Plywood Cities

Walking a gritty few miles around our fast crumbling northeast Cleveland neighborhood this ominous penultimate March morning , the skies laced fast with tenebrific clouds. I am served reminder of two factoids in a very clear fashion. One , Bud Selig must live in the subterranean beer cellar in Suds City , because he sure does not possess a clue about Cleveland weather in late March. Two. There is sure a lot of dog shit on the street. Take the second factoid in whatever manner you wish ? As I amble past the boarded up Pizza Hut , Ponderosa Steakhouse ,Goodyear Tire Company , and a gross of other plywood encrusted storefronts , these grim visages do nothing to promote the idea of exercise that has gripped my aging psyche. Instead this brisk walk rapidly becomes a game of eyes down dodge the doggy doo doo , and hum a happy little tune in attempt to negate the ugly abandoned place this once lively neighborhoods retail district has become. Corporate abandonment! The worst vision on this stroll along the Boulevard however is the boarded up former K-Mart and more recently a former Big Lots store who abandoned retail efforts here due to changing demographics , now sits empty . Dangerous , and mouldering while awaiting an uncertain future as a proposed City recreation Center. Now as the signage for the former Big Lots store has been removed , leaving me with only a chuckle when remembering the letter "L" in the Big Lots sign was burned out for the last few years of the store's existence. A not so funny sight gag , that speaks more than less about contemporary life in Cleveland ,Ohio.Corporate bigots! Now , this massive former blue light special space now turned rancid taunts and mocks all of us who pass it daily.An eyesore! Yeah , yet another corporate invader species , in this case KMart from Detroit , Michigan , deciding that they wanted no part of our neighborhood, so they blew the property off and we are left with an ugly empty building as reminder of there Collinwood kiss off , complete with a pot holed parking lot designed now to bust your axle first and ask questions later left behind for good measure. I suppose some Ohio corporations , say perhaps the former office supply joint out on Warrensville Center Road in Shaker Heights , ditched stores in Detroit. Touche. Far as I am concerned Cleveland , Ohio and Detroit , Michigan are about in the same shape and often it proves difficult to discern any visible or demographic differences between the two cities. We Clevelanders are up here on the south shore of Lake Erie and right across the water lives our friends from Ontario , Canada. Lots of melons amid the hoser strains lay ahead on the other side of these Erie waters. Melons , I said . Sadies rule! Back here in Ward 11 our City Councilman , Mike Polensek proves daily he is a well intentioned sort. Prone now in the late stages of a rather lengthy career as city councilman to fashion himself as a sage and experienced leader , whose twenty nine years spent in Cleveland City council chambers gives him the right to comment upon a large number of Cleveland issues. You bet! Councilman Polensek received some national media attention for his chastising and dressing down of a local Collinwood youth that Polensek witnessed tossing litter among the streets he is entrusted as elected official to represent. The young man was rather blase in his response to our councilamn and there is the story. Councilman Polensek acted in a strong pseudo parental fashion in the hopes of advancing this young man's social graces and imparting to him the negative lesson of public littering . Or loitering? Does not matter. Any society is only as good as the sum of it's parts. Yu go Mike Polensek! I concur and applaud your efforts and agree with this cleanliness cause. As I said earlier Councilman Polensek is a well intentioned sort ...I last observed Mike Polensek at a Euclid , Ohio Democratic Party for Obama rally that featured Carolyn Kennedy as a principal speaker held prior to the Ohio primary at the Euclid Community Center earlier this year. Councilman Polensek took the podium early on in the affair and in addressing the issue of foreclosure in our region said he was " sick and tired of being sick and tired" , concerning the incidents of foreclosure and the dire effects they have on our communities. Well put , councilman. Polensek then sat in stern studied silence facing the crowd with a Ohio For Obama , sign flashed towards the crowd of 150 or so attendees for the remainder of the evening . A good soldier for a good cause... Collinwood has no recreation center , and the abandoned KMart on Lakeshore Boulevard has been the proposed site of one for as long as I can remember. The closest City of Cleveland recreation center is the Glenville Recreation Center on East 113th street , under ten miles in distance , yet worlds away in regards to youthful politics. Glenville is Tarblooder territory , Collinwood is Railroaders turf. An invisible boundary exists between these adjoining neighborhoods , and rivalries in high school sports and other more street like matters involving commercial boundaries and illicit activities , run high. It is an unfortunate fact of life that many of our youth are witness on a daily basis to the street crimes of drug sales and prostitution that occur in Cleveland neighborhoods. Most of the customers for these illicit criminal enterprises are drawn here from the five or so Counties that surround Cuyahoga ,and it is easy to spot these low life visitors as they amble about in their hoopty automobiles doing their dirty deeds here in Cleveland .Plenty of crime exists in the rather cross eyed outbacks and dirt trailer types sequestered deep into a surrounding rural county. Often these bad boys are related to some distant parish or township politicians who creates law not observes law , and to quote a phrase "the beat goes on." These so called victimless crimes do have their victims however. Our youth who are doomed to live amid this traffic. These emerging Cleveland youth would be well served with a recreation center as a means of building enough athletic skills , and social graces to perhaps deter them from choosing the easy entrepreneurial skills that have dire long term consequences.To date Councilman Polensek fights hard to deliver this Recreation Center for Collinwood citizens . Keeping an item like this alive is to keep it in the news and in the public eye. The Collinwood neighborhood is among the better off of others in the scheme of events which Cleveland , Ohio is comprised of today. Hanging on by the slightest of margins to a fading dignity is Collinwood , Ohio 2008. An important Cleveland neighborhood to study intensely and often. How goes the future of Collinwood so goes the city. I do not have to elaborate on the positive benefits of exercise for adults , and children alike. Nor does it take a genius to figure that if a household is troubled and chaos exists within it's fabric that youth spending time away from a dysfunctional home situation is a positive , not a negative. The message at the Obama rally was to imagine and embrace the ability to dream and imagine positive change.If we can deliver candidate Obama to the oval office perhaps more funds will reach the tired streets and neighborhoods of Cleveland ,Ohio and Detroit, Michigan. hopefully resulting in more recreation centers and social services? The chant at the Euclid community center rally for Obama ended with the crowd chanting " Yes we can, Yes we can" over and over again. Time has arrived to make some choices , perhaps Obama can make the difference.Today the shame of the empty Cleveland Browns football stadium , built with public funds for private profit, stands on our lakefront empty 355 days a year while our Cleveland youth suffer from a paucity of recreation facilities and their lives become a gamble against the odds of prison or death on Cleveland's mean streets. Thousands of well fed Mothers and Fathers and their off springs many from far off suburbs will attend the 2008 Cleveland American League baseball opener today , spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on beer and food , trophy t-shirt souvenirs and the like. Most Cleveland residents and youth never even get a sniff of this corporate oxymoron ballyard/billboard newly named " progressive field". Calamity field is more apt a name for the baseball yard that the progressive insurance company paid twenty million to name! How many recreation centers would twenty million build?! Hell, the Cleveland AL baseball team even remodeled the right field kids playground at the jake into the new calamity field " party deck". Hell of thing society and it's priorities. We were all children once , and how we treat all children speaks miles about who we really are.Obama knows that fact well. As does all concernedr parents worthy of their salt. Now the time has come to act as if we are entering the 21st century as opposed to entering the 19th century in our current backward ways. Obama has decent odds to pull us out of the mess we as Americans are dug into. Bet on it! The amount of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars is pledged and in conversation with Councilman Polensek says is ready and available for an engineering study at the proposed KMart Recreation site on Lakeshore Boulevard. Councilman Polensek says senior fitness from local high rises should be first imperative. The Humphrey Athletic baseball fields behind the proposed site should remain ballfields forever. Historical evidence proves play on that site since the site was cleared years . This former farmland once used to grow the exotic hybrid Humphrey's popcorn used in the famous and delicious popcorn balls and bags of popped corn sold at Euclid Beach Park , East 105th and Euclid , and from a stand on Clevelands public square. Back when popcorn counted for something other than the great garnish it serves with soups or stews.Then as a parking lot until the amusement parks closing after the 1969 season. Flying turns fields forever! Yes we can!

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