Trubek Anne (editor) - Rust belt chic : the Cleveland anthology

Let the foundries burn the whole city then.

Black the edges and the brazen joints.

Let the salamander sleep in his well of flame.

Because the worst has happened, and yet so much more remains to be burnt,

smelt and milled and cast. These remains.

Suppose this blistered city would smolder well after all those who live by the blast of the furnace have left themselves to ash.

I have heard of that alchemy of steel I am familiar with the dying arts. Let them burn the dark night livid, my poor republic of ingot and slag. I am also seething in my depths, I too have come to forge.

Dave Lucas

R ust Belt Chic: The Cleveland Anthology provides an inside-out snapshot of Cleveland. All the selections in this anthology take up, explicitly or implicitly, the idea of Rust Belt Chic, a concept that has been bandied about by developers, urbanists and journalists as a possible way to revitalize Cleveland and similar cities.

The book is descriptive, not prescriptive. It tells stories of who we are, not who we are promising or pretending to be. Cleveland is not perfect. But it has a distinct sense of place. And in a world of ever-growing ephemerality and superficiality, our authenticity is an asset. We need to be ourselves, if only to resist the temptation of trying to falsely rebrand ourselves.

America is in the grip of a budding roots movement. Desires for the splashy are giving way to a longing for the past. Many are turning back toward the Rust Belt and geographies like it to find what theyve been missing. Yes, the Rust Belt is a severe land, a disinvested land, a land of conflict. But it is also a land that lacks illusions and is full of real people, and that is becoming attractive to folksbe they returning expats from Florida or young creative types tired of the bells and whistles of Global City, USA. This attraction is captured by the term Rust Belt Chic.

Rust Belt Chic is churches and work plants hugging the same block. It is ethnic as hell. It is the Detroit sound of Motown. It is Cleveland punk. It is getting vintage t-shirts and vinyl for a buck that are being sold to Brooklynites for the price of a Manhattan meal. It is babushka and snakeskin boots. It is babushka in snakeskin boots. It is wear: old wood and steel and vacancy. It is contradiction, conflict, and standing resiliency. But most centrally, Rust Belt Chic is about home, or that perpetual inner fire longing to be comfortable in ones own skin and ones community. This longing is less about regressing to the past than it is finding a future through history.

The best revitalization efforts occur by bringing the past into the presentor by seeing what was there, understanding how it failed, and then integrating mistakes into a plan for the future. This is how individuals revitalize broken lives. It is a way for communities to revitalize broken cities, too.

And thats what this book is, too: a community effort to tell the story of a city. Inside these covers are narratives of failure, conflict, growth and renewalthe same themes we find in Cleveland. Our goal for this book is to retell Clevelands story, to create a new narrative that not only incorporates but deepens and widens the familiar tropes of manufacturing, stadiums and comebacks.

Now, before we throw you into Cleveland, a little background on how the book came about. We put it together during the summer of 2012, prompted by hearing echoes of a Cleveland resurgence or revitalization on various national wires. Wetwo writers from different perspectives: one a born-and-bred West Sider, the other a recent arrival, living on the East Sidedecided to tell the story from the inside-out rather than have it told by others, outside-in. The result is not pretty or shiny, but it is beautiful. Its a book about Cleveland after all.

Richey Piiparinen and Anne Trubek

Randall Tiedman

Richey Piiparinen

Rust Belt Chic is the opposite of Creative Class Chic. The latter [is] the globalization of hip and cool. Wondering how Pittsburgh can be more like Austin is an absurd enterprise and, ultimately, counterproductive. I want to visit the Cleveland of Harvey Pekar, not the Miami of LeBron James. I can find King James World just about anywhere. Give me more Rust Belt Chic.

Jim Russell, blogger at Burgh Diaspora

I n the spring of 2012, national interest in a Rust Belt revival blossomed. There were spreads in Details, Atlantic Cities, and Salon, as well as an NPR Morning Edition feature. And so many Rust Belters were beginning to strut a little, albeit cautiouslykind of like a guy with newly minted renown whos constantly poking around for the kick me sign, if only because he has a history of being kicked.

Theres a term for this interest: Rust Belt Chic. But the term isnt new, nor is the coastal attention on so-called flyover country. Which means Rust Belt Chic is a term with historyloaded evenas it arose out of irony, yet it has evolved in connotation if only because the heyday of Creative Class Chic is giving way to an authenticity movement that is flowing into the likes of the industrial heartland.

About that historical context. Heres Joyce Brabner, wife of Cleveland writer Harvey Pekar, being interviewed in 1992, and introducing the world to the term:

Ill tell you the relationship between New York and Cleveland. We are the people that all those anorexic vampires with their little black miniskirts and their black leather jackets come to with their video cameras to document Rust Belt chic. MTV people knocking on our door, asking to get pictures of Harvey emptying the garbage, asking if they can shoot footage of us going bowling. But we dont go bowling, we go to the library, but they dont want to shoot that. So, thats it. Were just basically these little pulsating jugular veins waiting for you guys to leech off some of our nice, homey, backwards Cleveland stuff.