Aretha Was Detroit
By Aaron Foley Reprinted with permission from Detroit's The Neighborhoods, where Aaron Foley has continued to chronicle the city's response to [...]
Why Do We Continue To Be Surprised By Gentrification?
Part of what many people find so irritating—or dangerous, depending on how much you have at stake—about upwardly mobile young people moving to working-class city neighborhoods is the sense of frivolity, of flightiness, they carry with them.
Activism then and now: A talk by Randy Cunningham
By Randy Cunningham The following is an edited transcript of a talk given by Randy Cunningham, author of "Democratizing Cleveland: [...]
Too Fancy for Flint?
I live in Flint. I own a home in the city. However, I’m still often reluctant to call Flint my home. This isn’t because I’m not madly in love with this place, or incredibly proud to live in the city. It’s because of the way I talk. As soon as I open my mouth, most people realize I’m clearly not from here.
Pot Still Won’t Be Legal In Ohio For Awhile, But At The Cleveland School Of Cannabis Students Are Already Hitting The Books
The building is one of those beige, ’80s office numbers, and through the half-shut blinds, cars are whizzing past on Interstate 480. It’s a beautiful day in April, and in the darkened classroom, the teacher is doing a midterm review with the students, going through slides of vocabulary and textbook photos.
LeBron’s Legacy: The King Hits The Road (Again) But This Time He’s Leaving A Bit Of Himself Behind
The first time LeBron James left the Cleveland Cavaliers, the NBA team that plays just forty miles up the road from his hometown of Akron, he was savaged as “callous,” “heartless,” and “cowardly.” And that’s just what team owner Dan Gilbert called him in an angry open letter ...
Democratizing Cleveland: An Introduction
For a decade between the mid-1970s and 1980s, the neighborhoods of Cleveland, Ohio hosted a vibrant community organizing movement. This movement put a pro-neighborhood agenda on center stage in a city that was the very definition of the term “urban crisis”.
The Pennsylvania I Carry With Me: An excerpt from “Red State Blues: Stories from Midwestern Life on the Left”
Five years after I left, I got Pennsylvania inked into my skin. It was my second autumn post-college, and the notion that I might never live in my home state again was sinking in. So I decided to carry the state outline on my left shoulder, with the major rivers of the western third, where I grew up, drawn in blue.
Bessie: The Lake Erie Monster
If you live in Northeast Ohio, you’ve probably heard of Bessie, the Lake Erie Monster. You may have drunk an IPA called Lake Erie Monster, which is produced by the Great Lakes Brewing Co. of Cleveland. Or you may have watched the Lake Erie Monsters, a minor league hockey team that plays in Quicken Loans Arena. But have you ever seen the Lake Erie Monster in real life?
Dispatches From A Superlative Midwestern City
Milwaukee has become a clickbait darling. Our local media outlets run a story every time we're recognized as a "best-kept secret" or a "worst place to live." Without fail, my neighbors light up on Facebook in response to each one, sharing the latest listicle as they either swell with pride ("yeah, we are a hidden gem!") or struggle to articulate dissent with whoever most recently announced that we live in one of the country's most dangerous cities.
Another real estate developer backs out of Chicago’s South Works site. What now?
By Edward McClelland Last month, real estate developer Emerald Living scrapped its ambitious mixed-use plan for the site of South [...]
In observance of the first day of summer, an ode to my lawn mower
By Bert Stratton I didn’t used to like to cut my grass. I made my children do it, but then they [...]