One of the national media’s ongoing criticisms of Cleveland is that it’s a provincial place – unsophisticated, suffering, longing and not at all forward-looking. That black-or-white, no-multiple-truths-allowed philosophy comes from our largest metropolises; the media cognoscente from these places might claim to manage attending every hip thing in their markets. But they’d be lying. Meanwhile, back on Lake Erie, our options are not only clever and urbane… they’re also accessible. While you probably could attend all of our Fresh Start picks in some larger market, we’re guessing you wouldn’t know the majority of the people around you. Bite that, Big Apple. ¡Viva la Cleveland!

Sketchy Characters

OK, so it’s a phenomenon that started in NYC and spread across the country like wildfire. It’s what happens “when cabaret meets art school.” It’s Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School and the latest Cleveland installment hits the Beachland Ballroom on Waterloo this Tuesday, March 30 at 8 pm. The words “art school” denote a certain level of expertise, but pay no mind: this is a drinking club with a drawing problem. Catering to all levels of artistic experience, Sketchy’s monthly soiree features scandalous performers (drag queens, burlesque performers) as drawing models. Along the way, preposterous art contests, comedy skits, and fantastic music – live and otherwise –decorate an evening of imbibing and illustration. Dr. Sketchy’s is unpretentious and mirthful, and if you come out of the Beachland with some new friends, a few deftly scribbled stick figures on a notepad and a smile, well, Sketchy’s mission is accomplished.

Shaken and Stirred

When two great ensembles come together for a rare night of music, we’re gonna make sure you know about it. Such is the case with Portland, Oregon’s Pink Martini and the Cleveland Orchestra, which perform together as a part of the orchestra’s ongoing “Celebrity Series” this Tuesday, March 30 at 8 pm. Martini is the self-proclaimed “little orchestra” known for marrying Afro-Cuban jazz, Italian film scores and French cabaret with pop-sensibility and chamber music. Their wildly-popular 1997 debut effort Sympathique was a million-seller almost entirely due to word-of-mouth buzz, indie film festival exposure and inclusion on lifestyle music comps. Pairing them with the world renowned Cleveland Orchestra is a move of sheer, artistic genius (PM’s latest recording, Splendor in the Grass, matches them up with members of Harvey Rosencrantz Orchestra to great effect). An auditory banquet will most certainly ensue. Tickets are available at www.clevelandorchestra.com.

Fleet of Foot Originals

If the first two events aren’t cutting-edge enough, try Gordon Square. Cleveland Public Theatre launches their tenth annual CPT DanceWorks Festival on Thursday, April 1 at 7 pm, running several weekend-long dance expositions thereto. Artistic Director Raymond Bobgan does a fantastic job with this series, which gives local dance companies and choreographers the opportunity to present new and repertory works alongside peer companies. DanceWorks features new works every year (it’s the calling card of the series) and all troupes who participate must offer a minimum of one major premiere during their evening. Cleveland’s dance enthusiasts will tell you that there aren’t enough quality venues for smaller dance companies, and that’s but one of many reasons why DanceWorks has been going 10 years strong. See for yourself. Schedule and lineups are available at www.cptonline.org.

Last Bite

If you’re not already hip to the Edible Book Festival at Loganberry Books on Larchmere, then head over to the store's website, and then join in the fun Saturday, April 3 at noon. It’s a perfect way for Cleveland bookworms to have their “cake” and eat it, too.

If there’s a unifying thread behind this week’s Fresh Start on Ohio Authority, it’s how we process the information and make it work in our sphere of influence. Two venerable, cutting-edge organizations meet in the middle to help the area’s women find healing and strength through the arts. One of the region’s great young writing talents contemplates (and then stages) one of pop culture’s defining moments for African Americans during the 1990s. And a 111-year-old building opens its doors to artistic/creative types and the public at large, bringing the surrounding community a new tradition to curate and look after. One thing’s certain: all three of these Fresh Starts are sure to change you and your perception. What you do with the messages and experiences? That’s up to you.    

The Voice of Experience

Established more than a decade ago, the Women’s Voices Project pairs the Elyria YWCA Women’s Campus Project with the august Cleveland Public Theatre. Every year, they combine forces for an evening of original written works and poetry performance based on life experiences related to substance abuse, domestic violence and adversity. The inspiring results are then “toured” at Northeast Ohio’s women’s shelters, recovery centers and prisons. Think living well and recovering through empowerment and artistic expression and then you’re about halfway there. This year’s Women’s Voices Project debuts at Cleveland Public Theatre Wednesday, March 24 and will make the rounds at alternative performance spaces through late April. But my words here don’t even begin to sum up the words of the participants. If last year’s staging is any indication, this will rock you to your core. 

Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems

Karamu House playwright-in-residence Michael Oatman is about as regional as they come. The Cleveland native holds a master’s degree from Kent State (creative writing), and his tour of collegiate duty includes Cleveland State, Youngstown State and the University of Akron. After a critically-acclaimed staging of his play Before I Die: The War Against Tupac Shakur, Oatman has followed up with Eclipse: The War Between Pac and B.I.G. In it, he examines what precipitated (and cultural waves set off by) the drive-by shootings of feuding rap superstars Tupac Shakur and his rival Christopher George Latore Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls, the Notorious B.I.G.). The setting may be the East Coast–West Coast hip hop of the 1990s, but the bigger picture is far more intriguing. Oatman’s new work raises Karamu’s curtain Friday, March 26 at 8 pm and will run through mid-April.

Cirque du Bazaar

Arts festivals are plentiful during the summertime in C-town, but where does that leave creative types and their devotees during the colder months? They all head indoors for smashingly quirky fêtes like Cirque Imaginaire, which features all things wearable, presentable and edible at the Sachsenheim, the century-old Saxon home on Denison Avenue. Check out the day-long festivities, beginning at 4 pm on Saturday, March 27, as this traveling showcase of local artists take over the ballroom/dance hall/solarium. Everything from jewelry, pottery and murals, to chocolates, textile works and robot pals are up for grabs. Local bands, including Safari, will perform live. As for the building itself, it’s a treasure that, until five years ago, wasn’t even open to the public. Sachsenheim hosts everything from performance art and concerts to shindigs like this art gallery/bazaar; if you haven’t been there yet, you’re missing a real treat. Fancy antediluvian digs and inspired artistry? Then Cirque Imaginaire is a twofer. Be sure to also check out www.clevelandhandmade.com.

The words “Full Cleveland” are most certainly loaded ones. Considered a sartorial slam in the fashion world, the term summons the hideous vision of white patent leather belts and shoes. But the Full Cleveland, to our way of thinking, means the full-on Cleveland experience, including established and adored traditions. In this week’s OA Fresh Start, we remind our faithful readers that a bountiful independent film festival, custom vehicle menagerie and off-peak farmers’ market are not mutually exclusive. Don't be surprised to find some of your fellow Clevelanders at all three of this week’s event picks.   

Ready for Our Close-Up

Last year’s Cleveland International Film Festival launched with a “thinking man’s sci-fi flick” called Moon, a film about a lone spaceman losing his mind as he toils on a lunar mining base. Directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie’s son, a Wooster College alum) and starring Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey, Moon went on to win elite film awards and ended up on dozens of critics’ “best of” lists. So, what’s the point? You never know what kind of Cannes/Sundance/Toronto-like cinema you’re going to see during the venerable, 11-day event at Tower City Cinemas. Last year, festival organizers set all kinds of records, including single-day attendance. This year’s slate of contemporary American and international indie filmmaking offers more than 150 features and 150 short subjects from more than 80 countries, including Australian director Sarah Watt’s riotous My Year Without Sex (pictured). The “Local Heroes” regional filmmaker component returns as well. It all starts Thursday, March 18 and runs late into the month.

Greasy Kids’ Stuff

The CIFF gets two thumbs up as being among Cleveland’s high culture, but where does that leave an event like the Cleveland Auto-Rama? Roll your eyes if you will, but how can this so-called lowbrow, low-culture car festival get a bum rap for being too cheeky when it’s been formidable since the late 1970s? It’s about as Full Cleveland an experience as there is in town– think Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction meets the long-cancelled hot-rod reality show, Monster Garage. There’s even a “Happy Days/Laverne & Shirley” reunion with appearances by actresses Cindy Williams and Erin Moran. It starts Friday, March 19 and runs through the weekend at the I-X Center, and it’s as true to Cleveland as a trip to the St. Patrick’s Day parade, a slathered n’ smothered Polish Boy and those last bottles of Great Lakes Christmas Ale you’re hoarding. I’ll be the guy ogling the 1979 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am, if you need me. 

A Balanced (Local) Diet

You might consider offsetting such a Full Cleveland experience with Countryside Conservancy Winter Farmers Markets, including their installment this Saturday, March 20 at 9 am. It’s not peak veg season, you say? Bah. Even in the winter and early spring, you can still purchase local foods from farmers and artisan producers in a beautiful indoor setting. The Conservancy offers these indoor markets on the third Saturday of every month from November through April, tiding all of us regular farm market visitors over until the summer. Eating fresh, local food is a sustainable practice with amazing ripple effects for the community and the environment. To wit, the meats, cheeses, jams, syrups and more at your fingertips aren’t just good for you, they’re good for others around you, too. It all happens at the Happy Days Lodge, 500 W. Streetsboro Rd. (Rt. 303), Peninsula.

It’s all about character in this week’s installment of Fresh Start: A cultural observer from Shaker Heights tries to find the essence of the Perfect Man in his new book. A modest local organization feeds the needs of a city’s residents (in part) by feeding its donors. The heart and soul of the Cleveland Heights’ arts scene supports its present tense with the help of one of the region’s oldest galleries. This region’s got soul and continues to make history. These three events carry a torch that says the area’s best and brightest are here to stay.  

Training Day

Award-winning Shaker Heights journalist, author and cultural observer Jimi Izrael is not one to pull punches. It’s what makes his work moderating “The Barbershop” for National Public Radio’s Tell Me More with Michel Martin and his blog “The Hardline” for the Washington Post site The Root.com positively crucial. Izrael spins the a narrative of love, African American experience, episodic pop culture and opinion in his new book, The Denzel Principle: Why Black Women Can't Find Good Black Men (St. Martin’s Press). The book introduces the theory that The Perfect Man – in the form of Academy Award-winning actor Denzel Washington – actually exists off-screen and that all African American women “can snag a Denzel of their very own.” He signs and discusses the book at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lyndhurst this Tuesday, March 9 at 7PM. And if you’ve heard him on NPR, you know you’re in for a real treat. 

Chicken Soup for the Clevelander’s Soul

St. Malachi Center has long been a champion of Cleveland’s less fortunate children and families, nourishing the minds and lives that lean on it during particularly trying times. The Superior Viaduct organization offers no-cost showers, afterschool programs, adult education, health clinics and much more to those who arrive there. But none of it happens in a vacuum. Generous support of donors and attendees of their annual Soup for the Soul Benefit help St. Malachi’s mission financially. On Saturday, March 13 at 6PM, hit the center’s largest fundraising effort at St. Ignatius High School. Angelo Petitti (Petitti Garden Centers) receives honors, while celebrity servers offer up scrumptious, gourmet soups prepared by area restaurants. Appetizers, desserts, a silent auction, raffle, and live entertainment round out the evening, and all for one of Cleveland’s greatest causes: the community it serves.

Such Great Heights

Another Plumtown institution, Heights Arts, is in the midst of their own annual benefit: a sale of antique prints from the Vixseboxse Art Gallery. A painter and avid art collector, William Vixseboxse established Cleveland’s oldest art gallery three generations ago; his spirit is still carried on at the namesake gallery on Cedar Road. Prints by Nast and Homer from Harper’s Weekly, botanicals, chromolithographs, mezzotints, Civil War-era art and more are a part of the saleable stash. The sale launched over the weekend – and continues through mid-April during regular Heights Arts hours – but there’s still plenty to take in. Admit it, your pad needs a little sprucing up; your score helps one of the region’s art institutions thrive.

Cross-Checking

And hey, don’t forget that the Burning River Roller Girls season starts this Saturday, March 13 at 6PM at the Wolstein Center at Cleveland State University. Read my interview with some of those skatin’, cross-checkin’ ladies in OA this month.

I love cars. It's silly, but it's true. I enjoy talking with others about cars, ogling cars and occasionally even driving cars. With all the money I spend on car magazines and books, I likely could have bought a 60s MG MGB by now, but that's another story. My father tells me stories of walking by my grandparent's neighbors in Dublin, and stopping to admire the Aston Martin DB5 in their driveway. I was barely able to walk, but I would insist on stopping to look at the quintessential British gentleman's tourer. It's a deep-seated problem. 

I have a particular fondness for the great grand tourers and sports cars of the 1960s - and the accompanying stories: The Ferrari 250GTE that made its debut as the 1960 pace car of Le Mans and was Enzo's personal ride of choice as he could comfortably take his dog with him in it; or tractor-cum-automaker Ferruccio Lamborghini's gorgeous and technically superior 400GT 2+2, only the young company's second car, and the response to a disagreement Ferruccio had with Enzo over his Maranello-made mechanicals. The sultry Malcom Sayer-designed Jaguar E-type, a car Enzo is reported to have called "the most beautiful car ever made," essentially came to symbolize the Swingin' Sixties. There's the story of another tractor manufacturer turned automotive impresario, David Brown, who bought a fledgling young car company named Aston Martin in 1947. Under his direction, the company produced some of the world's most iconic autos (Sean Connery made Aston a household name with the release of Goldfinger in 1964) and fabled racers (the 1959 DBR1 co-piloted by a young Carroll Shelby won the 24 hours of Le Mans that year). Don't even get me started on vintage cars of the 1920s and 1930s, or the 50s-era William Lyons' XKs and the sporting ACs of Britain, or America's chromed behemoths of the 1950s or the muscle wars of the late-60s and early-70s. You get the point. 

I firmly believe that every car carries a story, some good, some bad. How many memories do you have associated with cars - a first car? A first date in a car? A first ticket? Family trips? Epic breakdowns?

With the summer car show and concours circuit a few months shy of Mother Nature's blessing in Ohio, there are few places for car guys to go kick tires. Yes, there is the Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum in Cleveland and the National Packard Museum in Warren, and they are wonderful. If you haven't visited either in a while, you should. You'll learn something. There is also the Cleveland Auto Show. 

When I was a younger, I'd eagerly look forward to attending the auto show with my father. I still do, and so I went this week. There are less cars this year, to be sure, and "nobody is buying new cars", but it's an exciting time, if you think about it. With Toyota moving full steam ahead and showing no signs of stopping, and all the German purveyors of luxurious banker cars engaged in an insular battle of monotony, the US automakers have seemingly got a bit of sense, looking toward quality not quantity. In all the years I've been going to car shows, I've never spent so much time in the Ford display area. More important, though, was the meeting of generations. Climbing in and out of cars, exchanging stories and opinions were kids and their parents, middle-aged folks with grandfathers. Strangers exchanged thoughts – and laughs – on automotive styling, inviting conversation that would normally seem awkward. People were having fun. People were comfortable. Whether you are interested in cars or not, it's about the times you share around them and the people you meet and get to know. 

So, grab a few friends or the family, and go to the auto show. It's $12 per person, and the parking is free.