An education of sorts

was found at the downtown campus of Cleveland State University in the early to mid nineteen seventies.

As an undergraduate student wavering between the arts department and the social work department, working towards a bachelor's degree was a luxury that was second fiddle to my greater education via the streets, alleys, and avenues, and the responsibility as a member of a household, wife, and children.

The real education was in the utter disrespect that CSU had for the neighborhood downtown that it was encroaching upon, and its serial demolition of quality urban structures in its insatiable quest for expansion.

These buildings that were destroyed and slaughtered wholesale, only to be replaced with CSU parking lots , vacant speculative lots , and the ugly brutal buildings that are the architectural bell weather of this pug ugly campus.

For a visual idea of the type of structures that existed prior to the 1970's urban destruction , via the filmed on location in Cleveland, Ohio in 1966 by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, THE FORTUNE COOKIE, the apartment scenes , both exterior and interior were filmed on a quality apartment building on East 19th Street between Euclid and Chester Avenue, one building in a solid block of brick ten story turn of the century luxury buildings that CSU demolished into rubble and replaced with an inferior and brutal addition to their campus.

THE FORTUNE COOKIE, was described as being filmed in "grimy black and white”, and resulted in a best supporting actor for Matthau's role at the 1967 Oscar awards.

This block destroyed and the five hundred or so residents displaced are the very type of citizens that the inept Cleveland planning commission, and the political knuckleheads that built CSU would like to attract back today to reside in the new planned " college town", that CSU intends to create in the next few years.

What a joke!

Destroy what is real and replace it with yet another ersatz phony planned community, selling the sizzle again and not the pork steak. It has been said that CSU should not be allowed to teach any courses, or even possess an Urban Studies Department, until they can apologize and rectify their destroying a viable urban neighborhood in pursuit of their greedy land grabbing goals.

Replacing citizens with parking for their suburban student base, and desecrating historic structures in the pursuit of academic mediocrity their modus operandi.

This wholesale destruction of properties adjoining CSU continues to this day, and the sprawling ugly mess that is CSU just grows uglier by the day. What would one expect from a second or third tier State University, such as CSU?

I spent my hard-earned money in attaining a degree from that gyp joint diploma mill, and threw the diploma into a file cabinet after receiving it in the mail, and I have offered many times to scratch out my name and allow some other sucker the use of this cheap piece of academic paper.

I would have been better off waiting until 2007, when answering today's telephone messages, a faux cheesy English accented coot left a hilarious offer to purchase a diploma for one hundred dollars via an 800 number and a credit card.

Should have waited and saved my money!

It was always such a great disappointment to see the wrecking ball knock down yet another solid brick building in the city of Cleveland, and my graphic black and white photographs of many of these now destroyed structures will be available as prints at a later date.

Just what were the culprits that conspired to this desecration of a city thinking about when they dismantled this city during the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980's?

The 1990's brought more of the same urban destruction as a political means of citizenry removal , and what we have to show for these actions is a decimated population , and a sad urban scene.

Bookselling Time!

A new offering just listed today, and certainly a book that any politician or University president should be required to read, an 1874 treatise on etiquette, and manners entitled THE BAZAR BOOK. Thanks to all fellow students and citizens who have survived the greedy machinations of the destructive planners and politicos.

My mother and family, Kim and John!

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