Jessica 'Evil' Eye
EYE BELIEVE. STRAIGHT OUT OF CLEVELAND
M U S I C / E N T E RTA I N M E N T / A RT S & C U LT U R E / L I F E / I N D E P E N D E N T / P R ES S U R E L I F E . C O M
PRESSURE PEOPLE
MEET THE PRESSURE TEAM Gennifer HardingGosnell
PRESSURE LIFE Creative Director, Owner Chief Operating Officer, Owner Editors
Jim Bacha John Gardner Amy Sokolowski Sarah Maxwell Ryan Novak
Art Director
Hannah Allozi
Illustrator
Aaron Gelston
With a master's in journalism from Kingston University in London under her belt, Gennifer HardingGosnell, is one of PressureLife's most experienced writers, bringing her unique perspective to every article she crafts. Gennifer never shrinks from covering controversial or taboo topics, but in all seriousness, she's one of the funniest people on our staff. Gennifer considers herself to be too sarcastic for her own good, and if you've got a problem with that she'll likely tell you to “Piss off, mate!” Gennifer is a huge futball (and “football”) fan, listens to way too much music and is a fantastic cook. As a left-brainer, she values logic and reason, but doesn't need a reason to get weird once in a while.
@gelston.design
Senior Writers
Adam Dodd Will Kmetz
Staff Writers
Dan Bernardi Matt McLaughlin Kevin Naughton
Contributors
Casey Rearick @caseyrearickphoto
Alex Bieler Ben Diamond Darrick Rutledge Stephanie Ginese Jae Andres Brandon Lee Wise Distribution
PMK Logistics
Casey Rearick Self-described as neither tall, dark, nor handsome, Casey Rearick is the keen eye behind the lens on many of Pressure's most vibrant photos, striking a distinct tone in his images that bring each subject to life on the page. Casey's studio is located at Cleveland's own creative supercastle, Lake Affect Studios, where he shoots fashion, editorial, and advertising photography. You can check out a showcase of his work at www.caseyrearick.com and on IG @caseyrearickphoto. When he's not snapping pix, Casey enjoys literature, poetry, and film, and is of the distinct minority that prefers Ace Ventura 2 to the original. Casey also fears moths, and will run if they near him.
Enjoying PressureLife? We would love to hear your thoughts. pressurelife.com/feedback
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 3
CONTENTS
FIN D H IM
G ET CASH
MARCH / APRIL 2016
10
30
06 Good Vibrations
13
A young shoemaker makes his mark
10 Made in Cleveland
Cleveland's fashion scene is about more than just T-shirts
06
Can rock and roll save Tremont?
26
14 Brewers Gold
Ohio’s untapped potential in hop and barley farming
16 Eye Believe
Cleveland’s own has her eye on the prize
08
21 Viva Dance
A downtown dance club with a distinctly Cleveland feel
22 Hometown (Super) Heroes
Cleveland’s newest hero of print and screen—Apama!
21
With Spring just around the corner, we thought for sure that this time Weir would emerge from his hibernation with a renewed sense of purpose and a strong desire to rejoin the herd, especially after our diligent reader Megan discovered him nested away at Bonnie's Bar & Grill in our last issue. Alas, this is not the case, and before we could tag him with a GPS tracker, Weir galloped off into the pages of PressureLife, once again treating our advertisements like his own personal nature reservation. What Weir didn't take into account is that he's big game, and on the prowl is his most dangerous predator: you, the reader. Weir is no match for your heightened senses and unparalleled cunning, so as you flip the pages of PressureLife with your sharpened claws, keep your eyes trained. For your chance to win a $25 gift card, locate the elusive Weir stashed away in one of our adverts and be the first to submit his location to @thepressurelife (through Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram). Game on!
Want to wear Weir?
26 The Curious Case
WINE
Weir is He This Time?
13 Coda vs. the Hydra
T
All win UESDAY EVENIN half p e bottles u G n rice b eginn der $99 ar ing at e 3 PM
Courtesy of EarthQuaker Devices
08 Kickmaster
DEAR FRIENDS...
½ OFF
EVERY
PressureLife.com has your size.
of the Unknown Man
Did the Zodiac killer call Cleveland home?
30 The Dyngus Among Us
Everyone’s Polish
FOLLOW US Facebook // Twitter // YouTube // Instagram
16
@thepressurelife
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 5
The
SOUND FACTORY
behind. He had simply found something that he loved to do. "At no point in that [time] did I intend to make a business out of it." After a while, a few of us step outside for a smoke. The sky is a grey blanket and it's just cold enough to be frustrating. Julie tells me about the homeless guy that harvests their cigarette butts. Then she shows me a video (she's got a bunch). The bum is a white-hot ghost captured on infrared surveillance cameras. We watch him shake the receptacle upside down like a giant salt shaker before he realizes the bottom pops right off. I look up and down the streets, but see nothing stirring.
VROOM, VROOM
Jamie Stillman and EarthQuaker Devices are Akron's guitar pedal industry
entire operation from his basement. He leans forward and explains in a low voice how the journey began.
Ben Diamond When I first get there, I wonder if I have the wrong place. I'm looking for EarthQuaker Devices, the guitar pedal company based here in Akron. Pale bluish paint is peeling off the bricks of the warehouse. There's no logo or sign. Just some directions for deliveries on the door. But Google Maps confirms it and there are a few cars parked out front. Encouraged, I ring the doorbell and I'm buzzed through.
KNOCK, KNOCK
I'm startled twice before I see any people. First, at the sight of a dressed-up skeleton under the stairs. Second, at a barking watchdog who sniffs me out when I reach the second floor. His master calls him off and I finally meet some humans.
The thing about EQD's pedals is that they're not just pedals. They're portals to new realms of sound.
Jamie Stillman, his wife Julie Robbins, and a few employees are huddled around a computer, listening to a demo of one of their pedals. Even through the desktop speakers, the sound is burly and the riffs are satisfying. Impressed, the group disbands, leaving Stillman in his office, which has impeccably clean hardwood floors and is bordered with amps, a few guitars and some band posters. I get the impression Stillman wears a lot of black. There's some silver showing in his beard and he tucks more black hair behind his ears.
Stillman is the founder of EarthQuaker Devices. Since its inception in 2005, it has become an established force in the music industry and its products can be seen on guitar rigs and in studios around the world. They staff just under 40 employees, ship between six to eight hundred pedals a week, and recently moved into this 11,000 square foot warehouse—but there was a time not too long ago when Stillman ran the
6 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
The noise started when Stillman was in his late twenties, back home in Akron after touring with various bands for nearly a decade. For music equipment, he was left with "garbage gear and very little of it." He still had one pedal that he really liked (a DOD 250 overdrive), but it was broken and he couldn't find anyone to repair it. Without thinking twice, he looked up the schematics and fixed it himself. At the time, he was working from home as a freelance graphic designer and had a lot of time on his hands. Guitar pedals became an obsession. "I started tinkering with stuff— breaking a lot of things—and eventually I made some pedals for friends, and they said they liked them."
RUMBLINGS
One of his friends was Dan Auerbach, the guitarist and vocalist for local up-and-comers The Black Keys. Stillman became their tour manager around the same time his pedal obsession began. About a year into his experiments, Stillman, who by then had unloaded some pedals on eBay, produced a fuzz pedal for Auerbach. Somebody photographed Auerbach using the pedal at a show and posted an inquiry on an online forum: "What pedal is this? It sounds awesome." Stillman happened to be lurking on the same forum and he identified himself as the architect.
A flood of messages came through. People wanted to know if Stillman could duplicate the pedal. From there it was all word of mouth. At first, Stillman sold directly to individuals, but then he secured some larger dealers. He needed help to meet the demand, and the basement began to get more crowded. In the early days, mailmen were always asking questions. "What do you guys make? What do you do for EarthQuakers?" If Stillman was wittier at the time, he would have told them to watch out for a big one on June 12. In retrospect, he might have picked a different company name. But Stillman was locked in, never thinking too far ahead or
We go back inside and Stillman gives me a tour of the ground floor. There are large, open spaces for storage and deliveries. They've got a new machine for the pedal enclosures and for printing pedal designs. In an adjacent room, dozens of employees sit at workstations for assembling electrical components. Because every pedal is made by hand, you could technically call EarthQuaker a boutique pedal company, but Stillman doesn't like to use that term. He acknowledges that it is
EQD'S Favorite Pedals The Speaker Cranker:
A single knob overdrive pedal, it's Stilman's favorite, partly because it's maddeningly simple and esoteric. "Anything that we've made has come from something that I need or want," he says. The Speaker Cranker is a prime example. He took it from his personal pedalboard to the production line only after receiving a great deal of positive feedback.
The Rainbow Machine: This Pepto-Bismo pink pedal can make full on double-rainbows all the way across the sky. Stillman had some fun with this one. Described on their website as "a cold digital beast made to pretend it has feelings," The Rainbow Machine is a polyphonic harmonic pitch shifter that uses an accurate, but archaic methodology. Stillman purposefully made it imperfect to release
some much needed chaos into the world. It takes a certain kind of person and a lot of patience to wield this one. Look! It's even starting to look like a triple rainbow! What does this mean?!
The Hoof: This is the one that started it all. Striking this gold box with a cloven-foot will turn your guitar into saw, a sword, or half of a two-man band. Based on the green Russian Big Muff (get your laughs out now), this woolly fuzz pedal has been linked to Dan Auerbach's own pedalboard.
Honorable Mention: The Dispatch Master is a popular reverb-delay combo pedal that can create a lot of unique sounds. It also pays tribute to the original name of the erstwhile Cedar Point coaster, The Disaster Transport.
a selling point for people in his industry, but there are other reasons for doing things the way they do. "It would be so much cheaper and smarter for us to farm all of this out," he says, but keeping things in-house enables EQD to have more control over the manufacturing process. And while he doesn't believe that a pedal made by hand is inherently superior, there is a certain security in knowing where it came from. "If anything goes wrong, you can call us at any point. We'll know everything about it, we'll know how to fix it, and we'll do it for free." Part of being Midwestern is not noticing that you are different until you venture out. Stillman noticed it at trade shows when he heard ridiculous marketing strategies and product pitches. EarthQuaker Devices has always used a clean, and simple approach to advertising: a white background, a picture of the pedal, a brief description. Anything extra doesn't seem necessary to Stillman and his coworkers. He laughs because it sounds too simple: "We make a thing, and we sell it, because we like to do it." On a similar note, he doesn't try to overtly promote the famous artists who use his pedals. But EarthQuaker Devices is associated with quite a few notable names and Stillman reluctantly gives me a few: Queens of the Stone Age, Radiohead, Coldplay, The Mars Volta, Paramore, Sleep, Failure, High On Fire, Pearl Jam, Oasis, Modest Mouse. He likes some more than others. Because you can also find their products in so many studios, sounds made by EQD pedals are more prevalent than ever, but that's not what matters most to Stillman. "The one thing that we've done is we've actually just maintained friendships with a lot of these big bands or little bands or any bands that we like," he says. From the sound of Stillman's own band, Relaxer, he favors the heavier bands, the ones that deliver a certain kind of raw power. Relaxer's album Lasers is self-described on Bandcamp as "ear splitting, cinematic, prog influenced psych rock" and is accompanied by artwork of a floating skull shooting lasers from its eyes. The thing about EQD's pedals is that they're not just pedals; they're portals to new realms of sound. They're little Pandora's boxes that draw you in with their righteous designs and symbolism. Their names perk the imagination: Talons, Hoof, Afterneath, Dream Crusher, The Depths, White Light. These devices are just part of the inventive world that Stillman and his team continue to build in Akron. They're a model example of Rust Belt reinvention that has taken advantage of cheap real estate and a tight-knit community to build an authentic, American-made product. Only instead of rubber, they manufacture sound. EQD inspires loyal followers from all over who actively promote their brand, but what about their presence in the surrounding area? I ask Stillman if anyone knows they're here. "No," he says flatly. In fact, he even took a quiet pleasure in shutting down the city block so that data cables could be wired to their new headquarters. I gather that he doesn't mind the isolation. It only means more quiet to fill with noise.
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 7
rate skills. This can mean anything from sewing to stitching to "skiving," which involves thinning the leather with a very sharp specialty blade. The other processes are evidenced in his workshop, accessible by spiral staircase in the corner of his apartment. On the landing, there are shoeboxes, cuttings, and miscellaneous debris cluttering the floor space. A few sewing machines line the wall. Shoe molds that look like feet from missing mannequins are stacked on shelves. Rolls of alligator, ostrich, and python hide—dyed licorice black, forest green, and candy red—are tucked underneath a large standing desk. For the simplest project, the process can take 12 hours, but for the more ambitious shoes, he can expect to put in 80 hours or more.
Kick Master
CRAFTSMAN
Jacob Ferrato's custom kicks bring a timeless touch to the sneaker world
To own a sneaker from JBF Customs, expect a heavy fee. The cost of materials, the number of hours, and Ferrato's level of craftsmanship certainly warrant it, but you might be wondering, who would pay that much for a pair of shoes? Those familiar with the sneaker world are not phased by that question. Sneakerheads are more than willing to shell out gobs of money for new, exclusive, or hyped-up shoes. However, Ferrato's clientele extend beyond this cliquey community. They can be average Joes, collectors, fashionistas, or celebrities, but they all have a few things in common: they want something unique and authentic, they want something with a story, and they appreciate having a hand in the creation. A recent project for Cavaliers guard Iman Shumpert comes to mind. Iman's brother, Ahrii, developed the concept with some sketches and it was up to Ferrato to make sure the concept was possible and to build it. "Some people just really appreciate hand-made goods," Ferrato says. "It's such a rarity these days, so I think some people really connect with that."
Ben Diamond // Head Shot: Casey Rearick @caseyrearickphoto
T
he business takes care of itself. It's always been that way, which is good for Jacob Ferrato, because he can get lost in his work. "I don't usually know what day of the week it is," he says half-jokingly.
He may not look it, but Ferrato is a master craftsman. He could blend right into a crowd of fellow Cleveland urbanites, although few 24-yearolds have built a coveted custom sneaker brand from scratch. Under the name JBF Customs, he has attracted a slew of celebrity clients and Instagram followers. All of Ferrato's shoes are made to order, starting at the base price of $1,000. He deconstructs and re-imagines classic sneaker designs with exotic animal hides and tasteful colorways. He has even begun to build shoes completely from scratch. Whatever the method, the emphasis is always on impeccable craftsmanship.
Some people just really appreciate hand-made goods.
A good gig if you can get it, the custom shoe game is certainly a niche one. Ferrato attributes his career to luck, but also to seizing opportunity. Ferrato got into customizing shoes in 2008 while he was attending Walsh Jesuit High School in Cuyahoga Falls. At first he tried painting, then stitching and gluing materials directly to the shoe, but these methods didn't translate into an ideal product. Learning to do a proper shoe reconstruction was more difficult, but it gave him the tools to advance his craft. He found his range in college, adding custom snapback hats with snakeskin brims to his repertoire. While the hats were easy money, he decided to post five pairs of original kicks online, priced at $350 each. They quickly sold out, and he received some incentive to make more: people were offering him a few thousand dollars for a pair. At the time he was 19, and that kind of money seemed too good to pass up, so he jumped on it. The requests kept coming and a spark was lit. There reached a point when Ferrato thought, "OK, I've probably got something here."
8 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
The motivation to build the business continued when Ferrato realized what was at stake. If he could make it a success, he could be his own boss and determine his own lifestyle. And that's exactly what he's done. He's amassed a huge social media following, the most coming from Instagram with 122,000 followers. His creations thrive on social media. They're visually stunning, dopamine-inducing shoegasms. It's really fun to read the comments from people whose minds have just exploded—a common response is a series of fire emojis. It's also easy to see why JBF Customs has been such a success. Once you see a pair, you need a pair.
Every artist has a signature and Ferrato is no different. After investing hours on a pair, he'll sometimes paint his logo (two plus signs) on the tongue and write his tagline, "Incomparable"—because that’s exactly what they are.
Instagram likes are nice, but for Ferrato, it's all about the craft. He's been told that shoemaking requires the mastery of around 200 sepa-
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 9
Made in
CLEVELAND
A look at the local fashion scene from some of its most innovative designers
Stephanie Ginese // Photography: Jae Andres
C
leveland is known for many things: great beer and even better food, a once highly-flammable river, a rich rock and roll history, and lovable sports teams ranging from the winning wine and gold to the boo-worthy brown and orange. One thing Cleveland is not really recognized for is a strong presence in the fashion world. However, many local designers are working to stitch up that perception and sew the city’s name into high-fashion hemlines. PressureLife caught up with three of these fashion aficionados to find out how we can get Cleveland runway ready, and how they plan to take their handmade designs out of the dawg pound and onto the catwalk.
Take us through your design process. First, I definitely research. Even though I don’t like to look at what other designer’s are doing when I’m working, it is important to know what’s going on and what the trends are—take a few that you like and then incorporate them in your own way. I have to find my inspiration before I even start designing. I won’t even sketch anything until I’m sure of what the inspiration is. Then, I find the fabrics I want and order the swatches offline. It sucks that in Cleveland we don’t have any really good fabric stores. Jo-Ann Fabric sucks. Then I move onto drawing, painting, and rendering my figures. Next I do the muslins on the figure, and finally get to actually making the piece: the fun part.
Jevon Terance She puts pieces together that no one would ever think would make sense, but she just has crazy style. Also, I don’t look at anything fashion related when I’m searching for inspiration. If you look at other designer’s work, you’ll subconsciously design what you’ve been seeing. I like to go outside of fashion for inspiration.
Danielle Pusateri "I just want people to not be afraid of fashion, and to be more adventurous. Just put it on."
Danielle Pusateri, the fiery fashionista, is a 2013 Kent State graduate who started out majoring in graphic design, but decided to switch lanes into fashion design after attending a campus fashion show. After graduating, she designed a men’s line for Xhibition, a local art and fashion gallery, but she later jumped ship to Forma Apparel Manufacturing in Beachwood, where she is currently helping to design their kidswear line, Orgava. To gain a more in-depth look in Pusateri’s supreme aesthetic, check out her fashion blog at danni-p.com. What inspires you? I like utilitarian. I personally wear a lot of men’s clothing. I like baggier fits, but that can still be sexy. There’s this German film student on Instagram whose style I just love. She goes by @majawyh.
10 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
Do you feel as though you take inspiration from being here in Cleveland? Yeah, for sure. I can’t always afford to travel, so my boyfriend and I always like to check out the really cool thrift stores here in Cleveland. We just went to Flower Child yesterday, and to Sweet Lorain. I run a blog, so I’m always trying to find cool places around the city to shoot the photos. What kind of impact would you like to make on the local fashion scene? It’s always the same thing here. You see girls all dressed pretty much the same. I feel like the men are a little bit further in the fashion scene here. I want to be able to inspire people to be more creative with their looks and more comfortable with trying new things. What would you like to see more of on the local fashion front? I just want people to not be afraid of fashion, and to be more adventurous. Just put it on. People around here should have more confidence. If you like it, wear it. You’re designing for other lines currently. However, if you were to start your own line, what could people expect? Lately, I’ve been leaning more towards women’s wear. I like men’s wear, and my style is very androgynous, so it’s always been easy for me to flip-flop between the two. Definitely, women’s wear first. I like men’s wear, but it’s just more expensive to make.
"People don’t usually put two and two together that I make glam dresses."
Jevon Terance, named after its creator, is the chic, yet edgy fashion-forward line out of Lorain, Ohio. Growing up, Terance was more about the basketball court than the runway, but he took a drastic turn when he began to learn the art of sewing. Taking most of his inspiration from the legendary Air Jordan sneakers, Terance began creating elegant women’s and men’s pieces based off of the shoe. He currently owns and operates a boutique in the heart of Lorain right next door to the historical Lorain Palace Theatre. With over 200 runway shows and a showing at Paris Fashion Week in 2015 under his black, leather belt, Jevon Terance is a local fashion force to be reckoned with. Tell us about the Jevon Terance brand? My brand started in 2007. I design both women’s and men’s clothing, which most designers don’t do. It’s really cool for me because it makes me more diverse. My pieces are everyday wear on a high-end scale. What makes your brand unique? Like I said, being a women’s and men’s line, I feel, makes me unique. Also, I have a good eye for prints and different fabrics. I like to take challenges with working with different fabrics. A lot of designers don’t like to change the settings on their machines, so they’ll work with just knits or cottons. I like to show those diverse fabrics and go searching for different things. I also design my own fabrics and patterns, so my pieces are definitely one of a kind.
What inspires you? I actually got into fashion through basketball. I used to sketch sneaker designs in elementary school, so I kept up with that. You know, I love Michael Jordan and I wanted to work for Nike. After high school, I moved to San Diego and fell in love with fashion there— everything was a little more high-end than where I had come from—so I started teaching myself how to sew. The Jordans still inspire me. I design a lot of my dresses based off of those shoes. When the Jordans drop, people know the exact date and they’ll wait out in the cold to get a pair. I call it the “Jordan Effect.” I want to have that for my line. How do you see yourself in the world of fashion? People don’t usually put two and two together that I make glam dresses. I really love when I’m networking with people and telling them that I make dresses and men’s wear because, being here in Ohio, people just assume you make T-shirts, which is fine, but you know, I’m doing some real stuff: buying fabric, cutting, and sewing. I love that I surprise people. What are your thoughts on the local fashion scene? I like what’s going on here. I like Yellowcake and ILTHY. ILTHY inspires me to make better T-shirt designs for my T-shirt line. Anyway, I think Cleveland is really good. A lot of people count us out, but we’re so close to New York. There’s always something going on with fashion, especially when it starts to warm up. What’s next for you? I’m building my next big show, which will be called from “Lorain to Paris.” I had to do a collection based off my visit to Paris. I’m working on doing maybe another Fashion Week in the fall. Just more branding, branding, and branding...
Dawn Fox "The imperfections of handmade make it look more quality versus now when items are mass produced."
Dawn Fox is a personal-style trailblazer and a walking work of art. A graduate of Virginia Marti College, she had hopes of opening a shop in Lakewood, but when those plans unfortunately fell through, she began to craft pieces on the side while working other odd jobs. She then took a job as a pattern maker for a local company, which allowed her to gain a lot of experience and to continue to harness her craft. However, she left the position after she
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 11
began to feel stifled—as so many creatives do—and continued to work on her designs on the side. She’s made custom dresses for friends and family, such as her sister-in-law’s wedding gown. She now puts all of her design efforts into her own Etsy store, which features one-of-a-kind accessories and designs. You can follow her on Instagram at @fuchsshoppe and shop her Etsy store at etsy.com/shop/FuchsShoppe.
CODA vs. the Hydra Matthew McLaughlin // Illustrations: Aaron Gelston @gelston.design
Tell us about your designs. My designs are heavily influenced by a lot vintage. I like men’s wear, such as military pieces and cowboy-inspired looks, for the ladies, but with a twist. I want to make sure it’s still feminine. Very vintage inspired, because I like the handmade look. Back when people used to make their own clothes, I think the imperfections of handmade made it look more quality versus now when items are mass produced. They just look cheap to me and lack character. I try to stick with things that I like. I have a weird style, and I like to mix a lot of different pieces. Do you feel as though you take any inspiration from being here in Cleveland? Um, yes. I mean, I definitely get more inspired to get my ideas out there because I feel they’re so different from what you see in Cleveland. The city itself, I know, is not high fashion and people sometimes will look at you weird if you wear something that’s even a little out there and creative. So, it does inspire me to get my pieces out into these kinds of areas in hopes that people will at least be willing to try it out. What are your thoughts on the local fashion scene? You don’t see a whole lot of unique styles. I do definitely appreciate that the Cleveland area does have a lot of vintage shops. I love that. I meet a lot of people that either buy vintage or they have their own stores. I think that there’s a lot of hidden talent here. I know people from going to school at Virginia Marti that have some really great ideas; it’s just a lot of Cleveland fashion goes back to the basics. You know, they sure do love their T-shirts. It’d just be cool to see more people venture out of the box. What would you like to see more of on the local fashion front? I always like that when you look at old photos or movies, you see the men all in suits. The women are all in dresses. I know that it’ll never be like that again, but I think it would be cool if people could tie more things like that into their daily wardrobe—something as small as even wearing a skirt with a T-shirt or combining those ideas. Anything to look a little more classic and classy and get everyone out of those PJ pants. It would also be great to see more fashion shows. I know there’s Cleveland Fashion Week and other events, but even a small show in a storefront, or to throw a show for a good cause.
12 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
N
ot too long ago Chef Dante Bocuzzi decided to open his fourth enterprise, this one on Professor Ave in Tremont. Tucked down in the basement, Coda is a low-ceilinged, red lit little music venue, with a square footage less than your average one bedroom and a bar the size of a thimble. Around about 600 BC, Hercules kicked the shit out of the Hydra. And ever since then, he’s been wandering around picking on anyone he thinks he can handle. Now, he’s got his eyes on Coda, the new kid on the block. When the Hydra slides down the steps and into the subterranean music space, one of his heads is definitely headed to the bar. There it finds a decent selection of craft beers, shitty domestics, a few cocktails, and enough fernet to satiate an army of bartenders. Now thoroughly distracted, Head One is gonna be held up for a while, as it works it’s way through a Doctor Funk #2, a beautifully balanced drink with just the right amount of Absinthe. In the meantime, Head Two wanders up to the front to take a look at what’s going on with the crowd. Looking at the graffiti mural behind the stage, he mutters under his breath “fucking yuppies.” But, when he actually looks at the show calendar and notices upstart bands like Duo Decibel, Fever Child, and Bullfighter, along with some decent touring acts like Farnsworth, and some local favorites like The Suede Bros, Head Two has to concede that it’s a pretty legitimate venue.
The funniest fare being a grilled cheese sandwich with spicy Cheetos, cooked in a waffle iron.
As Head Three heads towards the bar, it realizes that One is now trashed and hitting on one of the bartenders, and Two is engaged in a heated discussion about whether or not punk is dead on the other side of the room. Three's also gotten a little hungry. The food menu is pretty small, all bar food with Bocuzzi flair added. The funniest fare being a grilled cheese sandwich with spicy Cheetos, cooked in a waffle iron. After Three munches pleasantly on the bizzaro bites, it has decided that One, who now can barely talk and should probably stop shooting Ferraris with that guy in suspenders, should probably go home. The Hydra stumbles out of the basement, not quite sure why he was there in the first place, but pretty sure he will be back. PressureLife Magazine gives Coda 85 out of 108 poisonous fangs.
Know the Enemy: The Hydra is a many headed, ancient beast, known for smelling like garbage, having poisonous fangs, and insisting that you’re a fashion punk.
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 13
BREWERS GOLD in recipes. Although U.S. hop acreage has increased nearly 52% over the last three years, hop availability is sporadic at best, and hop contracts are almost entirely consumed by established breweries. And on the other end, distributors are blackmailing smaller breweries to purchase their surplus malts in order to get the hops they want.
Of the 45,000+ acres of U.S hops harvested for industry use in 2015, only 50 were from Ohio, with the overwhelming majority coming from the Pacific Northwest. The U.S. harvested nearly 3.1M acres of barley in 2015, and Ohio isn’t even on the list of growers. But with Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati making big splashes in the beer scene, an existing farming infrastructure and favorable climate, Ohio has the potential to be a big name in hop and barley farming. The current revitalization of heirloom malts and hop and barley growers expanding outside the Pacific Northwest and upper North America offers the perfect opportunity for farmers to take the plunge. The shortage of supplies due to the craft beer boom has brewers looking to local hop and barley growers, piggybacking the local resources movement. With our society is fixated with 100% local ingredients and 100% local beer, it doesn't get much better than that.
While malts aren’t quite as difficult to get your hands on, the majority of barley used in beer making comes from the European Union. And in North America, Canada doubles the output of barley compared to the U.S. Of the entire world’s harvest, a mere 22% is for industrial use, including malting and beer making. This hasn’t gone unrecognized, especially by farmers from the U.S. who are noticing stern federal regulation of hops and barley from growers overseas with loose regulations. Aside from the big players in barley farming (Montana, North Dakota, and Idaho) states such as South Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and Minnesota have all seen increases in seeded acreage over the last year. The same can be said for hops.
Some growers in Ohio have already begun to take advantage of this shortage. According to the Ohio Hop Growers Guild, there are nearly 40 small Hops farms stretching from Toledo to Cincinnati. The potential is so great, The Ohio State University and the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center hosts an Ohio Hop Conference and Trade show to help growers and anyone else interested in growing learn more about the product and industry. And while there aren’t farmers who grow barley alone, some grow it alongside other small grains such as wheat, oats, and corn. It may never gain the same traction hop farming does since Ohio has been and will continue to be a large producer of wheat, but Ohio is well on it’s way to becoming a sustainable grower and producer of some of the nation's best craft beer!
From Backyard to Bottle Will Kmetz // Illustrations: Aaron Gelston
A
ccording to the Brewers Association, there are now 4,000+ breweries operating in the U.S. to date, opening at an astonishing rate of approximately 1.8 per day. Colleges and universities are creating programs dedicated to the science of brewing, and many are calling it quits on their established careers to choose the brewery life instead. With many of these breweries already rooted in the community and even more vying to make it big, opportunity seems to be a glass half empty. But you don’t have to brew in order to cash in, and that’s exactly how farmers across the nation are viewing this cultural and economic boom. As an epicenter to the craft beer trend in the Midwest and a recognized farming state, Ohio has the potential to capitalize.
With an existing farming infrastructure and favorable climate, Ohio has the potential to be a big name in hop and barley farming.
There are four main ingredients in beer: water, barley, hops, and yeast. With this extraordinary growth in breweries, resources are at an all-time low. Of the four ingredients, barley and hops are of particular interest. A shift from intensely bitter to flavor and aroma packed beers means nearly doubling the weight of hops
With the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho) at the forefront, states such as Montana, Nebraska, Minnesota, Indiana, New York, New Hampshire, and Maine are all taking the leap in the hop growing game. A name you don’t see on either of those lists is Ohio.
HOW TO: Grow your own hops in 5 easy steps 01.
Obtain rhizome of desired hops to be grown. You can find these at your local home brew shop when in season (spring). Keep the rhizome moist and refrigerated until the soil is ready for planting.
02.
Spring is planting time. Choose a location with southern exposure to sun and plenty of space (~20 feet) upward or horizontally for the vine to grow. Dig a hole about 1-2 inches deep and plant the rhizome horizontally. Allow ~5 feet of space between each rhizome. Frequent, but short waterings work best. The soil should never remain dry for extended periods of time.
14 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
03.
String a trellis system up directly behind the rhizome. This can be 8-10 feet depending on space constrictions or up to 20 feet tall to allow the vine to grow in subsequent years. After the vine has reached about a foot in height, choose the hardiest vines (2-3) and prune the rest. Now wrap these around the trellis in a clockwise motion and prune subsequent vines from the base of the plant.
04.
The first year will establish the permanent root stock, called the crown. This can survive deep freezes so don’t worry about the dieback on the rest of the plant. You won’t get much flowering growth in the first year. Try to focus on maintaining the vine
structure. In years two and three, you will begin to see substantial gains in flowers, which are your harvestable hops cones.
05.
It’s time to harvest (Aug-Sep)! You’ll know the hops are ready when the aroma is most potent. Test by crushing a cone in between your hands and giving it a whiff. Mature cones should be plump and begin to dry only slightly. Pick only the cone, leaving behind leaf material. Cones that are brown and slimy are no good. Dry your harvest thoroughly either by air or dry heat. They’re ready to use! Most home grown hops are used for flavor and aroma, as the potency (alpha acid %) is mostly unknown. Enjoy!
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 15
EYE BELIEVE
E
JESSICA 'EVIL' EYE
C
andles are glowing with soft, warm light. The hotel room is full of luxurious pillows. The “Ambassadors of Comfort” were here and missed no pertinent detail. Fight week is extraordinarily intense and draining mentally, emotionally and physically. After months of training, days in the gym and more lean protein than any human should have to consume, a tiny bit of indulgence is all any man or woman would want. After all, the end game is to mentally morph your mindset to beat the living shit out of someone with absolutely no remorse or regard for their well-being.
Fight Eve. After weigh-in, the real preparation begins, the mental prep, the “rituals” that get you into your game. This is where you will observe a scene straight out of a slumber party every chick has ever been to: one girl is sitting on the couch, pounding a jumbo size bag of M&M's while her bestie braids her hair. The monumental difference
16 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
Jessica Eye hasn't just cleared her own path, she’s pioneered it
Sarah Maxwell // Photography: Casey Rearick @caseyrearickphoto between these two events? These are not your typical, bullshit Kim Kardashian pig-tails, these are badass, trademark war braids. These intricate braids are part of a mental preparation that sets everything into motion for the next day. It is time to tighten up everything. It is time to transform mentally and physically from a hometown Cleveland hottie to a warrior renegade. It is time to convert from Jessica Eye to Jessica “Evil” Eye. The Woman Behind the Evil. “Never judge a book by its cover” they say. Fuck that! I judge everything by its damn cover, and you’re lying if you say you don’t as well. Eye could make the toughest badass guy piss his pants and quiver in fear--she literally knocked a bitch’s ear off before--all while enigmatically attracting him. But Eye completely fits the saying, she is not the type of person who wants to be a pull-quote or meaningless headline about muscles, this incredibly tough (physically, mentally and emotionally), but poised woman has something to
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 17
THE BATTLE FOR QUEEN:
Eye vs. McMann
Once upon a time, Eye (UFC ranked #7) trained with friend and Olympic Medalist turned MMA fighter, Sara McMann (ranked #6). They thought it was a great opportunity for the two, in different weight classes, in different divisions, with different strengths and weaknesses, to elevate their games. Eye asked McMann to train with her prior to her 2013 Bellator debut. “I beat the crap out of her every day she was out here training. I blew her knee out. I put her down the one time,” Eye reminisced.
"We are going to ride this ship to the end. We will do it with gold around our waist. We’re going to do it here in Northeast, Ohio."
A few years later, as McMann prepared for her UFC debut, she asked Eye to join her to return the favor as she was facing Sarah Kaufman. Eye obliged and all was well in the MMA world, until two weeks later when Bellator cut Eye, getting rid of their women’s division. The UFC wasted no time and immediately picked her up and Eye was moved up a weight class, putting her directly in competition with McMann. The once seemingly pleasant rapport quickly turned icy when many of Eye's calls and messages lobbed at McMann went unreturned. Eye tried everything to reach McMann, but when she didn't hear back, a feud was born. When McMann ending up dropping the fight against Kauffman, Eye picked it up, making a serious entrance onto the UFC stage by kicking ass. These two will meet again soon when Eye and McMann reunite in the octagon. “So here we are three years later and it looks like we will get to settle it mano y mano in the cage. I guess the way two women should settle it,” Eye said.
say. Refreshingly, her message is about Cleveland and why everyone needs to pay attention to this burgeoning city we all live in (were born in and never left) amongst other empowering adages. When you are from a small town in the Midwest, you do not often hear success stories motivating you to change your entire path and direction. That lack of a clear set role model did not stop Eye from charging down her own path, as she always knew she had more in her. No part of her less than picturesque upbringing and life was going to stand in her way from turning herself into the role model that the city was lacking. Careful though, she refuses to assign that type of moniker to herself. “I am able to give people the ability to find strength in me. There is not male/female diversity anymore. For me to be called a role model, that is something that someone else has to give to me. It is important. I hope they can accept me in my mistakes and my successes and show you that no matter who you are, you can succeed.” To achieve the high-level notoriety and success that Eye has realized quickly and furiously, she has not only had to clear her own path, but pioneer it. She focused solely on her hometown of Cleveland support and was determined to make sure people not only knew her name in fighting, but knew about women fighting. As Eye prepared for her first fight, the organizers handed her a stack of tickets. Most people would look at this as a daunting, meaningless task, but instead she “sold them hand and foot.” Not only did she want to prove herself as a legitimate force to be reckoned with, she also wanted to prove that there was a space for women’s fighting, and it mattered. Her sales pitch was direct and fierce, just like she is: “I’m going to sell you a story that you are never going to hear again. I am Jessica Eye. I want to be a mixed martial artist, you might not have heard of me yet, but maybe if you buy this ticket you will be onto something before anyone else.” Ultimate (Fighting) Squad Goals. Keeping good company and surrounding yourself with a supportive net is important for all the pieces of the puzzle to come together. Beyond the “Ambassadors of Comfort,” Eye’s inner circle has been with her from the beginning. Eye noted that among them there is an immense “sense of togetherness" that "is so heartwarming and you can feel every inch of that.” She has everyone she needs from “Murse,” a friend who literally holds her purse when needed; Marcus Marinelli, her coach; Shannon, her personal braider; and Greg Kalikas, her manager.
More details to follow on PressureLife.com. Eye says that Marinelli is the father she never emotionally had. He took a leap of faith on her. “I earned his respect. It was probably the first time I ever felt I earned a man’s respect. It was one of the more addicting things in my life.” When Eye executes in training and sees how happy it makes her coach it motivates her and pushes her to go harder. The same goes for Kalikas, who has been by her side before she was even a fighter. He stuck by her and gave her a chance. Eye explains, “Stepped onto the mat, he was there. Stepped onto the octagon, he was
18 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
there.” Eye continued that Kalikas told her, “We are going to ride this ship to the end. We will do it with gold around our waist. We’re going to do it here in Northeast, Ohio.” Female Tough, Male Tough. You would expect people (read: bros) to be a bunch of assholes and dismissive about taking a female seriously in such a physically tough sport, but Eye has never truly come up against gender diversity boundaries. Men and women are treated as equals and train right along one another in the gym. You will see men and women fighting and kicking one another’s ass on any given occasion during those long hours training. The media picking up on female driven athletics has helped close any, no matter how small, gender gap that once separated the sexes in athletics. Eye explains, “You are really seeing women outshine men in sports.” EYEBelieve. Eye is no stranger from channeling inner-strength into creating momentum. “Self-belief is a hard thing to have,” she says. In today’s current climate, self-value, worth and belief have plummeted. It is an epidemic of a bunch of people who feel like shit about themselves, mainly because they are told they should. This self-rooted confidence is what moved Eye to create her own clothing line. “I wanted to sell a lifestyle, wanted to sell a belief. It is about more than me. E.Y.E is about self-assurance,” Eye describes. She whipped up a few shirts and they immediately sold out in one night. Her hope was that when people were wearing the motto across their chest, it would help them believe in themselves, help them find their own self-assurance, help them find their own voice and help them move towards their passion the way her self-reliance did for her. “The world needs more of believing in something happy and good out there. It is so easy to get caught up in something negative. We all need to refocus and find that one thing,” Eye elaborates. Eye wants people to feel strong when they wear her shirts, feel proud of themselves and their roots. That is why she continued her foray into fashionable monikers with “Straight Outta Cleveland.” Though obviously a play on "Straight Outta Compton," Eye still owns the rights to the slogan, so I would think twice before trying
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 19
to use it, beyond the obvious that you are legally not able, she could obliterate any of us.
STICKERS!
Shit Talking. When it comes to the entertainment aspect of fighting, throwing shade and calling out your opponent has become part of the game. A lot of competitors will play up the banter to try and sell the fight. Eye’s fans don’t care if she talks shit about the other fighter or not, they want to see her fists. They want to see her destroy someone “Street Fighter” style.
500 VINYL
DIE CUT STICKERS
$
Eye is more of a ball buster than anything else and she doesn’t really play into the Twitter bullshit, “I’m good for a ‘fuck you.’ I’m basic. Who has time for character chasing?” On the other end of the spectrum is fellow fighter Bethe Correia (pronounced Betch), who tends to partake in the social media ribbing.
149
3x3" Custom Shape White Vinyl / Full Color Full Bleed / Liner Prints Available
1000 HIGH QUANTITY
ROLL STICKERS
$
187
500 ULTRA-DURABLE
SCREEN PRINTED DECALS
211
$
3x3" White Vinyl / One Color Yellow and Clear Vinyl Available
Call 216.622.6360 Click jakprints.com
A STICKER ART ANTHOLOGY BY FILMMAKER
ALEXIS DEFORGES IN COLLABORATION WITH
PRESENTED BY
A F I V E E P I S O D E S E R I E S F E AT U R I N G I N T E R V I E W S W I T H
SHEPARD FAIREY / DAVE KINSEY / DB BURKEMAN / CJ RAMONE ABOVE / BIG FOOT / ERIK FOSS / EL TORO / SERGIO VEGA + MORE
M A R C H 2 6 | S T I C K - T O - I T. C O M | Issue 6
Viva Dance
Heriberto Perez and Rebecca Sweet, decided to open the studio there.
Industrial elegance at downtown dance studio Kevin Naughton
Eye had to sack up and swallow her pride to get past this part of her career.
4" Circle White Vinyl / 2 Colors
20 PRESSURELIFE
Celebrating One Year
Eye and Correia were once set to fight on the same bill in Pittsburgh, but Eye had to pull out of the fight. Correia took the opportunity to tell her Twitter followers that Eye pulled out of the fight so she could pursue acting and Hollywood. There was a reason Eye did not move forward with the fight: her team had her back, as they always do, and asked her to pull out of the fight.
Big Girl Panties. Eye is coming off a losing streak, but not just any losing streak: decision losses. Decision losses might be the worst for a fighter to handle since it basically means the referee decides one fighter lost and it is all up to his/her opinion. Eye said she would have rather a KO than have to have the fight left to opinion. She calls those years the hardest years of her life, she has always been a winner and been at the top. If she was not riding high on the top, she wondered if she was doing the right thing with her life by fighting. She begged to get onto the Pittsburgh card to pull herself out of the slump, but her team asked her to trust them and turn it down. OK, Bethe? Eye had to sack up and swallow her pride to get past this part of her career. She needed to fall back in love with her training and dieting. She needed to transform back into the gladiator, until finally she was ready to take on another fight. When she fell back in love with her training and discipline, “the heart she created on the inside started showing on the outside.” This is what makes her dangerous. The Land. This is Home. There is finally hype around our city and Eye wants to bring the UFC home. When the UFC is in town you can feel the energy from the fans, it swarms the city, its builds up the city. “That is what I want to do. I want to build it up when I am back in a contender spot,” Eye says. Eye has no plans of leaving Cleveland, no matter the circumstance and options that come her way. “Cleveland is always with you. You’re home. Your roots always come back to Cleveland. Cleveland is here, Cleveland is home, I won’t leave..ever.”
Amsel first encountered the space while he was exploring the halls outside of Negative Space gallery, where a friend was hosting an open mic night. “I saw these big glass doors that were unlocked, so I walked in and checked it out,” he recalls, “and it was this huge, beautiful place with this amazing view of downtown.” He quickly contacted Perez and Sweet, both of whom were already successful dance instructors, and they too fell in love with the place upon seeing it.
The one-year anniversary party, slated for March 19, is going to be one of the studio’s biggest events yet. In addition their own performers, Viva Dance will showcase dancers from studios across the city. Elevated, the popular Cleveland-based hip hop dance group, are among those scheduled to perform. With open dancing, drinks, and appetizers, the party sounds like it’s not one to miss. If you can't make it, however, worry not: Viva Dance plans on celebrating many more years of being a truly unique and stylish dance studio.
Since overcoming the initial challenging task of building out the space from a vacant, cavernous space to the stylish dance studio it is now, Viva Dance has been holding dance classes with a wide range of styles. “We have instructors for all different styles, whatever you are looking for,” Amsel points out, and you don't have to have a background in dance to join in, either. “We have progressive group classes. All of our level one progressive classes are complete beginner [classes].”
A
good dancer is recognizable in any setting. Whether it’s the star of a big-budget musical or a hungry artist performing on the street, most people instinctively know a talented dancer when they see one. The setting of the performance, however, and what it says in tandem with the music and the choreography, tends to get ignored; it’s a rather puzzling, undeserved snub for such an integral element to the artform.
“We really focus on lead and follow, and not just patterns, so you can go out and dance with anybody and have it work,” Amsel explains. “Some places just focus on patterns and you can really only dance with other people from that type of studio.” That’s handy, because in addition to the classes, Viva Dance regularly hosts parties and performances for dancers of all skill levels. Their popular weekly events have a much different feel than events at other studios: “Most studio parties feel like a dance studio practice session,” Amsel explains. “Well, our parties really feel like you’re no longer at a studio. You’re at a club.”
Bare brick walls and remnants of heavy machinery give the wide, high-ceilinged room a distinctly Cleveland feel.
Not so at the Viva Dance studio. Situated on the top floor of a repurposed factory, the atmosphere is strikingly different from most studios. “A lot of studios are boxes, you know?” observes Parker Amsel, co-owner and dance instructor at Viva Dance Studios. “This studio is—well, I don’t even know how to describe this.” Shani Mayer, a world-renowned Zouk and Kizomba dancer, gave the studio some high praise after a visit: “She said this is the dopest studio she’s ever seen,” beamed Amsel.
“Industrial elegance,” as Amsel whimsically put it, actually describes the space quite nicely. Bare brick walls and remnants of heavy machinery give the wide, high-ceilinged room a distinctly Cleveland feel, not to mention the absolutely stunning view of downtown through a windowed wall that spans an entire section of the studio. The space is truly remarkable and is the main reason Amsel and his co-owners,
West Siders tend to view the East Side as some sort of impenetrable labyrinth that begins as soon as the numbered street signs change from “W.” to “E.” However, located at 1541 E. 38th St. in the Asian Town Center building, the studio is more than easily accessible. “It’s actually not that far to get to, because we’re right off the freeway,” explains Amsel. “You can get here from East, South, West, you know? It’s really easy to get here, actually.” Wherever you’re from and whether or not dancing is your thing, Viva Dance is a stunning location worth seeing for any Clevelander. And if you can somehow manage not to have a good time dancing in a room like that, I'm sure there's something good on television tonight, too.
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 21
(SUPER)
Hometown
HEROES Local filmmakers and comic creators bring their latest creation to page and screen.
Adam Dodd
F
aster than Kenny Lofton, more powerful than a keg of Great Lakes Blackout Stout, able to leap Terminal Tower in a single bound—it’s man, it’s beast, it is Apama! After an ice cream truck driver dons an ancient and talismanic costume he finds in the woods, he unleashes the savage and mysterious powers of the mythic cryptozoological beast, the Apama. What follows is a spirited trial of errors and an engaging coming of age for a hero in training set in our own backyard. With immense prints scaling the window fronts along Superior and Prospect avenues, local writers, Ted Sikora and Milo Miller, introduced this cryptic creation to many downtown commuters after they teamed with South American artist, Benito Gallego, to create the legend of Cleveland’s resident superhero.
We wanted to take what was the best of the old comics, but we felt we had something different to say in the superhero genre.
One does not have to turn many pages in Apama: The Undiscovered Animal, an anthology which collects the first five issues of the comic in a single paperback, to spot the numerous shoutouts to The Land. Whether it’s someone grousing about the “punks on Tremont,” a panel featuring a “stately Rocky River manor,” or a character in the background of a diner lamenting LeBron’s shooting performance, Apama owns its hometown love. “I never wanted this to be a ‘rah-rah Cleveland’ book,” Sikora explained. “I think The Drew Carey Show did that. Cleveland has a brand. There is an authenticity to it. It’s a hard working mentality that is just woven into everything I’ve known growing up.”
22 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 23
PRESSURE PICKS UPCOMING SHOWS TO SEE Hopsin March 26 // Odeon
LUNCH, HAPPY HOUR, DINNER
Meatloaf March 30 // Hardrock Rocksino
Tom Segura March 31 // Hilarities
Steve Byrne April 14 // Hilarities
Surrounding Cities April 15 // Beachland
Sinbad April 15 // Hardrock Rocksino
Platform Concert Series April 16 // Lake Affect Studios
Santigold April 19 // House of Blues
Filter April 22 // Agora
Brian Jonestown Massacre May 4 // Beachland
George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic May 7 // House of Blues
Blue October May 15 // House of Blues
Apama was first conceived in 2001 during the writing of Miller’s and Sikora’s independent film, Hero Tomorrow. Apama was originally the fictional creation of film’s protagonist, also a comic creator. After failing to get his work published, the film’s protagonist assumes his own character’s identity after his girlfriend fashions him a costume. As Sikora explained over the phone, “It’s if like Stan Lee’s girlfriend made him a Spider-Man costume and Stan Lee, in trying to understand his creation, decided to run around as Spider-Man at night and starts fighting crime himself.” Hero Tomorrow was well-received and selected for screening at multiple film festivals including the Cleveland International, Fanstasia, and Montreal. The film’s success would prove the inspiration for Sikora’s next project.
Cleveland has a brand. There is an authenticity to it. It’s a hard working mentality that is just woven into everything I’ve known growing up.
In a very meta moment, Sikora and Miller did in real life what their cinematic counterpart could not when they created the very comic that failed to gain publishing in their film. “We spent so much time thinking about that idea in the film,” Sikora explained, “that we realized there was a lot of layers that we could riff on. We thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do the book that was just in his head, if our main character could have just got his book published?’” After the first volume was well received, it did not take long for Sikora to realize the advantages of keeping his ideas on the page rather than the screen. “We had so much fun making the comic,” he admitted, “as much or more so than the movie, that we just kept going and found the comic book experience to be so liberating because whatever you dream up goes right on the page and you don’t have to worry about budget or location and actors and all the headaches that come with making a movie. This is just a total joy.” Joined in art by Benito Gallego, Sikora made a conscious decision
24 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
to draw a parallel between his works and that of the pulps he read as a child. A trained eye will note the similarities in Apama’s art to that of comic legends like John and Sal Buscema and John Romita. To this end, Sikora was sure to offer credit where it was due during our interview. “What I like about Benito,” he gushed, “is that he is so pure to the story. There’s humor to it and authenticity. People don’t look like fashion models, they look like real folks.” When asked how he balanced honoring the nostalgia that inspired him as a child while still remaining relevant to modern readers, Sikora responded, “We wanted to take what was the best of the old comics, but we felt we had something different to say in the superhero genre. We didn’t want to do something that people had seen before.”
THE PREMIER BISTRO AND WINE BAR Discover the sensational flavors of a seasonally-inspired menu and an international wine list in a casually-sophisticated atmosphere.
BISTRO83.COM
If the evolution from a fictional comic portrayed in the film to an actual comic in our reality had not enough layers to unravel, Sikora and Miller have just begun the process of securing financing for the creation of their next feature film. This one based on the larger-than-life exploits of Apama. For those keeping score at home, that will make Apama a feature film character based on a comic character that is based off a comic that is featured in a movie based on that same comic that never existed in the first place. Still with me? Sikora and Miller are just coming off of a fun and successful residence at Cleveland’s recent Wizard World Comic Convention where they signed copies of their comic and film and hosted a feature panel spotlighting the process of bringing their creations to the silver screen. Currently, they are busy finishing the colors on issue seven of the ongoing Apama comic series, while Gallego works the pencils on issue ten, both of which will be included in the next collection, soon to be released. To get a copy of the film, Hero Tomorrow, or your own edition of Apama: The Undiscovered Animal, which collects the first five issues, visit www.apamanation.com as well as their Facebook page. Check in regularly for updates on the release of the comic’s second collection of issues coming soon and the forthcoming Apama motion picture as well!
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 25
Adam Dodd // Illustrations: Aaron Gelston @gelston.design
T
he old man kept to himself. He said little and was seen less. He had few friends and even fewer possessions. With the doors and windows locked, several days had passed before the overripe stench coming from his apartment became unbearable and the landlord was forced to enter. The old man’s body was face down in the bathroom. His hand still clung to the .38, it shell casing not far apart. A week of decomposition in the dead of summer left the scene a fetid travesty. Responding officer, Joe Truczak, had to wait to enter until gasmasks and respirators arrived. The Eastlake police report cites “thousands of maggots were on and around the body, mostly the head.” With no apparent next of kin to claim the body, the man whose identification read ‘Joseph Newton Chandler,’ was cremated. As Officer Truczak explained over the phone, “For a gentleman who lived that identity for so long there was no reason at the initial point in the investigation to feel that he was anybody, but Joseph Newton Chandler.” The original case report ends with, “…apparent cause is suicide. Case closed.” …Until it wasn’t.
The Curious Case of the
UNKNOWN MAN
“A guy needs somebody to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don’t make no difference who the guy is, as long’s he’s with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick." John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
26 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
It was not long before peculiarities began appearing in the case. When police interviewed Mike Onderisin, an estranged co-worker that Chandler listed executor of his will, he remembered Chandler as a man of distinct peculiarities. An electrical savant, Chandler fashioned headphones that broadcast white noise to drown out the rest of the world and breaker boxes that changed the channel anytime commercials ran. The man had lived in the same one bedroom apartment since 1986 and yet had next to no possessions. “Very mundane,” Truczak remembered, “very few personal items in the residence. Hanging in the closet he had very few articles of clothing. It’s almost like someone barely lived there.” Onderisin, like the rest of the world, assumed Chandler to be little more than a queer old man, whose only crime was a painfully isolated existence. It was not until a cursory search into his social security number revealed that his alleged identity traced back to an eight-year-old boy who died in a Tulsa, Oklahoma car crash on Christmas Eve, 1945. The man who committed suicide in 2002 was an imposter and had been living under the lie since he relocated to Cleveland in 1979.
trail. He paid for everything in cash. He kept to himself and made little associations from the day he materialized in Cleveland in 1979, seemingly from nowhere, until the day he ended his life. Aside from a partial lifted from an ashtray, no prints were recovered from the scene or the body, which had been cremated shortly after its discovery without taking DNA evidence or performing an autopsy.
It was not until a cursory search into his social security number revealed that his alleged identity traced back to an eightyear-old boy...
“He could be anybody,” explained US Marshal, Peter Elliott, when I met with him at his downtown office. “People that assume other people’s names and live covertly for a number of years under that name and went through all the cautions he did are usually someone on the run.” Elliott added, “I think when it’s all said and done its going to be someone who’s been on the run for something significant.” Whoever the man was, he was careful not to leave a
By the time local police realized the simple suicide was anything but, any potential evidence had been lost or damaged. This includes the murder weapon that, “due to condition and manner in which weapon was stored, any fingerprint evidence would have been destroyed,” according to an Eastlake police report. John Doe had a home computer, which, as stated in the same police report, “was accidentally dropped, broken, and discarded when property was being moved.” Elliott lamented, “The computer was lost which would have been great for us. We would have been able to find some stuff on that.” Reluctantly, Elliott considered, “If they would have thought he was someone else I think they would have put more effort into trying to find more fingerprints.” Officer Truczac shares Elliott’s concerns, sharing, “If there would have been questions regarding his identity then there would have been more done at the initial point.” Two years after his death, Onderisin grew impatient and filed an official complaint with Eastlake Police Department in order to determine any of John Doe’s potential heirs. Lieutenant Tom Doyle’s formal response read in part, “This investigation has consumed many, many man-hours, but is noncriminal in nature.
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 27
fabricate a past so geographically tied to the one you’re attempting to escape, that is, unless you’re modeling your life as a different Joseph Chandler all together. Stay with me, because here’s where we go down the rabbit hole…
Although we desire to provide closure to some family’s mystery and to return property to family members nothing is occurring, nor is anything anticipated with this case.” His explanation was similar when we talked, “I was making a case to the judge that we don’t have any standing in this case, the city of Eastlake. It’s taken up lots of time and it’s going nowhere and it’s a civil matter. It doesn’t involve us. It doesn’t even have an allegation of a crime. I can’t speak for the Chief of Police, but I know that there is no interest in it. They don’t have the time or interest to pursue something that is just a great curiosity.”
Born in 1950, there was a third Chandler, a Joseph Nelson Chandler living in San Rafael, California at the same times as the Zodiac murders. (For clarity’s sake, we will refer to this third man as “Nelson” for the rest of the article.) While Nelson is innocent of any such crimes, Zodiac and/or John Doe may have been someone he worked with or lived near. Consider that after crossing the San Rafael Bridge into the rest of California on the I-580, San Rafael commuters enter California proper on the I-80. This inevitable stretch of freeway for anyone living in San Raphael either leads or links to Vallejo, Bencia, Napa, and at its furthest, Modesto, all sites of Zodiac’s murders. One of the maps the Zodiac mailed to police, known loosely as the “Mt. Diablo map” was a road atlas map of the San Francisco Bay, which, he alleged, led to one of his victims. No bodies were recovered, but we now know the Zodiac used road maps prominently featuring San Raphael and the nearby freeways that linked from there to his crimes. Our John Doe’s alleged work history also sees his employment near another two California crime scenes of Zodiac’s, Lompac and Riverside, during the very stretch of time.
Perhaps most sensational is the possibility he and the Zodiac Killer, the serial killer who stalked southern California in the late sixties to the early seventies, are one in the same.
Since the mystery began, there has been no shortage of theories. Perhaps most sensational is the possibility he and the Zodiac Killer, the serial killer who stalked southern California in the late sixties to the early seventies, are one in the same. As unlikely as it may seem, when I asked Marshal Elliott if he ruled out the potential, his answer was immediate and without reproach, “No, not at all. We have not ruled anything out, including that.” A photo of John Doe, with his physical appearance regressed to how he would have appeared in the late seventies, finds striking similarities to the infamous police sketch of the Zodiac Killer. The two share similar glasses, male pattern baldness, knobbed chins and the same distinct bent bridge to their noses. At five foot seven inches, John Doe was distinctively shorter than an average man. Nearly every report given to police had Zodiac at the same height. Elliott mentioned during our meeting, “What’s going to rule out a lot of people is their height.”
Mia Marcum, the Ohio director for the Doe Network, which works to identify unknown persons, said as much when she wrote to the Eastlake police while they were still investigating. Although much of what John Doe claims has to be considered dubious at best, Marcum drew light to his listed previous work experience which places him in California at the same time as the Zodiac. Even if his work history was fabricated, it would seem counter-intuitive to
28 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
After reviewing what straws I could grasp, a theory emerged. After fleeing California, the Zodiac and/or our John Doe would be looking for an alias. The Tulsa crash of 1945, which was featured in several papers, would have drawn his attention. It was common for children in rural areas at the time not to be automatically registered with social security. The child’s death would leave John Doe with an opportunity to exploit. But more importantly, the boy shared the same name as another man in the area, his possible acquaintance, Joseph Nelson Chandler. Was this a means to hide in plain sight? Any superficial look into his connection to California in the late 1960s would only become muddied when invariably confused with Joseph Nelson Chandler from San Rafael. It should be noted, if even circumstantially, Nelson and the child also shared their name with the lead investigator who failed to apprehend the Zodiac’s personal hero, Jack the Ripper. Ripper was favored by the Zodiac and even mentioned in his notes. Additionally, a non-existent emergency contact given by John Doe, “Mary Wilson," also shares her name with another English serial killer of the same era. The odds would be too great to pass up for a mind as bent on patterns and riddles as the Zodiac’s.
What we do know as fact is that John Doe made his first known appearance under his new alias while requesting a “copy” of his birth
certificate (that of the actual Joseph Newton Chandler) to be mailed to a dilapidated shack in Rapid City, South Dakota in 1978. There, he then used the fraudulent certificate to obtain a social security card. The Rapid City Journal has local Detective Tom Senesac looking back in retrospect, “The fact that a forty-one year old man was requesting a social security card should have sent up a red flag at the time." A year later, John Doe settled in Cleveland and lived the rest of his life in obscurity until he ended it all on June 24, 2002. Curiously, eight years earlier, on the same day John Doe would commit suicide, Nelson died unexpectedly at age 44 in 1994. This is the same year our John Doe stops receiving social security benefits after switching his work to that of a contracted employee. Was this done in fear of drawing attention to a social security account which would have had the actual benefit contributions of one man (John Doe), the listed work history of another (Nelson), and the registered numbers of a dead child (Tulsa Boy)? Elliott informed me that in 1994, John Doe told his friend, Bob Onderisin, that unspecified people “were closing in on him” and that he would have to “lay low for a while." There is a period of time during that year that, to this day, is unaccounted for in his records. Eight years later, on the very anniversary that Nelson died, our John Doe locks the doors to his apartment and eats the barrel of a .38. Was the date significant to him? Had the years alone and the recent diagnosis of advanced rectal cancer left him looking at the date as an enviable swansong to exit on? Is that why the day after is blacked out with an “X” on the calendar found in the apartment, as if he knew that the 24th held an inescapable terminus fated for both men? Was the parallel one last riddle for the Zodiac to leave behind, a symbolic tip of the hat to the man who’s life he adopted for so many years? I relayed the theory to Marshall Elliott. “It has me looking at certain things in a new light,” he offered. His answer was non-committal, but better than the tinfoil hat for which I assumed I’d be fitted. After a subsequent search, Elliott could not confirm John Doe’s alleged California work history and conceded that particular Zodiac angle would need more conclusive evidence to move forward. Even still, he encouraged me not to give up the ghost. “I have something else I want you to look into,” he suggested. “There were some unsolved murders in East Liverpool in the seventies that might be interesting to the case.”
To be continued... Look out for part two of The Curious Case of the Unknown Man in Issue 7 of PressureLife.
Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 29
PRESSURE Music Reviews Alex Bieler
99¢
Santigold, Atlantic
THE DYNGUS AMONG US
One of the world's oldest and oddest holidays is near and dear to Cleveland's heart.
It’s hard not to dance when you listen to Santigold. That’s a particularly impressive statement from me, a rather large man whose chosen form of movement at a concert is what I call the “restless leg syndrome foot bounce.” Still, I couldn’t help but (awkwardly) sway and bop to the beats on the Philadelphia-bred musician’s latest album 99¢. Apart from a couple of tracks, the vibe of the album is sunny, bouncy, and just plain fun, so when she sings, “Rip it up, I’m having a good time,” you can’t blame her. Santigold alternates between ‘80s synthpop goodness on “Rendezvous Girl” to the rock-pop jam of closing track “Who I Thought You Were.” Even when the album’s sonic sugar rush slows down, there are treats to be had, as “Run the Races” is a lovely comedown after several bangers. If you’re looking for a good time, you’ll certainly get your money’s worth with 99¢.
4/5 Heaven Adores You Soundtrack,
Dan Bernardi // Illustrations: Brandon Lee Wise @brandon_lee_wise_art
B
Elliott Smith, Universal
uried away on your calendar is a little holiday called Śmigus-Dyngus, taking place annually on the Monday after Easter. Originally the day was observed in Poland with a series of absurd rituals in honor of Easter and the end of Lent, but after a heavy influx of Polish immigrants to America, the revelry was imported, toned down a bit, and given the half as silly name of Dyngus Day. Six years running, Cleveland is hosting a massive Dyngus celebration, so if your St. Patty's hangover has finally worn off, this is another great time to party- Polish-style. This year, I propose we do this Dyngus right and resurrect a few of those retired traditions alongside the new ones. Better bring a towel.
Each year Cleveland coronates one special local Polish lady with the title of Miss Dyngus. If you can make a pierogi, dance the polka, and know how to fashionably sport a babushka, you've got a fighting shot at that Kielbasa Crown and sash. In the past, however, Polish girls got less-than-royal treatment on Śmigus-Dyngus, which translates to “Wet Monday.” The guys would find a girl they fancy and affectionately dump a bucket of water on her head. Girls could retaliate with water and crockery (yes, they threw plates), or offer the boys painted eggs to avoid a drenching. Bring back the splash this year, and when your crush figures out why you drenched them on a cold spring day, they may be smitten by your amorous gesture. And if they're clearly not into you at that point, just claim it was for ALS.
WET MONDAY
Super soaking the object of your affection isn't the only way to participate in the more romantic side of Dyngus Day. In fact, it used to be much more violent than that. Boys would take pussy willow branches and whip the legs of their love interests, occasionally with no warning, and girls would strike back the next day. In 2016 the tradition has not fallen by the wayside, so bring the pussy willows: equal lashings for all. And when you're done, don't throw out the branch. Blessed pussy willows were once considered good luck charms, granting their bearers health and prosperity. Some even claimed they had supernatural abilities, such as preventing lightning strikes. Unfortunately in this case, they do not prevent the sting of a good leg whipping.
WIND IN THE WILLOWS
30 PRESSURELIFE
| Issue 6
One of the highlights of the modern Dyngus Day is a colorful parade that marches down Detroit Avenue, showcasing beautiful Polish garb, polka, and piwo. If you haven't tried piwo, you'll love it. It's beer. But at the dawn of Dyngus, the parade was a totally different beast. A procession of noisy boys would frolic through town, using a live bird's squawks to announce their presence. One lucky bro would dress like a bear wearing a bell on his head, trolling for gifts from the townspeople, before he was ceremoniously dunked in a nearby pond. This year, it may be a perfect excuse to hit the streets with your friends and cause a ruckus in the city. If the neighbors don't reciprocate with food and presents, you can shame them for being culturally insensitive.
I LOVE A PARADE
In the olden days, songs were sung to accompany many of these wild traditions. As a more poetic departure from the aforementioned holiday abuse, the boys would also take to the rooftops and speak in verse to declare their intentions for the day, while girls would rebut in verse in an attempt to shoo their pursuers. I picture it like a hostile version of Grease, only with more sauerkraut. While it would be quite the change of pace, if you're not up for conversing in iambic pentameter this holiday, join the revolution and hop on the polka bandwagon. Any seasoned vet will tell you that on Dyngus Day, one polka dance is mandatory, and after a little more piwo, you may actually enjoy the upbeat rhythm of that blaring accordion you usually hate. As they say, “Everyone's Polish on Dyngus Day!”
EVERYONE'S POLISH
It’s been over a decade since Elliott Smith died, but a new collection of music is trying to help people get a new look into the life of the influential musician. The soundtrack for Nickolas Rossi’s documentary Heaven Adores You features several alternative takes on some of Smith’s memorable tracks, as well as a couple of private recordings provided by family and friends of the late singer/songwriter. Tracks like “Hamburgers,” “Don’t Call Me Billy,” and closer “I Love My Room” show off a goofier side to the man known for “Miss Misery,” making for an intimate experience with a man that we’ll never really get to truly know. Even if you haven’t seen the documentary, this soundtrack is a must for Elliott Smith diehards and an intriguing new perspective for those who are only familiar with the idea of Smith as a moody singer/songwriter.
4/5 Painting With,
Animal Collective, Domino There’s plenty of the usual weirdness on display on Painting With, something that’s pretty apparent from the start thanks to album opener “FloriDada.” The track bounces around with gleeful abandon, propelled forward by a million little details combined into a bed of whirrs, thumps, and robotic noises. “FloriDada” sets the tone for the album, a weirdly catchy combination of elements that come across as playful. Tracks from Painting With aren’t going to carry the same weight as previous tracks like “My Girls,” a song that rightfully earned the band plenty of fans. Instead of a steady, shimmering buildup, these tracks are wobbly numbers that feel patched together, which isn’t always a bad thing. When the formula works, it comes across as a fascinatingly odd construction. When it doesn’t work, it’s just odd. At the very least, it’s an interesting ride.
3.5 /5 Issue 6
| PRESSURELIFE.com 31