Lakewood, Ohio, How I Miss Thee

It's only natural for someone to have an affinity for their hometown. It's no different for me, and as a one-city-over transplant, I really realize how much I love and, in many ways, miss the great city of Lakewood. Big house, little house, double, condo, apartment, I've pretty much had the Lakewood Experience.

And what a town it is. Certainly my fair city is in transition now, aging housing stock against the backdrop of a limping economy, Lakewood's demographics are changing. But it retains the feel, and the elements, to be what it always has been; the tightest little city around.

Bordered by the great Erie to the north, a river and preserved valley to the west, a raging interstate to the south, and the urbanity and insanity of Cleveland to the East, it truly has a little bit of everything. From the palatial estates by the lake and river, featuring a stodgy club by the beach to all of the doubles and tightly packed homes in its body to the high rise condos in its northeastern corner, it captures aboding Americana, minus the farms (genuine shortcoming) and the McMansion developments (no loss whatsoever).

A house in birdtown versus a house by the Clifton Club illustrates the sharpest of divides. I lived, with my dear mother, in a one bedroom apartment on Birdville's outskirts. Many a day in my youth was spent with and in the residences of my big-house-having friends (thanks guys). The geography and the proximity bridges this divide, as literally and figuratively in Lakewood, you are never more than a short jaunt from the other side.

Only a couple of miles up and down by a few miles wide, Lakewood's density is at its heart. It's self-sustained and then some. Bar, barber, restaurant, cleaners, church, school, whatever- definitely within walking distance no matter where in Lakewood you may stand. How many cities can say that, and also have ample street parking?

It's river valley is a true gem, something I feel we take for granted. I've been to plenty of places that offer nothing close to the geographic (and in the case of glaciation carved Rocky River Valley, geologic) diversity that Lakewood does. Oh yeah, and it's a smooth ten minute commute from downtown via car, bus, or train (lookin right at you, Cleveland Heights and Shaker Heights).

Most importantly, it is, and always will be, a true community. Sipping on some beers at one of the roughly thirty thousand bars in the 'Wood, standing with friends, I realized what our bond, our common thread, was. I'm a lefty nut-job, freely associating with right wing bankers. Connecting with the well connected, and the connectionless. Washed up athletes and aspiring artists, curved cap punkasses and buttoned up buttholes, homos and homophobes. They all, we all, share Lakewood.

L-dubs might look a bit weathered now, but I won't count it out. You shouldn't either.