related merch will “make your head spin.”

Early on, he says the group had to disprove naysayers who dismissed the costumeand-makeup wearing band as a gimmick.

“You have to ignore your critics,” he says. “They were hired without any degrees just to give their opinions. That’s fine. That’s all well and good as long as you say, ‘My opinion is that Led Zeppelin sucks.’ It’s okay as long as you give observational facts. Critic says, ‘Led Zeppelin sucks, but 50,000 people are going nuts, and they’ve sold 100 million albums, so I guess I’m the guy in the corner, and they need to send the w-ambulance.’ That would be fair, but that’s not the case. The pen is very mighty, and critics believe they’re more important than they are.

If you really look at the criticism that Star Wars and all the biggest forms of

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

entertainment got, you’d be shocked.

Rolling Stone called Led Zeppelin’s first album ‘limp blimp.’ And they called R.E.M ‘America’s finest band.’

I give up. Here we are 43 years later and our merchandising outsells the Beatles and Elvis combined.”

The band just performed at the Superdome in New Orleans and starts a European tour on May 1. Simmons says he found Wizard World appealing because he has loved comics since his youth.

“I’m a comic book geek,” he says. “I was when I was a kid, and I am more so now. When I was a kid, people said you were stupid for reading that stuff. Now, it is the predominant pop culture format on earth. Logan just opened and it’s the biggest thing since sliced bread.

Every Marvel movie that opens shakes the heavens. It’s a personal thrill for me because that’s the stuff I loved as a kid. I loved the Beatles and the Stones and comic books and that stuff is still popular. I was right, and the chicks were wrong. All our stupid boy stuff is the stuff that rules the planet. It is fair to say the ‘boy stuff,’ because I’ve never gone to see

I loved the Beatles and the Stones, and comic books and that stuff is still popular.

a Barbie movie, and I don’t care. If Avatar comes out, everybody goes.

And when the Super Bowl comes on, everybody watches.”

Simmons says he takes an “open book” approach to the meet-andgreets with fans.

“That makes me some people’s most favorite person and some people’s most hated person,” he says.

“Politicians until our President Trump would tell you whatever you wanted to hear just to make themselves popular, so you never got to know them. I personally don’t care. To thine own self be true.

You can’t please everybody and not everyone likes Jesus anyway, even though he’s a Jewish rabbi. That’s not my problem; that’s theirs. We hold these small intimate parties open to a couple thousand people, and the Wizard World guys promised that tickets would be only 20 or 30 bucks.

It’s cheaper to rock out with me than have lunch with your friends.”

For the show at the Agora, Simmons has hired a few session players to back him for a set that will feature songs from his solo albums, “obscure stuff” and Kiss favorites.

“I’ve never done solo tours or anything like that because Kiss satisfied me in all ways,” he says.

“Every once in a while, I would jump up on stage with someone like Johnny Depp. I want to do something special for the fans. We just want to rock out and have a good time. I’ll play songs I’ve never played before.”

Simmons says the thought of retirement hasn’t crossed his mind.

“I won’t have a say in that,” he says. “Mother Nature will have a say in that and try to stick me 6 feet underground. I’ll be kicking and screaming. I really enjoy life.

Vacations don’t appeal to me. I don’t have 10 cars. We have a nice big house, don’t get me wrong. When you think about it, the richest and poorest guys do the same things.

When you go to sleep and have your eyes closed, you have no idea whether you live in a palace or a onebedroom. Ultimately, the best thing in life is to have peace of mind and be comfortable in your own skin.”

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

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49

LIVEWIRE WED

03/15

The Infamous Stringdusters/The Way Down Wayfarers: One of the more exciting bands in the bluegrass scene today, the Infamous Stringdusters just keep expanding on their sound with each album.

They’ve become prolific by this point. The band’s latest, Laws of Gravity, not only features really cool artwork but also offers listeners a pretty diverse lineup of fresh, well written songs. You’ve got the rapidpace stuff like opener “Freedom” and the more relaxed, Americanadriven “A Hard Life Makes a Good Song,” with balladesque tunes betwixt. What’s more: The band blows these tunes up onstage with nimble improvisation. “Bluegrass and sorta jam-oriented music do go really well together, but they didn’t at the very start,” Chris Pandolfi told us last year in an interview.

“At the very start, things were very regimented. Guys were creating these new techniques to create new music on instruments that, you know, weren’t so genre-specific. It was all about songs. Now, many years later, all of these musical influences come together.” (Eric Sandy) 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $22 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Lil’ Debbie/Potluck/Demrick/Hough Crowd: 8:30 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. Grog Shop.

10 X 3 Singer Songwriter Showcase: Hosted by Brent Kirby (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Body Pressure/Yambag/Diva Cup/ Trophy Knife: 9 p.m., $5. Now That’s Class.

Vicki Chew/Anita Keys & Friends: 8 p.m., $5. Beachland Tavern.

THU

03/16

Candlebox Acoustic: 7:30 p.m., $30 ADV, $35 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

Greg Bandy and Friends: 8 p.m., $20.

Bop Stop.

Chris Hatton’s Musical Circus (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Jam Night with the Bad Boys of Blues: 9 p.m., free. Brothers Lounge.

The Leyla McCalla Trio/The Whiskey Hollow/In2ative/ Demarco Sleeper: 9 p.m., $10 ADV, $16 DOS. Grog Shop.

Sarah Potenza/Joshua Davis: 8 p.m.,

50

all the live music you should see this week Robert Randolph & the Family Band return to the Beachland Ballroom.

See: Thursday.

Supper Club.

Bill March (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m.

Brothers Lounge.

Paper Morning/Mammal Dap/The Rainbow Emergency: 9 p.m., $5.

The Euclid Tavern.

Pompous Ass/Irish Cottage Boys/ Harp City: 12 p.m. Vosh Club.

Secret Sound Society St. Patty’s Day Event Featuring Music By KNYCE/Corey Grand/JAMSdavis/ Eso/Jovzilla: 9 p.m., $15 ADV, $20 DOS. Grog Shop.

Moss Stanley: 10:30 p.m., free.

Nighttown.

Strand of Oaks/Twin Lab: 8:30 p.m., $14 ADV, $16 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Tiger Sex/Kill the Hippies/The Pizza Creeps/Parrot Heads (in the Locker Room): 9 p.m., $5. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

The Walking Plaid: 8 p.m., $16. The Kent Stage.

SAT $13 ADV, $15 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

John Prine Night (in the Supper Club): 7:30 p.m., $16. Music Box Supper Club.

Robert Randolph & the Family Band/The New Respects: Pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph has been an exciting force for years, and he certainly hasn’t slowed down.

His latest album with the Family Band, Got Soul, offers up more of that danceable blues and soul, with Randolph’s laser-sharp lead work driving each song. Check out “She Got Soul” and “I Want It” for examples of how well the vocals and rhythms work in syncopated glory.

He and his fellow musicians are nothing short of masters, and their shows end up turning into full-on gospel dance parties; it’s not for nothing that Randolph’s instrument is known in some circles as “sacred steel.” (Sandy) 8 p.m., $25 ADV, $28 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Uli Jon Roth: 7 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

FRI

03/17

Allah-Las/The Babe Rainbow: Allah-Las combine garage, psych and surf rock, drawn from classic pop and rock influences like the Zombies, the Doors and the ShangriLas, to create a weird mix that feels simultaneously contemporary

| clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

and rooted in the past. Even if you haven’t listened to any of the band’s influences, the use of ’60s standards like arpeggiated guitars, simple major chord progressions and lyrics about sun and sand immediately place Allah-Las into familiar sonic territory. Last year, the band released its latest album, Calico Review, a record that begins to pull from more modern influences and strips away some of the reverb and echo that populated the band’s first two albums. On the single, “Could Be You,” some complex guitar work emerges, making it seem like the band is coming out of a drug-addled haze instead of falling down into one. Trippy psych rockers the Babe Rainbow will open. (Johnny Cook) 8:30 p.m., $15. Beachland Ballroom.

13th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Party: 8:30 a.m., free. House of Blues.

Archie Green/Uptowne Buddha: 8 p.m., $8. Bop Stop.

Eskimo Sisters/Floorvveeds/New Neighbors: 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog. Heaven is In You 014 with Red Tailed Hawk Luna/Adam Miller/ ADAB: 9 p.m., $7. Now That’s Class.

The High Kings/Trihearn Duo: 8 p.m., $40 ADV, $45 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

Katatonia/Caspian/Uncured: 7 p.m., $22 ADV, $25 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

Live Jukebox Night with the Sunrise Jones (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m., $10. Music Box

03/18

Moose Blood/Trophy Eyes/Boston Manor/A Will Away: 7 p.m., $16 ADV, $19 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Glen Phillips/Amber Rubarth: As the frontman for the on-again/off-again Toad the Wet Sprocket, low-key singer-songwriter Glen Phillips benefited from the alt-rock explosion of the ’90s that turned Toad into a household name. His solo career hasn’t fared as well (perhaps that’s why Toad reunites every couple of years), but that hasn’t kept Phillips from trying. Last year’s Swallowed by the New features elegant arrangements and mellow vocals as Phillips explores his folkier side.

Expect him to stick to solo material and the occasional Toad number at this show. (Jeff Niesel) 8 p.m., $22 ADV, $25 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

The Smithereens/The Motels: Way back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, the Smithereens broke big out of their native New Jersey. Songs such as “Only a Memory,” “Blood and Roses” and “A Girl Like You” effectively channel ’60s pop; their catchy choruses and sharp hooks helped the songs cross over from college to commercial radio. The band’s track record in the ’00s has been spotty at best. At one point, singer-guitarist Pat DiNizio held down a gig on the Vegas Strip where he performed “Confessions of a Rock Star,” a show that

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Morgan James w/Andy Allo

Richard Thompson w/Joan Shelley

The Walking Plaid

Thu. Mar.. 23

Sun., Mar. 26

Sat., Apr. 8

Tue., Apr. 11

Wed., Apr. 12

ALL SHOWS AT THE KENT STAGE UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED Tickets available at www.kentstage.org or 877-987-6487 GMK [wÂ&#x2030;Â&#x160; cw Â&#x201E; iÂ&#x160;Â&#x2C6;{{Â&#x160; Š a{Â&#x201E;Â&#x160;B e~ Â&#x2026; JJHJF | clevescene.com | March 15 - 21, 2017

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3/22 | 7PM TRUE NORTH BIG BAND: THELONIOUS MONK

3/23 | 8PM NEOSONIC FEST: PATCHWORK + STEPHEN HALUSKA

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3/25 | 8PM NORTHCOAST JAZZ COLLECTIVE

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3/24 | 8PM DEBBIE GIFFORD $15

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52

$

OUTLAB

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LIVEWIRE featured songs and stories from throughout his life. The band doesn’t have a new album to push, but it’ll undoubtedly draw fans who remember it from the days when MTV actually helped break new bands. (Niesel) 8 p.m., $37.50$47.50. The Kent Stage.

Blockhead/p. stoops/Solomonphonic: 9 p.m., $12 ADV, $15 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Born of Osiris/Volumes/Oceans Ate Alaska/Within the Ruins/Fire From the Gods: 6 p.m., $18 ADV, $20 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

Cleveland Opera Theater: Harp And Heels: 8 p.m., $10. Bop Stop.

An Evening with Gene Simmons and Band: 8 p.m., $29.95-$299.

The Agora Theatre.

The Great Iscape Tour: Toobie Fresco/Walker OG/Simon Sed/ Blaise B./Mic Excel/Network/Sam Rothstein (in the Locker Room): 8 p.m., $5. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

Heavenly Creatures/Cheap Clone/ Public Squares: 9 p.m., $5. Happy Dog. Honeybucket (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Music Box Supper Club.

Midlife Chryslers: 9:30 p.m., $10.

Brothers Lounge.

Pauo Costa Trioo/A Forro Night: 9 p.m., $10. The Euclid Tavern.

Queen of Hell/Glass Traps/Dana/ Pig Flayer: 9 p.m., $8. Grog Shop.

Socrates and the Philosophers: 9 p.m., $7. Musica.

Songwriters Round in the Tavern: 3 p.m., free. Beachland Tavern.

Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes: 7 p.m., $30-$50. House of Blues.

Jackie Warren: 10:30 p.m., free.

Nighttown.

Wes and Joey (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

SUN

03/19

Allen, Mack, Myers and Moore Featuring Zach Myers of Shinedown: 7 p.m., $15. House of Blues.

Apollo’s Fire: 7 p.m., $27-$56. Music Box Supper Club.

Bon Jovi: 7:30 p.m., $19.75-$500.

Quicken Loans Arena.

Maria Chavez: 8 p.m. The Euclid Tavern.

The Choir: 7 p.m., $20-$50. Musica.

Howl/Two Hand Fools/Vacula: 9 p.m., $5. Now That’s Class.

Tim Joyce Trio CD Release Party: 8 p.m., $5. Beachland Tavern.

Magic City Hippies/Heavyheds/ Jul Big Green: 8:30 p.m., $7. Grog Shop.

Mike Petrone (in the Wine Bar): 5:30 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

Noam Pikelny: 8 p.m., $25. The Kent Stage.

Reclamation Band: 8 p.m., $12. Bop Stop.

School of Rock/The Staff Infection: 3 p.m., free. Beachland Ballroom.

MON

03/20

Skatch Anderssen Orchestra: 8 p.m., $7. Brothers Lounge.

Cold Sweats/Too Far/Deche: 9 p.m., $5. Now That’s Class.

John Corabi/M. Moody: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Velvet Voyage (in the Wine Bar): 8 p.m. Brothers Lounge.

TUE

03/21

Galactic/the Hip Abduction: The long-running New Orleans jamfunk band seems always to stop

by Cleveland near Mardi Gras — or does it just seem that way?

However the history goes, Galactic always delivers a hell of a dance party at Beachland, and we’d wager that tonight will be among the very best. The band’s canon goes back more than 20 years, but we’d recommend cuing up Into the Deep, which will surely prompt some guest singers tonight, and Carnivale Electricos. (A few years ago, singer Maggie Koerner joined the band for “Hey Na Na” and a few other tunes. It was a thrill.) They’re one of the most reliably exciting bands on the touring circuit — New Orleans does that sort of thing — and we can’t recommend enough this heater in an otherwise very cold Cleveland March. (Sandy) 8 p.m., $26. Beachland Ballroom.

Amorphis/Swallow the Sun: 7 p.m., $17 ADV, $20 DOS. Agora Ballroom.

City Mouse/Heart and Lung/Varsity Pinball: 9 p.m., $5. Now That’s Class.

Lady Pills/Sonder Bombs/ Womantra: 9 p.m., $5 ADV, $6 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

Outlab Session: 9 p.m., free. Bop Stop.

Swing City Big Band: 7:30 p.m., $10.

Vosh Club.

Underground Music Showcase: 6 p.m., $10. Grog Shop.

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Dear Dan, I went to Dark Odyssey Winter Fire, the big kink hotel takeover event in Washington, D.C., in February.

There was one thing I saw there that is messing with my head, and I hope you can set me straight. There was this lovely little six-person orgy going on with two cute-as-could-be hippie girls and four older dudes. Then these four people came along. They sat and watched — a guy and three women in hijabs and dresses that went wrist to ankle, fully covered. After a while, one of the hippie girls turned to them and said, “I’d be happy to flog you later if you’d like.” The three women in hijab giggled. The whole scene was really sweet, but I just couldn’t get over these three women. Intellectually, I know there is no reason to think that conservative Islam is incompatible with kink. But my cultural biases make me feel that it is. Or is it possible that covering is their kink? What would you make of that?

— Washington Kinkster Wondering “With all the hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric out there these days, it is tempting to romanticize Islam,” said Eiynah, a Pakistani-Canadian children’s book author who also hosts a podcast that focuses on sex, Islam, and apostasy. “The impulse is understandable, but Islam is another one of the blatantly sex-negative Abrahamic faiths.”

The other blatantly sex-negative Abrahamic faiths, for those of you keeping score out there, are Judaism and Christianity.

“So as much as I’d love to agree that conservative Islam isn’t incompatible with kink,” said Eiynah, “there’s every reason to say that it is. Modesty codes are pretty rigid in Islam, and in nonMuslim-majority countries, modesty garments tend to stick out rather than blend in. Which achieves the exact opposite purpose — attracting more attention, not less.”

And when sex-negativity, modesty, and religion mix it up, WKW, the part of our brain that grinds out kinks kicks into high gear. That’s why there are hot-priest calendars for sale on sidewalks just outside Vatican City.

“Islamic modesty has become fetishized for some — quite literally,” said Eiynah. “There’s hijabi porn and hijabi Lolitas. So the people WKW saw could be into some form of hijab kink.”

I’ve seen a few people dressed up as Catholic nuns at fetish parties, WKW, and I didn’t think, “Hey, what are nuns doing here?!?” I thought, “That person has a nun kink.” (Related point: The nuns you see at queer pride parades?

Not really nuns. #TheMoreYouKnow.)

“Finally, it’s possible they could be a more ‘open-minded’ polygynous Muslim family that ventured into the hotel in a moment of adventurousness,” said Eiynah. “We are all human, after all, no matter what ancient morality code we try to follow.”

Eiynah tweets @NiceMangos, her terrific podcast — Polite Conversations — is available on all the usual podcast platforms, and her children’s book, My Chacha Is Gay, can be ordered at chachaisgay.com.

Dear Dan, I’m a 30-year-old woman in a longterm polyamorous relationship with a stellar guy. Our relationship began as extremely Dom/sub, with me being the sub. Now, six years later, I find having kinky sex with him challenging. We have a very deep, loving relationship, so my feelings get hurt when we engage in bondage and kink play.

This is especially problematic because I still enjoy BDSM with folks I’m not dating. Basically, if I’m not in love with someone, it doesn’t hurt my feelings when they beat me and humiliate me.

My boyfriend feels slighted, but I just don’t know what to do. Every time we play rough — the same way we had played for years — my feelings get hurt. Any thoughts?

— She’s Hurting His Heart It’s not uncommon to meet people in BDSM spaces/circles who have passionate, intimate, solid, and regular vanilla sex with their long-term partner(s) and intense BDSM play and/ or sex with more casual partners. For some submissives, intimacy and a longterm connection can interfere with their ability to enter into and enjoy their roles, and the same is true for some Doms. If this is just how you’re wired, SHHH, you may need to write a new erotic script for your primary relationship — or make a conscious decision to have new and different and satisfying sexual adventures with your boyfriend.

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