Digg ThisSo, my bride and I just returned from our trip to Connecticut, where we had virtually no Internet access (well, there were some extenuating circumstances) — I was able to check email and post here only once the whole week — and I return to town to George responding to Seth Godin’s thoughts on a recent trip to Akron. (Actually, it was George’s RSS feed that alerted me to the discussion, not George in the middle of it.)
See, Seth supposedly thinks Akron is dead — or dying; others think not. And here I return to the region from arguably the busiest city in the world (New York) with an interesting perspective: I can see both points (which is really only one point, anyway).
As a life-long resident of the area — indeed, as a member of one of the area’s oldest families — I can tell you most assuredly that neither city is dead; far from it: you just have to know where to look for signs of life. You do, indeed — as Seth correctly points out — have to venture out of your hotel room (or your emotional shell, as the case may be with some folks).
It is truly unfortunate that Seth went to an event at that particular hotel. Or is it?
His point (and George’s, even though he was attempting to take the opposing viewpoint) was that the hotel employees were beaten down. Is this a corporate side-effect? Quite possibly.
In fact, quite probably.
For some odd reason, Cleveland is infected with a corporate mindset: “Unless it’s from a big corporation, it can’t be any good.” One excellent example of this is restaurants: we have virtually no independent restaurants here, save for Michael Symon’s excellent Lola Bistro (and its related restaurants), George Hwang’s beautiful Pearl of the Orient in Rocky River and Shaker Heights, and a couple of minor players like Molinari’s in Mentor, the Tangier in Akron and a few others.
Other than these few, the rest of the restaurants in the Cleveland-Akron area are chains dishing out average food and average service at best. We don’t talk about how “Mama Maria’s on Slingshot Street has the best Spaghetti and Meatballs with Marinara on the planet”; we speak of how good the food was at Bennigan’s — or Applebee’s — or Olive Garden — or __________ (fill in the blank).
It almost like having an independent restaurant in Cleveland is a curse.
In contrast, the New York/New England area is rife with independent restaurants, almost as if it was a way of life there (hmmmmm…); my bride and I ate at several. Interestingly, the vast majority of them are staffed with eager, energetic, and enthusiastic employees waiting to give you excellent service to accompany their excellent food. Like Seth points out about Starbucks, they choose to create the ultimate customer experience.
Admittedly, very few large corporations with satellite locations staffed with more than 8 or 10 employees can create that kind of enthusiasm.
And that’s where we — as a community — fall down on the job.
(Incidentally, it seems like there’s a Starbucks on every fourth corner in Manhattan — and virtually no independent coffee shops like our own Arabica or Phoenix — way to go, Ohio!)
Where we have Slyman’s on St. Clair, New York has the Stage Deli on Broadway — and probably 100 more like it within a few city blocks. What’s the difference between a Slyman’s corned beef sandwich and the same from Stage Deli — outside of location and fame? About 2 ounces of meat and 12 bucks.
Seriously.
But the folks at the Stage Deli are going to make damned sure that your sandwich is the best meal you’ve ever had: the service is impeccable, the environment clean, and the staff is incredibly friendly. Frankly, the best experience I’ve had at local delis has been, “Here’s your sandwich; that’ll be 8 bucks. Thank you, have a nice day (and don’t let the door…).” And I’m a decent tipper, too.
The funny thing is that we’re totally satisfied with this. We’d never let our children be this way, though.
We raise our children today to think freely; we encourage their creativity and then are astonished when they choose to leave the area for greener pastures. We complain about “brain drain” when we can’t even see Lake Erie for the waves on the beach: we’re telling our kids to “do as we say, not as we do” — and then wonder why we can’t get things to work properly here.
Then our kids come home and suggest a new way of doing something and we reply with a gruff, “Nah, it’ll never work.” We’re literally driving our best creative minds away from us, as if we were somehow less deserving to be blessed with their presence; we’re blind to how blessed we truly are, and in this regard Seth was bang-on target:
…the story has little to do with the economic reality and everything to do with self-image.
For those that have mis-read or mis-interpreted Seth, the above quote is what he has been talking about all along, even when he is talking about Starbucks or some other purple cow: marketing is about self-image, yours, theirs and mine. And our self-image here in Northeast Ohio, in general (but not in all cases), leaves a lot to be desired.
His trip to Akron was indeed unfortunate — from both his standpoint and ours — but quite telling nonetheless: he’s not saying that Akron is dead; he’s saying that someone’s self-image is dead, which can either be disastrous for the city — or it can serve as a wake-up call for the entire region. It’s one man’s perception, one city’s outlook; that’s all. You have to ask yourself the obvious question.
Now mind you, there’s an enormous difference between New York and Akron — or Cleveland, for that matter. And thankfully so; comparing the two areas is like comparing apples and oranges in every sense. The Northeast Ohio area cannot — and will not ever be able to — compete with New York, so just get that thought out of your head right now.
We can, however, make this area a much nicer place to be; we just have to start in the right place: ourselves.
As I’ve said here before, we in the Northeast Ohio area need to get out of the self-limiting box we fold ourselves into every day and start thinking in new, more creative ways. We need to work together to foster innovation and entrepreneurialism — not just do our usual and give lip service or create some cronyistic, nepotism-laced program designed to employ friends and family of the political powers-that-be.
Only then will we truly begin to healthily grow as a region again. Only then will we be able to shake ourselves from giving experiences like Seth’s in Akron. Only then will we lose the tag of “The Rust Belt.” Only then will we be able to give our neighbors and guests that genuine, spontaneous and heart-felt “Midwest smile.”
In other words, we need to wake up and smell the coffee.
