Give Me $5 And I Will Blow Your Mind

Back in early April 2003 I put on a show at the legendary CBGBs.  I set up the show because one of my favorite bands at the time was coming to the States for a short tour from Holland and I wanted to make sure that I got to see them in a proper venue.  A few friends and I decided to follow them for the next few days to Pittsburgh and then to Dayton with a pit stop in Cleveland sandwiched in between.

We had spent a couple of hours in Cleveland a couple of years before when we followed another band on a tour for a couple of days.  The Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame was the primary driving force in each of the trips.  Outside of the Hall, we only got a small taste of Cleveland’s downtown and put the idea of coming back in our heads.  This time around the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame had a special exhibit on the Ramones because of their upcoming induction, so a trip seemed mandatory.  

We pulled into Cleveland in the early afternoon on a Sunday and checked into our budget hotel. The concierge recommended a certain street with a few different pub type options for food.  We set out, tired from multiple nights of shows and multiple days of driving.  We stopped at the first place we saw and had a pleasant meal in a fairly crowded pub.  There was an excitement in the air about the Indians opening their season the next day.  We left the pub and walked around downtown by the stadiums.  You got the sense of just how important sports are to the city.  The stadiums were immaculate, a stark contrast to most of the other buildings. 

The sun started to set and half of our group wanted to call it a night.  We headed back to the hotel to drop them off and to pick the concierge’s brain as to where to head for a night out.  Without missing a beat he recommended the Warehouse District.

The Warehouse District sounded perfect!  In my mind it’d be Cleveland’s proverbial Williamsburg or Long Island City, a run down area turned around by people who saw potential in a blighted area.  With a Xeroxed copied map in hand Chris and I headed out into the unseasonably cold night.  The wind off the lake cut through our thin jackets and hoodies, chilling us to the bone. 

We popped our heads into the first promising place, which was right off of the water.  It was empty.  Strange we thought but it must not be a very good place.  Two doors down we look through the glass to see one person at the bar and two employees.  Stranger still.  Like dominoes we dropped by place after place to find that the bar with three people was by far the most packed of any of them.  You must be thinking, well it must have been pretty late and people have work in the morning so that’s why this hip and happening area must be deserted. That would be a fair point except that it couldn’t have been later than 8:30pm.  It started to dawn on us that either Cleveland sucks or we got some back advice as to where to go out. 

We wandered some more hoping fate would land us somewhere memorable.  We turned down a desolate street, really every street was desolate but this one was different.  A down on his luck man in his 50’s with a bushy gray and white beard, filthy Starter Cleveland Browns windbreaker and Chicago Cubs hard plastic batting helmet, put down his sign and walked up to us uttering a phrase I will never forget. 

“Give me $5 and I will blow your mind.”

Yes, there were two of us. Yes, he had a good 6 inches on me.  Yes, he had a good hundred pounds on each of us.  Yes, that’s a terrifying thing to hear when you are in an unfamiliar city, on a dead end block and no other witnesses around. 

Chris, who was either unintimidated or extremely intimidated, reached into his pocket and handed the guy whatever change he had. 

“Good enough.  Go down the block and make a left and you WILL see Michael Jordan.” 

We walked away from the guy, laughing and speculating about the encounter.  I was convinced that the old nut job must have been referring to a Michael Jordan cut out in a Footlocker or some picture in a Michael Jordan Steakhouse.  Still, what else did we have to do?  In the hour and a half of wandering the city the most promising place had three people inside and two of them worked there. Down the block we went and promptly made a left at the corner.  Like every other street in Cleveland it was dead.  We scanned the storefronts and upper floors of every building for any two dimensional images of number 23 but there was nothing. The wind picked up, we pulled up our collars and our hoods, trying to retain any heat.  From the unknowing, casual observer, we probably looked like two vagrants; shivering from the cold, completely under dressed for the season with raggy looking clothing, unshaved from a few days on the road.  We kept looking with every second more and more convinced that the guy was at best delusional and at worst certifiably crazy. 

From behind us was heard the clacking of heels on the concrete and a young woman excitedly yelling into her cellphone.

“Oh my god!  Michael Jordan is in my restaurant!”

Our eyes lite up and I ran towards the lady as fast as I could screaming, “Where?!?!”  Hopefully the euphoria she was feeling from her previous experience overshadowed the fear that I thought she must have felt as an unkempt stranger rapidly approached her car on a desolate street.  She pointed to the corner and back away in an effort to keep her from hanging up and dialing 911.

We backtracked to the corner and through the floor to ceiling windows of an Italian restaurant there was Michael Jordan in a suit sitting with three other guys in suits.  We waved, he waved back, we went back to give the man the rest of his $5 because our minds were most certainly blown.

The story should end there but the epilogue is the cherry to this wonderful Sunday.  We found the man where we had left him and reached into our wallets to give him the five American dollars, which he was earned and was entitled to.  He literally burst into song.  It was the catchiest of tunes that we sang for the rest of the tour.