So, a friend of mine is moving to Cleveland, and she doesn’t know anything about the city.
What are some fun things to do in town? Where are good places to shop? Where are nice places to eat? (She’s a vegetarian.) She’s a 25-year-old social worker, so it’s not like I’m looking for super-expensive gourmet restaurants or something.
If you have any suggestions of things she can do to meet other twenty-somethings, that would be great too. I know she’s already planning on taking a cooking class.
She said she’ll be living in the Lyndhurst area, if that means anything. I think that’s on the east side of town.
Lyndhurst and the surrounding 'burbs will put her within easy striking distance of every serious shopping mall on the East Side (three miles or fewer) from the yupscale Beachwood, Severance, and Legacy Village centers to the gritty/necessary Eastgate and Goldengate plazas. Just past Eastgate and Goldengate on the same street (Mayfield Rd.) is Hillcrest Hospital, which is probably one of the best hospitals (for nursing care) in the metro area.
It will also put her within three or four miles of the North Chagrin Reservation of the Cleveland Metroparks. The metroparks are called “the Emerald Necklace” because they are green spaces that nearly ring the entire city, following various river bottoms flanked by steep valleys so that there are a lot of trails of various levels of challenge for hiking, biking, cross-country skiing, etc.
She’ll also be near Cain Park, a fantastic venue for folk and jazz concerts throughout the summer.
I’m not familiar enough with that part of town to recommend casual vegetarian dining, but both The Mad Greek and the Cafe Tandoor are outstanding (if a bit pricey) restaurants in nearby cities that include vegetarian (Indian) entrees.
Traffic in that part of town (or anywhere in Cleveland) is pretty miserable. (We have no streets with timed lights and the only right-turn lanes are at shopping malls. :rolleyes: )
She’ll be almost right on top of elmwood (if she decides to meet Dopers).
Downtown, of course, has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Great Lakes Science Museum, The Browns, Indians, and Cavaliers, and a host of other activities. The Art museum is wonderful (and will be more wonderful when they re-open most of it after the current renovation. In the same area is Severance hall where the Cleveland Orchestra plays during the winter. (The summer home is near Akron at Blossom Music Center which is also the summer venue for any “big name” act in the Rock, Pop, or Country genres.)
Specific questions will get more specific answers.
She’ll want to eventually make her way over to Tremont on the near west side, just to check out “the buzz.” It’s particularly nice in the summer.
The de-facto vegetarian eatery is Tommy’s on Coventry in Cleveland Heights. I like it and I’m not even a vegetarian. And Coventry itself is full of a little bit of fun.
That’s not too far from her in Lyndhurst. And it’s on the way to University Circle which is where the museums are.
Lyndhurst/Mayfield actually has plenty of shopping, big and small stores alike. There’s also Eton Village in Woodmere which is the new hoity-toity place to be seen, but it’s got the area’s only Trader Joe’s. That page I linked to actually has a nice little roundup of some of the other nice mall-like areas in the Cleveland area.
She’ll be quite close to Shaker Square, where she can take the Rapid into downtown. The Square is also walkable and there are lots of amenities right there.
If she likes classical music, the Music School Settlement has free concerts on weekends pretty frequently - that’s up in University Circle near the museums.
If she likes art movies, there’s a whole network of art cinemas, the most prominent one being the Cedar-Lee, which is near where she will be.
Oddly enough, I am planning on taking a cooking class as well. I think it would be a fun way to learn new things and meet new people. Maybe we can take the same class.
Cleveland Geography 101: there’s a very sharp division between the East Side (neighborhoods and suburbs east of the Cuyahoga River, which includes Lyndhurst) and the West Side (neighborhoods and communities west of the Cuyahoga River).
Think of it this way: Harvey Pekar captures the zeitgeist of the East Side. Drew Carey does the same for the West Side. The West Side of Cleveland, to me, feels more “Clevelandy” than the East Side. Whether it’s a good thing or not depends on the qualities one values in a community.
East Side, in a nutshell:
Home to most of Cleveland’s old money. Generally, a white-collar vibe (excluding Euclid, Bedford Heights, Garfield Heights, and parts of Lake County.)
Home to most major cultural institutions, corporations and medical centers.
Generally liberal-leaning, with a strong intellectual/hippie vibe in Cleveland Heights. More Republican-leaning further out in Lake County.
Ethnically quite diverse, but known for a large Jewish, Russian and Italian population. Most of Cleveland’s predominantly African-American ghettos are on the East Side. Cleveland Heights, Shaker Heights, University Heights and South Euclid have long-established and successful (for the most part) programs to promote stable racial integration.
Difficult to get downtown easily, at least from the Hillcrest/Heights area.
Outside of the aforementioned ghettos, housing tends to be more expensive on a square foot basis.
Nightlife: concentrated in Coventry (more college-oriented), Shaker Square, Little Italy, Cedar-Lee and Cedar-Fairmont.
West Side, generally speaking:
Thought of as blue-collar and new money.
Politically, it leans to old-school labor Democrat.
Lakewood is the center of the region’s gay population, and has a growing population of young professionals.
Ethnically: Irish, Hispanic, Irish, Arab, Irish, Irish and Irish. There’s a large community of Polish-Americans and Ukrainians to the south in Parma and the surrounding area. It’s getting more diverse as Clevelanders become increasingly Cuyahoga-side agnostic in their house hunting.
Quite easy to get downtown, and much better access to Lake Erie than the East Side.
Nightlife: Irish bars and gay clubs in Lakewood, Irish bars in Rocky River, more sophisticated clubs in Tremont and Ohio City, Irish bars in Kamm’s Corners, and neighborhood sports bars and Irish bars everywhere else.
Better and safer gentrified neighborhoods close to downtown.
Housing is less expensive then on the East Side on a square foot basis, and it’s much easier to find affordable pre-WWII homes with “character” in desirable areas.
Among professional 20-somethings … from what I understand, they used to prefer the East Side, but now the West Side seems to be the place to be. Check out the ads for stores, restaurants and bars in one of the weekly freesheets (Scene, Free Times), and the locations are about 3:2 West Side:East Side
The East Side, at least in the Heights/Hillcrest area surrounding Lyndhurst, is quite vegetarian friendly. My girlfriend, a vegetarian West Sider, often stocks up whenever she crosses the river to see me. Whole Foods (University Heights/South Euclid), Trader Joe’s (Woodmere), Fresh Market (Shaker Heights) and Wild Oats (Woodmere) are all close. There’s quite a few vegetarian-friendly restaurants in the area, including the semi-famous Tommy’s in Cleveland Heights. With the large Jewish population in the Heights/Hillcrest area, there’s a number of kosher establishments, including some vegetarian kosher restaurants in South Euclid and Cleveland Heights. There’s also several Asian, Italian and Indian specialty stores along Mayfield Road. For more Arab-oriented foods, your friend will probably need to cross the river and go west.
How to meet others: it’s not going to be as easy in other cities, since Cleveland tends to be more family-oriented than its peers, and there’s not as much new blood as in more prosperous regions. Circles of friends can date back to elementary school, and it’s tough breaking in.
There’s the 20-30 Club for young professionals; most events are downtown. The Mayfied Curling Club in South Euclid has a rapidly growing membership of twenty-somethings. The Cleveland Hiking Club is quite active. If she’s Jewish, the task of meeting people will be much easier; there’s no shortage of groups on the East Side that cater to Jews in their 20s and 30s.
tomndebb mentioned it, but it’s not really someplace you hang out at when you live in Cleveland. You visit it once or twice, usually when showing a guest around town or when you’re invited to an event there or there’s a particular new exhibit you want to see.
Crap, I read the thread twice and still missed it. Sorry, tomndebb! I never meant to imply that it was a hangout for locals; I just figured that it met the “fun things to do in town” criteria.
