"Street Fighter" Director Got His Start in Cleveland Heights; Guards Tie Series: CLE Daily

Plus, things to do in and around Cleveland and Northeast Ohio this weekend.

by Ron Ledgard | Oct. 9, 2026 | 5:00 AM

Courtesy Mark Rogers

⚾️ Guardians Force Game 5: The Guardians scored nine runs again yesterday to win Game 4 in Chicago against the White Sox, 9-5. Game 5, the deciding game, is Saturday at Progressive Field. The winner moves on to the American League Championship Series against the Tampa Bay Rays.

🎻 Apollo's Fire Turns 35 With a Founding Father: Cleveland's Grammy-winning baroque orchestra opens its 35th anniversary season next week with "Ben Franklin in Paris," a 40-musician program led by Artistic Director Jeannette Sorrell about Franklin's years charming French society as a wartime ambassador. Concerts run Oct. 15-18 in Akron, Bay Village and Cleveland, with free family concerts, too.

🏛️ A Convention Center Expansion Could Complicate the Lakefront Bridge: Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne is pushing to extend the Huntington Convention Center north by about 75,000 square feet into the same space planned for the lakefront pedestrian bridge. The city says it's open to the idea, but $130 million in federal grants require construction to start by late 2027.

🖌️ Cleveland's Sign Painter Is Busier Than Ever: Alan Giberson of Old Soul Sign Co. hand-letters storefronts for spots like Van Aken, Kate's Fish and Anthology Cask House, and says demand keeps growing from businesses that want their look to signal quality.

🍸 Last Call at LBM: Lakewood's Viking-spirited cocktail bar closes Saturday on its ninth anniversary. Owner Eric Ho says higher insurance requirements on a new lease made the numbers stop working. Former and current bartenders are making guest appearances through the final night at 12301 Madison Ave.

ICYMI: Remember our guide to 18 Northeast Ohio apple orchards and markets? Peak picking season is here, from Eddy Fruit Farm in Chesterland, run by the same family for 150-plus years, to Quarry Hill Orchards in Berlin Heights, which comes with a winery and a Lake Erie view.

If you read our daily newsletters, consider supporting our local journalism with a print subscription to Cleveland Magazine.

Today's Trivia

Nov. 18, 1985, marked the debut of which comic strip characters, created by Bill Watterson and drawing heavily on his childhood experiences in Chagrin Falls?

Film: The director of Street Fighter learned his craft on Cleveland stages.

By Gregory Wakeman

Long before he directed The Eric Andre Show, Beef and the new Street Fighter movie, Kitao Sakurai was a Cleveland Heights kid auditioning at Cleveland Play House at age 5. "Because I had those experiences, I knew what I wanted to do from middle school," he says. Street Fighter hits theaters Oct. 16.

Homegrown Training: Sakurai, who moved from Kyoto, Japan, to Cleveland Heights at 3, joined the Play House's youth playwriting program at 12, took part in Dobama Theatre's Marilyn Bianchi Kids' Playwriting Festival and was a regular at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque.

Local Shoots: He filmed his debut short, Coda, at University School and came back to Cleveland in 2010 to shoot his feature Aardvark.

Worth Noting: For a big-budget video game adaptation, Sakurai says he wanted Street Fighter to "have emotional pathos and feel handmade."

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

Cleveland seniors are struggling to afford groceries as SNAP benefits shrink. Food bank demand among people older than 60 jumped 45% from 2019 to 2025, some seniors now get as little as $20 a month in SNAP, and home-delivered meal programs have waitlists.

East Cleveland schools cut chronic absenteeism by 10 percentage points in one year. The district tracks every student weekly, makes home visits, hands out bus tickets and stocks resource rooms with clothes and hygiene supplies to keep kids in class.

Cornell students are studying how Cleveland's soccer future could connect to transit. The urban planning class toured the proposed 10,000-seat Gateway South stadium site and unused park-and-ride lots that could become mini soccer fields near RTA stations, with final plans due in December.

A retired Cleveland Institute of Art professor is showing his glass sculptures at The Sculpture Center. Brent Kee Young's "A Concept in Flux" features clear, flameworked glass forms inspired by tree roots and tangled rebar, on view through Oct. 31.

Painesville schools are warning of deep cuts if November's income tax levy fails. If voters reject the 1.25% earned income tax, the district says it would close Maple Elementary, cut nearly all high school AP classes and drop some sports. The vote comes after a property tax levy failed in May.

More Things To Do This Weekend

🎸 The Who's Tommy wraps its run at Playhouse Square's Connor Palace this weekend, bringing the band's 1969 rock opera to the stage through Sunday.

🍕 Pints and Pies Craft Beer and Pizza Festival pairs local brewers and pizza shops at the Akron Civic Theatre at 7 p.m. Friday.

🤘 Sugar, the '90s alt-rock band fronted by Husker Du's Bob Mould, brings its reunion tour to the Agora at 8 p.m. Friday.

🧟 Evil Dead: The Musical opens Friday at the Akron Civic Theatre, mashing up the first two Evil Dead films into a gory rock musical that runs through Nov. 1, just in time for Halloween.

📖 Author M.L. Rio talks about her rock 'n' roll road-trip novel Hot Wax at Visible Voice Books in Tremont at 2 p.m. Sunday.

More things to do this weekend.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer

This Cleveland Heights theater opened in 1934 as the first municipally owned and operated outdoor theater in the country. Cain Park Theater

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

From the Editor

Every great director starts somewhere, and for Kitao Sakurai, it was a Cleveland Play House audition at age 5.

Next week, his Street Fighter hits theaters, and Cleveland Heights gets a little credit for the hometown kid who made it. Until then, the weekend is yours: The Who's Tommy at Playhouse Square, Evil Dead: The Musical in Akron, Bob Mould's Sugar at the Agora, or beer and pizza at Pints and Pies.

Go, see something live.

— Ron Ledgard, Managing Editor

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

Subscribe to Cleveland Magazine in print or to our daily email newsletters.

Ron Ledgard

Ron Ledgard is Cleveland Magazine's managing editor and a Pittsburgh native who has made his peace with Cleveland (except on Sundays). He's a University of Pittsburgh graduate, a veteran of The Athletic and the Akron Beacon Journal, and was there for every chapter of LeBron's Cleveland story. After two decades of chasing deadlines and box scores, he's happily landed in magazines. He's a sucker for a long story done right, the kind you save for a Sunday morning (before kickoff, of course). When he isn't editing, he's out on a trail, trying a new restaurant or hunting for the next great thing to do. Sports is his subject of choice, and coffee is his fuel. Most Starbucks baristas in the area greet him like the Cheers crowd greeted Norm.