Anyone Wanna Tell about Cleveland. Should I Move There?

[rp]

I'm think of coming back to the States. Any place I want to live (SF, Seattle) is competing with Dubai for rank rent exploitation and trust fund kiddie culture, it's why i got out of NYC. Friend of mine just moved to the suburbs of CLE, bud got transferred from NYC out there, and they just got an INSANELY nice 4brm '50s ranch house with unbelievably vast beautiful land. They will put me up till I get some work, save up, and on my feet - moving to Italy and living four years here wiped me out. After seeing the house and gorgeous property he bought I'm a intrigued. They paid ~$220K - in the NYC greater metro area eg LI, Westchester, CT it'd be a $3million home, easy, very easy. The most incredible thing is if he lost his corporate job or separated or both he could pay his mortgage and taxes with a burger flipping job at McDonald's. That's incredible in my ex-NYC universe.

I saw the stats - place is mega depressed, out of top 50 US cities in size it's in last place and showing no signs of recovery from 2008 - if not from the Danny Green car bomb 1970s. Gonna be rough for me to find work at 55, I doubt I want to stay in burbs and will probably try eventually to move into a funky downtown neighborhood. I'm an original denizen of the old Lower East Side punk NYC so I can handle urban squalor - but I'm not a blitzed out 20y/o either.

I know all about Great Lakes and winters as I went to University in Rochester NY, and lived in Montreal and Lake Placid for several years. I'm getting kind of old for that too but miss the snow, actually prefer it to palm trees and Mediterranean heat. I used to sea kayak so the Lake also intrigues.

I've been looking at jobs and rent on Craigslist. Jobs are few, bleak and LOW paying, it ain't NYC were I always found crazy cool, stimulating jobs with decent pay and pretty cool perks. But the rents in CLE are straight out of the 1970s. Holy crap! Like a clean, funky prewar 2bdrm for $675/m.

Looking at the real estate it tells me I'd be lucky to take home $350/w! Anyone have any experience or from there? love or hate for CLE and environs? Bad idea? Really bad idea? Hopeful idea? Am I going from one sinking ship onto an other? Can you be too old for the cold?

[dorrisant]

No clue about Cleveland... but we have water here (Evansville,IN)... and snow. Rent for two br is about $600-$650. Just across the river we could get a storefront with living space on the second floor for $850/month lease... considering it...

Glad to know you are moving much closer... Maybe you can help spearhead the great TAG get-together that we should have had some time ago.

Good luck on your plans! Let us know how it goes.

[M Fowler]

Dr Z is located outside of Cleveland and Doc used to work in Cleveland. Email Doc and he will advise.

Mark

[telentubes]

We moved back to the Pacific NW in June. Seattle, where we lived off an on for the past 30 years, has gotten too big, with LA traffic, and San Francisco price-tags, so we found a place in the woods outside of Bellingham, 90 miles north of Seattle. Not as cheap as Cleveland, but half the price of where we were living in California for the past 4 years. Quiet and rainy here, just like we like it. Bellingham is a very cool town. Not sure of the job market.

[chief mushroom cloud]

I would never use a house size as a determinate for where I live.....I use:
1. NO FUCKING MOSQUITOES
2. NO FUCKING SNOW
3. MASSIVELY DIVERSE LANDSCAPE
4. CLOSE TO AN OCEAN
5. DIVERSE POPULATION

Therefore...LA
There are a LOT of high paying jobs here.....more than I can ever remember.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Cleveland oughta be much safer now that the convention has left town.

Never lived there more than a couple days, to do rock shows. Actually a pretty nice city. And there's an opportunity for some amp work - Cleveland still rocks. Might also consider some other Ohio cities, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Toledo.

Living in upstate NY, prices here are high and taxes to match. Political corruption without match. Could Ohio be any worse? Naaah, see you rockin' on the "flats", in Cleveland! Just don't set the river on fire. Again.

[Phil_S]

...Political corruption without match...

Leo, surely you don't imagine your politico's have a corner on that market, do you? The previous mayor of Baltimore nearly got sent up the river for a gift card scandal. She managed to out maneuver them by agreeing to resign!

[Leo_Gnardo]

...Political corruption without match...

Leo, surely you don't imagine your politico's have a corner on that market, do you? The previous mayor of Baltimore nearly got sent up the river for a gift card scandal. She managed to out maneuver them by agreeing to resign!

NY, a corner on the market, hardly. The foibles of Baltimore mayors are legend. Schmoke, who could forget him? Gift card? You gotta be kiddin' me. VERY small potatoes. They should pin a medal on her.

NY legislature refused to consider any new laws covering corruption, although 3 high ranking legislators were tried and convicted during the most recent session. Those convicted of high crimes and treason besides keeping their ill gotten gains, will collect their pensions too, it's natural of course, just like the sun comes up in the east.

[rp]

Qualitatively NYS seems to have the most outstanding corruption because NYC is were all the country's (world’s) trillions of lucre gets routed on the way to wherever it winds up, and it goes through several times around and around. You can bet Albany ain’t gonna let NYC keep all of it. Every state is well staffed with homegrown Snidely Whiplashes but if we are talking mano a mano lucha libre graft championship bout I'd bet the farm on NYS.

Chief M-C, yes, yes, LA, all the cool NYCers have been heading there since 2000. Started with people on the margins, musician-cooks, actor-waiters, strange artisans and such, but now it's six figure salary types, people selling their one bdrm condos for $1.2mil and setting up in LA. So, even the old NYC 'cool' professionals are getting sick of what NYC has become. I should have gone straight there, but I wasn't that smart. I actually hate the heat - I know, I'm in Italy, but here the heat comes with free life-time health insurance.

NO FUCKING MOSQUITOES in LA?? Really?? Why? No more water? DIVERSE POPULATION - yes, it's killing me here. I'd give my right nut for a plate of pernil & arroz con frijoles w/ a side or maduros, some makowiec from a Polish bakery, a coffee shop w/ wifi w/o shit music, Chinese food that isn’t a novel event, even a cheese burger from a Greek diner… No more mono cultures for me!

CLE has one thing going for it, friend who'll put me up for a year or so and I can save up. But I can't save up anything if I can't find work or am bagging groceries in CLE chain-store suburbs hinterland. I looked at apts in town and did Google street view - OMG, bleak - and the picts are of bright summer - And those wide, cloud streaked Rochester skies that never stop reminding you that a long hard winter's around the corner. It's a place only Harvey Pekar could love.

I hustled freelance my whole life, but I never experienced an absolute low-pay/no pay employment wasteland 'till I got to Italy, I never wanna see the likes again so CLE seems the wrong gamble. These stat’s are terrifying: Cleveland, Ohio is currently 57.6% smaller than it was in 1950, the year of its peak recorded population. Cleveland, Ohio's growth is extremely below average. 98% of similarly sized cities are growing faster since 2000.

If I had something decent laid out I’d give it go. I'm so gonna contact Doc Z. Maybe he needs a solder monkey. That would actually be my dream job, I'd even do f'ing Tolex w/ a smile. Google says 35min from friend’s house. Thank you Mark Fowler, this has given me something to be upbeat about.

Keep the suggestions coming. No CLE locals here?

[martin manning]

I used to travel there regularly in the '90's. It was on the up tic then, with lots of downtown night life and a winning baseball team. Much of the former industrial base is gone, I think, so it has had to diversify, and it probably got hit hard in the recession. Lately Ford has been investing in their Brookpark engine plant, which was all but shuttered in 2007. There is aerospace tech there too, NASA Glenn Research Center, and the industries that support it. CLE still supports three pro sports teams, so there is something going on there.

[xtian]

Portland, OR, is high on the list of desirables these days. Check it out.

[cbass]

You might check out Texas . If you want to get out of the cold.
If your a leftist you'll probably like the left coast more.

[John_P_WI]

My uncle (now passed), cousins and cousin's kids have lived in the Cleveland area (Western suburbs Bay Village, Rocky River, Olmsted etc) for as long as I can remember. In fact 40 years ago I used to sail with my cousin from Cleveland to Put in Bay - they were all well established in the area back then.

It's a nice area and has re-invented itself since the economic downturn late 1900's early 2000. It certainly is doing better than other industrial areas such as Detroit, Milwaukee etc. That being said, I believe that Cleveland suffers poor areas similar to other larger older industrial cities.

Yes, there are winters - although they are somewhat more mild than here in WI. I do know that their spring is several weeks earlier.

As a bonus, it is a day drive to either the East coast or Chicago and is fairly central.

Sorry I can't add any specifics...

John

[drew]

Rp, what part of Italy are you in, and what led you to move there?

I don't know much about Cleveland, but I think I've heard that it has a big healthcare sector, so that might be a potential employment source.

[Leo_Gnardo]

rp, meet Graham & Rikki, Cleveland homesteaders who are making the most of it. Jump ahead to about 4:55 in this video for a quick 3 minute tour of chez Graham and his neighborhood. If you do move there, he's probably somebody you'll want to know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctahjN3y_Gc