Cleveland Vintage Blog

It's the joke everyone likes to make about Cleveland.  "Hey, remember when the river caught on fire?" To which you can respond, "You'll have to be more specific, because it happened a whole bunch of times."  In the 1960s, the Cuyahoga River actually caught fire more than a dozen times, as it had long been a dumping ground for sewage and industrial waste from the city's manufacturing companies. And while river fires weren't all that newsworthy to Clevelanders by the end of the decade, the blaze on June 22, 1969 (capping off a tumultuous decade that only led to a new one...

Raise your hand if you ever spent a Friday night at home growing up in Cleveland watching either The Hoolihan and Big Chuck Show, or what it evolved into: Big Chuck and Lil' John. Just what I thought - almost everyone. That said, in addition to looking forward to the awful movies they would put forward, we would also look forward to the hilarious skits at commercial breaks. Some were one-offs, new each week, while others were recurring characters or events. One that comes to mind is Cleveland’s pizza-eating champion, “Mushmouth” Mariano Pacetti. The “Pizza Fight” was a weekly event on the show, and...

Cleveland was once known as "Bomb City, USA" for a reason - and it wasn't just regulated to the ongoing mob wars going on in the city. On April 26, 1971, even the Hanna Theatre downtown fell victim to a bomb attack. To protest the production of the play Hair - a rock musical that featured plenty of drug use, nudity, sexuality, and obscene language - someone threw a bomb out of their car, which bounced off the theater's marquee and exploded at the curb. It would blow out more than 40 windows in the Hanna Building, causing some minor damage to...

April 15th, 1912 is a date forever attached to one of the world’s greatest tragedies, the sinking of the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. The dreams for many of the 2,229 souls on board included high hopes for new beginnings in cities all over a new country. Sadly, over time, their tales aboard Titanic’s first and only voyage began to fade with time, but it took a major Hollywood event to change all that and bring the stories back to the front pages. Without a doubt, James Cameron’s hugely successful 1997 film Titanic...

Did you know the city of Cleveland has its own flag? That's right, that flag you see around town, flying next to the United States flag and Ohio state flag at Progressive Field, is the official flag for Cleveland. Major cities all around the United States feature their own flags, though most cities don't do nearly enough with them. And judging by the unique designs of these city flags around the country, it sure seems like Cleveland's flag could be due for an upgrade. But first, let's look at the history of the Cleveland city flag. The Design of Cleveland's...