1972 - Mayor Ralph Perk’s wardrobe
Perk celebrated winning his first term as Cleveland’s 51st mayor by heading to the basement of an unnamed (he wanted to keep it a secret) wholesale clothing factory to buy six new reject suits. “I’ve bought rejects from the same factory for the last 22 years,” Perk told Tish Jett in the May issue. “There are a good many men’s clothing factories here that set aside clothes that have flaws in them, and these are the suits I buy.”
2017 - Mayor Frank Jackson’s Twitter account
Our chief executives’ exploits have long intrigued us (hello, Michael White
raising alpacas). But Jackson’s confounding Twitter account — he just discovered the platform this year, apparently — could use some help. We suggest he read our April story on social media celeb Chris McNeil and his Twitter account @reflog_18 full of sports humor, dad takes and MVP memes.
1972 - Steakhouses
Back in the halcyon days of 1972 — before a presidential resignation and a Cleveland default — we were really in the mood for dropping chunks of change for hunks of red meat. In our July and September issues, food writer Stan Davis reviewed 11 steakhouses including Ferris Steak House, Moe and Junior’s, and Raintree, where steak dinners started at $5.25 (!).
2017 - Tacos
We’re a little more casual these days — 45 years is a long time to keep your pinky finger up. Our February “Cheap Eats” cover sung the praises of the portable and customizable pockets of sunshine from local restaurant Bomba Tacos & Rum.
1972 - Cleveland Browns coaches
“Nick Skorich is the first mere mortal to coach the Cleveland Browns,” Abe Zaiden wrote in our September issue. “Paul Brown was an Olympian God of War, the Karl Friedrich Steinmetz of professional football.”
2017 - Cleveland Browns coaches
So for 45 years, fans (and management) has been second-guessing the 14 poor (well-paid) saps who followed in the footsteps of Browns head coaches Paul Brown and Blanton Collier. As Tony Grossi wrote in the April issue, “Browns coaches liked [Jimmy] Garoppolo in the 2014 draft, but owner Jimmy Haslam and then-general manager Ray Farmer overruled them and drafted Johnny Manziel instead.” We know how that went.
1972 - Hare Krishnas
Hare Krishna — the Eastern philosophy movement du jour in the 1960s and ‘70s — landed in Cleveland rather inconspicuously. “The visible result, for most of us, has been the mysterious appearance on downtown sidewalks of a breed of life which at first encounter seems almost extraterrestrial to the jaded Western eye,”
Derek VanPelt wrote in our September issue.
2017 - Yoga
In between all the “oms” and “namastes” we recite at one of the massive Believe In CLE yoga events organized by January’s Most Interesting Person Tammy Lyons, we can’t help but think that if spiritual enlightenment was so easy to obtain, everyone would be — Oh.
1972 - Roller skis
Roller Boogie wouldn’t come out for seven more years, but roller skis were a thing you could do 45 years ago thanks to Bell Mountain Shop in Lakewood. “They’ve found an ingenious Norwegian invention, Bergans Roller Skis, which might at first glance be mistaken for a pair of mutant skateboards,” we wrote in the September issue.
2017 - Stand-up paddleboarding
We never realized this about ourselves, but apparently we don’t take alternate modes of transportation lying down, which might be why we picked this waterborne activity as one of April’s “50 Things Every Clevelander Must Do.”
