Is Cleveland Midwest or East (Canton, Springfield: college, to live in, statistics)

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by bjimmy24

Cleveland is kinda like if you mushed Providence RI, Worcester MA, and Manchester NH together.

Yes, I always thought the Browns' Dawg Pound was extremely appropriate for Cleveland, because I've always considered Cleveland ethnically as the mutt of American cities. It's hard to understand how much Cleveland celebrates its ethnic heritage and diversity, which explains the great range of its culinary tradition from an ethnic standpoint, and its many ethnic celebrations, some just inaugurated in recent years, and growing, such as the Slovenian Kurentovanje festival. Are we witnessing the beginning of a Cleveland winter Mardi Gras tradition? The actual festival is today.

Cleveland Kurentovanje: Slovenian Mardi Gras offers week of food, fun and scary monsters (schedule, photos) | cleveland.com

“Maslenitsa” winter festival in the Russian Garden – The Cleveland Cultural Gardens Federation

Yet, as I explained in post 55, underlying Cleveland's "muttiness" is its New England "City Upon a Hill" philosophical roots, from the Western Reserve, to abolitionism, to its Progressive era leadership with Tom Johnson and William Stinchcomb, to its leadership in integration (Jesse Owens, Paul Brown in the NFL, Larry Doby and Satchel Paige in AL MLB baseball, Carl Stokes as first major city African American mayor, Frank Robinson as first African American MLB manager). It's a very different tradition from other American and even other Ohio cities (my mother remembered Ku Klux Klan marches in the Mount Vernon, OH, of her youth).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_upon_a_Hill

http://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Ku_Klux_Klan?rec=913

And Greater Cleveland's public squares and emphasis on civic excellence in cultural institutions, public parks, etc., is certainly reflective of these New England roots.

[btownboss4]

I love how you can tell when this moved to the Cleveland forum
By how the consensus changed from "it's Midwestern but Great Lakes Midwestern" to "Cleveland is literally on the Merrimack River"

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by btownboss4

I love how you can tell when this moved to the Cleveland forum
By how the consensus changed from "it's Midwestern but Great Lakes Midwestern" to "Cleveland is literally on the Merrimack River"

That's an exaggeration. I've explained how Cleveland was a great Melting Pot city built on a solid New England foundation. It has a very different feel, partly because in the 20th century, it was a Progressive city in a Teddy Roosevelt Republican sense, which, thanks to Tom Johnson, never fell under the control of a Democratic political machine as in Boston, NYC, Chicago, etc.

The tug-of-war between Tom Johnson Democrats (even though Johnson was a millionaire industrialist), and Mark Hanna (the Koch brothers of the Gilded Age) Republicans was brutal but largely healthy (political dialectics at work).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hanna

<<Johnson's streetcar fights with Hanna and his allies make a colorful part of Cleveland political folklore. In a time when companies with a monopoly of transport on a route were able to charge five cents for a ride, he made the 'three-cent fare' a cornerstone of his populist philosophy, and later he would come out in favor of complete public ownership.[10] Through the 1890s Johnson gradually divested himself of most of his transit and steel holdings, to devote himself entirely to the politics of reform. In 1901, pressed on by influential citizens and a public petition, he decided to run for mayor of Cleveland.

His campaign electrified the city. Johnson liked to rent large circus tents and set them up on neighborhood lots, attracting big crowds for whom he would deliver a powerful speech, banter cheerfully with hecklers, and finish with a stereopticon show with a political moral. On April 1, 1901, he was elected with 54% of the vote.

Johnson's entry into office would prove just as dramatic as his campaign. One of the campaign issues had been a valuable piece of city-owned downtown lakefront property, which outgoing mayor John H. Farley and the council had agreed to hand over to the railroads without compensation. Johnson obtained a court injunction to stop the giveaway, but it was set to expire three days after the election. Taking advantage of a legal technicality to get the new mayor sworn in early, Johnson's men staged a surprise takeover of City Hall and saved the land for the city[11] (today this land, with later landfill additions, holds Cleveland Browns Stadium, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Great Lakes Science Center).>>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_L._Johnson

Thankfully, Johnson arrived in the nick of time. For those who dislike Cleveland's lakefront today, imagine what it might be like in the absence of Tom Johnson....

[WRnative]

Originally Posted by btownboss4

I love how you can tell when this moved to the Cleveland forum
By how the consensus changed from "it's Midwestern but Great Lakes Midwestern" to "Cleveland is literally on the Merrimack River"

Also, Boston was one of the most racially intolerant cities in the North in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bill Russell described Boston as a "flea market of racism."

<< The already hostile atmosphere between Russell and Boston hit its apex when vandals broke into his house, covered the walls with racist graffiti, damaged his trophies and defecated in the beds.[71] In response, Russell described Boston as a "flea market of racism".>>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_R...th_Boston_fans

While the Celtics were racial pioneers in the NBA, the Red Sox were the last pre-expansion MLB team to integrate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpsie_Green

While Larry Doby, the first African American to play in the American League of MLB, suffered racial taunts on the road, his son said the Doby always noted that he never was booed in Cleveland.

When Larry Doby broke the American League color barrier in Cleveland: Nicolaus Mills (Opinion) | cleveland.com

<<Larry Doby Jr. said that his father, who died in 2003, did not dwell on those who protested his presence with the Indians.

“He said he never got booed in Cleveland,” the younger Doby said in an interview. Initially, he was skeptical of his father’s claim, but “when I got over the shock of hearing it, I realized it was true. It was a special place for him and my family, and whenever we’d go back, I’d see how he was greeted when he wasn’t playing.”>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/s...tegration.html

So no, Cleveland somehow grew into something very different than the capital of New England.

[btownboss4]

Originally Posted by WRnative

Also, Boston was one of the most racially intolerant cities in the North in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bill Russell described Boston as a "flea market of racism."

<< The already hostile atmosphere between Russell and Boston hit its apex when vandals broke into his house, covered the walls with racist graffiti, damaged his trophies and defecated in the beds.[71] In response, Russell described Boston as a "flea market of racism".>>

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_R...th_Boston_fans

While the Celtics were racial pioneers in the NBA, the Red Sox were the last pre-expansion MLB team to integrate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumpsie_Green

While Larry Doby, the first African American to play in the American League of MLB, suffered racial taunts on the road, his son said the Doby always noted that he never was booed in Cleveland.

When Larry Doby broke the American League color barrier in Cleveland: Nicolaus Mills (Opinion) | cleveland.com

<<Larry Doby Jr. said that his father, who died in 2003, did not dwell on those who protested his presence with the Indians.

“He said he never got booed in Cleveland,” the younger Doby said in an interview. Initially, he was skeptical of his father’s claim, but “when I got over the shock of hearing it, I realized it was true. It was a special place for him and my family, and whenever we’d go back, I’d see how he was greeted when he wasn’t playing.”>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/24/s...tegration.html

So no, Cleveland somehow grew into something very different than the capital of New England.

Yeah and the Braves were like the 3rd team that became racially integrated.

Cleveland not Boston's police is the city that shot a 13 year old for playing in a park, and Cleveland not Boston is the city under federal investigation for racial bias in its police department, and Boston, not Cleveland has never had deadly race riots.

[gouldnm]

As a person from Michigan who now lives on the East Coast, Cleveland is the Midwest. The culture starts to feel Midwestern as soon as you cross the Appalachians, even though you are still in Pennsylvania, which is technically part of the Northeast.

As someone said earlier, the Midwest is not a monolithic block. Neither is the East Coast.

[gouldnm]

Originally Posted by CubanfromMiami

Isn't the Rust Belt considered Midwest?

Not all of it. The rust belt also includes Western Pennsylvania and NY.

[gouldnm]

Originally Posted by Urban Peasant

Moses Cleaveland himself was a New Englander from Connecticut. There had to have been New England influence even from the start.

There was—not just in Cleveland but across the entire upper Midwest. Read “Albion’s Seed” by David Hackett Fischer. He describes how the descendants of the original British settlers migrated across the U.S. and influenced the regional cultures.

[gouldnm]

Originally Posted by Vanderbiltgrad

Cleveland does not remind me of anything on the East Coast. I lived in NYC and Boston and they are nothing like Cleveland. Cleveland I hear is like Baltimore in many ways but I don't see it.

I have spent extensive time in Boston, NYC, Baltimore, and Cleveland.

There are similarities between Baltimore and Cleveland up to a point. Both have a strong blue collar tradition, for example. But Baltimore also has a very strong, maritime coastal tradition that definitely makes it an East Coast City.

[gouldnm]

For those who would like to understand more about regional cultures in the U.S., I highly recommend this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-...n’s+Seed