Abstract
Todd Michney, born and raised in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland, reflects on his experiences as a youth and his familiarization with Cleveland culture in the 1980s. Michney describes how de-industrialization and economic deterioration impacted the youth culture movement of which he was a part during the 1980s. Cleveland's environment is described as an inspiration for hardcore punk, guerrilla art, and teenage rebellion.
Loading...
Interviewee
Michney, Todd (interviewee)
Interviewer
Hons, Justin (interviewer); Yanoshik-Wing, Emma (interviewer)
Project
Ingenuity Fest
Date
7-14-2006
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
20 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Todd Michney Interview, 14 July 2006" (2006). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 905001.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/283
Transcript
Justin Hons [00:00:11] If I could just get you to state your name and the date.
Todd Michney [00:00:15] Yes. Are we recording now? Okay. Todd Michney. And it’s July 14, 2006.
Justin Hons [00:00:23] So are you from Cleveland originally?
Todd Michney [00:00:27] I am. I was born at Mount Sinai Hospital, which just recently got knocked down, and grew up in Cleveland Heights for about the first couple to three years of my life and then in Orange Village. But my center of social life is definitely in the Heights. I always wanted to get back there. I spent a lot of time in Coventry growing up.
Justin Hons [00:00:51] What kind of things did you do in the Coventry area when you were growing up?
Todd Michney [00:00:56] Well, it’s interesting. When I was- This would have been, say, around ’86, ’87, maybe 1985, graduated from high school in ’89. Coventry was- First of all, they had this big grassy knoll where kids would just congregate on Fridays and Saturdays almost every night of the week, although there was a chance of getting arrested for curfew. That never happened to me, although it happened to my wife and some of my friends. But really there wasn’t as much to do there as there is now. But it wasn’t as corporate, obviously. The movie theater actually kind of showed artsy movies. We saw Mondo New York or something there. There’s, you know, movies that you couldn’t just see in a theater. Sometimes a little edgy. I don’t know. They had a booth there, a Middle Eastern boutique I think called the Kasbah. Grum’s Subs were there. I mean, some of the things that are still there were there. But yeah, there was, I guess there was always a problem with fires at Coventry. Some of the things that were there burned down and were later rebuilt in new quarters.
Justin Hons [00:02:04] What were some of the different types of kids that would congregate in the Coventry area?
Todd Michney [00:02:09] It’s interesting because it would draw a lot of kids from Cleveland Heights or Shaker Heights. Definitely my peer group had a lot of those. Some kids from outlying suburbs like myself. We’d have access to cars, so we’d drive in from Orange. For me, that was only like a 20-minute drive. But there are even kids coming from as far as Mentor. There’s a group and some people ended up dating people, folks from Mentor. They’d come down on the weekends and sometimes we’d have parties at people’s different, different houses in Cleveland Heights. So yeah, kids from all over. But it tended to have kind of like a punk rock or some kind of like neo-hippie, kind of Grateful Dead enthusiasts. And then when they built all that concrete embankment around the Coventry, it definitely cut down on the number of kids that you could have there. I mean, I remember sitting there in the wintertime, we’d be in the CoventryYard Mall with our legs stretched out in front of the Arabica was there before it was, and there’d be like 30, 40 kids with all their legs stretched out and no one could even walk in. But, you know, there wasn’t as much going on, so it wasn’t as big of a deal. So periodically they might come and ask us, you know, to clear out of there. But yeah, in the summertime there’d be probably, you know, two, 300 kids on Friday and Saturday nights all over the grass there. And we’d just kind of hang out and meet up with people. So, yeah.
Justin Hons [00:03:31] You said that sometimes there was a risk of arrest?
Todd Michney [00:03:35] Yeah, I mean, we knew people. I mean, the woman I’m married to now was in the same peer group in high school, though I didn’t know her that well, but she was arrested for curfew violations. And I knew one other friend, but I think they would have periodic sweeps. It’s always been an issue in Cleveland Heights, you know, remaking the Coventry area. And I don’t think it was that big of a risk really, but it was possible, I guess. Technically, the curfew was 12 o’clock for anyone under 18. So, yeah.
Justin Hons [00:04:05] Did you ever or you or any of your friends ever travel downtown?
Todd Michney [00:04:10] We did. We did indeed. I used to take the rapid down. Well, I would take- It’s interesting. I worked as a caddie at Canterbury Golf Club in the summers from, actually from 8th grade all the way into early college. And if it was a slow day, I’d just hop on one of the Shaker lines, usually the Green Line, and just come downtown. And downtown was really- Well, it was closer to dead than it is now. I mean, obviously, you know, we’re sitting here in Prospect and it looks quite different today. Made over. I mean, really, in those days, the places that interested me were the Record Revolution that was there and also the Army Goldfish store where you could buy clothes and you could buy combat boots or military jackets, whatever, you know, young punk rock kids of the day used to wear. And it was just kind of deserted. I remember you could go and climb into this one bridge. I’m not sure which one. It must be, maybe the Veterans Memorial Bridge on Detroit Avenue. There’s actually this suspended walkway where you could go and you could walk for miles along this thing. And sometimes we’d climb up on there and you could just walk and walk and then you’d come to some section that was rusted out. So you’d have to kind of edge your way around that. But, you know, we used to do things like that, just kind of hang around Public Square. You know, sometimes you’d talk with some of the street people that lived there. It was always interesting. A little edgy. Tower City was very interesting before the mall was there. Really all there was was a tobacco shop there and they would definitely sell tobacco products to underage kids. I can’t really remember what else was in there. It wasn’t much at all. When I was a kid, we used to come down here to see baseball games in the old stadium. And we would ride the rapid. I think that must have been the Red Line. And that was a big deal. They’d actually let you bring in your own food in a cooler as a family. They’d even let you bring your own beer, if I remember correctly. Although as a kid I wasn’t that conscious of what that was about. But certainly could pack sandwiches and come in, get seats for $5 and just kind of sit there. The stadium would be, you know, almost completely empty. Maybe 10 or 10 to 12,000 people in a stadium that holds, I think, 80-something thousand. So it was kind of surreal to just be there for that, but something cheap to do. Unlike today. I haven’t been down the stadium too many times. At the current prices, it seems like you have to know someone who has tickets through their business or something to even go anymore.
Justin Hons [00:06:51] How did your parents feel about you hanging out downtown?
Todd Michney [00:06:55] Well, I didn’t really know. That’s an interesting question. I was just telling someone the other day how I always wanted to go east when I was growing up. But my brother growing up in Orange Village wanted to go west. He would want to go to Solon or Chagrin Falls. And they didn’t really know. I mean, my parents were pretty trusting. I guess I gave them reason to, you know, feel that I was fairly responsible. Although they didn’t know all the things I would do. They certainly didn’t know about me climbing on those suspended catwalks under the bridges, or pool hopping was something that just came to mind as Shaker Heights, a lot of people have pools, so sometimes in the summer we would go as a group and go jump in someone’s pool and swim around. But there always had to be someone who actually wanted to push the line and, you know, maybe almost get caught. So they’d start jumping off the diving board or whooping. So then we’d all have to run, you know. But I’m just trying to think of some of these different Cleveland memories. They’re a little, you know, I guess we’d say good clean fun. That has such an archaic ring to it, you know, but, you know, certainly things that you wouldn’t tell your parents about, but things that it didn’t really harm anyone. And we’d come down for St. Patrick’s Day. I should mention that. In fact, I have a picture of all our peer group, about 50 different punk rock kids from Coventry. We’d come down, we’d cut school to come down for St. Patrick’s Day and all just kind of hang out down here and watch the parade. The parade was never really that good, actually. Well, I grew up in Orange, but there was a stint that I did in Catholic school at an Italian Irish parish in Shaker Heights, St. Dominic’s, and there’s an Irish family that always wanted to come down for the St. Patrick’s Day. And we’d actually get the day off when I was in grade school. And they’d come down, the big deal was go to McDonald’s and get these shamrock shakes. And you could also go up to, I think it was Higbee’s or Halle’s. They had a dining room up there that was still open. That was kind of one of these legendary places that long since closed. And you’d go and have food up there. And so I guess the St. Patrick’s Day parade is a big deal, but in high school, I don’t really remember it being, you know, much, much good. The parade itself, it was more to, you know, cut school and go hang out with your friends, you know.
Justin Hons [00:09:08] And so how did some more business-oriented folks that were downtown, how did they react to you and your peer group?
Todd Michney [00:09:18] Me and my ilk? It’s good question. I don’t feel like businesses were that uptight because there really just was so little going on down here. I mean, even today you can see how dead, you know, the businesses get after 5. But we’re too young to be in bars. I mean, actually, I should mention I was, I was a straight-edge kid for a while, so I wasn’t smoking or drinking or doing drugs for a point there in high school. And so I didn’t really have any interest in bars. And, you know, I don’t remember ever really getting into it. You know, we used to actually go in the Arcade even, and they have those two office buildings on the sides and we could, we could sneak up in the office, like part of that, which is now the hotel. And those were completely deserted. So you could go and just wander around these empty office suites. In fact, there was one where someone had traced the outline of a person and made almost like a, like a Hiroshima-Nagasaki memorial. It was really weird. They’d had some line from people’s shadows being burned into the pavement and then they had an outline of someone traced. I don’t know what that was, if it was kind of like guerrilla art or what. But you know, you were just almost completely free to roam around in these abandoned office buildings. It was just really strange. I have really fond memories of that. Just kind of like a rusty city that I don’t know, no one really cared much about anymore. And I kind of miss those days. I don’t know if you can do that anymore. We’d try and climb on tops of buildings, get out on tops of roofs. I don’t know if I had much success with that in Cleveland, but that was always something we’d do. I remember in Denver, went to visit some friends when we did that. Try and see if you could get out on the roof, you know.
Justin Hons [00:11:03] What were some of the bands?
Todd Michney [00:11:07] Okay, well I had some friends that were in a band Confront, which was a straight-edge band in Cleveland Heights. Outface actually became- Some of these people got famous. Frank Cavanaugh, the bassist from Outface, was a member of Filter. Charlie Garriga was a self-taught guitarist, also an Outface, went on to play with CIV. Derrick Green was the singer, now sings with an internationally famous Brazilian- I think it’s a death metal band or something. It’s called Sepultura. A lot of people from Cleveland got famous. I mean I didn’t really know Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails. Although my wife double dated and went to prom with Trent Reznor. Actually she was with somebody else but her best friend was dating Trent Reznor at the time. And I do remember when Trent Reznor lived over in Lakewood and he had this demo tape and people were showing it around Coventry. Check this thing out, you know. And so there were people from Cleveland who got famous. It’s just kind of weird and just knowing some of those people- We used to go to, there’s this Berea Roll ‘n’ Bowl. We shut down a lot of clubs. We had shows in Irv’s which was I remember actually when it still was a restaurant for a couple years, but they had roaches. It was bad on Coventry. Then it was empty for a while and we had some shows there in the summer of like ’87 or ’88 and they just tried a few straight-edge shows. It was Youth of Today or what else, I can’t even remember. But they came and played. Peabody’s Down Under was a big venue at that time for some of the bigger name bands. That was on Old River Road in the Flats. Yeah, the Flats were kind of interesting. I mean, not as built up, although there’s just starting- They’re starting to be a little bit built up. In early college we used to go to a nightclub called the Lift down there, the Aqualon. It was one of these clubs that had different kind of theme nights. And it was called the Aqualon on certain nights. And I think they even had big band before swing was really popular. This would have been like 1989, 1990. But when we’d go it was the Lift because they had this big freight elevator that they would carry you up on and you could get these free passes to go. Otherwise it cost like $5 or something. So you’d go up there and they stayed open till 4 or 5 in the morning. I mean they’d stop serving alcohol at 2, but I think you’d even get food. And they tried different incarnations there. They had the Smart Bar. They served these energy vitamin drinks that were supposed to make you smart. I don’t know, probably half the people were on ecstasy there. Although at the time I wasn’t, you know, using that. But yeah, there are different places in the Flats that you could go. But it really- I just don’t even think of that as being that built up. There’s a certain point at which the Powerhouse opened and then it’s kind of like, oh, the Flats is a place to go, you know, but they’re always- There are great places to eat late at night in Cleveland that I don’t really think exist anymore. There was certainly the Big Egg, which got shut down for health violations a few years back, but it had this egg-shaped menu. So you could go in there any time of night. And they had Clifton Lunch over like West 110th and Clifton. Just different places where you could go and just, you know, diners that were open all night. I mean, I grew up on the east side, but started to get to know the west side a little bit in college. And I mean now I’m fairly familiar with the west side. Not as you know, I don’t know as intimately as I do the east side, but there’s a time when people started moving to Tremont in the early ’90s. You could still get houses for $10,000 over there. Some of my friends moved over there and were sharing a house. The rents were just incredibly cheap. You know, I think even still Cleveland rents are pretty cheap. Yeah.
Justin Hons [00:15:00] What do you think best represents you, your experiences in Cleveland, in terms of a place or if someone were to tell you, I guess, what does Cleveland mean to you? Is it a place, is it music, is it a social scene?
Todd Michney [00:15:18] Yeah, I mean, I grew up my whole life here until I went away to grad school. And I did find going to the University of Minnesota that I couldn’t really refer to myself as being from the Midwest because there that means maybe Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota. I mean, I think more of Pittsburgh or Buffalo. We actually used to take trips up to Buffalo. There’s a club there called the Pipe Dragon that you could go and see shows at. And it was interesting. I must have been pretty innocent at the time because I just, I have a friend from Minneapolis who’s from Buffalo and I guess this place, it was quite a den of iniquity. And on the ground floor it was, you know, they’d have straight-edge hardcore shows, so you’d go see bands. But I guess, you know, if you went up one more floor, this is what I’m told they’d have- They’d have like a bar, a legal bar with no liquor license. If you go up another floor, you could buy marijuana and it’s like you go up another floor, who knows what you could do. So but we used to actually go to Buffalo for shows and kids from Buffalo would sometimes come here. Some kids would go to Detroit for shows, although I never did that. So yeah, I think of kindred cities like Buffalo, like Pittsburgh, like Detroit, Chicago even. It’s kind of like feels like a big Cleveland to me, but maybe a little different. I think Chicago’s kind of got the critical mass to be a sustained city. But for a while there just really looked like Cleveland was going to be done. And I think they’re still searching for an economic base. I mean Cleveland, Cleveland’s still a historically industrial city. I mean you can still smell that - late at night they blow the stacks - you can smell that. But yeah, I don’t really know what Cleveland holds in store. I mean, I have fond memories of it. I wrote my dissertation on Cleveland. So I think there’s a lot to be learned about Cleveland. But I don’t know if I could summarize it. Yeah, probably the social connections, things that I was talking about.
Justin Hons [00:17:19] One last question. With everything that’s happening this weekend, for Ingenuity, what are your feelings on the arts?
Todd Michney [00:17:27] Well, my wife is a photographer. I think that Cleveland has a decent art scene, but one that’s maybe a little insular. I think it’s kind of cliquish just from my own experience. And there are certain people that- There’s a small handful of people that seem to dominate all the press coverage. And it’s hard to open a gallery here. My wife tried to open a gallery in Euclid. Although we were doing on a very shoestring budget, people would come once and take a look around and then never show up again. So I don’t really know. It’s hard. I still don’t understand how the business of art works, really. It seems like most galleries go under. The Dead Horse Gallery in Lakewood always representing my wife while it was open and they would have great shows, but they didn’t sell much work. I think that people with a lot of money like trust fund or something open galleries and you either make it to some big level where you just become known as a place where people go to buy art like Bonfoey Co. Or it just shuts down within five years. There’s a really an excellent gallery on Larchmere called Head Footers. It does all self-trained and outsider art. So maybe if there’s kind of niche galleries, but I don’t know. The stuff down here is interesting, but I still don’t know if they’re making money really at it. I think there are a lot of really creative people in Cleveland. A lot of people lived in warehouse spaces, actually built their own living spaces. That’s kind of big here. And it’s still technically not legal as far as I know. But I think that Cleveland has a lot of art potential, but it needs to kind of break out of it. You know, it’s- I think it needs to not take itself too seriously. Living in New Orleans, people there were much more approachable about art and seemed to get more excited about it than they do here. But I don’t know. If I rag on Cleveland at all, it’s because I’m from here. So I feel like I’ve earned the right. Yeah. Yeah.
Justin Hons [00:19:22] All right, Todd, thanks a lot.
Todd Michney [00:19:23] Thank you. My pleasure.
Justin Hons [00:19:24] It’s good to talk to you, man.
Todd Michney [00:19:25] Yeah.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
