It's Official: Cleveland Is Butthole Of The World

thirteenbyseven

Legendary Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Posts
2,424
Media
0
Likes
1,519
Points
333
Location
Orange County, SoCal
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
Cleveland mayor says Cleveland ‘perceived to be the butthole of the world sometimes’

It's tough to be the mayor of a rust-belt town that has lost a good percentage of its population and has historically been a punch-line for comics going back half a century. But gosh, you're not supposed to say what everybody has always suspected.

Owner of Colossal Cupcakes explains how her staff ran for safety during Saturday’s protest

Delving into the genesis of Mayor Frank Jackson's uncharitable characterization of his city, one might look at what lies in the heart of Cleveland's central business district. Along historic Euclid Avenue from Public Square to East 9th Street, one should expect this exclusive bit of urban real estate to be occupied by financial powerhouses with names like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs emblazoned on skyscrapers along a concrete canyon of commerce. However in the Bizzaro World known as Cleveland, Ohio, one instead sees large festive multi-colored lettering--COLOSSAL CUPCAKES-- written across the storefront of a bakery specializing in (yes) flavorful cupcakes. A large model of a pink cupcake is above the entrance to remove all doubt. You'd more likely see a garishly painted store like this on the boardwalk in Coney Island as opposed to a location like this.

Kelly Kandah is the attractive owner of Colossal Cupcakes of Cleveland. With all that alliteration and tasty treats going for her, Kelly has made her business thrive for nearly ten-years. And with a degree in broadcast journalism she has a knack for getting in the local news as well, like when her business was robbed two-years ago. But it escapes all reason why an establishment that bakes low-cost, calorie-rich cupcakes should have been a target of vandals and looters this past weekend during the midst of nationwide demonstrations.

Perhaps it is another only in Cleveland story.
 
Last edited:

thirteenbyseven

Legendary Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Posts
2,424
Media
0
Likes
1,519
Points
333
Location
Orange County, SoCal
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
Cleveland cupcake shop owner on business being ransacked by rioters

This is not a repost; Kelly Kandah of Colossal Cupcakes of Cleveland is still making the rounds of Fox News shows, a full week after her cupcake shop was ransacked by rioters. Today she was on with Neil Cavuto. Friends in Cleveland told me she is a drama queen-- one with a degree in broadcast journalism-- but only someone who is cynical like myself would suggest she's using these news appearances as demo tapes.

Important note: She is wearing lipstick the identical shade of
hot pink that adorns the frosting of the giant cupcake model outside the shop. And either there is a delay with her Skype transmission or (probably) Kelly is pausing for dramatic effect. o_O

 
5

5522661

Guest
I grew up in Cleveland, and it is very sad as well as painful for me to go back and visit now. Areas that were thriving when I grew up there are now run down and falling apart.
 
  • Like
Reactions: thirteenbyseven

thirteenbyseven

Legendary Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Posts
2,424
Media
0
Likes
1,519
Points
333
Location
Orange County, SoCal
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
I grew up in Cleveland, and it is very sad as well as painful for me to go back and visit now. Areas that were thriving when I grew up there are now run down and falling apart.

Much as I portray myself as a Southern Californian (and part-time Floridian) I was born in Cleveland and still have extended family in Shaker Heights and Strongsville. Cleveland is on a bit of a transformation led by bio-tech and the Cleveland Clinic.

Kelly and her cupcake shop just hit my funny bone. She'll land on her feet. Perhaps WEWS Channel 5 will hire her to be a morning co-host on a new version of Morning Exchange.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Goliath918

thirteenbyseven

Legendary Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Posts
2,424
Media
0
Likes
1,519
Points
333
Location
Orange County, SoCal
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
Now that I have a bit of time, I'd like to expand on just what put the "leave" in Cleveland. Decades ago a confluence of events made the town a knee-slapping guffaw on the comedy club circuit, a mistake on the lake in retrograde orbit around the sun. And to illustrate the point, just throwing darts at a dartboard, the year 1972 was particularly rich in Cleveland lore.

perk-hair-on-fire-orlousky-photo

Cleveland mayor Ralph Perk was elected in an era where industrial midwest mayors had to look the part. The mayor of New York City could dress in expensive Italian suits as-if he were one of the opera and caviar set, but damn-it if anyone aspired to the office of mayor in Cleveland, Ohio, he'd better look like he knew the difference between a crescent wrench and a socket wrench. Unfortunately Ralph J. Perk grew-up in the depression working alongside his brother as pattern makers for the fashion industry. Moreover Perk was an oddity, a Republican who was able to attract a strong white ethnic (normally Democratic) voting base by exhibiting both family values with a blue collar lifestyle. To reinforce his administration's moral compass, Ralph Perk banned the sale of "racy" Playboy magazine with its nude centerfolds out at Cleveland Hopkins airport. When Richard Nixon's wife Pat invited the Perks to a lavish White House banquet Ralph Perk turned them down, saying it was their bowling night.

On October 16, 1972 Perk was scheduled for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the small and hopelessly outdated downtown Cleveland Convention Center. Cleveland had a difficult time attracting larger flashier conventions, so instead it had to reply on those which aligned with its unfortunate-- and increasing-- reputation as a prudish run-down, rust-belt town. That week a group of beer-chugging, macho men affiliated with industrial metals were there, people who knew their way around hard hats and blow torches. An aide to mayor Perk suggested he eschew the normal ribbon-cutting scissors in favor of a symbolic welding torch. The son of the fashion industry had never used a welding torch in his entire life-- and it showed.

In my next exciting installment I will tell the tale of
Hugo Zacchini, The Human Cannonball out at suburban Geauga County Fair. Teaser: It involves a Cleveland TV station, a clandestine camera, and it went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
 
5

5522661

Guest
Much as I portray myself as a Southern Californian (and part-time Floridian) I was born in Cleveland and still have extended family in Shaker Heights and Strongsville. Cleveland is on a bit of a transformation led by bio-tech and the Cleveland Clinic.

Kelly and her cupcake shop just hit my funny bone. She'll land on her feet. Perhaps WEWS Channel 5 will hire her to be a morning co-host on a new version of Morning Exchange.

The Morning Exchange is still on??? Wow I remember when it was Fred Griffith, Dorothy Fuldheim, and Liz Richards. Guess I'm dating myself now. LOL
 
  • Like
Reactions: thirteenbyseven

thirteenbyseven

Legendary Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Posts
2,424
Media
0
Likes
1,519
Points
333
Location
Orange County, SoCal
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
The Morning Exchange is still on??? Wow I remember when it was Fred Griffith, Dorothy Fuldheim, and Liz Richards. Guess I'm dating myself now. LOL


Of the original cast only Liz Richards remains alive. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida and to my knowledge still practices family law, only representing female clients. Her traumatic marriage to local Cleveland radio celebrity Gary Dee no-doubt had a long-lasting effect. I contacted her via email when my wife and I bought a second vacation home in the Tampa Bay area, and she returned my fan mail with a brief thank you for the memories.

The irrepressible Joel Rose-- always a fan favorite-- met with an unlikely end after it was discovered that there was a sexual stalking component to his personality. But a decade prior to that, during Joel's happier times, I met him one summer in Put-in-Bay at an island airport in Lake Erie. It was 1990 shortly after he had left the program. I was twenty at the time and had rented our flying club's six-place Beech A36 Bonanza at Cuyahoga County airport, taking my then girlfriend and two other couples to party hearty in the Key West of the Midwest. Joel Rose had just flown-in and was tying-down his single-engine Mooney 201 when we pulled-up on to the ramp. Naturally we treated him like a major celebrity, while he was just as witty and funny in-person as he was on morning television.

Now that everyone at LPSG is bored to death I'll leave-it at that.
 

thirteenbyseven

Legendary Member
Joined
Jul 9, 2004
Posts
2,424
Media
0
Likes
1,519
Points
333
Location
Orange County, SoCal
Sexuality
100% Straight, 0% Gay
Gender
Male
Petition seeks to replace Christopher Columbus statue in Cleveland's Little Italy with one of Ettore Boiardi, aka 'Chef Boyardee'

In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Little did that Italian explorer know at the time, but his likeness would be embroiled with dozens of other symbols of repression and racial discrimination hundreds of years in the future. At this rate, by Christmas statues of Jesus Christ will be under assault by Scientology followers of the late L. Ron Hubbard. However, replacing a statue of an historic Italian figure with one of a guy who cooked spaghetti sauce also reeks as another Cleveland joke. And the Mistake on the Lake doesn't need any more of those.

I haven't eaten a plateful of Chef Boyardee for years but I recall it as pasta and sauce, a southern Italian style red gooey sauce which consisted of two-parts tomato and two-parts sodium. It wasn't particularly hideous as much as....eh. Ettore Boiardi (Chef Boyardee) owned an Italian restaurant in Cleveland called il Giardino d'Italia off of E 9th Street during the 1930s. And his eatery did boffo business, particularly with the well-healed movers and shakers of Cleveland back in the day when the town was a symbol of U.S. industrial might. When WW-II started he used his connections with government officials to package a favorite of his restaurant patrons-- pasta containing his secret red sauce recipe, loaded with enough preservative sodium content to raise blood pressure 30 points-- and sent it to the troops in the form of K-Rations. It turns out the soldiers enjoyed his pasta one hellava lot more than 99% of the other K-Rations offered to them at mealtime.

After the fighting had ended, these now former soldiers went-out in search of it at their local grocery stores back home in America. The only problem was, Ettore Boiardi was a Cleveland restauranteur who lacked the skill and ability of food distribution like Jeff Bezos at Amazon. Rather than close his pasta sauce factory down and lay-off his employees, Boiardi reluctantly sold it in 1946 to the predecessor of Conagra Foods for a relative pittance of $6 million dollars-- about $85 million today adjusted for inflation.

Is he a worthy successor to Christopher Columbus?
 

DiamondJoe

Superior Member
Joined
Jun 27, 2020
Posts
6,578
Media
10
Likes
7,866
Points
133
Age
44
Location
Glastonbury (Somerset, England)
Sexuality
50% Straight, 50% Gay
Gender
Male
  • Like
Reactions: thirteenbyseven
5

5522661

Guest

Of the original cast only Liz Richards remains alive. She now lives in St. Petersburg, Florida and to my knowledge still practices family law, only representing female clients. Her traumatic marriage to local Cleveland radio celebrity Gary Dee no-doubt had a long-lasting effect. I contacted her via email when my wife and I bought a second vacation home in the Tampa Bay area, and she returned my fan mail with a brief thank you for the memories.

The irrepressible Joel Rose-- always a fan favorite-- met with an unlikely end after it was discovered that there was a sexual stalking component to his personality. But a decade prior to that, during Joel's happier times, I met him one summer in Put-in-Bay at an island airport in Lake Erie. It was 1990 shortly after he had left the program. I was twenty at the time and had rented our flying club's six-place Beech A36 Bonanza at Cuyahoga County airport, taking my then girlfriend and two other couples to party hearty in the Key West of the Midwest. Joel Rose had just flown-in and was tying-down his single-engine Mooney 201 when we pulled-up on to the ramp. Naturally we treated him like a major celebrity, while he was just as witty and funny in-person as he was on morning television.

Now that everyone at LPSG is bored to death I'll leave-it at that.
Oh man, the memories that come back watching that clip. I was a teenager and had the hots for Liz Richards. Funny. Thanks for posting that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: thirteenbyseven