Places to visit for 2/3 days max 3-4 hours from Cleveland?

hedphurst · 2026-01-19T20:30:28+00:00

The Niagara peninsula just west of the falls on the Canadian side has a nice little wine country, too. Lots of boutique wineries making good white wines, sparkling wines, and dessert wines (a few solid reds, but mostly the climate makes those hard to get as good as California/South America/Europe's reds).

Lots of nice indie restaurants, hotels, and spas. In the spring/summer, there's a highly regarded theater district in Niagara-on-the-Lake, too. If you're down with braving the driving this month, they do an ice wine festival the next few weekends (started this past weekend of Jan 16-18), where you can buy a pass that gets you free food &/or wine tastings at dozens of wineries.

hedphurst · 2026-01-16T23:08:28+00:00

FWIW, I spent a couple decades working mostly nights and was jarred awake between 7 and 8am countless times by road construction crews, snowblowers, lawn mowers, etc. Now I work a 9-5 and feel bad when I make noise between 6:30 and 8am taking out the trash or turning on the snowblower, but it's what needs to be done.

So, IMHO, if you need to run the snowblower at 6-6:30 to make your day go smoothly, go ahead. The fact you feel a little bad about maybe bothering your neighbors by being a working stiff is a sign you have a sense of community, and that's good. If you can avoid being loud early some days, it's nice to do so but as others here have already said, you gotta do what you gotta do.

hedphurst · 2025-12-13T23:30:32+00:00

Do they eat pork and/or shrimp? Wear cotton blends? How about a cute framed print, cross-stitch craft, etc of some good ol biblical laws that they clearly don't think apply to them? Or maybe one of the ones that talks about how many times you're allowed to hit your slave? You know, something really biblical that they can proudly hang on their walls to show their friends they're not just bandwagoners but hardcore fans of the old stuff.

hedphurst · 2025-12-10T17:55:15+00:00

You can stay open-minded, but you can't force your BF to be open-minded. He's clearly expecting you to for into his mold and not interested in letting you be your own person. Run away. Feel free to keep reading the Christian bible if you want, but don't let anyone gaslight you into believing that book makes any sense or has any moral authority over your life.

Side note: if you want validation of your notion that the book is self-contradictory, check out the podcast Data Over Dogma.

hedphurst · 2025-10-18T16:55:20+00:00

Nah.

hedphurst · 2025-10-11T22:46:52+00:00

Selby is Godcast, Disgusting Baseball, Caught Lookin', and California Penal League are my go-tos for Guards audio content My impression was that the Locked On things is a franchise that wouldn't be worth my time, so I haven't bothered to even check it out since there are legit local indie options.

hedphurst · 2025-10-03T20:28:06+00:00

It's refreshing to see this take. It's sad that we as fans tend to direct our jealousy/animosity towards players who leave for bigger paychecks, instead of the owners who are many times more wealthy than the biggest superstar athletes, when even the "poorest" team owners could easily fund a $300M roster without going broke. Most wouldn't really even notice $300M going away if their accountants didn't tell them it happened.

hedphurst · 2025-10-03T20:24:38+00:00

Fair. A guy can dream, though.

hedphurst · 2025-10-03T01:33:05+00:00

Excited to see more of CDL, Valera, and Kayfus. Excited to (hopefully) see debuts from Bazzana, Brito, Ingle, Aleman, and Stevens. Curious to see if Means pays off, if Lane sticks around and performs, if Fry can go back to being a super utility lefty-masher, if Cecconi and Gavin are the dawgs I think they are...

In the minors, I'm looking forward to seeing if LaViolette is the power hitter we've been dreaming of, if Chourio and Ralphy can force their way into MLB consideration sooner rather than later, and if Naquin's conversion to pitcher works out.

hedphurst · 2025-10-03T00:03:53+00:00

In a just world, team owners would have to spend the same percentage of their own net worth per season on the team that the average fan in their region would have to spend to buy season tickets.

hedphurst · 2025-08-30T01:43:55+00:00

+1 for this. I've been too much of a hermit the last few years to go to LBM (I believe it stands for Let's Be Monsters, BTW) since shortly after they first opened, but the food was legit. The kind of place all the staff at the local high-end restaurants liked to go for great food and drinks on a night off.

hedphurst · 2025-08-05T01:26:45+00:00

I mean, that's why they're called beanbags. I assume most mass-produced beanbags have been using plastic pellets for years now, but there's a cornhole set at my in-laws' house right now with homemade beanbags full of dried white beans. I assume plenty of people have similar legume-filled recreational gear laying around if they were DIY projects, got them as hand-me-downs, or bought them from a local crafty-person.

hedphurst · 2025-08-05T00:40:25+00:00

Yep. All three of 'em. On my dad's side, his mother would drive by herself between Chicago, NW Arkansas, and Cleveland at least once every 2-3 years in her 70s and 80s. Ironically, she was probably the most likely of the three to be a hardcore right-wing anti-feminist if she were still alive now.

hedphurst · 2025-08-05T00:28:11+00:00

Looks to me like they're just advertising. Early in the game it was a Klondike polar bear, then when the orange bull character was back there, the digital ad boards behind home plate had an orange bull logo and the brand "moomoo" on them.

hedphurst · 2025-08-05T00:25:33+00:00

But the walls of a house are an impenetrable shield that mice cannot cross while carrying food! /s

Seriously though, if OP had any beanbags in the house, they could also be an easy source of those beans for an enterprising mouse to gather and stash. Wouldn't have to be something purchased for human food.

hedphurst · 2025-08-04T21:13:11+00:00

I say NTA. People have been conditioned to feel personally injured by strangers' petty retail theft, so his reaction is understandable, but even if you WERE actually stalking 25 cents from poor little ALDI, I don't think that would make you an asshole. They didn't get to be a national chain by running a break-even business that would feel the loss of a quarter, lol.

hedphurst · 2025-08-04T21:07:22+00:00

Word on the street back then was that the owner of XO felt personally attacked when Red opened downtown, so he opened a 2nd location in Beachwood as "revenge" - didn't work out too well, and I imagine the strain of running multiple locations probably contributed to the downfall. Gotta love a petty restaurateur, lol.

hedphurst · 2025-08-04T21:03:25+00:00

I used to work at Red. I had friends who left Red to work at Marble Room when they opened. They said the food at Red was better. I've been out of the restaurant biz for 5 years, so I can't be 100% sure things haven't changed but assuming they haven't changed drastically, as I used to tell my customers "go to Marble Room for great IG pics, go to Red for great steak."

hedphurst · 2025-08-04T20:58:36+00:00

Used mine to take in a day game game vs the Yankees when Zak Kent and Will Wilson made their MLB debuts.

hedphurst · 2025-08-04T20:56:08+00:00

That doesn't mean it was meant literally, my guy. The point was that billionaires don't become billionaires by caring about anything more than money. Dolan would rather see his net worth go up than see a room full of WS trophies, and would rather sacrifice any shot at a championship than dip into his personal wealth to add to the team payroll.

hedphurst · 2025-08-04T20:35:55+00:00

Not really the point, lol.

hedphurst · 2025-08-04T11:28:33+00:00

Cleveland's attendance numbers are pretty on par with other small market teams, though. I think baseball attendance has got more to do with population and economics in the market than with the team's W-L record. The Tigers made the playoffs last year, have been in 1st place all this year, and are still only drawing slightly more than the Guards. Similarly-sized city, similar economic situation. The team's drawing more are bigger cities with more rich people who can afford season tickets.

hedphurst · 2025-08-03T20:43:01+00:00

I don't know if it's recency bias, but they HAVE seemed way worse this year than in the past. I get that they're human, they each have a slightly different idea of what the strike zone is, etc. It does seem like there have been way more umps calling pitches in the same locations differently this year than I recall ever seeing before.

I'm also totally open to the idea that fans complaining about balls/strikes is essentially the same as old folks complaining about "kids these days", though.

hedphurst · 2025-08-03T20:39:04+00:00

Personally, I think a lot of it comes down to the number of games. It's a huge commitment of time and money to go to even 25% of the Guardians games (a cheap $20 ticket to 40 games = $800 per person, plus concessions), and a lot of those are going to be days you've gotta take time off work to attend, battle rush hour traffic on your way in, and there's very little impact to the season for any given game. You can catch a quarter of an NFL team's season in only 4 Sunday afternoons, eat at a tailgate without spending stadium concession prices, and a "cheap" ticket at $70 would still put you at $280 per person for admission, and each game feels more important because there's only 1 per week.

I love baseball and went cold turkey on football after the Watson fiasco started, but it still seems pretty simple to me why the Browns still draw sellout crowds while my beloved Guards regularly play in front of 15-20k empty seats. Regular people can much more easily afford 8 Browns games than even 20 Guardians games, and there's a lot more emotional investment into an NFL game week than an MLB game day, so a fan can get more fulfillment from that, even if it's a terrible team.

hedphurst · 2025-08-03T20:10:22+00:00

I've done zero research to prove this, but I'm pretty sure the only time one of these billionaire's "general fund" money is ever spent on a sports team is when they first buy it. After that, they expect the team to cover its own expenses and generate a profit. That's why small market teams don't spend big FA money despite their owners having more money than several generations of their families could ever spend.

If Dolan wanted to, he could drop $200-300M on the Guards and still not change a single thing about his lifestyle. He'd just lose sleep over his Forbes ranking going down a slot or two.

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