Located in the heart of the historic Hough Bakeries Complex is the Inner Circle, a weekend club and reception facility operated for the past 7 years by the Hot Sauce Williams family. Starting shortly, operation of the Inner Circle will expand to extended hours every day, featuring a cybercafe, meeting space, computer terminals, free wifi, independent film, the Linux Cafe, art, culture, and great food, coffee, and even wine tastings, via a broader partnership of friends. This pan is from the deck and patio area, and features Guyanese chef and reggae performer and DJ Edwin, who will help operate the Inner Circle, shown with Hot Sauce Williams founder LeMaud Williams, as well.

I recently received an email from ClevelandSGS giving props to realneo, with a link to the ClevelandSGS space on Flickr. I hadn't heard of ClevelandSGS so I checked it out and was awed - it is an amazing assemblage of scanned historic documents and current photos of signage and scenes in Cleveland - a significant community asset in those respects - and a powerful gallery of "Mash-ups" not to be missed. But I still don't know what is ClevelandSGS. Do you? It is the Art of the Day, so read on

 
Anyone know how the Issue 18 monies will be divvied out??

Wow! Check this out! Los Angeles has a City Ethics Commission! Do we have one and the link is not posted? I don't see it in our city website... we need one for the county government, too!

One thing that Chuck D addressed while in Akron a couple of days ago is the absence of historical context when it comes to talking about hip-hop.  The monicker to describe what is now known as hip-hop was born in 1976 but the spirit that allowed all of its element to come together as an American art form (as American, if not more so, than jazz, the blues or Appalachian folk music) comes from the whole of the experience of Africans and African-Americans.  

Check this port related news!

Here's a wild idea... let someone else take that cargo. If we were to have Great Lakes only shipping, how much activity will that be - that is my question.

As a contrast to yesterday's Header of the Day, of Beechwood Place Mall, here's a new pan from a shoot at new Cleveland Big Box Mall Steelyard Commons, still in development, on April 20, 2007.

The RTA has awarded a commision to local artist Murphy Ajayi.
From the RTA NEWS                      

Board approves Park-N-Ride expansion, Puritas Station public art  

CLEVELAND –At today’s Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (RTA) Board of Trustees meeting, members of the Board authorized a contract to expand the North Olmsted Park-N-Ride lot, and approved a $176,000 public art project for the new Puritas Rapid Station.

Who is the artist and where is this public art located?
Other images attached.

I had the annoyance of going to Beechwod Place Mall today for a meeting. What an astounding celebration of sweatshop labor and wasted resources. This pan is the first floor corner by some silly place called Nordstom, where not only does the coffee shop not provide wifi but the barista doesn't know what wifi means.

Statement from Brian J. Cummins

Council Representative, Cleveland City Council Ward 15

Information to-date Regarding Demolition of 2606 Riverside Avenue

Dated:  May 22nd, 2007

On Sunday morning, May 20th, 2007, the boarded-up, condemned house located at 2606 Riverside Avenue was demolished in error in what appears to be a case of a new aggressive contractor acting without full authority from the City of Cleveland’s Building and Housing Department.

One of the great creative forces to ever come from Cleveland, Ohio, Philip Johnson was an innovative architect and arts intellectual who was commissioned by the Putnam Sculpture Collection to install this landmark work on the CWRU campus. Part of the Turning Point group of sculptures, this mesh seating area has a wonderful playfulness that bridges nature and structure, place and purpose - take your laptop here and pull in some wifi and work in a world-class work of art - this is a great spot to experience NEO art its unique best.

Give solar energy chance

Give solar energy chance

By Andrew Korfhage

In the early 1980s, the future looked bright for solar energy. The Carter administration had published the report "A New Prosperity," detailing how emerging technologies and smart policy could together help the United States meet 28 percent of its electricity needs from renewable sources by the year 2000. Before he left office, President Jimmy Carter installed a solar thermal water heater on the roof of the White House, and the government extended federal solar energy tax credits to homeowners so they could do the same.

One of my favorite works of public art in NEO is "Merging", by Athena Tacha, which is a large scale stone and water installation on the campus of Case University, nicely positioned near the Gehry designed Peter B. Lewis Building. The sculpture is part of the Putnam Sculpture Collection, and additional information and other images of this work are found here. This panorama was taken on a beautiful, brisk, sunny spring day, May 18, 2007, from the top of the sculpture.

I've always been uncomfortable with fluoride so now it is very exciting to see that an extract of one of my favorite substances on Earth - cocoa - is better at fighting cavities than flouride. Imagine the joys of childhood (and adulthood) if you had to be certain that every night before bed you ate your chocolate... as suggested by this research from my alma mater, Tulane...

When I was traveling a number of years ago in Santorini, Greece with a young woman I still know,  I had an experience that doesn’t happen much in this country.   We were eating dinner in a small bistro when volla! The waiter came to our table with a bottle of wine and two glasses, filled the glasses and left the bottle  – announcing that the wine was “compliments to the lady” from two men at another table.  That was great!

Image credit: Final Fantasy Compendium

To sweet Old Time tunes an interesting cross section of the Northeast Ohio alternative farming and energy communities will be represented at the 75th Anniversary of Coit Road Farmer’s Market on Saturday, May 19th 8am – 4pm. Also, a community garden on property owned by the market across Coit Rd. will be inaugurated.

It is always exciting to see powerful uses of the technology we use for realneo - Drupal. Derek recently pointed out that the New York Observer uses Drupal for their web presence and I just found a posting on the website of the originator and keeper of the Drupal flame, Dries Buytaert, that Ozzy uses Drupal - his label Sony uses Drupal. I'd heard that about Sony, but hadn't connected it with any of their sites before... this...

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Community gardens play an important role in our city and its neighborhoods.  They are a source of fresh produce for those who don't have the space at their own residence.  Gardening is a great form of exercise.  Being in contact with nature and the soil relieves stress.  A strong sense on community grows quickly in a shared gardening space.  Crime levels drop around community gardens. These are just a few of the reasons to support community gardening.

I have a theory that images influence our mood.  In particular, I believe that color and shape  in images impact our daily behavior.  Images certainly may even control more than our mood, but let’s start simply with mood.   There are images we turn our heads away from because we don’t want to view them, and there are images which we return again and again to view.  What does that tell you? 

It is good to see just released the latest research report from Policy Bridge, which explores: "How Anti-Education Messages in Media, at Home, & on the Street Hold Back African-American Youth". They contend "that institutional policy changes cannot succeed without addressing lifestyle factors that derail far too many black youth – boys in particular – from the surest path toward economic well-being: education." Policy Bridge is a think tank directed by Timothy Goler, who I got to know when he was acting economic development director in East Cleveland. This report is found at their website, here. It seems to do a good job of surfacing many issues and proposing solutions not now part of our dialog. There are other similar issues that make education more complex than it seems.

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