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Group Publisher Chris Keating Publisher Andrew Zelman
Upfront
Associate Publisher Angela Nagal Editor Vince Grzegorek
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UPFRONT PROSECUTOR O’MALLEY CALLS FOR SHERIFF TO BE RETURNED TO ELECTED POSITION, AMONG OTHER SUGGESTIONS FOR COUNTY GOVERNMENT REFORMS COUNTY PROSECUTOR Michael O’Malley is among the growing crowd that thinks that the Cuyahoga County Sheriff should be an elected position and no longer an appointment by the County Executive. And that would be at the very least, he says, in terms of reforms he believes are needed for the reformed county government, which is looking as problematic as the county government that voters tossed out the door back in 2009. “I was in this government prior to reform,” O’Malley says. “And I was in it after, and I’m in it now as an administrator, and I see so many issues. I didn’t come out publicly for or against the reform at the time, but when I went into the voting booth I supported it. But now that I’ve experienced what I’ve experienced over the past couple of years, there are significant challenges this government has created, and I think what we’re seeing with the jail is part of that.” In the wake of Dimora and Russo and company, Cuyahoga County voters overwhelmingly approved a sweeping change to county government 10 years ago by a 2-1 margin. Among the many changes in the new charter, the Sheriff, as well as the Treasurer and Medical Examiner and other departments, were layered beneath the executive office and their heads were made appointment positions. Now, in the wake of a year of deaths and inhumane conditions in the Cuyahoga County Jail, as corruption investigations continue to unspool and indictments continue to be handed out, both at the jail and across the IT department, there’s momentum behind returning the Sheriff to the ballot. County council said in December 2018 that it would likely consider the issue sometime this year. Any amendments to the charter would need to be approved by voters. O’Malley, who says he would return other administrator positions to the voters as well, has two main reasons: budgets and continuity. “In the old form of government, you had commissioners and you had
Photo courtesy of Cuyahoga County
a professional county administrator who ran the government on a day-today basis,” he says. “You come in and state your budget needs, and you’re responsible for your department and you’re answerable to the voters. There was an impartial body you could make your case to. Now, we have a council that ultimately decides on the budgeting but there has been so much power consolidated under the executive — Auditor, Sheriff, Clerk of Courts, Recorder — all under one individual, and none of these people can come in front of council and, without fear of reprisal, speak the truth. We’ve seen what has happened when people do that now. We’ve seen the results.” (He’s speaking of former jail nursing director Gary Brack, who appeared before council last year to honestly relate his critical concerns about healthcare in the jail and who was summarily fired by Metro, at the personal behest of Armond Budish, that same week.) Like other, but not all, department heads, O’Malley was tasked with cuts
to his budget the past two years — $1.5 million per year. The Sheriff’s department also saw cuts, which he believes runs a clear through-line to the multitudes of issues that have dotted headlines. “I think the county Sheriff is handcuffed as to speaking the truth,” O’Malley says, “because he is an appointee and will be eliminated if what he says is not consistent with the marching orders he receives from above. He not only was told to take a budget cut, but he was also directed to take Cleveland’s prisoners, but no one in the Sheriff’s department thought it was a good idea or that they were prepared to do that.” In addition to what he feels is a power structure built such that the Sheriff and others don’t have an avenue to fairly articulate the needs of their department, O’Malley says the current umbrella of departments under the executive branch means dangerous turnover. “Because all of those departments are underneath the executive, it will inevitably lead to change in leadership
in all those areas any time there’s a turnover, which we have now seen twice in 10 years,” he says. “Under the old government, the county was like a bunch of teeth in a gear, so when one tooth goes missing or there’s a change, the rest of them still function. It will spin. Now, wholesale change … it can be cataclysmic, it can downgrade the whole quality of the organization.” With indictments, surprise retirements and resignations, one doesn’t even need a new executive to walk through the door to cause drastic change, as we’ve seen in Budish’s tenure. “I don’t think they’re properly funding the departments, and I don’t think for a minute if Bob Reid was still Sheriff what happened at the jail would have occurred. The voters would not accept what is going on now. There would be an urgency to the situation.” In addition to returning the Sheriff, at a minimum, to an elected role, O’Malley also says there should be an independent budgetary office in | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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UPFRONT lieu of the current system. — Vince Grzegorek
The Hopkins Ransomware Attack, Another Blunder for City Hall Communications Valarie McCall is, these days, identifying herself as the city of Cleveland’s Chief of Communications, though she is still officially Mayor Frank Jackson’s Chief of Government and International Affairs. This Monday morning, it was McCall who quarterbacked a press conference in Jackson’s absence to update the media on the recent cyberattack at Hopkins Airport. McCall deflected aggressive questions from reporters who felt they’d been misled last week. She argued that while the city may not have provided everything reporters wanted with respect to downed computing systems and display screens at the airport, the city responsibly provided updates as they received them.
“There was never an intent to mislead the media,” she said. “I don’t know about you, but we’re not experts on this. Our timeline has been clear. Everything we knew we shared … There was no misleading. I don’t think it’s fair to say that.” Local reporters had been told — and were told again this Monday — that malware had been detected on airport computers on Sunday, April 21. The malware brought down the flight information display, baggage information display and email systems. As of Monday morning, the displays were up and running and emails were slowly coming back online. McCall said that airport managers had been provided temporary email addresses. An agent with the local FBI office — whose involvement the city initially denied — confirmed that they were initially contacted on Sunday April 21, met with the city the following Tuesday and have been analyzing the case ever since. They briefed city officials this past Monday morning and confirmed for the gathered media that “ransomware” had been detected in the system. Ransomware is a specific type of malware in which access to internal systems is blocked until a ransom is paid. (Channel 19 reported last week
that hackers had demanded bitcoin in ransom payment.) The city, however, had been denying that any ransoms were sought. In a press update last Friday, the city wrote in red letters that “no hacking occurred and no ransom demands [were] made.” Wait, what? Reporters on Monday were all extremely confused. First of all, where was Mayor Jackson? (“He’s managing the situation,” McCall said. “He’s just not here today.) How on earth could the city be so out of touch? What did they mean when they said no ransom demands were made? Wasn’t that the whole point of ransomware? No one speaking at the lectern made much sense. The city’s chief information officer Donald Phillips kept vaguely non-answering questions by saying that everyone at the city was “fighting the battle.” The FBI agent kept reminding folks that he couldn’t comment on the case specifically due to the ongoing investigation, but did manage to admit that, in general, malware of this sort usually gets onto a system when a user clicks on a link and malicious software (malware) is downloaded. McCall kept retreating from the lectern and then springing back to reiterate that no ransom demands were made. She volunteered the good
news that “redundancies” had been installed to prevent a similar situation from happening again and alluded to forthcoming “legislative fixes.” She also attributed the lengthy delay in getting the display screens back online to a “New Zealand holiday.” Evidently, the airport’s screens are hosted by an overseas third-party vendor and festivities prevented prompt communication and repair. When a reporter inquired whether it was wise to have these systems managed overseas, no one could conjure up an answer. In a telling moment, airport director Robert Kennedy said that all last week, at the airport, staff had been fighting to restore operations. “All communications were funneled through City Hall Communications,” he said, wittingly or unwittingly alluding to the fact that ‘City Hall Communications’ is where communication goes to die. — Sam Allard
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won a “historic victoryâ€? this weekend when members unanimously ratiďŹ ed a new contract that will pave the way for a $15 hourly wage. The ďŹ ve-year master agreement covers many of Cleveland’s most notable downtown properties — Tower City, 200 Public Square, the Ernst and Young Building among them — and the 500 janitors who keep them clean will see their wages increase by as much as 25 percent by 2023. In a press statement Saturday, SEIU said that the wage hike was four times higher than what janitors won in their previous contract, and that the additional wages translate into an extra $13,104 to $16,744 for downtown janitors over the life of the agreement. “Our janitor-led ‘One Cleveland’ campaign has proved to be a historic success, and I’m so proud of how we came together to win a better future for our city,â€? said Brian Yarbrough, a janitor at the Fifth Third Center, in the statement. “The wages and beneďŹ ts we won will provide a game-changing boost for our families and Cleveland’s most neglected communities. While Cleveland janitors have won a major
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victory, we won’t stop until all Ohio janitors earn at least $15 and can fully support their families.� The contract negotiations occurred as part of SEIU’s “One Cleveland� campaign. Among other things, it sought to dramatize the injustice of poor janitors of color — the union membership is majority black and majority female — cleaning some of the city’s most generously subsidized buildings. The downtown master contract agreement follows similar agreements by Cleveland janitors at Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C), the Cleveland Orchestra and the ArcelorMittal Steel Mill, most of whom are now on pathways to $15. All told, the increased wages, affecting 700 janitors, will inject roughly $11 million into Cleveland’s low-income neighborhoods. — Allard
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Bahama Breeze Reaches Settlement with Black Sorority Members Who Were Racially ProďŹ led at Cleveland Area Restaurant Members of an African-American sorority who ďŹ led suit against Bahama Breeze last year after being racially proďŹ led at the Orange location have reached a settlement with the restaurant. Terms were not disclosed but the settlement includes not only ďŹ nancial payouts but moves by the chain to “enhance Bahama Breeze’s existing diversity training curriculum,â€? according to a release from the Chandra Law Firm, which represented the women. A refresher for how this came to be: Court documents state the sorority members and their guests waited an hour to be seated despite having a reservation, and then endured glacial and disinterested service throughout the evening. Before most guests had eaten or received checks, a manager called the police to falsely report that the group was threatening not to pay their bill. Another manager stood with ofďŹ cers demanding receipts before these black patrons could leave the room, even to use the restroom. Some guests never even received their food orders. Add this to the ďŹ nancial penalties paid by Bahama Breeze parent company, Darden Restaurants, which was sued 10 years ago for similar behavior and racial harassment and settled for $1.26 million. — Grzegorek
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The Foilies 2019 Recognizing the year’s worst in government transparency By Electronic Frontier Foundation
T
HE CAUSE OF government transparency finally broke through to the popular zeitgeist this year. It wasn’t an investigative journalism expose or a civil rights lawsuit that did it, but a light-hearted sitcom about a Taiwanese American family set in Orlando, Florida, in the late 1990s. In a January episode of ABC’s Fresh Off the Boat, the Huang family’s two youngest children, overachievers Evan and Emery, decide if they sprint on all their homework, they’ll have time to plan their father’s birthday party. “Like the time we knocked out two English papers, a science experiment, and built the White House out of sugar cubes,” Evan said. “It opened up our Sunday for filing Freedom of Information requests.” “They may not have figured out who shot JFK,” Emery added. “But we will.” The eldest child, teenage slacker Eddie, concluded with a sage nod, “You know, once in a while, it’s good to know nerds.” Amen to that. Around the world, nerds of all ages are using laws like the United States’ Freedom of Information Act (and state-level equivalent laws) to pry free secrets and expose the inner workings of our democracy. Each year, open government advocates celebrate these heroes during Sunshine Week, an annual advocacy campaign on transparency. But the journalists and researchers who rely on these important measures every day can’t
help but smirk at the boys’ scripted innocence. Too often, government officials will devise novel and outrageous ways to reject requests for information or otherwise stymie the public’s right to know. Even today — 20 years after the events set in the episode — the White House continues to withhold key documents from the Kennedy assassination files. Since 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, privacy and government transparency in the digital age) has published The Foilies to recognize the bad actors who attempted to thwart the quests for truth of today’s Evans and Emerys. With these tongue-in-cheek awards, we call out attempts to block transparency, retaliation against those who exercise their rights to information, and the most ridiculous examples of incompetence by government officials who handle these public records. The Corporate Eclipse Award: Google, Amazon, and Facebook Sunshine laws? Tech giants think they can just blot those out with secretive contracts. But two nonprofit groups — Working Partnerships and the First Amendment Coalition — are fighting this practice in California by suing the city of San Jose over an agreement with Google that prevents city officials from sharing the public impacts of development deals, circumventing the California Public Records Act.
Illustration by Hugh D’Andrade
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FEATURE Photo courtesy of National Security Counselors
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Google’s proposed San Jose campus is poised to have a major effect on the city’s infrastructure, Bloomberg reported. Yet, according to the organization’s lawsuit, records analyzing issues of public importance such as traffic impacts and environmental compliance were among the sorts of discussions Google demanded be made private under their non-disclosure agreements. And it’s not just Google using these tactics. An agreement between Amazon and Virginia includes a provision that the state will give the corporate giant — which is placing a major campus in the state — a headsup when anyone files a public records request asking for information about them. The Columbia Journalism Review reported Facebook has also used this increasingly common strategy for companies to keep cities quiet and the public in the dark about major construction projects. The Unnecessary Box Set Award: Central Intelligence Agency After suing the CIA to get access to information about Trump’s classified briefings, Kel McClanahan of National Security Counselors was expecting the agency to send over eight agreed-upon documents. What he was not expecting was for the files — each between three and nine pages — to be spread out across six separate CD-ROMs, each burned within minutes of each other, making for perhaps the most unnecessary box set in the history of the compact disc. What makes this “extra silly,” McClanahan said, is that the CIA has previously complained about how burdensome and costly fulfilling requests can be. Yet the CIA could have easily combined several
requests onto the same disc and saved themselves some time and resources. After all, a standard CDROM can hold 700 MB, and all of the files took only 304 KB of space. The (Harlem) Shaky Grounds for Redaction Award: Federal Communications Commission After repealing the Open Internet Order and ending net neutrality, Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai doubled down on his efforts to ruin online culture. He released a cringeinducing YouTube video titled “7 Things You Can Still Do on the Internet After Net Neutrality” that featured his own rendition of the infamous “Harlem Shake” meme. (For the uninitiated, the meme is characterized by one person subtly dancing in a room of people to Baauer’s track “Harlem Shake.” Then the bass drops and the crowd goes nuts, often with many people in costumes.) MuckRock editor JPat Brown filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails related to the video, but the FCC rejected the request, claiming the communications were protected “deliberative” records. Brown appealed the decision, and the FCC responded by releasing all the email headers, while redacting the contents, claiming that anything more would cause “foreseeable harm.” Brown did not relent, and a year later the FCC capitulated and released the unredacted emails. “So, what did these emails contain that was so potentially damaging that it was worth risking a potential FOIA lawsuit over?” Brown writes. “Pai was curious when it was going live, and the FCC wanted to maintain a veto power over the video if they
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FEATURE didn’t like it.” The most ridiculous redaction of all was a tiny black box in an email from the FCC media director. Once removed, all that was revealed was a single word: “OK.”
The Cross-Contamination Award: Stanford Law Professor Daniel Ho One of the benefits of public records laws is they allow almost anyone — regardless of legal acumen — to force government agencies to be more transparent, usually without having to file a lawsuit. But in Washington State, filing a public records request can put the requester at legal risk of being named in a lawsuit should someone else not want the records to be made public. This is what happened to Sarah Schacht, a Seattle-based open government advocate and consultant. For years Schacht has used public records to advocate for better food safety rules in King County, an effort that led to the adoption of food
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The Scanner Darkly Award: St. Joseph County Superior Court ProPublica reporter Jessica Huseman has been digging deep into the child welfare system and what happens when child abuse results in death. While following up on a series of strangulations, she requested a copy of a case file from the St. Joseph County Superior Court in Indiana. Apparently, the clerk on the other end simply took the entire file and ran everything through a scanner. The problem was that the file contained a CD-ROM, and that’s not how CD-ROMs work. “Well this is the first time this had happened,” Huseman posted to Twitter, along with the blotchy black-and-white image of the top of the disc. “They scanned a CD as part of my FOI and didn’t give me its contents. Cool cool.” The Cash for Crash Award: Michigan State Police As tech companies experiment with autonomous vehicles on public roadways, reporters are keeping tabs on how often these cars are involved in collisions. That’s why The Information’s Matt Drange has
The (Harlem) Shaky Grounds for Redaction Award: Federal Communications Commission.
been filing records requests for the crash data held by state agencies. Some government departments have started claiming that every line of the dataset is its own individual record and subject to a copy fee. Our winner, the Michigan State Police, proposed to charge Drange a 25-cent fee for each of a 1.9-million-line dataset, plus $20 for a thumbdrive, for a grand total of $485,645.24, with half of it due up front. Runners-up that quoted similar line-by-line charges include the Indiana State Police ($346,000) and the North Carolina Department of Transportation ($82,000). Meanwhile, Florida’s government released its detailed dataset at no charge at all. The Bartering with Extremists Award: California Highway Patrol In 2016, the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), an infamous neoNazi group, staged a demonstration at the California State Capitol. Counter-protesters fiercely opposed the demonstration, and the scene soon descended into chaos, leaving multiple people injured. When the dust settled, a member of the public (disclosure: also a co-author of this piece) filed a California Public Records Act request to obtain a copy of the permit the white nationalist group filed for its rally. The California Highway Patrol rejected the request for this normally available document, claiming it was related to a criminal investigation. Two years later, evidence emerged during criminal proceedings that a CHP detective used the public records request as a bargaining chip in a phone call with the TWP protest leader, who was initially reluctant to provide information. The officer told him how the request might reveal his name. “We don’t have a reason to ... uh ... deny [the request],” the officer said, according a transcript of the call. But once the organizer
decided to cooperate, the officer responded, “I’m gonna suggest that we hold that or redact your name or something ... uh ... until this thing gets resolved.” In light of these new facts, the First Amendment Coalition filed a new request for the same document. It too was denied. The Preemptive Shredding Award: Inglewood Police Department In defiance of the law enforcement lobby, California legislators passed a law (SB 1421) requiring police and sheriffs to disclose officer misconduct records in response to California Public Records Act requests. These documents, often contained in personnel files, had historically been untouchable by members of the public and the press. Almost immediately, police unions across the Golden State began to
Illustration by Hugh D’Andrade
The Unreliable Narrator Award: President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. District Court Judges When President Trump tweets attacks about the intelligence community, transparency groups and journalists often file FOIA requests (and subsequently lawsuits) seeking the documents that underpin his claims. The question that often comes up: Do Trump’s smartphone rants break the seal of secrecy on confidential programs? The answer seems to be no. Multiple judges have sided with Justice Department lawyers, concluding that his Twitter disclosures do not mean that the government has to confirm or deny whether records about those activities exist. In a FOIA case seeking documents that would show whether Trump is under investigation, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said that the President’s tweets to that effect are “speculation.” Similarly, in a FOIA suit to get more information about the widely publicized dossier of potential ties between Trump and Russia, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said that the President’s statements are political rather than “assertions of pure fact.” And so, whether Trump actually knows what he’s talking about remains an open question.
safety placards found in restaurants in the region. After Schacht filed another round of requests with the county health department, she received a legal threat in November 2018 from Stanford Law School professor Daniel Ho’s attorney threatening to sue her unless she abandoned her request. Apparently, Ho has been working with the health department to study the new food safety and placard regulations. He had written draft studies that he shared with the health department, making them public records. Ho’s threat amounted to an effort to intimidate Schacht from receiving public records, probably because he had not formally published his studies first. Regardless of motive, the threat was an awful look. But even when faced with the threat, Schacht refused to abandon her request. Fortunately, the lawsuit never materialized, and Schacht was able to receive the records. Although Ho’s threats made him look like a bully, the real bad actor in this scenario is Washington State’s public records law. The state’s top court has interpreted the law to require parties seeking to stop agencies from releasing records (sometimes called reverse-FOIA suits) to also sue the original requester along with the government agency.
launch lawsuits to undermine these new transparency measures. But the Inglewood Police Department takes the prize for its efforts to evade scrutiny. Mere weeks before the law took effect on Jan. 1, 2019, the agency began destroying records that were set to become publicly available. “This premise that there was an intent to beat the clock is ridiculous,” Inglewood mayor James T. Butts Jr. told the LA Times in defending the purge. We imagine Butts would find it equally ridiculous to suggest
that the fact he had also been a cop for more than 30 years, including serving in Inglewood and later as police chief of Santa Monica, may have factored into his support for the destruction of records. The What the Swat? Award: Nova Scotia and Halifax Law Enforcement One Wednesday morning in April, 15 Halifax police ofďŹ cers raided the home of a teenage boy and his family. “They read us our rights and told us not to talk,â€? his mother would later tell CBC. “They ried through everything. They turned over mattresses, they took drawers and emptied out drawers, they went through personal papers, pictures. It was totally devastating and traumatic.â€? You might well wonder, what was the Jack Bauer-class threat to geo-political stability? Nothing at all: The Canadian teen had just downloaded a host of public records from openly available URLs on a government website. At the heart of the ordeal was some seriously terrible security practices by Nova Scotia ofďŹ cials. The website created to host the province’s public records was designed in such a way that
every request and response had a nearly identical URL and placed no technical restrictions on the public’s ability to access any of the requests. This meant that regular public records requests and individuals’ requests to access government ďŹ les about them, which included private information, were all stored together and available on the internet for anyone, including Google’s webcrawler, to access. All that was necessary was changing a number identifying the request at the end of the URL. What Nova Scotian ofďŹ cials should have done upon learning about leaks in their own public records website’s problems was apologize to the public, thank the teen who found these gaping holes in their digital security practices, and implement proper restrictions to protect people’s private information. They didn’t do any of that, and instead sought to improperly bring the force of Canada’s criminal hacking law down on the very person who brought the problem to light. The whole episode — which thankfully ended with the government dropping the charges — was a chilling example of how ofďŹ cials will often overreact and
blame innocent third parties when trying to cover up their own failings. This horror show just happened to involve public records. Do better, Canada. The Outrageous Fee Request of the Year: City of Seattle When self-described transparency advocate and civic hacker Matt Chapman sent his request to Seattle seeking the email metadata from all city email addresses (from/to/ BCC addresses, time, date, etc.), he expected some pushback, because it does sound like an incredible amount of data to wrangle. Seattle’s response: All the data can be yours for a measly $33 million. OfďŹ cials estimated that it would take 320 years worth of staff time to review the roughly 32 million emails responsive to Chapman’s request. Oh, and they estimated charging an additional $21,600 for storage costs associated with the records. The fee request is the second highest in the history of The Foilies (the Department of Defense won in 2016 for estimating it would take $660 million to produce records on a particular computer forensic tool). Then the city did something entirely unexpected: It revisited the fee estimate and determined that the
ďŹ rst batch of records would cost only $1.25 to process. We get it, math is hard. But wait — that’s not all. After paying for the batches of records with a series of $1.25 checks, Chapman received more than he ever bargained for. Rather than disclosing just the metadata for all 32 million emails, Seattle had given him the ďŹ rst 256 characters of every email. Those snippets included passwords, credit card numbers, and other personally identifying information. What followed was a series of conversations between Chapman, Seattle’s lawyers, and the city’s IT folks to ensure he’d deleted the records and that the city hadn’t just breached its own data via a public records request. Ultimately, Seattle ofďŹ cials in January 2018 began sending the data to Chapman once more, this time without the actual content of email messages. The whole episode doesn’t exactly inspire conďŹ dence in Seattle ofďŹ cials’ ability to do basic math, comply with the public records law or protect sensitive information. The Intern Art Project Award: Vermont Gov. Phil Scott Seattle isn’t the only city to
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FEATURE
The Least Transparent Employer Award: U.S. Department of Justice In the past few years, we’ve seen some great resignation letters from public servants, ranging from Defense Secretary James Mattis telling President Trump “It’s not me, it’s you” to former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ forced resignation. But the Trump DOJ seems to have had enough of the tradition and has now determined that U.S. Attorney resignation letters are private in their entirety and cannot be released under the Freedom of Information Act. Of course, civil servants should have their private information protected by their employer, but that’s precisely what redactions should be used to protect. Past administrations have released resignation letters that are critical of executive branch leaders. The change in policy raises the question: What are departing U.S. Attorneys now saying that the government wants to hide? The Clawback Award: The Broward County School Board After the tragic Parkland shooting, the South Florida SunSentinel went to court to force the Broward County School Board to hand over documents detailing the shooter’s education and disciplinary record. A judge agreed and ordered the release, as long as sensitive
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| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
The Wrong Way to Plug a Leak Award: City of Greenfield, California The Monterey County Weekly unexpectedly found itself in court after the city of Greenfield, California, sued to keep the newspaper from publishing documents about the surprising termination of its city manager. When editor Sara Rubin asked the interim city manager for the complaint the outgoing city manager filed after his termination, she got nothing but crickets. But then, an envelope containing details of a potential city political scandal appeared on the doorstep of one of the paper’s columnists. The weekly reached out to the city for comment and began preparing for its normal Wednesday print deadline. Then, the morning of publication, the paper got a call saying that they were due in court. The city sued to block publication of the documents, to have the documents returned and to have the paper reveal the identity of the leaker. Attorney Kelly Aviles gave everyone a fast lesson in the First Amendment, pointing out that the paper had every right to publish. The judge ruled in the paper’s favor, and the city ended up paying all of the Monterey County Weekly’s attorney fees. If it Looks like a Duck Award: Brigham Young University Police Brigham Young University’s Police Department is certified by the state,* has the powers of the state, but says that they’re not actually a
Illustration by Hugh D’Andrade
stumble in response to Matt Chapman’s public records requests for email metadata. The Vermont governor’s office also wins for its scissor-and-glue approach to releasing electronic information. Rather than export the email information as a spreadsheet, the Vermont governor’s office told Chapman it had five interns (three of whom were unpaid) working six hours each, literally “cutting and pasting the emails from paper copies.” Next thing Chapman knew, he had a 43-page hodgepodge collage of email headers correlating with one day’s worth of messages. The governor’s attorney told Chapman it would cost $1,200 to process three more days’ worth of emails. Chapman pushed back and provided his own instructions on exporting the data using a computer and not, you know, scissors and glue. Sure enough, he received a 5,500line spreadsheet a couple weeks later at no charge.
information was redacted. But when reporters copied and pasted the file into another document, they found that the content under the redactions was still there and readable. They broke the story of how the school denied the shooter therapeutic services and alternative education accommodations, but then uploaded the school board’s report with working redactions. Rather than simply do better with double-checking their redactions next time, the school board struck back at the newspaper. They petitioned the court to hold the newspaper in contempt and to prevent anyone from reporting on the legally obtained information. Although the local judge didn’t issue a fine, she lambasted the paper and threatened to dictate exactly what the paper could report about the case in the future (which is itself an unconstitutional prior restraint).
part of government for purposes of the Utah transparency law. After the Salt Lake Tribune exposed that the university punished survivors of sexual assault for coming forward and reporting, the paper tried to get records of communications between the police department and the school’s federally required sexual assault coordinator. BYU pushed back, saying that the police department is not subject to Utah’s Government Records Access and Management Act because the police department is privately funded. This actually turns out to be a trickier legal question than you’d expect. Brigham Young University itself isn’t covered by the state law because it is a private school. But the university police force was created by an act of the Utah legislature, and the law covers entities “established by the government to carry out the public’s business.” Investigating crime and arresting people seems like the public’s business. Last summer, a judge ruled that the police department is clearly a state agency, but the issue is now on appeal at the Utah Supreme Court. Sometime this year we should learn if the police are a part of the government or not. *Because BYU police failed to comply with state law, and was not responsive to an internal investigation, the Utah Office of Public Safety notified the department on Feb. 20 that the BYU police department will be stripped of its certification on Sept. 1, 2019. The university police also plan to appeal this decision. The Insecure Security Check Award: U.S. Postal Service Congressional elections can
turn ugly, but the opponent of newly elected U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger got a boost when the U.S. Postal Service released Spanberger’s entire personnel file, including her security clearance application, without redaction of highly sensitive personal information. When a third party requests a person’s federal employment file without the employee’s permission, the government agency normally releases only a bare-bones record of employment dates, according to a Postal Service spokesperson. But somehow Rep. Spanberger wasn’t afforded these protections, and the Postal Service has potentially made this mistake in a “small number” of other cases this year. Security clearance applications (Form SF-86) are supposed to be analyzed and investigated by the FBI, raising questions about how the FOIA officer got the information in the first place. The Postal Service has apologized for the mistake, which they say is human error, but maybe security clearance applications should be kept just as secure as the state secrets the clearance is meant to protect.
The Foilies were compiled by Electronic Frontier Foundation Senior Investigative Researcher Dave Maass, Staff Attorney Aaron Mackey, Frank Stanton Fellow Camille Fischer, and Activist Hayley Tsukayama. Illustrations by EFF Art Director Hugh D’Andrade. For more on our work visit eff.org.
scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene
| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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Saturday May 18, Noon-10p
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SUNDAY May 19, Noon-8p
FREE EVENT
LIVE MUSIC FEATURING:
three stages OF live local and national bands, plus vendors and THE MEIJER kid’s zone. Look for beer & craft cocktails on Erie Street, and, of course, ribs from participating downtown Willoughby restaurants & national vendors.
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| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
GET OUT everything you should do this week
Photo courtesy of Live Nation
Comedian Ali Wong comes to the Masonic Auditorium. See: Friday.
WED
05/01
THEATER
A Bronx Tale Oscar winner Robert De Niro and Tony winner Jerry Zaks teamed up to direct A Bronx Tale, a musical based on the film of the same name. The story centers on a boy who aspires to be a mob boss, and it features tunes from Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin). Tonight’s performance takes place at 7:30 at Connor Palace, where performances continue through May 12. Tickets start at $35. (Jeff Niesel) 1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org. MUSIC
Chamber Music in the Galleries This monthly concert series at the Cleveland Museum of Art places young musicians from the Cleveland Institute of Music and Case Western Reserve University in the CMA galleries. Now in its seventh season, the series features “mixed programs of chamber music” for “a unique and intimate experience.” The performances often feature instruments from the museum’s keyboard collection. Tonight’s concert begins at 6 and lasts for about an hour. Admission is free. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.
SPOKEN WORD
Cleveland Stories Dinner Party Cleveland Stories Dinner Party is a weekly series that pairs fine food with storytelling. Through it, the folks at Music Box Supper Club hope to raise awareness of the mission of the Western Reserve Historical Society’s Cleveland History Center. The goal of the Cleveland Stories Dinner Party is to “bring to life some of the fun, interesting stories about Cleveland’s past — from sports, to rock ’n’ roll, to Millionaires’ Row,” as it’s put in a press release. Admission is free, with no cover charge, although a prix fixe dinner, designed to complement the night’s theme, is $20. Tonight, Carter Strang, a student at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, and witness to many of the events surrounding the shootings, will talk about the event. Strang, an attorney, is past president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association and the Federal Bar Association Northern District of Ohio Chapter. Doors open at 5 p.m., dinner is served at 6, and the storytelling starts at 7. (Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.
a drink and a dog while listening to some of their Cleveland neighbors tell tall tales. Tonight’s show revolves around the theme, “What I’ve Done For Money.” The hosts are Adam Richard and Zachariah Durr. The program starts at 8 p.m. sharp at the Happy Dog. Admission is $5. Want to be a storyteller at a future session? See details on the website. (Niesel) 5801 Detroit Ave., 216-651-9474, happydogcleveland.com. THEATER
Native Gardens Described in a press release as a “hilarious hot-button comedy about thorny neighbors with good intentions,” Native Gardens focuses on two people who’ve just bought a fixer-upper next to a house with a pristine English garden. A disagreement over a fence erupts into all-out war. The Cleveland Play House production of the play can be seen at the Allen Theatre tonight at 7:30. Performances continue through May 19. Tickets cost $25 to $97. (Niesel) 1407 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, clevelandplayhouse.com.
SPOKEN WORD
MUSIC
Keep Talking Keep Talking is an exciting storytellers’ program where locals can share their real-life experiences on a theme. The monthly series offers attendees the chance to grab
Rock Hall Nights: Woodstock It’s been nearly 50 years since Woodstock turned festival culture into the monster that it is today. Tonight, the Rock Hall celebrates Woodstock’s legacy at its monthly
Rock Hall Nights. There will be Woodstock trivia and guests can see some Woodstock-related artifacts from the Rock Hall Library and Archives. There will also be a festival photo booth. It all starts at 6 p.m. and tickets cost $20 (but admission is free for Cleveland residents). (Niesel) 1100 Rock and Roll Blvd., 216-515-8444, rockhall.com. FILM
Who Will Write Our History Three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen and Academy Award winner Adrian Brody narrate Who Will Write Our History, a documentary about how historian Emanuel Ringelblum and a clandestine group of journalists, scholars and community leaders in the Warsaw Ghetto vowed to defeat Nazi lies and propaganda — not with guns or fists but with pen and paper. The film screens today at 7 p.m. and tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Cedar Lee Theatre. Check the Cleveland Cinemas website for ticket prices. (Niesel) 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-528-0355, clevelandcinemas.com.
THU
05/02
MUSIC
Open Mic Night/Live Band Karaoke Every Thursday, Stella’s Music hosts | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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GET OUT a night of music, poetry and comedy. The club’s doors open at 5 p.m., and performances begin at 8 p.m. Artists can sign up at stellasmusic.com/ open-mic to secure a 15-minute time slot. Signups will be available at the club as well. Meanwhile, happy hour takes place from 5 to 7 p.m. Admission is free. (Niesel) 2217 East Ninth St., 216-272-3377, stellasmusic.com.
meet as Em Schulz and Christine Schiefer bring their podcast And That’s Why We Drink to the Agora tonight for a “wine-filled evening of bone-chilling ghost stories and terrifying true crime stories.” The fun begins at 9:15, and tickets start at $27.50. (Niesel) 5000 Euclid Ave., 216-881-2221, agoracleveland.com.
and ending at Peace Park tomorrow at 3 p.m. Also tomorrow (known to Star Wars fans as May the Fourth Be With You), riders are encouraged to arrive in Star Wars’ costumes to view for prizes as part of the Star Wars Bar Crawl Ride through the neighborhoods. Green Tara Yoga in Cedar Fairmount will offer a special Stretching for Bicyclists at 6 p.m. today and 11 a.m. tomorrow.
Indians vs. Seattle Mariners The Seattle Mariners haven’t been to the playoffs in ages, but the team got off to a hot start this year that suggests that might change. Despite the Mariners’ heat, the Indians swept them when the two teams played in Seattle earlier this year. The Mariners will undoubtedly be looking for payback when they play the Indians tonight at 7:10 at Progressive Field. The two teams play each again tomorrow and Sunday. Tickets start at $15. (Niesel) 2401 Ontario St., 216-420-4487, clevelandindians.com.
Jane Scott’s 100th Birthday Featuring Michael Stanley Laura DeMarco, John Soeder, Holly Gleason, Anastasia Karel and Michael Stanley will be on hand to talk about the late Jane Scott, the Plain Dealer rock writer who would’ve been 100 years old this year. They’ll give a presentation on Scott’s life and legacy and then host an audience Q&A. The Rock Hall will also recognize Stanley for the Lifetime Achievement Award he received from the Cleveland Arts Prize judges. Snacks, birthday cake and a cash bar will be available during the reception. The event starts at 6 p.m. at the Rock Hall. Tickets cost $15, or $10 for Rock Hall members. (Niesel) 1100 Rock and Roll Blvd., 216-515-8444, rockhall.com.
THEATER
DEF LEPPARD
THE CURE
MUSIC
FRI
05/03
PODCAST
And That’s Why We Drink — Live Podcast Murder and the paranormal finally
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| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
El Desencanto (The Disenchantment) Jaime Chávarri directs El Desencanto (The Disenchantment), a nonfiction classic about Franco’s Spain. In it, the widow and children of the official poet of that fascist regime, Leopoldo Panero, talk about life under the Generalissimo. The film screens tonight at 7 at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets cost $10, or $7 for CMA members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org. SPORTS
WORDS + MUSIC
Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto Guest conductor Michail Jurowski and guest violinist Vadim Gluzman team up with the Cleveland Orchestra for tonight’s concert at Severance Hall featuring Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony. The performance begins at 7:30, and it’s preceded at 6:30 by “From Russia, with Love and Revolution,” a preconcert talk with Jurowski and Gluzman. Youngstown State University’s Cicilia Yudha will moderate the discussion. Additional performances continue through Sunday. Consult the orchestra website for more details, including ticket prices. (Niesel) 11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.
FILM
JANET JACKSON
STEVIE NICKS
RADIOHEAD
THE ZOMBIES
ROXY MUSIC
Million Dollar Quartet On Dec. 4, 1956, four guys you might have heard of — Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis Presley — got together in the Sun Records’ studio in Memphis. Their impromptu recording session is considered one of the greatest rock jam sessions of all time. Great Lakes Theater’s production of the awardwinning Broadway musical Million Dollar Quartet recreates that session. The plot doesn’t amount to much, but the action includes a terrific set of tunes including classics such as “Great Balls of Fire,” “Folsom Prison Blues,” “Matchbox” and “Blue Suede Shoes.” See it tonight at 7:30 at the Hanna Theatre; performances continue through May 26. Tickets start at $15. (Niesel) 2067 East 14th St., 216-241-6000, greatlakestheater.org. ARTY PARTY
BIKES
Bike the Heights Weekend To celebrate Bike Month, the Cedar Fairmount, Cedar Lee and Coventry Special Improvement Districts will introduce their first collaborative Bike the Heights weekend, today through Sunday. In addition to rides, there will be special offers at select merchants in each of the districts. Heights Bicycle Coalition will host a family-friendly ride originating
Heights Bicycle Coalition will have six mechanics offering repairs tomorrow in the parking lot adjacent to Nighttown. Self-service bike stations are also open throughout the weekend at Heights Library and at the corner of Lee and Superior, across from Cain Park. Find all the details, including restroom locations, on the website. (Niesel) cedarfairmount.org.
Mix: Matsuri This month’s installment of Mix celebrates traditional and contemporary Japanese culture with taiko drumming, sake-infused cocktails, art and J-Pop, all in honor of the Cleveland Art Museum’s new exhibit, Shinto: Discovery of the Divine in Japanese Art. Matsuri are Japanese festivals that have become part of popular culture with dancing, music and art. The fun starts at 6, and tickets cost $10 in
advance, or $15 at the door. It’s free for art museum members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org. COMEDY
Ali Wong Comedian Ali Wong — whose outrageous Netflix specials Hard Knock Wife and Baby Cobra pull back the curtain on the horrors and hilarity of motherhood — brings her newest standup show to the Masonic Auditorium tonight. Wong is no longer pregnant, like she was for her last two comedy specials; but rest assured, the comic will have plenty to talk about as a mother of two. The show begins at 7:30 and tickets start at $40. (Laura Morrison) 3615 Euclid Ave., 216-881-6350, masoniccleveland.com.
SAT
05/04
FUNDRAISER
The Dreamer’s Bal The Dreamer’s Bal, Ingenuity’s annual fundraiser, promises to be “an off-kilter gala unlike anything else in town.” Once known as the Bal Ingenieux, the yearly spring event now has a specific theme though it’ll still pay homage to the Kokoon Club, Cleveland’s exclusive arts club that existed from the 1910s until the 1940s. The event takes place at 8 tonight at IngenuityLabs, Ingenuity’s headquarters in the Hamilton Collaborative. Watershed Distillery and Platform Beer will provide the libations, and Poca, Sauce the City, Tinman, and the Rice Shop will serve up the food. Attendees should plan to wear “the costume of their dreams.” Tickets cost $27 in advance, $35 at the door, and VIP experience tickets are available as well. (Niesel) 5401 Hamilton Ave., 216-589-9444, ingenuitycleveland.org.
SHOPPING
The Cleveland Flea It’s time for the Spring Flea! A self-described “small business incubator” that draws thousands of locals hoping to snag some unique goods, the Cleveland Flea features a range of items you won’t find at the typical retail store, including “curated vintage,” and goods from “culinary all-stars” and “the most talented makers in the region.” As much a social gathering as a shopping experience, the Flea serves as an excellent hang, a place to meet and make friends. It runs from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. tomorrow. Find additional info on the website, including dates for the Summer, Fall and Winter Fleas. Admission is free. (Niesel) 3602 St. Clair Ave. NE., theclevelandflea.com. DANCE
Coppélia Choreographed for Cleveland Ballet by Spanish choreographer Ramón Oller, Coppélia is a comic ballet based on two stories written by German romantic author E. T. A. Hoffmann. The story centers on Dr. Coppelius, an inventor who’s made a life-size dancing doll. Today’s performances, presented by the Ballet Theatre of Ohio, take place at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the Akron Civic Theatre. Another performance takes place at 2 p.m. tomorrow. Tickets start at $25. (Niesel) 182 South Main St., Akron, 330-253-2488, akroncivic.com.
FILM
My Neighbor Totoro When it comes to anime, no one does it better than Japan’s Hayao Miyazaki, the director of My Neighbor Totoro, which centers on two sisters who move with their father to a remote country house near an enchanted forest. An anime classic, the movie screens at 1 p.m. today at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Admission is free. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org. FILM
Plan 9 From Outer Space A cult classic, black-and-white, science fiction horror film written, produced, directed and edited by the late, great Ed Wood, Plan 9 From Outer Space focuses on a group of aliens who try to prevent humans from creating a doomsday machine that would destroy the universe. The movie screens tonight at 9:30 and midnight at the Cedar Lee Theatre, where it screens again tomorrow night at 7. Tickets cost $6. (Niesel) 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-528-0355, clevelandcinemas.com. FILM
Rocky Horror Picture Show It’s the first Saturday of the month again, so tonight the Cedar Lee Theatre hosts its usual midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the 1975 cult classic that still draws an exuberant, costumed crowd that likes to throw rice and dry toast and sing along to the songs in the movie. In addition,
OPENING SATURDAY, MAY 4 SPRING HOURS: Friday: 5:00 - Close | Saturday & Sunday: 12:00pm - Close
OPENS Cinco De Mayo Weekend! SELLOUTS Saturday, May 4 • 2pm to 6pm
SHADOW OF DOUBT BAND Tom Petty Tribute
Sunday, May 5 • 2pm to 6pm
WHISKEY ISLAND MUSIC SERIES Every Wednesday Beginning June 5 Featuring The Region’s Best Bands
ALL SUMMER LONG Full Schedule Available on Our Website.
www.facebook.com/whiskeyislandstillandeatery www.whiskeyislandstillandeatery.net | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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Coming Attractions The gift that always gets applause for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, graduations, weddings and anniversaries!
locals act out a floor show that mimics the movie, turning the event into a veritable party. Tickets are $9.75. (Niesel) 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-528-0355, clevelandcinemas.com.
SUN
05/05
E-gift card now available playhousesquare.org/giftcard or 216-640-8800
FILM
ROB LOWE Stories I Only Tell My Friends May 30
With Alonzo Bodden, Grocery Store Joe Amabile, Cathy Rigby June 14
POETRY
(Rules at: playhousesquare.org)
PATTON OSWALT July 13
KATHLEEN MADIGAN Hot Dogs & Angels Tour September 28
Rhea Butcher Welcome to Night Vale David Sedaris
July 7 July 14 October 19
216-241-6000 Group Sales 216-640-8600 playhousesquare.org
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Ariadne auf Naxos The Cleveland Orchestra recently staged a production of the Richard Strauss opera Ariadne auf Naxos. Now, you can catch this film of the Vienna Philharmonic’s production from the 2012 Salzburg Festival. Staged to mark the centennial of the work’s ill-fated debut, the performance aspired to realize “the still-wonderful dream of its creators” by bringing together theater, ballet, drama, music and singing. It screens at 1 p.m. today at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets cost $20, or $15 for CMA members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.
| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
Neil Hilborn A bestselling author who claims to be the most-watched poet ever, Neil Hilborn has performed in 40 states and eight countries. He’s been diagnosed with OCD and bipolar disorder, and his poems often reference the topic of living with mental illness. Tonight’s performance — part of Hilborn’s 2019 Endless Bummer Tour — starts at 8 at the Beachland Ballroom. Tickets are $19 in advance, or $22 at the door. (Niesel) 15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com. MUSIC + BOOKS
Sunday Beat The Sunday Beat is a free weekly live music series featuring jazz, roots, Americana, folk, blues and bossa nova at Visible Voice Books. Purchase a Sunday New York Times, and receive a free bottomless mug of coffee or tea and half off a Jim Alesci’s Place pastry. Music runs from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. As an added bonus, anyone who shows a sameday receipt from brunch at Music Box, Prosperity Social Club or any Tremont or Ohio City restaurant receives 10 percent off any Visible Voice book purchase. The bookstore is open today from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Niesel) 2258 Professor Ave., 216-961-0084, visiblevoicebooks.com.
MON
05/06
SPORTS
Indians vs. Chicago White Sox The Indians began the season by splitting a two-game series with the Chicago White Sox. It’s still too early to tell if the White Sox have improved from last year, when they lost 100 games; but their offense does seem to be pretty potent. They come to town tonight to start a four-game series. The first pitch is at 6:10, and tickets start at $15. (Niesel) 2401 Ontario St., 216-420-4487, clevelandindians.com. PARTY!
Pack the Patio Party House of Blues celebrates recent venue renovations and welcomes the summer patio season with a Pack the Patio Party today from 5 to 7 p.m. There will be complimentary samples of House of Blues’ menu items, a raffle to win tickets to upcoming House of Blues and Jacobs Pavilion shows and a giveaway for a pair of Cleveland Indians’ tickets. In keeping with the warm-weather theme, Peroni and Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy representatives will be on hand to promote their summer beers. (Niesel) 308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-2583, houseofblues.com. NIGHTLIFE
Shit Show Karaoke Local rapper/promoter Dirty Jones and Scene’s own Manny Wallace host Shit Show Karaoke, a weekly event at the B-Side Liquor Lounge wherein patrons choose from “an unlimited selection of jams from hip-hop to hard rock,” and are encouraged to “be as bad as you want.” Fueled by drink and shot specials, it all goes down tonight at 10 p.m. (Niesel) 2785 Euclid Hts. Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-932-1966, bsideliquorlounge.com.
Wing Dang Doodle takes place every Monday from 6 p.m. to midnight. (Niesel) 1109 Starkweather Ave., 216-937-1938, prosperitysocialclub.com.
TUE
05/07
MUSIC
Open Turntable Tuesday Tonight from 6 to 9, the Winchester hosts its weekly Open Turntable Tuesday. Jason Gokorsch will book guest DJs and offer slots to people who want to bring their own vinyl and spin their favorite songs or deep tracks. First time DJs are encouraged, and equipment is provided. Patrons can also bring records for the night’s DJ to add to their set. Sign up on Northeast Ohio Vinyl Club’s Facebook page. (Niesel) 12112 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216-600-5338, facebook.com/ TheWinchesterMusicTavern. FILM
Return of the Hero Directed by Laurent Tirard, Return of the Hero stars Oscar winner Jean Dujardin (The Artist) and Mélanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds), respectively, as an emotionally AWOL military officer and his heartsick fiancee. The film screens today at 1:45 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Tickets cost $10, or $7 for CMA members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org. FOOD
Truck Stop Tuesday Crocker Park in Westlake has launched its seasonal Truck Stop Tuesday, a weekly food truck gathering that takes place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Needless to say, admission is free, but the food will cost you. Truck Stop Tuesday continues through Sept. 25. (Niesel) 189 Crocker Park Blvd., Westlake, crockerpark.com.
FOOD
Wing Dang 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 weekly wing night Wing Dang Doodle. Prosperity will not only serve up substantial, $1 whole wings, but it’ll also offer 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.
MUSIC
Vinyl Night Jukebox hosts a vinyl night every Tuesday that serves as a listening party for new releases, partnering with Loop in Tremont, so patrons can hear a new album on vinyl. You can bring your own vinyl and spin it too. It all starts at 5 p.m. (Niesel) 1404 West 29th St., 216-206-7699, jukeboxcle.com.
scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene
STAGE READING BETWEEN THE LINES Dobama tackles unconventional rom-com with a twist in This by Roman Macharoni Photo by Steve Wagner Photography
AS THE LAST PRODUCTION before the start of Dobama’s milestone 60th season, director Nathan Motta and company have chosen a play that combines the acerbic comedy sensibilities of modern theater with a story that relays the trials and tribulations of mid-life, in their production of Melissa James Gibson’s This. On the surface, This feels like a daft name for such a complicated and emotionally conflicted play, yet its simplistic title is fitting for a piece that constantly articulates that which cannot be easily explained. Gibson, who has shown a flair for penning tales of characters equally ready for therapy or standup careers with previous works like [sic], describes the titular denotation of This as the place between places, specifically events in life where people may feel directionless and unsure. That explains the characters within this story to a T. This is especially true for Jane (Rachel Lee Kolis), who, after trying to find peace after the untimely death of her husband, finds herself attempting to unwind at a dinner party hosted by her dear friends Tom and Marrell (Abraham McNeil Adams and Treva Offutt). Trying to cheer her up, the two, along with their neurotic mutual friend Alan (Craig Joseph), play matchmaker for Jane in the form of Jean Pierre (Kieron Cindric), an individual who is French to the point of self-parody. Combined with a party game that takes a dark turn absurdly quickly, it’s enough to cause Jane to break down and leave. When Tom reaches out to apologize and console her, he shares his more intimate intentions with her. This creates a volatile environment between Jane and the few people in her life to whom she can still look for support, especially Marrell. Meanwhile, Alan finds himself the odd man out of these looming secrets and seeks spontaneity as well as the longing to go back to the more joyous days of their friendship. There are enough plates spinning in this tale to make a circus performer nauseated as each character learns to grow and accept how their lives have turned out,
Abraham Adams, Rachel Lee Kolis, Treva Offutt, and Craig Joseph in This.
mostly to their chagrin. Within the first few moments of the play, it’s clear that This is all about the dialogue, and it’s ripe with realism. The conversations reflect a group of friends who know how each other ticks and they respond accordingly, with plenty of comebacks you’ll be quoting to yourself well past the car ride home. The humor is introduced as a playful exchange between good friends. As their stories progress and further intertwine, the verbal barbs start to feel like going a few rounds with a linguistic Manny Pacquiao. The characters focus not on the things they say, but rather how those things are said. Along with
backdrop that visually drives home the key themes of grief and, to an extent, postpartum depression. The majority of the play moves at a pretty fast clip, and credit is due to Motta and company for finding a suitable pace to discern the more emotionally heavy beats of the story. Dazzling lighting by Marcus Dana accompanies this approach by giving the various locations throughout the production their own personalities with subtle changes. It’s a well-executed method that lets the viewer take in the potency of the dialogue and lets the surroundings subtly supplement the ebbs and flow of the conversation and conflict. The production’s minimalist nature hinges on the performers’ abilities,
THIS THROUGH MAY 26 DOBAMA THEATRE, 2340 LEE RD., CLEVELAND HEIGHTS 216-932-3396, DOBAMA.ORG
the sensibly handled mature content, This will speak to the intellectual side of any theatergoer. The story is cinematic in nature and minimalist in execution thanks to the superb design team of Motta, stage manager Megan Mingus and costume designer Tesia Dugan Benson. They’ve created a space that highlights colorful, multifaceted characters upon a dreary, blue
and the ensemble cast truly excels at bringing this story to life. Kolis, no stranger to the Dobama stage, bares her soul as Jane and delivers equal parts wit and empathy that make her deconstruction of the single mother trope accessible to anyone, regardless of gender. Adams, another veteran performer at Dobama, also shines as the opinionated yet meek Tom. Adams’
eccentric tendencies give a delightfully quirky edge to the character. As Tom’s wife Marrell, Offutt shares a Modern Family-eqsue chemistry with Adams, as they constantly struggle with their infant child’s ever-fluctuating sleep patterns. Her moments to shine carry a sobering poise, oftentimes when consoling Jane. Offutt’s voice rings through the theater with a seldom-found richness in the few musical numbers she performs. Additionally, Joseph’s portrayal of the androgynous best friend hits that sweet spot between funny and endearing without leaning into the full-on stereotype. As a high-school French teacher by day, Cindric’s accent and fluent spouting of romanticisms and lust are both authentic and charming. Both Cindric and Joseph are making their debut at Dobama with this production, and they seem certain to win over audiences with their tongue-in-cheek tendencies. With unapologetic, biting satire and a ubiquitous appeal, this selfproclaimed “un-romantic comedy” encapsulates modern theater boiled down to its most intuitive elements. With an interpretation by the Dobama staff that truly gets the point of such a dense, chaotic script, This is something you surely won’t want to miss.
scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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ART ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: DEANNA DIONNE From shattered glass comes beautiful things By Dott von Schneider Courtesy of Deanna Dionne
IF YOU’RE NOT ALREADY FAMILIAR with Deanna Dionne, you should be. The Michigan-born artist behind the newly rebranded Street Glass Studios, formerly known as Cleveland Street Glass, moved here in 2014. Her car was broken into several times since then, but she has turned that series of unfortunate events into a boon for creative grit and chutzpah. It turns out that mining art materials from her environment is genetic. “My parents met at an art show,” the artist says. “My mom was selling macrame and my dad was selling pottery. They moved to the Upper Peninsula to live off the land and my father started Teaspoon Creek Pottery. He would dig up the clay near the creek. He built his own studio and kiln, as well. The more I thought about my own work, the more I realized that I’m doing what my dad did. It’s just that the glass was there and it’s available and if it were something else on the street, I might be working with that, too.” At the time of our studio visit with Dionne a few months back, she had been working on a proofof-concept installation. Here she has pieces of auto glass stuck in the wall, like shuriken (throwing stars) lobbed at high velocity. Alongside this piece, there are other sculptural works. We are intrigued by a particular mobile that has striping and ask if that striping is something she added, only to be told that the mobile was created from a tinted rear window; the stripes come from the defrosting mechanism, of course. “Some pieces were too big for jewelry and they sat in the studio until I could do something with them, so I knocked out these mobiles within a week, driven by inspiration. I also like the concept of chains going through tubes and the whole structure. That’s something that comes from jewelry making.” Dionne is completely selftaught and also at a point in her career where people are giving her materials to work with. In her studio, she has a windshield from an auto glass warehouse that was donated to her. “It’s nice to receive these, because now I can control the break,” she says. “I was at the
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| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
“Mettle,” a sculpture made of auto glass, polyester resin, brass and stainless steel.
holiday show at the 78th Street Studios and someone walked up to me with this full pane of glass. Can you imagine? They took the time to move the glass from their garage, transported it in their car, and carried it up the stairs to give it to me!” The artist has instituted a hiatus on events for a while. “I’m at a crossroads and not doing events with my art for a while,” she explains.
worth of work can be exhausting when you think about what you could be doing in the studio. “There’s the risk during the lean times on whether to spend money on art supplies or on food. That’s very real. The past two years at this time I was more depressed than I am now. I think that’s because I’m changing that wheel. I’m in a better head space this year, so although I don’t know what is on the horizon, it’ll be okay.”
DEANNA DIONNE OPEN STUDIO & TOUR 11 A.M. TO 3 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 4. 2218 SUPERIOR AVE., SUITE 200. INSTAGRAM@CLESTREETGLASS CLEVELANDSTREETGLASS.COM
“Multiple events in a month were too much hustle and I was making jewelry for each event and couldn’t concentrate on my sculpture. At Christmas I dove into sculpture, and it was really exciting; so I had to step back from doing events so I could grow as an artist.” The return on investment in an art show is a real struggle for makers. Sitting for eight hours and only selling $80
Since our studio visit, Dionne has been expanding her vision. “When I was in eighth grade, my dream was to be a website designer, so I taught myself; and then I thought I could be a children’s book illustrator, and I illustrated two children’s books and then I said to myself, okay, well you’ve done that now, too. Now I feel accomplished with jewelry brand and now I’ve started sculpture and
it’s a little more unclear and I feel like I need a big goal that’s not so achievable, you know? So it’ll take 10 years to accomplish instead of three. I live so much into the present, I have a difficult time with numbers and surviving and I live year by year, but I don’t want to be in a hamster wheel. I’m breaking that cycle.” On Saturday, May 4, Dionne will be hosting an open studio from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., where guests can check out her jewelry and also interact with her sculptures. Open studios are a great opportunity to get to know an artist and their work in a less formal setting. We are also pleased to learn that Dionne will be one of the exhibiting artists during the sixth annual Rooms to Let in Slavic Village. She is creating a site-specific installation featuring scavenged auto glass as well as other urban materials she will mine from the area, according to her social media posting.
scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene
MOVIES MISSING THE MARK The political satire Long Shot comes up short By Jeff Niesel Photo courtesy of Lionsgate Films
IF THE TERRIFIC HBO COMEDY VEEP hadn’t set the bar for political satire so high, perhaps Long Shot, the new romantic comedy starring Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen, might come off as a very funny take on what would happen if a politically savvy politician (Theron) with the hope of one day becoming president wound up dating a pill-popping, potsmoking left-wing writer (Rogen) unwilling to make any sort of compromises in life. But as it is, the film seems derivative and it struggles to produce sharp-witted comedy on par with the aforementioned VEEP. It opens areawide on Friday. The movie begins in medias res. Fred Flarsky (Rogen), a left-wing journalist for a paper called The Brooklyn Advocate, has infiltrated a “white pride” group. As part of his initiation, he must receive a swastika tattoo. While he’s getting his tattoo, the white pride guys realize that he’s recorded their meeting on his phone, and they threaten his life. He barely escapes. “That’s one for the Jews!” he yells as he makes his getaway after jumping out of a window. When he arrives at work the next day, however, he receives some
bad news. An international media mogul has bought the paper, and the editor (Randall Park) tells him he’ll need to tone down his stories as a result. Fred refuses and quits in protest. To cheer him up, his friend Lance (O’Shea Jackson) takes him out on the town. They wind up at a political fundraiser where Fred confesses that he knows Secretary of State Charlotte Field (Theron), who’s in attendance. She used to babysit him when he was a child, and he had a mad crush on her. After reintroducing himself, he stumbles down the stairs as he makes his exit. Despite the awkward exchange, Charlotte, who aspires to run for president, hires Fred to be her speech writer and takes him with her as she embarks on a mission to recruit some of the nation’s biggest countries to agree to a treaty that will help save the planet by preserving its “bees, trees and seas.” She intends to strike the deal and then go out on a high note and start her presidential campaign. While in the Philippines, she and Fred bond after surviving an insurgent attack. They begin not-so-secretly dating, something that irks Maggie (June Diane Raphael), one of Charlotte’s
main staffers and advisors. At this point, the film takes on a more serious tone as Charlotte must decide if she wants Fred’s gonzo journalism past (while at The Advocate, he penned stories such as “Why the Two-Party System Sucks Dick”) becoming an issue during her presidential campaign. The film’s second half becomes a bit of a slog, and Rogen, in particular, struggles to make the switch to a
more serious tone. That said, Rogen and Theron have great chemistry in the film, something that can’t be said about the stars in 2017’s Snatched, the last film from Long Shot writer-director Jonathan Levine.
jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel
SPOTLIGHT: ASK DR. RUTH RUTH WESTHEIMER, BETTER known as Dr. Ruth, is a Germanborn Jewish immigrant to the United States who became a fixture in late-night television and a major pop culture figure as a sex therapist, media personality and author. So says Alexa — the Amazon smart device – in the opening moments of Ask Dr. Ruth, a documentary chronicling Westheimer’s life and career on the eve of her 90th birthday. Directed by Ryan White (who produced and directed the Netflix documentary series The Keepers), the film opens Friday at the Cedar Lee. “Size doesn’t matter” is the film’s tagline, a reference both to Dr. Ruth’s oft-repeated dictum about male endowment and its relevance to female sexual pleasure, and to the doctor’s diminutive size. (She is
4-feet, 7-inches tall.) As a very old, very small woman, Dr. Ruth is every bit the warm and lively presence on screen as she was during the height of her popularity in the 1980s. She was already “grandmotherly” back then, and it was the juxtaposition of a smiling older woman with a thick German accent speaking frankly about erections, clitoral stimulation and vibrators that made her radio show such a novelty and hit. Much like 2014’s Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary about the eccentric Argentine filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and his failed cinematic magnum opus, Ask Dr. Ruth is driven by the buoyancy of its elder subject. Dr. Ruth is a delight to watch as she interacts with friends and family in the present — she calls Alexa “Alexis” at first — and as she discusses sexuality in archival
footage. Her personal history is astonishing as well. Born in Germany in the late 1920s, Ruth was sent to Switzerland as the Nazis rose to power. After the war, she was sent to an Israeli kibbutz and became a sharpshooter during the early ArabJewish conflict there. Her pre-USA life, though, to which White devotes considerable time, is sometimes hampered by limited visual material. White takes Dr. Ruth to the locations she describes and films her ambling about. But much of her Swiss childhood is conveyed through animation, which doesn’t quite fit the tone of the film at large. The most interesting material is the Speaking Sexually radio program, which unfortunately only occupies the film’s final third. It’s a straightforward biographic
sketch and includes Dr. Ruth’s early advocacy for both abortion rights and AIDS. She has remained, despite these views, avowedly anti-political — she doesn’t even like to be called a feminist — and is concerned exclusively with sexual literacy and respect for differences. There is no “normal,” Dr. Ruth insists. Millennial audiences may or may not be familiar with Dr. Ruth — this reviewer, for example, born in 1988, had never heard of her — and there is pleasure in discovering a recent pop-cultural artifact akin to watching Netflix’s Wild Wild Country, which documented another cultural phenomenon of the early ’80s. — Sam Allard
sallard@clevescene.com t@scenesallard | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
EAT STAYING POWER At Opal in Old Brooklyn, a wine bar matures into a bistro By Douglas Trattner Photo by Emanuel Wallace
THERE ARE FEW MORE ICONIC properties in Old Brooklyn than the sturdy brick fortress at 4250 Pearl Road. What began life as a bank branch in the early 20th century has, in more recent history, been the site of numerous restaurant concepts, from Michaud’s Aloha, where Hawaiian feasts were dished up in a faux Polynesian setting, to Mexico Lindo, a very short-lived Latin eatery. Contemporaries will more likely recall Theo’s Grill, whose sign still clings to the facade, and Drink Bar and Grill, which imbued the neighborhood with more optimism during its five-yearrun than many of its predecessors combined. That weighty mantle now belongs to Tony Mellon and his eight-month-old creation Opal on Pearl. Like many before him, Mellon is personally invested in the neighborhood, having moved to Old Brooklyn from Tremont 13 years ago. He inherited a space that was essentially turnkey thanks to Drink owner Brian Ochs, who did much of the heavy lifting in terms of repairs, renovations and restorations. Mellon has more than a few things in his favor. Thanks to 30-plus years in the hospitality industry, working for talent like Michael Symon, Sergio Abramof, Karen Small and Eric Williams at places such as Caxton Cafe, Johnny’s on Fulton, Lola and Flying Fig, he comes with a deep understanding of the business. That biography also buys a man a certain level of support from friends and patrons amassed along the way. Whether or not they will return all depends on what they find when they get there. What we found during our visits was a cozy neighborhood wine bar with more than enough food to keep guests from leaving when the inevitable hunger pangs strike. Since opening last summer, Opal has matured from a cheese-and-crackers kind of place to a full-fledged restaurant that attracts neighbors — if not cross-towners — for both drinks and dinner. The menu leans to approachable and unfussy, a collection of greatest hits culled from bar and bistro menus everywhere. Small plates like stuffed peppers,
calamari, mussels and flatbread are joined by a limited number of entrees and nightly specials, larger plates to appease bigger appetites. Thrilling takes a back seat to satisfying in dishes like calamari ($11), breaded and fried rings served on a bed of garlicky aioli, and mussels ($11), plump but petite morsels steamed in the customary tomato-wine-butter-garlic broth that
costs make it difficult to compare apples to apples, but charging $8 for a dish of olives and $10 for six chicken wings seems out of line with genial neighborhood pricing. I will say that the wings are delicious — hot, crisp-edged and slicked with a ginger-scented sauce. Buoyed by positive response, Mellon continues to push the envelope of what a wine bar kitchen
OPAL ON PEARL 4250 PEARL RD., 216-417-2030 OPALONPEARL.COM
demands more bread. Opal’s flatbread ($8), a preparation that changes frequently, is better than most pies prepared in the back of a bar, and the sausage-stuffed banana peppers ($11) are appropriately zesty, spicy and dripping with melted cheese. We can’t heap equivalent praise on the crab cakes ($12), a lackluster and altogether lump-free mash that only faintly conjures meals by the shore. I’m not one to gripe about prices as variables like choice of ingredients, portion size and labor
can pull off in terms of large plates. Specials have included compositions like braised short ribs with parsnip puree, bone-in pork chops with charred Brussels sprouts and a seafood-stacked cioppino in a spicy tomato broth. A lean, petite sirloin steak ($15) is grilled to a rosy medium rare and served thinly sliced. Unfortunately, those slices are plopped onto a pool of house steak sauce that is sweet and ketchup-y. The kitchen was out of green beans so they subbed Brussels sprouts,
which, while pleasantly charred, were limp through and through. There is little fault to find, however, with the garlic shrimp ($11) thanks to a handful of chubby, succulent specimens in a garlicky butter sauce accompanied by grilled bread. Opal offers more than 20 wines by the glass priced between $7 and $10, and each one we tried tasted fresh and free from age. A larger wine-by-the-bottle list offers some bigger, blue chip-style labels from California, France and Italy for those so inclined. There’s beer, both draft and bottled, and a full bar, but no cocktail list to speak of. Banks weren’t built to take advantage of the view and there are times when the “dim and sexy” feel of the lounge can edge toward dark and drab, especially on those rare days when the sun is shining on the other side of those few small windows. A soon-to-come front patio should help convince customers to keep coming, as should the scarcity of delightful American bistros like this one in the immediate area.
dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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Thyme Table now open in Bay Village By Douglas Trattner LAST FALL, MICHAEL SMITH moved on from his position at Marigold Catering, where he had worked for nearly a decade. Since then he’s launched his own catering company, taken the wheel of the popular Krav food truck and has opened his first restaurant, Thyme Table (583 Dover Center, 440-781-3025) in Bay Village. The restaurant launched last week in the former home of 583 Bistro. In preparation for the changeover, Smith and company have painted the walls an attractive forest green, installed a tin ceiling, added copper accents and yanked off the white tablecloths to reveal warm wood. Smith describes his restaurant as an upscale tavern, a comfortable place to enjoy good drink, great food and close friends. “To survive these days, you can’t be a special occasion place,” he says. “Where we are, we have to be the kind of place you can afford to go to twice a week, but still have something on the menu so people can celebrate if they want to.” Smith’s experience as a chef for a fashionable caterer provides him with a broad and deep inventory of dishes from which to choose for the restaurant, he notes. “Everything we’ve done over the years has been custom so I’ve had the opportunity to cook pretty much every style of food that you can imagine,” he explains. “So when it came time to write the restaurant menu, it was fairly easy to pull things from the repertoire.” On the menu are temptingsounding snacks and starters like fresh-baked pretzels with beer cheese, crispy fried oysters with remoulade, flaming Greek cheese served with pita, and crispy tater tots capped with lobster, cheese and bacon. There are a handful of fresh, seasonal salads, sandwiches and burgers, and a concise selection of main courses. On the roster are beerbraised short ribs with cheddar grits and broccolini, peppercorn-crusted tuna with sticky black rice, roasted spring vegetable risotto, and grilled hangar steak with hazelnut romesco sauce and asparagus. Thyme Table is open for dinner nightly except Mondays.
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Tacologist now open in University Circle A Tacologist is not a medical specialist who treats patients with an uncontrollable appetite for Mexican food, but rather the name of a new Mexican restaurant that has recently opened in University Circle. The restaurant, an offshoot of the Tres Potrillos family of eateries, has set up shop in much of the former Corner Alley space on Euclid Avenue (11409 Euclid Ave.). Management took inspiration from the location near Case Western Reserve University and incorporated sciencerelated features like glass beakers for cocktails and a periodic table of elements to list tequilas. Starters include guacamole, crispy fried flautas, flaming queso served in an earthenware bowl with or without chorizo, shrimp or mushrooms, and OMG (yes, OMG) queso nachos with or without ground beef or shredded chicken. There are also a quartet of salads. For the main event there are burritos stuffed with chorizo and grilled vegetables or barbecued pork, beans and cheese. Fajitas starring chicken, steak or shrimp come with grilled vegetables, rice, beans, salsa, sour cream and tortillas. Naturally, there are tacos. Classic varieties like pollo, carnitas, carne asada and barbacoa come in housemade corn tortillas and can be mixed and matched. “Especial” ones such as garlic shrimp, el pastor and fried fish come three to an order and cannot be swapped. All come with a choice of sides like lime rice, Mexican rice, black beans or seasonal vegetables. Last but not least are the entree platters starring items like grilled shrimp in garlic sauce, enchiladas with salsa verde, grilled steak and a fried chimichanga. To drink, there are a variety of margaritas — “top-shelf” and otherwise — joined by beer, wine and cocktails.
dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner
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TOMMY STINSON PHOTO COURTESY OF DINA MORALES
he Lemonheads and the Replacements both came out of the 1980s alternative rock scene and left lasting impressions for the way they mixed punk with pop and rock. The Replacements, who hailed from Minneapolis, and the Lemonheads, from Boston, would sign major-label record contracts, and both would receive wider exposure via MTV. While the Replacements have disbanded, bassist Tommy Stinson continues to tour and record. He comes to the Grog Shop on Monday to open for the Lemonheads. And even though the Lemonheads lineup has shifted over the years, singer-guitarist Evan Dando still fronts the band as he did in the early days. The group issued Varshons 2, an eclectic album of cover tunes, earlier this year. In separate phone interviews, the two talk about their respective careers.
T
Talk about how you guys know each other. Dando: I’ve always been a big Replacements fan. I’ve seen them play tons of times. My manager has
done some work with them and put us together, so we could do this tour together. I’ve met Tommy out in Kingston, where he lives, in New York. I’m really looking forward to it. Stinson: We share a manager, but I’ve crossed paths with him over the years. We’ve been forever and a day trying to get together and put our noggins together and write some music, but it hasn’t come to pass yet. Maybe this bus trip on this tour will do it. How will the two sets complement each other? Dando: It will be really fun. We might do some songs together. We’ve done that before, out in Kingston. It will work out well. I really like his songs. He’s a really great guy. Stinson: I don’t know exactly. I haven’t even thought about it. I haven’t given much thought to what I’m going to play yet. I’m leaving it up to magic, or lack thereof. What kind of music originally inspired you when you were growing up? Dando: Starting in 1983, our friend
Patrick Amory, who worked at Matador Records for years and years, went punk. We all went along with him. He went to our high school but was a year or two above us. We all started going to the all-ages shows to see Flipper and the Minutemen. We got introduced to a great bunch of music that was all underground. He worked at Harvard radio too. Back then, he had a show called The Record Hospital. There was a rebirth of punk in 1986, and we all got back into it. Stinson: That’s a bit of a tricky one. I grew up with all this shit that my brother was listening to in the ’70s, all the prog rock and mainstream FM rock and that kind of crap. In my teen years, I got hip to the Clash and the Pistols and things like that. It was then off and running in that direction. The Lemonheads emerged from Boston at a time when the city’s music scene was thriving, and the Replacements came out of Minneapolis when that city’s music scene was thriving. Talk about what it was like to have been part of those scenes.
Dando: It was incredible. We played our second gig ever with the Pixies. What’s wrong with this picture? They were incredible. We saw them a bunch of times before they got big and that was a big treat for us. When I was in Blake Babies, we shared a practice space with them and that was really fun. Stinson: You know, it was interesting. It was a cool music community all said and done. Everyone hung out together and played shows together and this and that. It was kind of diverse. Minneapolis had from Prince to Husker Du and us and everything in between. There were a lot of creative and like-minded misfits there at that time. What it was like to see the band become commercially successful? Dando: We never thought we’d be anything. That happened to all of our friends. Two thousand people started coming to our shows, and we got major label deals. It just happened to everyone. It was surprising. Stinson: You know, we didn’t become commercially successful. We became cultishly successful. We’ve always
The Lemonheads, Tommy Stinson | 8 p.m. Monday, May 6 | Grog Shop, 2785 Euclid H 30
| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
E VA N DA NDO PHOTO COUR T ESY OF JO MURR AY
skirted the perimeter of that. We couldn’t play that game to further our career. [Maybe we could’ve been successful] if someone had told us how to do it or if there was a way to keep your dignity and do it. Then, we might have looked for a fucking loophole. But for all practical purposes, we couldn’t really do it. Did you have a surreal moment of realizing just how popular the group had become? Dando: It was incredibly lucky the whole time. It took a lot of years to get there, and that was good. It was a gradual thing for us that happened over five years. Then, it was easier and easier and seemed like shooting fish in a barrel. It was fun to see bands like Sebadoh and Superchunk sell out [the Boston club] the Channel. Evan, can you talk about the new album. What was your approach with it? Dando: I just needed to put something out and wasn’t quite down with my own record. It was no big deal. It’s just
something that was fun that we could tour on. It’s not apparent that the label put the artists who originally wrote the songs on it, but I think because it’s called Varshons 2, people would know it’s a covers album. This one is a lot of favorite songs along with one weird one that my girlfriend wanted to do, which is “Take It Easy.” I wanted to try them a little differently. With the GiveGoods’ song “Unfamiliar,” we just thought we would soup it up a little more and give it a dub sound. We had never done a reggae song. Tommy, Bash & Pop put out a terrific album two years ago. What do you currently have in the works? Stinson: That record became a Bash & Pop record because I recorded it a particular way. I did solo records that were me playing everything and piecemealing the records together between tours. I like those records, but there was always something missing. It was the band vibe that I missed. When I did the first Bash & Pop record, I wanted to do that. You go into the studio and play the songs
live. We didn’t toil with things like that until we had a budget. That might have been when the biggest change came for the Replacements and could monkey around in the studio. Some things work and some don’t. I didn’t want to overthink. I didn’t want to sit and toil. I just wanted to have some people play the songs with me, so I could do my bit. It’s more of a band vibe. It didn’t feel like a Tommy Stinson solo record. I’m currently finishing up a Cowboys in the Campfire record. It’s me and my buddy Chip. He plays lap steel. It started as a dare years ago. We finally took it to the road when we had nothing to do one summer. We have a record and will put that out and then I’ll start making a Bash & Pop record and get out and tour behind them. What’s kept you going all these years? Dando: Just the love of music. I love playing guitar. I think I’m better at playing too, but it may be an illusion. I keep going against the odds. I’m hard-wired for endurance. The current
lineup is really good. The bassist is an old buddy of mine and guitarist Chris Brokaw is someone whom I’ve been playing with from 2000. The drummer is new, but he worked out great when we went to Europe. Stinson: I don’t know. I still like playing live. I don’t like to pound the pavement, but I like to do it on my own terms and I like to do it when it’s something worth doing. I want to spread myself out a little bit with producing bands and playing shows. There’s enough people who know who I am. I am working my way toward retirement and working it out so I can continue to do what I do in my small way and still have fun with it. I woke up this morning with a song in my head. I’m working on it now. That’s always going to be there. I’m trying to do anything I can nurture the beast and still enjoy it without killing myself.
jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel
eights Blvd., Cleveland Heights | 216-321-5588 | Tickets: $25 ADV, $28 DOS | grogshop.gs | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
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LIVEWIRE
05/01
Adventure Club/Dion Timmer/ Tynan/INZO: 8 p.m., $25 ADV, $30 DOS. House of Blues. The East 21st & East 22nd Street Bands: 8 p.m., $5 ADV, $8 DOS. Grog Shop. PJ Morton/Peter Collins: For his Keys & A Mic tour, singersongwriter PJ Morton will perform a special acoustic set with help from the Amours, a sister duo that accompanied Morton on his Grammy-nominated album Gumbo Unplugged and his 15-piece Tiny Desk Concert. Expect songs such as his cover of “How Deep Is Your Love” and the frenetic album opener “Sticking to My Guns” to really soar as the Amours perfectly complement Morton’s soulful croon. The Amours are preparing to release their first solo music on Morton Records. (Jeff Niesel) 7:30 p.m. Music Box Supper Club. Orville Peck/Jaite/Racket Man: 7 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. PUP/Ratboys/Casper Skulls: 8 p.m., $20. Beachland Ballroom. Reformed Whores: 9 p.m., free. CODA. Suck Lords/Pine Taar/Yambag/ Civil Unrest: 9 p.m., $8. Now That’s Class.
THU
05/02
AK/Visual 9: 7 p.m., $13 ADV, $15 DOS. House of Blues Cambridge Room. Billy Currington: 7 p.m., $39.50$57.50. MGM Northfield Park Center Stage. Dentist/The Swimfan (in the Locker Room): 9 p.m., $6 ADV, $8 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. The Everly Brothers Experience (in the Supper Club): 7:30 p.m., $12 AD, $15 DOS. Music Box Supper Club. Hathaway Brown Solo Voice Showcase: 7:30 p.m., $10. Nighttown. HONNE/Hablot Brown: 8 p.m., $23 ADV, $25 DOS. House of Blues. Kiss the Tiger/Ouster/D. Mills/Shy Moon: 8 p.m., $5 ADV, $7 DOS. CODA. Refresh Collective: Hip Hop At Bop Stop: 6:30 p.m., $10. Bop Stop. Spirits Republic/Vinyl Wings/ Apostle Jones: 8 p.m., $5. Now
Photo by Krista Schlueter
WED
all the live music you should see this week
Singer-songwriter PJ Morton comes to the Music Box. See: Wednesday.
That’s Class. Springbrook/Goodmorning Valentine/Reginleif: 8:30 p.m., $6. Happy Dog. Ullman/Swell’s the Chicago Plan: 8 p.m., $20. Nighttown. Colter Wall/Kacy & Clayton: 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $22 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.
FRI
05/03
Blunts & Blondes/Dutty/Goofym/ Sean 2:16/DJ Jimmy MAC: 9 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. Beachland Ballroom. Bold, Brazen, Brave: Windsong Chorus: 7 p.m., $10. Bop Stop. Bro Dylan/Shawn & Shelby/Joe Joyce Band/Morning Bird (in the Locker Room): 8 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Combichrist/Silver Snakes/Two Dead Roses/Tomorrows Ghosts: 7 p.m. The Winchester. DJ LDC’s Soul Music & Other Music for the Soul: 6 p.m., free. Happy Dog. Flying Luttenbachers/Amanda Howland/Stephe DK/Stephan Haluska/Dogpuncher/KJ Gentilcore: 8 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Now That’s Class. The Cory Grinder Band/Bindley Hardware Co.: 8 p.m., $7 ADV, $10 DOS. Beachland Tavern. Jazz Jam Session: 11 p.m., free. Bop Stop. Lovelytheband/Jagwar Twin/Flora Cash: 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. House of Blues. Mollo Rilla Album Release/ Anaconda Vampire Bats/The
Dreemers: 9 p.m., $10. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Morning Bird/Bro Dylan/Shawn & Shelby/Joe Joyce Band (in the Locker Room): 8 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Punch Drunk Tagalongs/Oregon Space Trail of Doom/Mr. Moon/ Hello Luna: 9 p.m., $6. Happy Dog. Red Wanting Blue/The Trews: 8 p.m., $33 ADV, $38 DOS. The Kent Stage. Richlove/Rule of Young/Kodus/ Bree Lefler: 8 p.m., $5 ADV, $7 DOS. CODA. The Slackers/Green Room/ Rockers/CRAIC: 9 p.m., $13 ADV, $15 DOS. Grog Shop. Jackie Warren: 10:30 p.m., free. Nighttown. Yellowjackets: 7 p.m., $40. Nighttown.
SAT
05/04
Eddie Baccus Sr. with Shirley Cook: 8 p.m., $20. Bop Stop. Etana/Ms BBC: 9 p.m., $15. Grog Shop. Forager/Halo Nelly/Heavenly Creatures/Violent Bloom: 9 p.m., $6. Happy Dog. Klaus Johann Grobe/Vinyl Williams: 9 p.m., $12 ADV, $15 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Horehound/Pillars/Rebreather: 9 p.m., $7. Now That’s Class. Living World/Rucczuck/Shagg/ Distort Hope: 9 p.m., $6. Now That’s Class. New Kids On the Block/Salt-nPepa/Tiffany/Debbie Gibson/
Naughty By Nature: When New Kids on the Block played the Q in 2017, they started the set with “One More Night,” which segued into “My Favorite Girl.” They then quickly delivered the goods with “You Got It (The Right Stuff),” a track they punctuated with pelvic thrusting. They also knew how to pander to the crowd: Donnie Wahlberg changed the song’s lyrics to “All that I wanted was Cleveland … and all that I needed was Ohio.” The guys spent most of the night on the stage extension, which wound its way through a portion of the crowd. Expect something similar this time around as the group comes to town on its MixTape Tour. (Julia Charvat) 8 p.m., $29.95-$109.95. Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse. Ruby Boots + INDIANOLA: 9 p.m., $10. Beachland Tavern. Pete Seeger 100th Birthday Party Featuring John McCutcheon: 8 p.m., $27 ADV, $32 DOS. The Kent Stage. Spring Fling VI with TURNOVER/ Turnstile/Sandy Alex G/Culture Abuse/Remember Sports/ Reptaliens: 4:30 p.m. Agora Theatre. Michael Stanley & Friends Benefit Concert for Cleveland Arts Prize: 8 p.m., $85-$275. Beachland Ballroom. Jackie Warren: 10:30 p.m., free. Nighttown. Evelyn Wright: A Tribute to Nancy Wilson: 8:30 p.m., $20. Nighttown. Evelyn Wright & David Thomas Trio: 12 p.m., $20. Nighttown.
SUN
05/05
Jaimie Branch’s Fly Or Die: 8 p.m., $15. Bop Stop. Leon Bridges/Jess Glynne: 7 p.m. Jacobs Pavilion. DMX: 8 p.m., $37.50 ADV, $40 DOS. House of Blues. Keith Kenny/Taylor Lamborn/SE Grin: 7 p.m., $5 ADV, $8 DOS. CODA. May Noise Lunch with Becoming/ Blame the Moon/Blue / Cassie Bishop/Earthlings/Eddy Marflak/ Khalil Cormier/LeRoi Da Moor/ Micah/MVRDR/ Stephan Haluska: 4 p.m., free. Now That’s Class. MC Lars/MC Frontalot/Mega Ran/ Schaffer the Darklord: 7 p.m., $15. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. Nekromantix/Rezurex/Brainiax: | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
35
LIVEWIRE 8:30 p.m., $9-$20. Grog Shop. One Mic Open: 6 p.m., free. Happy Dog. The Righteous Brothers: 7 p.m., $35-$67.50. Hard Rock Rocksino Northfield Park. Todd Rundgren: Singer-guitarist Todd Rundgren recently embarked on a concert/book tour in support of his autobiography, The Individualist: digressions, dreams and dissertations. The show features songs from the inception of his musical career through 1996, along with segments during which Rundgren tells the stories behind the songs and answers audience questions. (Niesel) 7:30 p.m., $39.50$75. Ohio Theatre. William Elliott Whitmore/Tom Evanchuck: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. Beachland Tavern.
MON
05/06
| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
5/3 | 7PM | $20-$250
BOLD, BRAZEN, BRAVE: WINDSONG 5/3 | 11PM | FREE
JAZZ JAM SESSION 5/4 | 8PM | $20
EDDIE BACCUS SR QUARTET FEATURING SHIRLEY COOK 5/5 | 8PM | $15
JAIMIE BRANCH’S FLY OR DIE 5/8 | 8PM | $15
IN THE SEA (TRISTIAN HONSINGER, JOSHUA ZUBOT, NICOLAS CALOIA)
A LAD INSANE 5/10 | 8PM | $20
DAN PUGACH NONET 5/11 | 8PM | $20
LENI STERN TRIO 5/12 | 7PM | $15
BRIAN KROCK’S LIDDLE
05/07
California Guitar Trio & Montreal Guitar Trio (in the Supper Club): 7:30 p.m., $22 ADV, $28 DOS. Music Box Supper Club. An Evening with Beth Hart, A Special Solo Performance: $35.50$52.50. Ohio Theatre. Gun Outfit/Street Rat/Chelsea Bridge/Obnox/House Panther Diadem Ensemble: 8 p.m., $8. Now That’s Class. Jamey Haddad With Oberlin Ensembles: 7 p.m., $10. Bop Stop. J.I.D./Saba/MEZ/Mereba: 8:30 p.m., $28-$99. Beachland Ballroom. Kings Kaleidoscope: 7:30 p.m., $25$60. Grog Shop. Knife Knights/Lando Chill/Nothing Major: 8 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes. LANY/Fletcher: 7 p.m., $25-$35. Masonic Auditorium. The Yawpers/In the Whale: 8:30 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Beachland Tavern.
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HIP HOP AT THE BOP STOP
5/9 | 7PM | $10
Hippo Campus/Samia: 8 p.m., $22 ADV, $25 DOS. House of Blues. The Lemonheads/Tommy Stinson: 8 p.m., $25 ADV, $28 DOS. Grog Shop. Todd Rundgren: 7:30 p.m., $39.50$75. Ohio Theatre. Strand of Oaks/Apex Manor: 8:30 p.m., $18. Beachland Tavern.
TUE
5/2 | 6:30PM | $10
REFRESH COLLECTIVE PRESENTS
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rock / pop / electronic / hip hop THURSDAY 5.2 THE HOOKUP (10pm) College ID night with DJ MIKE FILLY
MON 5/6
THE LEMONHEADS TOMMY STINSON
FRI 6/28
MON 5/20
SMOKING POPES THE ATARIS
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TASTE MY MOVEMENT PRESENTS THE CRASH COURSE,, WITH
2/3%,,/ s ,5#+9 &%%s3/5, #)4 9 HEIRESS BEHAVIOR SAT 5/11
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WEAR YOUR WOUNDS UNIFORM SEERESS TUE 5/14
IRON REAGAN SACRED REICH LEEWAY ENFORCED
FRI 6/7
MON 7/8
HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER ANNA ST LOUIS
LOS CAMPESINOS!
LUNCHTIME CHRONICLES (7PM) PODCAST NETWORK LAUNCH PARTY THE THOUSANDS (10PM) THROWBACK JAMS
SAT 6/8
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SWEET SPIRIT PART TIME LOVER
HOP ALONG
SMITH-TAYLOR
w/ DJ K NYCE & COREY GRAND SUNDAY 5.5 OPEN STAGE SOUND SYSTEM (9pm) Full Band Open Mic Night
TUE 6/11
SAT 7/14
ARI LENNOX BABY ROSE
SEBADOH
ELEANOR FREIDBERGER
-)+(!,! *%.% RON GILMORE
Hosted by XELA MONDAY 5.6 SHITSHOW KARAOKE (9pm) TUESDAY 5.7 LYRICAL RHYTHMS (9pm)
FRI 6/14
THU 7/18
BEN NICHOLS OLIVER PECK
DEVIN THE DUDE
AUSTIN CRAIG
Live Band Open Mic Poetry Hip Hop Soul Experience THE GROG SHOP PRESENTS AT
AGORA
SAT 6/15
SAT 8/3
HELADO NEGRO TASHA
TUE 9/17
THE REGRETTES
PEACHCURLS
THE GROG SHOP PRESENTS AT
HOUSE OF BLUES
MON 5/6
WED 5/15
FURIOUS BONGOS THE MUSIC OF FRANK ZAPPA THU 5/16
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SAT 5/18
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TEENAGE BOTTLEROCKET RAMONA HEART & LUNG
THU 6/20
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ANNA CLENDENING
SAT 6/22
LUCY SPRAGGAN
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PARKER MILSAP TOM EVANCHUCK
LOCAL H TUE 6/18
HIPPO CAMPUS
SAT 8/10
SUN 6/16
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BRITTANY’S RECORD SHOP *SL]LSHUK ,90, :;9,,; .<0;(9: >PSSV\NOI` 3667 ;YLTVU[ 4@ 405+»: ,@, 9,*69+: 3HRL^VVK 9,*69+ 9,=63<;065 *SL]LSHUK /LPNO[Z 9,*69+ :/67 >PSSV^PJR :8<(9, 9,*69+: (RYVU ;/, =05@3 .966=, )LKMVYK
THU 7/18
KURT VILE
& THE VIOLATORS
FRI 7/19
BELLE & SEBASTIAN THE GROG SHOP PRESENTS AT
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* ) $ FRI 5/17 *!-%34/7. 2%6)6!, TUE 5/7
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| clevescene.com clevesceene.com m | May 1 - 7, 2019 20019
37
KentStage =HGÍM FBLL MA>L> @K>:M LAHPL MB<D>ML HG L:E> GHP
5/9
PHIL VASSAR HitsTeria Tour with Special Guest David Nail
6/1
FRANKIE SCINTA The Showman
5/31
6/11
COLLECTIVE SOUL AND GIN BLOSSOMS Now’s The Time Tour
6/16
BIG HEAD TODD & THE MONSTERS & TOAD THE WET SPROCKET
6/18
RANDY RAINBOW
6/23
PATTI LABELLE
6/29
DAVID FEHERTY Live Off Tour!
7/5
RUSSELL PETERS Deported World Tour
Fri. May 3
Pete Seeger 100th birthday party
Uriah Heep
featuring
May 9, 10 & 11
John McCutcheon Sat. May 4
6/2
MELISSA ETHERIDGE
6/22
ROB THOMAS Chip Tooth Tour
Red Wanting Blue
SAMMY HAGAR’S Full Circle Jam Tour Featuring Michael Anthony, Vic Johnson & Jason Bonham Benefiting Akron Children’s Hospital
Martin Barre
Nils Lofgren Band
Celebrates 50 Years of Jethro Tull May 14 & 15
6/8
Alex Bevan & David J. Young Fri May 17
Thu May 16
WFC 107 Live Championship Boxing
An Evening with John Waite
Joanne Shaw Taylor Tue May 21
Wed May 22
Steve Earle and the Dukes
Karla Bonoff
Christone “Kingfish” Ingram
Sun May 19
Thu May 30
Sat. June 1
X
Thu June 13
JUST ANNOUNCED ROB LITTLE FEATURING RJ MCCARTHY 7PM & 9:30PM
5/31
6/1
PROGNATION CLASSIC PROG-ROCK TRIBUTE 8PM
6/22 BRETT SCALLIONS OF FUEL UP CLOSE & ACOUSTIC 8PM
6/7
THE FM PROJECT STEELY DAN TRIBUTE 8PM
7/5 7/6
5/10 5/11
KICK THE INXS EXPERIENCE 8PM
OVER THE RHINE Love & Revelation Tour
THE SELECTER
40th Anniversary Tour (1979-2019) PLUS SPECIAL GUEST & DJ
h^eZW ZWaWh
EARL DAVID REED
FEATURING JESSE BLANCO 7PM & 9:30PM
LAS VEGAS IS HERE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT TICKETMASTER.COM AND THE BOX OFFICE, OPEN DAILY FROM 1PM - 9PM. ALL TICKET SALES FINAL. 10777 Northfield Road, Northfield, OH 44067 | 330.908.7625 | MGMNorthfieldPark.com Must be 21 years or older to gamble. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, help is available. For free confidential help 24/7, call the Ohio Problem Gambling Helpline at 1.800.589.9966 or visit www.org.ohio.gov.
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| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
FRI. JUNE 21
FRI. SEPT. 13
:EE LAHPL :M MA> D>GM LM:@> NGE>LL HMA>KPBL> GHM>= Tickets available at thekentstage.com or 877-987-6487 GMK [w cw i {{ © a{ B e~ JJHJF
| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
39
BAND OF THE WEEK JERRY POPIEL By Jeff Niesel Photo courtesy of Jerry Popiel
MEET THE BAND: Jerry Popiel (guitar,
vocals) BIRDHOUSE IN HIS SOUL: Popiel grew
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| clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
up on Cleveland’s west side and originally played in the Birdhouse Gourds, a band from Lorain County, during the mid-2000s. With the Gourds, he played 1980s-style rock in the vein of acts such as Barenaked Ladies, Gin Blossoms and R.E.M. Since that band called it a day, he’s released one full-length and one EP as a solo artist. Over that time, he’s opened for a diverse set of acts, including Leon Russell, the Strawbs, Sister Hazel, the Fixx and Shawn Mullins. A SINGLES GUY: Earlier this year, Popiel released a series of terrific singles. Last month, he issued the digital single “Fall Asleep,” which is currently available on Spotify, Apple Music and iTunes. He describes it as a song “about two people not quite coming to terms with the truth.” He also just put out “Michigan Street,” which has gotten about 2,000 streams on Spotify, and “When I Was Younger,” which is just starting to get some traction. He hopes to put these songs out again on a fulllength later this year.
introduced him to Kevin Bianchi, the “lead guy” for both bands, and the two bonded. “We got introduced, and we did a few things while the bands were recording and helped each other out,” says Popiel. “[Bianchi] asked me to join just one of the bands, but it turned into joining both of them.” Popiel says co-writing with Bianchi is in the works too. WHY YOU SHOULD HEAR HIM: “Are You
Awake?” Popiel croons at the start of “Fall Asleep,” a jangle-y ballad that recalls ’90s-era R.E.M. “‘Fall Asleep’ was written about five years ago, and I figured out the best presentation for it just recently,” says Popiel. “I write songs all the time. I wrote ‘Michigan Street’ about two years ago. And after that, I wrote ‘When I Was Younger.’ Just this winter, I figured out it sounded better as a slow song. When it comes to songwriting, I don’t chase the latest trends. I simply focus on writing good lyrics and melodies.” WHERE YOU CAN HEAR HIM :
jerrypopiel.com. WHERE YOU CAN SEE HIM: Jerry Popiel performs at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 3, at Brothers Lounge.
AS IF THE SOLO CAREER WASN’T ENOUGH:
Popiel also recently joined the local bands the Chestertons and Vanishing Shores. A mutual friend
jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel
SAVAGE LOVE QUICKIES by Dan Savage I’ve been with my boyfriend for a few months. Prior to dating, I was clear with him that I would need to open our relationship at some point. He initially hesitated to respond, but then agreed we could do that when the time came. That time has come much quicker than I anticipated, but I feel like he’ll renege on his end of things because of many comments he’s made recently — comments like not understanding or liking nonmonogamy and how “his woman” sleeping around is a deal breaker. Is this a DTMFA situation? — Specified Open Relationship Early Early on, you let your boyfriend know that openness “at some point” was your price of admission — the price he’d have to pay to be with you — and now he’s letting you know that monogamy is his price of admission. What’s going on here? Well, sometimes Person A tells Person B what Person A knows Person B wants to hear regarding Topic X in the hopes that Person B will feel differently about Topic X after the passage of time or after Person B has made a large emotional investment in Person A. In many cases, Person A has the best intentions — by which I mean, Person A isn’t being consciously manipulative, but rather Person A sincerely hopes Person B will come to feel differently about Topic X or that they, Person A themselves, will. But considering how little time has passed, SORE — it hasn’t even been three months, and he’s saying shitty/judgy things to you about nonmonogamy and sexist/ controlling things about “his woman” — it seems clear that your boyfriend wasn’t being sincere, he was being manipulative. DTMFA.
This is another request for a kinky neologism. How about those of us who like the idea of our significant other having sex with somebody else but who aren’t into full-on cuckold-style humiliation? “Cuckold” implies a level of subordination that just isn’t my thing, and “hotwifing,” besides sounding incredibly sleazy, assumes that it’s a couple that is opposite sex and married, and the guy is only
interested in watching. Can you or the hive mind solve this problem? — Cuck In Name Only I don’t think the term “hotwifing” is inherently heterosexist, as there are gay men and straight women out there into “hothusbanding.” (They get off on sharing their hot spouses with others, aren’t necessarily interested in getting with anyone else themselves, and don’t, a la cuckolds, get off on humiliation.) But if that term doesn’t appeal to you, CINO, there’s already an alternative: stags (a man who may or may not be dominant who likes to share his partner and may or may not participate) and vixens (a woman who may or may not be submissive who enjoys having sex with others in front of her partner and may or may not share them with others too).
I’ve experienced anal itching in the past, and I’m not ashamed to say I enjoyed it. It felt so insanely good to satisfy that itching inside. I can find lots of information about relieving anal itching, but I can’t find anything about inducing it for pleasure. — Into Tormenting Clean Heinie According to the Mayo Clinic, keeping your ass too clean or letting it get too dirty can induce anal itching, as can pinworms, diabetes, and anal tumors. Seeing as you probably don’t want diabetes or rectal cancer, and since pinworms aren’t for sale at your local bait shop, ITCH, you could try scrubbing your ass with harsh soaps, which is what the Mayo Clinic urges people who don’t want itchy anuses to avoid. (I reverse engineered their advice for you. You’re welcome.) Good luck, and please don’t write back to let us know how you’re progressing, okay?
I am a 24-year-old pansexual trans woman, and I feel sexually broken. Hormones have made it nearly impossible for me to top a partner. I’m able to do it once in a while, but not as much or as reliably as I would like. Additionally, hormones have messed up my digestive system and
made bottoming difficult. I’m also relatively sexually inexperienced, which means I’m enthusiastic about oral but not very good at it. This leaves me feeling like I bring nothing to the table. — Horny But Sex Is Thorny Getting good at oral — like getting good at anything — takes a little practice. Let your prospective partners know you’re relatively inexperienced, and you’ll be far likelier to wind up in bed with patient and supportive people who will let you practice on them. As for bottoming, hopefully your guts will settle down in time. As for topping, well, lots of women use strap-on dildos for penetration. Having a strap-on at the ready and actively seeking out partners who don’t regard strap-on sex as a consolation prize (or a fail) will allow you to experiment with penetration without the pressure of having to produce or sustain an erection. You can switch back and forth between your dick and the dildo as needed, and being able to make it happen for your lover — using whatever tools you need — will build your confidence. And you’re not broken, HBSIT. You are, like all of us, a work in progress. Good luck.
I’m a college prof. Several female students have confided in me they’re having trouble finding guys. (They’re not hitting on me — and even if they were, no way am I dating a student.) These girls are smart, nice, interesting, and usually obese. You and I both know that in this imperfect world, many (most?) people place importance on looks. But how do I tell them that? A straight, single, male professor telling a female student, even gently, that dropping 20 pounds might help her dating prospects is extremely risky. — Professionally Risky Observation Flummoxes Oh my god. Keep your mouth shut. First, because it’s an asshole thing to say — never mind the professional risk — and second, because it’s not true. (Welcome to America, PROF, where most people are overweight or obese
and most people are partnered or married.) The likelier culprit here (besides a skewed sample size and confirmation bias) is the scarcity of available male partners. Women now significantly outnumber men on college campuses: “Where men once went to college in proportions far higher than women — 58 percent to 42 percent as recently as the 1970s — the ratio has now almost exactly reversed,” Jon Marcus wrote in the Atlantic. Graduating will probably do more to improve their romantic prospects than dropping 20 pounds.
I recently broke up with a girl because she didn’t know what plate tectonics was. We dated for three months. Great sex! Loved cooking together! Enjoyed spending time with her! But she was raised Mormon — and more important than that, she was simply NOT CURIOUS about science and the world. In all honesty, I think she’s a little dumb, although she doesn’t come off that way. Science! Politics! Philosophy! All of these things are important in my life! Am I wrong for breaking up with her? — Date Tectonics No! You did her a favor! I knew nothing about classical music before I fell in love with someone who’s passionate about classical music. I know a lot about it now and I actually enjoy it — but I didn’t get there in three months. My husband didn’t follow the news closely until he fell in love with a news junkie. Now he’s a daily reader of the New York Times and the Washington Post — but he didn’t get there in three months. The more time we spent together, the more interest we took in each other’s interests. There’s a lesson in here for you somewhere, DT, but I’m going to let you tease it out — because you’re CURIOUS and SMART, right? On the Lovecast, Dan interviews sociologist and author Nicholas A. Christakis: savagelovecast.com.
mail@savagelove.net t@fakedansavage | clevescene.com | May 1 - 7, 2019
41
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