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| - If you want an opinion about Cleveland, be wary of asking a native. Northeast Ohioans can be amongst the most self-loathing species on the planet. I would wager without hesitation that here are Somalis, Serbs and Iraqis who speak more fondly of their poverty-stricken, war-ravaged homelands than your average Clevelander when asked how they feel about life on the shores of Lake Erie.
Therefore, let me try to say a few words about the city from the perspective of a newer area resident, a native West Coaster, someone who can see the city from the outside in and highlight its virtues without dwelling on the negative. It's obvious to those of us living in the area what's not to like about Cleveland: smokestacks, grey skies, potholes, urban blight, crime, bad drivers, terrible football and so on and so forth. Cleveland is not Denver, it's not San Francisco, it's not Minneapolis. You won't see glassy luxury condos popping up overnight against a majestic mountain backdrop like in Seattle or Vancouver BC, or sun-splashed sidewalks that amble through upscale palm tree-lined shopping districts like in Santa Monica or Miami. Cleveland's lakefront area has the potential to be a great American cityscape, but like many things in Northeast Ohio, it remains sorely untapped and underdeveloped. Go to almost any major urban center outside rustbelt, and it will be plain to see that Cleveland still has a long way to go to catch up with America's new centers of commerce and industry.
Cleveland, however, in spite of everything, has a special pulse, an "it" factor that I don't feel to the same degree when I go back home to the West Coast, or to other Midwest cities that seem to be rebounding much faster than Cleveland like Indy or Columbus. It's not just the interesting neighborhoods and pockets of culture slowly coming back to life in Tremont, Ohio City, University Circle, Coventry or Lakewood. It's not just the rock-solid restaurant scene which is playing such an important, leading role in the city's identity revival. It's not just the solid attractions like Playhouse Square and the Rock Hall, or the city's amazingly close proximity to a national park and green spaces.
What makes Cleveland a supremely interesting place to be, to me, is unquantifiable. It is something akin to the feeling of living in a previous era of American history while watching the city around you grow out of itself and into a new age. There is character in buckets here, character that emerges from the mixture of old and new, from a simultaneous crumbling and prospering at once. Cleveland feels like a place that was important once upon a time, lost its way, and now aims to re-enter the modern world while still clinging proudly to its heritage and its rough and tumble roots. Living in Cleveland lets you be inside the process of "up and coming," rather than simply showing up in place that has already "arrived."
Good food and craft beer - two of the things that make life worth living - abound in Cleveland. It's not surprising. They say that struggle produces some of greatest works of art; in Cleveland's case, it's not hard to see the causal relationship between the long grueling winters, tough conditions of work in the steel mills, and the area's shocking abundance of artisanal cuisine and stellar microbreweries for a city of its size. If you're a lover of the American IPA, Cleveland is your Ground Zero; San Diego is a very distant 2nd place. Fat Head's Brewery, one of the best breweries in the city, recently opened up a shopfront in Portland, OR - one of many manifestations of the national repute the Cleveland beer scene is earning.
Last but not least, a word about Cleveland's cost of living. If money were no object, we'd all live in the Bay Area. But money is an ever more important factor these days in determining where one is able to put down roots; so much so that living in today's hippest urban areas comes at a great cost to those living on middle class salaries: either fork out 50% (or more) of your paycheck for rent, or sit in traffic for 3 hours a day while you commute to work from a distant suburb. Cleveland, on the other hand, is a last bastion of the American Dream: a place where schoolteachers and firemen can still afford nice homes and live comfortable lifestyles while not spending a quarter of their waking hours in a car. You may not have the Cascades or the Pacific Ocean to look out onto, but when you do go to visit those hipster paradises of the West, you can fly first class.
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