Cleveland Is Not My Paris. And That's OK.

I have mixed feelings about my hometown. I decided to embrace it when I needed a tagline for this blog: “Bold thoughts and irreverent insights from Cleveland, Ohio.” 

But I blog about New York and other places more than I seem to get around to my own plum of a town. Cleveland – in my life and this blog – is sometimes relegated to the background. My city is there but not there, an invisible launching pad for flights to other places and flights of fancy.

My ambivalence about Cleveland has its origins in my freshman year at Yale. It had never occurred to me that I would be one-down until I came face-to-face with the first of many East Coast snobs. My suite mate could not keep straight whether I was from Idaho or Ohio – it must have been the “o” sound. (We would go on to become best friends. I was willing to forgive the fact that this wannabe New Yorker was really from Jersey.)

My tough love for Cleveland is one thing – last fall I wrote a blistering, pot-stirring op-ed about our primary visitor attraction, the Rock Hall. But when clueless out-of-towners show contempt without investigation, my fangs come out.

To this day, East Coast elites can’t stop themselves from drudging up retrograde insults about Cleveland. Much of their venom -- "the mistake on the lake," losing sports teams, boy-mayor Dennis Kucinich --  dates back to the ‘70s and, I suspect, comes from a Google search. 

Some New Yorkers will always claim superiority despite being surrounded by the smell of urine and living in a city where they cohabitate with rats. But no, it is we who are unevolved.

 

Growing up, it was almost a given that any young person with drive, brains, and the means would move away from Cleveland during college and never look back. I did that for 17 years, until forces greater than I made me boomerang back here in 1997.

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I got to know a new generation of Clevelanders with a contagious pride of place. They inked their arms with Cleveland tattoos and came up with quixotic slogans and merch claiming that “Cleveland is My Paris.” Even if this notion rings resoundingly false, the underdog chutzpah is all Cleveland. ("Cleveland is my Pittsburgh" might be a more reasonable aspiration.)

Cleveland has formidable assets – culture, parks, restaurants, and sports teams. All that, and Pierogi Week. (Hell, I thought every week was Pierogi Week.) We are a 75-minute flight away from New York City, close to Chicago, and a great location from which to explore.

I do find that the city’s status as a restaurant mecca slipped during Covid, although Travel + Leisure just last year named us the 7^th best food city in the country. Now that same publication is doubling down. “Cleveland joins Paris, Montreal and Bangkok on Travel + Leisure list of top destinations for 2024,” screamed a recent headline. 

If you want Paris, go to Paris.
If you want pierogis, come to Cleveland.

With all respect to its proud Millenials and generous travel publications, Cleveland is not my Paris. Paris is my Paris. Our waiters are different from Paris waiters. Our TV tastes are sui generis. 

To those who won’t consider a stop in Cleveland, I say, “try it.” Have a pierogi, taste our ballpark mustard, cheer on our Guardians, and formulate your own opinion of the Rock Hall. Our "unflashy yet unmatched" orchestra, approachable art museum, and Playhouse Square performing arts center are all jewels.

You may not want to move here, but you won’t mistake it for Idaho, either.

Get yours here

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