Real Music & Real Estate . . .

The sign at the McDonald’s on Lake Shore Boulevard read: 30-minute time limit while consuming food.  The manager must enforce these rules.  Your cooperation is appreciated.

Several retired cops sat beneath the sign, drinking coffee all morning.

Ex-cop Bill Tofant said to me, “I used to work out every day at the YMCA. You know what that stands for?  The Yiddishe Meat Cutters Union.”

I didn’t know that.  (I was with retired cops because I was a police reporter in the 1980s.)

“I can still run a mile at 73 and hold my own in fisticuffs, and I can turn my head to see if traffic is coming,” Tofant said.

Tofant liked me — or put up with me — because my Great Uncle Itchy Seiger had owned a deli on Kinsman Road, which all the cops used to eat at.   “Your uncle would throw his arms around me every time I came into the restaurant,” Tofant said.  “I couldn’t spend a nickel there.  They had corned beef, turkey, you name it, gherkin pickles.”

The cops at McDonald’s decided to rate pawnbrokers — most of whom were “good sharpYidls.”

I knew one of the Yidls: Larry Botnick of Euclid Loan at East 59th and Euclid.  Larry had played tennis with my father.  Larry got shot and killed in a stick-up.  A couple streets over, there had been another stick-up . . .

“Three colored guys went in back of East 63rd and St. Clair,”  said Bill Lonchar, an ex-cop.  “One guy had a horse pistol yea long. It stuck out like a sore thumb.  It was a military weapon.”

Re: the pawnbroker at East 79th and Hough . . .  1.) not shot at,  and 2.)  “not so good.”  “He would buy a stove [gun] that was red hot and smile.”

The cops  rated Italian.   Not pawnbrokers.  Burglars.  Hardly worth talking about.  “If you’re not Italian, you’re nobody.  All that goddamn bullshit.  All that Italian camaraderie bullshit.”

The Lithuanians were worth talking about.  “The Lits will eat soup for twenty years, three times a day, and save their money, and all of a sudden they buy apartment buildings,” Lonchar said.

The Irish: dunderheads.

The blacks: no comment.

The Slovenians:  “Very respectable.”  Top of the line.   “There was a safecracker, Charlie Broeckel,” Lonchar said.  “He went out to Laguna Niguel, California, and hit a bank there.  Burned [spent] seven-mill worth of shit in negotiable papers.  Charlie always found his way out.  He might have been German, not Slovenian, actually.  His mother held a very respectable job.  She was beyond reproach, nothing like a stumblebum. The Broeckels lived at 8815 St. Clair.”

Put up a plaque.  Lonchar was Slovenian.   [So were the district police commander, the ward councilman and the mayor, Voinovich.  All lived within a mile of  McDonald’s.  (Voinovich was half  Slovenian, half Serbian.  Good enough.)]

—–

Footnote:  “Thank God I’m Slovenian” was a popular bumper sticker in Cleveland in the 1980s.  Cleveland has more Slovenian immigrants than any American city.

The top-selling ethnic  bumper stickers in Cleveland were “Thank God I’m Polish” and “Thank God I’m Irish.”    I know,  I  interviewed the bumper-sticker maker in Broadview Heights.  Special-order: “Thank God  I’m Transylvanian Saxon.”  No market: “Thank God I’m Jewish.”

Check out this vid, Who’s Cheaper: Slovenians or Lithuanians?

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I was back from Las Vegas, attending a Shaker Heights brunch.  Several people asked, “Did you play?”

Did Yiddishe Cup play Vegas?

I wish Yiddishe Cup had played Vegas.

I had been in Las Vegas on vacation with my wife, Alice, and older son, Teddy.   I had played blackjack.

Monaco Motel. The Strattons stayed here in '62. Caught Red Skelton at the Sands nearby.

That was my second trip to Vegas. My first trip was in 1962, when a Vegas waitress predicted I (then-12 years old) would return to Nevada for my honeymoon.  That waitress was very wrong.

I prefer outdoorsy vacations.

On my latest trip I won $7.50 at blackjack at the Jokers Wild, then quit.  I could hardly breathe in the Jokers Wild –- or in any other Nevada casino — because of the cigarette smoke.  I hung around the casino parking lot, waiting for Teddy and Alice to finish up.

My favorite Las Vegas attraction is the Red Rock Canyon, which is similar to Zion National Park, but only 17 miles from Vegas.

The Red Rock performs daily in an original revue that is F’n Crazy!   Be a Part of  It!  Best Show in Vegas for the Past 900 Years!

***

Scouting locations for a Las Vegas School of Klezmer

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It wouldn’t cost much for me to open a klezmer store.  I have several vacant storefronts.

I could put my store — call it the Klezmer Shack — next to the Bass Shop.  The Bass Shop doesn’t sell basses, but string players brake for it anyway.  The Bass Shop is a bait and tackle store.

Some of my  merchandise:

The Jewish Fake Book by Velvet Pasternak. Useful for anybody who wants to pass as a Jew.  You’ll learn your way around seltzer and freylekhs (horas).  Plus you’ll learn the Hebrew lyrics to  “Jerusalem of Gold”  and “Bashana Haba’a.”

Yiddishe Cup latkes.

Dave Tarras’ Freilachs, Bulgars, Horas — 22 clarinet tunes, handwritten by the master himself.  I got my copy in Delray Beach, Florida, from the widow of Harold Branch, the late New York bandleader.

Irwin Weinberger’s autoharp.  Please buy it!  (Irwin is Yiddishe Cup’s singer.)

Harold Branch’s Club Date Handbook.   You’ll learn what to play when the caterer wheels in the Viennese dessert cart at a 1968 New York bar mitzvah party.   For the flaming jubilee, play “Funiculi, Funicula.”   (For the main course — the roast beef — play “I’m an Old Cowhand.”)

Clarinet neck straps.  Hard to find.  We have them.

Clarinet travel bags.  Ours are imported from the Pilot truck stop, Lodi, Ohio.

Two Twistin The Freilach LPs, 1961.  Used.

Seven Kleveland Klezmorim Sound of the World’s Soul LPs, 1985.  Never opened.

Klezmer gum.

 —

Footnote:  There  is a Klezmer Shack website,  run by Ari Davidow, who is allowing me to use the name for my store, I think.
—
Yiddishe Cup plays First Night Akron (Ohio) 6:15 p.m. Sat., Dec. 31.
—
Here’s a video by Kasumi,  who teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art.  She won a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship for her vid work.  This video is Yiddishe Cup.

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An Asian Indian asked me if he should buy a motel.

Why ask me?  Why not ask Patel? I thought.  Forty percent of American hotels are owned by Indians, and many are Patels.

The Asian Indian was a tennis pro who had invested in Cleveland real estate and lost money.  He thought maybe I knew some tricks about investing.

I knew this: Most everybody in the real estate biz in the 2000s was not hitting the long ball.

He asked me about stocks.

This is what I knew:  My late father, who was a stock broker for about six months in the 1950s, taught me the market is legalized gambling.  John Bogle, former chairman of the Vanguard Group, said, “The investor in America sits at the bottom of the food chain.”  You have to be lucky twice with stocks: when you buy and when you sell.

In March 2009 the New York Times business-page headline was “Are We There Yet?”  There meant the stock market’s bottom.

In March 2009 the price/earnings ratio was at its lowest in more than 20 years: 13.  (Trailing 10-years figure.)  The worldwide P/E was even lower, down to 10.  It was a good time to invest, but scary.

***

My Uncle Lou and Uncle Al drove a truck, delivering wholesale items to stores.  They offered me a carton of baseball cards — 24 packs — at deep discount.  I was in.  I immediately ripped open all the packs.  I was 9.  This was my first speculative investment.  I got a lot of Humberto Robinsons (an Indians relief pitcher) and no Mickey Mantles.  Maybe my uncles were teaching me dollar-cost averaging: better to buy a pack a week (i.e., dollar-cost averaging) than go all in.

The Asian tennis pro moved to Florida.  His wife and kids couldn’t stand Cleveland winters, for one thing.  He didn’t have a job down there.  He didn’t have a house.  I hope he knew Patel.

—-
Here’s “Beer and Coconut Bars,” which I wrote for the CoolCleveland website.  Went up a week ago.  The story is definitely full Cleveland, if not cool Cleveland.

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The title of Maury Feren’s autobiography is almost book-length: Wheeling & Dealing In My World, Including World War II Memories, by Maury Feren, Cleveland, Ohio’s Produce King.

Maury Feren, 2010. (Photo by Ron Humphrey)

Lettuce and tomatoes aren’t that compelling to me, but World War II is,  so I read the book.

Maury fought the war on two fronts: 1.) Europe and 2.) Europe  — against his fellow American soldiers.

Here are some chapter titles: “Another Bigot,” “I’ll Show You What a Dirty Jew Can Do,” “Anti-Semitism at Home and Abroad” and “More Anti-Semitism.”

An American soldier called Maury a “rag peddler.”  Maury “gave him a lesson in boxing that he might never forget.”

A mess hall server said to Maury, “Vot vould you lick? A piss of this, and a piss of that?”

Maury grabbed him by the throat.  “If you ever talk like that again to me, I’ll close your windpipe so you’ll never be able to talk again.”

Maury Feren (shirtless), 1944, w/ friend

Maury encountered German soldiers and civilians in Essen, Germany.  “I screamed at them in a Yiddish-kind-of-German about how despicable they were . . . ‘You are murders, baby killers, women killers . . . I am a Jew.  Look at me and see whether you want to kill me too.’”

Maybe I’ll read Maury’s chapter on chives.

Probably not.  Is there any ass-kicking in chives?
—-
Footnote: Maury, 96, is still kickin’.  Biz a hundert un tsvantsik, Maury.  (You should live to 120, Maury.)

—-
Jack Stratton, Yiddishe Cup’s alternate drummer, as Mushy Krongold:

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The Intakes, a JCC boys’ club, should have met at the old Council Educational Alliance on Kinsman Road.  The Intakes was a throwback to a Depression-era settlement-house boys’ club.

The purpose of the Intakes was to keep teenage boys off the streets, which wasn’t too hard because we studied so hard we rarely went out.

The club president had a regular Saturday night excuse:  “I’ve got too much homework.  I can’t go out.”  On Saturday night?   One summer the club president landed a grant to write a report on the crystal structure of molecules.

The Intakes Club didn’t “intake” girls.  We were for the most part afraid of girls.  We played poker, miniature golf, bowled and held meetings.

Our advisor was a social worker from New York.  He often called us “schmucks,” which we found endearing.

We debated where to spend our money, which we earned by selling salamis and Passover macaroons.

Should we go to New York or Washington?

We went to both, on the Hound.  (Two different trips.)

In New York we went to the Statue of Liberty, saw Jeopardy! live and ate at Katz’s Deli.  I bought Existentialism Versus Marxism in a Village bookstore.  I haven’t finished it yet.

In Washington we met our congressman and pantsed an Intake back at the hotel.  We tried to post his pics on the ’net, but got an error message: Internet not invented yet.

Our congressman, Charles Vanik, had an administrative aide, Mark Talisman,  a small smart Jew who was just eight years older than us.  He seemed to know everything about the government.  He gave us a private meeting.  He was the puppet master for the entire suburban east side of Cleveland.

Talisman was an inspiration.  He made it out of the tough Harvard-Lee neighborhood to Harvard U.

We should have made Mark Talisman an honorary Intake.

We shouldn’t have taken those naked pictures.

The Intakes, 1967, poker game

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Why do nursing-home administrators request 100-percent peppy music from performers?  Some residents want to hear contemplative tunes.

Why do eyeglass-frame adjusters have so much power over us?  Did they all get PhDs?  From where?  I.U.?

How come newspaper columnists don’t write about pet peeves anymore?  That’s annoying.

My wife took the electric toothbrush to Columbus, Ohio, on a business trip. The electric toothbrush — and the seltzer machine and Bose radio — are permanent attachments to the dwelling, Alice.

Why does Zagara’s grocery in Cleveland Heights sell only 12-packs of shabbat candles and not the 72-candle jumbo box?  Zagara’s Jewish Lites.

What about those phone solicitors from yours kids’ colleges who ask for money.  What are you supposed to say?   “Here’s another $50.  No problem.”

Why do “highly sensitive” people insist on telling you what bothers them?  That’s irritating.

When your computer crashes, why do you feel like your right hand fell off?  Why can’t you feel like a mosquito bit your ankle.

Who is nostalgic for mimeo machines?  Somebody should be.

Why do “sophisticated” Clevelanders brag about not reading the Plain Dealer?  They say, “I’ve lived in Cleveland for 20 years and never subscribed to the PD.  I read the New York Times. ”  Go home.

People who grow vegetables always serve arugula.  Why don’t they grow dates or figs?

Why do concertgoers at the Cleveland Orchestra applaud maniacally after every single piece?  The listeners nap for 54 minutes (Mahler Symphony #1), then give the conductor three curtain calls.  Applaud this!

If you want to talk about cars, first ask: “Do you want to talk about cars with me?”  Same goes for sports, TV shows and politics.

Which is preferable:  a) “He passed away.” or b) “He passed.”  Answer: “He passed away.”  Best answer:  c) “He died.”

Who was the curmudgeon — Harvey Pekar or Andy Rooney?  Coin toss.

Don’t complain about lousy cell phone service and long lines at the post office.  That’s modern life.   You wouldn’t get upset by a house sign that said the smith’s, would you?

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My wife, Alice, and I were bumped from a plane at the Phoenix airport. We got free tickets, a hotel room and food vouchers.  Our son Teddy — who wasn’t with us — thought it was the greatest deal of all time.

I didn’t.  I wasn’t young.  I was not looking forward to a free night at the Phoenix Embassy Suites.   I had stuff to do at home.

Stop.  Maybe you do not like airport-travel horror stories.

Restart.  Maybe you do . . .

The Embassy Suites van driver was from Cleveland and had wrestled at John Marshall High.  We talked about the Milkovich family, the 1960s Maple Heights wrestling dynasty.  The driver took Alice and me to the Heard, the American Indian museum.  Any place within five miles of the hotel was a free ride.

I jogged along a canal by the hotel.  I didn’t have any clean clothes (my suitcase was on the plane to Cleveland), so I jogged shirtless, with long pants and brown leather shoes.  The Mexican-Americans along the canal gave me the once-over.

"Oye, Curly!"

Alice and I arrived at the Phoenix airport the next morning at 7 a.m. and didn’t get on the early flight.  I was ready to kill.

We paced the airport for a couple more hours.  There was no fresh air.

We got on a mid-morning flight and had to connect via Houston.

That’s my  story.

Your airport travel story is no doubt worse.

Don’t tell me.
—-
Irwin Weinberger, Jack Stratton and Bert Stratton are doing a klezmer show 2 p.m. Sun. (Nov. 20) at Shaker Heights Library, 16500 Van Aken Blvd.  Free.
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And here’s an original Klezmer Guy video:

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At Yiddishe Cup gigs, I sometimes send photos to my daughter, Lucy.  Like of centerpieces or lighting.  I get the photos from my bandmates — some of whom are camera happy.

Lucy is an event planner in Chicago.

I was at a gig in Hunting Valley, Ohio, where the backyard tent was draped with strings of tiny candles.  I thought that was noteworthy.

I sent  this:

My daughter answered “pretty.”  One word.  Was that like “whatever”?

How about the white vinyl dance floor?  Workers were on their knees scrubbing that white dance floor.  My daughter wasn’t too impressed with that either:

Lucy knows about white flooring.  In Los Angeles she covered a parking deck with white carpet.   She bought 400 shoe-booties at Home Depot for workers, so they wouldn’t dirty the carpet before the guests arrived.

I didn’t get any photos of the horses at the Hunting Valley wedding.  The horses — in a stable by the party tent — went berserk during the upbeat recessional.  The horses, however, liked the stately and lyrical  “Erev Shel Shoshanim” (Evening of the Roses) — the processional.

Lucy used to ride horses.  Why didn’t anybody in the band get a pic of the horses?   Lucy would have been impressed with horses, I think.
—
These are the gigs Lucy works:

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Have you read any good klezmer liner notes lately?

Probably not.

How about some bad notes? . . .

“The drummer has appeared in duo and trip [sic] settings.”

“This is what happens when Rumshinsky’s Theatre Bulgar is feed [sic] through Quincy Jones talking about Count Basie.”

“One[sic] the other side of the hall, a zedeh and bobe will spin in skeletal outlines the remembered steps of a tantz (dance) that their parents taught them …”

***

Here is the solution.  Hire Klezmer Guy Ink to write your liner notes.

If you submit to Klezmer Guy Ink, please follow these guidelines:

1. Don’t name your tunes.  We’ll do that.   Your first cut will be “Klezmer Lovin’,” “Hymie’s Town,” or “Romanian Shock #1.”  We’ll decide.

2. Don’t name your album.  We do that.  The choices: Intravenous Klezmer, 13 Jewish Hummingbirds and Black Curly Hair.  We pick.

3. We hire world-class musicians to punch up your sound. Our stable includes Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg and Eric Carmen (of the Raspberries).

4. We’ll come up with a pseudonym for a musician in your band.  This makes your album mysterious and more marketable.   Choices: M. Rogue Gemini, Hy Lowe and Jewboy Fuller.  We pick.

5. Your bio is tweaked.  Even if you’re a nebbish from Long Island, you visited your grandmother in Brooklyn at least once, right?  You’re from Brooklyn.

6. We’ll get you impressive music-school credentials.  We work with the Broadway School of Music.*

For your CD cover, we use red.  Why not?

Give Klezmer Guy Ink a call.  Some of our clients have been somewhat satisfied.
—-
*Broadway School of Music, 5415 Broadway Avenue, Cleveland.
—
A version of this post appeared in Zeek, the online “Jewish journal of thought and culture,” on December 21, 2010.

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I lived in Beachwood at the Mark IV apartments (now the Hamptons) after college.  I was staying at my parents’ apartment.

My dad said, “I’m sure you’ll be a success some day.”

At what?  Whatever it was, I should do a good job of it.  My father never said, “What are your plans?  What do you see yourself doing in ten years?”  That would have been cruel.

My post-college days were hell, but not a bad hell.  My mother lined up blind dates for me.  The dates were usually daughters of my mom’s friends.  I took the girls to bars and restaurants and ordered 7&7s.  That was my total booze repertoire: 7&7.

I got feedback about the dates from my mother, who picked up tidbits through back channels, like at bridge games.  Some of the girls liked me, some didn’t. One date thought I was “a little weird.”

She was weird.  She had no business dragging me to her dad’s kangaroo court (his living room was plastered with World War II medals) for interrogation. What were my plans?  What did I do?

What’s an apricot sour?  That’s what she had ordered at the bar.

Meanwhile, my old-neighborhood pal Frankie (not his real name) wanted to go to a Corvette rally, starting at Manner’s Big Boy, Mayfield Heights.  Frankie had a brand-new 1974 ’Vette, 350 HP, headers, with all the emission controls removed.

No thanks, Frankie.

Frank said, “You think you’re too good for my ’Vette!  You’d prefer a VW bus with a hippie slut.  Hey, why not try real chicks and real cars.  Friday night at the Strongsville Holiday Inn, it’s crawling with it.  Chicks and ’Vettes.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You’d rather be in Cleveland Heights!  Any city that has a bumper sticker like that is a losing proposition.”

After my six-month sentence at the Mark IV, I moved to Cleveland Heights, into a double, which I shared with Case Western Reserve graduate students.

Cleveland Heights worked.  I’ve been there ever since.

I haven’t seen Frank in more than 20 years.  He doesn’t hang around klezmer concerts, for one thing.

My future wife, Alice, knocked on the door of the Cleveland Heights double, looking for a room to rent.

Mom’s Dating Service became history right then.

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I went easy on a tenant, rent-wise, because he called the police on a leaded-glass thief, who had stolen windows from the apartment building’s entrance.  (The windows were sidelights.)

Ex. Two sidelights flanking main entrance

The cops asked my tenant, “Would you be a witness?”  My guy — Bill Livingstone — said yes.   I appreciated his civic involvement.

Livingstone was nosy.  That was a good thing.  Livingstone, a poodle groomer, stayed at the building 23 years.

***

A vandal scrawled graffiti on a front door.  Livingstone wasn’t around. (Different building.)

The building manager knew the graffiti “artist.”  She even knew his phone number.  My custodian personally knows this derelict?  The graffiti “artist” was a friend of a friend of the custodian.  The “artist” hung out at a skaters coffeehouse and had a recognizable tag.  My custodian,  a lesbian brakeman with multiple piercings, knew the scene.

I phoned the graffiti kid.  What if he was nuts?  I hung up.  Let the cops handle it.

The kid called me.  “You just called my cell.”

I hate that.

The cops found him and made him clean up the doors.   His mom even helped.  The kid was in high school.  I didn’t press charges because he cleaned the door.

***

Re: the leaded-glass sidelights thief.  That guy was caught due to Bill Livingstone’s accurate ID of the man.  (The thief sold the windows to an antiques store.)  The man was charged with aggravated burglary and grand theft.

He didn’t do any jail time.  He made restitution to me over a couple years.

I’ve been fortunate. Thanks to Bill Livingstone, tuned-in building managers and persistent police detectives.

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My parents often name-dropped Billys, who I usually didn’t recognize.

The Billys were:

1.) Billy Rose.  He  put together the Aquacade show at the Great Lakes Exposition in 1936-7.  The Aquacade was a theater-like pool.  There was an orchestra and synchronized swimming.  Johnny Weissmuller starred in it. Billy Rose took the show to the New York World’s Fair in 1939.

2.) Billy DeWolfe.  A character actor.   Billy De Wolfe occasionally ate at my Great Uncle Itchy’s restaurant, Seiger’s, on Kinsman Road.  Was Billy De Wolfe  really Billy D. Wolf, Billy The Wolf, or what?

3.) Billy Weinberger, a Short Vincent Street restaurateur (Kornman’s) who moved to Las Vegas in 1966 and took over Caesar’s Palace.  My Uncle Al  got discount hotel rates “from Billy” in Vegas.  Billy was close with the Cleveland mobsters who started Vegas.

***

Did I ever name-drop Billys to my kids?  I don’t think so.  I can’t think of any Billys.  My parents took all the Billys.

I did Garys: Gary Moore, Gary Powers and Gary Lewis.

—

Bonus:  Whatever Happened to Putt Putt?, an original video:

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At Monte’s bar in South Euclid, there was a lot of talk about blacks, but no blacks.

For instance, a Harley Electra Glide was a “nigger-lighted” Harley.  The Harley Electra Glide was the black man’s bike because it had after-market trim lights.  The white man’s bike was the Harley Sportster, the chopper.

“Nigger fishing” meant casting from the power-plant pier instead of from a boat.  Sheepshead was a “nigger fish,” usually caught from the pier.  Lake Erie perch was a high-end fish, often requiring a boat to catch.

Monte’s bar also featured Italian specials like tizzone (“coal”) and mulunyan (“eggplant”).

I went to Monte’s to see my neighborhood friend Frank, a mutuel clerk at the racetrack.  He wore a snub-nosed .38 in a shoulder harness and always had a wad of cash.  Frankie didn’t like dirty money.  “I can’t stand it when people give me dirty bills,” he said.

Frank’s mother had played banjo in an all-women’s band, and his father had idolized trumpeter Harry James.

Frank played trumpet in a white soul band.  He kidded me because I dabbled in a “nigger band” — a band with blacks.

A bad-ass mo'fo, 1969, Michigan dorm

I was interested in soul jazz (Hank Crawford, Wes Montgomery), which I had   heard at my college dorm.  I had lived across the hall from three Detroit black kids who were from inside 8 Mile — way inside.  Two were  dopers into scag (heroin), grass and cocaine.  They railed at me for being so straight and suburban.  I bothered them.  They would say: “Bert, you be a trippin’ motherfucker . . . You’re a bitch with your shit . . . That motherfucker be trippin’ . . . ”

They kidded me because they loved me  . . . “Stop playing that country shit!”  (I played blues harmonica along to Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry tapes.)

When money was low, the dopers would go to the parking garage across from the dorm and sniff gas from cars for a high.  That was called “hitting the tank.”

The third black kid was a non-doper.  He was middle-class,  an “elite.”  He moved to another floor and became a doctor.

At Monte’s bar, patrons liked the idea of blacks and black slang.   I was the maven on the subject.  Frankie suggested I go to the ghetto and talk shit.

Great idea.  I went to Hough and walked past an angry black man (not too hard to find in the early 1970s) and said, “What’s happnin’, man?”

“Nothin’ to it,” the man said, not breaking stride.

I was hip.  He was hip.

I stayed hip for  another two years, until I took an ulpan (Hebrew course) at Case Western Reserve Hillel.

—-
“Monte’s bar” is a made-up name.  “Frank” is also a pseudonym.
—
More on Frankie at today’s CoolCleveland.com.  See “Mom’s Dating Service.”
—
World-class shofar playing from Cleveland . . .

More on this guy — and his Kickstarter project —  here.

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Doctors like to complain how their pay isn’t what it used to be.  Another  gripe of docs is the increased paperwork.

But doctors do all right.  They are one of the few professions that still hire bands.

A side benefit for Yiddishe Cup is we sometimes get free medical advice at gigs.   At a Pittsburgh wedding, a doctor checked one of our guys for a hernia in the men’s room stall.

In Cleveland, a doctor asked me for an appointment.  He was a Washington heart specialist, considering a job at the Cleveland Clinic.  He played mandolin.  He wanted to know if Cleveland had a good quality of life.

I said yes.

He spent several years at the Cleveland Clinic giving me –- and others — the lowdown on HDL.  (The lowdown is there is no sure-fire way to raise your HDL.)

Yiddishe Cup occasionally gets gigs from immigrant doctors from South Africa.   One doc had a diploma on his office wall from the University of Witwatersrand (South Africa).  I thought “witch doctor” — like the doctor in the Mickey Katz parody “My Son the Knish Doctor.”  The Katz doc had studied at the Bwana Wana Yeshiva.

South African doctors are often Litvaks (Lithuanian Jews) and plugged into Yiddish culture — what’s left of it.

***

I met a doc at Klezkamp who was atrocious on soprano sax and would repeat,  “I’m a doctor!  I’m a doctor!”  That worked.  It made him feel better.

He had a point.  He saved lives.  So what if he couldn’t play “Khasidim Tantz”?

Yiddishe Cup had a medical student in the band.  Dave Jaffe, guitarist/singer and Case medical student.  He lasted a year.  Med school and the band were too much.

Doctors often form their own bands because of their busy schedules.  These bands play a couple benefits a year and often have names like No Evidence of Disease.

I wish I had studied harder in Inorganic and Organic Chemistry.  I wouldn’t mind being a brain surgeon with a side interest in klezmer.

Turns out I’m a klezmer musician with a side interest in brain surgery.  This scares people.

I accept most insurance plans.

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Cleveland cop Tommy Alusheff moonlighted as a comedian, using the stage name Morey Cohen — a conflation of Morey Amsterdam and Myron Cohen (two of Alusheff’s favorite comedians).  Morey Cohen worked at Hilarities and other regional comedy clubs, plus he did some out-of-town gigs, like in Los Angeles.

Morey Cohen’s father, Chris Alusheff, owned the Baker Candy factory in Collinwood.  Chris Alusheff  once told me Jews like dark chocolate more than gentiles like it.  Why?  Kashrut?  (Kosher dietary laws?)   Probably.   The Alusheffs were Macedonians.   Their best-selling product was chocolate-covered whipped candy eggs, sold at Easter time.

Tommy Alusheff (Morey Cohen), about 2009

Morey Cohen died last year.  I didn’t go to the funeral; I only knew him by reputation.  Morey wasn’t in the Sixth District, which had been my police beat.  (I was a  reporter in the 1980s.)

The top comedy cop at the Sixth District had been Paul Falzone, a stand-up guy, but not a stand-up comedian.  Falzone was almost ready for prime time.  I hung out with Falzone in the burglary unit at the East 152nd Street station, aka The District, the cop shop.  The building had few windows.  It was a fortress, built after the 1967 Hough riots.  When the A/C went out in the building, it was a real sweat shop.  Falzone said, “I have eight minutes of material to Morey’s twelve.”

Falzone asked me, “How are the Jewish holidays treating you?”  It was September.

“Fine.”

“You’ve got to watch for neo-Nazis,” he said.

“Why?”

Mob makeover

“Everyone has to watch for somebody.  Italians, they got to watch out for other Italians; you start your car and it goes ba-boom instead of vroom.  The Irish, they got to watch for Jack Daniels.  Hey, how can you tell Ronald McDonald at a nudist colony?”

“How?”

“He’s the one with sesame seed buns.”

Falzone ran for county sheriff,  and president of the patrolmen’s union.  He didn’t win either.  He eventually became police chief of Bratenahl, a suburb.  Now he’s running for mayor of Bratenahl.

Paul Falzone, 1982, at the Sixth District

Two years ago Cuyahoga County tried to put Falzone in jail for theft.  Something about drugs and guns missing from the Bratenahl property room.

Falzone was acquitted.  Now he’s suing Bratenahl for “humiliation.”  Doesn’t sound funny, but Falzone can probably get some jokes out of it.  Bad jokes. He needs only four more minutes to match Morey Cohen . . .

“So I’m on patrol, and I walk into the Viking bar.  I see a 16-year-old punk with a Miller’s.  I say, “When’s your birthday, kid?”

He says, “October 10.”

“What year?”

“Every year.”

—
Footnote: The Sixth District became the Fifth District  in 2008, when the Cleveland Police Department reapportioned the districts.
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From illustrator Ralph Solonitz’s Parade of  Nations collection:

Ireland

Italy

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In Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids, she hangs around with famous people on almost every page, even when she isn’t famous yet.

Patti needed 10 more cents for a sandwich at an automat.  Allen Ginsberg appeared in back of her with a dime.  Ginsberg mistook her for a “pretty boy.”  Ginsberg bought her a coffee too.

Smith dated drummer Slim Shadow.  After a few meetings, Slim told Patti he was really Sam Shepard, the playwright.

Patti ran into Janis Joplin a lot.

Ted Berrigan, the poet, lived on St. Mark’s Place.  Berrigan’s tenement had a clawfoot bathtub in the kitchen.    That was how tenements were built.  Berrigan was in bed.  It was the middle of the day.  His wife, poet Alice Notley, said, “When Ted gets dressed, you two should go to Allen’s to get the mail.”

Ted Berrgian, 1971. (Photo by Gerard Malanga)

Alice Notley was addressing Berrigan and me.  (I was in Berrigan’s apartment, not Just Kids.)  Berrigan collected Allen Ginsberg’s mail when Ginsberg was out of town.  Ginsberg’s place — on East 13^th Street — was neat.  It wasn’t messy like I had expected.

***

I played harmonica at Grand Central Station to assure myself I wasn’t just another commuter.  I checked my bags in a Grand Central locker, then talked to a staffer at the outdoor convention-bureau kiosk.  She directed me to the 34^th Street YMCA.

French tourists at the Y asked me why the street was smoking.  Smoke was wafting out of sidewalk vents.  I figured it had something to do with the subway.  (Am I right?)

A roommate service — Two for the Money — charged $40 to match you with a roommate in New York in 1972.  I met Nathan outside the agency, so we didn’t pay the finder’s fee.  We wound up on Waverly Place in Greenwich Village.

There were a lot of old people in Greenwich Village.  Not the best of scenes — old people.

So I called Webfoot — his phone number was W-E-B-F-O-O-T — in the East Village.  Webfoot said come over.  He lived on Second Avenue and was asking only $100/month.  ($539 in today’s dollars.)  I spent a night there.  He spit blood into the toilet and didn’t flush.

I checked out the NYU bulletin board and found an apartment in SoHo, across from where Ornette Coleman had played a loft concert. $100 for my share.  A mature woman (30-something) answered the door and said, “Let me make this perfectly clear, you aren’t going to score with me if you move in here.”

Score?  Only swingers said score.  Was this woman getting her news from Playboy?  Had she missed the whole hippie thing?

I wound up in a studio apartment sublet on East 13^th Street in the East Village for $150/month.  The tenant upstairs was lifting weights, it seemed.  I knocked on his door and said, “Can you tell me if you stay home all day and lift weights?  I’m laying down $450 for a deposit and rent, and I don’t want to make a mistake.”

“I don’t lift weights.”  He had a weightlifter’s build.  “And you don’t knock on your neighbor’s door in New York.  Where are you from?”

“Ohio.”

“That’s in Chicago, isn’t it?”

He also said his apartment had been broken into twice, and he had been mugged outside the apartment.

Maybe the wiser choice was the apartment on Waverly Place in the West Village.  I called Nathan.

Too late.  Nathan had rented the extra room to a law student.

I saw Patti Smith.

I saw her in Cleveland.  It was her first show in Cleveland.

Is that worth anything?
—
Footnote: Ted Berrigan was a visiting professor at Michigan in the fall of 1969.    Here’s the syllabus from a class I took:

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I could get the Ohio klezmer vanity plate.

In Chicago, a musician from the Maxwell Street Klezmer Band has the Illinois klezmer.  I saw the Illinois plate on the cover of a Maxwell Street CD.

klezmer is taken in New York.  I saw New York klezmer in the KlezKamp parking lot.

Ohio klezmer is available, according to the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Do I want klezmer?  What if I cut somebody off; they’ll know it’s me.  (I remember getting cut off by ezras.)

What if I’m checking out a potential tenant, and  I’m parked by the guy’s sleazy mini-market on West 25th Street, and he comes out and has an anti-klezmer ’tude.

I remember mazel on Fairmount Boulevard.

I’ve seen yenta.

I’ve seen gevalt.

On Ohio’s newest license plate, you practically need a microscope to find the OHIO. Why does the state devalue Ohio so much?  Ohio is pretty catchy compared to other states.   How would you like to live in Maryland?

oHIo.

That’s my gift to the BMV.

Ohio first cluttered its plates in 1973 with Seat Belts Fastened?  That innocent public service opened the doors to Birthplace of Aviation, Bicentennial 2003 and Beautiful Ohio.

OHIO in big block letters would work.  If the BMV ever goes retro, back to  block OHIO, 1950s-style, I would seriously consider klezmer.

I want a plate I can nail to the side of the barn and be proud of.
—
Footnote: Jewish license plates in California are well-documented, per this video:

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The FBI building in Cleveland on Lakeside Avenue is on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie.  The building is outside the downtown district by a few blocks and somewhat secluded.

I went there to see the head man.

To get to him, I went through two minutes of various security checks in the lobby.  Then I was in the boss’ office, overlooking the lake.  Nice.  If the sun had been out, it would have been Santa Monica.

The boss, Gary Klein, and I were old friends from high school.   Gary had been a fearless JCC-league basketball player.  After high school, Gary went off to Annapolis, where he got his nose broken by a Southerner in a boxing match.  Gary told me some of the students had razzed him because he was Jewish.  It didn’t faze him.

Gary was tough, but not greaser tough.   He was smart and bowlegged like a cowboy.

Gary Klein, 2004. (Photo by Ted Stratton)

Gary showed me the FBI’s war room and the bug-proof room.  He said FBI life looked glamorous but wasn’t.  In 19 years he had lived in Boston, New York (Cosa Nostra and Russian mob work), Phoenix, Houston, Washington and Cleveland.

His new job was snooping on potential terrorists in northern Ohio, from Cleveland to Toledo.  He said, “Ninety-nine percent of it is B.S. leads, like somebody dumping burial ashes over Parma Heights.”

Fighting terror was job one, forget about The Mob, he said.

Gary, how can we forget The Mob?  They’re a lot more fun than Islamic terrorists!   We grew up on The Mob.  Hollywood wouldn’t exist without Mob movies.  I had been inside the Little Italy house of James Licavoli (aka Jack White), the last head of the Cleveland Mob.  Licavoli made wine in his cellar.  Drinks all around.

Gary asked me to keep my eyes open.

I said I would.  (This was 2003.)

So far nothing but B.S. leads, thank God.

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My wife, Alice, was one of the many star-struck fans who drove to Rockside Road and I-77 in Cleveland to audition for The Avengers movie.

I asked Alice, “Did you get the part?  Did you read anything?”

Not only did she not read, she did not even audition. The traffic was so horrendous at Rockside Road, she turned around.  Thousands of people had shown up for the audition.  The line of wannabes snaked at least a mile from the building, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

There was another Hollywood movie, Fun Size, filmed a few weeks earlier, several blocks from our house in Cleveland Heights.  That’s when Alice got star struck.  Catering and make-up trucks were around our neighborhood.

I heard about it.  I didn’t want to see the trucks.  I have a bias against Hollywood.

Hollywood guys have too much fun.  They should be making radiator valves, or PVC pipe fittings, like the rest of the world.  Not blowing things up and eating from catering trucks.

My wife’s school gym (where she teaches elementary-school physical education) was turned into a vast make-up room for Fun Size.  She said the school board got $500,000 for the rental.

I didn’t believe that.  Alice’s source — the school janitor — told her the five-hundred grand figure.

Make that $50,000.  I’d accept that.  Better yet, $5,000.  Who would pay half a million to rent a school building for a couple days?  Hollywood is a funny ballpark, but not that funny.

Hollywood’s latest tax-abatement haven/heaven is Ohio.  Used to be Michigan.

I would like to be in a movie, Alice.   But I would demand some lines and star food.  No way am I going to be a man in the crowd, not at this point in my career.

I want to blow up something.  Grab a lighter, Alice.  You have a role.

Those Lips, Those Eyes, United Artists, 1980, Cain Park amphitheater, Cleveland Heights. Bert Stratton at far left.

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A version of this story is crossposted today at CoolCleveland.com.

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