Since I have more or less become a research fiend for the past several days, and I am required to write three posts a week and have failed to do as instructed, I shall register here three days worth of blog-posts! It will be positively thrilling, I assure you.
I didn't leave on project until Tuesday because I was making final edits on my senior thesis of gargantuan, world-ending proportions. But once Tuesday came around, I was a well on my way to learning about Cleveland neighborhoods.
I suppose I should break away from the main storyline to describe to you all what exactly I am doing. I am working with the Western Reserve Historical Society on building oral histories of Cleveland neighborhoods. The end product as far as WRHS is concerned is to create a comprehensive historical program for senior citizens who can bask in the glow of yesteryear. It's really great because I get to learn about Cleveland and talk to oldtimers about what the city was like, and I get to help preserve their stories for posterity.
At the moment, I'm focusing on the Coventry Road and Forest Hill neighborhoods. The contrast is fascinating - I've zeroed in on the early 1960s in both areas. Coventry was home to the Hell's Angels and an alternative vision for America. Forest Hill, on the other hand, was a bulwark for those who believed in a suburban dreamland à la Revolutionary Road. This comparison, I hope, will distill two disparate cultures existing at odds with each other during the same time-period, and that this will derive some sort of exciting new conclusion about the American urban landscape at large.
Back to the story, I sifted through my mother's dissertation for her master's degree in historic preservation. She researched the business district of Coventry Road throughout the past several decades, and I collected lots of interesting information about the cultural shift of the neighborhood through the swift change in storefronts over the years. For example, in the 1940s (when the Beat Generation that would inspire everything that the 1960s stood for), there were Jewish pharmacies and Delis up and down the street. It was a stereotypical business set-up for a city like Cleveland with a significant Jewish population. But then, by the 1970s, famous restaurants like Tommy's moved into town and the hippie ethos of the neighborhood was set for all of eternity. I don't wish to wax ad nauseum about the brisk transformation of the neighborhood, but this is just a sample of what I have discovered.
I spent a good deal of time Wednesday reading various scholarly documents I discovered via Hawken databases such as JSTOR and the historical newspaper database. My goal was to collect basic information about cultural trends in the 1940s and onward. I learned about the peace movements during Vietnam, the drug-craze of the Beat folks, and I read Jack Kerouack's On The Road, the ultimate defining moment of that generation, a zeitgeist for droves of lost souls who grew tired of the wasted American Dream.
I worked all day at the Gries Center on Thursday, and it was just splendid! It was the first time that I had been there and I was thoroughly impressed with the building. Though I ended up with a terrible sunburn from the light streaming through the sunlight on the second floor. I spent the afternoon after normal school hours on Coventry, trying to piece together I sort of introductory chapter in order to set the scene for the research that I would elucidate further in proceeding chapters. I certainly had a quintessential Coventry experience - I met a nice gentleman in the road who either tried to sell me ecstasy or asked me for money with which to procure it (I could barely understand his husky growl). Whichever it was, I only had a dollar and thus could not assist him in his grand pursuit of kicks like Dean Moriarty. It was fascinating just looking at people - there were your hipsters, then the polo-sporting Chagrin explorers who decided to venture into the so-called "ghetto." It made me think about how both groups evolved out of a single social experiment that originated in the neighborhood.
On Friday, I had to devote time to developing this year's Calliope, but I hope to recoup time this weekend and coordinate with friends at the Cleveland Heights Historical Society and Heights City Hall to check out their demographic data. I also plan on taking photos to add some color to my dreary pages of documentation if the weather permits. I would say that project is going smashingly.
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