David Giffels and Scott Raab Read at Brews + Prose Second Anniversary

(Courtesy David Giffels)

To David Giffels, the Rust Belt is a promised land of grit and rust — a place where he unequivocally belongs.

On Tuesday, a pilgrimage to Ohio City and a brush-up on Giffels’ book, The Hard Way on Purpose, might inspire similar feelings in readers. Giffels, a University of Akron professor and former Akron Beacon Journal columnist, will read alongside Scott Raab, author of The Whore of Akron, writer-at-large for Esquire and occasional Cleveland Magazine contributor. The event, a second-anniversary celebration of the Brews + Prose reading series, will doubtless fill up fast.

We asked the Akron-born Giffels about LeBron, "ruin porn" photography and what to expect at the packed-house reading.

Q: What are you looking forward to about reading with Scott Raab?

A: We have this LeBron James connection, because I’ve written about it and he’s written about it in very, very different ways. I really want this to be a showdown. I think that’d be great if he was game to do that. Tuesday, who knows what could be happening with LeBron, so it could be kind of an electric kind of moment.

Q: Is the LeBron James as metaphor thing as important as it’s made out to be?

A: I’ve been constantly asking that question. I think it is. He represents such an interesting intersection, him being born just as the Rust Belt notion was beginning and to have been here, then through a weird twist of fate, to have stayed and begun his career here. All of that was at a point where Akron was at the lowest point of its sense of identity. Not that he would be our identity, but that he would represent a new identity, or part of a new identity. I think that’s fascinating.

Q: In your book, you talk about good and bad ruin porn. Does that concept glorify ruins in the wrong way?

A: The issue with ruin porn, especially in the specific Rust Belt ruin porn that I’m writing about, [is that] a lot of those photographs are being made by people who are exploiting it. They’re being made by people who aren’t from that place, who aren’t documenting something with any sort of social or civic or cultural intent so much as just to take fascination in the image itself. I think that’s shortsighted.

Where those images are useful is where the context is opened up, when they’re taken by people that understand it -- whether they’re from the place or they’ve taken the time to really understand it.

Brews + Prose, Market Garden Brewery, 1947 W. 25th St., Cleveland, July 1, 7 p.m.

Eaters Welcome

Photo by Barney Taxel

   Urban dweller Joe Gramc likes to take advantage of all this city has to offer. One of his particular enthusiasms is dining out. He's a regular at numerous independent, owner operated and chef driven Cleveland restaurants;  is gung ho about those that stock the kitchen with local products and is always eager to try new places.  The fine meals he's had have made him an outspoken fan and active booster of our food scene which, he says, stacks up against those in other cities. Three years ago Gramc decided it would be fun to get other people to join him in his culinary forays, and so the Cleveland Dinner Club emerged on Twitter.  It was a way, he explained, to support these restaurants and help them be successful. He also saw this as a chance to network, bring old friends together, and make new ones.
  Ten showed up for the first "drop-in" event at Dante. They ate from the regular menu and he tweeted about it. That pattern repeated with subsequent outings. Interest in what he was doing grew.  Now Gramc, who has a full-time job as VP of Finance at Five Star Trucking Inc, the family business in Willoughby, puts in around 16 (unpaid) hours to plan and promote each monthly gathering. The format has evolved to  feature special prix fixe menus created just for the group and reservations are required. He asks that chefs try to include some vegetarian and gluten-free options.
   Until it's time to come to the table, this is a totally online project. "I tweet out what we're doing- I now have around 3000 followers- and send invites to 150 names on the Club's email list," he says.  There's a link to an event site I create where people can rsvp. The Club is open to all. Anyone can attend an event as long as there is space available in the restaurant." Typically each gathering attracts 20-30 people, sometimes less, occasionally more.

Photo by Barney Taxel

 Dinners are always held during the week, when business tends to be slower and the restaurants can handle the crowd.  The next one is Wednesday, September 18, and I'm excited to be part of it.  I'll be the guide for an after-hours tour of the West Side Market, sharing some little known facts and debunking a few popular myths. Guests get a signed copy of my book, Cleveland's West Side Market:100 Years and Still Cooking.  After our ramble in and around the building, we'll head next door for a meal at Market Garden Brewery. The dishes Chef Andrew Bower and the crew are preparing make for a mouthwatering read: heirloom tomato salad with country ham; duck breast with apple and fennel; seared scallops with roasted corn and crab risotto...  and there are (optional) beer pairings with each course, including dessert. There are still seats available for this but you must purchase tickets in advance. Please consider joining Joe and I for this unique Cleveland Dinner Club outing. No doubt a good time for all. And if you can't, be sure to become a Twitter follower so you're sure to know what he's got going on in the months to come.

Laid-off Plain Dealer staffers, half volunteers, half not, drink at Irish wake

Last night, after word went out that The Plain Dealer’s newsroom layoffs would come today, Ellen Jan Kleinerman stayed late to finish her article, knowing it might be her last.

At 8 p.m., the medical reporter scheduled her story to post on Cleveland.com. It went online this morning at 6 a.m. Four hours later, she and about 44 other journalists were out of a job.

“I was in mourning for my career, for my colleagues, and for journalism in general,” Kleinerman said tonight on the patio of the Market Garden Brewery, where dozens of Plain Dealer reporters gathered for what was dubbed an Irish wake. “The way we cover news is changing. I’m all for change, but I’m not sure I’m embracing the type of change that’s going to come.”

The Plain Dealer slashed its unionized newsroom staff by 30 percent today, part of its switch to a digital-first news strategy and its cutback to a four-day home delivery schedule next week.

About half of the laid-off journalists volunteered to go. Harlan Spector, head of the Newspaper Guild local, and John Mangels, leader of the union’s Save The Plain Dealer campaign, asked to be put on the layoff list. So did columnists Regina Brett and Margaret Bernstein.

For those who chose to leave, the layoff amounts to a generous buyout – a union-guaranteed two weeks’ pay for every year worked. It’s also a chance to save someone else’s job while opting out of Advance Publications’ digital future.

“I’ve been doing this a long time,” said Spector, a 32-year journalist and 23-year PD veteran, after the Guild’s 6 pm rally outside the Plain Dealer offices. “I never thought I’d leave the business. But the way things are going here, I didn’t think I’d get to practice journalism the way I and many others have practiced it.”

The new way is speed and clicks, not ink. Managers are telling PD reporters to think of themselves as working for a website, not a newspaper, one staffer said. While they post news as it happens, a new team of curators will decide which Cleveland.com stories make it to print.

The changes concern Kleinerman, who says editors seem focused on attracting hits, not a story’s value to the community. She fears the PD’s remaining journalists won’t have time to chase unsexy stories that drive change, like her 2009 series about the Cleveland water division’s plague of broken meters, outrageous over-billing and hour-long call times.

“I’ve been in journalism 30 years,” she said. “I love writing. I love the mission. It’s very fulfilling when you do a story and you know that you’ve informed readers and changed lives.”

For 110 journalists and a few dozen nonunion editors, that work goes on. Today -- as if to signal the new regime will support in-depth projects -- Cleveland.com previewed a digital-first investigative series on DNA testing of old rape kits. It’s set to debut Monday, the first day with no home-delivered Plain Dealer. Rachel Dissell, a reporter on the project, says some elements will also run in the paper, but a few, such as an interactive digital timeline, won’t fit a print format.

Tomorrow, Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer will cover Ariel Castro’s sentencing, the finale to the city’s biggest story of the year. It could be a morale boost for the slimmed-down staff – or, at least, a way to work through survivor’s guilt.

Market Garden Brewery raises the bar on lit readings

The wall-to-wall crowd at the one-year anniversary celebration of Market Garden Brewery’s monthly Brews + Prose reading series got a special treat last night: a reading from Pulitzer-Prize winning author and journalist Connie Schultz’s forthcoming novel (scheduled to be released fall 2014).

Schultz read a chapter focusing on a teenage girl growing up in a working class family during the late '60s in a fictional Ohio town while perched at a podium in front of an exposed brick fireplace in the basement of the Ohio City brewery.

One nugget that elicited a collective sigh from the crowd: “Allie looked at her daughter and saw God’s second thoughts.”

The reading was cut short when Schultz realized she lost the second-to-last page. But fellow writer and presenter Michael Ruhlman, along with a cheering audience and Schultz's husband U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, encouraged her to keep going. Schultz pressed on.The crowd of writers, beer drinkers and fans of spoken word received her reading with warm applause.

The free series brings writers out of the bookstore or library and into the brewery for lit readings that feel more relaxed, more genuine. Plus, organizers argue literature is better enjoyed while throwing back a few drinks.

“They’re here because they love the city, they’re here because they love literature and maybe because they love alcohol,” event co-founder Dave Lucas quipped about the crowd.

Jokes aside, the series has become a respected outlet for writers to connect with an audience that may not have come across their work in this way before. Two writers, essayists, journalists, playwrights, novelists or poets read every month. Past speakers include George Bilgere, Michael Heaton and Paula McLain.

“We believe Cleveland is a great place that deserves great literature and deserves a great venue for it,” Lucas said. He added that the series helps show the literary community that Cleveland supports them and can be as great a place for writing as big cities such as New York or Chicago.

Ruhlman agreed the series is an excellent way for the public to have access to prose.

“What a great venue ... the fireplace, the beer, the energy in the room ... it's just fabulous,” Ruhlman said. “We become so isolated by our lives behind our computers that community events like this really, really mean a lot."

Ruhlman read from both his digital works such as posts from his food blog, Ruhlman.com and one of his many traditional print books, Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America.

A snippet from one blog post, titled "The Fallacy of 'Follow Your Passion'" proved that Ruhlman, although known as a food writer, can write about more.

“Everyone has the capacity for passion built into them," he read. "It’s part of being human. You need to set yourself up to receive inspiration. Be ready to let inspiration flood into you.”

The series will continue next month on Aug. 6 with Akron author and journalist, David Giffels and author Alissa Nutting, whose steamy novel Tampa was just released Tuesday. Cleveland Magazine contributing writer Laura Taxel, will speak in October.

Schultz is a frequent contributor to Cleveland Magazine. Most recently, she's written essays on changes to GED testing, threats to Ohio's unions and revising our city's story.

Plain Dealer union members drink 7-Day Lager, mull bitter agreement

Market Garden Brewery’s 7-Day Lager, brewed in honor of the Save the Plain Dealer campaign, is crisp and blond, light for a craft beer.

“Only four percent alcohol, so you can drink seven in one day,” joked PD theater critic Andrea Simakis.

The beer menu just says “best when enjoyed daily.” But it’s understandable if some of the paper’s journalists wanted to drink more.

Three hours before their party last night at Market Garden’s basement bar, they’d learned the details of their union’s new agreement with Plain Dealer management. It sets the terms of the newsroom’s downsizing next year from 168 journalists to 110. And it made the party an uneasy brew of sad resignation, festive camaraderie, and sarcastic anger.

“We’ve got a special guest,” Plain Dealer science reporter John Mangels announced at the mike. “I’m sure he’s here somewhere. Steve Newhouse, are you here?”

Scattered boos greeted the name of the digital division chairman of Advance, which owns the PD and has converted several daily papers to three-day-a-week publications. Last month, Newhouse dismissed the union’s Save the Plain Dealer campaign by saying the chain’s decisions would be based on industry trends, not sentiment.

Mangels, who’s heading the campaign, pulled a Clint Eastwood, talking to a green chair as if it were Newhouse. He mocked Advance’s digital-first strategy and the quality of Cleveland.com, the PD’s online platform.

“Steve’s blazing trails in the digital world,” Mangels said, but Cleveland.com "takes a little while to load.” Advance has rebranded online reporters and editors as “content providers” and “curators,” Mangels said. "We are going to rebrand Steve,” he announced. “The first person who can do that without using the F-word gets a seven-day supply of 7-Day Lager.”

The proposed labor agreement signals that Advance does not plan to merge the Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com into a single “media group,” as it has done in other cities. Instead, the company will run parallel news operations in Cleveland: a shrinking unionized newsroom and a new, nonunion digital news staff.

Under the new agreement, nonunion Cleveland.com journalists will be able to write for the Plain Dealer, while Plain Dealer reporters’ work will still go online. It’s a major concession by the Newspaper Guild, and it’ll weaken the union over time, since new hires will likely be on the online side.

In exchange, the company will extend the Guild’s contract from 2014 to 2019, restore the 8 percent wage cut the journalists took to avoid layoffs in 2009, and add money to the Guild’s underfunded pension and health care funds. The paper also put a floor on its layoff plans. After the cut from 168 to 110 staffers sometime after May 1, it’ll only carry out one more downsizing, to 105 in 2014, in the next six years.

“After the massacre of 2013, we wanted a guarantee for people,” explained Harlan Spector, president of the Guild local.

The union votes on the agreement Tuesday. If it says no, Spector says management has vowed to cut 80 to 85 newsroom jobs in 2013 instead of 58 and reopen the existing contract’s economic provisions to take the health care and pension fund money out of the journalists’ wages.

“It’s not much of a choice: a bad option and a worse option,” said John Horton, who writes the PD’s Road Rant column for commuters. Horton said he’d grudgingly vote for the agreement. “You see what we have – it’s being dismantled. You’re losing something. You won’t realize it until it’s gone.”

Spector said the agreement hasn’t weakened the Guild’s resolve to press on with the campaign, which has attracted 6,700 supporters on an online petition. “We’re going to stand up for the community and what they want, a seven-day newspaper and a news staff that has some teeth,” he said.

The party, in the brightly wood-paneled basement of one of Cleveland’s most buzzed-about bars, was packed with current and former PD journalists and supporters of the Save the Plain Dealer campaign. The crowd included a few civic leaders, but not nearly enough to stage the citywide revolt the Guild has been hoping for.

Dave Abbott, executive director of the George Gund Foundation, drank a 7-Day Lager at the bar. “It’s a lighter beer than I normally like, but I’m drinking it out of a sense of loyalty,” said Abbott, who came to Cleveland to work at the Plain Dealer from 1975 to 1979.

Abbott said he thinks Cleveland.com is a poor substitute for the print edition. “Their online platform is unappetizing, confusing, and inaccessible.” He feared a cut in the PD’s print schedule would hurt the community. “A daily newspaper is a primary source of civic journalism, analysis of issues,” he said.

Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald weaved through the crowd as reporters thanked him for his support. He said losing a daily would hurt the community’s growth and its political culture.

“Cleveland is on an upswing in a lot of ways,” FitzGerald said. “This is exactly the wrong time to become the largest metro area that’s not going to have a daily newspaper. We’ve got a good story to tell, a lot of vibrancy right now. I think we need a seven-day paper and all the reporting ability that goes along with it to build on that.”

Full-time reporting on politics is a “necessary ingredient of democracy,” FitzGerald argued. Without it, politics “really gets dumbed down.”

How are other civic leaders responding to the campaign? “I don’t think they’re as motivated as they should be,” FitzGerald said. The PD’s reporting has made enemies in town. “A lot of it, in my conversations with them, is based on the fact that they might have a personal grievance against the coverage of the Plain Dealer. It’s understandable, but I think it’s short-sighted.”

At the mike, singer-songwriter Alex Bevan performed “Ink on Paper,” a lively blues he wrote for the campaign:

The times are changing
You know that’s a fact
When a good thing is done
You just can’t get it back
I want my paper to stay

Sam McNulty, Market Garden’s owner, expressed solidarity with the journalists while anticipating next year’s layoffs.

“I’ve got two thoughts,” McNulty said. “One is, we’re going to win this. The second thought is, in case we don’t, Plan B is, when you walk out, bring everything you have, your Rolodex, all your contacts. There’ll be a small office somewhere where we can start all over again.”

Update, 7 pm: Videos from the event are online here.

Ale-Tail

Cocktails made with beer are a hot new trend. They’re serving a fine one at Amp 150, the bar and restaurant at the Airport Marriott. I had an opportunity to taste it at the start of a private dinner I attended a few weeks ago.

The purpose of the gathering was to introduce some members of the media to the new team: Executive chef Jeff Jarrett and food and beverage manager Nathan White. The take-away message and good news was that these two are continuing the commitment to keep a local focus when it comes to ingredients and products. And that was perfectly expressed in the refreshing drink that kicked off the evening.

It’s called The Rockmill, after the brewery in Lancaster, Ohio that supplies saison, a Belgian beer the bartender uses in combination with St. Germain, an elderflower liqueur, and fresh lemon juice. Matt Barbee, founder and fermentation master of Rockmill Brewery (pictured below), is in a truly unique position, and I mean that literally, to make this traditional farmhouse ale.

The former horse ranch owned by his family where he works his magic with organic yeast, hops and malt is located upstream at the source of the Hocking River. His water is not just clean but has a mineral profile remarkably similar to what’s found in Wallonia, the region of Belgium where saison was perfected. Since water is the main ingredient in beer, his stuff has an authentic edge that others can’t match.

Barbee also does a witbier, a dubbel, and a tripel. The production is small and hands-on. His beers were the only spirits selected for this year’s Maxim holiday gift guide. When I spoke to him last week, he was in a truck driving to Cleveland with his first delivery to all of Heinen’s grocery stores. Bottles are also sold at Grady’s Fine Wines in Rocky River. In addition to Amp 150, the beers are served at B Spot, Greenhouse Tavern, and Buckeye Beer Engine.

Sam McNulty and Andy Tveekrem of Market Garden Brewery in Ohio City, which also pours Barbee’s brews, are cooking up a special Nose-to-Tail beer dinner for Tuesday, Nov. 29. I love the collaborative spirit behind this event. Executive chef Michael Nowak of Bar Cento, another of McNulty’s dining and drinking establishments, and his team are in charge of the food side, turning a pasture raised heirloom breed pig from Tea Hills Farm into four fabulous courses (out of five, counting a non-pork dessert). Guests will get to meet the brewers and be among the first to sample something new from Rockmill. Tickets are $45. Reservations are required: 216-621-4000. Glasses are raised at 6:30 pm.

In the Market for Something Good

I was at Market Garden Brewery in Ohio City Thursday night. The size of the after-work crowd — inside and out — suggested they were giving away beer. (To be clear, they weren’t.) But obviously word had spread quickly about this long-awaited spot that has been in the works for two years but open only a few days. It looked like half of Cleveland had come to check out what idea man and founder Sam McNulty and brewmaster Andy Tveekrem have accomplished.

The pair started with two empty and unexceptional buildings. Now, after major renovations and thanks to help from a veritable army of others, they’re presiding over a microbrewery that turns out a dozen different beers, a sprawling brew pub and a restaurant, and they'll soon be distilling onsite and pouring their own spirits as the first place in Ohio licensed to do both. Leave it to McNulty, a relentless beverage entrepreneur who already operates Bier Markt, Bar Cento, and Speakeasy (all directly across the street) to hit upon the trendy concept. According to an article that appeared in USA Today in May, pairing craft brewing and distilling is a nationwide phenomenon.

It was a glorious evening — blue skies, warm but not hot and a bit of balmy breeze — so the husband and I wanted to be in the beer garden, an appealing and convivial patio. It faces the alley running parallel to the West Side Market. (Equipped with a wood burning fireplace, it should be equally nice when cold weather returns.) By the time we arrived at 6:30, it was packed, but luckily our son Nathan had gotten there earlier and secured a corner and three stools at a long communal table that encourages conversations between friends and strangers alike. There wasn’t an empty seat out front either on West 25th Street and few unoccupied spots in the two interior rooms, each with its own bar. Sliding glass doors seamlessly connect patios and dining areas. The layout, with spaces flowing seamlessly together, makes it seem as if everyone is part of one big party, no matter where you are.

Amongst the curious and the thirsty, the husband and I saw quite a few people we know, which reinforced that impression. On our personal who’s who was Kevin Scheuring, of Spice Hound and manager of the Coit Road Farmer's Market (spotted but not greeted); Samantha Fryberger, director of communications for Jumpstart, who was with a friend from Positively Cleveland, her former employer; Natalie Ezzie, who is with St. Vincent Charity Medical Center, and her sister Nadine Ezzie, an attorney; Josh Taylor with Twist Creative; Joe Mosbrook of Cleveland State University; and Kurt and Barbara Zoss, owners of Zoss the Swiss Baker and our Cleveland Heights neighbors. They make the excellent soft pretzels on the brewery menu. The timing of their arrival was perfect; they stopped by to say hello just as we were polishing off an order.

I went there for a professional peek and some social time with my son and husband. I got both plus something more: a sense of community and an infusion of excitement. I felt happy for myself and for my town, happy to have a new business investing in the neighborhood and the city, happy for the energy and activity it brings to the street. I’m glad when good things happen here. I take it personally. And the opening of Market Garden Brewery definitely makes me want to celebrate.

photos by Stephanie Sheldon

First Sip: Market Garden Brewery

As Market Garden Brewery gears up to open the first week of July, owner Sam McNulty invited us over for a sneak peak tasting last night. We sipped five handcrafted beers created by brewmaster Andy Tveekrem, formerly of Dogfish Head. In all, McNulty says there will be about a dozen house-crafted brews offered (10 will be regularly on tap with two to rotate seasonally). Plus expect nods to other local microbreweries such as The Brew Kettle and Thirsty Dog Brewing Co.

If the first five (which included ales, stouts and IPAs) are any indication of what's to come at Market Garden, then we can't wait for the taps to open — not a bad brew was sampled last night. Here are three of our favorites:

Test Market Ale: This is what we caught McNulty drinking last night, and for good reason. It's Market Garden's first brew, amber in color with a malt meets hops feel for a crisp finish.

St. Emeric Stout: Guinness drinkers (myself included) will love this stout. It's full bodied and dry but without a bitter finish. It goes down velvety smooth.

Wallace Tavern Scotch Ale: Light brown in color, it's got all the makings of a traditional Scotch ale with a malty caramel flavor and a bit of a roasted kick.