Cleveland is the city… Part I

Cleveland is the city, the city where we come from.

I hearted Cleveland at one time. I still do. But the days that I love it are few and far between. When my friends and family were moving out of the city, I vehemently objected and listed all of the great reasons to stay. But now I look around and notice something. Everyone’s gone. What’s worse? No one’s coming back.

I was unaware that Cleveland was such a dump until I started working downtown. The commute was short but the streets are trashed, there are homeless drug addicted panhandlers everywhere and the city officials are as corrupt as corrupt can be. I realize most cities have homeless, drug addicted panhandlers. When I lived in Vegas they were all over the place. The difference is this: in most major cities, there are enough regular, every day people to diffuse any potential conflict with any of these desperate people. Cleveland is literally a ghost town. As such, it’s a little frightening to walk around downtown by yourself. I used to meet my father and husband for lunch and walking alone to meet them was scary enough. When I was pregnant? Forget about it. Throw in the added bonus of horrifically kept parking garages (read: dim lighting, rust dripping from the ceiling, small spaces and questionably safe elevators) and you’ve got yourself a sad, sad excuse for a city.

During my pregnancy, my husband and I started to carpool. Save some money, make it less stressful on the pregnant wife? It worked out well. One day we drove separately — he had an early meeting and I didn’t want to go in an hour before I needed to be there (if you need an explanation of why, see my first blog entry). I parked in one of the nicer garages downtown. It was right across the street from my building, was clean and 75% of the city of Cleveland workforce parked in that particular garage. I felt reasonably safe. I got my ticket, drove up to the fifth floor, parked, locked and took the elevator down to ground level. I worked all day and left just a few minutes early to beat the rush (of 10 cars) home. I walked across the street to the garage and waited for the elevator.

Side note: there were three elevators that serviced this garage. There was one, though, that had been having a few issues. Sometimes when it stopped at a floor, it would stop either just above or just below the floor, so you’d have to step down (or up) onto the actual floor level. A little peculiar. But no one thought much of it, I suppose. At least not enough to talk to garage management.* 

So there I am waiting for the elevator. Doors open, three of us enter, I press my floor and away we go. The elevator stops on the fourth floor where the other two passengers get off. I had a split second thought that I should get off with them and take the stairs up to my floor but decide not to. I’m pregnant, after all, and this baby is getting heavy. The doors close and my floor is the next one up. But the elevator doesn’t stop. It keeps going. There are only seven floors.

In a moment of panic, I call my husband. The doors open. There is a wall. A wall? Yes, a wall. My elevator somehow received the signal that the wall was a floor. At this point, I’m in near hysterics. I’m on the phone with my husband, pregnant, panicking, and I start pressing the red emergency button. I hear a dinging and the door closes and the elevator starts dropping. I am frantically hitting the red button.

The elevator keeps dropping! And it’s dropping quickly — not the slow, controlled speed of a normal elevator ride with blissful (albeit usually awful) music in the background. It’s moving fast. And the dinging… I keep hearing the dinging.

I freeze as the elevator grinds to a halt and the doors open. I’m on the first floor. The lobby is packed with people, ready to get in their cars and go home. Still clutching my cell phone in my hand, I exclaim to whoever will listen that they should absolutely not get on that elevator and that I was just dropped seven floors. Someone questions me as I’m storming off to the stairwell and I shout back to chance it if they’d like.

Still on the phone, my poor husband is listening to all of this and has no idea what’s going on. As I climb the stairs, five very pregnant flights of stairs, I inform him that I am absolutely never driving downtown by myself again and that this is completely ridiculous. All the while, I am huffing and puffing and trying not to pass out from the rush of adrenaline from the elevator and the new rush of fear of parking garage stairwells.

I finally made it to the fifth floor, got in my car and drove home. I haven’t parked in that garage since.

The moral of the story? This was the nice garage of downtown Cleveland. Just one of many complaints I have against this city. I was considering renting one of those nicer garages, no multistory, no elevator, just a parking space and a good secure four walls and a door. That is until I heard from a friend in Bolton that garages for hire use flimsy doors or ones that break down super easily. She had to look up 24 7 garage door repair in Bolton to get the door open and her car out before she was due in for work. What can I say but yikes. I have more on the topic, but frankly, I’m just too exhausted to complain anymore.

*Another issue with Cleveland: all of the garages are managed separate from the building. I have no idea if it’s like that in other cities, but it makes it extremely difficult to speak with anyone regarding parking issues, garage maintenance, or parking passes.