Imagine a business making flowers into necklaces -

When you go to Hawaii and you leave the airport in Honolulu, make certain your first stop are the lei stands right next door to the airport (photo) whose location and history is described here.

Here is a sample of a one-of-a-kind hand painted sign.   As I travel I am recording these bits of Americana. 

Realneo doesn't announce births everyday, so flowers are in order. 

The community offers our best wishes to Evelyn, Claus, Norm, and Max

March 08, 2008... the Blizzard of 2008! Nothing is more REALNEO... more Cleveland+... more believe in Cleveland than a blizzard. There's not a cop on the street, yet nobody gets robbed. People are pushing strangers around, but only to get their cars out of the snow.  For REALNEO kids, it can't get cold and deep enough. REALNEO adults smile to remember being REALNEO kids. Blizzards set REALNEO apart.

  This is a montage of the persons at the Planning Commission meeting on March 7, 2008 while they were listening to Adam Wasserman, from the Port of Cleveland, proposing a new 200 acre dredge muck port facility off East 55 th Street which might be ready in 20 years.

When I asked one of the Obama volunteers at my ward campaign headquarters how she thought Obama would do in our poor, urban, distressed part of town, she said she was the first African American to move to East Cleveland, and she knows everyone there, and they will all vote for Obama... and then I realized it was Mrs. Jones.

These snowdrops were out in bud form on the 24th of February in Cleveland,Ohio, and are now open in the 65 degree southerly breezes on March 3, 2008.

Michael Chattem, Semen is Thicker Than Blood. Blood, ink, marker

One of the greatest times when the Cleveland School May Show is the Cleveland Institute of Art’s Annual Student Independent Exhibition, now in its 62 year. Drawing from a huge, diverse body of work in every imaginable media and medium - this year, including semen?! - from an awesome pool of talent, connected by a world-class arts college, in a great arts community, the SIE always delivers an inspiring, mind-expanding experience of genius.

Jessica Jurca, Reliquary to the Brontosaurus. Enamel on Copper, pine.

This image is on the remains of a building wall behind a car wash on Euclid in East Cleveland, Ohio, just east of Noble Road.

This is an image of "The Rock" - Alcatraz Island in San Fransisco's harbor

How to upload an image for the RealNEO header -- without using a blog post:

To help "Cleveland School" Neon Artist Extraordinair Dana Paterson celebrate, show-off and profit from his cover story feature in the Free Times newspaper, this week, the Inner Circle will feature an exhibit of Dana's recent and past work, with installation beginning this Friday, February 8, 2008, when you may meet the artist, from 4-7 PM... the exhibition will have a formal opening next Friday, Fenruary 15th, from 6-9 PM, and will remain on display through the end of the month.

Location

I spoke with the auto wrecker which is just under the bridge from the free wall today.  He isn't happy with the graffiti workers because when the graffiti is on the junk yard fence, the city inspectors make the junk yard paint over the graffiti. 

So, please, put the graffiti on the bridge abuttments, not on the private junk yard fence!

The Cleveland Institute of Art is extraordinarily important to Northeast Ohio and the world for the great artists and designers educated there, and for the great artists and designers who are the educators, and staff. Each year, the work of the diverse CIA faculty is showcased in an exhibition not to be missed... the reception for 2007 was last Friday, December 7, and a great event, as always... perhaps the last ever in the historic Gund Building Reinberger Gallery space, as the CIA moves in total to Euclid Avenue.

As part of the Star Neighborhood Development planning for the Star Complex and surrounding one mile radius, I have been planning the redevelopment of the current Cleveland Institute of Art Gund Building and land, on East Boulevard in Cleveland, shown below (full size image here).

Chef Jonathon Sawyer's blog says "!!!Due to the Overwhelming Response!!!"... and I saw that first hand, last week...  COOK CHEFIN' w/ Kids @ Bar Cento is now a weekly occassion for families to get together at the very cool Bar Centro, being the left side of the Bier Market, 1948 W. 25th Street, from 4.30pm-8.pm, for the kids (and adults) to make their own gourmet pizzas... Bar Cento provides a great spread of organic, fresh toppings and has fresh dough spread out to go. We took our son Claes last week and we all had such fun, and made the best pizza in town, so we're going back tonight and will be regulars... scene is today's header of the day, full size here).

Location

I wanted to enjoy and capture a last glimpse of Fall 2007 so stopped by the second most important battleground in the history of the environmental movement in NEO, after Whiskey Island, being the Shaker Lakes Nature Center, above (see full size here). Were it not for 11 exceptional women from Shaker, including REALNEOan Martha Eakin's mother, a seriously crude, corrupt, foolish Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairman, former Cuyahoga County Engineer Albert Porter, would have driven freeways through this exact spot in the Shaker Lakes. The scenario is very much like we have in NEO today, with seriously crude, corrupt, foolish political bosses attempting to do seriously crude, corrupt, foolish things to our region, like demolishing the Breuer, over-bridging and retrenching I-90, and likely the "Opportunity Corridor", which is driving far more than 11 exceptional women to take on the latest generation of seriously crude, corrupt, foolish leaders... and, like the Shaker 11, we are winning.

Rockefeller / MLK Drive is as beautiful a place to enjoy nature - these days, fall colors - as any place on Earth that has been touched by man.  As I've been thinking about the Native Americans of this land, and Indians of India and America, and the current hostility in this county of past invaders against all others who want to live here too, I was drawn to the Indian Cultural Garden, today, and it was spectacular (full size image here).

I stood there alone, in one of the world's most beautiful places, as commuting suburbanites whizzzed by, and I thought of the last photos I took near here, of the demolition of historic apartment buildings on East Boulevard, that were part of this park's historic fabric and culture, quietly demolished for parking lots, for the whizzzzzing commuters (Full size images: above and below).

It is interesting to reflect on "Cleveland" as a "shrinking city", with 100,000s in declining population, 10,000s of abandoned residential, commercial and industrial lots and buildings covering 1,000s of acres of land, and a failing tax base. Simply put, much of Cleveland is free to the taking, and taxpayers will even pay to get taken by their leaders - the land that is being freed up in this latest Savings and Loan "crisis" is worth $ billions and is being given to the friends of politicians for long term speculation and short term enrichment... what is bad for the poor is very good for the rich, who can buy low (can't beat free, with public subsidy). I'd say all this foreclosure hoopla is as fraudulent as was the housing bubble itself, being pure voodoo economic bullshit media spin to steal from the poor and give to the rich - the "Developed Nations" way and a NEO leadership specialty. I'd like to propose a completely different spin on dealing with our shrinking city crises, which is to give back to the Native Americans what we stole from them in the first place, since we destroyed it and supposedly it is now a burden to we settlers in our cowardly New World.

Driving back and forth between Ohio City and East Cleveland, I often take Euclid... partly to watch the progress of the "Silver Line" and Clinic Complex development. I increasingly find the "Silver Line" and Mid-Town aspects of all this disappointing, but I am fascinated by what I see coming together with the Cleveland Clinic.

The last two realneo headers are pans of a site I pass often, on my way between the East and West sides, which is bounded by East 105, Wade Park and East Boulevard, in one of the most important historic and cultural neighborhoods in America, where I was shocked to find a group of significant apartment buildings being demolished.