7.18.11 - Hello, Cleveland!

Tom's gone home to Syracuse and Leah's gone home to Rochester so it's a little lonely waking up as a twosome again in Buffalo but some strong coffee and lots of stimulating talk with our ebullient hostess and Squeaky Wheel Programming Director Jax DeLuca about the joys and challenges community media and our pie in the sky plans for the cinematic revolution leaves us buzzing. There's time to check out a couple of Buffalo's many community gardens and enjoy a leisurely breakfast at Sweetness 7 before hitting the road... we blow kisses at Canada just across the water but alas, no trip to Toronto this time around.
We arrive in Cleveland smack dab in the middle of rush hour and meander through town to avoid commuter hell. Heeding the advice of Bruce Checefsky, a terrific filmmaker who very kindly spent a day showing me around Cleveland a couple years back, the destination we choose for tonight's guerilla screening is Lincoln Park in historic Tremont. The neighborhood--home to Lemko Hall, location of the wedding scene in the Deer Hunter--is quiet, its inhabitants evidently still recovering from yesterday's Taste Of Tremont. But the Prosperity Social Club is hosting Karaoke Night and serving stuffed cabbage rolls with mashed potatoes (food of my people!) so we park the Filmmobile in front of the Lincoln Park Baths, and start setting up. Almost immediately, we're approached by one of the building's residents but instead of shoo-ing us off the block, it turns out Mark is on the board of the Cleveland International Film Festival and couldn't be more gracious about hosting an impromtu screening in his front yard... a couple of phonecalls later and we have artists, community organizers, filmmakers and musicians riding up from all over the neighborhood to take part. 
Afterwards, we have a nightcap at the Prosperity while Karaoke Night rages on. The most creative renditions of hits from yesterday and today ever performed are accompanied by interpretive dancing, high-fives, hoots n' hollers and jello shots tossed back with aplomb. Smooth Operator will never be quite the same. And as if all this isn't enough, the night ends with the most intense storm of the tour: thunder cracks deafeningly directly overhead, lightning flashes constantly and five inches of rain pour down in an hour... Let it pour! We're battened down in the Filmmobile...