c o l l i s i o n b e n d . c o m

I’ve been lamenting the closing of Shinano’s Restaurant in South Euclid, of late. Open in the same place with the same crew (save for two people) since 1991, Shinano’s had just about the best sushi on the upper East Side of Cleveland.

Word is that they are looking for new digs, perhaps near Solon, which doesn’t do me a whole bunch of good: I don’t want to drive 25 miles for sushi — if I’m going to drive that far for sushi, I’ll go a few more and head to Ohashi’s in North Olmsted, which is probably (perhaps easily) the best sushi restaurant in town.

So what’s a guy like me to do? Suffer?

Not quite. Enter Young Lee, the former sushi chef at Lure Bistro in downtown Willoughby. Lee and his wife have recently opened Young’s Sushi on Clark Avenue in downtown Willoughby (old Willoughby). Clark Street runs parallel to Erie Street one block West of Erie.

OK, so I’m not exactly convinced by the location — I think I’d rather be right on Erie Street, but then again, the rent is higher there. Young’s location has its own parking lot, which helps out: parking in Willoughby can be a nightmare, especially during the car show.

Walking in, I was a little amazed at the decor; get this: black and white linoleum tile floor, a pale ash green wainscot-type bottom half and deep purple top half paint scheme on the walls, cantina-style tables with metal-framed plastic chairs, and (oh, wow!) country music playing in the kitchen.

I had my doubts…

…and was well rewarded for my open-mindedness. The sushi was outstanding: their white tuna is on a par with Ohashi’s any day of the week. I had the Fire Bird Roll, which has tuna, salmon, red snapper, white tuna, crab, avocado and cucumber; the Love Roll, which has white tuna, snow crab and avocado; and two pieces of white tuna nigiri. My bride had the Mexican roll (!), which has shrimp, avocado and cucumber; the snow crab roll, which has snow crab, avocado, and cucumber, and another which I can’t remember.

We both also had the Miso Soup and the house salad with ginger dressing. Both of these were excellent. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that both exceed any we’ve had yet (in Cleveland).

But the sushi was, as I said, outstanding: the fish was absolutely fresh, the rice perfectly cooked, the seaweed not too chewy, and the vegetables crisp and flavorful. And the ginger was so fresh it almost burned my tongue!

At first, I was going say that the wasabi was a little weak, but that would be wrong: it’s not weak at all — it’s what you would refer to as a “sleeper”: you get some flavor, but little heat… so you take a little more… then, all of a sudden…

WHAM! Your sinuses are under assault, your eyes can’t hold their water, and your mouth is going hooo-HAH! The wasabi is truly excellent.

I saved the white tuna nigiri for last — white tuna sashimi is one of my all-time favorite foods — and I was not disappointed in the least: it tasted almost like butter, and it melted away on my tongue slowly and evenly — and not a single hint of a sour note, which can happen easily with less-tan-Grade-A white tuna. My only regret here was not ordering two orders of white tuna nigiri (or maybe three — what the hell: when it comes to sushi, what can I say? I’m a pig… <grin>…)

All of this from what you would never think of when you think of a sushi restaurant. I only had one negative to the whole experience: the chop sticks were oval, and were difficult for me to handle. That is something I can definitely get used to, with practice.

I have to wonder about their timing, since opening a restaurant is never easy, especially in bad economic times, but if Young can develop and keep a loyal clientele (and with food like his, I see no reason he can’t do it), you’re going to be hearing a lot about this restaurant in the future.

The hours are 11-9 daily, and 1-8 Sundays; the restaurant is located at 4082 Clark Avenue in downtown Willoughby, about two blocks from the Willoughby Brewing Company (the other side of Erie Street), right next to the convenience store.

If you’re out and about on the East side, and you have a taste for sushi, try this place — you’ll be glad you did.

Cleveland, you gotta’ be kiddin’ me.

I pass this amazing piece of crap twice a day, every morning and every evening, and I’m always amazed that it exists.

How long are you going to sit passively in your cars and pass this wretched hulk day after day? Take a good look, Cleveland, because this is the real face of our city:

A real beauty, right?

The city could probably take this building by Eminent Domain, and for a song. The only problem is that this hulk has been sitting on this spot, just like this, for years: open, broken windows, open doors — the works. It’s probably going to cost a fortune to clean the hazardous waste out of this building.

What? Hazardous waste? What hazardous waste? In an empty building?

You bet: just about every bird living within 10 miles of the city has to know that this nice, little shelter is here waiting for them in bad weather. Just about every rat the size of Shamu does, too. And every stray dog, too. What about snakes? We have them in this region of Ohio. And I’ll bet there’s more bird shit and rat shit in there than Exxon has oil.

THAT hazardous waste. (It’s time to call in Mike Rowe for another episode of “Dirty Jobs.”)

The land could be worth a fortune — if it were habitable, which it’s not. Not by a long shot. You could build something very nice here: a housing complex, perhaps, or an aquarium, maybe, or an office building, possibly. Gee: maybe even — dare I say it — a casino? Not that I’m for having one in Cleveland, but if we did have one, this would be an excellent location…

The possibilities are endless for a property with an outstanding lake view like this.

But instead, we have this hulk just sitting here, taking up space, rotting from the inside out and the outside in, housing all sorts of vermin, rodentia, and the like. Just a thought: if mosquitoes are breeding there, and they are breeding in water polluted with rabid or diseased animal waste, you have to wonder what kind of diseases they carry with them — and what they can infect us with.

Our priorities are elsewhere: a convention center, a medical mart… not that these things are unimportant — they certainly are important — but you can’t forget about severe rot like this. Not in an area so visible.

So, Cleveland, there you have it: your fair city. This is the face of Cleveland, Ohio, like it or not: this is what every visitor to this city sees every time they go down to Progressive Field, or Cleveland Browns Stadium, or the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame, or one of those supposed conventions our politicians want so badly that we never seem to be able to attract.

They blame the lack of hotel space (ironically — and laughably — this is an abandoned Howard Johnson Hotel!) for the lack of conventions here. Yeah, right. If you were hosting a convention, and you had a choice between just about any other American city — and this dung heap — what would you choose?

I’ve been meaning to get down there with my real camera and take some better photos; I just might tomorrow morning, if the weather holds. I will post more photos here as I take them, believe me.

All day Tuesday, April 22nd, the good folks over at TCP in Aurora, Ohio will be celebrating Earth Day with IllumiNation, a special Earth Day webcast about conservation, recycling, and ways you can help conserve our planet’s environment and natural resources.

Tune your browser to www.tcpi.com/earthday for more information.

While you’re at it, check out Help Our World to learn more ways to help the environment.

Ed Hammer, known as the “Father of Fluorescent Signature Analysis,” invented the Compact Fluorescent Light bulb (CFL) for General Electric in 1976. Ed eventually won the IEEE Edison Medal for his pioneering work in the lighting industry.

Ed currently serves up podcasts about his experiences in the business, and (pardon the pun) sheds some light on the true nature of fluorescent lighting from the first days to recent developments in the industry — including advances that help eliminate the introduction of mercury into the environment.

You can check out his weekly podcasts at www.drop-the-hammer.com.

I can tell you that we here at the Bend have changed about 3/4 of our light bulbs over to nVision CFLs in the last year, and we’re seeing a significant savings in our electric bill.

Check it out — and save a few trees.

UPDATE — You can also digg this at:
http://digg.com/environment/illumiNation_An_Earth_Day_Event_Brought_To_You_By_TCP

Whoa, relief…

I was just able to relieve myself from a difficult client’s expectations and go to another project at work this week. The initial client is a bit, shall we say, persnickety; everything has to be absolute letter-perfect, pixel-perfect, etc., all the way down the line.

Print stylesheets? Perfection need only apply. (What? We have lousy print CSS support across browsers? The Hell, you say!)

We have a bug tracker, of course, and I have been free for a couple of days now — that is, of course, if you ignore the client’s bug reports issued today, which were really a series of change requests…

All that aside, it was a pleasure for me to move from one challenging site to another, internal, site that is probably more like moving from the frying pan into the fire than it is moving from one difficult situation to an easier one.

Seriously.

But what I was able to do, this week, was to leverage some recent learning into the internal client’s site that saved me time, countless hours figuring out stuff, and plenty of headaches.

I used jQuery, my new heartthrob.

My superiors are impressed, and so am I — and the best is yet to come, as I have more wrinkles to expose in this project: the sky is my limit!

So I just got home, after numerous hours at the agency this week, slaving away, and I come home feeling… well… tired, yes, but…

…damned good.

It’s a feeling of accomplishment, but better: it’s knowing that I stretched myself to create something that should be; something that belongs where it is as it is. It’s a feeling that I created something that simply deserves to be. Something right.

It’s rare, because it’s a feeling that I did it.

It’s a good feeling, too: and I want more.

By now, I can assume that you have been able to dig yourselves out of the snow and actually get around our fair city.

For some of us, that process took longer than others.

I got home Friday night around 7:30, and it was just in time: I took my lunch leftovers and the daily mail inside, dropped it on the kitchen counter, then slid into the bathroom to do something… well, if you can imagine that it took me almost 90 minutes to drive home, you can imagine what I had to do in there.

Afterward, I went outside to have a cigarette, and I saw the first of what was to become a long list of cars to get stuck in front of my home over the weekend. I lost count around 18 or 20, most of which were 4-wheel drive trucks with snow plows, or Jeeps, but there were a couple of cars and minivans — and one of the latter got stuck right at the end of my driveway sometime late Saturday morning.

By that time, we had at least 16 inches of snow in the street, and it was still coming down — hard. (When all was said and done, we ended up with 28 - 30 inches of snow in the street, drifting to 4 or 5 feet in some places just off-road.)

The lady who owned the minivan abandoned her vehicle with the intent of returning to get it out. She tried later, only to get her Jeep stuck before she arrived at her minivan.

What really got to me was what happened Sunday morning: a city snow plow, trying to get around Ms. Had-no-business-being-out-in-the-worst-snowstorm-in-Cleveland-history’s minivan, got stuck in the very same place many other vehicles found them selves in the hours earlier.

I woke up just in time to take these videos (I apologize for the sharpness — I woke up just seconds before, grabbed the camera, and began shooting; the fuzziness is the window screen):

Turn the volume up and you can hear my bride and I talking about what a good job these guys were (and have been) doing — and they have.

I mean, let’s face it: the heavy snow wasn’t hardly their fault. Nor was the fact that their jobs were made infinitely more difficult by the bozos who felt that they were such good drivers, and their cars were so great in the snow, that they could get through anything.

For that, the proof is in the pudding, as they say:

In this second video, you can hear me say, “oh, please hit that minivan — please hit that minivan!” I was saying this because the person that left their minivan there had absolutely no business being on the road on Saturday — for whatever reason. And their lack of consideration for themselves or others resulted in many more individuals getting stuck in the same place — and to preventing the plows from cleaning our street when all of the others in the neighborhood had been cleared at least twice.

We were stuck in our house until 5:00 p.m. Sunday, unable to go for groceries or other goods when others had been out for hours — thanks to this person’s stupidity.

I took the video because you never see snow plows getting stuck — or pulled out of such a situation; I posted the videos because people need to see what a lack of thought and consideration can do to inconvenience others (and I’m not just talking about me).

Next time they say to stay off the roads unless it’s an absolute emergency — stay off the roads.

UPDATE — My video has been picked up by The News-Herald.