I am responding here on RealNeo to J. Murray who is a frequent and steady contributor to Brewed Fresh Daily.  Here is the link on BFD that is relevant. 

If you want to know the health of your community--ask your mail carrier:  "How many vacant and foreclosed properties on my block today?"

So when I walked by Joe, at the door taking a breather, asked..."you from Boston?"

Well, I had visited Boston (and I had spaced that the Indians were up against them just then) - so I thought the guy was able to see into the future.

Stable on my feet, I walked into the All State Barber College, and l felt that HERE was the healthy, real economic future. 

Regarding the "Red Socks Out to Dry" banner:   I realize there are many in the Realneo audience who despise the toothy grinning Indian logo (and see it as a racist caricature).  The DDealer came out with an editorial along this line recently - but I couldn't find a link.

Thanks to Crain’s for bringing this into the light. 

Bill Callahan, a private concerned citizen (where’s the County in this expose?), has taken a keen, focused interest in minding the "sub-prime" statistics.  

City of Cleveland Mayor Jackson and Cleveland Metropolitan School District Superintendent Eugene Sanders held a “news conference” in the Mayor’s Chambers this afternoon.  The security magnetometer at the Mayor’s City Hall second floor office suite doorway sensed metal (my camera?) and buzzed when I went in, but it buzzed for everyone.  No one was minding it.  Anyway, I’m sure there was not any concealed carry in the City Hall because the yellow sign on the front door of the City Hall said “guns not allowed”.

 

When you visit downtown Chicago or Toronto you can feel those places are more civically healthy than downtown  Cleveland. 

Now that I'm settling into East Cleveland, expect to see posted to REALNEO and my other communities many amazing pictures of urban cores of this NEO-Plum... healthy, ill and dead.

The last two realneo headers are pans of a site I pass often, on my way between the East and West sides, which is bounded by East 105, Wade Park and East Boulevard, in one of the most important historic and cultural neighborhoods in America, where I was shocked to find a group of significant apartment buildings being demolished.

I've enlisted the kids in the neighborhood to let me know of the most recent demolitions.  West 34th St. is the most recent victim of these random hits (Address 3872, south off Denison).  

Creating these gaping holes is not how to save the city.  If there was some actual vision or plan to make use of these demolished properties, then I could see the rationale.  To the people living with the bulldozers--it's as if someone has dropped a bomb on their street.  (I will have to buy a digital camera to record the devastation a la Jeff Buster).

After the presentation by authors  John Mearsheimer (left) and Stephen Walt (right)  of the The Israel Lobby at Case’s Ford Auditorium last night,  I approached  Alice Bach, the tenured Case prof  (on the stage between the authors) and complimented her on her perspicacity shown in arranging  Mr. Mearsheimer's and Mr. Walt's visit to Cleveland.

Let’s say it’s 2:30 in the morning in August in Downtown Cleveland, you are a homeless guy in your fifties named  Mr. Baskin, and you are in the grassy walkway area (pictured in daytime above) behind the County Administration Building.   And you’ve got to go.

Brutalism against Breuer in Cleveland, Ohio. 

We're close enough to our move in to 1894 Roxbury, in East Cleveland, that we have had our DSL service switched over from Ohio City to East Cleveland. Whereas on Clinton, at W. 45th Street, there were several WiFi signals in the air, my new POP on Roxbury is the only signal in the digital darkness of this corner of East Cleveland.

Whoever is culling through the news and posting at the

Cool Cleveland this week ran a piece by Chris Whipple  about re-naming Cleveland’s Terminal Tower.  Mr. Whipple suggests that “terminal” (as in "terminally ill", dead, or dead end) is too much a downer name and that instead the building should be called  VanView  after the Van Sweringen brothers who built the tower and Shaker Heights, etc. 

Press release  posted at the request of Council representative Brian Cummins:

Council needs to clean-up act, move to