[amykenny-thespec]

Doing some reading on Youngstown and enjoying this 50s-era depiction of industry, published as part of a book celebrating Ohio’s sesquicentennial.

Finished cars and kettles just spill from a mill that looks like Oz!

I think some artistic license was taken with the narrative here.

[amykenny-thespec]

All the rest stops in Pennsylvania seem to have carving of bears. Last day of our Steel Tracks tour. Headed back to Phillipsburg, NJ, to pick up my car that blew head gasket last Thursday. Hyundai dealership there has been great getting it fixed.

[amykenny-thespec]

This is the new Heinen’s Grocery Store at 900 Euclid Avenue.

It opened in February.

The building used to house the Cleveland Trust Company until it closed.

Now it is the only grocery store right in the core of the city.

The core is growing.  As fast a formerly vacant buildings can be renovated to lofts or condos, they are being snapped up.

All those people, an especially increasingly young crowd, need food.

[amykenny-thespec]

?Joe Yachanin, a marketing and public relations specialist with the Cleveland Metroparks, offered to show us a bit of the city from the vantage point of Tremont, a neighborhood that sits above the AcelorMittal plant here.

Once a neighborhood of worker homes, the place has been gentrified now.

That him point out some of the city scape to Amy.

[amykenny-thespec]

Day ten - Cleveland

Last day. You ready to do this? Me neither. We’ll get through it together though.

We started the day with breakfast at Jack Flap’s which is mostly waffles. On the way there we passed a hot dog cart and I almost made a joke about how gross it woud be to have hot dogs for breakfast. Little did I know that's what I’d be having - a waffle covered with cream cheese, garlic greens and a chopped-up, all-beef hot dog.

I will confess to having expected the hot dog part of this meal to be a little more chi chi than a straight-up wiener because of the price and the atmosphere of the place (maybe a "deconstructed hot dog" that was actually chunks of steak, for example) so I was surprised by what was served, but I still ate it and you know what? I'd do it again.

From there we spent most of the day driving around and taking pictures.

Though it had nothing to do with steel, we visited Heinen's  - a grocery store on Euclid that's located in a former bank in the Cleveland Trust Building. It. Is. Beautiful. A gorgeous rotunda serves as a lunch counter and cafe, a second floor offers wine and beer sales and tastings, and an adjacent grocery store has everything else. You can read more about it here and then please install something similar in Hamilton in time for me to buy groceries this Sunday, thanks: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/02/heinens_opens_downtown_superma.html

After that we went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for some shots of the waterfront where ships used to unload. One of these was the William G. Mather, which is still there. The boat houses a museum these days, but at one time it was a bulk freighter that carried ore, coal, stone, and grain around the Great Lakes. The steel mills of Cleveland were a standard stop on its route. Sadly we couldn't go in because it's closed right now, but we had plenty of other stops to make.

One of these was Arcelor Mittal. If you want to spin by their property, you can. Independence Drive winds through the middle of the grounds and it's wild to be able to drive back and forth and see the facilities steam and grind around you.

Our most fruitful stop of the day was thanks to Positively Cleveland. The city’s tourism arm put us in touch with Joe Yachanin at Cleveland Metroparks. He was good enough to open up the Steel Museum down at Steelyard Commons (it's usually only open in summer) and arrange for an interpreter to spend a couple hours talking to us about the city and its industry.

Afterwards, Joe took us up to a lookout in the Tremont neighbourhood where we could get a view of the entire city and the Cuyahoga River. No sooner had he finished saying he wished we could see a freighter navigate the channel than a freighter swung into view and navigated the channel. I don't want to say it seemed like a set-up, but I'M ON TO YOU, CLEVELAND.

We also drove out to see the massive campus of the Cleveland Clinic, a huge academic medical centre with a campus that’s like a city of its own, before grabbing dinner in Cleveland Heights.

Now I know this isn't a competition, but Cleveland wins. At least as far as food goes. It has been outstanding, even if there was a direct correlation between the awesomeness of the meal and the idiosyncrasy of the server. For instance, I don't think I have ever been bowed to as much in my life (in fact maybe only once before, at Disneyworld, near Cinderella’s castle) as I was tonight at Vero, Cleveland’s answer to Bread Bar. The server all but ended each interaction with "your grace" which made me want to tell him “kid, stand up and save it for someone who didn't eat a hot dog for breakfast.”

So. That was it. Ten days of steel. People in every city we've visited have been incredible. Generous with their time and stories and tours. I wish we could keep going, but John's got to go win photojournalist of the year at the Ontario Newspaper Awards and I've got to start transcribing interviews.

Thanks for reading and tweeting and sending emails. This story should publish sometime near the end of May, but I'll keep you up-to-date on twitter @amyatthespec

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have something in my eye...

[amykenny-thespec]

Not sure what was quite so important from her car that she had to run across Eucild Street in the middle of getting her hair done.

[amykenny-thespec]

Harry Hall struck up a conversation with me while I was shooting the line up for Green Day.

Said he’d been working towards being a doctor.  Had his PhD.

Then he’d gone into construction.

We did not get much farther than that.  Someone who knew him came along an offered to buy him a sandwich.  He was agreeable to that and off they went.

[amykenny-thespec]

It’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction weekend here in Cleveland.

Today people were lined up on Euclid Avenue avenue to get into tonight’s Green Day show at the House of Blues.  Everyone had tickets but it’s first come first serve jockeying for position in the room.  No seats.

Some had been there since the night before.

The induction ceremony is held in Cleveland, where the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is located, every three years.

[amykenny-thespec]

Garbage cans on Euclid Street in downtown Cleveland apparently have some hidden messages.

[amykenny-thespec]

Floor in consumer train station on 9th Ave. Cleveland

[amykenny-thespec]

Interesting installation in Willard Park Cleveland.

[amykenny-thespec]

Breakfast at Jack Flaps on Lorain in Cleveland. That's a Fat Elvis top and Happy Jack Waffle bottom.

[amykenny-thespec]

Stumbled across Joe Hiesman's birth place on Bridge Street in Cleveland on our way to lunch.

[amykenny-thespec]

In a trendy neighbourhood in Cleveland we discovered this blue box on the street.

It’s a retired shipping container that’s been cut down and placed on a side street to lock bicycles up in.

[amykenny-thespec]

Found these along the sidewalk on Lorain Avenue in Cleveland.

I can only speculate they are for locking a bicycle to. 

[amykenny-thespec]

Seems everywhere we have gone since arrive in the USA we have encountered Canadian geese.

These two were grazing in a field slightly above Cleveland’s Steel Yard Commons, a box store mall built on the former site of a steel mill.  One is still functioning behind it.

[amykenny-thespec]

This is the logo of Egine 4 and Ladder 4 of the Cleveland Fire Department’s station on Lorain Avenue.