Cleveland . . . . with photos!!!!!!

It's a brand new era here in my weblog, though it's unfortunate that the first photos I bring you are of American's Mistake By The Lake . . .Cleveland, Ohio. Last Friday, Dan, Darren, How-Yune and I left this fair city around 11 in the morning to go to Cleveland for the weekend.



Just be sure to never carry your hand guns around . . . . these signs were EVERYWHERE.

So, why Cleveland . . . in November? That in itself is a question I found myself asking until How-Yune answered me with these two simple reasons: to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on the Saturday, and to see a live Browns game on the Sunday.

I was pumped.

We were all pumped. How-Yune had gotten us a cheap hotel room right by Jacobs Field, we had cheap seats to the game . . . in fact, here's where we sat and what we saw.





There were few photos taken on the trip, but trust me, the haunting images of an empty downtown Cleveland will haunt me for the rest of my life. No matter what time of day it was there was nobody on the streets. Like Bad Boy says: "Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooobody!" The empty streets looked like they were primed for zombie attack at any second.

Highlights:
- Seeing Elvis Costello, live and in the flesh, walking around the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
- Hell, the entire Hall of Fame was a highlight unto itself
- The giant statue entitled Land of the Free which is really just a gigantic stamp with the word "FREE" on it, stupid, large, unecessarily patriotic and embodied much of the Cleveland aestethic. (So we posed in front of it, see below)
- Seeing yet another live NFL game
- Having the crowd cheer sunlight when the weather was bitterly cold.
- The breakfast place on Sunday morning
- Having a delicious Bloody Mary in a cool little pasta house after visiting the R & R Hall of fame
- Seeing The Breakfast Club, "the most well respected, well traveled and longest established 80's tribute band in the USA" in a bar in Cleveland. They brought the goods and the Noise. They were damn good.
- Having White Castle for the first time . . . mmmmmmmmm, so many burgers, such little cost . . .except to the stomach lining.

Lowlights
- Basically, the entire City of Cleveland . . . really. It is that bad. Email me for stories.
There were boarded up houses, boarded up office towers, a huge racial divide, and no decent place to get a decent breakfast in the downtown area.

Despite it's lack of charm, grace, safety and anything open on a Friday night, the four of us still managed to have a good time there.





That's us in the Land of the Free. By Sunday we couldn't get out of there fast enough.

Benefit

Hey guys . . . what are you up to this Wednesday night? Well, I'll be spinning at a benefit called "Just Ace of Spades" this Wednesday night at the Boat (158 Augusta Avenue in Kensington). What is it you ask? Well, 7 of Toronto's finest DJs and myself will be spinning a DJ set consisting entirely of Motorhead's classic song Ace of Spades, and my particular spot is from 11 to 11:45 pm that night. Why? Well, it's allllll for charity, the Red Cross specifically. People are collecting donations for every 15 minutes that they can stay in the club, or there's a $5 donation at the door. On top of that, the bar is donating %20 of all the bar sales to the Red Cross as well. There's been some cool coverage in the Globe and Mail so come on out, and party down to Motorhead for a good cause.

More info on the actual event can be found here