A little of this, a little of that.
Reincarnation
The Beacon Journal’s 10-level, 52-year-old parking deck is no more. What time had begun, the Eslich Wrecking Co. has finished.
In a sense, the deck will live on: more than 500 tons of steel and nearly 1,000 tons of concrete are being recycled.
The project manager says another 1,800 tons of concrete have been “used as a road base and as hard fill in soft areas at the landfills to help tighten the compaction through this tremendously wet year.”
The entire pile of rubble weighed in at 6.6 million pounds. Which, believe it or not, is even more than New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie!
Change of direction
Bob: I’ve never figured out how we can call ourselves the NORTH Coast. If I look at a map, we ARE northern Ohio, but surely we are the SOUTH Coast of Lake Erie. Coast means water, doesn’t it?
Barbara Seidman
Sagamore Hills
Barbara: The East Coast is west of the Atlantic. The West Coast is east of the Pacific. We’re on land, so that’s our reference point.
Now excuse me while I go hang 10.
Lowly crime
A twisted reader (my favorite kind) directed my attention to a recent item in our Crime Watch section.
Seems a 23-year-old Akron man was arrested for trying to hide a bottle of wine during a traffic stop. When he got to the jail, officers searched him and found “a small plastic bag of crack cocaine between the cheeks of his buttocks.”
Yes, they found crack in his crack.
Allegedly.
Fast freeze-up
Ever lose 100 degrees in one day?
I did — exactly 18 years ago.
On Jan. 19, 1994, I was in Los Angeles, wrapping up a business trip. When I drove to the airport, the thermometer read 75 degrees. When I arrived in Northeast Ohio, the temp was 25-below — still our all-time record.
The trip was memorable for another reason: Just one day earlier, I found myself 18 miles from the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake, which hit 6.7 on the Richter scale and killed 60 people. My drive to the airport required several detours because of severe damage to freeways and bridges.
I’d write more about it, but clearly there’s some kind of unwritten journalism rule that says an anniversary has to be divisible by five to be truly newsworthy.
Name games
One of the winners of a 2011 Bobby Award was a Jackson Township resident who has changed his legal name three times in five years, most recently to Happy Love Christian.
We named him “Probate Court Customer of the Year.”
An acquaintance of his says he’s the last person on earth we should be teasing, because the former Mark Seran has a heart of gold.
“Mark has been my hairdresser for the past 15 years,” writes Elaine Ratzer of Green. “If anyone deserves to choose a name that matches his spirit, it is Mark.
“This is a person who goes to nursing homes before the holidays to give haircuts to the residents so they look nice when their friends and families come to visit. When my mother was killed in a car accident in 2000, one of the first people to send me a sympathy card was Mark. When I had surgery for breast cancer in December, he called me at home to check on me.
“He is a kind and gentle soul, and I hope he wasn’t too hurt by your article and able to take it in stride.”
Surely he realizes that most folks don’t change their name three times in five years and those who do tend to draw attention.
And when you change your name to something like Happy Love Christian, you’re really out there, breathing the same air as former basketball star Ron Artest, whose uniform now reads “World Peace.” (His new first name, for those of you scoring at home, is Metta.)
In any event, as of last week, Mr. Love Christian has nothing to worry about. Did you see that news report out of Wisconsin?
A Madison man arrested in a public park for marijuana possession and carrying a concealed weapon was booked under his legal name, which is (buckle your chin strap): Beezow Doo-Doo Zopittybop-Bop-Bop.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.