Special Ingredients: Cleveland Sucks!

Another thing I know I wouldn’t agree with is his opinion, as the song to his sadly-defunct show bearing his name expresses, that “Cleveland rocks.” For most of my life, I would have agreed with this, because Cleveland was the home of Ohio’s long-departed SeaWorld, which I, for reasons unclear to me now, loved to go to as a child. There was also a certain level of pride that an Ohio city would have things like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Browns, not to mention Drew Carey.

Hey, I live near Toledo, where the two biggest names are Jamie Farr, who no one outside of the Toledo area remembers, and Katy Holmes, who seems to be almost ashamed of where she came from because I never hear her mention it. Apparently, Tom Cruise was here for a few weeks visiting the in-laws, a period of time that I should be able to remember, despite the fact the usual Toledo-style subtle media coverage of telling everyone where the Big Deal is and requesting that we ignore it was not on duty during that time. Even though this early warning system failed, I should have known something was up because the air of weirdness should have been noticeably thicker. Anyway, the point is, I don’t get cool stuff like this to associate with, and even though I’d like to think I don’t care about trivial things like this, I have to admit it’s a little cool.

So I would have sworn that Cleveland was a wonderful city. The reason for this was I never actually visited it itself before. Obviously, this has changed significantly, and now I, like many people I talk to, never want to go to Cleveland again.

The reason I was in Cleveland was my fiancée, Christy, had a class trip scheduled in November to go to the Cleveland Zoo to study primates. If you know anything about Toledo (yeah, right), you’ll know that it has a famous zoo of its own that wildlife poster boy Jack Hannah showers with praise. And it’s really a nice place, so far as I can tell where zoos go, because I’ve now been to a sum total of two in my entire life, and it’s clear which is my favorite. So I didn’t understand why her class didn’t just go to the Toledo Zoo, which was less than an hour from her college campus, instead of driving over two hours to Cleveland to look at primates. She explained it was because the Toledo Zoo has no lemurs, which would really throw the entire class trip into a death spiral.

She ended up dragging me into it so we could use the trip as a way of having a romantic getaway in a new city. Although it may not be evident by some of the articles I’ve written on travel, I don’t really enjoy vacations spent mucking about in new, unusual locations. The exceptions are my mother’s cottage, which I’ve been going to since I was born, and Casino Windsor, which I get to go to for free, and the entire trip has no obligations besides eating and sleeping.

Conventional vacations are not like this. You have to plan them with the intensity of an all-out military campaign (not necessarily a Bush military campaign, which is about the equivalent, complexity-wise, of going out to get the morning paper), pay for them using money that could go towards other endeavors, like naughty videos, and force yourself to have fun and try different things even if you don’t want to, like the latest local style which involves driving a nail through your tongue (wait a minute…). The more I travel, the less I look forward to doing it again. On the upside, it makes some great evidence in my case to nail my feet down in Oregon.

Another thing I hate about going to a new place is the newness. I never know where things are, and I feel like a complete dolt for asking the locals what there is to do around town, because that’s pretty much a written confession that I’m a clueless out-of-towner who fell off the turnip truck (this is the opposite image that locals get in places like Branson, Missouri, where questions like this make the locals think you’re some drugged-up, lustful corporate whore from the big city who fell out of your Ferrari). Once I get used to a place, I’m much more comfortable and enjoy myself more. However, in most cases, I’m positive I’ll never be around enough to get a feel for the environment.

I also hate places with mutant roadway systems. Again, it helps a lot when you’re used to location, but I hate it when the people laying out the road plans decide it’s most efficient to throw in blind turns, vague signs, and turn-only lanes that aren’t clearly labeled and you only know they exist when you’ve already plowed into another car. You better believe the very foundation of Cleveland is built on this.

Despite all of this, I stupidly agreed to the idea, and it was my job, in addition to driving duties since I was the only one who had a car at the time, to arrange a hotel. Since this was a romantic getaway, I started doing my research diligently, looking for lodging that would meet my stringent requirements, which consisted of low prices and a low cockroach count. And you think romance is dead.

I decided to book the trip through Orbitz, the all-in-one online travel agent website. I found an Econo Lodge in a town near Cleveland called North Olmstead that looked good, so I decided to call the hotel itself. Even though I’m constantly surrounded by technology at my job and consider myself a semi-avid video gamer, I find that I don’t latch onto new technology as readily as some. I’m far from a luddite, but I don’t see too many reasons for me to be on the cutting edge. Because of this, I wasn’t completely comfortable with Orbitz, so I called the motel to get more information.

I eventually decided to go with Orbitz, because I figured I’d probably need the service eventually, and it was a little cheaper. With my part out of the way, it was up to Christy to find us some attractions. I’m happy to report that her mission was successful, except for the minor setback that she didn’t know where any of the actual attractions were located.

The Saturday of the trip came, I picked Christy up and we were on our way. By sheer stroke of fortune, we live in a city that has State Route 2 serving as its main business district, so getting to Cleveland was as easy as following it east, without having to muck about with the turnpike. The roads remained clear up until Cleveland, so the trip was smooth and without any interruption, save for a quick stop at McDonald’s for some breakfast.

I suspect, however, we were considered outcasts in the small town we stopped in, because we were the only ones who had to wait around for our food, while cars were driving around us, quickly served. It was probably just bad luck, but I suddenly had the urge to get out of that town right away, lest we become involved in a The Lottery-style narrative. What malevolent presence made me feel such ill-ease? Football.

By what I suspect is a coincidence, that day was the day of the big game between rivals Ohio State University and the University of Michigan. I’m not sure if this phenomenon affects you if you don’t live in or near either state, but around here, this game is absolutely huge, with normal, civil people donning their favorite team colors and spending the entire week before the game lambasting the other team and its supporters. I’m not joking when I say these people take this to a religious level. I’m certain if this game was on Sunday, the minister would forget about God and talk about how his favorite team is going to kick ass.

Hmm, maybe Chick was onto something after all…

Christy and I don’t care for sports. I don’t understand the appeal of watching sports, especially on TV, and I don’t see why people get so religious over it. I have a feeling this sentiment was blatantly obvious, and if we didn’t clear out of the town immediately, the cultist sports fans would crucify us on goal posts in hopes of pleasing their football gods.

On the plus side, the roads might have been so clear because everyone was at home praying before the game started.

Shortly after, we rolled into the zoo, despite some detours we had to take because Cleveland was under construction. I have a theory that when I start looking up maps online, MapQuest alerts city officials and they begin construction before I arrive. It happened to me in Saint Louis, and I’m starting to see a trend. It also seems like the cities I end up aimlessly wandering around in end up on the Most Dangerous list, a fact I’ll leave up for interpretation.

The Cleveland Zoo struck me as odd from the get-go. At first, we couldn’t find the main entrance, because it’s not clearly labeled (I would find Cleveland seems to have something against clear labeling). After we finally found the parking lot, we went to the main entrance to pay for our tickets, but were told by the attendant we had to go across the street to get the tickets, then come back and give them to him. To be honest, it wasn’t that far, but I’m not sure what blowhard zoo official decided we couldn’t just pay there. I think it was idiotic, but I’m not a pimple-marked teenager working at a zoo in November for minimum wage, so what do I know?

After we got our tickets and went inside, I began to notice the zoo resembled a park as much as a zoo, because it is, after all, affiliated with the Cleveland Metroparks. I noticed this after driving down the road past the entrance, but thought nothing of it until I was inside. It was basically like any other decent zoo, except spread out a lot more and with things like picnic tables and large expanses of trees, just like a normal park. So basically, if you want to go for a brisk walk, you’re going to have to pay up.

There was actually a woman we kept seeing who was there for a walk. I suppose there are worse places to go for a walk, and at least you can stop and see some cool stuff.

I imagine taking a stroll here would be an extremely peaceful experience if the zoo was always as busy as it was that day. Granted, it was November, and I’m not sure if the zoo had much business being open. The flaw in this ponder is the zoo was only partially opened, so it probably doesn’t count. The place was like a ghost town, with most of the stands and attractions closed up, and very few people around, making the entire place ooze with an eerie radiance. The only thing missing from the scene were a few well-placed zombies.

As we walked through the desolate zoo on our journey to the primate house, I began to notice some things were amiss, and it only took one building to do it. We came across a run-down looking shack that was designed that way to look like an Australian outpost of sorts. Behind a fence were some wallabies that were shuffling around, minding their own business. Had I wanted to, I could have gone over and petted them.

This is because there was only a chain link fence separating me from them. I found this extremely odd, since the Toledo Zoo has a couple of safeguards to keep both the visitors and the animals safe, and they rarely get within ten feet of each other without something significant blocking the way. And yet here I was, able to go and touch an exotic animal, something I wouldn’t do, because there are laws against that sort of thing.

I began to wonder if we were in some area we weren’t supposed to be in. I pretty much had this suspicion the entire day, because in fine Cleveland tradition, nothing is marked. There were several times we ventured into places that looked like they were for employees only, but it turned out this was normal for this zoo.

It turned out we were in public areas the whole time, and the Cleveland Zoo just seems pretty lax about their animal confinement. I swore even my two-hundred-plus pound video game nerd carcass could get in and out of a few of the habitats without too much trouble. There were a few exhibits where I wondered why the animals didn’t just jump out and eat me, like the cheetah exhibit, which featured another chain link fence and a viewing area that was completely unprotected, save for a railing and a slight drop. I’m positive if I stuck my hand out, the cheetahs could, if so inclined, grab me, pull me in, and devour me. I was really surprised the clearance wasn’t low enough for them to jump out of there.

We also spotted an open-air monkey exhibit which concerned me even more. The only thing really stopping the moneys from getting out was a pool of water surrounding their habitat. If they could clear that, I imagine they wouldn’t have too much trouble climbing out and giving me some exotic disease. The caretaker entry way to the exhibit was in a side of an adjacent building with decorative stone jutting slightly out of the wall and leading to the railing. I’m positive a smaller monkey could easily climb this and escape, but the ones on display didn’t seem all that active, just sitting there in a heap on their big rock, so maybe the zoo was counting on their apathy. They probably didn’t want to bother going through all of the trouble of escaping just to terrorize a single couple from out of town.

Couple this with a few irritating dead-ends and loops, and we spent most of the day not knowing where the hell we were going. Don’t think the signs were that much help. In addition to pointing towards various winding paths, half of the signs were engraved with dark blue text on a dark brown background, meaning you would have to climb up the post and squint for a minute just to figure out what they were trying to tell you. It was sort of like a signpost version of Lassie, but less noisy.

Another odd thing about the zoo was vehicles would occasionally dart around the walking paths. We had to move out of the way of golf cart-sized cars, pickup trucks, and shuttle buses. I would hope the traffic would cut down during the summer months, otherwise it would seem the only reason Cleveland is a dangerous place to be is because of the zoo. Factor in the lax security on the animals, and its any wonder how we survived.

It didn’t take me long to draw comparisons with the Toledo Zoo and the Cleveland Zoo. The Cleveland Zoo has been around a little longer and feels more like the park it is, with attractions spread out between a lot of nature. Even though I only saw it on the off-season, I have a feeling the place is more geared towards people who want to come in and just hang out for a while, catching the sights gradually on different visits. It seems if you go there to see everything at once, you won’t be getting the most out of it. It also seems like the exhibits weren’t exactly planned out as far as attraction placement, and everything seems to be unorganized.

The Toledo Zoo, by contrast, is more of an amusement park. You go in, try to see everything, purchase overpriced food and souvenirs, and you’re off. Personally, I think the Toledo Zoo is a lot better, and I have a feeling that opinion wouldn’t change if I went to the Cleveland Zoo during the summer. The Toledo Zoo simply has more to do and more animals to see. And no, I’m not just saying that because it’s closer to my house.

I also thought of calling PETA on the Cleveland zoo, because there were a lot of animals out that I thought had no business being outside on a near-freezing day. I learned that animals like giraffes, who I never really pictured roaming the icy plains of Ohio, seemed to be comfortable out in cold weather. I guess I thought they would shrivel up the moment they came in contact with a single snowflake. But the Cleveland Zoo seemed to be bent on testing the tolerance of these animals, because a surprising number were still outside, wondering what they did to deserve being locked in their icy prison.

But back to the primates. Fortunately, just after our encounter with the wallabies, a shuttle bus carrying the rest of Christy’s class stopped and took us the rest of the way. The rest of the class had come by bus and were going to be leaving shortly after, making them worthy of their eventual college degrees just for showing great levels of common sense.

The primate exhibit was a bit odd in that they combined primates, big cats, rodents, and fish in one place (well, not in one habitat). In my experience, these things tend to have a separate building and some kind of order, but the baboons were next to the snow leopards, and the fish weren’t far off. The idea of watching one of the gorillas battle a shark in its tank, however, is a concept I would like to investigate further.

While I’ve made it clear I like the Toledo Zoo better, for some reason the primates were more interesting at the Cleveland Zoo. Part of it could have been the fact there weren’t droves of people shoving, shouting, and pointing at the primates, who were usually calmly sitting around, showing more evolutionary maturity than the people who were gawking at them. With the place virtually deserted, there weren’t any slack-jawed yolkles hooting and hollering at the primates, forcing me to seriously question which animal I was supposed to be looking at.

Mostly, I think it could have been the fact Christy was forced to observe the primates, so I had the opportunity to stick around. Back at home, she insists on moving on after catching a glimpse of any animal, and I actually enjoy watching animals going about their business. I especially like the chimpanzees, because they’re so humanlike, it’s almost as if they’re looking straight into your eyes and say “Don’t you tell me the theory of evolution is complete ape droppings! Look at me! I use tools!”

Of course, one cannot deny the sheer pleasure of watching some of the smaller monkeys whack each other with milk jugs.

I also have to give the Cleveland Zoo credit for having animals the Toledo Zoo doesn’t. I saw things I never heard of before, like the fossa, which is a sort of combination of a cat and a rodent. I find myself staring in awe when someone uncovers new species of animals, especially higher life. Remember a while back when explorers stumbled on an unexplored forest and found new types of mammals? Probably not, but while the world was wondering what crazy antics Brittney Spears was up to, I was reading the news article and thinking, “Wow, we really don’t know anything about what’s going on with Earth!” It’s moments like this that take you down a peg.

They also had seals, which I like because they’re basically hairless dogs that swim, and I wouldn’t mind having one as a pet. That, and a monkey, and maybe the fossa.

In case you’re wondering about the lemurs, they’re probably the most boring primates ever. Christy could have just observed her cats and got about the same results. So the main reason for the trip was really just a bunch of MS.

Before leaving the zoo, we checked out the rainforest exhibit, which was neat, but by that time, I was tired and hungry. I should also mention it was cold with the occasional drizzle, which was a weather concoction for depression. I stuck it out, though, and saw more interesting animals, including an ant eater, which I never saw live before. Still, the humidity was not doing my fatigued body any favors.

We left the zoo and took off for parts unknown. Because I’m a man, I didn’t bother asking for directions before barreling into the city. I figured I was on the right track, because there were big buildings ahead of me, and I reasoned that was where Cleveland was storing all of its Fun.

It turns out one thing Cleveland is good for is pointing out the existence of its attractions, since a lot of the main roads had road signs advertising them. Pointing to where they are exactly, however, was apparently too daunting of a task. Combine this with the vaguely-labeled turn lanes and one-way streets, and you have a recipe for one cursing driver.

Surprisingly, we were on the right track to where the mother load of fun was most likely being kept: the Tower City Center. Tower City is sort of like Saint Louis’s Union Station. It was once a train station that was converted into a shopping center, and like Union Station, is mostly worthless.

Finding exactly where Tower City was proved challenging, but figuring out where to park was a task on the level of advanced trigonometry. We found the street leading to the parking garage, but were distracted by (surprise!) some construction going on. Actually, all it involved was a crane blocking the other side of the road, but the melodrama that played out distracted me enough to miss the poorly-labeled entrance to the parking garage.

Apparently, a driver in the front of a line of traffic decided it was a good idea to go ahead while the crane’s ball was right above him. A construction worker walked in front of him and calmly motioned for him to stop. The driver lurched forward, startling the worker and causing him to angrily gesture to the driver to stop right the hell now. I couldn’t see the driver’s response, but it was clear by how pissed off the construction worker looked it wasn’t very understanding. I say let the guy drive under the crane, and if he gets crushed or accidentally flung into the river, maybe he’ll learn his lesson for next time. Assuming he’s not dead.

I learned the lesson for him and decided to be cautious as I eventually came back through there to get to the parking garage, which I’ll mention at this time is across the street and below Tower City in addition to no being clearly labeled. This was after a vaguely interesting series of events involving getting into the wrong lane, driving away from Tower City, circling back, and a whole lot of cursing. As I crept down the right road at speeds I’m sure the motorists behind me greatly appreciated and kept an eye on the crane, we spotted the parking garage and pulled in.

I’m not used to areas that are supposed to be dangerous. I’ve never had my car broken into, and I rarely find myself in situations where I feel threatened. Yet for some reason, I didn’t want to park anywhere in that dark parking garage where there weren’t any other cars to choose from. I figured if a car thief came by, he would look at my 1994 Crown Victoria, then at the new Plymouth Behemoth or the Dodge Cottonmouth and decide to pass on mine. I forced my car into a space designed for the popular Matchbox-class car, and Christy and I squeezed out of the car and into the elevator.

I should mention the elevator was also poorly-labeled (why wouldn’t it be?), so we didn’t know where to get off to locate Tower City’s supply of Fun, or, because we hadn’t eaten lunch yet, Food. To find out where we wanted to go, we employed an ancient technique used for centuries by successful explorers: we followed the other people in the elevator. The only catch to this otherwise fool-proof plan was they could be going to something we would never want to be involved in, like some secret S & M club involving rusty nails, but I think there was a kid with this group, so that seemed slightly less likely. They could also have been going to their car, but that would be impossible, because then they would miss out on all the Fun.

The group eventually led us to Tower City and all of its bustling excitement. Actually, from where we entered, there didn’t seem to be all that much too it, but that’s because we were on the ground level and could only see part of it. The interesting thing about Tower City is it extends under the street, so it takes up buildings on both sides of the street, plus the area below the street. This means if one too many trucks were to pass at the right point, the entire thing could collapse and you could be crushed to death while being harassed about changing your cell phone service. The only good about this is you would die and go to Hell, but at least you’d be away from the cell phone salesman, unless he dies too, and you better believe he’ll still bug you about hammering out a rate plan as the soul-burning fires singe the essence of his spirit for all eternity.

After checking out the list of restaurants, which included Cleveland’s Hard Rock Café, we opted to check out a place called Houlihan’s, which seemed to be sort of like a Chili’s, which I approve of. I stated in the beginning of the article how I hate feeling the obligation of trying local cuisine because I’ll either not like it or, worse, like it so much that I’ll go insane not being able to eat it back home. I’m glad to report that Houlihan’s is an example of the former.

We were waited on by a very pleasant man named Arthur, who for some reason kept referring to us as “fine people,” among other outmoded monikers. He actually sort of reminded me of a combination of Morgan Freeman and Jerry Stiller, making it hard for me to complain about the food that was eventually set in front of me.

And complaint-worthy it was. As per my usual, I looked past most of the other confections on the menu and went straight for the burger. I figured since the place looked pretty nice, they could at least whip up a burger around the same caliber as J. Alexander’s, an excellent restaurant back in Toledo. What I ended up getting was a semi-carbon meat disc with no fewer than five hundred bone shards/gristle chunks/hard things that made the day even better. If it weren’t for good ol’ Arthur, there would have been one unpaid bill lying around.

After the delectable meal, we decided to check out the mall. When it comes down to it, Tower City is more of an attraction than a place any sane person would shop. But the consumer population probably consisted of mostly people living in Cleveland, so there were many insane customers on hand to fill out the profit sheets. Seriously, this was a spender’s paradise. I could smell the scent of consumerism in the air. It smells like clothing stores and popcorn.

I checked out the mall’s GameStop, which was probably one of the worst I’ve ever been in, and the FYI, which is probably the best one I’ve ever been in, which is pretty bad, because I didn’t enjoy myself. I’m not sure how FYI can exist anymore, considering the internet has changed to face of business, and shoppers are much savvier than they were ten years ago. Then again, people still live in Cleveland, so the continued support of a chain of useless stores is not such an absurd concept.

I’ll admit I have purchase a few things at FYI in the past, but only because they weren’t that much, they had a rare good sale, or I was a complete idiot. Mostly, I hate myself for wandering into one of those stores, looking at all of the inflated prices. I know Media Play was like this, and I was depressed when they went out of business, but they didn’t mark up so much, and you could find a good deal far more often, and they had much better selection. Plus, they supplied me my anime during a time when it was akin to illegal drugs: expensive, hard to find, and caused people to look at you oddly for having anything to do with it.

FYI did have a wide array of overpriced anime DVDs and other baubles. They even sell used anime, but it’s usually too expensive (wow!) and mostly not worth it anyway. Plus, they mix it in with the new titles, so you have to dig through the entire section in search of the special sticker. I guarantee I would probably walk out of there with a purchase more often if they could go through the daunting task of separating new and used titles, but I guess the manpower involved would be far too great. The selection of anime accessories is respectable, but also overpriced, and seeing the intricate nuances of specific anime series hocked off at a mainstream entertainment store as add-ons for whiny teenage geeks made my inner-fandom hurt, so I ran out of there and into a toy store.

Actually, it was more of a board game store, and it was actually pretty neat. They had more types of board games than should be legally allowed to exist in one place. Even more surprising were some of the clearance items in back that were actually decent deals. Nothing I personally would drag home to add to the inordinate piles of junk I already have actively accumulating, but I left the store pleasantly surprised.

This feeling got lost in the crowd when I met up with Christy again and she insisted on checking out the candy store. It was a typical bulk-style store where you fill up bags with the candy you want and pay by the pound. Unfortunately, the store owners apparently think the world outside of the mall was destroyed in the Apocalypse and they control what now amounts to the world’s only supply of candy, if the prices are of any reflection.

This would be okay if they had any interesting or hard-to-find candies, or anything of high quality, like those fufu chocolates sold in mall chocolate stores that are apparently created from the milk of Nandi’s daughter for as coveted as the stores make you believe it is. Instead, they have common candies like gummies and M & Ms that can be purchased for about three bucks in the Real World (located less than a quarter of a mile from the store), but will run you about double if purchased in “bulk.” I wish I could convince customers the more they buy, the higher the incremental price is.

There was also an ice cream shop next door that I didn’t trust because they refused to display a clear menu. They did have churros, something I haven’t had since high school, but they didn’t look like they were worth the trouble.

At this point, we decided to jump in the car and get away from Tower City. The multiple levels made this task more of a maze run than a mall power walk; I was surprised a Minotaur didn’t stomp out of a store wearing the latest Gap fashions. We eventually made it to the car, though, and because we had spent enough money at Houlihan’s (lord knows we didn’t bother with anything else), they didn’t hold us hostage for more cash.

Since Cleveland wasn’t looking all that attractive anymore, we decided to call it a night and headed for the hotel, which was located in a neighboring town of North Olmstead. At this point, I was ready to get the hell out of that side of Ohio and go home, which we could have without too much hassle, since it was still early. But we had a reservation, so I figured we may as well stick with the plan, figuring we were safe from the troubles we had in Cleveland.

Alas, trouble travels like a leech to a skinny dipper. After getting lost for a moment, just for fun, we arrived at the hotel. I went in to claim the reservation, and wouldn’t you know it, there was none! Of course! So it came down to me pointing out to the clerk I had already made a reservation, while he pointed out there was no reservation, and wouldn’t you know it, he was right.

It turns out there was an error at Orbitz, which caused my reservation to be made for a month in advance. What probably happened was I set the right date, then had to make some sort of change, which caused the form to reset to the default date of one month later. Fortunately, despite the Econo Lodge being the Mecca for trendy types, there were still rooms left, so the plan was salvageable.

I later called Orbitz and steeled myself for a lengthy argument. They have a policy wherein canceled reservations come with a twenty dollar fee. While I can see how this would prevent people from jumping ship after it’s too late to fill the arrangements they suddenly abandoned or prevent witty internet comedians from making fake reservation and cancelling them for a lark, I thought this was a kick in hotel mints considering what had happened. After getting hung up on once, I managed get past Orbtiz’s initial defenses consisting of a standard English-as-a-fourth-language representative and talked to someone who agreed to wave the fee just this once. So I’ll pretty much never use Orbitz again, or do so after threatening the representative with dental torture to make sure the date is right.

In the end, we were victorious in our quest to secure a hotel room for our romantic road trip. As we stepped into what would be our temporary sanctuary, we were hit with a special notion that couples get when they realize they can be alone and uninterrupted for the entire evening: “Damn, it’s cold!”

For a moment, I thought we accidentally walked into the motel’s freezer, but the presence of a bed and TV coupled with the lack of frozen goods indicated that this was, in fact, our room. The entire thing was heated by a single wall-mounted heater, which was off at the time in an effort to save electricity and torment wide-eyed customers. I cranked the thing up to max and we walked around the room as if we had just escaped from a full-body acupuncture session before the needles were removed.

But it was all worth it for such a quality room. It included a bed with sheets, and an old TV, and running water… you know what? I haven’t’ been all that positive at any point in this article, and I’m not going to balance it out now.

This room was only a step away from qualifying as something that should only be rented by the hour. It wasn’t all that clean, with dust clogging some of the ventilation grills. The sink was literally coming off the wall in the bathroom. The occasional creepy bug and some light graffiti could also be spotted. Call me spoiled from my many stays at Casino Windsor’s fantastic hotel, but I’d like to have confidence that I will not wake up the next day dying of some long-lost plague or eaten to the bone by insects.

Okay, it wasn’t really that bad.

It didn’t take long for us to decide if we were going to stay in our refrigerated room for the night, we might want to grab some dinner to heat us up. Having learned from the Houlihan’s incident, and because it was kind of late anyway, we decided to venture out and eat at the first place we ran across that sounded good, even if we had it at home. This is how we ran across Domino’s.

Any Toledoans who has been assaulted by a Domino’s commercial will know the frustration of futility because there really aren’t any Domino’s in the area since it packed up with the Noid years ago. The first time I had Domino’s in recent years was at an anime convention, and I wasn’t impressed. This made me sneer condescendingly every time a Domino’s ad would come on TV, as if to say “Ha! Not in MY town!”

Then they pulled out the Oreo Pizza. I pretty much like to get involved with anything that is associated with Oreos, including the obscure Oreo deodorant, Oreo computer processor, and Oreo personal lubrication, so an Oreo Pizza was like God tossing me an Oreo-flavored carrot. Then he yanked it away at the last minute, because there were no Domino’s in the area.

When I saw that famous red, white, and blue, I pulled in with little council from Christy. We walked in and place the order, and ended up meeting a friendly clerk whom we chatted with while we waited. We ended up talking to him about our rough day, and he was sympathetic. He also seemed to be on drugs, at least little, because I swear he said he loved Cleveland, and then a couple minutes later said that it sucks. Either way, he was pretty cool, and he actually gave us an Oreo pizza free with our order.

We hurried back to the hotel and started eating the pizza. While it was better than I remembered it, it still felt like I had to finish my vegetables before having dessert. After I cleaned my plate, I grabbed a slice of Oreo Pizza, took a bite, and decided quickly that this depressing hotel room was probably the best place to kill myself and actually get the job done.

Instead for that sweet artificial chocolaty flavor with cream made from the clouds of Heaven, I found myself gnawing at a chewy, dead-tasting sheet of construction paper with dirt bits held on by white glue. It tasted nothing like Oreos. It didn’t even qualify as a product of cheap knock-off Oreos. I took another slice just to make sure I hadn’t made some kind of mistake or if an overlooked spider bite hadn’t clouded my judgment, but the second bite was the confirmation: this thing sucked, and fit in with the rest of the trip.

We soon decided to just sleep the day off, and in a stunning turn of events, had drifted past the silver lining and into the sunlight. This is because today was the day I would take in Northeast Ohio’s multimedia retail establishments, aka the stores that sell video games and DVDs.

I had heard that the Cleveland area was home to a franchise of used media stores called The Exchange. Back in Toledo, there was a small chain that is somewhat related called Allied Record Exchange, and place I happily drop hundreds, if not thousands of dollars per year at, and usually have a lot to show for it.

A good visit at Allied will yield an armful of games, movies, anime, and the occasional hardware for a low price. If I need to shop for gifts, it’s off to Allied first to see if I can snag myself a bargain. If I see something someone might like, I’ll grab it up, and I’m usually not out all that much if my hunch is wrong. Plus, I can usually dump stuff I don’t need in exchange for precious credits, and sometimes I end up turning a little profit. If not, there’s always Amazon.

So you can imagine my ecstasy when I heard there was an entire fleet of stores like these in the Cleveland area. My plan was to hit up as many as possible, but with just over a dozen locations to choose from, I would need a solid couple of days to sort them all out, not to mention get there. Seeing as how I had no idea where these stores were at, or if it was worth driving all the way to get to them, there was definitely some performance anxiety going on.

I forgot to ask my co-worker who first told me about them, and I tried calling him when I got to the zoo, but he sort of forgot about me in short order. After the zoo, I found a GameStop in Cleveland (a halfway decent one that had nothing to do with Tower City) and I inquired about the Allied. The clerk said there weren’t any around there, to which I had a sinking feeling like I was just told I was going to die next week. In reality, there were no Exchanges in Cleveland proper, but there were in the surrounding area.

My chat with the pizza guy hit a big payoff. Not only was there an Exchange in the area, it was practically right down the street from the hotel. So the next day, we found the road that served as North Olmstead’s main business district, and it was there I briefly pondered giving up on Oregon and moving there.

Not only did they have an Exchange, they also had Borders Outlet and another huge bookstore, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other cool little secrets down the street that I would have uncovered if I had time. The Exchange was pretty cool, had a large selection of mostly overpriced anime, and tons of video games with some good deals wedged in there.

What got me was the store looked more a big-name retailer than the Allieds back home, which basically looked like a stoner leased some space, contracted for the cheapest sliding glass shelves possible, and covered any product overflow with cardboard boxes and sticks of incense. Allied looks more underground. The Exchange looks more professional, which I found I like more than the local Allieds’ grunge look, not that I don’t have a lot of love for them. For now, I handed over a wad of cash to this Exchange.

The used bookstore next door was also pretty cool. I usually hate used bookstores because they usually look like God attacked a library containing mostly outdated books with the same air compressor he uses to make Level Two hurricanes, and the people running these places mostly don’t have a clue what books are worth, usually to the disadvantage of potential buyers.

In these places, I’ll routinely encounter stacks of dusty, long-ineffective books with obsolete information published in 1947 on something like genetics and evolution which was probably written by a Christian who believes everything is a Xerox of God and evolution is a twisted lie of the Devil, and these books will usually have a price of some sort on them, which is too much to pay unless you were looking for something potentially bulletproof to stuff down your shirt to defend yourself from your fellow irate bookstore consumers. On my way out, with no irony whatsoever, I can usually find some egotistical poster or decoration praising books, literacy, and/or reading.

The bookstore I went to was pretty much exactly like this, except in addition to books, they succumbed to the forces of darkness and stocked DVDs and even video games. While they had absolutely no idea what they were doing with the video games, the video section proved to be pretty interesting. While generous for a bookstore, the selection was limited, though I managed to find some obscure anime at great prices tucked in there.

The store’s real validation for me, however, was the graphic novel section. They had on hand a sizable quantity of manga on hand for as low as two bucks, so I ended up loading up. There were a lot of interesting graphic novels too, but most of them were pricey, and I didn’t care about most of what was there.

After dropping a few more dozen dollars, we were bound across the street for the Border’s outlet store, but we stopped briefly to contemplate lunch. It was in the middle of the afternoon, and neither of us had anything meaningful to eat. I peered next door and saw a Chick-fil-A freestanding restaurant, something unheard of in Toledo, which has a lone mall location in the Franklin Park Mall, located over ten miles away, which is outside my tolerable range for driving for fast food. Unfortunately, if you kept your timeline right, it was Sunday that day, and Chick-fil-As are proudly closed on Sunday to honor God (I’m not kidding). Oh well, a couple bucks less in the offering plate for them.

We went over to the Borders outlet, and I was impressed with the size and prices of the books. I found my way to the manga section and started scooping up titles, and I found a good number of other things that would ensure a merry Christmas for my friends and my wallet. After dropping another dozen or so food bills worth of cash, we decided it was time to go home.

That is, until I found North Olmstead’s Goodwill. From the outside, this one looked pretty nice, but the inside was a different story. The place looked like a freight train had crashed in there and management decided to just put the items on the rubble after they cleared out the train, and maybe even sell some of the rubble. It was dark and dirty, the merchandise was costly, crappy, and scattered throughout the store, and I wanted to get out of there as soon as possible.

Which we did. We were finally on our way out, soaring down the highway towards our freedom back home. As we drifted across Route 2, each mile bringing us closer to Oregon, I knew I would find comfort in the town I call home.

But first, we stopped in Sandusky for dinner. As I mentioned in a previous article about our trip to Cedar Point, Sandusky had not only a Friendly’s, but an Exchange to its name. Sadly (or joyously, in Christy’s case), I didn’t know this, so there was no visiting of the Exchange on that day. This time, however, would be different.

After a meal at Friendly’s and my obligatory mint chocolate chip Happy Ending with Reese’s Pieces on top, it was off to the Exchange. Christy chose to slip into the nearby mall, which was a shame, because this Exchange was probably one of my favorite, even when compared to the ones at home. Everything was very professional looking, there was lots of stuff, and I plucked out some great deals. I only had a half hour before closing time, but rest assured if I had more, I would have found more than enough to turn a huge profit, but not before maxing out my credit card in the process of paying for all of that stuff.

After lugging my purchases to my car and putting them with the rest, causing my car to point at a near forty-five degree angle, I picked up Christy and we tiredly went the rest of the hour and a half home, where each of us separately passed out from the aftermath of our relaxing vacation.

In conclusion, Cleveland sucks, but North Olmstead and Sandusky were fun, so go there if you happen to be in the area (I’ll bet). I’m sure I’ll get a barrage of e-mails from angry Cleveland lovers, pointing out how I can’t make a fair judgment about the city based on a single day of unprepared wandering.

To that I say screw you, because I will remain unconvinced that I need to return unless you people straighten up your roads and seal in your animals. Of course, you’re more than welcome to send me a thoughtful rebuttal explaining to me all of the wonderful things Cleveland has going for it, and I’ll be sure to put it in my “to do” pile for proper aging. This is assuming the cheetahs don’t eat you first.