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Tag: Cleveland Reviews

  • My Review of Rep. Max Miller’s Opinion of Cleveland – Cleveland Scene

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    Congressman Max Miller, not to be confused with the more well-known Max Miller who hosts a YouTube cooking show with his husband, “Ketchup with Max and Jose,” recently called for the National Guard to be deployed to Cleveland. The 36-year-old, who did not grow up in Cleveland but rather the affluent suburb of Shaker Heights, was quoted saying: “The Cleveland I grew up in is now unrecognizable.” I am here to shed light into what his experience in Cleveland may have been like.

    I am a 37-year-old white woman who has lived in both urban and suburban areas across the country. I grew up down by the bayou in Lafayette, Louisiana before moving to the beautiful suburbs of Wooster, Ohio for college. From there, I moved to downtown Dallas, got a doctorate, and eventually came back to Cleveland, where I have resided for the past seven years. These years have been filled with survival, uncertainty, and fear; this is a warning to readers about what you might face if you dare cross into city limits.

    On an average weekend day, I leave the safety of my home to find coffee with my four-year-old daughter and my husband. When I arrive at Phoenix Coffee, there are people sitting outside. I wonder, momentarily, if they will ask me for money or worse, assault and rob me; however, they surprisingly continue drinking iced lattes while conversing about literature and poetry. As I narrowly make it inside, I face another horrifying realization. They hand me a coffee with no straw. I ask politely, may I please have a straw? The barista hands me a compostable straw. I grow worried about its integrity in my cup and on my lips, but it somehow maintains its shape as I slurp down my caffeine. If this is not tyranny, I do not know what is.

    If this doesn’t scare you enough, there are some coffee shops that provide no straws at all. Rising Star, for example, only offers sippy-cup style lids. Should you feel truly threatened, retreat to Starbucks. Straws are abundant there. Remember these lily pads of safety in times of crisis.

    After narrowly avoiding caffeine disaster, I walk down to pick up my farm share. A strange man leaving the establishment says, “Good tomatoes today.” I clutch my red bin closer, ensuring he cannot wrench it from my arms. Inside, the tomatoes are indeed good looking. But lurking beneath them is something far more sinister: fennel. The same fennel that once withered in my fridge, unused, taunting me. I feel panic rise. Mercifully, the farm stand volunteer points me to an “exchange bin.” I swap the fennel for more tomatoes and run, trembling, into the daylight.

    Seeking refuge, I head into Dave’s Market. A police officer at the door soothes my nerves, and I’m relieved to see no fennel in the produce section. But then disaster strikes again: they no longer carry Winking Lizard BBQ sauce. I feel threatened. Should I demand to see a manager, or flee immediately? I choose to flee.

    I sprint down Lorain Avenue, where a city bus roars past. Public transportation makes me uneasy. My blood sugar plummets. I enter Juneberry for brunch, but there are no tables available – an hour-long wait. I stagger on to Le Petit Triangle, where they inform me they are fully booked and only taking reservations. Was this what Max Miller (not to be confused with the more well-known New York Jets offensive tackle Max Mitchell) meant when he said the city was unrecognizable? A place where a 37-year-old white woman cannot procure a $16 omelet on demand?

    I retreat home with my farm share, hungry and shaken. Outside, a terrifying noise erupts: children playing on the sidewalk, including my own. I wonder if I should board up the windows, but it would cover the stained glass. I crouch in the dark on my hardwood floors until the laughter subsides.

    Night falls. I venture out for a calming walk but am unnerved by sounds of people eating on patios and leaving art galleries. I duck into Bookhouse Brewing for safety and a smoked beer. There are no televisions here, only books and board games. Patrons are laughing, talking. I am defenseless, unable to track the Guardians’ score in real time. At least the beer is good.

    Later, I stumble into Dean Rufus House of Fun. I consider it as a possible family-friendly outing, but upon entry I am assaulted by shelves of menacing penises in rubber, glass, and latex. For a moment, I fear this is the arsenal Max Miller warned us about – weaponized rubber dicks stockpiled in the city’s core. I reel outside, dizzy. A woman asks if I’m okay. I recoil, fearing assault, though she only offers kindness. The city is alive with music and laughter, but I rush home, still trembling.

    That night, my husband recounts his own ordeal: securing ice cream from Mason’s before their 9pm closing, navigating the uncertainty of daily flavor changes. We eat in silence until a noise jolts us. From the backyard window, I see our cat Hector sharing his food bowl with a raccoon. The raccoon shoves the bowl around, snorting. Again, I feel fragile, weak.

    The next morning, I remember Max Miller, not to be confused with the more well-known late Grammy-nominated rapper Mac Miller, once worked at Lululemon. Inspired, I set out for leggings, but the store is gone, replaced by a boutique. In Cleveland, it seems, there are many small businesses and few Olive Gardens. People smile and wave on the sidewalks, but I never know when they might pull out a weapon. It is always on my mind.

    I try to find food: Larder: closed Sundays. Momocho: closed Sundays. Amba: closed Sundays. A famine in the land. I decide to escape into nature but fear moving my car; suburban visitors have clogged the street with their parked vehicles. I hop on my bike and use one of the many bike lanes toward the Towpath, finally finding quiet.

    Here, I reflect. I have survived compostable straws, fennel, brunch denials, artisanal penises, and raccoon incursions. Still, Max Miller, not to be confused with the more well-known Democratic strategist Matt Miller, insists the National Guard must stabilize the city. He will bring us chain restaurants with laminated menus, endless breadsticks, plastic straws in every size, and the soothing silence of cul-de-sacs. This great Max Miller, not to be confused with the more well-known horse trainer Max Miller of Shelbyville, Kentucky, will march the National Guard in the suburban amenities our Founders intended. Until then, I will remain on high alert, clutching my farm share tomatoes, hoping no one forces fennel upon me again.

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    Andy J. Huston

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  • My Review of the Cleveland Browns

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    When you think of suffering, you might think of war, genocide, or famine. Suffering that is forced upon someone, with no escape, no control over the situation, is absolutely deplorable, absolutely incomprehensible, and also absolutely not the focus of this article.

    The suffering I’m concerned with is elective. The kind you sign up for. College admissions committees love this kind: “What obstacles have you overcome?” “What challenges have shaped you?” If you wrote about real agony, they would gasp and clutch their pearls. We must not overshare, lest the rawness make the reader uncomfortable. Save it for your therapist. But elective agony, they eat that shit up. Write about how an ACL tear in your varsity soccer game led you to an interest in sports medicine: instant Ivy League material. Write about how sexual assault led you to clinical depression: instant waitlist. We trot out our micro-traumas as evidence of character. Hardship, we are told, builds mental fortitude. It builds character and molds us into unstoppable forces. And, since there is so much merit in adversity, we often enter into it willingly.

    Today, I am on day two of a six-day backpacking trip through the remote wilderness of the Rocky Mountains with my partner, writing this down on a scrap piece of paper with a pencil. Yesterday, we climbed two mountains (~5000 vertical feet), crossing over 19 miles of terrain, carrying our home (tent), kitchen (stove and pots), and all the necessities to survive on our own, packed away on our backs, raking in a combined ~50 pounds. Today, my right foot is swollen. My legs are throbbing. My back is bruised. My odor is offensive – bad enough to extinguish the Cuyahoga if it ever caught fire again. Yet, as I sit here, I feel joy. I’m sure part of that joy is the knowledge that this will end – a warm shower and a cold beer await me on Friday. But it feels like more than that.

    There is a peculiar human drive not only to accomplish but to suffer. The Badwater Ultramarathon, for example, is 135 miles through Death Valley in July, where the air itself is hot enough to sauté you. If it were about mileage alone, runners could just loop around beautiful Lake Erie in November until their knees liquefied, then go grab a few rosemary bagels from Cleveland Bagel Company and a coconut water iced latte from Phoenix. But no; the point is the punishment. The point is to cook while climbing. 135 miles around Cleveland is too luxurious. You can’t achieve enlightenment with schmear on your face and the world’s best iced latte. With the Badwater Ultramarathon, suffering is not the obstacle. Suffering is the substance.

    We see this across history. Mother Teresa and Saint Francis of Assisi denounced comfortable lives to embrace poverty as if it were haute couture. Buddhist monks fast and seclude themselves into enlightenment. Jean-Jacques Savin crossed the Atlantic stuffed inside a barrel, while Joey Chestnut punishes himself by stuffing barrels of meat into his body – 70 hot dogs in 10 minutes, a feat equal parts impressive and alarming. Even Forrest Gump, cinema’s great philosopher, ran across America “for no particular reason.” The reason, of course, is to suffer.

    Which brings us to Cleveland.

    It turns out this drive to endure is not limited to wilderness of ultramarathons. In my own backyard, 17 times a year, I witness another kind of suffering. Being a Browns fan is its own Badwater: an intentional immersion in futility, an intellectual exercise in not giving up, a barrel meandering across the Atlantic, a communal fast where enlightenment is promised but only another off season rebuild is delivered. We elect it. We embrace it. We carry it on our backs.

    Consider the résumé: In the 1990s, the Browns were kidnapped to Baltimore, where they promptly won a Super Bowl while wearing someone else’s laundry. Since their return, Cleveland has managed only one playoff win. In the 2010s, we perfected a 1–31 stretch, capped by the platonic ideal of defeat: a 0–16 season. Just a few days ago, at our home opener, the Browns lost by one point to the Bengals. Since 2000, we’ve enjoyed just four winning seasons. The Colts, in their Peyton years, won relentlessly, but the stadium felt like a country club brunch; just last week they were voted the most pessimistic fans. The Rams won a Super Bowl in 2021, but half their stadium was visiting fans. Cleveland’s fans, by contrast, fill a losing stadium with the raw energy of a religious revival every single home game, in rain, snow, or sleet.

    This is not “despite” our record. I am starting to believe that it is because of it. The resilience is the point.

    A few hours have passed, and I am writing now sitting down in a patch of dirt by a creek, eating granola out of a bag. My legs ache, my back is striped with bruises, and an hour ago I sprinted in my underwear after a camping chair that the wind had blown downstream. I am suffering, but not unhappily. I feel fully at peace. I’ve gone through extreme lengths, and I rest brimming with a feeling of ability; not to accomplish, but to endure. Pain is proof that I can carry more than I thought. Misery is evidence of capacity. My partner sits beside me, just as sore, just as odorous. There is companionship in this misery. There is a triumph in the resilience of suffering, together. There really is an art to that.

    And that is Cleveland football. We climb the mountain season after season, battered and bruised, hauling futility on our backs. And though the summit reveals nothing more than another mountain, we keep going, together.

    Our losing seasons are not a failure but a kind of fellowship. They are a ritual, a proving ground, a daily reminder that endurance itself is a victory. There really is an art to suffering. In Cleveland, we practice it together with devotion – shotgunning warm beers in the Muni Lot, cheering through the wind and snow, and finding joy where no one else would dare look.

    Being a Browns fan is not about wins. It is about endurance. It is about carrying futility like a pack on your back and still walking forward, shoulder to shoulder with thousands who feel the same bruises, the same sting of disappointment. We do not suffer in silence. We revel in it, we ritualize it, we turn loss into communion. In Cleveland, misery is not defeat; it is proof. Proof that we can endure, that we can keep climbing, that we can find joy in the climb itself. And maybe, just maybe, that is the closest any of us will ever come to enlightenment.

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    Andy J. Huston

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  • My Review of That One Gorilla at the Cleveland Zoo

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    Scene Archives

    The Cleveland Metroparks Zoo

    It was a warm August day in 2023, the kind that made the zookeepers sweat and the ants plot. I, a humble carpenter ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus), found myself deep in contemplation, brainstorming new research trajectories, or rather, new galleries to excavate. With the collective wisdom of my colony – a bustling superorganism of minor and major workers, scouts, and our venerable Queen – we formulated an idea so pioneering it sent ripples through the colony’s decentralized decision-making system.

    Our Queen, that magnanimous matriarch and consummate scout, volunteered herself for the riskiest reconnaissance mission. Ever fearless, she left the safety of our nest to explore the uncharted wilderness of the Cleveland Zoo’s gorilla exhibit. There, amid the mossy, decaying wood, a veritable palimpsest of cellulose and lignin, she found a modest nesting site, perfect for a modest colony expansion. Nothing to go ape shit over, but it will do.

    “It’s not exactly the Serengeti,” she reported via pheromone communication, “but the gorillas seem uninterested. It is a suitable stop on our way to the cheetah exhibit. The gorillas even assured me that the wood was communal property. A gift from the zookeepers themselves.”

    I took up the mantle of project architect, meticulously mapping the blueprint for a new gallery system. With antennae twitching in excitement, I laid a pheromone trail along the grain of some mock wood samples outside the exhibit to test tensile strength and moisture content. This was no ordinary stick; this was the stick, the cornerstone of our future expansion.

    Meanwhile, our simian observers, led by one particularly surly silverback with modest intelligence (hereafter referred to as “That One Gorilla”), watched with the curiosity and adeptness of a wellness influencer suddenly put in charge of public health policy. He repeatedly reached toward our proposed gallery site as if to claim it with a casual “I was here first” paw swipe, a classic case of seniority without merit.

    The major and minor workers were on high alert. We all knew what was coming. This gorilla had zero engineering skills but infinite entitlement. It was only a matter of time before he tried to appropriate our work.

    True to form, our Queen confronted That One Gorilla with all the diplomatic tact of an ant queen speaking to a bellowing primate. “Respect the boundaries of innovation,” she signaled, her antennae poised with authority.

    He responded by stomping his feet so violently that the ground trembled like a minor earthquake, sending vibrations through the cellulose substrate. “I want a gallery, too! And it must be finished before you touch any other wood in this exhibit or the better wood in the cheetah enclosure. I’ve always wanted a soft, architecturally exquisite piece of wood. I told the last silverback about it! This is my idea.” Cue chest pounding for emphasis.

    We diplomatically agreed to share the gallery, provided he contributed in some tangible way. (Spoiler alert: he did not.) After all, the wood was provided by the zookeepers, and the idea was ours, but we were magnanimous. We had bigger plans, like conquering the neighboring cheetah exhibit’s prime real estate.

    As we laid down our pheromone trail and began excavating, carrying tiny cellulose chips out of the tunnel and depositing refuse away from the brood chambers, That One Gorilla lurked nearby. He popped in periodically to ask the same, painfully uninformed questions, and once even tossed some of our carefully removed debris back into the tunnels, risking fungal colonization. The nerve.

    Work progressed under duress – walls were smoothed, galleries expanded – until near completion. Our Queen sent him a detailed communique, inscribed on a leaf and etched in pheromones, outlining our monumental effort expended on this “stupid piece of bark,” and making note of his lack of involvement in the progress.
    The next morning, That One Gorilla reappeared, exhibiting the classic displacement behaviors of a large male facing irrelevance. Some have called him distinguished, but he did not act in a way that demanded respect. Instead, he was stomping, chest-thumping, and aggressively failing to make a point. He stammered, flailing about, spittle flying:

    “This was my idea! I’ve wanted this since I told that one gorilla you never met! In fact, I told you about the wood here, it was me who started this whole thing! How dare you steal it? You’re just an ant – not even a queen! A lowly worker, barely promoted. You know nothing about wood! I am the wood expert! This is my exhibit! I could eat you! Gorillas sometimes eat ants, you know!”

    My mandibles curled in amused disdain. He went absolutely bananas. And, as the Queen said, this was really nothing to go ape shit over.

    Calm as a freshly excavated gallery wall, I replied:

    “We don’t care. If this means so much to you, take the wood. We were heading to new galleries anyway. Finish the tunnels yourself – I’m sure your dexterity and opposable thumbs will do wonders.”

    He went ballistic. Pounding, stomping, whining, despite getting his way. I, meanwhile, set off as scout, laying a fresh pheromone trail into the next frontier. Like our Queen before me, I am unafraid of the unknown. Nor am I intimidated by giant apes with small ideas.

    I am ready to lead. Ready to dig. Ready to move forward.

    New discoveries await.

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    Andy J. Huston

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