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Articles by Jacob DeSmit
DayGlo Celebrates a Bright 90-Year History in Cleveland's Paint Industry
Standing in Public Square, it’s hard not to gape at the latest addition to Cleveland’s skyline, particularly as the summer sun’s rays illuminate its glass exterior — Sherwin-Williams’ latest corporate headquarters, a 616-foot-tall skyscraper on West Sixth Street, is a site to behold. But look to the street level and you’ll find, hiding very loudly in plain sight, the signatures of another local icon of the industry — in bright orange traffic cones and highlighter-yellow safety vests.
Avon Balances Past With Present: Best Places to Live
A graduate of Avon High School, class of 2010, I last claimed Avon as home in 2012. Having spent most of my formative years here, I thought profiling what makes it one of Cleveland’s best suburbs sounded easy — I’d know the city like the back of my hand, right? Based on census data, Avon’s population has exploded throughout the aughts, jumping in total population from 11,446 in 2000, just two years after my family moved to town, to 24,847 as of 2020.
Aaron "OkPants" Sechrist: Most Interesting People 2024
Why He’s Interesting: Defense mechanisms take many forms when we’re young. For Aaron Sechrist, the ability to draw Tasmanian Devil and Bart Simpson deterred “getting my ass beat,” he says. These roots have paid dividends for the self-proclaimed artist in a designer’s body, whose resume of clients includes Patton Oswalt, Red Bull and the House of Blues.
Cleveland Magazine's Most Interesting People 2024
Kara Maxine Bieber, 25, Fashion Brand CEO This business owner and fashion designer has focused on female empowerment with her two brands, while balancing a busy personal life of travel with her husband, Cleveland Guardians player Shane Bieber. Read more >> Rhonda K. Brown, 54, City Strategist This artist returned to her hometown to become the city's first-ever senior strategist for the arts, culture and creative economy.
Rhonda Brown: Most Interesting People 2024
Why She’s Interesting: Brown made Cleveland history upon appointment by Mayor Justin Bibb to an inaugural position as the city’s senior strategist for the arts, culture and creative economy. Having worked as a professional artist in Chicago and as president of the City Colleges of Chicago Foundation for three decades, Brown brings years of expertise to her advisory role.
Stefan Johnson: Most Interesting People 2024
Tell a teen that there’s a local celebrity with roughly 9 million total followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, and you’ll likely have their attention. Play them a clip of this influencer’s silky-smooth baritone voice, and they’ll likely recognize him as Stefan Johnson, Cleveland’s own viral social media artist with an impressive highlight reel of voice-acting and performance credits.
How the Cleveland Clinic's Quantum Computer Will Revolutionize Health Care: Future of CLE
Consider this: You’re having a party and want to set different moods in different rooms. To get the optimal amount of mood lighting in each room, a dimmer is more useful than the standard “on” and “off” of a basic switch. With a dimmer in every room of the house, the lighting possibilities across all rooms are endless compared to a standard switch.
Honduras to Cleveland: The Story Behind Roasted's Coffee Beans
From the first sip, it’s clear that the blend on tap at Roasted is special. Newcomers to specialty coffee might identify the medium roast of the bean, balanced right down the middle on scales of body and acidity. Connoisseurs with a more refined palette might taste notes of pomegranate, honey and milk chocolate. One thing all can agree on: It’s too good to waste a drop. RELATED: Take a sip of Cleveland's coffee scene at these 34 shops and cafes.
The Best Tips On Avoiding Injury As A Young Athlete: A Sports Doctor's Guide for Active Kids
Injuries in young athletes can result in serious issues down the road, whether they continue to play or not. Dr. Jacob Calcei, an orthopedic sports medicine physician and shoulder surgeon talks tips to prevent them. By Jacob DeSmit Sports physicians continue to see a troubling number of “adult injuries” befall students of the game, including elbow injuries in tennis and shoulder injuries in baseball.
The Offspring, Sum 41 and Simple Plan Still Rock After All These Years: Review
It’s a strange and troubling thing to be an aging fan of punk rock. In 2023, “elder” Millennials, who lived through the rise and peak of the genre’s “pop” flavor, are beginning to contend with hard choices: Do I keep the mohawk, or do I transition down to a more subdued faux-hawk, at “corporate’s” request? Even if I want to be at the center of the circle pit, can my body still handle it?
Step Inside the Cargill Salt Mines Under Lake Erie
On Whiskey Island, a large, cage-like hoist travels 1,800 feet beneath Lake Erie at a four-minute pace — a rapid trip that feels like a hellish eternity to an outsider. For Cargill employees, the descent, which can reach a top speed of 500 feet per minute, is more akin to the mundane morning elevator ride, en route to one of Cleveland’s most unique workplaces: the underground mine, a cavernous world unto itself where the salt used to clear winter’s icy roads is harvested each day.
Kaulig Tees Up Golf Legends at Firestone CC
Ask any golf nut: it’s hard to think of a professional golfer shining brighter on a single stage than Tiger Woods at Akron’s Firestone Country Club, where he dominantly won seven events from 1999 to 2009.
Firestone’s BigShots Golf Facility Impresses
If there was one takeaway from Firestone Country Club’s presentation of the newly-opened BigShots Golf facility in Akron, it was that BigShots is not TopGolf — it’s better. From our limited trial with this budding brand’s premium driving range experience, this is true enough to warrant consideration of the extra hike South when compared to its spiritual predecessor’s popular location in Independence.
Inside The Colorful World of Guice Mann, TikTok's Viral Train Artist
A locomotive graveyard resides on the stretch of Quiggley Road near the Towpath Trail, a barren field lined with tracks where once-great steel cars, now dull, rusted and tagged with amateur graffiti, lay in waiting.
Brightening The Engines That Powered Us
A locomotive graveyard resides on the stretch of Quiggley Road near the Towpath Trail, a barren field lined with tracks where once-great steel cars, now dull, rusted and tagged with amateur graffiti, lay in waiting.
Variety Theater: Behind Kelly Flamos' Fight to Revive the Historic Venue
Nearly a year after Kelly Flamos closed on her deal to purchase the Variety Theater, the curtains remain closed on her vision to reinvent one of Cleveland’s historic landmarks. Constructed in 1927, the theater’s interior is crumbling.
Chef Vincent Morelli Plans to Expand Fashionable Cent's Pizza: Best Restaurants 2023
At first sight, it’s almost easy to get distracted by the “+ Goods” side of Cent’s Pizza — be it by the exotic variety of colorful Gueyu Mar fish tins and imported natural wines to your left, or the collection of boho New York streetwear and literature to your right. But “almost” is the operative word here, because the aroma of rich cheeses and cured meats emanating from chef-owner Vincent Morelli’s kitchen smacks sense into you quickly. You’re here for pizza.
Nic Barlage: Most Interesting People 2023
The young CEO leading a new era for the Cleveland Cavaliers and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. By Jacob Desmit Why He’s Interesting: Taking center court as one of the NBA’s youngest chief executives, Nic Barlage, who oversees the Cavaliers, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and Rock Entertainment Group, is bringing fresh ideas to a Cavaliers team primed to enter an exciting new era with Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley and a young group of star players.
Orlando Baking Co. in Cleveland Celebrates 150 Years
The secret recipe to Orlando Baking Co.'s longevity, as it celebrates its 150th year anniversary, isn’t much of a secret at all — it’s in the name. A career in the family business tends to start early. For John Anthony Orlando, his first paycheck was earned at age 11, for delivering bread with his father. Today, John Anthony may still be found honing this craft on the bakery floor, even as he carries the torch as the president and CEO of this local legacy brand.
Indie Rockers Vampire Weekend Take an Adventurous Approach at Jacobs Pavilion at Nautica
click to enlarge Samantha Fryberger Improbably, at least by the standards of the bleak start of summer in Cleveland, Vampire Weekend’s stop at Jacob’s Pavilion at Nautica last night couldn’t have landed on a better night, as a mostly millennial crowd of fans caught a sold-out show of tunes as breezy and fun as the Lake Erie waves that backdrop the venue.
British Rockers IDLES Deliver a Short-But-Fierce Set at the Beachland Ballroom
click to enlarge Jacob DeSmit To a bystander observing the Beachland Ballroom last night, the line of ratty teens-to-Boomers decked in clothes black, ripped or studded that waiting outside the bar’s entrance, combined with the sound of buzzsaw-sharp guitars that leaked from the bar throughout the night, might have suggested that blood, or at least sweat, would spill on the dance floor for English rock quintet IDLES stop in Cleveland.
Indie Rockers Parquet Courts Showcase Their Uptempo Style at Grog Shop Show | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog
Indie rockers Parquet Courts took the Grog Shop stage last night looking like members had just left an Urban Outfitters photo shoot, opened with a song about sweeping up dust (literally) and left the stage without playing one of their most popular hits.This is the sort of odd show fans can expect of Parquet Courts, a post-punk quartet from Brooklyn, N.Y., which has risen through the indie rock ranks since breaking into the scene with 2012’sSince, the band has released four other full-length...
Green Day's Rousing Concert at Blossom Proves the Punk Band Hasn't Lost a Step | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog
When seeing a Green Day concert in 2017, one might assume pop-punk’s elder statesmen, whose founding members, Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt, formed the band just over three decades ago, have lost a step when it comes to putting on a show.That assumption proves to be far from the truth, as many who witnessed the enthralling, two-and-a-half-hour set the group performed to a maxed-out crowd at Blossom Music Center last night would likely attest.You can see a slideshow of photos from the...
A Lack of Stage Presence Doesn't Derail Car Seat Headset Concert at the Beachland | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog
If patrons in the audience at the Car Seat Headrest show that took place last night at the Beachland Ballroom attended without prior knowledge of the band or its sound, they might have left pleasantly surprised, if not somewhat puzzled, by what they had witnessed.For roughly an hour and a half, the quartet’s mastermind, Will Toledo, and his backing band played to a sold-out crowd that hollered with enthusiasm from the start.
Singer-Songwriter Jack Johnson's Laid-Back Vibe Goes Over Well at Blossom | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog
With a slew of laid-back tunes perfect for those craving the start of summer, singer-songwriter Jack Johnson moved a sea of fans who made the pavilion look more like a beach party than a concert last night at Blossom.Johnson, on his first North American tour since 2014, looked pleased to be back on the road throughout a two-hour set of songs spanning the five solo albums he has released since debuting within 2001.As the sun set on a pavilion lawn so densely packed as to be made standing room...
Chance the Rapper Gives an Exuberant Performance at Blossom | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog
If God's will was to dampen the mood of Chance the Rapper's latest set at the Blossom Music Center with a messy bout of rain, it wasn't enough to deter the showman, or his legion of young followers, from staying positive throughout Friday night's sold out show.In fact, the rapper’s Christian faith seemed to stoke the fire that ignited his exuberant performance, though it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to anybody who has heard, the artist’s latest mix-tape, whose spiritually-steeped...
Slacker Mac Demarco Proves His Star Power at House of Blues Concert | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog
If the rising star of slacker-rock king Mac Demarco was in any doubt, that was laid to rest last night as a sold-out crowd packed the upper and lower decks of House of Blues to witness a 90-minute set of the songwriter’s laid-back tunes and odd antics.DeMarco’s tour comes in support of his latest album,, and he played with Tonstartssbandht, a two-piece jam band that features DeMarco’s lead guitarist, Andy White, and White’s brother, Edwin.
Comedian Bill Burr Wraps Up a Two-Night Stand at Hilarities Tonight | Scene and Heard: Scene's News Blog
Aside from selling out shows internationally, comedian Bill Burr has made his way into a few movies — playing both serious and comedic roles — and put out five albums, all while being hailed as one of the top comedians in the industry. It's for good reason, though, because the brutally honest Burr's "against the grain" perspective on many of society's quirks makes for sets that will both offend and delight.
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