Cleveland Orchestra Strike Looms: CLE Daily

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🎸 Cleveland Punk Pioneer Cheetah Chrome Dies at 71: Cheetah Chrome, born Eugene Richard O'Connor in Cleveland in 1955, died Sunday. He helped invent punk's sound as a founding member of Rocket From the Tombs before co-founding the Dead Boys, whose 1977 debut "Young, Loud and Snotty" became a genre classic and a fixture of New York's CBGB scene. He later wrote a memoir and became creative director at Nashville's Plowboy Records. He's survived by his wife, Anna, and 14-year-old son Rogan. 

🥩 Cleveland's Marble Room Named America's Best Steakhouse: Downtown's Marble Room Steaks & Raw Bar topped a field of 63 nationally acclaimed steakhouses — including Maple & Ash, Chicago Cut Steakhouse and Bourbon Steak by Michael Mina — to win The64's national, fan-voted bracket tournament, the lone Ohio restaurant in the running.  The title adds to a growing list of accolades, including a Tripadvisor top-15 fine-dining ranking and a spot on Yelp's Top 100 Date Night Restaurants. 

🎤 Juanes Brings Cumbia to the Cleveland Orchestra's Home: Latin Grammy legend Juanes performs at Severance Music Center tonight, touring behind his 11th album and a catalog of 17 No. 1 hits. His stop comes two days before the Cleveland Orchestra opens its 2026-27 season, Music Director Franz Welser-Möst's last. 

ICYMI: Remember when we told you Michelin's anonymous inspectors were already dining across Cleveland, sizing up the city ahead of next April's inaugural American Great Lakes Guide reveal? Marble Room's new national steakhouse title lands right in the middle of that audition — another data point in Cleveland's case for a star.

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Today's Trivia

Finish this lyric by Bob “Mad Dog” McGuire to a song later sung by Drew Carey for his TV show: “Get her past those radar Mounties, bring her to Lake County…”

Arts & Culture: Cleveland Orchestra musicians are prepared to strike over pay that lags behind the other "Big Five" orchestras by about $27,000 a year.

By Mark Oprea

Unionized members announced on the steps of Severance Hall earlier this month that they've authorized a strike if orchestra officials don't meet their demands before the current contract expires Sept. 23 — six days before the orchestra leaves for a monthlong European tour.

The Pay Gap: Cleveland Orchestra musicians make roughly $163,000 for the 2025-26 season, about $27,000 less than the average among the other "Big Five" orchestras — New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago. New York's musicians top the list at $205,000. "We're not asking to be in the middle of the Big Five, just that we keep in line with them," violinist Elayna Duitman says. "We've been at the bottom of the pack for such a long, long time."

More Than Money: Beyond wages, members want more attention paid to healthcare and a real vote in the audition process for the orchestra's eight open seats, mostly strings. "We want to at least take a vote and have that count for something," Duitman says. "Our management so far has said no."

What Management Says: Orchestra officials have told members they can't raise enough money to justify a raise, says Duitman — even as the orchestra's endowment sits at $360 million. A spokesperson says the organization is "negotiating in good faith," pointing to the Sept. 2 extension through Sept. 23, and declined to comment further on the ongoing talks.

Been Here Before: The orchestra last went on strike for two days in 2010, over similar concerns about pay and benefits. A no-strike clause bars any walkout before Sept. 23; if it comes to that, every concert during the strike would be canceled.

Worth Noting: With roughly three dozen concerts left on the calendar this season, a strike could complicate the orchestra's European tour just days after the contract deadline. "We want to stay playing," Duitman says. "We just want the Cleveland Orchestra to be the quality orchestra it is. And stay that way." 

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

A century-old grocery chain is closing its Parma distribution hub. Marc's will shut its facility at 12200 Corporate Drive in November, laying off 55 workers across warehouse, buying and packaged-food roles. Marc Glassman Inc. is handing the produce-and-commissary operation to Indianapolis Fruit, part of food distributor FreshEdge, which will keep supplying all 59 Marc's stores. 

Cleveland spent the week wooing 300 corporate site-selection consultants. The city hosted the Site Selectors Guild's Fall Forum, with tours built around a quantum-computing showcase at Cleveland Clinic's IBM Quantum System One, the private-sector machine the two unveiled in 2023. Cleveland Clinic says the partnership has backed more than 50 research projects so far.

Hundreds of motorcyclists rode across Northeast Ohio Sunday to honor fallen officers. The 18th annual Cops Ride staged roughly 400 bikes Downtown before riding to Bedford Heights, timed this year to the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and honoring four Ohio officers killed in the line of duty in 2025, including State Trooper Nicholas Cayton. 

A Grafton man's lucky number paid off — to the tune of $1 million. He bought a $20 "$1,000,000 Stacked" scratch-off at a North Ridgeville gas station because it was ticket No. 13, his lucky number — the first two tickets he scratched were duds. He'll collect $40,000 a year for 25 years.

Books: Akron graphic novelist Derf Backderf's new book trades Cleveland and Akron for World War I-era New York — but not entirely.

By Annie Nickoloff

Derf Backderf, known for Kent State and My Friend Dahmer, releases The Dissidents today, a graphic novel about the real cartoonists of The Masses, a socialist New York magazine whose artists were prosecuted under the Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I. "It's completely forgotten history at this point, which I like," Derf says.

Still a Little Bit Ohio: Derf narrates the story through Joe Hertle, a fictional Northeast Ohio cartoonist whose immigrant family is based on his own. "I tried my best to break away from doing stories about Cleveland and Akron ... but in the end, I couldn't break away completely," he says.

Ohio's Comics Roots: Derf traces the medium itself back to the state — The Yellow Kid, considered the first newspaper comic, debuted in 1895, drawn by Ohioan Richard Outcault. "Literally all of comicdom came through Ohio, or came from Ohio and the Midwest," he says.

Worth Noting: Derf calls the parallels between the book's WWI-era crackdown on dissent and today "absolutely chilling."

Read the full Q&A.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer 

What Amherst native started as a motorcycle racer before becoming a manufacturer of racing motorcycles?  John Penton

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

From the Editor

Cleveland sports is currently serving two very different meals.

The Guardians host the White Sox this week in what might be the most meaningful series of their season, still white-knuckling that last wild-card spot as it owes them money. The Browns, meanwhile, are doing their best to unsee Sunday's 34-10 faceplant in Jacksonville before an even tougher trip to Tampa on the 20th, where Baker Mayfield will be delighted to see them.

One team's playing for October. The other's just playing for the mercy rule.

— Ron Ledgard, Managing Editor

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