Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland is a strange and depressing place. People seem to move about the city with sort of a bewildered amble, as if they can't believe they got left behind. There is no polish here. It is rust stained concrete and old timey looking store fronts. There are loading docks and warehouses and mismatched architecture and weeds. It reminds me of my grandfathers basement workshop in a way. A lot of old but useful and needful things, hoping to be remembered. Faded signs and ancient streetlights hang overhead. Below, cracked pavement and patched potholes obscuring traffic lanes. Some of the streets wind around small valleys which seem to promise a view as you approach, then pull a bait and switch when you arrive and show instead the skeletons of some industry left to decay. There are car shops and muffler shops and submarine sandwich places everywhere, broken up by the occasional shot and a beer joint. Kids leaving school do so in a hurry, loudly bypassing the playgrounds and disappearing into the folds of the neighborhood. There may be a vibrant nightlife here, but it was planted here, like a pacemaker in a damaged heart. Nothing here is dying, but nothing feels really alive.