In McClelland’s Nothing But Blue Skies and the book I’m currently reading, The Next Hundred Million by Joel Kotkin, northeast Ohio gets discussed from a ten-thousand-foot view. Having lived here, I’m going to offer a bit closer perspective…
I recently was asked to monitor a roundtable for a professional writing organization in Cleveland. The working lunch was great – I love speaking with incredibly smart people about the ways that they get their jobs done and the passion they feel for their work and their communities – and things went well, with good questions and a lively discussion. I also got to hang out on the west side of the Flats, a place that is legendary in Cleveland history and with which I have a lot of personal history. The Flats in general have changed dramatically, as any Clevelander can tell you, going from industrial dock (and place where sailors drank) to manufacturing center to polluted hellscape (we still honor the burning Cuyahoga with a Burning River Festival) to party center to scooby doo ghost town (h/t Mike Pollack) to a revitalized community being developed by folks like the Wollstein clan (hear about this on The Downtowner, a Cleveland podcast).
Through it all stand two icons – the Flatiron Cafe and the Harbor Inn. For old time’s sake I had a beer at the Harbor Inn after the meeting, and the memories came flooding back.
In its heyday in the late 80s and early 90s the Flats’ two sides were an odd mixture. The East side featured Peabody’s, a great music club, but it also had a bunch of the types of bars and clubs that didn’t jibe well with the indie/punk/postpunk music tribe of which I found myself a member. The West side had a couple of large strip clubs but it also had the only place that we could get Guinness on draft (this is before the craft brew explosion, young ‘uns) and a cool, dingy, sort of sketchy bar where we could avoid the yupsters. A couple of cool clubs came about later, but we always started on the West side before risking the trip to Peabody’s, through hordes of drunk former frat boys throwing each other into the river. Harbor Inn was a safe space before we knew the term, a place where you could share a beer with an off-duty cop and not worry about being hassled, a place where the women were impossibly cool rock n roll types who were just about as unattainable but way more interesting than the ones who inhabited the other side (and with far smaller hair). Plus, their beer selection was amazing, and that alone (plus the much friendlier bartenders) made it a great place to pregame.
Starting the evening there, moving to hear great music at Peabody’s (which was legendary as the Pirate’s Cove even earlier), and then finishing at the 9 of Clubs on West Sixth was a pretty okay way to spend an evening, even if work boded early the next morning.
I’m glad that the Flats has moved past its latest wasteland incarnation and has become a different type of space. I’m equally glad that the Harbor Inn (and Flatiron Cafe) are still thriving. Long may they stay…