Scene May 29, 2019

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Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat

CONTENTS

Group Publisher Chris Keating Publisher Andrew Zelman Editor Vince Grzegorek

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Upfront

Editorial Music Editor Jeff Niesel Senior Writer Sam Allard Staff Writer Brett Zelman Web Editor Laura Morrison Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Visual Arts Writer Dott von Schneider Copy Editor Elaine Cicora Interns Preeya Shankar, Alana Whelan

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The Ohio state legislature has some stones

Feature

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

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Testifying at the Tiro Testicle Festival

Creative Services Art Director/Production Manager Steve Miluch Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace

'ET /UT

Business Sales Assistant/Receptionist Megan Stimac Controller Kristy Dotson

More cool events than you can stuff in a sack

Circulation Circulation Director Don Kriss Euclid Media Group Chief Executive OfďŹ cer Andrew Zelman Chief Operating OfďŹ cers Chris Keating, Michael Wagner VP Digital Services Stacy Volhein Digital Operations Coordinator Jaime Monzon www.euclidmediagroup.com

Art

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A diverse batch of Cleveland artists tackle Fabulism and ask how you like them apples

National Advertising Voice Media Group 1-800-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com Cleveland Scene 737 Bolivar Rd., #4100 Cleveland, OH 44115 www.clevescene.com Phone 216-241-7550 Retail & ClassiďŹ ed Fax 216-241-6275 Editorial Fax 216-802-7212 E-mail scene@clevescene.com

Eat

27

A swift kick to the nuts for a near-westside restaurant’s hopes

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

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Music

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Balls to the wall for this week’s concert lineup

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Dan’s helpful cupping tip

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UPFRONT REPUBLIC SERVICES WOULD APPRECIATE IF WE’D STOP PUTTING LIVE AMMO AND DEAD ANIMALS IN THE RECYCLING

Photo by Sam Allard

THE REPUBLIC SERVICES recycling center in New Russia Township, Ohio, receives, on average, one bowling ball per day.

Of the 400 tons of ostensibly recyclable material that’s trucked into the facility from municipal, commercial and industrial clients stretching from Toledo to Cleveland, about 60 percent is “recovered.” That means 60 percent is sorted, baled and shipped to consumers who put the material to various new uses — recycled, in other words.

The rest is mostly trash.

On the hangar-like tipping floor where material has been dumped, mountains of cardboard (from the commercial clients) have sprung up next to the cascades of multicolored, multi-textured detritus (from curbside municipal programs).

“We see an old shoe every few minutes,” operations manager Dan Schoewe told Scene at the facility recently, pointing at the children’s slide, toolbox and basketball within view. “We see baby diapers, scrap steel, guns, ammunition, propane tanks, dead animals. And when we get material like that, everything around it is contaminated too.”

Guns? Scene wanted to confirm.

“Oh yeah,” Schoewe said. “We’ve had them come in when they’re loaded. We get shotgun shells a lot actually. I’ve got a five-gallon bucket, and I keep all the ammunition until we get a gun, and then I give it over to the sheriff.”

Schoewe couldn’t speculate on why anyone would throw a loaded gun into a recycling bin, but said in some cases, people just toss out

boxes of material without knowing their contents. Others, he said, have a warped idea of what it means to ‘recycle’.

“They think, ‘Oh, someone else could use this. I’ll just recycle it.’ But that’s not how it works. That’s not how our program works anyway. I always say, ‘when in doubt, throw it out.’”

The biggest problem for recycling facilities like this one, 35 miles west of Cleveland, isn’t apathetic folks who don’t recycle at all. It’s what Schoewe called “wishful recyclers,” who fill up their bins with items they hope are recyclable, but often cause more harm than good. The additional contaminants are becoming more costly as the market for recycled goods constricts.

“It’s sad, because these are people

trying to go above and beyond,” he said.

The Republic recycling center installed new equipment at a cost of $9 million in 2012. It sorts paper, plastic, cardboard, aluminum and glass by ocular and magnetic means before shuttling it along specified conveyor belts where human sorters extract items that haven’t been properly sorted. The 30 sorters per 10-hour shift function as the machines’ quality control. The material ends up in segregated bins and is then baled — compacted into rectangular cuboids — and stacked before being shipped to destinations coordinated by a materials marketing team.

Until recently, a major destination for the nation’s recyclables was China. But starting last year, China | clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

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UPFRONT has refused to accept a number of materials, including plastic and mixed paper products, unless they are extremely clean.

“They use to give us 5-percent contamination,” Schoewe said, meaning that for every 100 pounds of a specific material shipped to China, five pounds were permitted to be something other than that material. “But then they went down to half a percent.”

This strict standard meant that China was frequently rejecting loads, and Republic was forced to pay $8,000 to $10,000 per load, Schoewe estimated, in freight costs.

“It’s a real gamble to send something overseas,” he said. “You better have high-quality stuff.” (In related news, Canada is now spending more than $1 million to ship 69 containers of rotting garbage back from the Philippines, where it was sent in 2013 and 2014, improperly labeled as recyclable plastics. The Philippines’ president, Rodrigo Duterte, threatened to dump the garbage in Canadian territorial waters if the country failed to collect the shipments.)

This dramatic change — in which

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Asian countries like China have prioritized domestic waste disposal and declared that they will no longer be the planet’s garbage can — has forced Republic and other material recovery firms to ship domestically, where there’s considerably lower capacity.

“Now there’s an overabundance of supply,” Schoewe said. “So you can imagine what that does to the price.”

He said Republic is now paying their purchasers to take mixed paper products off their hands.

“We went from making $50 per ton to paying $10 per ton,” he said.

“We’re still doing it, because we’re committed to recycling, but it’s harder and harder.”

And Republic can’t keep its bales in storage until the market rebounds.

They get 400 tons of material every day, and don’t have the storage capacity to keep material long-term.

“In January, I had 1,200 bales sitting around,” Schoewe said. “That’s the total capacity of this room. We couldn’t move it, and this stuff has a shelf-life. Sometimes there’s a little pop or milk in there. It starts to break down, starts to smell. We’re at the mercy of the market. I’ve seen cardboard sell for $200 a ton and I’ve seen it sell for $10. I do 1,000 tons per month, so I either made $200,000 or $10,000. And we didn’t do anything

| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

different in the middle. It’s a rough business.”

That’s why Republic and municipalities are pushing so hard to educate residents about recycling protocol. The lower the contamination levels, the higher quality of the material and the more money they make. (Or, in some cases, the less money they lose.)

It’s not like private citizens on Ohio’s North Coast should be losing sleep about a major corporation’s ability to maximize its profits. But they should be concerned about the ramifications of the current market. In Philadelphia, for example, fully half of the city’s recyclable tonnage is not recycled at all but shipped to an incinerator and burned, increasing pollution levels and the risk of disease for the largely minority communities that live nearby.

In many cases, municipal recycling contracts have become so expensive that they’ve abandoned curbside recycling collection all together.

Schoewe said he understands why some cities make that decision, but said it’s frustrating because once you change someone’s behavior, “it’s hard to change it back.”

Last summer, the City of Cleveland began re-issuing $100 fines for failure to comply with curbside waste disposal rules.

The Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District has helpful information related to individual municipalities’ programs available on its website. It highlights that there are really only five categories of items that should be recycled these days: cans, cartons, glass, paper and cardboard boxes, and plastic jugs and bottles.

Schoewe said that what’s most important on his end, assuming you’re recycling the proper material, is that items are “empty, clean and dry.” He also pleaded that folks not recycle plastic bags, which frequently get caught in the machines and are difficult to remove from individual recycling streams.

“Listen, if you’re the kind of person who doesn’t want to recycle,” said Schoewe, “buddy, I’m not trying to force it on you. Just don’t contaminate our good recycling materials.”

— Sam Allard

As the County Jail Deals With More Suicides, What’s Up With Cuyahoga County’s Plans for Mental Health Crisis Centers?

When the Greater Cleveland Congregations announced in late August of 2017 that it would

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UPFRONT

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withdraw its petitions for a ballot referendum on the city of Cleveland’s portion of the Q Deal renovations, it came as almost a complete surprise.

The groundswell campaign to rectify a secretive and speedy decision to give Cavs owner and billionaire Dan Gilbert what many, including Scene, felt was an outsized public handout represented an invigorating and righteous democratic check on Mayor Jackson and company.

Surely, one thought in the immediate aftermath, they had won hard-fought compromises from the powers that be and not succumbed to backroom pressure from the brokers — Carole Hoover, Marcia Fudge, among others — who’d been dispatched as intermediaries to convince the GCC that it would be in its best interest to simply go away. Surely, they had held firm to their demands: “a community investment fund with matching dollars that would go toward ‘urgent and concrete’ regional issues in communities of need: workforce development, youth programming, housing, mental health, others.”

Turns out, not so much.

That day in August of 2017 the GCC issued a statement saying, “The GCC applauds the expressed commitment from County Executive Armond Budish, through mediators, to mental health and substance abuse crisis centers, which GCC has sought throughout its current campaign. This commitment represents a dramatic shift toward decriminalizing mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction.

Research and evidence suggest that the construction or rehab costs for at least two centers to be $10 million, with an annual cost of roughly $1.4 million per center. We recognize the county’s intent to further research these investment costs and search for best practices.”

There was, of course, no actual commitment from the county. In later interviews with Cleveland. com and others, Budish would say there was never any concrete agreement. And over the past two years, a county spokesperson would tell Scene repeatedly that there was nothing to announce or discuss on the matter.

The need for mental health crisis centers was already evident in 2017, with the case of Tanisha Anderson just the most visible example of the kind of interactions with police and the criminal justice system that

would be far better handled by those with mental health expertise. That need has only become more clear and dire in the ensuing years, as the county jail’s disastrous track record has been exposed and laid bare, sadly on the backs of nine people who have died there in just the past year.

There were 69 suicide attempts by inmates in the Cuyahoga County jail in 2018, according to numbers released by the county. That’s a 64-percent increase from 2017, when there were 42 suicide attempts, which itself was a jump from 2016, when there were 23 attempts. And, as the sad death of a National Guard vet who had struggled with heroin addiction and hanged himself in the county jail last week reminds us, there’s a broad intersection between the need for mental health and substance abuse treatment.

So, what’s up with those crisis centers?

Prosecutor Mike O’Malley has been meeting regularly with the GCC since winning the election, and in addition to plans for a specific gun docket for youthful offenders (which just recently launched) and hopes for a fourth drug court, the sides have continued to work on the issue.

“We’ve been working with people within the county and outside the county trying to develop them, both for pre-arrest and post-arrest, where people who hare having a crisis can be taken to help stabilize them and doing what we can to help them avoid the criminal justice system,” O’Malley told Scene last month.

While progress has been made, they’ve also encountered a hiccup in a newly interested county executive who, after years of sidelining the issue and following a round of indictments against jail officials and a blistering U.S. Marshal’s report on its operations, surprisingly announced in February that he hoped to build a facility for those dealing with mental health or substance abuse issues where they could be diverted instead of going to the county jail.

This nugget from Cleveland.com’s report on the announcement says all you need to know, however: “Budish offered no timeline or price tag for the project, and declined to disclose the proposed location. But he said his administration has been working on the plans for more than a year.”

If the administration had been working on the plans for more than a year, that was news to O’Malley and the GCC, as well as to Judge John Russo and Judge Holly Gallagher, the latter of whom runs the county’s mental health court

Photo by Sam Allard

docket.

“There are two separate groups, and I was assisting with the GCC,” O’Malley said. “We were trying to work toward that goal, and the county executive has been working as well. We’ve been talking to the Gund Foundation, trying to get a study done as to what type of center is needed in terms of size, beds, population, what the best model out there is. And, now, we’ve also been working with the county executive as well, as he goes down that track.

He had been meeting with St. Vincent, trying to work out a deal where we can get a center at or near the St. Vincent campus to have a one-stop mental health crisis center.

As for whatever speech it was when he first said it, I can tell you I didn’t know anything about it and the court was very surprised.”

Given Budish’s late-arriving interest in the county jail, as well as what one might assume are lingering misgivings over the GCC’s effort to squash the Q Deal and O’Malley’s office’s investigation into his administration, it’s not hard to believe he’d refuse to seek out the assistance of those he might blame for his woes.

O’Malley hopes that the two sides

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can eventually work hand-in-hand with each other.

For his part, he was part of a group that made a trip to Franklin County where they’re in the brickand-mortar phase of a mental health crisis center, and also to Miami,

where the city is building a new one.

“I see progress being made, and with the crisis at the jail, it’s all so interconnected,” he said. As for a timeframe when we might see a ceremonial ribbon cut: “It’s too early to predict; I wish it were yesterday.”

Reached for comment, Donna Weinberger of the GCC said, “GCC is continuing to push for pre-booking mental health Crisis Centers as we work on diverting the mentally ill and addicted away from jail and into treatment. We are not yet ready to be

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State of Ohio, ‘Bought and Paid For’ by Plastic Bag Lobby, Looks to Preempt Local Ban Once Again Republicans in the Ohio Statehouse are once again attempting to prevent local communities from regulating auxiliary containers like plastic bags with new legislation in deďŹ ance of home rule. (Home rule is the idea, enshrined in the state constitution, that Ohio cities can pass their own laws).

Reps. George Lang of Butler County and Don Jones of Warren County have introduced House Bill 242, a revamp of last year’s House Bill 625. The bill seeks to preempt taxation and regulation of auxiliary containers.

It is an “over-reaching bill based on lobbyist funding and passed by an uneducated state legislature,â€? in the words of Orange Village Council president Brandon Duber. Orange was the ďŹ rst community in Ohio to enact a plastic bag ban last year. The new bill, if passed, would invalidate the ban.

County councilwoman Sunny Simon, who has been leading the charge locally for plastic bag regulation, told Cleveland.com that she wasn’t surprised the statehouse was “bought and paid for by the plastic and chemical industries with no consideration to the longterm damage and impact to the environment.�

The state bill was likely resuscitated because Cuyahoga County is planning to establish a ban. After Simon and her co-sponsors failed to rally support for a fee on plastic bags last year, they have managed to enlist allies in support of a ban, based largely on environmental concerns. Council was expected to vote on the ban at their next meeting on May 28.

Speaking on behalf of the plastic bag industry, “Representative� George Lang told Scene last year that HB 625 was “primarily aimed to help business.� In fact, it was “all about� reducing the cost and complexity of regulations for businesses. (Lang’s district is home to a plastic bag manufacturer.)

Cleveland.com reported that in a memo sent earlier this month,

Lang wrote to his colleagues that the legislation was supported by the Ohio Beverage Association, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and “other politically inuential business groups.â€?

The memo echoes Lang’s comments to Scene: “When everyday products like paper cups, grocery bags, to-go containers and soft-drink bottles are taxed and regulated inconsistently within a state, it creates costly problems for manufacturers, businesses and working families.

Adopting statewide uniformity for auxiliary containers is a way to protect against overregulation, support manufacturing jobs and uphold consumer freedom.� — Allard

DIGIT WIDGET $100+ MILLION Projected “economic impact� of 2021 NFL Draft in Cleveland, whatever that means. This year’s draft in Nashville attracted ~600,000 attendees (more than half of whom were from outside the region) and generated ~$10 million in tax revenue.

$14.5 MILLION Estimated total cost of putting on the four major sporting events over ďŹ ve years, including the draft, according to the Cleveland Sports Commission. Through its Velocity fundraiser, it has raised about $4 million so far.

42 Number of new cases of Hepatitis A diagnosed in Cleveland since January 2018, according to the Cleveland Department of Health.

Ohio declared a statewide emergency in 2018 and since then there have been 2,298 cases, 1,413 hospitalizations, and eight deaths.

$778 MILLION Estimated cost, as of last year, for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ plans for a project to permanently stop Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes. The project received approval last week.

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FEATURE CONSIDER THE TESTICLE A journey into rural Ohio for the annual Tiro Testicle Festival and a sense of who we are

By Eric Sandy All photos by Eric Sandy

THE SMALL, PUNGENT AND minimally advertised Tiro Testicle Festival is held in late spring each year in the part of Ohio where the Lake Erie Basin gives way to monocrop agriculture, meaning somewhere vaguely west of I-71 in what geologists refer to as the glacial till plains. The loamy interior of the state is threaded nimbly by Route 61, which wends south from Ruggles Beach to Shelby. Based solely on a cursory afternoon drive, the region’s tentpole communities are church-going and motorcycle-riding.

On Route 61 alone, you’ll find an alpaca ranch, a surfeit of Methodist ministries and a neat billboard trumpeting the sale of “Christmas trees” in early May. This part of Ohio is governed by almanacs, by seasonal shifts in climate and social occasion. Like the warm rite of planting rhubarb crowns in spring, it is known that the brickwork Tiro Tavern, at 102 Main St., will host its testicle festival every year, synced neatly with the sudden stirrings of buds on great oak trees. We’re compelled to visit, if only for the mindless sense of adventure.

We’re compelled, you see, in a professional sense, to immerse ourselves in regional tourist staples and gastronomic curiosities. Ohio gives us this gift. There’s a strange kind of education to be found in things like the Duck Creek Log Jam in Logan or the Shiloh Ox Roast down on Delaware Street in Shiloh, Ohio. The Tiro Testicle Festival. Hit the road; find the story. Pure Neil Zurcher.

We arrive in Tiro on Saturday afternoon, and the crowd is only beginning to build. “Tuesday’s Gone” plays loudly in the background of the scene. We mingle, we mill about.

When my travel companion and I sidle up to the Budweiser truck out back and order our second round of 12-oz. Yuengling and Pabst Blue Ribbon, respectively, the man behind the tabletop bar tells us that he grew up in Tiro and, listen, the crowd sort of comes and goes. He recalls one night when about 600 bikes were lined up at trim 45-degree angles outside the bar. Other years? Well,

like the farmsteads ringing rural Tiro, there’s a boom and bust cycle at play.

A possible explanation for that uncertain attendance is that you won’t find much information about the TTF online. Kristian Campana, the writer behind ohiofestivals.net, seems to be the only real arbiter of info on the testicle festival, at least outwardly. His website charts all the quirky cultural touchstones of Ohio from January through December each year — everything from the Newark Strawberry Festival (May 31 to June 2) and the Nelsonville Music Festival (June 6 to 9) to more esoteric events like the Banana Split Festival in Wilmington (June 7 and 8) and the Pork Rind Festival in Harrod (also June 7 and 8, so choose wisely).

“I feel that festivals are open doors, allowing people to come in and share a celebration of a community, a lifestyle or subculture of people,” he tells Scene.

But beyond his work, you won’t find any material substance to guide you from a place like Cleveland to a place like Tiro (population: 266).

In fact, it’s Campana himself who’s apparently setting up the actual Tiro Testicle Festival Facebook event page each year. “There is no official Facebook page or website, so I’ve gathered some info in case you want to go this year. This info is basically repeated from last year,” he wrote in the 2019 installment. For the second day of the festival, May 12, we’re assured that the fun “starts at 1 p.m. and ‘nuts’ start at 4 p.m.

Ends around 11:30-ish.” Campana reviewed the festival in 2013 and 2017, sharing choice words and photos from the event on his website.

It seems too good to pass up.

Once you start looking into the matter, you stumble upon enclaves devoted to annual testicle-eating rituals. Languages consisting solely of gonad vernacular. You learn quickly of an almost religious iconography out there. Testicle festivals are held and celebrated in Byron, Ill.; Huntley, Ill.; Deerfield, Mich.; Olean, Mo.; Oakdale, Calif.; Ashland, Neb.; Stillwater, Okla.; Salmon, Id.; Clinton, Mont.; and Dundas, Wash., all of which are

small towns, like Tiro, easily reachable by winding asphalt and a timber-rattling Harley-Davidson Low Rider.

At the 2010 World Testicle Cooking Championship in Gornji Milanovac, a remote mountain village in Serbia, chefs from around the globe worked a spectrum of testicles — bull, boar, camel, kangaroo — into spritely summer dishes. That year, the festival bestowed upon then-U.S. President Barack Obama an award for his truly ballsy performance and take-charge attitude. “Obama took over the world at the most difficult economic and political times,” organizer and Serbian chief Ljubomir Erovic told The Telegraph.

“He showed he has balls.” American pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger also won the prize.

***

For practical purposes, everyone knows what a testicle is. As usual, though, there’s much more to know than most of us care about — it’s all | clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

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FEATURE a matter of what your interests are.

Physiologically speaking, the testicle is the male reproductive gland, the homologue to the female ovary. It’s best known for producing sperm and testosterone, which is to say it produces a hell of a lot of problems for our civilization. There are usually two attached to whatever lunkhead of the species you’re picturing in your head right now, and nothing but visceral, lightingsharp pain comes from forceful contact with one or both. More thoughtful forms of contact, on the other hand ...

Inside, you’ve got your standard seminiferous tubules and efferent ducts. Churning factories of nucleic acids and protein complexes. The whole system is an entwined series of interlocking assembly lines, three shifts ’round the clock. The testicle operates instinctively, manufacturing spermatogenetic possibilities out of stray glints shipped down from the iris.

But that’s just the pure biology of the thing. There’s an important maxim to remember: If it’s part of an animal, it’s been eaten by humans.

Ancient Greek athletes ate raw testicles, of course. Martin Polley, an Olympic historian at Southampton University in England, reports that the men (yes, duh, enterprising men) treated the testicles as a drug, a forerunner to modern steroids meant to confer godlike power: speed, strength, the whole bit.

The history spreads out from there, through Europe and Asia and Africa.

Here, they’re most commonly known as Rocky Mountain oysters.

They’re more of a novelty item than a performance-enhancing device, at this point, but as America grew into itself they landed on the plate out of necessity. This is Western cowboy heritage we’re talking about here; no one was leaving meat on the bone when scarcity and hunger ruled the day. Now, we eat ’em for kicks.

In this form, they’ve spawned any number of roadside marketing schemes, tongue-in-cheek alt-weekly features and sun-stunned foodie festivals across the globe. One broad reason for this, aside from the grim meat-eating reverie at play, is that castration is a big part of turning the cattle of the American pasture into the hamburger you had for lunch today. It’s a primeval violence — the removal of the testicles, the removal of a certain life force — and

it’s standard operating procedure before that cow becomes clingwrapped patties you can buy at the supermarket down the street. This happens when the cows are young, mind you, and all the more starryeyed about this life they’ve suddenly fallen into. There’s a certain mindset, then, that seeps into that violence and demands the meat-eater use it all. A retroactive raison d’être: If you’re going to take it, you take the whole.

Now, if you’re catching a baseball game at Coors Field in Denver, you can help yourself to a Rocky Mountain Po’boy (“topped with garlic slaw, guacamole, green chili ranch, pico de gallo and cotija cheese,” according to the Coloradoan).

Bull testicles get the headlines — for sheer girth, maybe — but there are, of course, different balls to try on your ball-eating adventure. Serious Eats offers an expert breakdown: “Duck testicles, which take the size and general shape of kumquats, are more tender and delicately flavored than those of lamb, which are more like small avocados. While duck testicles do not taste particularly ducky, lamb testicles are unmistakably lamby with a pungent, grassy smell and a offal-intensive taste that’s akin to stomach. Their texture is almost identical to that of a succulent scallop.”

Mmm, mmm, mmm. Serious Eats recommends grilling them to complement the “gamey undertone” of most testes.

Both in the earnest head-totail, whole-animal ethos and in its gimmicky cousin, the ball is very much in the public court when it comes to food culture these days.

Andrew Zimmern, for example, has built a foundation of his rollicking entertainment career nearly entirely on eating the balls of strange animals, turtles and camels included. Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern has been running for an astounding 23 seasons.

At one point, as the show was really taking off around 2010, Zimmern appeared on Watch What Happens Live and described the flavors of different animals’ testicles as their likenesses appeared on a screen. “Little gamey, little raunchy, little too barn-yardy when old,” he said of bull testicles, apparently fully aware of the farce going on and just hamming it up a bit for the audience.

Barn-yardy? The great lengths to which we’ll travel for outlandish carnivore primping — now, that is an American story.

The same forces are at play in Tiro, where the primary objective

of the TTF is to marry the selfconscious comedy of the thing — eating balls, endlessly referencing balls — with a sort of summertime rib fest atmosphere. You’d be wrong if you didn’t think Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing almost non-stop from the PA speakers out back of the bar.

***

Tiro is small enough that the village could be measured in square feet. If you’re not coming down Route 61 on a motorcycle, though, you’re going to have to park your car on one of the few streets jutting off the main intersection. And the main intersection, naturally, is where you’ll find the unassuming Tiro Tavern. Walking up to the place is a little like stumbling through a vague dream, the mysterious enticements of Campana’s blog reviews suddenly concretizing before you.

On the approach, the aroma is inescapable. They’re cooking up something good around the brickwork building, and it’s reasonable to suppose that maybe the line cooks are slinging cheeseburgers and kebobs. And that’s partly true; the good men and women of the Tiro-Auburn Volunteer Fire Department, longtime

neighbors of the Tavern, do serve an alternative menu each year: pulled pork sandwiches and plump wieners, naturally, in warm buns. You can stop by and catch up on local goings-on, eat some more familiar foodstuffs and get a base going in your stomach before the afternoon takes its inevitable turn at the main event across the street.

It’s hard to avoid the simple puns at a thing like the TTF. The way our society is constructed, you can’t get into this topic without also dovetailing into a bit of slapdash man-child toilet humor. There wouldn’t be a testicle festival, after all, if there wasn’t something to point and laugh at — some dactylic court jester whose real purpose is to provide empty laughter.

Indeed. You can leap over the angular consonance of “testicles” and get into all sorts of goofy-ass monikers. Ever since man first developed an approximation of language and starting scribbling, he’s done just that on CBGB men’s room stalls or papyrus scrolls or whatever surface might be within reach.

As Andrea Gramm notes in Sexual Allusions in the Works of William Shakespeare, this sort of ball devotion carried on for centuries,

this fascination. The good bard himself deployed and relished a variety of references to the very thing we’d be chowing down on at the TTF. “Punning on both its shape and its function, the scrotum is referred to as a bag or a purse, for example in The Winter’s Tale: ‘’twas nothing to geld a codpiece of a purse,’ where codpiece as the part of clothes that covers the genitals seems to be an equivalent to penis,” Gramm

writes. “Another pun on ball can be found with bowl. Since bowling is played with balls, to bowl seems to be to play with balls; hence, in a transferred sense, to caress the scrotum. We find this in Love’s Labour’s Lost: ‘She’s too hard for you at pricks, sir: challenge her to bowl.’”

This is classic stuff, really.

And young men through the generations between have taken up the banner, having spent hours of their lives coming up with fanciful

| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

15

FEATURE terms for the twin figs they’re taught to honor and obey in our helterskelter society.

Your balls, to be clear. You’ve got your grapes, junk, gear, stones, brass clankers, family jewels. And surely we’d be remiss without mentioning your beans, boys, marbles, jibbly bibblies, dangly bits, clockweights, huevos and mangerines.

It’s just too easy to crack an obvious joke but, rest assured, the results are plentiful on the Tiro Tavern’s official branded merchandise. Right away, we amble over to the souvenir table to review the offerings. That seems to be at least half the point, anyway.

The two most popular T-shirts include variants on a refrain: “BOFA Deez Nuts” and “TRUMP These Nuts.” The event staff clearly saved the best for themselves, however; their tie-dyed shirts feature the sort of thing that’s meant to get paying customers in the spirit: “It ain’t a party till my NUTS come out.”

Another saying, which you’ll find on T-shirts and koozies, is sort of

the official slogan: TIRO TAVERN’S TESTICLE FESTIVAL. YOU’LL HAVE A BALL! We purchase a fine hat and a bandana, though it’s not immediately clear why. Before anything else happens, we learn that we’ll have to head inside and fetch wristbands

per drink, and we grab our first two beers for the day. Cold cans are pulled from 12-pack boxes sitting upright in the cooler behind the bar.

“The testicles are free,” we’re told, which is kind of surprising. Armed with knowledge and appropriate headwear, we return to the sunlight,

for our drinks. The bar is quiet and typical of many small-town dives. It’s pleasantly without airs.

We flash our IDs at a small table in the front window, pick up our paper wristbands and tickets at $3

the music, the festival.

The casual observer quickly realizes that a lot of the TTF is essentially the vibe of a county fair condensed into maybe 900 square feet of plastic picnic tables, caution-

taped entrances and exits monitored by local police officers, and plenty of Lynyrd Skynyrd on the PA (did we mention that?). One grievance we note right off the bat is that the tables are all taken. We’ve arrived too late, clearly, and we’re not exactly blending in with the terrific display of leather and cheeky slogans. One woman wears a T-shirt that reads, “A hard man is good to find.” We tighten our festival merch atop our heads and slip into the crowd. The bandana, we suddenly notice, has spelled out our fate: Tiro Testical (sic) Festival.

At one point, around 4 p.m., an older man comes into the yard behind the Tavern with a big sign, which he ties ceremoniously to a wooden stake. Written haphazardly in thin marker: “NUTS. Enter Here.”

At this, we leap — and we’re not alone. The line builds quickly and wraps endlessly beneath a white tarpaulin, and even more yellow caution tape guides hungry travelers west, east and west again before jutting eastward one more time, toward the balls themselves. “Just like Cedar Point, honey,” one woman tells her partner, as they saunter slowly toward the ritual.

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is the main event, after all, and it’s treated as a sideshow, as something that’s happening separate from the Skynrd now pumping berserkly through the speakers, separate from the volunteer firefighters serving pulled pork sammies over at the station, separate from the very bar itself, which remains open throughout the festival and continues to serve the same cans of beer to the same leather-clad customers inside.

There’s a cycle occurring here, and the balls exist entirely outside of it.

And yet.

We can see that an assortment of sauces from E.D.S. Bourbon Sauce in nearby Galion, Ohio, is made available, and we start plotting out what we’ll pair with our delicacies once we get to the front of the line.

There’s blackberry bourbon sauce, mango habanero, sweet mustard wet rub and sweet-n-smoky, along with Tiro resident David Jacobs’ Shakey Jake’s hot sauce and, if needed, twin shakers of S&P — and this is somehow very important, the sauces.

***

It’s not what we’d expected — at all. The pageantry we’d built up in the car ride down to Tiro collapses suddenly as we approach. An older man is stationed at a trio of small Presto ProFry digital deep fryers.

The table is jacketed in greasesplotched cardboard, coarse slabs duct-taped to the table. He’s dropping three baskets at a time and making small talk between servings. But it’s the testicles themselves that we can’t stop looking at. The nads.

We’re not sure what we’d imagined; maybe some sort of jar, with testicles free-floating in a protoplasmic solution? Or balls laid out like jumbo white eggs in Styrofoam cartons? These things didn’t resemble anything like that.

Nothing like what we pictured Ancient Greeks gobbling in the shade of an olive tree. Nor do they appear to be the familiar nuts of innocent, indulgent wisecracks. The veal testicles are all bunched up and packed in like molding clay into a large plastic container, a thick case of Tupperware that you might give an adult child for the leftover casserole from Sunday dinner. You can’t look at it without feeling a dull pain in your mid-region, stringy testicle-clumps being drawn from the recesses. Cash tips are collected in an old Folgers Custom Roast canister nearby.

Testicles in hand, as one does, we wander back into the central picnic table area to take stock of what, precisely, the hell we’re dealing with here.

In the little storage containers, the balls looked gnarled. Once battered and fried, they look even less like what one might think of as “balls,” in either the biological or geometric sense. The testicles coil around one another, forming shapes less globular than clustered — like cashew treats or a neighborhood of galaxies.

The texture is similar to your standard chicken nugget, or maybe flash-fried calamari. Slightly chewy, of course, and generally plain.

The dish is missing the richness of poultry, the succulent nature of crispy-on-the-outside chicken tenders. This is where the sauces come in. For journalistic purposes, we’d selected an ample squirt of mango habanero, which provides the sort of clarifying zing that veal testicles apparently require.

It’s almost impossible to get this education anywhere else but at the good old Tiro Testicle Festival.

The event raises its fair share of ontological questions, you can be sure, and it’s easy to kid.

We’re a part of history’s great underpinning: joking about balls and, inevitably, eating them. But summertime has touched down in Ohio, and you’ve got about three ways to measure its sweet, sweet arrival: baseball, cold IPAs on the patio out back and the floating scent of cooked meat along the sweeping plains and backyard neighborhoods of our great state.

The other way of looking at it is this: You can stay home or you can go anywhere in the world to get your kicks. Warm weather and nicely paved roadways make short work of an afternoon getaway, a breezy trip to some place you’ve never been and may never visit again. If it’s Tiro this time, perhaps it’s Yellow Springs on your new motorcycle next week. Evansville, Memphis, Shreveport. You wake up in Havana, eating cocina criolla.

Head south. Anticuchos in some warmly lit alley in La Paz. You shoot a silent film on the Falklands. Whole years have passed by. Languages learned, forgotten. The road home grown long and strange. These opportunities branch outward forever, until they’re gone.

When it’s time to leave the TTF, until next spring, a simple sign offers more poetic parting words than ours for the boozy, adventurous and satisfied among us: “THANKS FOR TASTING MY NUTS.”

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| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

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– 12AM

GET OUT everything you should do this week Photo by Emanuel Wallace

WED

05/29

FILM

All About Eve Winner of six Academy Awards, All About Eve stars Bette Davis as an aging Broadway star who has to fend off an ambitious young fan (Anne Baxter) who wants to steal her spotlight. The film also stars George Sanders, Celeste Holm, Marilyn Monroe and Gary Merrill. Part of the Happy Hour Classic series, tonight’s screening at the Capitol Theatre includes a complimentary cocktail or soft drink and light appetizers. It all starts at 6, and tickets cost $10. (Jeff Niesel) 1390 West 65th St., 216-651-7295, clevelandcinemas.com.

FILM

Boy Howdy!: The Story of Creem Magazine A documentary film about the Detroit-based music magazine Creem, Boy Howdy!: The Story of Creem Magazine chronicles the magazine’s history and charts its rise from an underground paper to a commercial success that gave the late, great music writer Lester Bangs an outlet for his writing. It screens tonight at 7 at the Rock Hall. Tickets are free for members, or $5.50 for non-members.

(Niesel) 1100 Rock and Roll Blvd., 216-515-8444, rockhall.com.

SPOKEN WORD

Cleveland Stories Dinner Party Cleveland Stories Dinner Party is a weekly series that pairs fine food with storytelling. The goal of the series 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. Doors open at 5 p.m., dinner is served at 6, and the storytelling starts at 7. Tonight, Doug Kusak talks about the true story of Cleveland’s “Burning River” upon the occasion of its 50th anniversary.

(Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

COMEDY

Eddie Izzard Over the course of a career that stretches back decades, comedian

Hessler Street Fair celebrates its 50th anniversary. See: Saturday.

and actor Eddie Izzard has amassed an impressive body of work. Born in Yemen and raised in Northern Ireland, Wales and England, he lost his mother at the age of 6. He dropped out of college and took to the streets of London, where he developed his one-man act. A self-proclaimed “action transvestite,” Izzard performs in makeup and heels and has become as famous for his “total clothing” rights as for his comedy. Today at 8 p.m., he brings his Eddie Izzard: Wunderbar international tour to Connor Palace.

Tickets start at $57. (Niesel) 1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

COMEDY

Mike Palascak Comedian Michael Palascak has blown up on the comedy scene of late.

With appearances on both The Late Show and The Tonight Show within the same year, Palascak is starting to get his feet under him. The comic uses stories about his life and his awkward misadventures to open a window onto his inner workings.

You can catch a very laid-back performance from Palascak tonight at Hilarities at 7. Tickets are $13 to $18.

(Martin Harp) 2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

FOOD

Walnut Wednesday Walnut Wednesday is one of summer’s great traditions. Today from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at Perk Plaza at Chester Commons — at East 12th and Walnut streets — food trucks once again gather to serve up lunch to area residents and employees. Follow the Downtown Cleveland Alliance on Facebook for weekly updates on vendors, entertainment offerings and more.

The series continues through Sept. 4. Admission is free, but the food will cost you. (Niesel) downtowncleveland.com.

THU

05/30

humor at its heart. Tickets cost $10.

(Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

SUMMER STUFF

Edgewater Live This is the first week for Edgewater Live, the Cleveland Metroparks’ extremely popular series of Thursdaynight happy-hour concerts held at Edgewater Beach. In addition to live musical performances, you’ll find yoga, standup paddleboarding and cornhole. Those ubiquitous food trucks will be on hand, of course, and the Beach House will sell drinks and food as well. Hours are 4:30 to 9 p.m. It’s free. (Niesel) 6500 Cleveland Memorial Shoreway NW, clevelandmetroparks.com.

SPOKEN WORD

SPOKEN WORD

Confessions of a True Crime Addict, with James Renner A former Scene staffer, true-crime author James Renner kicks off a 10-day book tour tonight at 7 in the Concert Hall at the Music Box Supper Club. Renner celebrates our obsession with true crime and shares “weirdly funny” stories. He’ll discuss everything from Serial to Making a Murderer as he explores the absurd world of popular crime and finds the

Rob Lowe Actor Rob Lowe, who’s written two New York Times best-selling memoirs, Stories I Only Tell My Friends and Love Life, provides a “peek behind the curtain at Hollywood, fame, fatherhood, marriage, and a life lived at the forefront of culture for four decades” at tonight’s performance at Connor Palace. Expect a night of jokes and funny anecdotes, along with a Q&A and plenty of insider film clips | clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

19

GET OUT and photos. It begins at 7:30 p.m., and tickets start at $40. (Niesel) 1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

FILM + MUSIC

About 75 vendors are participating, peddling a variety of art, posters, movies, toys, collectibles, vinyl, unique crafts, T-shirts and more. The schedule also includes panels, movie screenings and a 4-hour compilation of ’80s cartoons, commercials and TV shows. Weekend passes cost $60, and individual day passes for Friday ($25), Saturday ($30) and Sunday ($20) will be available at the door.

Movie Feature: An American in Paris Tonight at 7:30 at Severance Hall, you can catch a screening of the classic flick An American in Paris, while the Cleveland Orchestra performs the soundtrack. The musical stars Gene Kelly as an American ex-GI who falls for Parisian Leslie Caron. Better still, the movie features some of George and Ira Gershwin’s most unforgettable songs. An hour before the show, Bill Rudman, artistic director of the Musical Theater Project, gives the preconcert lecture. The program repeats tomorrow and Saturday. Check the orchestra website for ticket prices and more info. (Niesel) 11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.

SUMMER STUFF

$10, or $15 for VIP, which includes a meet-and-greet with a photo op.

(Niesel) 2785 Euclid Hts. Blvd., 216-321-5588, grogshop.gs.

PRIDE

COMEDY

Second Annual Pre-Pride on the East Side This year’s Pre-Pride on the East Side party at the Grog Shop is again

Joe Torry The host of Russell Simmons Def Comedy Jam, Joe Torry has also had small roles on TV shows such as ER and NYPD Blue. The quick-witted Torry often likes to make fun of the people in the audience, ridiculing their hairstyles and fashion choices.

While his comments can be harsh, he has an uncanny ability to improvise.

He performs tonight at 7:30 at the Improv and has shows scheduled there through Saturday. Tickets start at $17.

(Niesel) 1148 Main Ave., 216-696-IMPROV, clevelandimprov.com.

FRI

05/31

SUMMER STUFF

Simple PlaN

MUSIC

Open Mic Night/Live Band Karaoke Every Thursday, Stella’s Music hosts 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/openmic 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.

his standup show to Hilarities tonight at 7; he has shows scheduled through Saturday. Tickets cost $50. (Niesel) 2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

The Zombies

AUG 9

JUNE 8

AUG 17

SUMMER IN THE

CITY

WEDNESDAYS

PRIDE ON THE PLAZA JUNE 12

SUNFLOWER BEAN AUG 7

OPEN AGAINST MIKE SWEARIN SOCCER MIKE THE KROL MOMMY EAGLE CURRENT JULY 17

JULY 24

JULY 31

FAM JAM

BIKE NIGHTS

ROCK & RESILIENCE

JUNE 29

JULY 25 & AUG 15

AUG 25

Playhouse Square’s Backyard Bash Today at 5:30 p.m. at U.S. Bank Plaza, Playhouse Square hosts a “backyard bash” to celebrate summer’s arrival.

Carlos Jones and the P.L.U.S. Band will perform, and nearby burger stand Dynomite will have beverages and food available for sale. The event goes until 9 p.m., and it’s free. (Niesel) East 14th St. and Euclid Ave., 216-771-4444, playhousesquare.org.

AUG 14

BELIEVE IN CLE YOGA AUG 30

ROCKHALL.COM/SUMMER

Euclid Beach Live This live concert series offers great music, delicious food and fun for the whole family. The setting couldn’t be better either: The site overlooks the scenic Euclid Beach State Park on Lake Erie, and the 285-foot rebuilt pier gives the events a throwback feel and harkens back to the glory days of Euclid Beach amusement park. The fun takes place tonight from 6 to 9.

The series continues through Aug. 2.

(Niesel) 16301 Lake Shore Blvd., 216-635-3200, clevelandmetroparks.com.

FILM

The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon As part of its Anime in May series, the Cleveland Museum of Art screens The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon today at 8 p.m. The film centers on a boy who sets off to find his mother after his father tells him that she’s died and gone to heaven. The movie shows outdoors in the Fine Arts Garden, and tickets are free. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

NOSTALGIA

Retro Invasion Weekend Iconic film and television stars from the 1980s, including Joe Bob Briggs, Diane Franklin and Mark Metcalf, will be on hand for Retro Invasion Weekend, a four-day homage to the olden days of entertainment taking place today through Sunday at the Double Tree by Hilton in Westlake.

The whole thing kicks off tonight with special a VIP party; as of press time, a few $70 VIP tickets still remained.

20

BOOKS + FOOD

Consult the website for details and a full schedule of events. (Niesel) retroinvasionweekend.com.

COMEDY

Brendan Schaub Comedian Brendan Schaub cohosts The Fighter and the Kid podcast with fellow comic Bryan Callen. The popular show receives about 10 million downloads a month. Schaub brings

| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

sponsored by the LGBTQ Center and an official recognized Pride in the CLE event. Reps from Cleveland Area Paranormal Society, Margie’s Hope, Drag Pride, Crow Leather Works, Attention’s Antiques and the Rock N’ Roll Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will be present tonight with resources and materials for audience members.

Doors open at 7:30, and a meet-andgreet takes place at 8:30. Tickets cost

Moon Cleveland and Unique Eats and Eateries of Cleveland Release Party In the third edition of Moon Cleveland, Scene food critic and cookbook coauthor Douglas Trattner explores Northeast Ohio’s every nook and cranny to find every quintessentially Cleveland experience. The recently updated guide features insider information on topics such as hot air ballooning in Amish Country, fishing

for walleye on Lake Erie and riding through town on a Segway. In Unique Eats and Eateries of Cleveland, Fran Golden and David G. Molyneaux take readers on a gastronomic tour of the city Golden calls an “emerging foodie capital.” The book provides an overview of Cleveland’s diverse food trucks, growers, markets, pubs, chefs and lore. The authors even touch on the decades-long ballpark mustard debate.

At 7:30 tonight at Visible Voice Books in Tremont, Trattner, Golden and Molyneaux will discuss their books at a special book release party. The event will include food from Fahrenheit and Crust. Admission is free. (Niesel) 2258 Professor Ave., 216-961-0084, visiblevoicebooks.com.

MUSIC FEST

Spring Badfish Sublime tribute band Badfish returns to Nelson Ledges Quarry this weekend for Spring Badfish, its annual twonight stand. The band will play a twohour set tonight and tomorrow night.

The lineup will also feature acts such as Roots of Creation, Bumpin’ Uglies, Wild Adriatic and Ancient Elephant.

Admission is $90 ($75 presale) for Friday through Sunday, or $70 ($55 presale) for Saturday through Sunday.

There’s no extra charge for camping.

(Niesel) 12001 State Route 282, Garrettsville, 440-548-2716, nlqp.com.

SAT

06/01

FILM

Climax It is odd to say that a film called Climax, written and directed

by French Director Gaspar Noé (Irreversible), an erstwhile enfant terrible positively obsessed with the depiction of sex and violence and every shade of aberrance, does not include one identifiable orgasm. The sex takes a backseat to drug-induced mayhem in this hellish “dance-horror” flick, a Chernobyl lovechild of Suspiria, Hellraiser II and Rent. It screens at 9:40 tonight and at 8:45 tomorrow night at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque. Tickets cost $10, or $7 for members and students. (Sam Allard) 11610 Euclid Ave., 216-421-7450, cia.edu.

Bread and Milk, Justin Bieber and Kanye West viral rants, DiBietto has hosted Gotham Comedy Live on AXS TV. He performs tonight at 8 at the Hanna Theatre. Tickets start at $35.

(Niesel) 2067 East 14th St., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

FESTIVAL

Hessler Street Fair Conceived in 1969 as a block party (and later abandoned amid the not-sohip 1980s), the Hessler Street Fair in Harmony Park has evolved into one of the biggest and most involved parties of its kind. It’s a free event that sort of opens the floodgates for summertime neighborhood fun in Cleveland. Acts slated to perform at this year’s fest include Austin Walkin’ Cane, Cats on Holiday and Colin Dussault.

This marks the street fair’s 50th anniversary, and it’s going on hiatus next year, so get there while you still can. The fun runs from 11 a.m. to dusk today and tomorrow. (Niesel) hesslerstreetfair.org.

SPRING HOURS: Friday: 5:00 - Close | Saturday & Sunday: 12:00pm - Close

LIVE MUSIC EVERY WEEKEND! Friday, May 31 8p-12a

EVILWAYS

OPERA

Porgy and Bess Tonight at 7:30 at the Ohio Theatre, the Cleveland Opera stages the original opera version of Porgy and Bess, the George Gershwin musical known for songs such as “Summertime,” “A Woman Is a Sometime Thing,” “My Man’s Gone Now” and “I Got Plenty of O’ Nuttin’.”

The opera comes complete with a full orchestra under the baton of Grzegorz Nowak, music director of the Grand Opera in Warsaw (Teatr Wielki) and permanent associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. Tickets start at $25. (Niesel) 1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

PRIDE

Pride in the CLE March and Festival No matter what your sexual orientation might be, Pride in the CLE is a celebratory event that features vendors, performers and musical acts.

The parade steps off at noon from the staging area at Front Avenue and West Ninth Street. There are also pre- and post-fest events that bookend today’s celebration, which runs from noon to 6 p.m. on Public Square. Consult the website for more details. (Niesel) lgbtcleveland.org.

COMEDY

FILM

Vic DiBitetto Critics have described comedian Vic DiBitetto as a cross between Rodney Dangerfield and Ralph Kramden.

Roles in films like Kevin James’ Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 have helped raise DiBitetto’s profile. Famous for his

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

Saturday, June 1

TED RISER 2-6p

COUNTRY REDFORD 8p-12a

Sunday, June 2 2-6p

BILLY MORRIS 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 29 - June 4, 2019

21

Join SCENE for our Leinenkugel Friday Summer Bar Tour!

Catch us at a different location from 6-8 pm every Friday all summer long!

Grab a pic with the promo team and enjoy an ice cold Summer Shandy!

See You: This Friday, May 31 at Shooters & Margaritaville Next Friday, June 7 at Thirsty Parrot & Whiskey Island

GET OUT that likes to throw rice and dry toast and sing along to the songs in the movie. In addition, 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.

SUMMER STUFF

Uptown Mini Golf, Ice Cream Social & Games Today from noon to 5 p.m. at Toby’s Plaza in University Circle’s Uptown District, you can celebrate summer’s arrival with the Uptown Miniature Golf and Ice Cream Social. There will be a special pop-up nine-hole miniature golf course. While supplies last, Piccadilly Artisan Creamery and Mitchell’s Ice Cream will offer free scoops of sweet-and-creamy goodness. There will also be human foosball, whack-a-wall and battle lights games. Admission is free.

(Niesel) 11440 Uptown Ave., universitycircle.org.

SUN

06/02

FILM

YOU AND A GUEST ARE INVITED TO SEE

Wednesday, June 5th at 7:00 p.m.

Capitol Theatre Visit WWW.AMAZONSCREENINGS.COM

Give Us This Day Though Give Us This Day is set in New York’s Little Italy, director Edward Dmytryk had to shoot the film in London because he was blacklisted in Hollywood for alleged communist connections. The 1949 social drama focuses on an Italian immigrant bricklayer living through the Great Depression. It screens today at 1:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The screening comes courtesy of Richard Di Donato and is co-sponsored by the United Labor Agency and the North Shore Federation of Labor. Tickets cost $10, or $7 for CMA members and cardcarrying union members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

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IN THEATERS FRIDAY, JUNE 7TH www.latenight.movie @LateNightMovie #LateNightMovie 22

| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

MON

06/03

TRIVIA

Lunchtime Trivia Today from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. on U.S. Bank Plaza, Last Call Trivia hosts a live show that allows teams to compete for prizes by answering trivia questions. Last Call games also incorporate a distinctive point

wagering system, giving teams the ability to choose their own strategy which ensures every team has an equal chance to compete. Teams can range from 1 to 8 players and prizes are awarded to the top teams at the event’s conclusion. (Niesel) East 14th St. and Euclid Ave., 216-771-4444, playhousesquare.org.

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.

TUE

06/04

DANCE

Dancing Under the Stars Tonight’s the first summer edition of Dancing Under the Stars at U.S. Bank Plaza. Beginning at 6, Valerie Salstrom of Get Hep Swing will give lessons; then it’s on to the dance party, accompanied by a live band.

The dancing begins at 6:30 and continues until 9 p.m. Admission is free.

East 14th St. and Euclid Ave., 216-771-4444, playhousesquare.org.

FILM

The Owl’s Legacy : Episodes 1-4 The Owl’s Legacy, a 13-part, fiveand-a-half-hour nonfiction film by France’s cine-essayist Chris Marker (La Jetée and Sans Soleil) explores ancient Greece’s lasting influence on Western civilization and culture.

Made for French television and first broadcast in 1989, the film features a controversial interview with philosopher George Steiner, who angered one of the series’ primary sponsors with his on-camera assertion that modern Greece has little connection to its glorious past.

As a result, one of the film’s financial backers suppressed the series for almost 20 years. Today at 1:45 p.m., the Cleveland Museum of Art shows the first four episodes. Tickets cost $10, or $7 for CMA members. (Niesel) 11150 East Blvd., 216-421-7350, clevelandart.org.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

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https://tinyurl. com/y49nb45h THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS 2 has been rated PG (Parental Guidance Suggested – Some material may not be suitable for children) for some action and rude humor.

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23

ART MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE Cleveland artists bring all the fabulism to the Yards

By Dott von Schneider WALKING INTO FABULISM: META Fact and Fictions, on view at the Yards through the end of June, is akin to riding a motorcycle through the canyon of our individual and collective myths. Curated by Liz Maugans, the exhibition’s works break down and rebuild as the participating artists experiment and evolve their modus operandi.

Meng-Hsuan Wu’s “Passage” has humanoid trees uprooting themselves and moving swiftly, and frighteningly, in fantastic formation. Arabella Proffer goes full Jules Verne by bringing her “Biomorphic Garden Party” to the Yards with an exploratory voyage through micro universes. Claudio Orso’s chunky woodcuts coax us into a different world. Antwoine Washington’s intense and fragile series of portraits shore up the “meta fact” angle of Fabulism by presenting facts and fictions built around the African American community with his drawings: “Powernomics (Woman),” “Multi Ethnic Destruction in America (M.E.D.I.A.)” and “Powernomics (Man).”

Dante Rodriguez, well known for his beautifully serene portraits that investigate personal identity, is creating work that is even more internal. This is by no means navel gazing. What Rodriguez brings to the table is thought provoking and a gorgeous leap into new materials. In our interview with the artist at the opening reception, he enlightened us about his Black Sun series, specifically “Black Sun: Self” (pictured). States the artist, “Black Sun, what the 16th- to 17th-century alchemists called ‘Sol Niger,’ was recognized by Carl Jung as symbolic of transformation of the soul. He saw the black sun as a way into the subconscious to illuminate a deeper understanding of the self.

During the last year and a half, I went through a dark period of my life: personal transitions, me and my adoption status, my marriage, among other things.”

What will really blow your mind is that these artworks are not what they seem. We truly believed this new series was constructed with rubber.

“Black Sun: Self,” Rodriguez informs us, is the self portrait of his conscience using charcoal mixed with linseed oil on Yupo paper. He added elements like

24

Photo by Dante Rodriguez

spoons, positioned in such a way as to look like tears streaming down its face. “I’m just trying to get deeper into myself,” says Rodriguez. “So the fur … I’ve been experimenting with new materials, how to draw, how to cut into it, so this is more of a tactile piece.

For seven and a half months I had no partner. I was on my own, so I’ve been feeling like a lack of touch in my life.

So these pieces are more about touch.

I’m trying to push drawing.”

Perhaps one of the best outpourings in Fabulism is Laura Ruth Bidwell’s two portraits of Kyle Kidd of the band Mourning [A] BLKstar. “KK Camelias_8658” and “KK Ivy_8633” are everything. “The two photographic portraits in this show are about beauty and abundance. There is a created fiction in these images, but there is also much truth,” explains Bidwell in her artist statement. Bidwell completely captures the essence of KK, who exudes not only the beauty and abundance that the photographer references, but also the fire of fierce creativity and identity; they are framed, but they cannot be housed in a box.

Omid Tavakoli’s dreamlike “Birds of Paradise” series excavates the anxiety and pressures of females using the dress as a metaphor. He has included an installation using silks that were featured in his recent MFA thesis at Kent State University.

Thanks to a sublimation dye printing operation, where the dyes are actually locked into the silk, the material can be washed and dried like actual dress fabrics.

“Black Sun: Self” is Dante Rodriguez’ deep dive into self.

face is showing. “These women are in prayer but also being preyed upon in their own culture, and then there

FABULISM: META FACT AND FICTIONS THROUGH JUNE 28 WORTHINGTON YARDS, 725 JOHNSON CT. YARDSPROJECT.COM For information on hours, email yardsprojects@gmail.com

“I’m bi-racial,” says Tavakoli. “The other side of my family is Iranian and I’m always thinking about the struggles and the pressures that Iran is putting on their women.”

Within “Azure (Fire) Pr/Ey (Pray),” Tavakoli has produced a virtual sea of Iranian women at prayer in a mosque each wearing a large veil wrapped around her body and head; only the

| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

are references to fire. A lot of women are killing themselves through selfimmolation, but it also symbolizes the flame that arises through the strength of feminism.”

We have long loved Kristen Cliffel’s ceramic sculptures. Her piece, “The Golden Question,” is one of the best we’ve seen on view this year. The words “pretty” and “please” are laser

cut in plexiglass; light bleeds through, causing a shadow play that repeats the words onto the birch plywood that lies beneath. Then there’s the gold lustre over low-fire clay flowers and the gold leaf. This exploration into “domestic mythologies” is what keeps us enraptured with Cliffel’s work.

As Maugans puts it, “The artists offer diverse outcomes of exploration for our own escape into dreamscapes, future worlds, revisionist fairy tales and heightened details of new realities.”

Oh yes, they have brought it all to the Yards.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

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EAT LET THERE BE LIGHT The Kensington Pub on Lee feels like an old friend with a new look

By Douglas Trattner Photo by Emanuel Wallace

IT’S TRULY ASTONISHING WHAT a little light can do. For as long as anybody can recall, the tavern at the corner of Lee and Kensington roads in Cleveland Heights has been a dim cavern owing to windows that long ago were sealed up tighter than Al Capone’s vault. By installing a wall of new glass along the southern expanse, the owners of the Kensington Pub have done more than simply flood the room with natural light; they’ve filled it with optimism.

For nearly three years, the space formerly known as the Tavern Company has been closed, a conspicuous missing tooth along the neighborhood’s prime restaurant row. Partners Jeff King and Brad Poe seized on the opportunity to not only rescue the iconic spot, but to improve and refine it in ways they believe local diners desire. Of course, along with the keys to such a prominent spot comes the pressure to make good use of what many see as an extension of their living rooms.

The windows might be the most visible improvement, but management didn’t stop there.

Nearly every surface got the onceover, from the floors to the ceiling to the walls to the tabletops.

Fortunately, the owners stopped short of completely expunging the personality of the well-worn tavern, with the mile-long wooden bar and backbar possessing every bit of handsome charm it always has. That bar is, once again, one of the best spots for friends to meet up over beers and baseball, and those beers exit clean lines and shiny taps. Fresh wines by the glass, a unicorn at corner pubs, include a French rose, German riesling, Italian Chianti and California cabernet, along with a dozen or so other options.

I’ll admit that walking into the old TavCo and bumping into a host stand was more than a little jarring. The move is just one of a handful of small gestures aimed to bring a touch of old-tavern class into the mix, moves borrowed from the owners’ many combined years working the dining rooms of haunts like Johnny’s. Servers don crisp

white shirts and ties while hoisting laden-down serving trays. A flip of the wrist and a tray stand opens alongside the table, a slightly more elegant maneuver than shuttling stacked plates by hand.

Fear not, pub fans, Kensington isn’t fine-dining — or even finerdining for that matter. You can still enjoy a burger and fries at the bar in your work clothes, even if your day

Order the strip steak au poivre ($25) and you’ll be rewarded with a nicely trimmed 12-ounce chop wearing a coarse and crunchy peppercorn jacket and gilded with a silky cognac cream sauce. From the expertly charred exterior to the warm medium-rare heart, the steak is steakhouse good. The stark white platter also is steakhouse-bare save for the sprigs of fresh thyme. Three

KENSINGTON PUB 2260 LEE RD., CLEVELAND HEIGHTS 216-331-1003

job is mowing lawns. But you can also, if the mood strikes, tuck into a thick steak and wash it down with a plummy Nickel & Nickel cabernet from the Napa Valley. That burger, available in four different builds, is beefy, juicy and easy to enjoy thanks to a buttery brioche bun. Order the Sweet & Smoky ($13.50) and you’ll net a burger topped with sweet caramelized onions and smoked Swiss cheese. Thick, crisp fries are included in the deal.

other chop presentations are on offer, as is a double-bone pork chop and roasted lamb shank. Intrigued, we ordered the hot brown casserole ($16), the pub’s take on the classic Southern comfort food. Starring good-quality, thick-cut roasted turkey, bread, bacon and bubbling cheese sauce, the dish is comforting indeed.

Once you get past the burgers, steaks and chops, the landscape narrows to salads, a handful of

sandwiches and a pair of macand-cheese dishes. Breaded pork schnitzel sammies appear to be having a moment and the one served here ($13) is ideal. Tucked into a soft bun, the breaded-and-fried cutlet is topped with slaw and slathered with spicy mayo. Other sandwiches star corned beef and that great houseroasted turkey breast.

An odd jumble of apps includes plump beer-steamed mussels ($13.50) served with golden brown toast points; sausage-stuffed, cheesecapped banana peppers ($12) in chunky marinara; and a tasty skewer-free corndog ($8) sporting an aromatic cornbread coating. Night owls can knock back that corndog along with a cold beer clear up until 2 a.m. every day of the week.

Despite the new management, new name, new look and new menu, Kensington Pub feels like an old friend who just moved back to town.

After a few awkward moments, you pick up right where you left off.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner | clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

27

EAT BITES Cleveland chefs vie for top honors in annual Blended Burger Project

By Douglas Trattner

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| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

Photo courtesy of the James Beard Foundation

“IT IS ESTIMATED THAT Americans eat 10 billion burgers annually,” according to the James Beard Foundation.

If 30 percent of the beef in every burger was swapped with mushrooms, it would be the equivalent of pulling 2.3 million cars off the road in terms of emissions; it would conserve as much water as 2.6 million Americans use at home each year; and it would reduce agricultural land demand by an amount larger than Maryland.

Those are the lofty ambitions that propel the Blended Burger Project, a partnership between the Beard Foundation and Mushroom Council to encourage chefs to create healthier, tastier and more sustainable burgers.

May 27 marked the start of the Fifth Annual Blended Burger Project. From now until July 31, chefs around the country will compete to win a trip to New York City to prepare their burger at the James Beard House and hopefully snag a professional Vitamix and a $5,000 purse. This year, Cleveland Independents will have 11 local members competing.

The top 25 vote-getters from the first round will move on to the next round, during which they will be evaluated by a group of judges. The top five from that round will compete for the big prize at the Beard House.

Those vying to be among this year’s winners are: 111 Bistro, Astoria Market & Cafe, The Cabin of Willowick, Cowell & Hubbard, Der Braumeister, Jukebox, Mallorca, Provenance at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Table 45, Tartine Bistro and Tremont Taphouse.

The first round is largely popularity-based. The participating restaurant must be among the top 25 vote-getters to advance to the second round.

“We are determined to have Cleveland represented at the James Beard House,” says Cleveland Independents’ president and Table 45 chef Matthew Anderson.

“Clevelanders need to vote every day.

We need to make this happen!”

While voters are encouraged to visit the restaurants to sample

the Blended Burgers, they are not required to purchase them. They must, however, visit to ensure that their votes are entered.

Ciao Bistro, the Ohio City Restaurant with Owner Who Slammed Neighborhood Before Opening Day, Has Closed It appears that Ciao Bistro (3800 Whitman Ave.), the Ohio City restaurant that broke the internet following the owner’s offensive social media comments, has closed. The signs are down at the attractive brick building that has been home to a string of short-lived eateries in the past six years.

After announcing last fall his plans to open the Italian restaurant, owner Shawn Taylor (or somebody with access to his personal Facebook account) penned the infamous three-word insult — “liberal white cunts” — beneath a Facebook post by Cleveland Scene announcing that very opening. While most prognosticators assumed that the business would never take flight given the gaffe, Taylor soldiered on, opening the restaurant despite nearuniversal repudiation.

As neighbors could attest, the restaurant was almost never patronized, a diorama of an empty dining room on a quiet residential side street. This endured for roughly six excruciating months until the signs finally came down and the doors were locked.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

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| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

T’S BEEN 20 YEARS SINCE Rob Thomas struck it rich with “Smooth,” his collaboration with Carlos Santana that hit No. 1 in October of 1999, ultimately spending 12 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100.

If you were anywhere near a radio that year, “Smooth” was hard to miss, and even Thomas admits that he got a bit tired of the song. He says the best thing that he got out of the whole experience was the friendship with Santana, which remains strong to this day, with the pair frequently trading text messages and phone calls.

The Santana collaboration came on the heels of a whirlwind run of platinum success for Thomas with his own group, Matchbox Twenty, which had put out a pair of successful albums starting with Yourself or Someone Like You in 1996. By the time the band released 2002’s More Than You Think You Are, its third album, Thomas was continuing to expand his creative horizons.

He had written two songs with Rolling Stones vocalist Mick Jagger, including one, “Disease,” which Jagger handed back to the singersongwriter, who turned it into another Top 40 hit for Matchbox.

Thomas also had the experience of writing songs with Willie Nelson for his 2002 album The Great Divide.

While “Maria (Shut Up and Kiss Me),” which leads off the album, is probably the best known of the bunch, “Recollection Phoenix” is the melancholy gem.

“You know, [Nelson] liked that song because he felt like a lot of times, people write a song about being on the road, and people write about women on the road, but it’s usually the woman that gets left at home,” Thomas explains during a recent phone conversation. He performs at 8 p.m. on Friday at MGM Northfield Park Center Stage. “And this was from the point of view of my wife, who is a woman who is on the road with me. He said he’d never seen that in a song before and there’s a line in there that says, ‘You might think the road has made her colder,’ and he liked that, and he liked the line, ‘I wonder when the hell did I get older.’ He was always joking that he was wondering when that was going to start for him.”

Nelson, Thomas says, is “everything that you want him to be.”

“I got to spend a lot of time with him. I got to spend a lot of time with him and we got to do some shows with him and we got to play with him a lot. We got to hang out. I think for me, that was the dream,” he says. “I

I

used to get asked all of the time, ‘Who do you want to work with the most?’

And it was always Willie. He’s always been a legend. So to be able to hang out with him and for him to mentor [me] — I’ve been really fortunate with people like him and people like Carlos, who is one of my closest friends — having that [experience with them] is pretty invaluable.

With his ongoing solo work, Thomas continues to unlock exciting new collaborations, including one with producer Butch Walker (the Struts, Fall Out Boy, Weezer) on Chip Tooth Smile, Thomas’ newest album that was released in late April. Even though the two have been friends for quite a while, it was their first time working together in the studio after years of talking about doing it.

At first, Thomas thought he was making his Nebraska, an album that would be acoustic-based. Instead, he started to see that the songs were pointing in more of an ’80s pop direction.

“Once we started to realize it, we leaned into it more, me and Butch,” he says. “We’re like, ‘Oh, you know what?

Let’s go with this because this seems to be where our heads are at right now.’”

eventual album.

“Butch is basically the band, except for a couple of drum tracks, a couple of keyboard tracks and some of my guitar tracks. The rest of it, Butch is the band, which really keeps it in house,” he says. “If I’m writing these songs and then Butch is the whole band, we didn’t have to go out to a lot of people. I don’t think that Atlantic knew we were making a record until we were halfway done with it. That gave us a lot of freedom.”

The producer also knew his place in the creative process and was careful not to overstep his boundaries.

“One of the things about him as a producer is that his ego stays out of it. A lot of times, you want a certain kind of sound, and you go to the

Rob Thomas | 8 p.m. Friday, May 31 MGM Northfield Park Center Stage 10777 Northfield Rd. | Northfield 330-908-7625 | Tickets: $85-$159.50 mgmnorthfieldpark.mgmresorts.com The first song that they worked on together, “I Love It,” seems destined to be shaking stadiums and arenas at future sporting events in the years to come. It came to life in an interesting way, emerging early in the process when Thomas was about to start looking at potential tracks for the album with Walker. The process was interrupted by an unexpected phone call.

“We got a call from the people who were doing the Deadpool 2 movie, saying that they were looking for songs to be in the trailer and stuff, and they wanted to know if I wanted to take a crack at it,” Thomas recalls.

“I had this song written that I’d actually written with my son and I said, ‘Well, actually, I think I do have a track for it.’ I sent it to Butch and he did it that night, a whole track, and sent it back. The funny thing is that it didn’t wind up on the movie. I think we got beat out by a White Stripes song. But at the end of the day, it got the ball rolling.”

Walker was an important asset in many ways as he and Thomas dug in deep, working on the songs for the

producer that gives you that kind of sound,” Thomas explains. “But he’s in such service of the artist and such service of the song that he wants to make sure that it sounds like the best version of what it’s supposed to be that it can be and not like the best Butch Walker record.”

With “Timeless,” the ’80s vibe of the album goes full throttle. Thomas calls it “an ’80s song about listening to ’80s songs made up of a patchwork of ’80s songs.”

“Except for the chorus, that was the only song that me and Butch wrote together. Butch had had that chorus. All of the verses were actually my wife and I,” he recalls. “I was sitting in my studio, down in my basement where my studio is, working on the song. My wife was in real time texting me different song titles, because we have pretty much the same musical taste, especially when it comes to the ’80s. So she was just throwing me titles, and I was trying to fit them in and trying to create a believable song and a believable story that was kind of a mosaic of all of these little ’80s memories.”

Buried in the musical landscape of “Timeless” is a very specific nod to Phil Collins’ classic drum break from “In the Air Tonight.” Thomas had his label reach out to Collins’ camp to get permission to use the reference.

“If we would have used the actual fill, that would have been like a sample, but if you take the fill from ‘Jack and Diane,’ and you take the first half of that long fill out, it’s [very similar],” he explains. “It’s an ’80s fill — it’s just that [Collins] made it the most famous fill in the fuckin’ world. So even though I don’t know if legally we had to, it felt like [the right thing to do] just because I’m a huge Phil Collins fan. I felt like he would get the idea that it was an homage, especially since ‘in the air tonight’ is one of the first lines in the song. I think everybody understood that it was just a very good homage to him and to that time of music that I loved.

Because it was optimistic, it was carefree, it was free-form. You’d come home from school and you’d put on MTV and you’d watch MC Hammer, Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne in the same block.”

Thomas says he and Walker are already planning to work together again.

“Now that we’ve done it, I think that we’ve agreed that this is something that we’re going to keep hitting at for a little while,” he says.

Matchbox Twenty fans can also eventually look forward to new music from the group, which last toured together in 2017.

“Something’s going to happen.

It’s funny, I just reached out to [drummer] Paul [Doucette] two or three nights ago. Everybody in Matchbox was kind of waiting until this got up and running. I said, ‘Listen, right before I hit the road, you should start sending me some song ideas, and we should start kind of going back and forth so that by the time we’re ready to do something with Matchbox, we’ve really worked on some good songs and we’re not cramming it all in.’”

Doucette told Thomas he simply didn’t have time because he was scoring a film and had about 200 minutes of music that had to be done by an upcoming deadline.

“Everybody’s kind of busy doing their things,” says Thomas. “[Guitarist] Kyle [Cook] is on the road right now doing his solo thing. So somewhere, when it just feels natural, there will be new music, and there will be touring, just because we still have more to say.”

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene | clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

33

KentStage =HGÍM FBLL MA>L> @K>:M LAHPL MB<D>ML HG L:E> GHP

Steve Earle and the Dukes

Karla Bonoff

Christone “Kingfish” Ingram

Thu May 30

Sat. June 1

Thu June 13

AJ Croce Plays Croce

The Allman Betts Band

Darrell Scott

Sat June 15

Tue June 18

Thu June 20

Over The Rhine

Gary Lewis & The Playboys

Duwayne Burnside

Fri June 21

Sat June 22

Billy Bob Thornton & The Boxmasters

Joe Robinson

Wed July 17

Wed July 31

Sat July 13

A Special Evening with

John Mayall Tue August 6

JUST ANNOUNCED

Michael Kelsey

The Music of Cream

The Steeldrivers

SEPT 21st

NOV 8th

AUG 3rd

: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

34

| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

@masoniccle @hobcleveland

@masoniccleveland

J U S T A N N O U N C E D - O N S A L E F R I DAY CL MA EV SO EL NIC AN D

THE DOORS OF CHICAGO Tribute to the Doors JUNE 22 ON SALE NOW

RYAN BINGHAM

w/ ASTN

ANJELAH JOHNSON

SEPT. 8 ON SALE NOW

SEPT. 27 ON SALE FRI. 10AM

CONAN GRAY

w/ Jamestown Revival

MOD SUN

w/ Blossom Reynolds, Lost IN Vegas, Baby E

NOV. 9 ON SALE FRI. 10AM GE ID BR M M OO CA R

JUNE 6

JUNE 6

HOWARD JONES

LEELA JAMES

JUNE 16

JUNE 24

w/ MEN WITHOUT HATS, ALL HAIL THE SILENCE

L TI OW AL CKE ER T T

GUSTER w/ Mikaela Davis

COMING SOON

w/ I The Mighty JULY 3 May 30 June 14 June 20 June 24 June 25 June 26 June 26 June 27 June 29 June 30

BUY TICKETS AT

JULY 26

Xavier Wulf w/ Beau Young Prince, Marty Grimes, Reco Havoc Cambridge Room New Found Glory w/ Real Friends, The Early November, Doll Skin SonReal Cambridge Room Alt Nation Presents: Advanced Placement Tour Featuring Bloxx, Hembree and Warbly Jets Cambridge Room Chon w/ Domi + JD Beck Mir Fontane w/ Chanelle Kazadi, Visual 9 Cambridge Room Car Seat Headrest w/ Naked Giants In Association with Beachland Ballroom The Midnight w/ Automatic Weapons The Purple Madness â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Tribute to Prince Ziggy Alberts w/ Garret Kato Cambridge Room

w/ Trevor Hall

AUGUST 7 July 11 July 14 July 16 July 18 July 19 July 21 July 31 July 31 Aug. 3 Aug. 19 Aug. 22 Sept. 17

O-Town w/ Ryan Cabrera Cambridge Room SOLD OUT Carly Rae Jepsen w/ Mansionair LOW TICKET ALERT Michigan Rattlers w/ Oliver Hazard Cambridge Room Kurt Vile and the Violators - In Association with Grog Shop Belle and Sebastian w/ Men I Trust - In Association with Grog Shop Mystery Skulls w/ Phangs, Snowblood Cambridge Room HELLYEAH - A CELEBRATION OF THE LIFE OF VINNIE PAUL J. S. Ondara w/ Christian Lee Hutson Cambridge Room Red Wanting Blue The Alarm w/ Modern English, Gene Loves Jezebel feat. Jay Aston The Adicts Bad Suns w/ Liily, Ultra Q

Buy tickets at Ticketmaster.com or 216-523-BLUE

TO MASONIC CLEVELAND

JUNE 15

ART ALEXAKIS

Songs & Stores ft. Everclear, Fountains of Wayne, Eve 6, Marcy Playground

w/ Yung Bino, 83 Babies

JUNE 1

MAY 31

COMING SOON

NOV. 6 ON SALE FRI. 12PM

Sept. 14 Sept. 21 Sept. 24 Oct. 2 Oct. 8 Oct. 26 Dec. 12

Adam Ant Norm Macdonald 91.3 The Summit presents Andrew Bird w/ Madison Cunningham An Evening with Steve Hackett Theo Von Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul Featuring Steven Van Zandt of The E Street Band Brian Regan

MASONIC CLEVELAND: 3615 Euclid Ave, Cleveland OH 44115 HOUSE OF BLUES: 308 Euclid Ave, Cleveland OH 44114 masoniccleveland.com / houseofblues.com | clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

35

36

| clevescene.com m | May 29 - June 4, 2019

LIVEWIRE

all the live music you should see this week Photo by Travis Shinn

WED

Balanced Breakfast/Jordan Dean/ Mood Bored: 7:30 p.m., $6. Grog Shop.

Lincoln Durham/Morgan Mecaskey: 8 p.m., $15. Beachland Tavern.

Pile/Halfsour/Pelican Movement: Indie rockers Pile come to town tonight in support of their upcoming album, Green and Gray. The band specializes in mixing emo-ish vocals with noisy guitars and drums — think a heavier version of My Morning Jacket. Engineer Kevin S. McMahon (Titus Andronicus, Frightened Rabbit, the Walkmen, Swans) deftly balances the band’s tendencies and capably adds strings to songs such as “Firewood.” (Jeff Niesel) 8 p.m., $12 ADV, $14 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

Ava Preston: 7 p.m., $12. Bop Stop.

THU

Stan Lynch of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers fame) and the rerelease of his 2002 album Walking All the Way. (Niesel) 8 p.m. Music Box Supper Club.

Judi Silvano and Joe Lovano CD Release.: 8 p.m., $20. Bop Stop.

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

Nighttown.

05/29

05/30

Dear Darkness/Girl Fight/Cotton Ponys/Bwak Dwagon/N6664: 8 p.m., $7. Now That’s Class.

The Dirty Hooks/Birdog Cats/ Mella: 8 p.m., $5 ADV, $7 DOS. CODA. Dubbstar Reggae: 8 p.m., $10. Bop Stop.

Steve Earle and the Dukes: 8 p.m., $38-$48. The Kent Stage.

Grapetooth/James Swanberg: 8 p.m., $13 ADV, $15 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

Hunter Hayes/Levi Hummon: 6:30 p.m. Agora Theatre.

Michelle Romary (in the Supper Club): When she was in grade school, local singer-songwriter Michelle Romary had a huge 17-by-17-inch pink spiral notebook in which she kept all of her lyrics.

Even at an early age, she knew she wanted to become a musician.

A handful of albums and a slew of gigs later, Romary is still at it.

Tonight, she’ll debut some of her new songs at Music Box Supper Club. She’s been recording locally with producer Michael Seifert at Somewhere Recording. The album is due out in June. (Niesel) 7:30 p.m. Music Box Supper Club.

Tash Sultana/Pierce Brothers: A self-taught musician who’s mastered over 15 instruments, Tash Sultana started by busking

SUN

The hard-rock act Greta Van Fleet comes to Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica. See: Sunday.

on the streets of Melbourne, Australia. Now she’s become an international star and recently won an ARIA award for Blues and Roots Album of the Year.

Last year, she performed at both Coachella and Lollapalooza, and she comes to town tonight in support of her most recent album, last year’s Flow State, a collection of soulful semi-acoustic tracks that shows off her ability to play a variety of instruments. (Niesel) 7 p.m., $35. Jacobs Pavilion.

Xavier Wulf/Beau Young Prince/ Marty Grimes/Reco Havoc: 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. House of Blues.

FRI

05/31

Bruce in the USA: 8 p.m. Music Box Supper Club.

Ex-Astronaut/Sam Goodwill/Key to the Mint: 9 p.m., $6. Happy Dog. Habibi: 8:30 p.m., $12. Beachland Tavern.

Hey Mavis (in the Supper Club): 8 p.m. Music Box Supper Club.

Hot Mulligan/Belmont/Kayak Jones/Fredo Disco/Future Teens: 7 p.m., $15 ADV, $17 DOS. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

Morgan James: 8 p.m., $30-$60.

Beachland Ballroom.

Mod Sun/Baby E: 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. House of Blues.

Roots of American Music Benefit Concert: 7 p.m. Bop Stop.

Al Stewart: Greatest Hits Tour/The Empty Pockets: 8 p.m., $35-$50.

The Kent Stage.

Sweepyheads/VVISONS/Oregon Space Trail of Doom: 9 p.m., $10.

Grog Shop.

Swiss Army/Future Bummer/Joy

Ceiling/Curtail: 9 p.m., $8. Now That’s Class.

Rob Thomas: 8 p.m., $85-$159.50.

MGM Northfield Park – Center Stage.

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

Nighttown.

SAT

06/01

Karla Bonoff: 8 p.m., $32-$42. The Kent Stage.

Fundraiser for Safer Venues Cleveland with b0xed wine m0m/ Flipcoin/Sure, Machine/ Heavenly Creatures/ Drama Moth: 9 p.m., $10. Grog Shop.

Harvey Pekar Record Release/ Pillars/Minority Threat/Heart & Lung: 8 p.m., $8 ADV, $10 DOS. Now That’s Class.

Mason Jennings/Maura Rogers: 8 p.m., $20 ADV, $25 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Lady Funk and the Gentlemen (Highland Heights School of Rock Grad School): 7 p.m., $5. Grog Shop.

Remo Drive/Slow Pulp/Slow Bullet: 7 p.m., $15. Mahall’s 20 Lanes.

Rich the Kid/Quando Rondo/Young Bino/83 Babies: 8 p.m., $27.50 ADV, $32.50 DOS. House of Blues.

Todd Sharp (in the Supper Club): Singer-guitarist Todd Sharp grew up in Cleveland and cut his teeth playing the area with bands like E.T. Hooley, Fleet and the Maudie Barker Band. For tonight’s show, bassist Mike Joyce, another Clevelander, will join him. The two used to played together when they were much younger. Tonight’s show celebrates the release of his rootsy new single “Back to 1” (co-written and recorded with

06/02

Matt Anderson/Erin Costelo: 8 p.m., $15. Beachland Tavern.

Battle of The Sexes Hosted by BKA Watts: 9 p.m., $10 ADV, $15 DOS. Grog Shop.

Vladimir Cetkar Album Release Party: 7 p.m., $20. Bop Stop.

Paul Gilbert: 7:30 p.m. Music Box Supper Club.

Greta Van Fleet: Last year, Greta Van Fleet, a young band from Frankenmuth, Michigan, of all places, played the Agora as it came through town on an anticipated tour. The band performed with that same kind of energy that distinguished Guns N Roses back in the day and delivered a fierce 75-minute set that evoked acts such as Led Zeppelin. Expect that kind of intensity as the group returns to town tonight to play Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica. (Niesel) 8 p.m., $44.50-$54.50. Jacobs Pavilion.

Sammy Hagar: 7:30 p.m. MGM Northfield Park – Center Stage.

Olden Yolk/Edwin Augustin/Sam Goldberg: 8 p.m., $6. Happy Dog. Jon Spencer & the HITmakers/ Archie and the Bunkers: 8 p.m., $15 ADV, $18 DOS. Beachland Ballroom.

Wu-Tang Clan: 7 p.m. Agora Theatre.

MON

06/03

U.S. Girls/Mourning [A] BLKstar/ Badge Époque Ensemble: 8 p.m., $12 ADV, $15 DOS. Beachland Tavern.

TUE

06/04

Emily Asher’s Garden Party: 7 p.m., $15. Bop Stop.

Choir Boy: 8 p.m., $10 ADV, $12 DOS. Now That’s Class.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene | clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

37

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SUNDAY 6.2 OPEN STAGE SOUND SYSTEM (9pm) Full Band Open Mic Night Hosted by XELA & BIRD DOG MONDAY 6.3 SHITSHOW KRAROKE (9PM) W/WALLACE AND MANNY TUESDAY 6.4 LYRICAL RHYTHMS (9pm) Live Band Open Mic Poetry Hip-Hop Soul Experience

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| clevescene.com m | May 29 - June 4, 2019 20119

SATURDAY 6.1 THE THOUSANDS (10pm) w/DJâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s KNYCE and COREY GRAND

PELICAN

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4(% '2/' 3(/0 02%3%.43 !4

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MOZZY

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0%!#(#52,3

Twitter & Instagram @BSIDECOVENTRY

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| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

39

BAND OF THE WEEK HARVEY PEKAR

By Jeff Niesel OHIO'S PREMIER

Photo by Ruben Anree’ Polo

SMOKE SHOP & TATTOO SUPPLY HEADQUARTERS

5/29 | 7PM | $12

AVA PRESTON 5/30 | 8PM | $5

RAS T DUBFLEX INTERNATIONAL REGGAE 5/31 | 6:30PM | $25

CELEBRATE ARTS EDUCATION:

20 YEARS OF ROAM 6/1 | 8PM | $20

JUDI SILVANO/JOE LOVANO: “LESSONS LEARNED” CD RELEASE CELEBRATION 6/2 | 8PM | $20

VLADIMIR CETKAR NEW ALBUM RELEASE CONCERT 6/4 | 7PM | $15

EMILY ASHER’S GARDEN PARTY 6/5 | 8PM | $20

WOMEN AND WINE: NIGHT OF COMEDY

NEEDLES: Combos Singles Cartridge Bug Pins Piercing INK: Specialty Sets Also MACHINES Coil Rotary Cartridge TATTOO KITS GLOVES FOOT PEDALS POWER SUPPLIES CLIP CORDS CHAIRS ARM RESTS AFTERCARE MADACIDE SHARPS CONTAINERS

poizon_ _ink Background Tattoo

GLASS PIPES BUTANE TORCHES INCENSE DIGITAL SCALES DETOX GRINDERS COLLECTABLES & MORE!

MEET THE BAND: Elliott Frank (guitar),

Ian Douglas (drums), Nick Kratsas (vocals), Nick Schmitt (bass)

6/6 | 7PM | $20

CLEVELAND

STRONGSVILLE

GIVING IT A GO: Friends since grade

BECCA STEVENS

4264 Pearl Rd. 216.749.3440

19097 Drake Rd. 440.572.8287

6/7 | 8PM | $15

EASTLAKE

GIRARD

32888 Vine St. 440.942.8668

16 N. State St. 330.545.8131

school, guitarist Elliott Frank and singer Nick Kratsas originally met bassist Nick Schmitt outside the punk club Now That’s Class and approached him about starting up a band. “That was right after the band I had been in for a long time had broken up,” says Frank. “I wanted to do music but was more interested in playing guitar. Nick Kratsas and I had been friends since we were 5. We wanted to put together something that we could make an honest go of.” Though Frank and Kratsas never met the late comic-book writer Harvey Pekar, they decided upon the band name because it references their childhood experiences hanging out at comic book shops.

CHRIS HOVAN ORGANIC TRIO 6/7 | 11PM | FREE

TRI-C JAZZFEST PRESENTS:

JAZZ JAM SESSION

LORAIN

BARBERTON

832 Broadway 440.242.4080

536 W. Tuscarawas 330.753.0500

6/8 | 5PM | $12

RE:SOUND 4: ANDPLAY/ NEW MORSE CODE

AKRON

MANSFIELD

1004 Kenmore Blvd.

330.753.3600

532 Park Ave. W 419.522.1695

SEE OUR AD ON THE BACK COVER

LINEUP CHANGES: The band’s

subsequently had a few lineup changes over the years. “There used to be a time when we’d go through a lineup change, and it would freak me out,” says Frank. “Now, I just think the band is really nice because we’ve gotten to play with so many great people. We’re fortunate enough to continue to find people who want to do this and every time a new person enters the picture, it makes the band better for it.”

stage with such bands as Defeater, A Wilhelm Scream, Code Orange, Such Gold, Idles, Birds in Row and Knocked Loose.

A STEADFAST APPROACH: The group

recorded the songs on its latest album, Paris Green, without a record deal. Produced and engineered by Ryan Foltz (Dropkick Murphys, Rancid) at Cleveland Audio, the disc draws from Cleveland punk rock and hardcore acts such as Integrity, 9 Shocks Terror and Dead Boys. The band was also recently tapped as one of four recipients of a 2019 Panza Foundation grant. After shopping the record, it inked a deal with locally based Steadfast Records, which released it earlier this month.

WHY YOU SHOULD HEAR THEM: A real

scorcher, album opener “Predation in Shadow Position” features a Fugazilike vibe as it includes a mid-song breakdown of sneering spoken vocals.

“Glow Aplomb” is a bit more melodic, and a gritty guitar riff drives “Coup Ensemble.” “I think more than any record we’ve put out so far, we pushed ourselves to do things outside of our comfort zone,” says Frank. “This record has some things that are not necessarily direction opposite but further afield from what we’ve done.”

There are even synthesizers on the album for the first time.

WHERE YOU CAN HEAR THEM: facebook.

KEEPING BUSY: The group initially

“We’re a Mexican American band, and no word describes America like immigrant. Most of us are children of immigrants, so it’s perhaps natural that the songs we create celebrate America in this way.” So says Louie Perez, the “poet laureate” and primary wordsmith of Los Lobos, when describing the songs on the band’s new album, Gates of Gold.

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| clevescene.com | May 29 - June 4, 2019

issued a self-released EP, Thirty Ghosts, which it recorded locally at Brain Child Recording Studios in Lakewood. The guys followed it up with Upward, Not Northward, which they also recorded at Brainchild Records, and with 2016’s The Astral We. Since forming, the band has toured extensively throughout the U.S. and Canada, sharing the

com/harveypekarohio/ WHERE YOU CAN SEE THEM: Harvey Pekar performs with Pillars, Heart and Lung, and Minority Threat at 8 p.m. on Saturday, June 1, at Now That’s Class.

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

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SAVAGE LOVE SEATTLE & DENVER

by Dan Savage SAVAGE LOVE LIVE SWOOPED into Seattle’s Egyptian Theater and Denver’s Oriental Theater over the last two weekends. I couldn’t get to everyone’s questions at these sold-out shows — there were so many great questions and I’m just one lousy advice columnist — so I’m going to power through as many as I can in this week’s column.

*** Weddings are terrible. I attended “Dueling Dallas Lesbian Weddings,” and both couples are pressuring me to tell them whose wedding was better (or better in the eyes of social media). Am I obligated to “rat” these couples out to each other?

Weddings aren’t terrible, people are — some of them, not all of them. But you certainly aren’t obligated to “rat” these couples out to each other. You aren’t even obligated to speak to any of these terrible people again.

*** What is the best relationship advice you’ve ever received?

Cup the balls.

*** I’ve been talking to a guy for four months, and we still haven’t met in person. He’s recently divorced, and I find it odd that he is all into me with sexting, etc., but doesn’t want to meet. What do I do?

Stop wasting your time.

*** I have always loved anal sex with my partner of more than a decade.

He loves it, too. We’ve noticed a trend over the years where he gets melancholy after we have anal sex.

He doesn’t know why.

Do you have any ideas or theories about why?

Nope.

*** How do I make sure I enjoy my upcoming wedding instead of worrying about how it will go?

Elope.

*** I’m a woman and I’ve been in a relationship for two years. My partner is not able to make me orgasm. He is my first lover. HELP. If you can make yourself come, show your partner how you do it.

If you can’t make yourself come — if you’re one of those people who have never masturbated — start masturbating, learn how to make yourself come, and then show him how you do it.

*** My boyfriend is a cuckold and very into the humiliation aspect of cuckolding. I’ve been hooking up with one guy who is so into humiliating my boyfriend that it’s kind of freaking me out. They message each other so much, I feel like I’m the one being cheated on!

You get the D. Let your boyfriend have the DMs.

*** We are married 10 years, monogamish, pansexual. My friends are opening up their relationship and so are we. Any good reason I shouldn’t have sex with my friends?

Only the most obvious one: If someone gets hurt, these friendships could end. But friendships end all the time without anyone getting off, so …

*** I’m 31; he’s 44. I know how you feel about splitting the rent in proportion to income, but my higherearning boyfriend points out that I’ve opted for more leisure time and less stress with my lower-paying job.

How should we split the rent?

Someone making two or three times as much money as their partner should be willing to pay more of the rent. Splitting the rent 50/50 wouldn’t be fair, particularly if the higher earner wants a larger and/or nicer space, because then the partner making more money is effectively having their lifestyle subsidized by the one making less.

But if someone chooses to make less money because they want more

leisure time, they shouldn’t expect to have that choice underwritten by a partner making more money.

I don’t think they should pay half the rent — but a higher percentage of their income should go toward the rent.

*** How can I nicely convince my girlfriend to have anal sex?

By using your words — your best non-coercive, nonthreatening, willing-to-take-no-for-an-answer words. And it will help if you tell her you’re willing to take it slow and willing to take turns.

*** My boyfriend of 1.5 years doesn’t feel it is “appropriate” to tell me he is in love with me. I want so bad to have our “I love you” moment. What should I do?

Say it to him — and if he doesn’t hit you with an “I love you, too,” then either he’s not in love with you or he’s in love with you and knows how badly you want to hear him say “I love you” but he won’t say it because he likes to torture you.

*** My partner discovered — with someone else — that she loves BDSM, including pain and humiliation. I’m trying, but she’s not impressed. What do I do?

Presumably your partner doesn’t love BDSM to the exclusion of all the hot vanilla sex she’d been having with you previous to this discovery. So instead of trying to be something or someone you’re not, let your partner enjoy BDSM with others while making sure you two maintain your sexual connection by continuing to explore your shared sexual interests.

*** Blair says all blowjobs should end with a swallow.

Thoughts?

Blair is entitled to Blair’s opinion, but Blair isn’t the boss of blowjobs.

I’ve been with my partner for two years. We love each other and have no real issues, except family. I’m out of the closet to everyone in my life. My partner is, too. Her mom “accepts” her being gay, except around extended family. At family gatherings, her mom pretends my partner is heterosexual and interested in men, as if our twoyear relationship doesn’t exist. Is it okay that I think this is not okay?

It’s okay that you don’t find this at all okay. But I’m curious what your partner thinks.

Presumably your partner isn’t a houseplant — which means she must have feelings about this and presumably she’s capable of communicating those feelings to her mother.

*** How do you introduce BDSM into your sexual relationship?

Suddenly and without warning — trust me, the element of surprise is crucial when it comes to kinky sex. Joking! For the record: You introduce BDSM into your sexual relationship by first initiating a conversation about your sexual interests and, if there’s interest on both sides, gradually and slowly introducing JV BDSM play into your relationship.

*** I ran into a coworker at a fetish party, and he was wearing a “URINAL” T-shirt. Does that mean what I think it means?

It means you don’t have to leave your workstation when you need to take a piss.

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