Home Tour Sweet Home Tour

Looking for something cool to do in Cleveland this weekend? Even if you aren't, you should go to the Ohio City Home Tour. The tour highlights houses, condos and businesses in the Ohio City neighborhood. These kind people let you walk through their houses and businesses to view either the unique history or the modern touches they have added to the neighborhood. Its a great way to become more familiar with the near west side of Cleveland or just a good excuse to stop into The Old Angle for a pint.

Pub Crawl Slideshow

I was told some people were unable to see the pics I tried to post last week from my pub crawl. I decided to go ahead and add the slide show so that you could see all the revelry up close. Enjoy and have a great Thanksgiving weekend.

Come One, Come All...

...To my Ohio City Pub Crawl. Join me this Saturday as I bar hop through Ohio City for the last time before moving to Old Brooklyn (that's Cleveland not Parma by the way). We will be leaving the Old Angle at 6:30 pm and stopping at seven or eight bars (weather permitting) before coming back to the Old Angle to finish the night. There will also be t-shirts designed by Tim for a very small price to wear along the way to make it worth your while. I hope to see you there!

There Is A God And He Eats Wings

I am happy to announce there is now officially a wing night in Ohio City. The gods have smiled down upon my brother and I, and now the Old Angle will be serving their wings for only 25 cents apiece on Monday nights, along with $2 domestic beers. These are the same wings that cost almost a dollar apiece any other night of the week there, so it really is a deal. Last night as we left with a bill of only $24, we started laughing because that is usually the tip we have to leave when we normally go there.

Why We REALLY Got The Internet

I walked into the annex today and saw my computer was on a page with a history of NBA basketball MVPS. If you were to flash back three hours earlier at The Old Angle, my brother and I got into a small argument about how many MVP awards Larry Bird won in a row. I swore he didn't win three in a row and my brother swore otherwise. He did win three in a row. This is why the page was still up for me to see as I walked in the door, and this is the real reason we got internet access at the annex. Is there anything more satisfying than settling sports debates? I think not.

Watch Out World I Have Wi-Fi

I am sitting at the Old Angle watching playoff football using my wireless internet for the first time. Could things be better? Our parents got us an incredible laptop for the holidays and I plan on putting it to use. Luckily for me, The Old Angle makes it easier to do that. Hopefully this will help me update my blog more often. Who knew I could increase my productivity at the Angle?

Reality Schmality

What a great weekend! The CAVS came back from 20 points down, the Browns beat a playoff contender, we had the second lowest points and we still won our fantasy football game and I won my first week of fantasy basketball. Yes, I came to the realization that fantasy football will not last forever and I will need something to take me through the summer. Therefore, I have decided to join a fantasy basketball league with co-workers (reason #213 why I love my job). Pretty soon everything in my life will just be one big fantasy and I will wake up in my fantasy apartment and go to my fantasy job and then go to fantasy Old Angle for fantasy drinks. Reality is overrated anyway.

Why We Call It The Annex

According to Wikipedia, Annex is defined as: a building that is in addition to another building. When I was in college, the word was also used to define the smaller fraternity house, which housed all the people who couldn’t fit into the main house. As you know, my brother, who has the other apartment in my house, and I also call our house “The Annex.” Part of this definition comes from the fact that it is a building that is in addition to another building-that’s Camp Lieberth-but part of it comes from the fact that it does indeed seem like a fraternity house at times. Take this weekend for example.

I walked (stumbled) in on Friday night/Saturday morning and called my brother’s name out when I walked into the door, as we usually do when one of us is walking in that late. He was still up, and even though he said he was getting ready for bed, I got him to go back out and get more beer. After all it was only 2 am. Soon I was making homemade beef chow mein (I like to cook late at night) and we played Monopoly until 4am as we talked about sports, work, girls and other unrecognizable conversation pieces all while making up some weird dance. Are you starting to see the frat house correlation yet? It was such a blast that we spent most of the day Sunday drinking beers, watching football and talking about many of the same topics as I made a big Italian feast. I think we should re-name our house: Kappa Lambda Alpha for Kamp Lieberth Annex.

The best part about this fraternity is that we go on field trips: free hot dogs tonight at the Old Angle for Monday Night Football. I certainly can’t cook every night, or people might start to think I am the house mom.

Best Week Ever

When I tell you my week started with Barbie in Fairytopia and ended with soccer moms, you may think that it was a quiet, family friendly week. Not quite. In honor of my favorite show ending for the season, I really did have THE BEST WEEK EVER.

If you read my last entry, you know last Monday night out with Barbie wasn’t all that family friendly but it sure was enlightening and the soccer game at the Wolstein Center turned out to be a lot more fun than we thought it was going to be. Couched in between these two events was a very long week of giving back to the community in my own very talented way: through eating and drinking. On Wednesday, my favorite watering hole, The Old Angle, hosted the Summer Restaurant Tour and gave 40% percent of the proceeds from that evening back to the Center. On Thursday, Union Station hosted Martini night and gave 60% of those proceeds back to the Center which turned me into quite the philanthropist. I don’t know if I necessarily recommend drinking and donating after this week. The reason for this recommendation is when it comes to the end of the evening and you ask yourself if you really want one more, you realize you are drinking for the cause and you have to have one more (and one more and one more after that…). Let’s just say I did my part last week.

Thankfully we took Friday night off to take out braids, my new favorite thing-that-I-do-every-three-months activity and Saturday evening did at least start out low-key. I felt like we were back in high school as we went out on a fun double-date that started at Johnny Mango and then headed to watch some soccer with free tickets won only a day earlier. I ended up enjoying the soccer much more than I thought I would because the original Cleveland Force legends played at halftime. I used to love the Force, so to see some of those players now was hilarious. After the game we decided to go somewhere we normally don't frequent and ironically enough we ended up in Ohio City. Touch Supper Club turned out to be the coolest place I hung out at all week with the DJ spinning for our table and the bartender impressing us with his talents. We finished that night off with a trip to Diana's, where a certain Cleveland blogger would agree their coffee actually puts you to sleep.

I do believe I will be taking this week off to recuperate and volunteer at the Center at night to get ready for the Summer Party. As if I didn’t already give enough last week…

By the way, the fun will be starting again on August 15 as Maria and I will be hosting the Summer Restaurant Tour at Momocho and don’t forget the Wing Thing on August 16 at the zoo to benefit Community Shares.

The L stands for Lazy

When it comes to updating this blog, I have been very lazy the past week. I could have been writing about the fun film festival I attended last week, or the midnight grilling of burgers and hot dogs on Sunday, or the Rainbow Wrangler benefit and a little woman named MO, or walking in the rain, or the hilarious recital of a green bean casserole recipe over the phone from my mother (“the ratio is whatever you want it to be”), or the incredible game LeBron had on Saturday night only to be followed up by one of his worst performances, or the crazy Geauga County Commissioner who thinks welfare moms should be sterilized (how embarrassing to be from that county!) or perhaps even the satisfying feeling of Spring cleaning.

It seems that everyday something happens to me and I say: “I should blog that”. Obviously my intentions are good but my follow-through needs a little work. To perpetuate my lazy blogging, I picked one of those crazy lists to fill out and post. I never thought I would do one of these but then when I started thinking back over the questions, it brought up so many fun memories and so many hard choices. Perhaps it will do the same for you if you haven’t already seen this list published somewhere (which means this is your first time on the internet because everyone posts this list, so if this is true: welcome and remember the back arrow will take you to the last page you visited.) Sure this blog has been handy for revealing my arrest stories, my love for LeBron and Tim Marshall and my encounters in Ohio City but if you don’t know my six favorite songs, do you really know me at all? I think not…


Six jobs I have had in my life:
-Wrapped beef jerky and cheese at a small market for my very first job ever
-Laminated maps in a factory
-Worked in sports information for five years
-Mystery Shopper
-Human Resources in Florida
-Admissions Counselor

Six movies I would watch over and over:
-Pretty Woman
-Tommy Boy
-Reality Bites
-Best In Show
-Thelma and Louise
-Dirty Dancing
(Wow this list makes me look not so smart. I just want everyone to know if it was seven movies, I would also pick Pride and Prejudice. Ahem.)

Six places I have lived:
-Cuyahoga Falls, OH
-Streetsboro, OH
-The Old Angle
-Athens, OH
-Cape Coral, FL
-Cleveland, OH

Six TV shows I love to watch:
-Seinfeld
-The Daily Show
-Six Feet Under (I still love the repeats)
-Sportscenter (in a weird way where I can watch the same episode six times in a row on any given morning)
-Girlfriends
-Best Week Ever

Six Songs I would listen to over and over:
-Sentimental Lady-Fleetwood Mac
-Baby Can I Hold You-Tracy Chapman
-The Weakness in Me-Melissa Etheridge version
-Deceptacon-Le Tigre
-Underneath Your Clothes-Shakira
-Emperor’s New Clothes-Sinead O’Connor

Six Musicians/Musical Groups I love:
-Ani DiFranco
-Fleetwood Mac
-Dance Hall Crashers
-Le Tigre
-Alix Olson
-Liz Phair

Six places I have been on vacation:
-Sunset Beach, NC
-Chicago, IL
-Key West, FL
-The Old Angle
-New York City
-Cape Cod

Six websites I visit daily:
-espn.com
-myspace.com
-mindy’s blog
-timmy’s blog
-msnbc.com
-cleveland.com

Six of my favorite foods:
-Any meal served at the Lobster Pot in Cape Cod
-Anything my dad grills
-The flank steak at the Old Angle
-Garlic Chicken dinner at Lemon Grass
-Chicken Wings
-Soup, Soup and Soup

Six places I would rather be right now:
-Provincetown
-Chrissy and Tina’s backyard in the fall
-Alison and Karen’s backyard in the summer
-Driving the Pacific Coast Highway
-Tucked away in my bed watching bad television
-The Old Angle

Back From Vacation

I am officially back to work from my vacation and what a vacation it was. Without ever leaving the city limits, I had a fantastic five-day weekend. Most of my time was spent watching basketball, but I was able to find some time in between to spend St. Patricks Day with family and friends at the Fulton and Bounce, go bowling with some crazy kids on Saturday and catch up with my parents on Sunday at the Old Angle.

It really is my favorite sports weekend of the year. How can you beat 48 games in four days? My brother asked me if I caught some of the games when I picked him up from the airport on Monday and I answered: “I think I watched somewhere around 44 games.” How I missed the other four games is beyond me. By the way, and I know this doesn’t really count because I have three different brackets, but I did pick Wichita State to beat George Mason in the Sweet 16 this weekend in one of my brackets. The over/under on that happening had to be about one percent, so I was feeling a little smug Sunday night, which also happened to be the night Tim introduced us to the buffet at Cocktails, so it might have been hard to tell why I was smiling.

All in all my vacation can be summed up in three words: velcro bowling shoes (pictured and worn by Maria Saturday night).

Finally!

After all the money I have spent at my favorite watering hole, The Old Angle, my money will finally be going to something worthwhile there. This Wednesday The Summer Restaurant Tour will be coming to the Old Angle and forty percent of everyone's bill will be going to The Center. Please join me and my friends as we drink and eat in honor of a place that gives so much to the city of Cleveland.

What the Heck am I Eating?

On Sunday my parents came up to Ohio City for lunch. They wanted something simple like a burger but unfortunately Sunday afternoons and Monday evenings are a hard time to get something fun to eat in Ohio City. I wanted to take them to the Old Angle but it wasn’t open yet and the Flying Fig was closed. This left me with Heck’s.

For those of you not familiar with Heck’s, people drive into Ohio City just to get a burger at this place. As we walked there, my mother noticed I only lived a block away and she asked if I went there all the time. I said actually we don’t really care for the place and contrary to popular belief, it’s the third best burger on the block. Every year, the annual awards come out for best burger in Cleveland and every year Heck’s wins this award. Is this one of those awards that just keeps going to the same place because of the name and how long the restaurant has been there? To get the best burger in Ohio City, you must go to the Flying Fig for happy hour (Tuesday through Thursday until 7:30). The burger there is incomparable. A very healthy serving of beef, cooked exactly the way you want it, topped with a mound of blue cheese, sitting on top of bacon and carmelized onions. During happy hour, this burger is less than five dollars and worth every single penny. Can’t make it to the Flying Fig in time for happy hour? Walk down to the Old Angle. A very similar burger, sans the bacon. We have walked through snow and freezing rain for this burger when we had plenty of food at our house. . Can’t make it to these three places? Then I would personally recommend the hot dog stand on Randall and Lorain but Heck’s is always a viable choice as well.

Speaking of burgers….when did McDonalds become party food and brain food? They advertised their McDonalds fish sandwich as brain food this morning. “Studying late? Get some brain food with the fish filet at McDonalds.” This doesn’t make me chuckle as much as the guys who go out and get Chicken McNuggets for their rockin party. If I walked into a party and saw McNuggets, I would do a double take especially if they also had quarter pounders as an appetizer like the other commercial. If there is one thing I feel like doing after eating a quarter pounder, its gotta be dancing and mingling, though usually I just lay down with a stomach ache.

Number 97 On The Field, Number One In Our Hearts

I had an interesting run-in last night. My brother Mark and I were sitting at the Old Angle having some drinks with his friends after the CAVS game and this guy came up beside me and muttered something I couldn’t quite hear. Then he just kept asking if the Old Angle served steak and finally he turned to me asked me if I recognized who he was. He said he played for the Pittsburgh Steelers. I was a little skeptical at first and asked him his name. I turned to Mark and asked him if he thought this guy was legit because I knew there was a Kendrell Bell that played for the Steelers. He said, all slurred, he was originally from Georgia where his mom lives now.Apparently he was in Cleveland to visit his sister who lives on the East Side.

How he happened upon the Old Angle, not being from the area and for being so high on alcohol or drugs, is a miracle to me. The Old Angle is this small bar that sits on West 25th and Bridge Avenue. Nonetheless he ordered two flank steaks, one after the other, and proceeded to make poor conversation with us at the bar. My brother started talking to him about playing at Syracuse and playing in the Fiesta Bowl and at this point he seemed to be going along with what Mark was saying. We had some drinks with him, it was fun toasting to his 15-1 season this year. He gave the bartender his credit card and we had the bartender check it out. It was some sort of corporate card, so Mark thought he was most likely telling the truth because professional athletes tend to use those which are given to them from the team to pick up expenses on the road. The funniest part is that whenever he looked up on the screen and saw another Pittsburgh Steeler playing in the Pro Bowl he pounded his chest and said: “That’s my boy, that’s my boy right there. I'm gonna talk to you tomorrow boy. That’s my boy” He seemed especially enamored by Hines Ward which I thought was funny. Nonetheless that’s my story.

Oh by the way he was nice enough to buy us a round, after we bought him one I might add, but he left no tip for the server after eating two steaks and drinking for an hour. He also acted like a jerk to our friend Dusty after Dusty asked him a question about the Heinz Field Scoreboard. At that point Kendrell said something like, “What are you talking about man—I don’t even know why I go out and talk to people asking stupid questions.” (Keep in mind he was the one who introduced himself to me and its not like Dusty was questioning defensive schemes from the New England game they lost) That was funny. Oh wait, also this morning we found out he played college ball at Georgia, which makes more sense than Syracuse. No wonder he looked confused when Mark started talking to him about playing in the Fiesta Bowl with Syracuse. That guy was out of it.



Happy Valentines Day to all of you romantics. I have never been a huge fan of the holiday and luckily I have a girlfriend who feels the same way. Though it was sweet for Mindy to give me a mention on her blog.