A bit of setup...
Frankly, this summer went nothing like I wanted it to. I had a nice list of things that I wanted to do and accomplish but when you have no control over things in your life...everything gets complicated...or depressing...or just downright time consuming...oh and expensive! Anyway with that being said I've accomplished squat this year. Out of the 14 things I was excited about doing in Cleveland I've eaten at Happy Dog in UC and kayaked Lake Erie (my original idea was the river but you take what you can get). That's it and it's become a grim reminder of how old I am and how much more of an adult I've had to become recently. I'm basically the CEO/CFO/CIO of my own small failing business and it's a whole other 8 hour work day. I have a spreadsheet of all my finances. I have people who I am in constant contact with about money, jobs, real estate, product storage, financial planing, manual labor... the list goes on. I frankly don't see how people make it in the world today and I say that not having kids. Life has become much too complicated and for me this summer it's to the detriment of fun.
I'm not looking for sympathy but instead am using that information to set up and build up this:
An undocumented goal of mine for this year was to attend a Walnut Wednesday at Perk Park downtown. The problem was it happens downtown during lunch and I'm stuck out in stupid Brooklyn where nothing fun happens ever. It's literally like bizzaro Disney Land. Well if you put road blocks between me and a goal...I'll nap on it and if I still think it's a good idea, I'm going to remove those road blocks and achieve! So I got security access to our offices in the Higbee building (right above the casino!), built up the courage to tackle change, found a free parking spot, and... laid around depressed all summer and only went to work downtown twice. Neither time on a Wednesday...UNTIL THIS WEEK!
I got my shit together and headed downtown to work on a Wednesday. The view from my mobile working area desk is not great but I can creepily walk around and look outside at downtown like a kid peering into a toy store around Xmas time. There is so much going on in and around my building and even more on the way. It's crazy the amount of cranes you can see if you really tried to count...and then think of how nothing was build for about 20 years anywhere close to downtown.
Lunch time started to roll around and the clouds and slight drizzle hadn't stopped but I wasn't going to let a little rain stop me from getting to Perk Park to enjoy food served from trucks with other downtown employees. Plus, I had an umbrella so f*ck you rain! I exited out onto Public Square which is still under construction but is starting to come together. I started walking east on Euclid and as I looked around I started to feel a bit of pride seeing all the people out walking about. The city was alive and pumping people down the sidewalks like blood through an artery...and I was some of that blood. I thought to myself that if I had started working downtown right out of college (or had been exposed to an urban area at all as a child) I'd probably be an executive by now. Urban areas just give me power and confidence and I feel it every time I'm downtown.
Readers: Please encourage your kids to go to a college in an urban/downtown area. It'll give them 4-6 years of life experience so that they can make an educated decision about urban living. I always wish I would have done that and not gone to Kent. It was too isolated and too close to home.
My walk was finally complete as I approached Perk Park and found it surrounded by food trucks. Not too many people though as little drizzles of rain would fall from time to time on my walk over. The rain did hold out while I was there so I got to enjoy my meal at my own dry relaxed pace. Perk Park, once the dark skeezy home to a triple murder, is a now wonderful green park that's pet friendly and has some of the best places to sit and relax. There are places to play chess and checkers. There are beautiful flower. There are grassy mounds. It's not like you need a break from tall building after tall building in Cleveland like you might in NYC or Chicago but it is a nice break from the grey concrete of the ole urban landscape.
I can't put lipstick on the pig that was the lunch I bought... it was a Gyro and it was pretty damn good. When I think street food (thanks Kent), I think gyros! Now don't think that I chose the best of what was offered or even the status quo of food being served. I went Greek fast food because I has a taste for it. Plain and simple. I did walk around before I ordered and scoped out the menus. Sushi, burritos, burgers, lots of pulled pork, salads, and even Swenson's!...although it's weird watching them run the 3.5 feet to you to give you your galley boy. It's like those 1st few wind sprints in a football practice.
I laid back in my seat and kicked my feet up on the concrete ottoman eating my gyro. I looked at the other people there enjoying their meals and drinks and wondered how busy it gets on a nice day and how the music sounds when there's not a threat of electrocution. I took it all in and it recharged my batteries. There's a lot of excitement but even more potential and it buzzes like a transformer on a power pole. I guess doing this food truck get together only once a week is good enough for now. It's a different type of experience that you won't usually get anywhere outside a downtown area and it's a great place to enjoy your lunch and mingle with co-workers. I sometimes think that if businesses didn't tuck tail and move out to the burbs, there may be even more little parks hosting food trucks for even more downtown workers. I think about how our grandparents (not mine) lived and worked in the big cites before the great exodus to the suburbs and were proud of it. I'm glad to see that my generation is getting back to that and trying to fix the mistakes that the baby boomers made. Unfortunately those old f*cks are still in charge and their racism, fear, and selfish attitudes of pretending to be somebody successful still dictates what goes on in our everyday life. Ya, I thought about all of this stuff sitting there eating a gyro under an angry sky. You think of what they're going to do with the 6 all pro QB's at OSU which has nothing to do with you or your life and I think of this shit. To each their own I guess.
Sometimes, urban explorers, conquering the drive to the pharmacy is the worst part of getting the meds that will make you feel better.
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