Abstract
In this 2025 interview, Claude Carson, the owner of Sports One Bar and Grill in the Lee-Harvard neighborhood, discusses his experiences as business owner in the area. He details his early life, his involvement in the Black studies program at Kent State University, and his pathway to opening a business. He then details the changes of Sports One Bar and Grill over time and why he continues to stay invested in the neighborhood.
Interviewee
Carson, Claude (interviewee); Jordan, Mikel (participant)
Interviewer
Carubia, Ava (interviewer)
Project
Union-Miles
Date
1-27-2025
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
56 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Claude Carson interview, 27 January 2025" (2025). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 483014.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1360
Transcript
Ava Carubia [00:00:00] I’m recording now and I have a little script I read at the beginning of my interviews, which is today is January 27th, 2025. My name is Ava Carubia and I’m here at Sports One on Harvard Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio. Interviewing Mr. Claude Carson for the Cleveland Regional Oral History Project. I also will say that I am here with my co-worker Mikel Jordan. And thank you for being agreeing to be interviewed today.
Claude Carson [00:00:28] Not a problem.
Ava Carubia [00:00:29] So for the record, can you please state your name, your birth date and where you were born?
Claude Carson [00:00:33] Claude Carson, and my birthday is. I was born in a literal sense or neighborhood wise? What do you mean? I was born here in Cleveland, Ohio and I was raised just down the street from where this interview is taking place at 14129 Benwood. It’s about 12 houses down the street here. I was brought home from the hospital to that house and I left for college from that house. And I’ve done business here in the community all my life.
Ava Carubia [00:01:16] Perfect. So I want to get started just with your early life. Can you talk about what it was like to grow up in this area?
Claude Carson [00:01:24] Sure. When I was very young, when I was say, 7, 8, 9 years old, 10 years old, I used to deliver newspapers in this area. I was known as the neighborhood hustler, if you will. I collected pop bottles. You don’t remember, too young to remember a day when there was a deposit on pop bottles, milk bottles, and I would collect those bottles. I would shovel snow. I delivered newspapers. There used to be a newspaper in the neighborhood, two of them actually, one called the Plain Dealer and another one called the Cleveland Press. So I delivered both those papers as a kid. In addition to, you know, just taking on odd jobs around the neighborhood, I, I’ve been working a paid salary job since I was seven years old right here in this community.
Ava Carubia [00:02:29] So what can you say about your experiences working here from such a young age?
Claude Carson [00:02:35] Well, I think that it gave me a very unique experience. It was able to make me probably one of the most well-rounded people you’ll ever meet. Rarely would you meet people in life that have strong affiliations or connections to, say for instance, a college president or a, or a Fortune 500 company executive and local crackheads. I know them all from top to the bottom. You know, through my experiences in my life. I, you know, again, reared in this neighborhood, watched it, watched it change or morph from a predominantly white neighborhood when I was a kid to being predominantly Black. I hate to say, but crime ridden, it’s changed. It’s changed. You know, when I was a kid, all of my friends, this neighborhood, all of them, practically 90% of my friends, we all lived in two family, two parent households and they all owned their homes in this neighborhood. There weren’t a lot of Blacks at the time. In the early, early 70s, they began to move in late 70s perhaps. But my parents moved to this neighborhood in the late 50s and again, you know, lots of whites then. And, you know, all of my friends, you know, had two parent households. You know, we played organized sports in the playground and it was a fun time. It was a fun time.
Ava Carubia [00:04:52] So I want to go back a little bit and ask you about your parents. They moved to the area in the 50s. Were they from Cleveland?
Claude Carson [00:05:03] Originally? They were not. My mother was from Georgia, from a small town in Georgia, my dad, small town in Arkansas, you know, Blytheville, Arkansas. And let me back up some as well before we go too much further so I can clarify some things. I was raised by my grandparents. So when I refer to my parents, I’m referring to my grandparents. They raised me and they are the ones I affectionately refer to as my parents. So they were from Arkansas and Georgia respectively, and moved to the short Scovill area in the, in the 50s, early 50s, and shared two big houses amongst my dad’s family. And this big house housed, you know, several families all with the same last name, maybe two or three last names perhaps.You know, much of what you would see in like a Jewish community, you know, they may have, you know, especially years ago, they’d have two or three different family members all living together. But the one thing that they had, they had a retail component to theirs. They’d have three, four, five families living all up under one roof, perhaps upstairs or in the rear of their family owned business. So we didn’t have that component. We just had the communal living situation.
Ava Carubia [00:06:53] What was that like growing up in that communal living situation?
Claude Carson [00:06:56] Well, I wasn’t old enough. I wasn’t born until ’68.
Ava Carubia [00:06:59] Okay.
Claude Carson [00:07:00] Right, I was born in ’68 down the street. But I was born into a very large family. My dad, again, my grandfather’s my dad, his wife had died and they had a handful of kids and my mom had divorced and she had a handful of kids. And they came together and they had more kids, which totaled about 19 kids. So I was raised in a house with a dozen and a half kids. So that unto itself was an entirely different experience than anyone, any, you know, could have, you know, then or even now, you know. But it was a great it was a great time. One thing I will say about growing up in a family that large, you know, I never ever heard the word step. I never heard it. I didn’t know what a step was. [Recording pauses]
Ava Carubia [00:08:02] So you’re just talking about growing up in a big family.
Claude Carson [00:08:06] Yes, yes, yes. Large family. And again, like I said, we never used the word step. I didn’t know what a step-sibling was. You know, my dad didn’t raise us that way. We were, you know, I grew up in a very, very strict household. Believe it or not, my dad was, he was not an ordained minister, but he was one that subscribed to the Bible and we went to church every Sunday. I sang in a gospel choir at my church. I sang in a gospel choir from age 6, 7 until I graduated from college. You know, all my life that’s all I ever done, you know. And when I talk to you about, talk to you about other parts of my life, you’ll say, wow, that’s different. This, you know. But yeah, yeah, he was a steel worker. My, my mom was a homemaker. And you know, during the middle 70s, middle to late 70s, she started taking kids into the home to, you know, earn extra income, that kind of thing. And she would have odd jobs, you know, there were some places like up on Lee Road, she would work. I forget the name of those places there. I have to think about them. But I do remember her bringing burgers and stuff home when I was very young. She would work a few hours, but she never had a career job, you know. And my dad, in addition to, he was working for Republic Steel. And Republic’s a long time name. It went from Republic Steel to Jones and Laughlin or J&L Steel to whatever it is today. I don’t know if it’s back to Republic or what. But yeah, that was so, you know, you figure this guy, you know, Bible-toting, you know, pickup truck-driving, you know, steel worker. Worked very hard, lots of mouths to feed, you know. You familiar with a movie called The Wiz? You remember a little fat lady in there? She said, “Don’t nobody bring me no bad news.” Hey, don’t bring him no bad news about grades, about you got in trouble, about nothing. He don’t want to hear it. You know, it’s going to be, it’s going to be a wrath that’s coming down, you know. And he ruled with an iron fist and I appreciate him for it. I look at the lives of some others that I grew up with and it’s just not the same. Some of our experiences overlapped. But in terms of being a man, in terms of rearing a family, in terms of providing for my family, in terms of knowing right from wrong, understanding it, in terms of being able to fix things, being handy, being able to just be a man, you know, most of them pale. They pale in comparison, pale sorely, you know, because I was taught, you know, I’m a general contractor now, in addition to all the other stuff I’ve done. But I got the foundation for my father, a man who only had a fourth grade education. He was the wisest, unlettered man I’ve ever known in my life. You know, he could fix anything. A car, he could fix, he could build anything. He could install toilets, put up walls, put a roof on, paint a house. You know, I mean, he was ingenuitive and he, you know, he was willing to try, you know, and seek assistance, seek information if he didn’t know how to do something, you know, and it’s out there, especially these days, we, we live in an information age where you can find out anything, you know, find out how to do a heart transplant. You can Google it, it’s there, you know, so, you know, it’s a different age, different era. You know, believed in family, you know, everything was family oriented, family centered. When I was growing up, you know, he would buy us all cars when we got to be of driving age. It wouldn’t be a brand new car, but nonetheless it was a car. And he’d tell us, you know, the car doesn’t belong to you. You may drive it every day. It belongs to the family. So you tell my brother Rick or my brother Matt or whomever, you know, if you got something important you have to do or you going out somewhere and you need the nicer car, then you take it, you know, but it’s not your car. It’s just a car in the house. You know, as it turned out, you know, you drove the car 99% of the time. But he made it clear going in, if he’s going to make this investment, this is about oneness. This is about family. It’s not about individualism. It’s not about you. It’s about us. It’s about whatever it takes for us to collectively, you know, move forward, get something done is for the betterment of the situation.
Ava Carubia [00:14:45] I want to come back to that, but I want to go back to something you said about how the neighborhood was predominantly white in the early 70s when you were growing up. How did that feel to be in a mostly white neighborhood? What were the conversations going on about that?
Claude Carson [00:15:04] You know, I didn’t, I didn’t experience. Very rarely have I ever experienced what one would consider racism. It wasn’t until I became a young adult when I really began to understand what racism was all about because, you know, I really didn’t know how to define it. So as an adult, looking back, you know, I clearly recognized some things that were done to me that was racist, you know, but I didn’t recognize it in the moment. There was a lady that lived about five houses down from right here now. Her name was Ms. Annie. Old, old white lady, you know. And I’d go to collect money for the newspapers. And again, you’re too young to remember the brutal, brutal winters we had in the middle 70s, the blizzard. 76, 77, 78. We had real winters. I’m talking about, you know, as a 56 year old man today, I still remember them. Where you had snow drifts that covered up your door. You couldn’t get out the house getting out the drift. A snow drift covered it up, you know, so I’m standing out there at her door collecting money for the paper, and I knock on the door and I said, “Hey, I’m here to,” It was only about 40 or 50 cents she owed me. And she said, “Okay, wait right here.” close the door. And I stood there on the porch waiting for her to bring the money to me for like 25, 30 minutes, you know, my mind couldn’t process what was going on at that time. I was too young. But I know now, I know now what Ms. Annie was doing to me. I know now. Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:17:28] So you were out in the neighborhood, like that was an example of you having one of your jobs. So as you were like just out in the neighborhood experiencing all these different people in all these different communities. How did the neighborhood start to change as you got older?
Claude Carson [00:17:47] Well, the families began to break up. And I think the disintegration of the Black family is what changed the Black community. For whatever reason, the father may have lost a job, he may have moved on, or, you know, there was divorce. And this is all really, you know, in my young, young adult years, this wasn’t as a young man. This is, you know, when I was 14, 15, 16, before, just before I was going off to college, you know, and it was just a change. You could see, you know, the drug epidemic didn’t hit until like mid-80s, you know, that wasn’t until like ’87, ’88, ’89. That’s when it really hit this community hard. I come home from school and I just didn’t recognize people anymore. I didn’t recognize the people. I didn’t recognize what was going on. You know, little bitty dudes in the neighborhood that I was throwing a football to, you know, driving, you know, brand new SUVs and big old wheels on them and just, you know, tons of money, big jewelry and just the world had changed. You know, being away for those few years, you know, I come home over the summers, but, you know, even during the summer I’d still work, you know, in fact, I worked at Republic Steel. You know, I worked at Republic Steel and I worked at Seaway Foods. You know, they all have like summer help positions. And really wasn’t that in-tune to the community until I graduated and I came home and we opened this place, opening in 1992 as the B5.
Ava Carubia [00:20:19] I want to ask you about your educational journey. So what elementary school did you go to?
Claude Carson [00:20:27] Oh, interesting. I went to Moses Cleveland. It’s right two blocks away, just east of here. And I went there from kindergarten until the fifth grade. In 1979, they started busing here in Cleveland. So my sixth grade year, I had to go to the west side. I went to a school called Artemis Ward. I get up at 6:00 in the morning to get on the bus, 5:30, 6:00 to catch the bus. 12 years old, all the way to the west side. So my middle school, or what we call junior high, then when I got to the seventh grade, I came back to the east side. I, I went to Robert H. Jamison, which is one block, two blocks, one block west of here, right here on Harvard. So I did the seventh, eighth, ninth, my junior high school years on the east side. Then 10th grade, I went back to the west side. I went to John Marshall.
Mikel Jordan [00:20:40] I didn’t know you went to Marshall.
Claude Carson [00:20:42] Yep, yep, I graduated from John Marshall in 1986.
Ava Carubia [00:21:50] So what did you think about busing? Being a kid that had to go all the way across the city?
Claude Carson [00:21:57] I didn’t particularly like it because, you know, A, I had to get up early in the morning, B, I, you know, I had to stand out in the cold. You know, the winters were brutal. You know, catching a bus always to the other side of town, it was rough. But again, some things that I experienced in that I didn’t have the capacity. I wasn’t looking through a set of lenses that would help me understand exactly what I was dealing with and why. You know, it wasn’t until after I actually got to college and I got involved in the Black Studies program at Kent State University under a gentleman named Dr. Crosby. He and his wife Shirley Crosby ran the Black Studies department there and just began to learn more about self and kind, you know, and you know, I’ve always been a pretty voracious reader. So the lights started to come on, you know, I started seeing things from a different perspective and I said, oh, wow, okay, that wasn’t cool. Well, wow. Well, that shouldn’t have happened that way. You know, I became a little bit more informed and I was able to develop a different opinion about how I felt about what was going on.
Ava Carubia [00:23:36] So you graduated high school in ’86.
Claude Carson [00:23:38] In ’86.
Ava Carubia [00:23:40] You went to Kent State?
Claude Carson [00:23:41] Well, not initially. I graduated in ’86 and I participated in a student exchange program the following year in ’87. So I went over to England for a while and then I came back and I started Kent in the fall of ’87. So I stayed there and I graduated in ’91.
Ava Carubia [00:24:10] And leaving home and going to England and also to Kent State. What was that like?
Claude Carson [00:24:17] It was interesting. I had to really kind of man up. I had to muster up a lot of courage the first time I’ve been on an airplane, you know. You know, I didn’t come from a family that traveled like that or, you know, kind of had it like that to go places, to do things, you know, my kids have been all over the world, but. And my youngest, the 16 year old. I have 16 year old twins. They’ve been all over the world. At 16, I was graduating from high school and this is my first time being on an airplane. I flew from Hopkins to JFK in New York and from JFK to London, Heathrow. My first time being on a plane. So that was a trial by fire, you know, to not know what the experience is going to be about and have to take on so much of it at one time, it’s like, you know, it was interesting, but I enjoyed it. I really loved. Was good. You know, that experience coupled with my experience at Kent State University were probably the best years of my life. Those are what some historians refer to when they talk about periods. The awakening. That was my period of awakening, yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:25:45] So what did you study at Kent State?
Claude Carson [00:25:47] Business. Business, yeah. Yep.
Ava Carubia [00:25:51] But you were involved in the Black Studies department?
Claude Carson [00:25:54] I, I was involved with the Black Studies program as a, as a participant. You know, they had English in what they call a department called Bowman. Then they had English in the Black Studies department, you know, and they had the two English programs because they had clearly identified that English for Black students is different than English for a white student. So you could take English over in Bowman hall, but there’s also English over here for you, you know. But I’ve never had a problem with either the two, to be honest. But there were other classes I took, like the Black Experience, one and two, Black Health. I took a Kiswahili course, one and two. I took some other advanced level Black Studies course coursework [Recording pauses]
Ava Carubia [00:26:59] And you’re talking, right, about the Black Studies program at Kent State. Okay, that’s what we were talking about before I paused it.
Claude Carson [00:27:04] I. Yeah, I was saying that that was like a really, really strong turning point in my life because it gave me. It helped me to understand who I was. It helped me to understand who I was. It gave me proximity, if you will, you know, geographic proximity. It gave me mental proximity. It gave me a cultural proximity where I was able to understand, you know, when I say geographically, you know, I know where I am in the world. I know right now, I am on 142nd and Harvard, on the north side of the street, you know, on the northeastern side of the street in the city of Cleveland. On Harvard in Cleveland, in Ohio, in the United States, you know, in the western hemisphere. You know, it gave me that sense of understanding. It helped me understand what my proximity is to [Recording pauses]
Ava Carubia [00:28:40] A better situation.
Claude Carson [00:28:41] That’s okay. That’s okay. It is what it is.
Ava Carubia [00:28:44] Yep, it is what it is.
Claude Carson [00:28:45] You know, we, again, are coming from humble beginnings, so. It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m used to grassroots.
Ava Carubia [00:28:51] Okay. I appreciate that.
Claude Carson [00:28:53] Uhhuh.
Ava Carubia [00:28:54] So ’91. You came back.
Claude Carson [00:28:57] I came back. And while I was in college, I. I was. I hate to make the comparison today, but at one time, it was kind of something I could be proud of. But I was the P. Diddy of Kent. You know. What he was known to be. I was a party promoter. I promoted parties every weekend. And I found a niche in the market where they weren’t allowing Black students to host parties and that kind of thing on campus. So I found some places down there. I’d come down over the. I’ll admit to you, some things I did. What I did was I was part of the student government. Okay? I held a position in the student government, and I helped to govern a budget of about 3, 350, $400,000. And we doled that money out through all the student organizations. Every year, we save about 20, 30% of it for what we call a contingency fund. Those monies would be doled out to students that didn’t go through the annual allocation program process. Okay. As a member of that board, you know, I had very close relationships with, you know, campus ombudsman, vice president, university president, university, all the higher-ups. So there was always a problem. Students organizations could always rent room on campus, say, for instance, the ballroom or some of the other smaller rooms. They’d host parties, charge three, four or five bucks at the door, and create a little seed money for their organization to do things. So there was always a problem between the fraternities, which one I’m in. I’m an Alpha, you know, I’m part of Alpha Alpha Fraternity Incorporated. And the football team, you know, they inevitably they end up fighting to the point where it would take someone like myself or another advocate to go to the university and advocate on behalf of the students to say, you know, let’s put some policies place so that these parties can continue, but much more responsibly. So what I would do, I would advocate against it. Don’t let them have the parties on campus. You know, they don’t need to have them. It’s a bad thing. And I would in turn go to all of the available buildings and building owners, nightclub owners in the city, and I’d establish contracts with them. So I had all of them locked-down, every single one of them. So I pay them whether I’m using their place or not. And based upon the crowd that I’m anticipating over the weekend, you know, I’d use that venue. So I own them all. I have rights to them all. So no one could have a party in the city without me. I don’t care who you are, you can be in a sorority, you can be in a fraternity, even my own fraternity. Yeah, there’ll be no partying without me. And I made ungodly amounts of money. I did.
Ava Carubia [00:33:14] I’m sure.
Claude Carson [00:33:14] I did. I tell you, I lived very high on a horse. I drove a very nice vehicle in college. I lived in a very nice. Yeah. So that was how I more or less kind of put myself through college. You know, like I say again, it was always about a hustle. I always gotta figure out how I’m going to do this. I didn’t have, you know, my parents didn’t have money like that to, you know, to even send me. I went to college because my brother over me went to college. He went because my other brother over him went and we all went to Kent. You know, hadn’t I been for athletics. My oldest brother, my older brother Matthew, he went to Kent on a football scholarship. He got there, realized what it was all about, drugged my other brother Rick up. He got there, saw it, and, you know, we were just a year apart, so I was seeing it as he was seeing it. So, you know, I had already made up my mind. I’m going there. Didn’t know what I was going to do there or whatever, but once I got there, you know, decided, okay, you know, I’m gonna do something in business. And when I got there, my older brother Matt, he was on his way out, and he said, well, hey, Claude, you know, I’m gonna walk you over here to this financial aid office and try to get you some money. He walked me over and never forget a guy named Bill Johnson. He’s probably long gone. In fact, I’m sure he’s long gone now. He says, “Hey, this is my little brother. You know, need to help him out, get him some financial aid, get him some money for food” or whatever. You know, had some stuff going in, but it’s never enough. So between my side hustles, cutting hair, selling T shirts and all kinds of stuff, I was able to make ends meet. And that’s what led me to student government. You know, my brother told me, hey, you know, you could always become an RA, Resident Advisor, and they’ll pay for your housing and your food. So I said, okay, I’ll look into that. He said, but if you really want to do something, Claude, get on that Senate, man. If you really, really want to do something. I said, okay, you know, I can become politically engaged. That’s. That’s easy for me. Went right into it and spent my last days on the Senate. They paid all my. They paid for all my books. They paid for all my tuition. So that was my real reason for, you know, becoming politically engaged, to get that stipend. And it worked well for me. Coupled with my side stuff. I lived well. Lived very well.
Ava Carubia [00:36:15] And so how did all of the stuff you were involved in in college prepare you then for coming back to Cleveland? You said that you worked at Black Pages?
Claude Carson [00:36:27] I worked at Black Pages, yeah. Yeah, I worked there for the. For my first year. I knew we were going to open this place. It was under construction. When I came home, my older brother and I decided to kind of go into it together. He was a firefighter and obviously, you know, graduate. Coming out of college, I didn’t have the money to do anything, but I did have all the wherewithal. I knew how to run this place because I did it as a child. I’ve been on this corner all my life. All these corners. You know, when this was a place called Dr. Pepper’s in the 70s, I was here, you know, filling the coolers with beer, wine and pop and that sort of thing. Then in 1970, another guy bought the place named Teddy Gardner. I worked here under him. In fact, he came looking for me because he knew I knew all the ins and outs of the place. Oh, there’s a kid in the neighborhood named Claude that knows everything. And I did, you know, and I worked here, you know, I put in a solid 20, 30 hours a week. You know, I had a regular paycheck all of my life as a kid growing up by a regular paycheck. There’s a pool hall across the street right there. I worked in there kind of cleaning up. It used to be a watermelon stand at some point during my life, you know, everything in the neighborhood. You know, next door used to be a juice distributorship called Daily’s. A guy named Bill Colley owned it, and I worked for him, you know, and everything. Every place around here, if there was a dollar moving, I was touching it, you know. So when my time came, so to speak, to kind of have the entire ball of wax, it was easy. I walk into these places and, you know, I build them out. I can, you know, put them together, you know, design them. Everything about this I can do with my eyes closed. This is all I’ve ever done, you know. You know, a lot of the, you know, dope boys like to claim blocks, you know, this is my block. This is my block, you know. Well, this is my block. I’ve been on this block since. For 40 years, 45 years I’ve been on this block. Almost closer to 50 years I’ve been on this block. So this is my block, you know.
Ava Carubia [00:39:22] Can you describe just in this block in particular, the businesses that have come and gone throughout the years?
Claude Carson [00:39:31] Well, this has always been what it is now, a mixture of a beverage store and a local corner bar. I’ve expanded it over the years to be probably one of the most popular restaurants in the city. We went from under our ownership, my family’s, we started as the B5 in 1992. In 1990. What was that? In 1992? Then in 2000, we changed over to The Mix. In 2000, say about five or six, something like that, I changed to Harvard Wine and Grill. And when it was Harvard Wine and Grill was when I was really, really, really focusing on food. I mean, we were doing, you know, white linen on the tables, and we were the. The cat’s meow of the neighborhood, you know, with the big glass windows in the front, you know, the covered tables with the linen and candles and that kind of thing. And the distributors from the food companies like GFS and some of the other big food companies would bring some of their colleagues here and they would just marvel at what I was doing. They couldn’t understand it. They’re like, how are you selling so many steaks and scallops and shrimp and how are you selling all this high-end food, crab legs in this neighborhood? How are you doing it? You know, because I was selling more than anyone around. I mean, big restaurants that, you know, had big names and were doing big things and I didn’t really know how I was doing it. I was just doing it, you know, I didn’t set out to be what it had become. Excuse me. I was just trying to give people what I like. That’s always been my way of doing business, you know, I give people what I like. When I taste something that’s good, I’m gonna sell that. Oh, that tastes good, I’m gonna sell that. You know, it was always about, you know, what I experienced and just selling that experience. And as it turned out, it ended up being a huge, huge hit. Huge hit. I was probably selling. Oh, man. Early, early on we were doing $100,000 a month in sales right here in the ghetto. Easy, you know, A million dollars, nothing easy. A million dollars in sales. Easy, easy, easy. Yeah, right here in the hood. And a lot of it was on premises, on premises, consistent. People come sit down, get dressed up and come here to dine. Then we had a live entertainment component, always jazz. You know, for a very long time, I almost single handedly held, held up live entertainment in this city. You know, when they could go nowhere else to perform, I’d have them come here and perform for years. 20 years, I did it. Yeah.
Ava Carubia [00:43:55] So you mentioned jazz. What other kind of music would come through here?
Claude Carson [00:43:58] Just jazz. All I would do. Just jazz and R&B, but nothing, nothing beyond that. No rap or nothing like that. It was, you know, just good stuff that people could appreciate. Adults could come here and feel at home, you know, comforted and be all right being in the inner city. We didn’t really have any problems. No fussing, fighting, none of that stuff, nothing. You know, up until about six or seven years ago when the neighborhood had changed and there was a new generation of juveniles welding their own juvenocracy in the area. And some guys pulled up on some other young guys that were outside. They weren’t even in here. And I don’t know if it was a hit on them or what, but guys pulled up and started shooting. Absolute mayhem, I tell you, Mayhem. Absolute mayhem’s like. Like a movie. I’m talking about where you’re diving over tables, you’re ducking, and you’re waiting on them to stop shooting so you can run by. I mean, something you see in a movie, that kind of activity. It was crazy, crazy, crazy.
Ava Carubia [00:45:37] What year was that?
Claude Carson [00:45:40] That was about seven, eight years ago. So do the math.
Ava Carubia [00:45:45] I’m bad at math.
Claude Carson [00:45:46] Yeah. This is 25. That was probably, excuse me, 2000. What? Eight. No, let’s see. 18. Yeah. 2017. 16. 17. 18. Somewhere around there. I try to forget it, but as it turned out, I ended up with three dead bodies right here on my doorstep. And about 60 shots that rang out, yep, killed a very, very good business, killed this community. That was the nail in the coffin that killed this community. That was it. If ever anything did, that, did it. I mean, the advent of crack cocaine didn’t do to this community what that did. It didn’t. I mean, that was it. That coupled with this new emergence of mass media and social media, it hit the airwaves and it touched so many more people than you could ever dream. You know, it was, you know, just a few years ago. I’ve heard people tell me that they saw it on like Verse 24, some, you know, criminal justice program, you know, and it just. People. People have not forgotten it. They have not forgotten it.
Ava Carubia [00:47:51] And when you say it changed this area can you explain how?
Claude Carson [00:47:57] Right now the sales I used to do, I can’t do a third of that right now. I can’t do a third of it. I’m here for the betterment of the community. I’m here because I believe in the community. I think that it will turn, I think that it will come back. I’m heavily, heavily invested in this community and I think that it will come back. But right now, I’m throwing money in the wind. It has the same look that the places downtown have, you know, with the garage door windows, the wrought iron patio out front, beautiful chairs, you know, eight big screen TVs down there, you know, granite bar top. I mean, this area up in here is nice to you?
Ava Carubia [00:48:57] Yeah.
Claude Carson [00:48:58] I mean, you’d be hard pressed to find this anywhere else in the community. You know, when I rebuilt this place and renamed it in hopes that people would come back with a different name, you know, it just hasn’t worked.
Ava Carubia [00:49:16] What year did you rename it? Right after-
Claude Carson [00:49:18] It’s been two years. It’s been two years now. I renamed it Sports one Just try to give it a sports feel, make it more casual dining. You know, they’re still hankering for the food, but they don’t particularly want to sit here and eat it any longer. They want to get it and go. And the word is, you know, don’t be around here after dark. You know, I used to be open at 2:30 in the morning, you know, every day and, you know, had a customer base. I close every day now at midnight. I could really close at 10 or 11, maybe midnight on the weekends. It’s just not the same. It’s difficult trying to recapture the magic. And I had a couple hundred thousand dollars tied up in it in this reemergence, this new look, you know. But will I get it back? I just remain hopeful right now.
Ava Carubia [00:50:28] Well, the interview- There’s so much I could ask you. The interviews are generally just about an hour. So I’m going to start winding down the questions and I have two more things to ask you. One is that you said you’re invested in this community and that you have hope. Why do you stay invested in this community? Like, what are the positive things that keep you doing business here and keep you investing, even if you don’t know you’re going to see that money back?
Claude Carson [00:50:52] Because if I don’t, who will? If I don’t, who will? Who’s going to provide people with jobs? Who’s going to provide this community with a clean place that it can come to and just unwind? Who’s going to be that place? No one else around here is doing what I do. No one. No one’s trying to be that place or fill that void. There’s a new place up the street. Excuse me. They’re doing, you know, white linen and you know, I applaud their efforts.
Ava Carubia [00:51:39] Is this Doc’s?
Claude Carson [00:51:41] Doc’s, Yeah. I applaud what they’re doing. But since, you know, they have their challenges, it’s very, very small, they don’t have parking, and it’s a much more sterile environment than this. You know, I did that already and I did it very well. Very, very well. I did millions of dollars. You know, as Doc’s, then, you know, as Harvard Wine and Grill, you know, but right now, you know, just trying to provide a more casual dining experience for this customer base, for this community. You know, I’m here and I’m committed to it, but I question whether or not I’ll get it back. But if I don’t, it’s okay. I’ve been blessed. I’ve been blessed.
Ava Carubia [00:52:43] My final question is one that I ask everyone at the end of these interviews, which is, what message would you like to leave for future generations?
Claude Carson [00:52:59] My message is the two most important times in a person’s life is the day you’re born and the day you understand why. Once you understand why, be true to that calling and do what it is you’re supposed to do. You know, the Bible talks of being called to the cloth, or, you know, there’s a verse that says, the day you hear my heart harden, the day you hear my voice harden, not your heart. It’s not always to become a minister or come to the cloth. It doesn’t always mean that. But whatever that message is that the Creator is laying on you, abide by it. And in my case, I think that I’ve been called to be a vessel for this community, for employment, for change, for hope, and I’m going to abide by it. I’m going to listen to my heart and continue to do what it is I believe I’ve been called to do. So I would advise those coming behind me to do the same. Whatever that calling may be, be true to it. And understand that if you don’t take care of your own, you know, you can’t expect anyone else to.
Ava Carubia [00:54:48] Well, I want to thank you for doing this interview. And I also want to ask you if there’s anything you want to say that I didn’t ask you about.
Claude Carson [00:54:58] Not particularly. I mean, you allow me the latitude to just kind of speak freely, and a lot came out, and I appreciate that. So hopefully I didn’t veer off too far from where you. You wanted me to be.
Ava Carubia [00:55:22] I don’t want you to be anywhere. This is your life. This is your story. I’m just here to listen.
Claude Carson [00:55:24] Absolutely. And, you know, hopefully I was able to answer your questions, and hopefully you’re able to get a picture of what this community was, you know, say, 50 years ago, what it was and where it’s going.
Ava Carubia [00:55:51] I’m gonna end the recording now.
Claude Carson [00:55:53] Not a problem.
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