"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." William Blake
Cleveland: Cheap and Easy
Having some fun throwing together a video on this. Whether you like the idea or not, it’s honest.
From a call I made into WCPN last September:
Based on ease of transportation an low cost of living, it was suggested the marketing slogan could be, “Northeast Ohio: We’re Cheap and Easy.” Hey, why not?
The laugh of the day was provided by caller Jay in Lyndhurst who first suggested that one benefit to living in Northeast Ohio was that it’s “cheap and easy.” Wonder whether the folks at Positively Cleveland will jump on that one: “Come to Cleveland, We’re Cheap and Easy!”
He also noted, “One of the reasons I love living here is it’s close to Lake …Michigan.”
Don’t we have our own Great Lake?
“We can say we’ve got our own lake, but there’s a better one up there,” he replied.
You can lead a Clevelander to water, but you can’t make him appreciate it.
Hah!
Cleveland RTA: Difficult, Rude and Weird:
Okay, so as I was entering my RTA ride home and asked why there are no signs on the train indicating it is the Green Line. I was met with immediate grumblings from a long time and proud Cleveland resident who was not at all shy about her dissatisfaction with RTA service.
In the spirit of the Cleveland International Film Festival, I only need a day doing a documentary on the RTA to show how dissatisfied many other customers are with the experience. Come on Cleveland, you can do better than this. Keep it easy.
Weapons of Mass Creation Fest: June 8-10, 2012. I am there!
A Real Convention and Visitors Bureau for Cleveland
Cleveland will only change when we have enough people who are not from here move to the region. Why? More people who are not from Cleveland love it than people born and raised here. Seems like pretty simple math to me. What is one of the fastest ways to make this happen? I would think Cleveland’s Convention and Visitors Bureau (Positively Cleveland) would want to play a part in this. Unfortunately, they do not seem to be doing the job. If they were, then why the hell does it sound like we are still talking about a Quiet Crisis?
So I posed this idea to my wife last night: Cleveland hotels should be near 100% capacity year round to show we are getting enough new people to the city and region. She thinks I’m crazy. I think not having a bold goal like this is crazy. What’s it going to take? We shall see.
What Cleveland can Learn from Indonesia
I have been following the Changing Gears commentary on what it is going to take to bring about “transformation” in the rust belt (Cleveland, Detroit and Chicago). To me it sounds like a rebirth of the “Quiet Crisis” as the conclusions and conversations are nearly identical.
In all honesty, there are a lot more great things going on in Cleveland simply based on the the growing number of start-ups and efforts to support them. However, the painful truth is that Cleveland is not changing fast enough and more needs to be done; everything that was talked about 10 years ago! The magic bullet to really get things going would be a billionaire with vision, who could cut through all the crap and invest bukoo to make the right things happen. Until then, we can continued to make small incremental improvements and continue to “get things done.”
The Changing Gears commentary did remind me of a conversation I had with an Indian entrepreneur living in Indonesia on how he liked Indonesia compared to his motherland. His answer was simple: “I like Indonesia because when I bribe someone, something gets done.” In other words, when he bribed someone in India, nothing happened; they just took the money.
He gave me a funny example of a time when he was pulled over by a police officer for speeding on the way to the airport. He was late for a flight which he quickly explained to the police officer, then gave him $100. The officer took the money, got on his motorcycle and gave him a high speed police escort to the airport!
I am certainly not condoning bribery or corruption, but it was a topic on Changing Gears. Some people calling in from Chicago actually said corruption helped to get things done. In the next 10 years when someone asks why I live in Cleveland, I simply want to say because things get done (without the corruption).
