Best of CLE Selections: CLE Daily

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🎤 Taylor Swift Wrote a Song Called "Cleveland!" The pop star's extended edition of The Life of a Showgirl drops Friday with four new tracks, including one titled after her adopted hometown. She and Cleveland Heights native Travis Kelce bought a $5.35 million Bratenahl estate on Lake Erie in March. 

🎓 Ursuline College Ranks No. 1 in Ohio for Upward Mobility, Again: For the second year running, U.S. News & World Report ranked the Pepper Pike college first in Ohio for helping students climb the economic ladder, and 6th among Midwest Regional Universities overall, up from 8th last year. The rankings land as Ursuline's merger with Pennsylvania's Gannon University is set to close this fall.

🚬 Ohio Has the 6th-Highest Smoking Rate in the Country: A new Lung Risk Score study from The Mesothelioma Center at Asbestos.com found 17.1% of Ohio adults smoke — well above the 12.8% national rate — and 14.5% of Ohio kids live in a household with a smoker, versus 10.3% nationally. The bright spot: Ohio's adult smoking rate has fallen sharply from 25.1% in 2011, and a comprehensive smoke-free workplace law now covers every resident.

ICYMI: Remember yesterday's item on the J. Glen Smith Center demolition? City Council members are pushing back hard. Ward 10's Michael Polensek said he was "mortified" by the plan, and MetroHealth is now eyeing Cleveland's city-owned Eastside Market as its new Glenville home once the health center closes in fall 2027.

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Today's Trivia

Euclid Avenue and East 105th Street were the site of the first one of these in 1914.

It's Here: Best of Cleveland 2026, all 146 categories of it.

By Cleveland Magazine staff

Readers nominated and voted on their favorite restaurants, shops and personalities across Northeast Ohio, and our editors added 44 superlative picks of their own — from a hand-forged watchmaker to a satirical news site giving The Onion a run for its money. Here's a taste of what won.

Readers' Picks: Great Lakes Brewing Co. topped Best Brewery, Grateful Heart Yoga and Wellness was Best Yoga Studio, Playhouse Square took Best Entertainment Venue, and Jose Ramirez was voted Best Guardians Player — plus dozens more picks spanning dining, shopping, entertainment and hometown personalities.

Food & Drink Editors' Picks: Rosy won Best Bread Platter, La Playa Fresh Seafood's viral frozen drinks took Best Soft-Serve Margaritas, and a Chagrin Falls PB&J got a Spanish upgrade with pistachio butter and manchego.

Shopping, Style & Services Editors' Picks: A Lakewood embroiderer, a hand-forged watchmaker and a Concord Township candle maker who builds scents around moods all earned editor distinctions this year.

Entertainment Editors' Picks: From a haunted castle sleepover to a Tremont street artist known only as "the Sign Guy," these are the only-in-Cleveland experiences worth seeking out.

See all 146 winners across the four lists.

Celebrate in person: Join us Oct. 15 at the Great Lakes Science Center to toast this year's winners. Get tickets.

Talk of the Town

The Natural History Museum is bringing in two science heavyweights this fall. Gravitational-wave physicist Gabriela González — a founding member of the LIGO team that confirmed Einstein's century-old prediction — speaks Oct. 6, with limited tickets left, followed by YouTuber and author Hank Green on Nov. 19, with tickets going on sale Oct. 14. 

RTA can't decide when to ask voters for more money. Trustees delayed setting a sales tax levy amount for a planned 2027 ballot measure, weighing a May vote that would bring cash sooner against a November vote with better turnout for RTA's first levy ask since 1975.  

About 200 workers at Cleveland Clinic Lutheran Hospital are threatening to walk off the job. SEIU 1199 says nurses, aides and support staff could strike as soon as Wednesday at noon over healthcare costs and drug-testing policies. The two sides came close to a strike once before, in 2023.

The Cleveland Orchestra's contract expires at midnight Thursday, and musicians have already approved a strike. Players say management's raise offer wouldn't keep pace with inflation, with bargaining sessions squeezed between performances ahead of a European tour and with Music Director Franz Welser-Möst's farewell season hanging in the balance.

Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights residents are split on tearing down part of the Doan Brook dam. A $32 million sewer district plan to restore wetlands at the old Horseshoe Lake site drew mixed reaction at an Ohio EPA hearing . Public comment stays open through Sept. 29.

A Laurel School senior is building a fair to get Cleveland teens off their phones and talking to strangers. Eliana Fieldman's "Find Your Thing Fair," set for Oct. 10 at the Cleveland Public Library, uses bead-bracelet icebreakers and human bingo to combat pandemic-era social isolation. Fourteen local organizations have signed on.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer 

What Geauga County church became known as the “Cradle of Equal Suffrage” for its welcome of women’s rights organizations? South Newbury Union Chapel

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question.

From the Editor

Northeast Ohio is still a small town.

When I do an interview, more often than not, I find some connection between the source and a family member or friend. In my Best of CLE write-up about Crowley's Dive Bar, I learned that one of my second cousins is close to co-owner Tanja Bartulovic. My cousin's daughter even babysat her kids.

People sometimes ask whether I'd want to write for The New York Times. I only half-joke that more of the people I love read me in these pages than ever would in the Times.

That closeness isn't a closed door. Bianca Beach moved here from the West Coast eight years ago and built Llamacita Sauces by showing up at farmers markets and asking for introductions. "I slowly built this web of people and resources," she says.

The Best of CLE issue and the Oct. 15 party might look like a celebration of food and shopping. They're a reminder that one of the winners probably knows your cousin.

— Dillon Stewart, Editor

Let us know what is on your mind at conversation@clevelandmagazine.com.

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