Steve Presser interview, 2012

Abstract

Steve Presser, owner of Big Fun, describes his life in Cleveland Heights, being owner of a toy store, and his love for Coventry. He begins by giving a brief history of the path he took to owning Big Fun. He also talks about the renovations and construction he did to open the original store and then the current store. After that, Steve discusses his affinity for locally owned business and his affiliation with the "Cash Mob," which is a group of people who go to locally owned stores and spend money.He ends by talking about how special Coventry is and how each store and restaurant has a story.

Interviewee

Presser, Steve (interviewee)

Interviewer

Fearing, Heidi (interviewer)

Project

Cleveland Heights

Date

2012

Document Type

Oral History

Duration

63 minutes

Recommended Citation

"Steve Presser interview, 2012" (2012). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 911072.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/806

Related Resources

Cleveland Heights @ Cleveland Voices

Transcript

Heidi Fearing [00:00:01] Can you say something?

Steve Presser [00:00:02] Sure. Am I on? Do you hear my great nasal voice or my horrible nasal voice?

Heidi Fearing [00:00:08] [laughs] I don't think you have horrible nasal voice.

Steve Presser [00:00:10] Hi, my name is Steve.

Heidi Fearing [00:00:12] That'd be pretty funny. [laughs]

Steve Presser [00:00:15] That's all, folks.

Heidi Fearing [00:00:16] You could end with that if you wanted.

Steve Presser [00:00:18] I'll happily do it. You can ask me questions. Yes. I tend to talk too much.

Heidi Fearing [00:00:26] That's fine.

Steve Presser [00:00:26] So this is good volume, like this?

Heidi Fearing [00:00:28] Actually, it's perfect. All right, so can you state your name, where you're from, where you went to school, etcetera?

Steve Presser [00:00:35] Sure. Easy questions first. Steve Presser grew up in University Heights, right by John Carroll. In fact, my parents' house was the fourth house built on that street. A typical suburban grand plan of grid housing and streets. And I was the first child born on that street, so it was kind of cool. Went to Belvoir Elementary School, which is now Gearity, Wylie Junior High, graduated from Heights High, so graduated Heights High in 1976. And what else do you-

Heidi Fearing [00:01:07] Did you go on to school?

Steve Presser [00:01:09] Oh, sure, yeah. I went on to the University of Michigan, graduated with bachelor of science in psychology. I was pre med, was going to go to medical school and opted not to. I then decided that I was going to go to graduate school in psychology, and I moved. I was hoping to go to Berkeley and moved to California to get residency. I was there about six months in San Diego and just felt it wasn't the place where I wanted to be. Just beautiful people were nice, but there was no culture. And I just, I felt, you know what? I'm going to come back home. And I came back to Cleveland, moved back in home with my parents, and started working with the developmentally disabled and mentally retarded in direct care, and loved it at PVA Parent Volunteer Association, which is now called New Avenues for Independence. And it became a really important part of my life. I loved working, I'd always liked working with people with differing abilities and disabilities and worked there for a little over two years. And right when I started working there, September 16, 1981, I had the first date with my beautiful wife, now Debbie Apple, a woman whom I lusted after since I've been in 7th grade, literally 7th grade. Didn't ask her on the first date till roughly, let's figure this out, eleven years later. Her brother, her younger brother, is one of my best friends. So, Mark. So it's kind of odd going out with one of your best friend's sisters, but I knew she was the woman of my dreams, so. We started dating. And then I decided that it would be important if we were going to take it further that I would have to look for a job that would pay me more. And I love working with people with special needs, but financially, there just wasn't a lot of money there. So I opted to go and pursue another career. And unknown to a lot of people, I became a stockbroker, investment executive with Payne Webber for seven years. I wore suit and tie every day. I had a beard back then, but actually had a beard for about 20 years, but I wore a suit and tie every day. The first three years were pretty cool, but after that, I can see that it just wasn't something I was interested in. And I did that because my wife's an artist, and, you know, an artist, what an artist makes and what I was making, we needed to change, and so I did that. But in the meantime, I was still involved with people with disabilities, and I became a board member. And then I became the youngest board president of PVA. And then my brother in law Mark Apple is in construction. I saw there was a need for construction for people with certain needs. So we created a company called Access Design Group. I was the social service person. I was the person that went in and talked to the families and individuals and care workers and caseworkers. And my brother in law Mark was the one who did the consultation. The big joke is I can screw in a light bulb and I can plug in and install a phone jack. Well, not the jack, the plug into the jack. So it worked out nicely. But again, we were at the mercy of the public in the sense of we had to deal with the state, and the state was low paying. So it went on and on a little bit. In the meantime, I'd always collected. I'd been a crazy collector for years. And I decided that I needed to do something I really loved. And when I went to visit a store in Chicago, my wife's friends all moved there after school in Madison, Wisconsin. A lot of Wisconsin graduates go to Chicago. There was a store there called Goodies that everybody told me I had to go to. In fact, one of her best friends told me I needed to go there. And I went there, and it was a very small store. Roughly 700 square feet. And the first time I walked in there, I. Well, I met the person who owned it. His name is Ted Frankel, who's from Shaker Heights. And I said, I have to sit down. He says, do you feel okay? I said, I feel too okay. Everything went off in my body. I mean, it was like. It was an epiphany. It was the glorious clouds opening up in the sun, every allegorical, every analogy. The best description of it for me was it was like the first time you see the Wizard of Oz. And it goes from black and white to color. That feeling is what I had. And I became very close friends with Ted Frankel, who owned the place. And he moved that store up from Goodies to, from 700 square feet to a 20,000 square foot warehouse with two floors. And he had a soda fountain and a bar, a candy bar. And upstairs there was clothing, vintage clothing. It was an incredible store. And we talked and talked and kept in touch. And I would go there all the time, twice in every trip. Once, the very first time I would drive in off Lakeshore, I go to his store, and then at the end of the trip I would go there. That was protocol. And I called him once and I said, you know, I'm thinking of changing lives. I'm thinking of doing something else. And I said, I'm thinking of opening a toy store kind of like yours. And he said, Steve, I'd be honored to help you. And I said, and by the way, I found a warehouse. And in our business, warehouses are like the old gold rush days, where you'd look for merchandise. And warehouses are old buildings. Warehouses, many of them are two, three stories, some of them are five or seven stories stories, and they're filled with oodles and oodles of old merchandise, old stock from the thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, seventies at that time. Eighties wasn't that hot back then. And I had found one, it was five stories in Columbus, Ohio. And in our business, you never tell anybody about a warehouse because it's the gold rush. You don't know what can happen. And we've all been burned over the years. But Ted was a friend and I took him there and I got the greatest lesson of life. I was like Indiana Jones Junior going through all these boxes and he says, oh, this company, the manufacturer, we found hats. And he said it was Batman cowl covers. He says they also do Green Hornet. And we looked for old boxes and anything that was made in Japan in the crates and things that were wooden crates and things that were made in Occupied Japan. And for a couple years, I bought things out of that warehouse and it helped me start my business, Big Fun. And I owe it all to Ted Frankel. And he also named it Big Fun, which is kind of cool. So he opened a store called Uncle Fun. I opened up April Fools of 1991. I officially opened up Big Fun at the store across the street at 1827 Coventry Road, which was in front of the kosher poultry place. It was now next to Hyde Park Grill. It's now Jimmy Johns. But I had opened up in November of 1990 while we were doing renovation. My old store was an empty, vacant business. It had many businesses, from bike shops to video stores. And when you walked in there, there was a gigantic dead rat, a sewer rat, right by the front door. And I said, it was so disgusting in there that even a rat died. And you can't even kill rats these days. I mean, they live forever. The walls were completely torn up. There was concrete floor. It was miserable. Roof leaked. Everything was wrong with it. And I decided that this was perfect. I mean, I'm a nut. This is perfect. You look at this thing, it's like, oh, this is perfect. There's a refrigerator with a door open and a dead rat. And that's all that's in the place. And I had design ideas and crazy ideas, an architect and brother in law that helped, and the city that saw that there was a chance and opportunity, and I participated. [beeping sound] Is that you?

Heidi Fearing [00:09:13] Yeah. I need to turn off the volume. I thought I had. I don't even know where it went to... Sorry...

Steve Presser [00:09:32] No, that's okay. And so the city, the economic development department, the city, and the planning commission, Cheryl Stevens back then, but now she's a council person. They had a program. They had a rebate program. They had a loan program. And I also got a loan from the Hyde Park Grill, the owners of the property next door. And my father loaned some money, and I brought him in as a partner, so to speak. He was retired, and we decided to renovate the whole place. And it was cool. It was like taking- It was like a phoenix. I mean, we took a horribly dilapidated building and, you know, all new electrical, all new plumbing, all new heating and air conditioning, roof, all new walls, floors. The floors came from the Kinsman Lee bowling alley lanes. They were going to tear it down. Over on Kinsman and Lee on the Shaker- Cleveland border. And my brother in law and I cut those wooden lanes out, which were maple in some areas and pine in others. We went through dozens of blades because there's lots of nails and they weigh a ton. And we brought them back, and we had to build up the floor. And the floor in the front section of the store was made out of bowling alley lanes, which is very cool. The fixtures came from an old dime store on the west side called Madison Five and Dime in Lakewood, of which we still have those fixtures in my new store, the floor we couldn't schlep over. It just wasn't practical. Then I had these really cool, ornate, turn-of-the-century - actually, they're from the teens - jewelry cases from Taddeo's jewelry store in Little Italy. So those are the showcases in my store presently that are right in front when you walk in. And then behind, you'll see the big cases, the wooden cases. So there's long glass and marble show click cases, and then behind the wooden cases, and then in the back of our store now, presently, we have a couple of those cases. And the lighting fixtures in my old store were from Higbee's downtown. They're really cool. Spun aluminum from the forties. And so I created this little fun place over there. And it was intimate, it was small. My father worked there. It was very tight quarters, and I loved it. But I made it as accessible as possible because I worked with people with disabilities. So I had ramps to the second floor. I tried to keep the aisles as clear as possible, but with my mind and my clutter and everything else, it was difficult. But we made it as accessible as we could. And we had a good run there. 14 years. It was great. It was kind of cool to be next to a kosher poultry place, a slaughterhouse in the city of Cleveland Heights. And that's something you should probably look into writing about, because it was unusual to have somebody slaughtering chickens. Tommy will tell you great stories about a guy that used to break in and open the cages at night when they would deliver them at two or three in the morning and set the chickens free. I mean, it's kind of funny. Actually, the funny story for me was my first time in the summer there, I took out the garbage, and we shared a dumpster out back with the folks next door and with Hyde Park Grill. And the dumpster was closed. So I have my bag of garbage. I open the dumpster, I go to throw my junk in and out flies, I'm telling you, 18 or 20 crows, gigantic crows. Well, what probably happened is the birds were in there eating the remains and the entrails from the chickens, and somebody closed it on them. And so I don't know how long they were there, but they flew out. I'm telling you, it was like a Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe movie. I just. I lost it. I screamed. It would have been a great video. So that was kind of fun. And then we moved across the street about six or seven years ago, and we took over the old Hyde park, the old High Tide Rock Bottom space. Marsha Polevoi, who was a stalwart on Coventry for 32 years, 33 years. Incredible store, great gift shop. We went from 1700 square feet to 3300 square feet. The store has a basement. The old store did not have a basement, so warehousing the stuff, immediate warehousing this stuff was difficult. I have a warehouse now, and I have had one for years. But to have the ability to stock items from the basement, that now was wonderful. And I have an office, a real office. My old office was the size of a prison cell, cut in half. It was small, very small. You open the door and you practically hit the wall on the other side. And it's nice. I like the new space now. It has twelve foot ceilings, 13 foot ceilings, and it presented some issues. I wanted to redesign. I didn't want to have the same store that Marsha had had, but it had good bones to it. And, you know, you can go crazy and spend lots of money. So I brought all my fixtures over, but I wanted to really design it to have a feel, like Big Fun. So we turn off half the lights on the ceiling, partially because we don't like the brightness. Well, actually, that's why. We are environmentally conscious folks, but we decided that the ceiling, which was dropped ceiling with these horrible white dropped-in panels, got to do something with it. Well, my son's a graffiti artist, and he knows an incredible amount about graffiti art and aerosol art. And so I said, I have an idea. I think I'd like to paint the ceiling kind of like the Sistine Chapel, but do it like really cool graffiti art. I said, Merrick, I need some people to help out. And he got together six of Cleveland's finest. In fact, a couple people came in from out of town, and we didn't know if it was going to be able, you were going to be able to spray upside down. Just the physics of spraying a can upside down, you know, after a while, it doesn't work. And then the panels, if they would absorb, if we would have to prime them, you know, a lot of logistics. There were lot of questions and how it would hold. And lo and behold, we were blessed on every level. They were able to climb ladders. One guy used scaffolding. A lot of them used gas masks. One guy used a bandana. And we had like a weeklong, about four days long, of a spraying party. Six different guys, six different areas. A lot of aerosol smell. I mean, you know, we opened the windows, of course, pizza, beer. And I think it worked out fantastically. And we have a really cool ceiling. And that was the start. The floor. I did some research, and I decided, you know, I didn't want to put down carpeting. We had wood. So we painted with this supposed to be incredible, ultra, uber industrial strength paint that, you know, highways and this and that. It was just okay. And so we ended up painting some yellow brick road, which my wife and a friend Carl helped out doing. My wife, Debbie, was incredible with the painting because then we chose all these crazy colors across the street. We had kind of fifties colors, some chartreuse, some pinkish and things like that. I decided to go with bold blues, reds, greens, and yellows, your basic kindergarten colors. So we did that. I had a photo booth across the street, a black and white photo booth, I ended up buying for, you know, for 14 years, I didn't have my own. Now I have my own. So I brought that over. I brought over the gigantic refrigerator that I got, I traded with one of my customers. He got out of a mansion out of Shaker Heights. It's probably built in the late forties, maybe early fifties. It's non functional, but it's cool and it's huge. And I started to design the store. I had old beauty cases. I used some of the cases that Marsha had. And it started to take form and shape. And I put up- I brought back the old awning effect that I had across the street, the red and white stripe, to give you the, you know, the circus feel. I had my neon sign that said "Big Fun" that hung in the window, the sign window. I unfortunately paid a gentleman to do a cool neon sign for my new store, and he left with my money. So I never got to do the sign until about three months ago. And there's a local artist by the name of Dana Depew, who's a wonderful artist that I become friends with. And I just love his work. I love his two dimensional work. I love his three dimensional work. He's a recycled artist, so he's a reclamation artist, which is what my wife is, too. And Dana takes old letters from neon signs and outdoor signs, and he puts them together. And he created a Big Fun sign with flashing lights, which is now probably over the front door. And then I said, well, we got this. And it was custom built. We got another panel, got to put Toys. So he built a Toys sign. And then we decided. Decided to do. Inside this door, I have some other artist friends. So Mark Jenks, this incredible artist, one of Cleveland's best artist, and I know a lot of artists, one of the most talented people out there, all media, all forms of art. And he does a lot of things for Parade the circle. And he and Patty have a frame shop over in Lakewood. Mark created this gigantic, oversized, Big Fun lunchbox. I mean, it looks like a real lunchbox with a handle. And the joke is there's a thermos inside, but it's fantastic. It's top of the refrigerator. And then I'm a big Pee Wee Herman fan. Let's face it. I love Pee Wee. My store is kind of like Pee Wee Herman meets Doctor Seuss meets Tim Burton. I mean, it just, I want it to be a playful area. He made John B's house from Pee Wee's Playhouse, and that sits on top of the photo booth. So we had that. And then I have a friend, Carl Jara, who works at the Cleveland Natural History Museum. Carl Jara is a world champion sand sculptor, and I know he can do great things. So I said, Carl, can you make something for me? How about a jack in the box hidden in the corner when we first opened up? Now we put over the front door, and it looks great. So Carl Jara did that. And then my clock, my neon clock, another person that works at, and a very, very fine artist that works at the Natural History Museum in display and design, Steve Misencik. He made a cool little sign above my neon clock. And then two local artists. This all happened in the last, last year with, I told you about Dana Depew sign, but with two local artists, John G. And Jake Kelly, famous for doing work for Melt with their ads and also their interior displays and things at Grog Shop, each of them independently, I had them do a mural of a sideshow. I said I wanted a sideshow. So that goes down the ramp to my greeting card area. And my wife right now is working on a special permanent display for my windows. She does reclamation and recycled art. And she had also done the Fencepiration from Heights Arts over on the south side of Cedar, across from Whole Foods and University Heights on the South Euclid side, which a lot of people love. And so she's working on that. And she also did my first window installation. And we're going to start working on that. We're going to start doing cool installations in the windows. So that brought you up to the next question, because I've gone ad nauseam, as I said, and I promised I would. So go ahead, ask me some more.

Heidi Fearing [00:21:12] You actually answered a lot of my questions so far. Let me see. How, besides being from University Heights, how are you connected to Cleveland Heights other than it was where you lived when you opened your first store?

Steve Presser [00:21:27] Well, you know, I. My wife and I lived in sin for a few years on Euclid Heights Boulevard, right around the corner from where the store is now, right next to Turtle Park. A lot of people know Turtle Park. It's a real cute little park, Euclid Heights by Hampshire and East Overlook. And our apartment building was there and we lived there for five years. And in 1987 we decided to stay in Cleveland Heights and move. And we moved diagonally across the street, maybe 500 feet, on East Overlook. So it was almost like the circus of moving our stuff from our apartment to our house, because as you can imagine, I collect a lot of things, so there was a lot of things that had to be moved. Speaking of circus moves, moving from across the street from Coventry from 1827, our old store to 1814 was pretty comical. I mean, we schlepped tons of boxes, but we literally had a moving company with dollies and moving fixtures across the street, almost like a circus, because there were a lot of very, very expensive, or not expensive, but important cases and artifacts from historical places that needed to be moved and preciously moved. And they were. And it was successful. We didn't even crack a shelf, so that was kind of cool. So we decided to raise a family in Cleveland Heights. We wanted to live in the Coventry area. We love the Coventry area. We like the eclectic nature of the commercial district. And this was before I had my store, because it was in 1987. And we liked the neighborhood because there's a mix of apartments, rental condos, houses and the commercial districts were very close by. It's a walkable neighborhood, so we can walk to Coventry, we can walk to Cedar Fairmount. And that was important. And if we wanted to put a good walk in, we'll walk to Cedar Lee too. And it was really important for us to be in an area that we really didn't have to have a car, if need be the case. But, you know, we drive our car, although I walk to work a lot. And my wife graduated Heights from 1975. Her father, her mother and father both graduated, graduated from Heights. My father graduated from Cleveland Heights High, and we decided that we wanted to raise our kids in Cleveland Heights and go through the Cleveland Heights public school system. Debbie's father, Robert Apple, was a school board president, so we have a lot of heritage there and it was wonderful. Our kids went to Coventry elementary school, Roxboro Middle School, where my father went to middle school. Coventry is where Debbie's, both her parents, I think, went to Coventry elementary school and then Heights High. You know, three out of our four parents graduated from Heights High. And it was cool. I mean, Debbie's father was elected to the Cleveland Heights High School Hall of Fame. I was elected, which was quite an honor. I got to accept it when my mother was dealing with the end of her life and, you know, terminally ill with cancer. And it was nice to go out and celebrate that. She was really proud. In my acceptance speech, I kind of confused people because I got up there and I said I was the second clown to be elected to the Heights High Hall of Fame. And everybody's like, what is he talking about? Well, the first clown was Larry Harmon, Bozo the Clown, who went to Heights High. So I jokingly said I was the second clown. Got a few laughs once I explained what I was talking about. So Cleveland Heights is an important part of our lives. And both my wife and I love the area, and we love our community, and we've been active in the elementary schools, middle schools, and high school. My wife's an artist, and I got interested in an arts organization called Heights Arts, which is one of the most incredible organizations I've ever been involved with. I mean, we've done incredible things. I'm a founding member. We're eleven years into it, and we're doing what we set out to do, which is to educate the community about the importance of arts and spread the good gospel of it. And Heights Arts has had wonderful projects in Cleveland Heights and especially in Coventry. It was responsible for the benches, responsible for the planter areas. Tyrrell Brinsley- Brinsley Tyrrell did those, and they're just magnificent. Barry Gunderson did the first Heights Arts public art piece, the sculpture by the library, by Coventry School, and the signage. I mean, we continue to be involved with public art, and it's an important part. I'm very active in the community. I have a difficulty saying no, especially to good causes. And I love Cleveland Heights for its activism and its community, and it's a wonderful community to live in. And so I'm entrenched. I know a lot of people just by my store, but I also know a lot of people by doing and working with organizations that are great out there, like Future Heights and Reaching Heights. And I think this year's maybe my 19th, 18th, 19th spelling bee, where I'm the master of ceremonies. I've got the easy job. I just have to pronounce the names of the participants and not the words. Although some of the names have gotten difficult over the years. I wear a jacket. I call it akin to the green jacket from the Masters I wear. My wife took an old tuxedo jacket I picked up at a thrift store. And she sewed on, or, no, she actually ironed on. My wife's an incredible, clothes designer and seamstress, but she ironed out all these different letters, and I wear it, put it on every year. And I jokingly say, here's the answers to all your questions. There's just numerous, numerous organizations. I go to Park Synagogue. I'm involved with Park Synagogue. Purim's coming up this Sunday. Both my wife and I will be there. I love my community, and there's just so much here that I, like, talked earlier about Cain Park. It's a jewel that 90% of Cleveland has never been to, and it's really one of the great things that Cleveland has. So I love Cleveland Heights. I love the sports teams. I used to be a jock, and I played soccer at Cleveland Heights High School. I played basketball there, too. I just- It's a wonderful place.

Heidi Fearing [00:27:54] [checking questions] Um, you answered that one.

Steve Presser [00:28:08] How about I can talk about- No, you can look at that. I'll talk about Big Fun. When we first opened up, the concept was things you don't need, but gotta have. And it really is. There's so much nonsensical junk, but we spell junk j u n q u e. So it's. It's. It's funk and junk. The whole idea is to come shopping and leave smiling. We want people to have a great time, and I think they do. I know they do. I mean, we, people really laugh. I don't care if it's the greeting cards, you know, the back they laughing at, or it's the joke and gag stuff, or the toys they remember from their childhood. We take great pride. We. I don't think there's a store anywhere around that has the depth of the collection of collectibles we have. And we're different than most stores. Like, there's collectible stores out there that are purely collectible stores, that, you know, like, they have similar items of us, like GI Joe's, the Transformers, the Star Wars, the Hot Wheels, He Man, all those kinds of wonderful toys. You know, we're a little bit different because we do more of the girls line. So we have Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony and Rainbow Brite. So we're a non-sexist, non- We're just nondiscriminatory. We like to have lots of good things for everybody. And what's happened now is the eighties toys are taking off like crazy. So that's the biggest market. The people that work for me, every person that's worked for me, who's an employee, was a customer before, and an avid customer. They loved to shop. They loved this stuff. And they decided that, you know, they wanted to work there. And some people just help out because, you know, they have regular jobs and they just help out on the weekends. It's important for me to perpetuate the mom and pop, and I become extremely vocal in the buy local movement. And I think it's important because neighborhoods, and there's many great neighborhoods in Cleveland Heights, you know, the Cedar Fairmount, Cedar Lee, Coventry, they're unique. And many of these neighborhoods are dying off because big box is coming in and the Internet has caused problems. And there's a whole generation that doesn't know what a small independent store is about. They're used to going to the mall or they're going to their smartphone and buying stuff. So we're trying hard on Coventry to keep the importance of a local neighborhood vibrant. And so we've done everything in our power to keep out for the most part, let's say keep out national chains. I mean, there are a couple, but we try to keep it a really heavy mix towards local entrepreneurs and what I call mom and pops. And for me, you think of mom and pops. I mean, it was Steve and Pops. My father was Pops. I mean, that's what I called him. And so he was there for many years. He got sick, unfortunately, and passed away of cancer. And my mother had helped out before, but then she stepped up and it was Steve and Mom, and then she got sick. And my family helps out a little bit. My wife comes in more often. My kids, I love my kids dearly. And Big Fun has never been their place that they want to settle down into, and I respect them for that. They've helped. They've helped paint and stock and price and do things like that. But to work there, very rarely, and that's okay, that's okay. But the whole idea for me is to retain that friendly atmosphere that when someone walks through the door like, hi, how are you doing? And I recognize them, they recognize me. And if I don't recognize them, I want them to feel like they've been recognized. So the next time they come back is, hey, how are you? And so we offer things. We're like a comfort food restaurant, but we don't sell food, except for our candy, which is pretty cool, all the retro candy. So it's all the stuff from your childhood. We have a magic section with a magician, Amazing Gary, that comes in every once in a while. We've got a video section that we sell old-school video games. We're talking about Nintendo's and Atari's and that stuff from the eighties and nineties. We have joke and gag stuff, which is a schmegegge like me, who grew up, I was a prankster. And, you know, I love that kind of stuff. So I would go down to Schneider's Magic Shop or Jean's Fun House downtown as a kid. And that was, you know, ride the rapid with a friend of mine. And that was, you know, you'd spend $2 and you get a sack full of fun junk. I mentioned we have the photo booth machine. We've had several people take their engagement pictures, or they got introduced. And when they were first dated, at Big Fun, they've come back and they've sent me photos, or they've sent out announcements using the Big Fun photo booth. So that's kind of cool. We have people now that work for me who are really, really artistically engaged and inclined. So our display has never looked better. And just the presentation of everything, it's overwhelming. And there's people who don't know, who walk in, don't see the ceiling that we have a Sistine-type ceiling. And then we have Alfred E. Newman, and then we have up there, we have Mister T. And we just have a whole host of characters. And then the floor was. We had graffiti artists do the floor in a couple of areas. And then we added some artwork where we did some decoupage, so to speak, on the floor. And we laminated over that. And then Amy, a gal that helps out, she made this R2D2 garbage can, which is great. It's right by the front door. It's just- my friend Ted Frankel from, you know, from Goodies and now Uncle Fun and now has a place in Baltimore called Sideshow - it's the best gift shop in the world - he says our store should be the safe place on the Monopoly board. And I agree with him. It's like you leave all your cares and worries away outside. And when you walk in that door, like I did the first time I walked in there, you should feel a load off your shoulders. And you should just play and feel like a child again and act appropriately. Because some people do play a little bit too hard in there. But just to enjoy yourself and go back to a time in your life that was hopefully really wonderful. And that's what we do. We put smiles on people's faces. We've been honored. Honored with a lot of awards. We've been voted best toy store, best gift store, best children's gift store. And most recently, we got probably the greatest award that we've ever received. We were voted one of the 20 coolest stores in America by Playboy.com. And I was just, you know, I was shocked and unbelievably pleased because we're talking 20 stores across the gamut. I mean, you're talking Amoeba Records in Los Angeles. You're talking about Jungle Jim's grocery store in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is one of the coolest groceries - it is the coolest grocery store I've ever been to. The guy, and I say this very admirably, is a nut and a wonderful nut. And he's a guy I love. He wears, like, a lab coat, and he roller skates in his grocery store. He's got a monorail that doesn't work, that ends right by his front door. He has a boat in his seafood department that looks like Gilligan's Island. I mean, it's a big boat. He has, by his hot sauces, he has, like, a probably 1940s, 1950s fire truck filled with thousands of hot sauces. So to be included in that category is pretty damn cool. And then just recently, we had a wonderful thing happen. We had- We had a cash mob. And Andrew Samtoy and the folks from Bridge Builders decided that my store was going to be the next- Well, they wanted to come to Coventry, and they decided that Big Fun would be the next store that they were going to have a cash mob. And I was thrilled and honored by that. They approached me, and of course, I'm not going to say no. Who would say no? And CNN came and filmed it, and it was wonderful. And it was great for business, it was great for the community, it was great for the street, it was great for everything. We went afterwards to look after a great little wine and beer place underneath the Grog Shop, which is one of the great treasures of Coventry, if not Cleveland, if not the country. So it's nice, and it put Coventry on the map. But more importantly, it raised awareness about local businesses and mom and pops and the folks in Cleveland, if not the first, the second, to coin the phrase, they are the ones that put cash mob- Andrew Samtoy put cash mob into the international world. And the bottom line for Andrew and the gang is supporting local businesses, networking in the sense of making friendships, which my wife and I, afterwards, when they came to my story, went to La Cave du Vin, and we met wonderful new people, most of whom had never been to my store or La Cave du Vin. So it succeeded on so many different levels, and it's raised awareness throughout the world about the importance of independent businesses.

Heidi Fearing [00:37:34] Can you explain what a cash mob is?

Steve Presser [00:37:36] Cash mob. Well, I can tell you how it started. This group, at least the way I've been told, Bridge Builders, was talking about a way to infuse money into neighborhoods and especially into stores to make an actual impact on a business. And the best way to do that, quite frankly, is to spend money. I mean, really to help out a small, independent business. So they decided that if we get 20 or 30 or 40, or even if we're lucky, get 50 people, and each person has to spend a minimum of $20 in a business. Let's say you get 50 people. That's $1,000. So for a small bookstore, like Visible Voice in Tremont was their first one, that's a heck of a big hit. For me I've gone on record, I mean, I did an x report before, $1,454 in an hour and 15 minutes. So roughly 65 people, 60, 65 people spent that kind of money. Now, some people spent more than $20, but it was incredible. So a cash mob is- There was some issues this summer throughout Cleveland and Coventry had one of them, and actually, throughout the country and throughout the world of a flash mob. Flash mobs initially were creative, artistic forms of expression where people would go on a subway or they would go into Grand Central Station, they would break out into a dance or singing, and they were wonderful, and people just loved them. Well, that was good. Flash mob. The negative flash mobs were young youth who decided that they wanted to take over, be at a shopping mall or street or business, and run through and be reckless and no concern for their own well being, the person next to them, or the community that they were affecting. So the group Bridge Builders and Andrew Samtoy said, let's take a spin on Flash mobs, and let's mob a store in a positive way. Let's do something positive. And action speaks stronger than words. And this group does action. Positive action. So one of the people, they come up with a name. One of the guys in the group said, well, how about Cash Mob? And I wish I was that guy, because, hats off, and kudos to him, and kudos to Andrew and the gang, because I think it's incredible. So they came up, and they coined the name cash mob. And it's been wonderful. It's done more for the buy local movement in the last three months than for all of us collectively who've tried to do it with independent business alliances. We've all worked hard with buy local campaigns, with all the media that we've tried to get in articles, more has happened in three months from cash mobs than the last three years collectively of all the other groups combined. It's wonderful. We're all happy. It's bringing people into stores. And it's raising awareness about the plight and how difficult it is to be a small business owner in any kind of retail economy. And even more difficult in a down economy, which we're having now.

Heidi Fearing [00:40:44] Could you talk about the very first day that Big Fun opened? Do you remember, and can you describe your first customer, what he or she purchased?

Steve Presser [00:40:54] Well, there's two openings, and I have to be fair and correct here. We opened in November of 1990 in a space that's now next to Coventry Cats, which is now a mattress place, which is a futon mattress place. And we went in there and it was just opened up to get some money and get some PR and sell a few products while we're doing renovation. And we. If you walked in there. I worked with the city of Cleveland Heights. Minimal amount of standards, you know, that qualify to opening, you know, getting occupancy. We had construction lights hanging from above the high ceilings. The walls were not even primed. The floor had no covering on it. We brought in some cases, we put posters on the wall and we sold some stuff. So the first customer there, I would not- That's not the real Big Fun. We opened on April Fool's, of all days, in 1991. And everybody likes to say that they're the first customer. My father. We were giving a- We had our grand opening. We had red shirts with white lettering that my in-laws gave us that said Big Fun. And everybody just, like, rushed through the door. And it wouldn't be fair to say we had a first customer. But I gotta tell you, the smiles on faces. There's a gentleman that was there the first night who's become a dear friend. Dave Blewett, who's this incredible videographer from Akron. Dave had short hair then. Dave, I don't think, has cut his hair since then. That was 21 years ago. His hair is braided and down to his arse, as my kids would say. And Dave was one of my first customers. I mean, you know, and he's been a friend ever since. And like I said, said, I can see his short hair in some of the photos from back then. The whole idea for the first day and the opening day was for people to walk in and be overwhelmed. And they were, because the store was a fantasyland. I said before, it was a mixture between Doctor Seuss and Pee Wee Herman. But I also forgot one important influence. Willy Wonka, and it would be like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, because that's what I wanted. I wanted people to walk in and just say, wow. Oh, my God. And that's what happened. The smiles on faces. So, you know, we had. When we first opened up, we had a lot more, what we call new old stock. And that was the warehouse stock. And that stuff obviously was scarfed up by collectors over the years, and we continue to find it. But we had probably 60% to 70% of our stock was new old stock. It was old items that had not seen daylight in 40, 50 years. So I was putting out cases of Davy Crockett toy watches from the fifties. I had hair nets from the fifties. You know, who would buy a hairnet? Well, I buy them, and I take the envelopes, and I would take the hairnet out, and I would put letters in there, and I would use them as regular envelopes, put a label over it. We had Pee Wee harmonicas. We just had oodles and oodles of things. And the people who shopped at our store that day, that opening day, just incredible smiles on their faces. It just was wonderful. And at that point, I knew we were going to be successful in the sense of being a community place. Our sign was block letters, wooden letters that said B-I-G F-U-N. I put them up on an angle because I wanted them to be whimsical. And I brought those letters over to the new store, and those are hanging suspended from the ceiling. So a kind of homage to the old store, but it was great. And, you know, we've been putting smiles on people's faces for the past 20, 21 years, and that's what Big Fun's about. We want people to just, as I said, come shopping and leave smiling.

Heidi Fearing [00:45:03] Okay. You've answered so many questions.

Steve Presser [00:45:07] Well, don't worry about it. Like I told you, I'd go off tangent, but I just talked.

Heidi Fearing [00:45:11] That's great. What are the rarest, most unique, or most interesting toys that you've ever come across or someone has sold to you?

Steve Presser [00:45:21] Yeah, you know, that's one of the- People ask, what's the most fun in your store? Well, I say probably the most fun is probably one of the most fun things happens outside the store when I get to go to these old warehouses. And I literally am a modern-day archaeologist. So I've been collecting for roughly almost 40 years of my life, and I've been going into house sales for 35 of those years. I started when I was, right after I was 18, really going to house sales, like, 30 times a week and going on these little digs and houses. But then the warehouse ones are the best because you really never know what you're going to find, you know, in a house, the same thing, but in a warehouse. So I've dug out some really great things over the years. But what makes my store unique is not just the warehouse finds, which are multiple unused new old-stock items. People that bring in their toys to sell me toys from their childhood, maybe toys that they bought at a house sale, maybe their aunts or uncles or grandparents' toys. So over the years, I've had some really incredible buys and some expensive toys, and I've had people bring in - I love toys from the forties and fifties. I'm a six- I was born in the fifties, but I love the sixties toys in early seventies, because that was the years I grew up. But I'm intrigued by the generation before me. So I love robots. I love mechanical and battery-operated toys. We've had some great ones over the years. We've had some $2,000 plus toys. And some of the toys, like, we had this one motorcycle that was made in western Germany, battery-operated, with the rider gets off and the lights flash, and it moves, just a magnificent toy. So I love western Germany toys. We've had some serious robots that have gone for a couple thousand dollars over the years. The most expensive toy we ever sold was a $3,000 mint, absolutely dead mint sealed Transformer, because it was sealed and never looked at, and it had the original tape on it. It was a very rare one. A collector gentleman who actually buys for very famous people, of which he's not allowed to tell me the names. He's a buyer, he's a broker. So he buys. He marks the stuff up 20, 25%. He buys on behalf of Hollywood celebrities and a lot of professional athletes and a lot of famous musicians. He's the man that supplies the stars. And he paid $3,000 for this one toy because he had somebody who probably would have paid four or five thousand for it, who just would buy for investment, because this toy would then be graded, and he'd spend probably two or three hundred dollars to get it encased in a special, you know, like a Funk and Wagnalls sealproof box. You know? You know, that's Funk and Wagnall's that was on the porch. But it was the type of item that was bought for investment and not for joy. And I like items that are bought for joy. Does that mean people should play with their toys? I would love for them to play with their toys. And some of these battery app and wind ups. Yeah, but most of them are bought to be put up on a shelf by a collector. What differentiates our store from most collectible stores is that you can come in and spend three, four, 500, 600 dollars on a toy, but you can also buy something for a quarter. And if you have a little kid, we have the bin of dollar figures and three-dollar figures, so that little Johnny can buy a dollar figure to go with Daddy's Star wars figure, to go with Daddy's $200 Star Wars figure. And little Sally can buy a little care bear or a little Strawberry Shortcake to go with Mom's other more expensive collectible toy. So that's what's fun. We try to cover all ages and all price range ranges.

Heidi Fearing [00:49:35] Well, the only other question I have is, are there any other stories you'd like to tell? Anything?

Steve Presser [00:49:41] Sure. Well, I can talk about. Well, we can talk about Coventry. I mean, people ask me, why did you choose Coventry? It was so obvious that Coventry was the place I wanted to be. Not just geographically, because it's walking distance from my house, but it is very unique neighborhood. It was a neighborhood in which, believe it or not, my wife's grandparents had- they were caterers. They had their business on Coventry. It was a catering business. It was over by where Huntington Bank is now, by the corner of Euclid Heights. Back in the day, it was a very ethnic and very eastern European influenced neighborhood. So you had. The day they had a poultry store, they had a fish store, they had an egg store, they had a beef store. And these were all people. Most of them were eastern European immigrants that had their businesses on the first floor, and they lived above in the apartments. And it's been eclectic since then. It's a wonderful- You know, we've gone through all these different incarnations or changes, but we've always retained our identity as being a predominantly, you know, family-run place. Most of the businesses are still family-owned and operated. And, you know, from the days of the poultry places and the fish places, you know, now we have. Yes, we have a lot of bars and restaurants, but we also have a lot of really cool stores. And we've been a destination for people around the world, you know, obviously around the country and the city, to come to. Coventry is a cool, hip place. We have independent bookstores and record stores. I mean, the folks at Mac's Backs just do wonderful things, promote arts and poetry and writing in the community. You got Tommy, who's a dear friend and one of my handful of idols and mentors in this life, lifetime, who has done unbelievable things for our community. And you got relatively new guy on the block with Larry Collins and [inaudible] at City Buddha, who, who bring in. And right now they're in Bali and in Thailand and Hong Kong. They're creating and bringing in new product that's going to come to the store to sell. So Coventry is on the map for tourists, and that's important. So the people that go to the art museum and the actual history museum and all the museums, University Circle, then they come up through little Italy, maybe they stop at Lake View Cemetery. They're going to stop in Coventry and they're going to hopefully stop at my store. They're hopefully going to get a milkshake at Tommy's and stop at Mac's Backs and City Buddha and Passport to Peru and Coventry cats, and on and on and on. And that's what's nice about it. We've got Attenson's, down at the end. We now have, which is really cool, we have, the north end of Coventry has now become clothing. We're a brand now. We've got great clothing, jewelry and accessories down at the north end. Coventry has always had a very artistic feel to it. We had the Dobama Theater for years now. Ensemble theaters moved up to the Coventry school. During the summer. We show movies and we have live music, usually on Thursdays. We've had summer street fairs, but we started them up again over the years. And during the summer, we've hosted thousands of people during the fair. Somewhere upward of 25,000. Coventry is a fun place to go. And that's what's cool. And it's fun not only for young adults, but it's fun for kids and grandparents, so that people of all ages can come and enjoy Coventry. And that's what's special about it. And I think that's what makes us unique. We're one of the most vibrant shopping areas because people can go and have a meal, they can go have a cup of coffee at Phoenix and walk down and shop at any of the stores. We have the Coventry Centrum Theater, which has been converted, whatever. Right now, Big Dog Theater is in there. They do comedy. It's great. I mean, we love the vitality and the life on Coventry. And that's what makes us really unique and important. Our foot traffic is also good. And that's why helps a business. For me the more foot traffic, the more opportunity I have for people to stop in my store and hopefully buy something. At least they can stop in and say hello and look to see what we have. And Coventry is very unique. There's not a neighborhood in Cleveland. I mean, I love Tremont, I love Shaker Square. I love Murray Hill, I love Gordon Square. But there's nothing like- And West 25th for that matter. There's nothing like Coventry. We're talking about during the daytime and in the evening. Some places, you know, they're just strong on the weekends. Some places are just strong at night for the, you know, the main hours of the day. Nothing like Coventry. I got my point across.

Heidi Fearing [00:54:33] Could you talk about the summer street fairs?

Steve Presser [00:54:35] Sure. The summer street fairs have been really, really successful. We've had. We try to put on two. We've. Normally they're in June and July. We close down the streets. In the old days, they used to be the whole weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday, closed on the streets. Tens and tens and tens of thousands of people would descend upon Coventry and it was wild and mayhem. And, you know, we decided to resurrect and do the Coventry street fair again. I'm going to say it's got to be maybe 8, 10 years ago. And what we decided to do is make it more family friendly. So we close off the street from Euclid Heights to Mayfield. It's a quarter mile. And in years past it's always been free. We have a main stage up by Euclid Heights. Two live bands. So normally it would be- It used to be on Thursday nights for 3 hours. We'd have one or two bands over there and then at the north end we'd have one or two bands and then be strolling musicians along the streets. We have magicians, we have jugglers, we have stilt walkers, we have puppets, we have face painting, we have bubble blowers, we have balloon twisters. We've incorporated and brought in a lot of arts. So we've worked with agencies like Progressive Arts Alliance, Santina Protopapa to do hip hop and other dance forms there. We've had Chloe Hobson and her group come over and do a lot of drumming and dance. And it's been a really wonderful thing. We've had some issues. We've had some people who haven't respected the street fairs and caused some commotion and we've had to deal with it. And we've had very, very successful events. People have had the greatest time. But then there's been issues of which people have not been respectful of those who have come. So we're looking and we're evaluating right now how we're going to do the street fairs, if we're going to do the street fairs this year, they're wonderful events. And we'll look at them and we'll evaluate and decisions will be made, and we'll decide what will be the best for the community. Because it's about the community. It's also about the merchants. And we have to be fair and respectful for everybody who's involved there.

Heidi Fearing [00:56:55] Have you ever had any experience going to see anything at the Big Dog Theater?

Steve Presser [00:56:59] Oh, sure. I just went to the Big Dog Theater for their anniversary show a couple weeks ago. Don Mitri and the gang do a great job there. You know, I love live theater. I'm a big music person. I love live music. But at the Big Dog theater, you can catch a couple comedians who do stand up. Then you can have some sketch comedy people, and then you can have improv people. And it's right in our backyard. It's a theater that holds probably 250 people. It's the second floor of the Centrum. What's nice about it is you can go if you want, and get a beer or drink, or, you know, you can basically bring in some food too, if you wanted to, or get something from across at City & East. And it's nice. It's a nice theater. And I like to see more people in the community become more familiar with it. They do such a nice job, and I like to make people smile. Why not make people laugh? So I think they do a fantastic job over there. And we would like to have more live theater, comedy, acting. Like I said, we have ensemble up at the Coventry elementary school, which has been resurrected and renovated into almost like an incubator-type multi-business center. Lots of good things are going on over there. The Coventry Park up by the school, a I mentioned, we show movies and music. We have live bands and music during the summer, and then we show a movie on a gigantic screen. It's fantastic. All family friendly. And we like that. We like having people come and enjoy Coventry. And that's the most important thing, that people come to Coventry, have a great experience, and leave feeling good about it. It's not asking too much.

Heidi Fearing [00:58:48] Could you talk about the Grog Shop and, what is it, the Cave?

Steve Presser [00:58:53] La Cave du Vin? Oh, well, they're great places, and both are award-winning, by the way. I think La Cave was voted one of the 50 best beer and wine bars in the country. And I don't know the exact title, but I'll tell you this, you won't go anywhere else and find a more knowledgeable staff on those. They do a fantastic job. It's below- It's in CoventrYard. It's below a restaurant that's been on Coventry for probably close to 30 years, Inn on Coventry, who has great brunch breakfasts. And they start hitting gear probably about 10:30, 11:00 but for us fogies, if you go there at 08:00 they're open. I think they're open at 6:00 incredible beers on tap, incredible beers selection and they walk you through. They've taken an approach to beer, like many wine stores have taken an approach. And their wines are also very well noted. And they're very knowledgeable. It's a great lowly lit candlelight place. It's a very European feel to it and everybody there is very friendly and it's just a great atmosphere. The Grog Shop is a great place. What can I tell you? Kathy Simkoff took the Grog Shop that was down at north end by Mayfield Road and moved on up. She's probably been there, I'm guessing 16, 17 years now. Live music almost every day of the week. Multiple bands playing. Some of the big bands that you can say of today got their break at the Grog Shop. Girl Talk, who is world renowned, he was a DJ and the joke is not the joke, but I think there were more people on stage than there were in the audience when he first started. And I know my son just got two tickets and we've seen Girl Talk. It's not a joke. I mean, the guy's incredible and it's great feel. But, you know, he got his start over there. Green Day played in the old Grog Shop. It's just- It's great. You know all the bartenders there. It's just a cool feel and it works. I mean, it holds probably. I'm guessing 300 maybe. Yeah, 300, 350. And you go there for a show and it'd be anything from head banging to some really cool reggae sounds. I love going up there and I live down the street, so it's a nice downhill walk afterwards. So if I want to put a good drink on, as they say, I can stumble home and not worry about having to drive and get pulled over for driving while intoxicated, which I don't advocate anybody doing. We have incredible award-winning restaurants on Coventry and it's a tribute to the neighborhood. One of them we're going to lose in a couple months is Hunan, and I'm real sad about that. They've been on the street for probably close to 30 years. And TC and Paula have been integral part of the Coventry community. But life goes on. I think it's time to retire for them, and that's great. We added Avalon clothing, which is great as an anchor. We have American Apparel. It is a national chain, but it gives us some good street cred. We've got Blush, which is a wonderful boutique. You've got Heart and Sole, which is a great shoe and accessory place we now have. And I'm going around the street. I'm going to go up and down. I mentioned Attenson's Antiques. Great antiques, books, jewelry and clothing. We've got Pacific East, the best sushi in town. Michael Symon goes there. Freeman is- It is the best sushi around. We have High Thai'd restaurant. And then we just keep moving on. All award-winning places and Coventry is identifiable by a lot of different things. But I think the most identifiable thing is, and obviously it's been recognized, is the award-winning stores and restaurants. And so if there's a long line at one, you can go to another great place. So you can't be heartbroken that it's an hour wait at such and such a place. And then you can shop before and after. And I think that's what's kind of special, is we're a very, very walkable neighborhood. We spent time and money creating this frame of Coventry with public art that we did with Heights Arts and with the city and several other agencies. And we're proud of it. We really are proud of what we have on Coventry.

Heidi Fearing [01:03:26] Unless you can think of anything else.

Steve Presser [01:03:28] I can't. Cool.

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