Jeff Hess has a feed now. Make sure you add it to your favorite aggregator.

It’s interesting how many more WiFi hotspot have come to light since the article in the PD. Did you know Civilization in Tremont has free WiFi? I didn’t either. It doesn’t appear to be on their website, but I might be missing something.

Anyway, I thought I take the opportunity to encourage you to make sure your favorite area hotspot is on Steve Goldberg’s CleveWiFiWiki and to post photos using tags like the one’s Valdis Krebs used on his Flickr pages.

It was never our intention to highlight ALL of the hotspots in the area. We wanted to create a distributed effort that a number of people could take part in to bring attention to everyone providing free WiFi in the area.

Thanks for being part of it!

Here’s the post I’ve been waiting for from Sarah Wilson-Jones:

“If that first lunatic fringe goat herder hadn’t decided to find out what was making his goat dance, we wouldn’t have had the Renaissance. Paris wouldn’t have been founded. The Mongol Horde would have over-run Europe. They would not have stopped at the gates of Vienna. The United States never would have been founded. Lloyd’s of London never would have existed. The Dutch never would have found cocoa.”

Want more creativity? More economic development? Innovation? Try coffee.

Jack Ricchiuto has launched FacilitationCommunity.com, and will be inviting participation soon.

From their latest newsletter, a link:

Downtown Cleveland Partnership is the not-for-profit advocate dedicated to building a dynamic downtown. We provide predevelopment, marketing and technical expertise and assistance to downtown businesses, civic and governmental entities, stakeholders, investors, retailers, developers and tenants. We are committed to making downtown Cleveland a vibrant and desirable place to live, work and visit.

What I received in my inbox was:

Downtown Cleveland Partnershipâ??s seventh annual Ruth Ratner Miller Award for the Advancement of Downtown was presented recently to two pioneers of redevelopment in downtown Cleveland, John Carney and Bob Rains.

Each year the Partnership has the honor of presenting the Ruth Ratner Miller Award to those who have contributed significantly during their careers to the vibrancy of downtown. Dr. Ruth Ratner Miller was such an individual who throughout her life contributed to making Cleveland a greater place. She headed the City of Clevelandâ??s Community Development as well as the Health Departments. For Forest City Enteriprises she helped to spearhead the Tower City Center project. In addition, she was always very active in the support of numerous social service and charitable programs. Recipients of this award are deemed to have displayed similar admirable qualities.

The prestigious award was presented as a part of the organizationâ??s annual awards luncheon event held in early March at The Union Club. The sell-out crowd on hand came to honor Carney & Rains who through their firm Landmark Management, currently manage a total of over 535 residential units, 108,300 square feet of commercial space and 220 parking space in downtown Cleveland. Their redevelopment efforts have resulted in investments of well over $100 million, involving 16 buildings…

I’ve added emphasis.

Can I have a reality check here? Why are John Carney and Bob Rains being honored? The award supposedly goes to developers who display “similar admirable qualities” to Ruth Ratner Miller, right? Isn’t it the “support of numerous social service and charitable programs” that’s the admirable quality? The only thing I see are all the buildings they’re managing. Is that really revitalization? What do you think a dynamic, vibrant, and desirable downtown Cleveland would look like?

I lifted these out of a comment from Jeff Hess:

So what would a vibrant Cleveland look like? Hereâ??s a short list. A Cool Cleveland would have:

Mom and pop Korean groceriesâ?¦

Pizza-by-the-slice shopsâ?¦

Live theatre on the third floor of old warehousesâ?¦

Hole-in-the-wall jazz clubs that are open until 6 a.mâ?¦

Breakfast places where you could grab a bagel and loxâ?¦

Coffee shops where the owner makes the coffee every morningâ?¦

Restaurants with four tablesâ?¦

Loft apartments that havenâ??t been converted to Yuppie playpens.

His opinion is that Cleveland doesn’t have these things. I look at the list and think, man, we’ve got to have some of those things here. So if you know of one or more, please comment about it or post it to your own blog (or Flickr page).

Excerpts of brief views

It’s funny. Though this city is split by a river that runs roughly parallel to that line of lights, this city seems dimensionless to me in that direction. For me, this city’s defined by it’s east-west roads. Lorain Avenue and Cedar Road. Mayfield Road and Detroit Avenue. The north-south roads, the Warrensvilles and the Clagues, they never really seem as existent as I-90, or the shoreway.

This one is priceless:

I was walking down Lake Road when I passed an older lady. She was maybe in her sixties. She was wearing a coat with the hood up around her head, and there was a furry runt of a dog a leash’s-length in front of her.

The lady was staring at me.

The lady was not happy with me.

Being a nice guy, and being the kind of guy who likes to assure older ladies that I am not a mugger or a psychopath, I met her steely gaze with my own innocent one, put on my best “I’m not a mugger or a psychopath” smile, and said, quietly and without a hint of menace or threat in my voice, “Hi.”

I took another step–I sometimes walk fast, by the way–and she didn’t crack the slightest hint of an “I’m walking past another person on the sidewalk” smile. Instead, she grunted, and said, “You’re so friendly you’re sickening!”

Another step, and I was past her. Another ten steps, and I was starting to laugh.

Good work, Darby. Keep it up.

I’m not sure what to say about this post by Wendy Hoke. I was very moved by it. I had no idea what to write about Easter, and I’m glad I didn’t, because Wendy was much more eloquent.

Interesting, that the prayer she shares is from Thoughts in Solitude. Posting them to a blog is hardly a voice crying in the wilderness.

As if we didn’t have enough sports bars in town, SportyGrrl writes:

In case you arenâ??t in the University Circle social circle, you may not know Case Western Reserve University has opened a big sports bar right in the middle of its student center. The name of this bar? Wackadoos. Apparently itâ??s a chain, but there are only five other locations, three of which are in Florida and the other one is in St. Louis. Nothing has ever seemed more out of place than a sports bar on Caseâ??s campus. If you are not familiar with the athletic makeup at Case, you have a Division III athletic department where you can find more jocks in the science clubs than on the football field.

To complement the sporty feel, there are old Case uniforms hanging up on these big pieces of netting. These jerseys must be from the many All-American athletes that have gone to school here at Case. (I would challenge one person eating there right now to name somebody who has even been inducted in the Case Athletic Hall of Fame.)

“Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.” - Charles Caleb Colton

At least that’s what I’m telling myself. How long have I been pointing to other bloggers and highlighting what they’re talking about? A couple of years?

One of my colleagues is pitching the same idea. The irony is, my colleague has never really done what I do. His area of expertise is in areas that I don’t even touch. Not to mention some of the best work from my colleague has done in the past will be comprised by this new arrangement. Frankly, I think they’re doing a bigger disservice to the area by providing this new service.

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery. Imitation is the sincerest of flattery. Imitation is the sincerest of flattery…

Update: I’ve commented on this post, so please click below for more details.

The Rogue Mechanic proves his rogueness in this post:

Are you following in the footsteps of other companies that provide crappy customer service or are you just trying to help the other bike companies sell more bikes?
I know of three people in the same amount of months who are less than happy with the warranty process. In fact all three are really hacked off. All are seriously considering jumping ship to another brand. Besides me getting upset because of the level of service these good people have received, I also feel one inch tall because of my recommendations made. Maybe it’s time for me to start changing my tune…
Up until recently, making the recommendation to buy a Trek was an easy one and my confidence was high that if there was ever a warranty issue, it would be rectified seamlessly. That’s the way it was for me the 12+ years of dealing directly with the company…

I think this is a great example of why someone should blog within their expertise. John invites the president of the company to call him and is willing to go to bat for his clients. I wonder if he’s heard from Trek yet…

I think it’s charming that Mayor Campbell still writes letters. It’s an appropriate metaphor for the archaic argument that goes something along the lines of - they got [insert name of big thing here], so we need our own [copy name of big thing here].

Did your parents you to ask you “If so-and-so jumped of a bridge, would you jump to”?

One word… JibJab

Yes! Jeff Hess has a real economic development idea. Imagine the jobs it’ll create! A total slam dunk…

Got an email from the GOP Commi pointing me to the Right Angle Blog.

I recorded this conversation today with Paul Allen, who starts out describing Cleveland as a hithole, compares and contrasts it with other places he’s been, and ends up sharing the view of an outsider on the slurry we call the civic space. It’s about 43 minutes long, but worth every minute.

Damn.

This was a great conversation.

I totally botched it. I couldn’t get my PC recorder working, so I tried it on my Mac. At least I got their two-thirds of the conversation. Just imagine I’m saying something intelligent or funny during the pauses…