Cleveland Scene - December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

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CONTENTS DECEMBER 6 - 19, 2023 • VOL. 54 No 11

Upfront .......................................6

Music ........................................21

Feature .......................................8

Livewire....................................23

Get Out ..................................... 14

Savage Love..............................26

Eat ............................................ 17 Dedicated to Free Times founder Richard H. Siegel (1935-1993) and Scene founder Richard Kabat Publisher Andrew Zelman Editor Vince Grzegorek Editorial Music Editor Jeff Niesel Staff Writer Mark Oprea Staff Writer Maria Elena Scott Staff Writer Brett Zelman Dining Editor Douglas Trattner Stage Editor Christine Howey Membership & Marketing Manager Kelsey Jae Burke Email Kelsey - kelsey@clevescene.com - to join membership club.

Advertising Senior Multimedia Account Executive Shayne Rose Creative Services Creative Services Manager Samantha Serna

Chava Communications Founder, Chief Executive Officer Michael Wagner Co-Founder, Chief Marketing Officer Cassandra Yardeni Operations Director Hollie Mahadeo Director of Agency Services Mindi Overman Social Media Director Meradith Garcia Director of Digital Content Strategy Colin Wolf Art Director David Loyola Digital Operations Coordinator Jaime Monzon chavagroup.com National Advertising Voice Media Group 1-800-278-9866, vmgadvertising.com Cleveland Scene P.O.Box 14070 Cleveland, OH 44114 www.clevescene.com Phone 216-505-8199 E-mail scene@clevescene.com

Creative Team Jack Spatafora, Joe Frontel, Pedro Macias, Ana Paula Gutierrez

Cleveland Scene Magazine is published every other week by Chava Communications .

Staff Photographer Emanuel Wallace

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Business & Sales Support Specialist Megan Stimac Circulation Circulation Director Burt Sender

Copyright The entire contents of Cleveland Scene Magazine are copyright 2023 by Chava Communications . Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is prohibited. Publisher does not assume any liability for unsolicited manuscripts, materials, or other content. Any submission must include a stamped, self-addressed

With the big Rolling Stones date awaiting Cleveland next year, we look back to one of the many times they appeared on the cover over many, many decades. Man, they’re old. And so are we.

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“Cleveland Scene Magazine” COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ANSON STEVENS-BOLLEN

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UPFRONT WITH WEED NOW LEGAL ACROSS OHIO, ARE PSYCHEDELIC MUSHROOMS NEXT? AFTER WORKING IN finance for almost two decades, Erik Vaughan entered the world of medical cannabis, working in Ohio grow laboratories and insurance services, while privately cheering on the pursuit of full legal status.

In 2022, Vaughan began wholly pursuing what he saw as the logical next step after Ohio legalized weed: Decriminalization, and eventual legalization of, psychoactive mushrooms in the state.

He founded Epiphany Mushroom Co., with his wife Stacey, in March of that year. Both a witness to the mysterious healing properties of psilocybin, the chemical compound that causes psychedelic effects in magic mushrooms, and its burgeoning legal status in the American West, Vaughan is banking on Ohio to follow suit.

Legal weed, he said, is only the beginning.

As Epiphany will, sometime in the next decade, be reliant on Ohio loosening its laws around mushrooms that it still treats as—like the DEA— schedule one narcotics. And see those brown and white fruiting spores, grown carefully in a whitewalled lab, more so as salves for incurable anxiety.

“That’s why you’re starting to see bipartisan support on it, because the results are coming through from places like Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and NYU and Ohio State,” Vaughan, 46, said from a table in his office on Akron’s South Main Street. Around him are plush toys of amanita muscaria (“the

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Mario Bros mushroom”), bottles of Lion’s Mane capsules, and posters with post-therapy resolutions.

“And this isn’t coming just from some Grateful Dead concert,” Vaughan added, with smiling aplomb. “This is coming from the doctor ’s office.”

There is some credence to

forests, magic mushrooms debuted as legal, therapeutic medicine in some 13 facilities across Oregon this summer. The operation is one half formalized shaman, another half deep therapy session: patients spend up to two months preparing mental notes for their “medicine day,” when they’ll ingest the fungi

Vaughan’s enthusiasm and business model. Since 2020, when Oregon voters chose to decriminalize psilocybin-rich mushrooms, researchers have jumped at the opportunity to study the fungi’s lasting power for ameliorating PTSD, chronic depression, and even curbing addictions to alcohol and tobacco.

In the past three years, related papers on the National Library of Medical Research have quadrupled.

Long consumed out of plastic Ziploc baggies or deep in suburban

lying supine with a blindfold on.

Or, as Vaughan recalls his own session, or sessions, the dates of which he refused to disclose: “You take a large dose of psilocybin mushrooms, you sit on the couch and go inward for four hours to explore your consciousness.”

And, like numerous reports from the hundreds this year that have seen Oregonian schroomtenders, Vaughan had his own reasons—and months of mental prep—for such therapy.

“I haven’t had a drink in 2023,” he said, emotional. “For me, it was

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that relationship with alcohol.”

Because the federal government’s grip around psilocybin studies was only loosened in the past few years, concrete data on magic mushroom’s effects isn’t welldocumented. Due to most users still having to obtain, and ingest, shrooms in a Mark Oprea closed-door fashion, evidence linking “overdoses” to heart attacks is cloudy at best, and, as Vaughan purports, an “indirect” cause of any deaths.

But the risk is there. Even in a controlled therapy setting, with trained psychologists acting as drug escorts, bad trips are common, as are protracted psychosis and freak outs, which can last for hours. One therapy taker’s reaction was so awful, the New York Times reported, that she permanently “lost partial connection to reality.”

A 2020 study analyzing 346 trip reports found a good helping of them signaled potential ER visits, along with generally positive “thinking distortions and perceptual alterations.” (Rainbows and unicorns, one could imagine.)

And, of course, the ill-advised helping: “The use of multiple doses of psilocybin in the same session or its combination with other substances was linked to the occurrence of long-term negative outcomes,” the researchers found, “while the use of mushrooms in single high doses was linked to medical emergencies.”

In Vaughan’s mind, bad trips are often cherry picked for stories and cloud the often lifesaving

effects psilocybin can have on trauma victims. Overeating is also why Vaughan is sponsoring a microdosing study at Ohio State, under the impression that large doses, the crown of medicine day, isn’t for everyone. Also, one therapy session, like the kind Epiphany might have, could cost anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000.

Which could take a while, even as marijuana activists shift their focus. While some mycologists believe the country could sway toward legal shrooms as soon as the next “three to five years,” Vaughan is assuming a more conservative estimate. It’s why, as Epiphany begins furnishing its basement grow labs and fruiting rooms, its team will only be focused on sporing four legal mushrooms: Lion’s Mane, Cordyceps, Reishi and Maitake.

City councils in Akron, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati are not currently leaning towards decriminalization, which could, like it did for marijuana in Cleveland, take years. Most haven’t even begun to address the topic, Vaughan suggested.

“So, I’m overjoyed that this is changing, but it is going to be a while,” Vaughan said. “It’s going to be a couple presidential elections before it changes here in Ohio. So, it’s no time soon.”

For now, half of Vaughan’s interest—an obsession, one might say—is still illegal. Even picking one of the 14 magical mushrooms that grow naturally across Ohio could lead to a fine or a possible arrest. “Most people don’t even know that,” Don King, Epiphany’s mycology expert better known as the Mushroom Hunter on social media, said.

Holding a block of Reishi in his hand, Vaughan agreed as he hurried to make a Zoom meeting with his team in Colorado. After all, he and Epiphany plan to have therapeutic services up and running there by early 2025.

“God, we’re going to know so much more in ten years,” he said.

“And so much more than that in 20 years—if the government gets out of the way.” – Mark Oprea

Clevelanders Dealing With Highest Median Rents in Almost Two Years Taking on extra work hours.

Cutting subscriptions. Staying in on the weekends.

These are some of the ways some Clevelanders are dealing

with a wintertime rent spike, one that’s arrived in time for the holidays, and holiday spending, and a continuing rise in overall cost of living.

Median rent in December for a one-bedroom, according to data from Zumper, a real estate data firm, shows Cleveland’s at the highest since February, now hitting $1,300/month. Despite Akron and Columbus rents leaping up 10 percent this year, Zumper’s report shows, Cleveland’s median rent is still the highest in Ohio.

The flurry of spikes and troughs in the wake of the pandemic has, both in coastal cities and further inland, led to shifts in the housing market.

But with interest rates still at a 22-year high, and a recession mentality trailing, plenty of those in the typical homebuying brackets are opting to deal with raising rents over the gymnastics required to own a home in 2024. Over half of those Zumper surveyed for their end-of-year report believe “the new American dream is being untethered to homeownership.”

(Thirty-eight percent “never plan to buy” a home altogether.)

“That’s a statistic no one in the real estate industry can afford to ignore,” Anthemos Georgiades, Zumper’s CEO, said via the report.

“It’s also the most significant change in attitudes” in the past three, four years.

In Cleveland, rent increases come amidst the continued arrival of new multifamily buildings, those like the City Club Apartments on Euclid Avenue or Driftwood in Tremont, that are bound to list studios and one-beds at, or above, market value. An informal survey of Clevelanders around town showed rent raises citywide, from dozens of dollars to hundreds.

“At first, it didn’t seem like it was a strain,” Nicole Harvel, 26, a communications specialist living with her partner in Gordon Square, told Scene. This year, the couple’s landlord raised their rent for their two-bedroom by $200, to $1,800.

“Months went by, started to realize with the cost of everything increasing, the extra $100 each— we were more strapped than in the previous year,” she added. “We had to pay a little more attention to bank accounts. Do more cooking at home. You know.”

For Micah Gates, 37, who relocated to a three-bedroom house in Clark-Fulton after his previous landlord sold his building, a $300 jump was significant.

A Tower City security guard living with his sister, Gates said he felt inclined to grab more overtime hours at work—which he’s taken in stride. “Yeah, I do a little bit more,” Gates said, walking through Tower City’s garage on Prospect. “I’m just tired every now and then. That’s all.”

Though the Zumper report anticipates a softening of the rental market next year, it speculates there will be a sort of two-roads-diverged phenomenon, with property managers either cutting raising rents or renters themselves giving up and hiring a real estate agent.

It’s kind of what Alec Rubin, a news editor in his fifties, did with his husband this summer.

After their mom and pop landlord hiked their typical $1,200 a month rent in West Park to $1,375, Rubin declined to renew and dove into the precarious world of house hunting. After a month of searching, Rubin and partner whittled their top five down to a two-story in Cuyahoga Falls.

Though Rubin didn’t say how much his mortgage payment is, he suggested it’s not too far off from his West Park three-bedroom. An economical wakeup came after: “How many times did we say to each other, ‘Geez, I’m glad we’re not starting out right now,’” Rubin said. “And rental qualities just seem like crap right now.”

Harvel said she’s not yet ready to say bye to her Gordon Square two-bed: her landlord’s nice, and utilities are included. But there’s a ceiling in her book—if that monthly payment hits two grand, she’s out.

“Even if it’s over $1,900, I don’t know if it’s worth it,” Harvel said.

“I think we need to continue to keep our options open. The type of rental we’re going to be in.

And where.” She added, “but I mean, buying a house is kind of unfathomable to me.” – Mark Oprea

Phone Use Dropped After Ohio Passed Texting While Driving Law In April, Ohio finally made it illegal to fiddle with your phone while behind the wheel as part of a comprehensive distracted driving law that made it a primary offense to use your cell on the road, with very few exceptions, such as hands-free calls.

Texting while driving was previously a secondary offense, which meant it couldn’t be the reason for a cop to pull you

over. The new law had broader provisions that basically made it illegal to use your phone for any reason while cruising along.

Following a six-month grace period in which offenders were given warnings by officers, citations began being issued on Oct. 5, which carry a $150 fine and two points on a driver’s license for first-time offenders.

The good news, according to a study from Cambridge Mobile Telematics, which gathered data from smartphones, dashcams and other devices to analyze driver behavior, is that there’s been a reduction in phone use by Ohio drivers since the law went into effect, reducing the average time of distraction per hour from one minute and thirty-nine seconds to closer to 1:30, a 7.4% drop from March, before the law was passed.

It might not sound like much, but it has produced results: The Ohio State Highway Patrol says fatal and injury-related crashes in the state due to distracted driving have decreased by 19% in 2023.

And CMT’s study says the drop has prevented 3,200 crashes, eight fatalities and some $78 million in economic damage.

As Axios Cleveland reported, there have still been 700 distracted driving crashes in Cuyahoga County this year.

But enforcement is beefing up.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol has handed out more than 1,500 tickets and Axios pinned I-480 and I-271 as the home of the most citations issued in the county so far this year.

“This law will clearly save lives,” Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said at a press conference this spring.

“There’s absolutely no doubt about it. It will spare many families the grief and the sorrow that unfortunately many of our families have suffered in the last few years because of distracted driving.”

In its awareness campaign, the state also urged drivers to leave the phone aside even when the car isn’t moving.

“Looking at your cell phone while stopped at a light can potentially endanger your family, friends, and neighbors,” it goes on to state. “Drivers have a responsibility to watch for people crossing the street or other drivers and bicyclists who haven’t yet cleared the intersection.” – Vince Grzegorek

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

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CORPORATE ABUSE AND ENVIRONMENTAL HARM DOMINATE PROJECT CENSORED TOP 10 STORIES THIS YEAR The Pattern Signals A Deeper Truth: Our Economics And Our Species’ Survival Are Deeply At Odds

By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor “WE HAVE MADE THE planet inhospitable to human life.”

That’s what the lead researcher in Project Censored’s number one story this year said. He wasn’t talking about the climate catastrophe. He was talking about so-called “forever chemicals,” per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), linked to prostate, kidney and testicular cancer and additional health risks, and the study he led found unsafe levels in rainwater worldwide.

Even though this story received some corporate media attention — in USA Today and the Discovery Channel — the starkly shocking bottom line clearly didn’t come through to the general public. Have you heard it before? Has it been the subject of any conversation you’ve had? No? Well, that, my friend, is the very essence of what Project Censored’s signature “top ten” list is all about exposing the suppression (active or passive) of vitally important information from the public, which renders the public unable to act in the way that a healthy democratic public is supposed to. They’ve been doing it since Carl Jensen began it with a single college class in 1976, inspired in part by the way the Watergate story got this same sort of treatment until well after the election cycle it was part of.

But there’s a second story intertwined with the “forever chemicals” pervasive presence: the revelation that companies responsible for them have known about their dangers for decades, but kept those dangers hidden — just like fossil fuel companies and climate catastrophe. The intersection of environmental/public health and corporate criminality is typical of how certain long-

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standing patterns of censored news weave together across the years, even decades, and how the spotlight Project Censored shines on them helps to make sense of much more than the individual stories it highlights, as vitally important as they are in themselves.

In previous years, I’ve highlighted the multiplicity of patterns of censorship that can be seen. In their introduction to the larger 25-story list in their annual book, The State of the Free Press, Andy Lee Roth and Steve Macek describe these patterns at two levels.

First, invoking the metaphor that “exemplary reporting is praised for ‘shining light’ on a subject or ‘bringing to light’ crucial facts and original perspectives,” they say: The news reports featured in this chapter are rays of light shining through a heavily slatted window.

Each of these independent news reports highlights a social issue that has otherwise been dimly lit or altogether obscured by corporate news outlets. The shading slats are built from the corporate media’s concentrated ownership, reliance on advertising, relationship to political power, and narrow definitions of who and what count as “newsworthy.” Censorship, whether overt or subtle, establishes the angle of the slats, admitting more or less light from outside.

But in addition, they say, it’s important to see the “list as the latest installment in an ongoing effort to identify systemic gaps in so-called ‘mainstream’ (i.e., corporate) news coverage.” They go on to say, “Examining public issues that independent journalists and outlets have reported but which fall outside the scope of corporate news coverage makes

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Anson Stevens-Bollen

it possible to document in specific detail how corporate news media leave the public in the dark by marginalizing or blockading crucial issues, limiting political debate, and promoting corporate views and interests.”

On the one hand, all that is as true as it’s ever been. But on the other hand, the two-story themes in the number one story — environmental harm and corporate abuse — so dominate the top ten story list that they send another message as well, a message about the fundamental mismatch between our needs as a species living on a finite planet and a rapacious economic system conceived in ignorance of that fact. The climate catastrophe is just the most extreme symptom of this mismatch — but it’s far from the only one. Corporate abuse figures into every story in the list — though sometimes deep in the background, as with their decadeslong efforts to destroy unions in story number six. Environmental harms ‘only’ show up in seven of the 10 stories.

There are still other patterns here, to be sure — and I encourage you to look for them yourself because seeing those patterns enriches your understanding of the world as it is, and as it’s being hidden from you. But this dominant pattern touches us all. The evidence is right there, in the stories themselves.

1. “Forever Chemicals” in Rainwater a Global Threat to Human Health Rainwater is “no longer safe to drink anywhere on Earth,” Morgan McFall-Johnsen reported in Insider in August 2022, summing up the results of a global study of so-called “forever chemicals,” polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. Researchers from Stockholm University and the Institute of Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics at ETH Zurich concluded that “in many areas inhabited by humans,” PFAS contamination levels in rainwater, surface water and soil “often greatly exceed” the strictest international guidelines for acceptable levels of perfluoroalkyl acids.

They’re called “forever chemicals” because they take so long to break down, “allowing them to build up in people, animals, and environments,” Insider reported. Project Censored notes, “Prior research has linked these chemicals to prostate, kidney, and testicular cancer and additional health risks, including developmental delays in children, decreased fertility in women and men, reduced vaccine efficacy, and high cholesterol.”

“PFAS were now ‘so persistent’ and ubiquitous that they will never disappear from the planet,” Lead researcher Ian Cousins told Agence

France-Presse. “We have made the planet inhospitable to human life by irreversibly contaminating it now so that nothing is clean anymore. And to the point that it’s not clean enough to be safe,” he said, adding that “We have crossed a planetary boundary,” a paradigm for evaluating Earth’s capacity to absorb harmful impacts of human activity.

The “good news” is that PFAS levels aren’t increasing in the environment. “What’s changed is the guidelines,” he said. “They’ve gone down millions of times since the early 2000s, because we’ve learned more about the toxicity of these substances.”

All the more reason the second strand of this story is important: “The same month,” Project Censored writes, “researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, published a study in the Annals of Global Health using internal industry documents to show that the companies responsible for ‘forever chemicals’ have known for decades that these substances pose significant threats to human health and the environment.”

There’s been limited corporate media coverage that rainwater isn’t safe to drink — specifically from USA Today, the Discovery Channel and Medical News Today.

But the general public clearly hasn’t heard the news. However, there’s been more coverage of the series of lawsuits developing in response to PFAS. But the big-picture story surrounding them remains shockingly missing.

Anson Stevens-Bollen

2. Hiring of Former CIA Employees and Ex-Israeli Agents “Blurs Line” Between Big Tech and Big Brother

“Google – one of the largest and most influential organizations in the modern world – is filled with ex-CIA agents,” Alan MacLeod reported for MintPress News in July 2022. “An inordinate number of these recruits work in highly politically sensitive fields, wielding considerable control over how its products work and what the world sees on its screens and in its search results.”

“Chief amongst these is the trust and safety department, whose staff, in the words of the Google trust and safety vice president Kristie Canegallo, ‘[d]ecide what content is allowed on our platform’ – in other words, setting the rules of the internet, determining what billions see and what they do not see.”

And more broadly, “a former CIA employee is working in almost every department at Google,” Project Censored noted.

But Google isn’t alone. Nor is the CIA. “Former employees of US and Israeli intelligence agencies now hold senior positions at Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other tech giants,” Project Censored wrote. A second report focused on employees from Israel’s Unit 8200, its equivalent of the CIA, which is “infamous for surveilling the indigenous Palestinian population,” MacLeod wrote. Using LinkedIn, he identified hundreds of such individuals from both agencies, providing specific information about dozens of them.

“The problem with former CIA agents becoming the arbiters of what is true and what is false and what should be promoted and what should be deleted is that they cut their teeth at a notorious organization whose job it was to inject lies and false information into the public discourse to further the goals of the national security state,” MacLeod wrote, citing the 1983 testimony of former CIA task force head John Stockwell, author of In Search of Enemies, in which he described the dissemination of propaganda as a “major function” of the agency.

“I had propagandists all over the world,” Stockwell wrote, adding: We pumped dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities, Cuban rapists [to the media]… We ran [faked] photographs that made almost every newspaper in the country … We didn’t know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans. It was pure, raw, false propaganda to create an illusion of communists eating babies for breakfast.”

“None of this means that all or even any of the individuals are

moles – or even anything but model employees today,” MacLeod noted later. But the sheer number of them “certainly causes concern.”

Reinforcing that concern is big tech’s history.

“As journalist Nafeez Ahmed’s investigation found, the CIA and the NSA were bankrolling Stanford Ph.D. student Sergey Brin’s research – work that would later produce Google,” MacLeod wrote. “Not only that but, in Ahmed’s words, ‘senior U.S. intelligence representatives, including a CIA official, oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.’”

This fits neatly within the larger framework of Silicon Valley’s origin as a supplier of defense department technology.

“A May 2022 review found no major newspaper coverage of Big Tech companies hiring former US or Israeli intelligence officers as employees,” Project Censored noted. “The most prominent US newspapers have not covered Google, Meta, Microsoft, and other Big Tech companies hiring former US and Israeli intelligence officers.”

Individual cases may make the news. But the overall systemic pattern remains a story censored by mainstream silence.

3. Toxic Chemicals Continue to Go Unregulated in the United States The United States is “a global laggard in chemical regulation,” ProPublica reported in December 2022, a result of chemical industry influence and acquiescence by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over a period of decades, according to reporters Neil Bedi, Sharon Lerner and Kathleen McGrory. A headline example: asbestos, one of the most widelyrecognized toxic substances, is still legal in the US, more than 30 years after the EPA tried to have it banned.

“Through interviews with environmental experts and analysis of a half century’s worth of legislation, lawsuits, EPA documents, oral histories,

chemical databases, and regulatory records, ProPublica uncovered the longstanding institutional failure to protect Americans from toxic chemicals,” Project Censored reported. ProPublica identified five main reasons for failure: 1. The Chemical Industry Helped Write the 1976

Anson Stevens-Bollen

Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). A top EPA official “joked the law was ‘written by industry’ and should have been named after the DuPont executive who went over the text line by line,” ProPublica reported. The law “allowed more than 60,000 chemicals to stay on the market without a review of their health risks” and required the EPA to always choose the “least burdensome” regulations. “These two words would doom American chemical regulation for decades.”

2. Following Early Failures, the EPA Lost Its Resolve. In 1989, after 10 years of work, the EPA was banning asbestos. But companies that used asbestos sued and won in 1991, based on a court ruling they’d failed to prove it was the “least burdensome” option. However, “the judge did provide a road map for future bans, which would require the agency to do an analysis of other regulatory options … to prove they wouldn’t be adequate,” but rather than follow through, the EPA simply gave up.

3. Chemicals Are Considered Innocent Until Proven Guilty. For decades, the U.S. and EU used a “risk-based” approach to regulation, requiring the government to prove a chemical poses unreasonable health risks before restricting it — which can take years. In 2007, the EU switched to a “hazard-based” approach, putting the burden on companies when there’s evidence of significant harm. As a result, ProPublica explained, “the EU has successfully banned or restricted more than a thousand chemicals.”

A similar approach was proposed in the U.S in 2005 by New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, but it was

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soundly defeated.

4. The EPA Mostly Regulates Chemicals One by One. In 2016, a new law amended the TSCA to cut the “least burdensome” language, and created a schedule “where a small list of highpriority chemicals would be reviewed every few years; in 2016, the first 10 were

selected, including asbestos,” ProPublica reported.

“The EPA would then have about three years to assess the chemicals and another two years to finalize regulations on them.” But six years later, “the agency is behind on all such rules. So far, it has only proposed one ban, on asbestos, and the agency told ProPublica it would still be almost a year before that is finalized.” Industry fights the process at every step. “Meanwhile, the EU has authored a new plan to regulate chemicals even faster by targeting large groups of dangerous substances,” which “would lead to bans of another 5,000 chemicals by 2030.”

5. The EPA Employs IndustryFriendly Scientists as Regulators.

“The EPA has a long history of hiring scientists and top officials from the companies they are supposed to regulate, allowing industry to sway the agency’s science from the inside,” ProPublica wrote. A prime example is Todd Stedeford. “A lawyer and toxicologist, Stedeford has been hired by the EPA on three separate occasions,” ProPublica noted.

“During his two most recent periods of employment at the agency — from 2011 to 2017 and from 2019 to 2021 — he was hired by corporate employers who use or manufacture chemicals the EPA regulates.”

“A handful of corporate outlets have reported on the EPA’s slowness to regulate certain toxic chemicals,” Project Censored noted, citing

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stories in the Washington Post and the New York Times. “However, none have highlighted the systemic failures wrought by the EPA and the chemical industry.”

Anson Stevens-Bollen

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Stalkerware Could Be Used to Incriminate People Violating Abortion Bans Stalkerware — consisting of up to 200 surveillance apps and services that provide secret access to people’s phones for a monthly fee — “could become a significant legal threat to people seeking abortions, according to a pair of articles published in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the constitutional right to abortion,” Project Censored reports.

“Abortion medication is safe.

But now that Roe is overturned, your data isn’t,” Rae Hodge wrote for the tech news site CNET just two days after the Dobbs decision.

“Already, the digital trails of abortion seekers can become criminal evidence against them in some states where abortion[s] were previously prosecuted. And the legal dangers may extend to abortion seekers in even more states.” The next month, writing for Slate, University of Virginia law professor Danielle Keats Citron warned that “surveillance accomplished by individual privacy invaders will be a gold mine for prosecutors targeting both medical workers and pregnant people seeking abortions.”

Invaders only need a few minutes to access phones and passwords.

“Once installed, cyberstalking apps silently record and upload phones’ activities to their servers,” Citron explained. “They enable privacy invaders to see our photos, videos, texts, calls, voice mails, searches, social media activities,

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locations — nothing is out of reach.

From anywhere, individuals can activate a phone’s mic to listen to conversations within 15 feet of the phone,” even “conversations that pregnant people have with their health care providers — nurses, doctors, and insurance company employees,” she warned. As a result, Hodge cautioned, “Those who aid abortion seekers could be charged as accomplices in some cases,” under some state laws.

It’s not just abortion, she explained, “Your phone’s data, your social media accounts, your browsing and geolocation history, and your ISP’s detailed records of your internet activity may all be used as evidence if you face state criminal or civil charges for a miscarriage.”

“Often marketed as a tool to monitor children’s online safety or as device trackers, stalkerware is technically illegal to sell for the purpose of monitoring adults,” Project Censored noted, but that’s hardly a deterrent. “Stalkerware and other forms of electronic surveillance have been closely associated with domestic violence and sexual assault, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence,” Citron noted.

In addition, Hodge explained, “third-party data brokers sell sensitive geolocation data — culled through a vast web of personal tracking tech found in apps, browsers, and devices — to law enforcement without oversight.” And “abortion bounty hunter” provisions adopted by states like Texas and Oklahoma, add a financial incentive.

“Given the inexpensive cost of readily available stores of personal data and how easily they can be de-anonymized, savvy informants could use the information to identify abortion seekers and turn a profit,” she noted.

“The law’s response to intimate privacy violations is inadequate, lacking a clear conception of what intimate privacy is, why its violation is wrongful, and how it inflicts serious harm upon individuals, groups, and society,” Citron explained. “Until federal regulations and legislation establish a set of digital privacy laws, abortion seekers are caught in the position of having to create their own patchwork of digital defenses, from often complicated and expensive privacy tools,” Hodge warned. While the bipartisan American Data Privacy and Protection Act is still

“slowly inching through Congress” it “is widely thought toothless,” she wrote.

The Joe Biden administration has proposed a new rule protecting “certain health data from being used to prosecute both clinicians and patients,” STAT reported in May 2023, but the current draft only applies “in states where abortion is legal.”

“Corporate news outlets have paid some attention to the use of digital data in abortion-related prosecutions,” Project Censored reports. While there have been stories about post-Roe digital privacy, “none have focused specifically on how stalkerware could potentially be used in criminal investigations of suspected abortions.”

5. Certified Rainforest Carbon Offsets Mostly “Worthless” “The forest carbon offsets approved by the world’s leading certifier and used by Disney, Shell, Gucci, and other big corporations are largely worthless and could make global heating worse, according to a new investigation,” the Guardian reported on Jan. 23, as part of joint nine month reporting project with SourceMaterial, and Die Zeit. “The analysis raises questions over the credits bought by a number of internationally renowned companies — some of them have labeled their products ‘carbon neutral’, or have told their consumers they can fly, buy new clothes or eat certain foods without making the climate crisis worse.”

“About 90 percent of rainforest carbon offsets certified by Verra, the world’s largest offset certifier, do not reflect real reductions in emissions,” Project Censored summed up. Verra, “has issued more than one billion metric tons worth of carbon offsets, certifies three-fourths of all voluntary carbon offsets.”

While “Verra claimed to have certified 94.9 million credits” the actual benefits “amounted to a much more modest 5.5 million credits.”

This was based

on an analysis of “the only three scientific studies to use robust, scientifically sound methods to assess the impact of carbon offsets on deforestation,” Project Censored explained. “The journalists also consulted with indigenous communities, industry insiders, and scientists.”

“The studies used different methods and time periods, looked at different ranges of projects, and the researchers said no modeling approach is ever perfect,” the Guardian wrote. “However, the data showed broad agreement on the lack of effectiveness of the projects compared with the Verra-approved predictions.”

Specifically, “The investigation of twenty-nine Verra rainforest offset projects found that twenty-one had no climate benefit, seven had significantly less climate benefit than claimed (by margins of 52 to 98 percent less benefit than claimed), while one project yielded 80 percent more climate benefit than claimed. Overall, the study concluded that 94 percent of the credits approved by these projects were ‘worthless’ and never should have been approved.”

“Another study conducted by a team of scientists at the University of Cambridge found that in thirtytwo of the forty forest offset projects investigated, the claims concerning forest protection and emission reductions were overstated by an average of 400 percent,” Project Censored reported. “Despite claims that these thirty-two projects together protected an area of rainforest the size of Italy, they only protected an area the size of Venice.”

While Verra criticized the studies’ methods and conclusions, an outside expert, Oxford ecoscience professor Yadvinder Singh Malhi, had two PhD students check for errors, and they found none. “I wish it were otherwise, but this report is pretty compelling,” he told the Guardian.

“Rainforest protection credits are the most common type on the market at the

moment. And it’s exploding, so these findings really matter,” said Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, who’s researched carbon credits for 20 years. “But these problems are not just limited to this credit type. These problems exist with nearly every kind of credit,” she told the Guardian. “We need an alternative process. The offset market is broken.”

“There is simply nobody in the market who has a genuine interest to say when something goes wrong,” Lambert Schneider, a researcher at the Öko-Institut in Berlin told SourceMaterial.

“The investigations by the Guardian, Die Zeit, and SourceMaterial appear to have made a difference. In March 2023, Verra announced that it would phase out its flawed rainforest offset program by mid-2025,” Project Censored reported. But they could only find one brief mention of the joint investigation in major U.S. newspapers, a Chicago Tribune op-ed.

6. Unions Won More Than 70 Percent of Their Elections in 2022, and Their Victories Are Being Driven by Workers of Color Unions won more than 70 percent of their certification elections in 2022, according to reporting by NPR and The Conversation, and workers of color were responsible for 100% of union growth, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute reported by Payday Report and the New Republic. 2,510 petitions for union representation were filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in fiscal year 2022 (Oct. 1, 2021-Sept. 30, 2022), up 53 % from FY 2021. 1,249 certification elections were held, with 72% voting to certify a union as their collective bargaining agent.

“The entire increase in unionization in 2022 was among workers of color — workers of color saw an increase of 231,000, while white workers saw a decrease of 31,000,” EPI wrote in a Feb. 2023 press release.

EPI also noted that “Survey data show that nearly half of nonunion workers (48%) would vote to unionize their workplace if they could. That means that more than 60 million workers wanted to join a union, but couldn’t.

Anson Stevens-Bollen

The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act and the Public Service Freedom to Negotiate Act Anson StevensBollen

provide crucial reforms that would strengthen workers’ rights to form a union and engage in collective bargaining.” It passed the House in 2020 and 2021 but died in the Senate, where it needed 60 votes to pass because of the filibuster.

“Seventy-one percent of Americans now support unions according to Gallup — a level of support not seen since 1965,” Project Censored noted.

“Dismantling existing barriers to union organizing and collective bargaining is crucial to generating a more prosperous, equitable economy,” EPI concluded.

More than a quarter of 2022 union elections, 354, were held at Starbucks, Marick Masters explained in his January 2023 article for The Conversation.

“Workers at Starbucks prevailed in four out of every five elections.

Workers at Chipotle, Trader Joe’s, and Apple unionized for the first time, while workers at Microsoft and Wells Fargo also had wins,” Project Censored reported.

Union activity spikes during times of social unrest, Masters reported. Unionization rose from 7.6 to 19.2% from 1934 to 1939, during the Great Depression, and from 20 to 27% between 1941 and 1945, during World War II. “Masters described the current wave of union activity as driven by record levels of economic inequality and continued mobilization of workers in ‘essential industries,’ such as healthcare, food, and public safety, who were thrust into harm’s way during the global pandemic,” Project Censored noted.

“Whereas Republican and Democratic politicians often separate concerns over working conditions and pay from issues of

identity, these data demonstrate how identity and workers’ rights are closely connected,” Project Censored added. “Unionization and labor struggles are direct mechanisms to better accomplish racial and social equality; the ability for people to afford to live happy and dignified lives is inherently tied to their ability to enjoy fundamental social and civil rights within those lives, too,” Prem Thakker noted at the New Republic.

Despite these gains, “the power of organized labor is nowhere close to what it once was,” Project Censored wrote. “As Masters pointed out, more than a third of workers were unionized in the 1950s, whereas only a tenth were in 2021. Before the 1980s, there were typically more than five thousand union elections in any given year, and as recently as 1980, there were two hundred major work stoppages [over 1,000 workers],” compared to just 20 in 2022, which was still 25% above the average over the past 16 years.

“Corporate media coverage of the labor resurgence of 2022 was highly selective and, in some ways, misleading,” Project Censored reported. There’ve been hundreds of articles on union organizing at Starbucks and Amazon and among graduate students, and “Yahoo republished Masters’s The Conversation article about union success in elections, and Vox, Bloomberg Law, and the Washington Post all remarked on organized labor’s recent string of certification vote victories,” they noted. “Yet corporate coverage of current labor organizing often fails to address the outsized role played by workers of color in union growth.” Nor has it placed recent union successes in the historical context of prolonged decline, largely due to private employers’ heavy-handed efforts to undermine organizing campaigns and labor laws that strongly favor employers.

7. Fossil Fuel Investors Sue Governments to Block Climate Regulations “Litigation terrorism.” That’s what Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz called the practice of fossil fuel companies and investors suing governments in secretive private tribunals to thwart climate change policies.

Litigants claim climate change laws undermine their profits, and thus they must be compensated

December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

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under what’s known as “investorstate dispute settlement” [ISDS] legal actions, Rishika Pardikar reported for The Lever in June 2022, following a paper in Science by lead author Kyla Tienhaara the month before. It found that “Global action on climate change could generate upward of $340 billion in legal claims from oil and gas investors,” which, “is more than the total level of public climate finance globally in 2020 ($321 billion).”

A good portion threatens the global south. “The five countries with the greatest potential losses from ISDS are Mozambique ($7–31 billion), Guyana ($5–21 billion), Venezuela ($3–21 billion), Russia ($2–16 billion), and the United Kingdom ($3–14 billion),” Tienhaara reported. What’s more, “If countries decide to also cancel oil and gas projects that are currently under development, this could introduce substantial additional financial losses from ISDS claims.”

“Such [litigation] moves could have a chilling effect on countries’ ability to take climate action because of the fear and uncertainty they cause,” Pardikar noted. “New Zealand, for example, recently said that it could not join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international consortium of governments working to phase out fossil fuels, because doing so ‘would have run afoul of investor-state settlements,’” Lois Parshley reported for Grist in January 2023.

Project Censored also cited Lea Di Salvatore’s December 2021 report that fossil fuel “investors succeeded in 72% of all cases,” winning an average over $600 million, “almost five times the amount awarded in non-fossil fuel cases.”

In addition, secrecy is the rule.

“54% of the concluded fossil fuel cases are confidential — while their existence is known, no case-related documents, such as awards or decisions, have been made public.”

Although the tribunals may sound like courts, they aren’t.

“Because ISDS systems are written into thousands of different treaties, each with different wording, there’s also no system of precedence,” Parshley wrote, after noting the practice of ‘double batting,’ in which one individual may act as arbitrator, legal counsel, expert witness, and tribunal secretary, either sequentially or even concurrently.

Most come from “an elite group of approximately 50 arbitrators who are regularly appointed” to most cases, researcher Silvia Steininger told Pardikar. Conflicts of interest “are viewed as commonplace in

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international investment arbitration and considered an inherent part of the system,” the Law Review article Parshley references said. What’s more, “Just because arbitrators decide something in one case doesn’t mean that logic has to be applied to another. Proceedings can be kept confidential, and there is no way to appeal a tribunal’s decision,” Parshley noted.

Tienhaara’s paper ended with a section “An Abolitionist Approach,” where she warned, “Reformist approaches would be timeconsuming and likely ineffectual, based on the experience of previous efforts.” Abolitionist examples include “Terminating all bilateral investment treaties” in order to “prevent existing leaseholders from accessing ISDS,” as South Africa and others have done “without any resulting reductions in foreign investment.” Negotiating the “removal of ISDS clauses from trade agreements, as the United States did with Canada in the US-MexicoCanada Agreement,” is also possible.

“Another option is for states to withdraw consent to ISDS in cases involving fossil fuel investments, emulating the approach taken by Singapore and others to remove the threat of ISDS claims from the tobacco industry.”

But abolitionists face two problems: “sunset clauses” that extend treaty protections “for 10 to 20 years for investments commenced prior to termination,” though they can be nullified, and resistance “from states with powerful fossil fuel lobbies.”

Parshley noted that the Energy Charter Treaty, “ratified by over 50 primarily European countries,” is the largest international agreement protecting fossil fuel companies.

After six countries announced their withdrawal and a modification effort failed, “the European Parliament called for a coordinated European Union departure from the treaty altogether,” but they still face sunset clause threats.

While the Independent also reported on ISDS lawsuits “it only briefly touched on the concern that these lawsuits could prevent climate action,” Project Censored noted.

“Beyond this handful of reports, the topic has received little coverage from major news outlets.”

8. Proximity to Oil and Gas Extraction Sites Linked to Maternal Health Risks and Childhood Leukemia “Two epidemiological studies,

| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

from 2021 and 2022, provide new evidence that living near oil and gas extraction sites is hazardous to human health,” Project Censored reports, “especially for pregnant mothers and children, as reported

by Nick Cunningham for DeSmog and Tom Perkins for the Guardian.”

Based on 1996–2009 data for more than 2.8 million pregnant women in Texas, researchers from Oregon State University (OSU) found that “for those pregnant women within one kilometer of drilling there’s about a 5 percent increase in odds of gestational hypertension, and 26 percent increase odds of eclampsia,” researcher Mary Willis told DeSmog. “So, it’s this really close range where we are seeing a potential impact right on women’s health.” Eclampsia is a rare but serious condition where high blood pressure results in seizures during pregnancy.

“Notably, the data in the OSU study predate the widespread development of ‘fracking,’ or hydraulic fracturing, the process of extracting gas and oil from shale beds by injecting fluids at high pressure,” Project Censored pointed out, going to note “previous coverage by Project Censored, including Rayne Madison et al., “Fracking Our Food Supply,” story #18, and Lyndsey Casey and Peter Phillips, “Pennsylvania Law Gags Doctors to Protect Big Oil’s ‘Proprietary Secrets,’” story #22, from 2012-2013; and Carolina de Mello et al., “Oil Industry Illegally Dumps Fracking Wastewater,” story #2 from 2014-2015.”

The second study, from Yale, did study fracking. It found that “Young children living near fracking wells at birth [less than two kilometers (approximately 1.2 miles)] are up to three times more likely to later develop leukemia,” according to an August 2022 Guardian story.

“Hundreds of chemicals linked to cancer and other health issues may be used in the [fracking] process, including heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds, benzene and radioactive material,” they explained. The study, based on 2009-2017 data from Pennsylvania, compared 405 children aged 2–7 diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia with an additional 2,080 children, matched on birth year, who didn’t have leukemia.

The findings aligned with others, as DeSmog discussed.

“One consistent takeaway from so many health studies related to fracking is that proximity is key,” they reported. “The allowable

setback in Pennsylvania, where our study was conducted, is 500 feet,” Yale researcher Cassandra Clark told them. “Our findings … in conjunction with evidence from numerous other studies, suggest that existing setback distances are insufficiently protective of children’s health.”

State and local governments have tried to create health buffer zones, but “The oil industry has consistently fought hard to block setback distance requirements,” DeSmog reported. For example, “In 2018, the oil industry spent upwards of $40 million to defeat a Colorado ballot measure that would have imposed 2,500-foot setback requirements for drillers.”

Regulations are so weak that “In Texas, drilling sites can be as close as 45 meters from residences,” Willis told them.

“Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced new proposed rules that would require 3,200-foot setbacks on new oil and gas drilling, which would be the strongest in the nation and aligns with the distance where Willis’s studies find the most serious risks for pregnancies,” DeSmog reported.

“But those rules would not affect existing wells.”

No major U.S. newspapers appear to have covered either the OSU or the Yale study at the time of Project Censored’s publication, although “Smithsonian magazine, The Hill, and WHYY, an NPR affiliate serving the Philadelphia region, covered the fracking study.”

9. Deadly Decade for Environmental Activists At least 1,733 environmental activists were murdered between 2012 and 2021 — nearly one every two days across ten years — according to the Global Witness study, Decade of Defiance, “killed by hitmen, organized crime groups and their own governments,” Patrick Greenfield reported for the Guardian, “with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras the deadliest countries,” with half the attacks taking place in the first three countries, each reporting around 300 killings.

“This has been going on for decades,” scientist, activist, and author Vandana Shiva wrote in a foreword to the report.

“The report shows Brazil has been the deadliest country for environmental defenders with 342 lethal attacks reported since 2012 with over 85% of killings

Anson Stevens-Bollen

within the Brazilian Amazon,” Stuti Mishra reported for the Independent. “Mexico and Honduras witnessed over 100 killings while Guatemala and India saw 80 and 79 respectively, remaining one of the most dangerous countries. The report also reports 12 mass killings, including three in India and four in Mexico.”

“The killing of environmental activists has been concentrated in the Global South,” and “Indigenous land defenders are disproportionately impacted,” Project Censored warned. “ The Guardian reported that 39% of those killed were from Indigenous communities, despite that group constituting only 5% of the global population.”

“This is about land inequality, in that defenders are fighting for their land, and in this increasing race to get more land to acquire and exploit resources, the victims are indigenous communities, local communities, whose voices are being suppressed,” the BBC summed up.

“Threats to environmental activists are not limited to killing,” Project Censored noted.

“Environmental activists also face beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention, strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) brought by companies, sexual violence, and surveillance.

A separate April 2022 report from the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, as reported by Grist, documented more than 3,800 attacks on human rights defenders — including not only killings and death threats but also beatings, arbitrary arrests and detention, and lawsuits — between January 2015 and March 2021.”

But, “campaigners are hopeful that progress is being made,” the BBC reported, citing the sentencing of a former energy executive to 22

years in prison in Honduras for the murder of world-renowned activist Berta Cáceres in 2016, as well as promising international agreements.

The Escazú agreement, the first environmental and human rights treaty for Latin America and the Caribbean “commits countries to prevent and investigate attacks on environmental defenders,” and went into force in 2021. Mexico has ratified it, but “others including Brazil and Colombia have not” so far, the BBC said. There are also plans by the European Union to pass laws making companies responsible for human rights abuses in their supply chains.

“These are game-changing decisions that could make a real positive impact for environmental defenders,” Shruti Suresh told the BBC. “We should be optimistic.

But it is going to be a difficult and challenging road ahead.”

There’s been scattered coverage of Global Witness’ report. A September 2022 New York Times article reporting how Mexico was deemed the deadliest country for environmental activists, a short piece the next month in the New York Times’s climate newsletter “Climate Forward’’ about why Latin America is so dangerous for environmental activists, and Feb. 26, 2023, a Los Angeles Times op-ed about attacks on Mexican Indigenous communities fighting climate change all referenced Global Witness’ findings, but “Otherwise, the corporate media have largely ignored the Global Witness study about the deadly wave of assaults on environmentalists during the past decade,” Project Censored noted, adding that it had previously covered the 2014 edition of Global Witness’s report “which was also significantly under-reported by establishment news outlets in the United States.”

10. Corporate Profits Hit Record High as Top 0.1% Earnings and Wall Street Bonuses Skyrocket “Corporate profits in the U.S. surged to an all-time record of $2 trillion in the second quarter of 2022 as companies continued jacking up prices, pushing inflation to a 40-year high to the detriment of workers and consumers,” Jake Johnson reported for Common Dreams in August 2022.

“Astronomical corporate profits confirm what corporate executives have been telling us on earning calls over and over again: They’re making a lot of money by charging people more, and they don’t plan on bringing prices down anytime soon,” the Groundwork Collaborative’s chief economist, Rakeen Mabud, said.

This followed Johnson’s reporting in March that the average bonus for Wall Street employees rose an astounding 1,743 percent between 1985 and 2021, according to an analysis by Inequality.org of New York State Comptroller data. Then, in December 2022, he reported that “earnings inequality in the United States has risen dramatically over the past four decades and continues to accelerate, with the top 0.1% seeing wage growth of 465% between 1979 and 2021 while the bottom 90% experienced just 29% growth during that same period,” according to research by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

As a result, the average incomes of the top 0.1% rose from 20 times that of the bottom 90% in 1979 to more than 90 times as much in 2021.

“The fossil fuel industry has enjoyed especially lavish profits,” Project Censored notes, citing Jessica Corbett’s July 2022 reporting for Common Dreams that the eight largest oil companies’ profits spiked a whopping 235 percent from the second quarter of 2021 to the second quarter of

2022, for a combined $52 billion profit, according to an analysis

by Accountable.US. “Make no mistake; these profits mark a large transfer of wealth from workingand middle-class people to wealthy oil executives and shareholders,” Jordan Schreiber of Accountable.US told Corbett.”While many consumers were feeling the heavy burden of a life necessity suddenly doubling in price, oil executives were keeping prices high to maximize their profits.”

“ExxonMobil profited $17.85 billion; Chevron, $11.62 billion; and Shell, $11.47 billion,” Project Censored notes. “Notably, in 20212022, the oil and gas industry spent more than $200 million lobbying Congress to oppose climate action.”

Coverage of all this was scant.

“The establishment media have reported intermittently on record corporate profits, but this coverage has tended to downplay corporate use of inflation as a pretext for hiking prices,” Project Censored sums up, citing examples from Bloomberg, ABC News and New York Times where the role of greedflation was debated. ” The Times quoted experts from EPI and Groundwork Collaborative but refused to draw any firm conclusions,” they note.

In addition, “The EPI study on the accelerating incomes of the ultrarich was virtually ignored” while the massive Wall Street bonuses got some coverage, they report: “Reuters ran a story on it, as did the New York Post. CNN Business noted that ‘high bonuses are also good news for Gotham’s tax coffers.’” ©Random Lengths News 2023, run with attribution

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

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GET OUT WED

Everything to do in Cleveland for the next two weeks 12/20

Cavaliers vs. Utah Jazz The Cavaliers go up against former teammates Lauri Markkanen and Colin Sexton tonight as the Utah Jazz, one of the weaker teams in the Western Conference, visit Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse at 7.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

Magic of Lights A drive-through holiday lights experience featuring holiday scenes and characters of the season using the latest LED technology and digital animations, Magic of Lights returns to the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds.

Hours are 5:30 through 10 p.m. daily through Dec. 31. Check the website for ticket prices.

19201 East Bagley Rd., Middleburg Heights, 440- 243-0090, magicoflights. com/events/northeastohio/.

Midnight Rental presents Secret Movie Night Hosted by Lenora from the internet hit-series Midnight Rental, this movie night features what it deems to be the best in VHS horror, thriller and campy classics. The event begins tonight at 8 at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights, and the club will feature a special movie night menu for the event.

2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5588, grogshop.gs.

THU

12/21

Jeff Arcuri This comedian who’s appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Comedy Central’s Roast Battle, Laughs! on Fox and SiriusXM performs regularly at the storied Comedy Cellar in New York. He brings his matter-offact humor to Hilarities at 7 and 9:45 tonight and tomorrow night.

2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

Cavaliers vs. New Orleans Pelicans Led by former Duke star Zion Williamson, the New Orleans Pelicans make their one and only regular season visit to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse for tonight’s game. Tip -off is at 7:30.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens was a hell of a writer, but he could be a tad verbose. So it’s

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convenient that there have been so many great stage and screen versions of his classic ghost story. One of them — required viewing for anyone with a Netflix membership — is the 1951 movie starring Alastair Sim as a Scrooge for all eternity. And the other is this Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival production, which never fails to engage and delight. Tonight’s performance takes place at 7:30 at the Mimi Ohio Theatre, where performances continue through Saturday.

1501 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

Cleveland Orchestra Holiday Concerts Brett Mitchell conducts this musical extravaganza that returns to the Mandel Concert Hall tonight at 7:30.

Expect to hear classical takes on Christmas classics. Performances continue through Saturday.

11001 Euclid Ave., 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com.

The Nutcracker Cleveland Ballet presents this famous ballet in two acts based on the original story by E.T.A. Hoffman. Tonight’s performance takes place at 7 at Connor Palace, where performances continue through Saturday.

1615 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

Think & Drink with the Extinct This special event at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History takes place tonight from 6 to 9, and it features a celebration of the longest night of the year. There will be live animal encounters, programs in the Nathan and Fannye Shafran Planetarium and meet-and-greets with museum curators and scientists. Limited warm and cold foods will be available for purchase in Origins Café. Beer and wine will be available for purchase, including a limited supply of Dunkelweizen from Fat Head’s Brewery.

1 Wade Oval Dr., 440-561-9356, cmnh. org.

FRI

12/22

Scuba Claus Merry Meet & Greets Scuba Claus Meet & Greets continue today at the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. The event includes full aquarium access, a seasonal I-Spy activity, an “I Saw Scuba Claus” sticker or pin, the unique opportunity to share “fish-mas” wishes with the jolly fellow and a digital photo of the experience.

| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

Scuba Claus returns to the Greater Cleveland Aquarium. See: Friday, Dec. 22.| Amber Patrick The event takes place from 5 to 7:30 tonight and from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. tomorrow.

2000 Sycamore Street, 216-862-8803, greaterclevelandaquarium.com.

based Jon Dixon and local heroes Abstract Horns. The event begins at 9 tonight at Crobar.

3244 St. Clair, 216-771-4727, crobar1921.com.

Bill Squire

SAT

Comedian Bill Squire, co-host of the local radio program The Alan Cox Show, regularly touches on his “life as a step parent, divorce, dating and leaving the Mormon church in his early 20s,” as it’s put in a press release. He headlines the Agora tonight at 7 in a show that will be recorded. Fellow Alan Cox Show co-host Mary Santora, who just announced she’s leaving town in 2024 to pursue her comedy career in the Big Apple, opens.

5000 Euclid Ave., 216-881-2221, agoracleveland.com.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra This year for its annual fall/winter tour, the progressive rock group TransSiberian Orchestra will revisit the Ghosts of Christmas Eve, a conceptual show that centers on a runaway who breaks into a vaudeville theater on Christmas Eve. The rock opera features tunes such as “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24,” “O’ Come All Ye Faithful,” “Good King Joy,” “Christmas Canon,” “Music Box Blues,” “Promises To Keep,” and “This Christmas Day.” Performances take place today at 3 and 7:30 p.m. at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

Welcome Home 024 Featuring Jon Dixon/ Smooth Talk/Abstract Horn The local DJ collective Smooth Talk celebrates the second anniversary of its Welcome Home series with Detroit-

12/23

Holiday Double Feature: A Very Silly Christmas Carol + The Improvised Hallmark Holiday Movie This special event at Imposters Theater features an improvised retelling of the classic Charles Dickens tale and a brand-new, never-before-seen Hallmark Holiday movie. It all goes down tonight at 7 at the Imposters Theater.

4828 Lorain Ave., 216-471-8073, imposterstheater.com.

A Magical Cirque Christmas Unaffiliated with the famed Cirque du Soleil, this special Christmas program promises to feature “worldclass entertainers” performing holiday classics. The show takes place today at 4 p.m. at the State Theatre.

1519 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

MON

12/25

Maltz Museum Christmas Day Can-Can! The Maltz Museum is open today from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and you can bring a canned good donation as museum admission. The Museum’s newest exhibition—The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from the Łódź Ghetto — is currently on display and so are ritual objects in the Temple-Tifereth Israel Gallery. The day also includes a chance to craft greeting cards to

welcome new refugee and immigrant families coming to Cleveland. Canned goods will be donated to the Kosher Food Bank and the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.

2929 Richmond Rd., Beachwood, 216593-0575, maltzmuseum.org.

TUE

12/26

Lyrical Rhythms Open Mic and Chill This long-running open mic night at the B Side in Cleveland Heights allows some of the city’s best rappers and poets to strut their stuff. The event begins at 8 with a comedy session dubbed 2 Drinks & a Joke with host Ant Morrow. The open mic performances begin at 10 p.m. Tickets cost $5 in advance, $10 at the door., $5.

2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-932-1966, bsideliquorlounge.com.

WED

12/27

Monsters vs. Toronto Marlies The Monsters take on the Toronto Marlies in this rare weekday game that takes place today at 7 p.m. at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

THU

Cavaliers vs. Milwaukee Bucks Led by a dominant center dubbed “The Freak,” the Milwaukee Bucks, one of the NBA’s best teams, come to Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse to take on the Cavs tonight at 7:30.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

SAT

12/30

Dave Hill A former Clevelander, musician, comedian and writer Dave Hill returns to his old stomping grounds for tonight’s show at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights that pairs him with local comedians Mike Polk and Bill Squire. The jokes commence at 7:30.

2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5588, grogshop.gs.

Legends of Basketball Showcase This event features college hoops games between Ohio University and Davidson, Akron and St. Bonaventure, and Ohio State University and West Virginia. The action begins at 1:30 p.m. at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, and the last of the three games commences at 7 p.m.

One Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

12/28 SUN

12/31

Browns vs. New York Jets

Steve Byrne

The New York Jets come to Browns Stadium tonight for a nationally televised Thursday night game that takes place at 8:15. The Jets got off to a rough start this season when star quarterback Aaron Rodgers suffered an injury. They somehow managed to beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 6, but that’s been the only real bright spot as the team has struggled to hit the .500 mark.

Alfred Lerner Way, 440-891-5000, clevelandbrowns.com.

Comedian Steve Byrne, the star and creator of the TBS sitcom Sullivan and Son, gets laughs by making fun of people based on the types of music they listen to; he also likes to have audience members join him on stage so he can create his own boy band. Byrne likes to make observational jokes about married life. Expect a lively, interactive show when he performs two special NYE shows tonight at 7:15 and 10:15 at Hilarities.

2035 East Fourth St., 216-241-7425, pickwickandfrolic.com.

FRI

12/29

Cocoa Brown If you’ve seen any of Progressive Insurance’s “Name Your Price” commercials, then you’ve seen comic Cocoa Brown. In the commercial, this vivacious comedian and actress plays the angered wife whose husband decides he wants to juggle chain saws.

Tyler Perry has even taken her on as a vital character in his TV shows and films. She performs tonight at 7:30 and 10 and tomorrow night at 6:30 and 9 at the Improv.

1148 Main Ave., 216-696-IMPROV, clevelandimprov.com.

MON

01/01

The Harlem Globetrotters The spectacular Harlem Globetrotters bring their unrivaled ball-handling wizardry, high-flying dunks and gutbusting comedy to the Covelli Centre at 2 this afternoon. This basketballentertainment bonanza is fun for the whole family.

229 East Front St., Youngstown, 330746-5600, covellicentre.com.

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

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| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

EAT FAMTABULOUS

At Pizza DiLauro and Retro Burger, quality and technique are producing something special

By Douglas Trattner BEHIND EVERY “OVERNIGHT sensation” is a couple like Adam and Tiffany DiLauro, who lie awake at night obsessing over the smallest of details. Since opening in 2021, Pizzeria DiLauro in Bainbridge has grown from a friendly neighborhood pizza shop to a multi-concept destination that has people lining up for a taste of whatever the DiLauros are selling.

“I live, eat, breathe and sleep our product,” says Adam. “Looking at pictures and processes of what we were doing when we first opened, we’ve come miles and miles.”

True to his word, the pizza that Adam and his team are making today is somehow better than it was three years ago when I first tried it. The round pies look like classic New York-style pizzas, but they eat like Neapolitan-style pies. They are thin, crisp, foldable and sparsely topped, but they have almost no chew to them. Instead they are light, tender and a joy to eat. Unlike most American pies, they are judiciously topped with cheese – more mottled than entombed.

DiLauro always made amazing Sicilian-style pies, rectangularcut pan pizzas with dark and crispy edges and a light, airy crumb. They’ve since added large, square Grandma pies, a low-rise version of the Sicilian that also flips the conventional cheese-sauce arrangement.

But don’t take my word for the pizza quality; stop by on any given weekend and see for yourself. The meticulous crew, working in an open kitchen, flies through 250 to 300 doughs on a typical Friday or Saturday night. Those doughs were started three or four days prior and are hand-tossed to order. Customers know that wait times for pies can climb to two hours, but callers are provided with dead accurate pickup times. Most families grab and go, but some scramble for a table in the small dining room.

Not long after they opened, the DiLauros busted into an adjacent space that had been home to Tiffany’s day spa. Soon, The Lounge was unveiled, a handsome 28-seat saloon where folks (21 and over) can knock back an Old Fashioned

Retro Burger.| Doug Trattner or Negroni while they wait for their pies. Many guests treat the Lounge as a full-service dining room, opting to order food and drink for onsite enjoyment. The wise ones come on Tuesdays, the only night that DiLauro offers chicken wings.

I’ve eaten my weight in wings and I am telling you that these are special. In a process with ties to Greenhouse Tavern, jumbo wings undergo a three-day prep that includes a 24-hour dry cure, long bath in buttermilk, dredging in rice flour and another day to dry. After a hot bath in the deep fryer, the wings are tossed in sauce. The method results in a crust that stays crispy for hours, but also meat that is fallapart tender, juicy and flavorful.

“Chicken wings are my favorite food in the world and I refuse to just drop raw wings in a fryer,” says Adam. “We can’t do this five days a week.”

Because folks like Adam and Tiffany are never content with the status quo, the couple didn’t hesitate to acquire the space on the other side of the pizzeria when it too

RETRO BURGER 17800 CHILLICOTHE RD became available. The location was ideal for a new concept they were developing because it could share the kitchen and staff of the pizzeria while also taking advantage of the baked-in crowds. After weeks of testing, the DiLauros unveiled Retro Burger in November, a quick-serve burger and fries restaurant. No surprise, they strived for excellence and succeeded.

“We tasted beef from all over the country and as soon as we tasted this beef, we said stop the samples, we found our beef,” Adam says of Bonner Farms in Garrettsville. “The beef lends itself so well to being smashed and cooked to well-done while staying juicy. It was a nobrainer.”

Simplicity and technique are the watchwords here, with lacey, crispedged patties capped with American cheese and loaded into soft potato

rolls with a choice of shredded iceberg, tomato, pickles, raw onion and special sauce. Singles, doubles and triples are available. All-beef hot dogs from Cleveland’s Five Star Meats are also available, as are crisp, thin fries, soft-serve custard and milkshakes.

Naturally, the DiLauros are thinking three steps ahead.

“I always said that I would never open another pizzeria because dough is such a hard thing to manage,” Adam explains. “With Retro, we wanted to create something that was simple and duplicatable. We’re really excited about this concept. This is something we can pop up five or six of them.”

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

17

EAT BITES

Salted Dough Bistro opening in Little Italy this week

By Douglas Trattner CAMPUS POLLYEYES CLOSED its Little Italy location after just four months, and almost immediately Jeff Fisher signed a lease to take over the space. Next Thursday, December 21, the former Touch Supper Club chef will open a spinoff of his popular Broadview Heights eatery Salted Dough (9174 Broadview Rd.), which he opened in 2019.

Fisher says that he’s been approached numerous times to expand, but no opportunity was as appealing as this one. The turn-key restaurant (12308 Mayfield Rd.), located in the newly constructed La Collina mixed-use property, is a perfect fit for the chef’s concept.

Called Salted Dough Bistro, the restaurant will offer more of a finedining experience than the original down south, with a broader focus on hand-made pastas, seafood and meat dishes. Fisher will still be making his quality pizzas, but he hopes they take a back seat to dishes like sweet pea gnocchi, pappardelle Bolognese, braised short rib, and pan-seared filet.

“I tried to really dig into the pastas,” Fisher says. “We kind of want to make a statement with our regional Italian pastas – nothing fancy, just true flavors.”

To start, the menu offers items like ricotta-stuffed hot peppers, braised octopus, beef carpaccio and house-cured salmon crudo.

Fisher has a knack for homemade desserts so diners can look forward to treats like panna cotta, crème brulée, chocolate mousse bombs and lemon polenta cake.

Salted Dough Bistro will be fullservice. To accomplish that, Fisher has made some pretty significant design changes to the interior.

Cilantro Taqueria Opening in Former Fahrenheit Space in Tremont Cilantro Taqueria, the fastgrowing Cleveland-based Mexican restaurant group, is moving into

18

Salted Dough Bistro

Tremont. The Galindo family has purchased the former Fahrenheit property at 2417 Professor Ave. and will open location number six there.

“It’s a good area with a lot of good people around us so we figured, why not bring a Cilantro here,” says spokesperson Rey Galindo. “Rocco [Whalen] did a great job there for years and we’d be happy to carry on his tradition.”

Galindo says that the new restaurant will claim only about half of the property, with the other side being offered up for lease to another tenant. The beautiful old bar will be ripped out to make way for the food line. Like the other five locations, this one will be fast-casual, with customers grabbing their own seats or taking their tacos, burritos, tortas, quesadillas, rice bowls or “gringas” to go.

Cilantro opened its first shop on Coventry in 2019. Since then they have added locations in Lakewood, Shaker Hts., North Olmsted and Chesterland. This latest restaurant is expected to open in February.

Skyline Chili in Lyndhurst to Close at End of December My fondness for Skyline Chili stretches back to my college days

| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

at Ohio State University, where the budget-friendly diner on High Street was a frequent post-bar destination. Northeast Ohio was never high on the list of priorities for the Cincinnati-based company, with most stores located south of Mansfield, but at least we had Lyndhurst (5706 Mayfield Rd., 440-646-1011). That shop has been around since 1989.

Sadly, for fans of chili cheese coneys and 3-ways, the news from Cincinnati this week is bleak.

“The Lyndhurst Skyline location is closing at the end of December,” Skyline Chili CEO Dick Williams recently announced.

The closure on the Lyndhurst store, coupled with the 2019 shuttering of the Skyline Chili location in Brooklyn, has made Northeast Ohio a serious Cincinnati chili desert. After the first of the year, the closest location will be Stow (4127 Bridgewater Pkwy., 330940-3929). 137 restaurants out there and zero in Cleveland.

But the news isn’t all bleak.

There’s hope yet for Skyline fans as the company begins a search for a possible new location.

“We are actively looking for a new location in the market to better serve customers,” Williams added.

“We’d like to find a location with a

drive-thru access to better serve the lifestyle of busy families.”

If they succeed, we’ll be sure to let you know.

La Plaza Out, Sauce the City In at Re: Bar Downtown It was a good but short run for La Plaza Taqueria at Re: bar downtown (2132 East 9th St.). The restaurant, a partnership between Re: bar owner Rachel Ulloa and La Plaza’s Adrian Ortega, launched in February of this year. It was the first restaurant residency at the bar since Ulloa completed renovations on the adjacent property, adding a kitchen and dine-in seating.

La Plaza’s Gateway District outpost is on the way out, but a replacement is all lined up.

“Our partnership with La Plaza at Re: bar has been a cherished chapter in our story,” Ulloa announced this week on social media. “We are immensely grateful for the invaluable moments shared and the unwavering support received from our customers. Together, we ventured into uncharted territories, transforming Re: bar into both a bar and a restaurant. However, with growth comes evolution, and in our commitment to community spirit

and collaboration, we have decided to conclude this chapter with La Plaza.”

Taco fans can hit up La Plaza downtown through the end of this year.

Next up for Re: bar, which is located a block from Progressive Field, is Sauce the City. When approached with the offer to step in, owner Victor Searcy Jr. leapt at the chance.

“They called me and I was like, ‘Heck yeah, a downtown location would be great for us,’” he said.

Searcy won’t go as far as calling Sauce the City downtown a fullfledged restaurant, rather a satellite kitchen that he will oversee. He says that he’ll work closely with the Re: bar staff to deliver a high-quality, albeit truncated, version of the menu that he offers in University Heights (14480 Cedar Rd.). Diners can expect two-fisted fried chicken (and hot chicken) sandwiches, wraps, tenders and wings.

“Eventually I’m hoping it will turn into an actual full-fledged Sauce the City, but right now I don’t want to stretch myself too thin, too fast,” he said.

Searcy has new help in the organization in the form of chefpartner Rasul Welch, who arrives

fresh off his stint at Saroj & Carlos at BottleHouse Brewery in Cleveland Heights.

If things go as planned, Sauce the City at Re: bar will open in late winter. Lunch service could be added in spring.

CleaveLand Grocers to Open CleaveLand Grill in Strongsville On October 19, Cleveland lost one of its best resources for Halal ingredients when a fire broke out at CleaveLand Grocers (13425 Snow Rd., 440-306-5374) in Brook Park.

But it wasn’t just those who follow that strict dietary law that suffered a blow, the mourners also included fans of great burgers, chicken sandwiches and cheesesteaks.

Since opening CleaveLand Grocers in 2021, owner Fasih Syed has built a following for his freshmade foods, which are prepared in an open kitchen at the grocery. First it was those drippy double smash burgers that were bringing people in by the dozen. Later it was the grilled chicken wings, cheesesteaks, chopped cheese sandwiches and tacos.

While Syed continues to focus on getting the grocery and grill in

Doug Trattner

Brook Park back up and running, he has decided to branch out with a second location.

“The rebuilding process at this location will be at least six months and we can’t wait that long; we had to get something going in the middle,” he explains. “We thought it would be perfect to have another location that we could serve the community from.”

The new location by Shinto in

Strongsville will include a butcher shop and kitchen but not a grocery.

The space isn’t large enough for both, says Syed.

The owner expects this new store, dubbed CleaveLand Grill, to be open sometime in the coming month or two.

dtrattner@clevescene.com t@dougtrattner

December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

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| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

MUSIC POP JUNKIES

Cleveland’s Falling Stars retreated to an Iowa studio to record their latest album

By Jeff Niesel WHILE SINGER-SONGWRITER Chris Allen and guitarist Tim Parnin, who play together in the local rock group Falling Stars, weren’t exactly close friends when they attended St. Ignatius high school in the late ‘80s, they did know each other then. They played in different bands at the time and crossed paths when Allen’s band played a Battle of the Bands at the school. At that event, Parnin just happened to be the soundman and provided Allen with a Marshall amp and speakers.

“He brought me a Marshall stack,” says Allen, adding that one of his favorite rock ’n’ roll moments of all time came when he watched Parnin play Van Halen’s “Eruption” at an after party for an Ignatius basketball game at the high school cafeteria. “We got five votes for last, and five votes for first at that event.”

The two are sitting in a back room at Ready Set Coffee Roasters, the coffee joint in the Gordon Square Arts District that Allen runs with his sister, to talk about Lonely No More, the new Falling Stars album. The album came out in October on Tee Pee Records, and the band performs with Ray Flanagan and Dave Rich & His Enablers at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 30, at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights.

Their friendship solidified in 2015 at a memorial for mutual friend Sean Kilbane, who booked bands at the Happy Dog. At that tribute concert, Allen asked Parnin to join him on a cover of the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young.”

“We then got together and wanted to come up with all new things,” says Allen, adding that early tunes they wrote, “Down and Out in Ohio” and “Losing Without You,” are still in the band’s repertoire. “We decided that if it worked, we would do it. And it

FALLING STARS. | Chad Cochran

FALLING STARS, RAY FLANAGAN, DAVE RICH & HIS ENABLERS, 9 P.M. SATURDAY, DEC. 30, GROG SHOP, 2785 EUCLID HEIGHTS BLVD., CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, 216-321-5588. TICKETS: $10, GROGSHOP.GS.

worked out.”

The attempt to sound different from their other musical projects – Parnin plays with indie rockers Sweet Apple and Cobra Verde, and Allen leads the long-running alt-country act Rosavelt – meant that some songs took some time to complete.

“There are lots of songs that we had parts for early on,” adds Parnin. “One of those songs, ‘Another Wrong Way Out,’ is now a staple. That one was sitting around for almost a year, and it was so catchy, we knew we had to record it. People really like that one live even though it didn’t come naturally.”

The pair released Stranded in the Future in 2017 and followed it up with 2019’s Let It All Go EP. Though the band initially just included Allen and Parnin, the duo eventually recruited bassist Dave Padrutt and drummer Gerry Porter. The four all play on Lonely No More, an album that distills influences such as Tom Petty, Dinosaur Jr., Husker Du and the Meat Puppets with songs such as “Lonely No More,” a tune with a great J. Mascis-like guitar solo.

“I’m a pop junkie,” says Allen, adding that his taste in music isn’t really much different from Parnin’s.

“There is a certain amount of guitar chaos that we both enjoy.”

“I like Eddie Van Halen, but I won’t finger-tap over one of Chris’s songs,” adds Parnin, who delivers the crisp licks found throughout the album.

On “Love Is Enough” and a cover of Tom Petty’s “Walls,” the group worked with Don Dixon (R.E.M., Smithereens), who also produced Stranded in the Future.

However, the group tapped John Agnello (Dinosaur Jr., Kurt Vile) to produce and mix the bulk of Lonely No More.

To get the right vibe for the album, Agnello and the band headed to the Magic Barn in Solon, IA to record the album. That studio famously features the high-end Neve board from the now-shuttered New York studio the Magic Shop, a place where David Bowie and Lou Reed recorded.

Parnin and Allen say that the new album was also filtered through Padrutt, who added harmony vocals and pop sensibilities.

“He’s more vocally present,” says Allen when asked about Padrutt.

“The first album was purposefully not a lot of backing vocals. He sings lead on ‘Sky Is Falling’ and has a sweet-sounding voice while mine sounds like it was murdered in the back alley, so it works out good.”

One of the new songs, “Indigo,” a tune that features a wall of guitars, has been part of their live set for nearly five years, and others combine Dinosaur Jr. guitar theatrics with sharp pop hooks, putting the band in a genre-less category of indie rock/pop.

“At this point, we don’t feel like we need to make some homogenous album that can be marketed,” says Parnin, who adds that the band has already started thinking about the next album and has gathered about 12 voice memos that represent the kernels of new songs. “If we like it, we like it. It doesn’t even matter if we think the label will like it.”

jniesel@clevescene.com t@jniesel

December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

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| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

LIVEWIRE

Real music in the real world Courtesy of Ryan Humbert

Ryan Humbert brings his Holiday Extravaganza to the Akron Civic one last time. See: Wednesday, Dec. 20.

WED

12/20

Ryan Humbert Holiday Extravaganza In previous years, this series put together by local singer-songwriter Ryan Humbert has included a genrecrossing range of holiday music, including big band, rock ‘n’ roll, bluegrass, and more. For this, the final Holiday Extravaganza, the show will return to the main stage of the Akron Civic Theater tonight and tomorrow night at 7:30 for an “up-close-andpersonal cabaret performance.” A seven-piece jazz ensemble featuring Humbert and his longtime singing partner Emily Bates on vocals will perform.

182 South Main St., Akron, 330-2532488, akroncivic.com.

FRI

12/22

Frosty Beats Various DJs will perform at this event, which the organizer has dubbed a “Christmas rave.” The music begins at 8 p.m. at the Mercury Music Lounge in Lakewood.

18206 Detroit Ave., Lakewood, mercurymusiclounge.com.

Into the Blue The Grateful Dead’s tenure spans 30 years, and much of that time is divided

into various “eras” (different musicians, different modalities, etc.). This local tribute act can play music from all eras. It performs tonight at 9 at the Beachland Ballroom.

15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com.

King Joy,” “Christmas Canon,” “Music Box Blues,” “Promises To Keep,” and “This Christmas Day.” Performances take place today at 3 and 7:30 p.m. at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse.

1 Center Court, 216-420-2000, rocketmortgagefieldhouse.com.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

SAT

This year for its annual fall/winter tour, the progressive rock group TransSiberian Orchestra will revisit the Ghosts of Christmas Eve, a conceptual show that centers on a runaway who breaks into a vaudeville theater on Christmas Eve. The rock opera features tunes such as “Christmas Eve/Sarajevo 12/24,” “O’ Come All Ye Faithful,” “Good

12/23

Frank Amato’s Christmas Jam Featuring the Cleveland All-Stars Veteran local musician and all-around good guy Frank Amato (Beau Coup/ Thrills & Co./TaskMaster/Six Foot Separation) jams with some of his favorite musical friends at this annual

December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

23

ASLYUM ROOM TEMPLELIVE CLEVELAND

THE BROKEN HEARTS

THE ULTIMATE TOM PETTY TRIBUTE

SAT. MAR 9

THE DEAD SOUTH

MON. FEB 12

CHAINS & STAKES TOUR

JO DEE MESSINA

FRI. FEB 16

HEADS CAROLINA, TAILS CALIFORNIA TOUR

BLUE OCTOBER

FRI. MAR 8

SPINNING THE TRUTH AROUND TOUR

EDDIE GRIFFIN

SAT. MAR 9

GIMME SUGAR & MISTER BREEZE

TRIBUTES TO THE ROLLING STONES & LYNYRD SKYNYRD

SAT. APR 13

WQMX PRESENTS

TERRI CLARK

THUR. MAR 14

HAIRBALL

SAT. MAR 16

ARENA ROCK CELEBRATION

THE CELTIC TENORS

TUES. MAR 19

BLACKBERRY SMOKE

FRI. MAR 29

3615 EUCLID AVE. CLEVELAND | TICKETS FOR ALL SHOWS AT TEMPLELIVE.COM

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| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

BE RIGHT HERE TOUR

SPIRIT BOMB

ANIME MUSIC EXPERIENCE WITH PYRO KITTEN, BASSDRIP & CRAZY8THEGREAT

SAT. APR 20

benefit concert for the Autism Society of Greater Cleveland. The event begins at 7 p.m. at the Music Box Supper Club.

1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

takes place tonight at 6 at the Roxy in Lakewood. Live It Down, Vacation and Piss Me Off open.

13200 Madison Ave., Lakewood, 216521-3280, mahalls20lanes.com.

The Boys from the County Hell

The Legendary Soul Jam

When the Boys from the County Hell first got together in 2000 as a Pogues cover band, it was supposed to be just a one-night stand. But after selling out their first show at the Euclid Tavern, the group’s popularity escalated. The guys bring their annual Christmas show to House of Blues tonight. The concert begins at 6. Singer-songwriter Jack Harris opens.

308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-2583, houseofblues.com.

The Manhattans, Bloodstone, Enchantment, One Way and Miles Jaye share the bill tonight at State Theatre for a concert dubbed the Legendary Soul Jam. The music begins at 7, and tickets start at $50.

1519 Euclid Ave., 216-241-6000, playhousesquare.org.

The Modern Electric Presents Northcoast Christmas!

Taking its name from an EP this local indie rock band made in 2011, this special show at the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights celebrates what it’s like to live in Northeast Ohio during the holiday season. The Modern Electric headlines, and it handpicked Papi and the Smears and Dive Bombs to share the bill. Doors open at 7:30 p.m.

2785 Euclid Heights Blvd., Cleveland Heights, 216-321-5588, grogshop.gs.

MON

12/25

Annual Xmas Night Latke Party with Blue Lunch The local blues/swing/jazz act comes to the Beachland Ballroom for its annual Christmas night latke party. Special guests Jerry Devivo (Mighty Blue Kings) and Tom Moore (Little Frank & the Premiers) will join the group, and Pete London will DJ at the start of the night. The show begins at 7:30 at the Beachland Tavern.

15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com.

FRI

12/29

Red Wanting Blue The veteran regional rock act formed in Athens, OH in 1996 and has played Cleveland on a regular basis ever since.

The band released its latest single, the rousing “Hey, ‘84,” last year and plays an end-of-the-year party tonight at 6:30 at the Kent Stage.

175 E. Main St., Kent, 330-677-5005, kentstage.org.

Fri.

The Vindys Over the course of a career that stretches back several years now, this Youngstown-based rock band has performed at various festivals including LaureLive, Winnetka Music Festival and Summeriest, where the band won the first day of the Emerging Artist Series selected by voters on Twitter. Additionally, the Vindys have shared the stage with the Drive-By Truckers, Judah & the Lion, Hunter Hayes, Reeve Carney and more. The regional rock band comes to House of Blues tonight at 7. The Commonheart and singer-songwriter Britny Lobas, a former Clevelander, open the show.

308 Euclid Ave., 216-523-2583, houseofblues.com.

SUN

Fri.

12/29

Sat. 12/30 Fri.

01/05

Sat. 01/06 Fri.

01/12

Sat. 01/13

8pm-11pm 9pm-12am 8pm-11pm 9pm-12am 8pm-11pm 9pm-12am 8pm-11pm 9pm-12am

Fleetwood Mac Tribute by Rumours Hear all of Fleetwood Mac’s biggest hits when the tribute act Rumours plays this special NYE show at Music Box Supper Club. The event kicks off at 9 p.m.

1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

Noon Year’s Eve with Nitebridge! Motown Favorites & Much More Local favorites Nitebridge play a set of Motown favorites at this Noon Year’s Eve event that takes place at noon at the Music Box Supper Club.

1148 Main Ave., 216-242-1250, musicboxcle.com.

John Welton & the Awakening

Hammy New Year Local punks Heart Attack Man team up with indie rockers Cloud Nothings for this special New Year-ish show that

scene@clevescene.com t@clevelandscene

12/30

Sat. 12/23

KARAOKE KARAOKE SEE ALICE MICK&RICK BAND SILK BAND OFF THE RECORD ROCK N’ ROLL EXPRESS KARAOKE

12/31

Co-founder of local heroes the Waterband, singer-songwriter John Welton has kicked around the Cleveland jam band scene for the past 20 or so years. He plays a special NYE show tonight at 8 at the Beachland Ballroom. Johnny Markowski (New Riders of the Purple Sage/Drums) joins Welton and Co. on drums.

15711 Waterloo Rd., 216-383-1124, beachlandballroom.com.

SAT

12/22

December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024 | clevescene.com |

25

SAVAGE LOVE DEPARTURES

By Dan Savage I am a 34-year-old gay man who immigrated to Canada from a Latin American country a few years ago. I immigrated with my husband of eight years.

Throughout our relationship we had been monogamous, and we never questioned it. (Perhaps due to our Catholic religious backgrounds?) However, the sex was never great. Not even at the beginning. But he was kind, good looking, and caring. So, I fell for him. I was always clear at the beginning that I was versatile, and he said he was, too.

But after a few weeks I assumed the bottom role, and I never felt like I could make any demands on him. In fact, I’ve never even asked a blowjob. (And I did not get one for seven years, even as I gave him plenty!) Also, we had sex once every two weeks or so, and only when he wanted to. Always in the dark, and always in the same position. I know I am at fault for not asking for what I needed.

About year ago, I got on Grindr without my husband knowing. I met a man and his husband. Their relationship was open, and they invited me over. After that one threesome, we decided to just be friends and we even hung out as couples with my husband, everyone pretending that nothing had happened. But I started to develop feelings for the person I originally connected with on Grindr. We continued to have mindblowing sex, just the two of us now. Four months later, both our partners discovered our affair. The other couple decided to divorce, but my husband and I decided to work through it. But the affair continued and my feelings for this other person only continued to grow.

My husband is not willing to be more sexual, he is not willing to allow me to top him, he will not go down on me, and he refuses let me have sex elsewhere. I have been patient and mindful of his needs and struggles, but he gets annoyed each time I talk about this or ask him to read a book about open relationships. He accuses me of only caring for myself and the things that I want. He has agreed to talk to a therapist about the possibility of being open, but I don’t know how much longer I should wait. On the other hand, the person with whom I am still having an affair wants me to live with him.

Sometimes I want that, sometimes I don’t. He has a young child, and I had never thought about being any sort of parent.

Should I stay in my marriage and be patient with my husband since sex is the only thing that does not work between us? Or should I simply go be with this new person?

Staying Over Straying Don’t drag this out.

You’ve already opened your marriage,

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SOS, and you have no intention of closing it again. You’re still fucking the other man.

While you don’t explicitly state that your husband is unaware the affair continues, the fact that you still describe it as an affair suggests your husband doesn’t know.

You need to tell him.

I get it: you don’t want to be the bad guy. You got caught having an affair and giving your marriage a chance — or pretending to — is what a good (but not perfect) person does after they get caught having an affair, SOS, if that’s what their spouse wants. I mean, you owe your husband that much, right? So, now you’re going through the motions — having those difficult conversations, pushing the right books at him, searching for a non-trad couple’s counselor — but unless you sincerely want to remain in this marriage, SOS, you’re wasting your husband’s time.

And based on your actions over the last year, I really don’t think you wanna stay in this marriage. To recap: You cheated on your husband with a married couple and then encouraged your husband to socialize with that couple and then started fucking one of those guys behind his husband’s back and yours. That kind of double-barreled betrayal isn’t something a marriage typically survives —your affair partner’s open marriage didn’t survive a lesser betrayal — and the fact that you’re still slamming your dick down on the self-destruct button, i.e., fucking this other guy, is evidence that what you want is out.

Because you already got caught once, SOS, and you’re going to get caught again, and then your husband is almost certain to leave you.

But if you can sincerely say you could happily remain married if you were free to fuck and date other men — so, not just open, but poly — you need tell your husband that.

But you’re issuing an ultimatum, SOS, you’re not entering into negotiations. And of that’s unacceptable to your husband, well, then you’ll need get a lawyer and your own place.

If you’re still crazy about the guy you’re fucking a year from now and you’ve come to enjoy spending time with his kid, you could think about moving in with him then. If you’re still crazy about him a year from now and you don’t enjoy spending time with his kid, think about moving a little closer, e.g., moving into the same building or onto the same block.

Sexual compatibility is crucially important in sexually exclusive relationships.

The sex doesn’t work between you and your husband, it never has, and it’s unlikely it ever will. You could live with that for a while — you did live with it for a while — but you’re not willing to settle anymore. You’ve been doing the wrong thing for a while now, SOS, but it’s not too late to do the right thing: honestly ask for the divorce you clearly want, SOS, instead of manipulating your husband into giving it to you.

Please help. I saw an old boyfriend today and based on our text communications about how much he wanted to be with me, I

| clevescene.com | December 20, 2023 - January 2, 2024

was expecting him to take me in his arms and kiss me. When he made no moves, when he didn’t so much as react to my flirty comments, I was devastated. I didn’t realize how devastated I was alone in my car. While I’m not usually big on the waterworks, I started weeping. I don’t think I was devastated about being rejected. I’m a big girl, I can handle that. But does weeping — more like wailing — indicate something that my heart knows/ understands that my head hasn’t caught up to yet? Does this mean that I’m in love with him?

The Town Cryer It does not.

You reconnected with an old flame, you swapped some flirty texts, mutual interest was established. And at some point between reestablishing mutual interest and scheduling that first face-to-face meeting in however many years, you allowed yourself to do what anyone in your position would (and what your ex probably did): you began to fantasize about what could be (or could be again), TTC, and you got your hopes up. What you were wanted — what you were in love with — was what he represented: possibility.

When an old flame comes back into our lives, it can feel like a miraculous shortcut; if you can pick up where you left off, the truly hard part — finding someone you like — is already done. In this instance, TTC, the shortcut didn’t work; you’ve changed, he’s changed.

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it: you were rejected and that always hurts. But it was the want of it that made you cry, not the him of it. You hoped it might find what you want with him — love and connection — but that wasn’t in the cards. So, go ahead and have a good cry, TTC, and then go find it with someone else.

P.S. I once met up with an old flame — my first true love — hoping we might get back together. I went to Marshall Field’s that day fully expecting we would wind up in changing room, tearing each other’s clothes off like we used to. But whatever we had was gone. We had a nice lunch, but lunch was all it was. The feeling — or the lack of feeling — was mutual, I think, and neither of us wound up weeping on the subway on the way home.

But the realization that what seemed possible an hour earlier was impossible left me feeling incredibly sad. So, I feel you, TTC, and my heart goes out to you.

I’m in love with someone I shouldn’t be. He’s married. He claims to love me. We haven’t done anything besides talk. While I’m not among the most traditional sorts of people, I have a hard time getting past the fact that he is married. I can rationalize it. We knew each other and we loved each other before he met her. He only married her because he thought I was unavailable.

Their union is an unhappy one. But the fact remains that he hasn’t asked her to open the marriage. I don’t get anywhere when I

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suggest he do that. He claims he wants to divorce, or separate, but he doesn’t make any movement in that direction. They don’t have sex anymore, he says. They don’t sleep in the same bed anymore, he says. They don’t celebrate holidays together anymore, he says.

If all that is true, I don’t understand why they stay together. I don’t know if I should wait, which could be a long time, or give up. If it were just about sex, the answer would be easy. But he’s become an important part of my life, despite it just being only talk — and not sex talk, we talk about everything going on in our lives. What would you do?

This Emotional Affair I’d fuck the guy.

But if I shared your qualms — if the guy was married and unwilling to ask for an open relationship and I didn’t know if anything he was telling me was true — here’s what I would do: I would tell this guy to give me a call when he’s single. And as much as I might pine, I wouldn’t wait. I’d get out there and date/fuck other people — single and looking, partnered and ENM — in the hopes of putting as much emotional, social, and sexual distance between me and this married-andunavailable guy as I possibly could. That’s not giving up, TEA, that’s moving on. If I heard from him after his divorce and I was still single, we could resume talking and possibly start fucking. If I was with someone else when I heard from him after his divorce and I was happy with that other person, I would tell him he missed his window — again — and, given the intensity of our connection, I would tell him being friends was out of the question.

And finally, TEA, if I was with someone else when he reached out after his divorce and I was unhappy, I would do what I wanted him to do back when he was married and unhappy: open or end the relationship I was in so I could be with him too or with him instead.

Got problems? Everyone does! Send your question to mailbox@savage.love!

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