Cleveland Vintage Blog — Culture

The Musicarnival is one of the many long-gone Cleveland rock institutions, a summer tent theater that operated on the grounds of Thistledown Race Track from 1954 to 1975. All types of major rock acts would make their way through the Musicarnival, including Led Zeppelin on one particularly big night for the world. Now, if you're a fan of rock and roll history or Cleveland music history in general I would highly recommend Smoky, Sweaty, Rowdy and Loud: Tales of Cleveland's Legendary Rock & Roll Landmarks by Mike and Janice Olszewski. It's a fantastic, in-depth history of Cleveland's rock and roll scene...

Nestled away on a Mount Washington sidewalk in Pittsburgh at the top of the Monongahela Incline, in front of the Engine 27 firehouse at the corner of Virginia and Shiloh, a true 90s relic thrives. It's the infamous Phantom Menace vending machine.  You might remember the massive Pepsi tie-in with 1999's Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. With 24 different character cans, a wide variety of promotional items, and commercials featuring the Marfalump character, Pepsi's presence in the build up to The Phantom Menace was inescapable (along with the billions of other product tie-ins).  This, of course, also...

Like any region in the United States, the people of the Midwest have their own language, a subset of slang and sayings that tell anybody, "Oh yeah, this person's definitely from the Midwest." Here is a look at 50+ of those phrases and sayings you might find while traversing around the Midwest. Getting a Midwesterner Excited If you rile up a Midwesterner one way or another, you're liable to hear one of these phrases: Ope! Uff da! For cryin' out loud Cheese and rice / Cheese and mice Oh, for cute! / Oh for fun!  Heavens to Betsy! / Jeez...

The time was the 1820s, when a terrible potato famine struck Ireland and the Irish population in Cleveland began to grow significantly, with many making the area surrounding the Cuyahoga River home. By no means was the initial surge to Cleveland overwhelming, with the numbers of Irish immigrants settling at around 500 by 1826, which led to the establishment of the first Catholic priest to serve the growing Irish population. The overall push to Cleveland of Irish families because of the Great Famine back home continued into the 1840s, with overall numbers swelling to well over 8,000 by the 1930s....

Whether you're begging for aliens to finally pay you a visit and take you with them or you're petrified at the thought of being abducted, you now have some odds to consider. A recent report analyzed more than 4,000 abduction reports in Ohio ranging from 2019 to 2024, which means that Ohioans have about a one in 89 chance of reporting an alien abduction (this boils down to one alien abduction for every 11,300 residents; Ohio has about 12 million people total).  Those figures put Ohio right in the middle of the pack in terms of states with the most...