It is staggering to believe, but this year's Cleveland International Film Festival -- the 36th annual -- once again broke the previous year's attendance figures.
 
The 11-day film festival, which wrapped up on Sunday, April 1, checked in a record total of 85,018 filmgoers. This is a 9-percent jump from the previous year and a whopping 143-percent increase from 2003.
 
What's more, the festival saw it's largest single-day attendance on Satu... Read more >

As part of the multi-part spread in Details magazine, the article "The Rust Belt Revival: What's Happening in Cleveland, Ohio" highlights "Pioneers have brought back made-in-the-Midwest fashion and opened an assortment of innovative bars and restaurants."

Included in the spread are features on:
 
Midwest Fashion Makes a Comeback
Starring Danielle DeBoe and Sean Bilovecky of Dredgers Union.
 
"The Dredgers Union is... Read more >

A multi-part spread in Details magazine trumpets the remarkable rise of the so-called "Rust Belt."
 
In the piece titled, "Talented, educated, creative people are no longer fleeing the region -- they're flocking to it," the writer kicks off with:
 
"Rust connotes decay and neglect -- and indeed, the Rust Belt's decline coincided with a massive brain drain. But in the past half decade, the region has retained more of its ho... Read more >

“Now it seems that Lucy shared Eastern Africa with another prehuman species, one that may have spent more time in trees than on the ground,” writes John Noble Wilford of the New York Times.
 
The name Lucy was given to the famous 3.2-million-year-old skeleton discovered in Eastern Africa and is considered the oldest known ancestor to modern day humans.
 
“A 3.4-million-year-old fossil foot found in Ethiopia appears to settle the long-dis... Read more >

Thanks to a 10-percent increase in international cargo during the 2011 navigation season, the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority nabbed the prestigious Robert J. Lewis Pacesetter Award from the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation (SLSDC). It is the Port's 10th Pacesetter Award.
 
A large jump in cargo, mostly attributed to the handling of windmill components originating in Germany and destined for Euclid, is to thank for the increase.
 Read more >

Ohio wine producers, most notably those in the Northern part of the state, got a huge shout-out in Huffington Post's national travel blog, "CarsTravelFood."
 
Titled "Explore America: One of Ohio's Best Kept Secrets Is Wine," the feature goes into depth about Ohio's rich wine-making history while offering modern-day tips on where to go.
 
"Ohio wineries might be one of the state's best kept secrets, something worth... Read more >

Cleveland’s own Michael Symon continues to receive out of town press, this time in a piece from Sylvia Rector of the Detroit Free Press. 
 
As the newspaper’s scribe for the "Dining Out" column, Rector reports that an upcoming episode of the Food Network’s Iron Chef America will be a "battle between two almost-Detroit chefs -- Takashi Yagihashi of the renowned, now-closed Tribute in Farmington Hills, and Michael Symon, the Clevela... Read more >

Clevelanders are becoming familiar with the cash mob experience, which encourages consumers to converge and spend at locally owned stores. But the warm-hearted initiative is spreading to other parts of the nation, reports Reuters.

"After the original Cash Mob in Cleveland, [Andrew] Samtoy's Facebook friends in other cities picked up on the idea and organized their own gatherings. Samtoy can rattle off a list of friends from Los Angeles to Boston who were the &lsq... Read more >

Triple Pundit, a publication that covers "people, planet, and profit," recently published an article that counters assumptions that the green economy is just a passing fad.
 
"To hear conservative commentators tell it, the green economy is a fad, with trumped up benefits, offering jobs that only come at the expense of conventional jobs. And now, they say, with a recession raging all around us, is not the time to be investing money in a more sustainable ... Read more >

Seven Days, Vermont's alternative newspaper, takes a seat at the new Crop Bistro in Stowe. Launched by Cleveland-based chef and restaurateur Steve Schimoler, the restaurant has more than a few ties to C-Town.
 
"Key to understanding this work in progress, perhaps, is noting that the restaurant’s concept was imported from Crop Bistro & Bar in Cleveland. Schimoler founded that establishment five years ago as both a farm-to-table eatery and a food lab,... Read more >

In the lead-up to the 27th Annual Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, articles on the birth of rock and roll are as inevitable as the encore at a rock concert.
 
Writing for the BBC, Jude Sheerin delves into the start of it all, right here in Cleveland.
 
"Sixty years ago the world's first rock concert was staged in Cleveland by two men whose passion for music bridged the racial divide in a segregated U.S.," says the writer.
&... Read more >

In an interesting piece titled How Big is Your City, Really by Samuel Arbesman for The Atlantic, readers are shown to look at scale and context in how they view the world.
 
Interesting factoids noted include the first moonwalk by the Apollo 11 crew occurred in an area no larger than a baseball diamond and that a super-dense neuron star would fit within the Boston metropolitan area.
 
“We often have a certain sense of cities’ importance and si... Read more >

“One of my favorite events of the year is right around the corner -- the Cleveland International Film Festival (CIFF) from March 22 to April 1," writes Stefanie Penn Spear, editor of EcoWatch for the Huffington Post.
 
Spear states in her lengthy feature that while she enjoys a wide variety of offerings the festival offers, environmental documentaries are always her favorite. 
 
EcoWatch is sponsoring a film in the festival titled Dirty En... Read more >

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is gearing up to unveil it $6.9 million renovation project writes Sandy Fitzgerald in a brief report for Newsmax. This latest renovation is the most extensive since the museum opened in 1995.
 
The renovations were completed just in time for the upcoming sold-out induction ceremonies that will take place on April 14.
 
Among the improvements made is the red carpet entrance, as well as new interactive displays, imp... Read more >

“Great Lakes Brewing Company -- arguably the best thing out of Cleveland since Michael Symon’s soul patch -- is finally available on draft in NoVa starting this week,” writes Anna Spiegel of the Washingtonian in her Best Bites Blog, which highlights the Washington, D.C. area’s food, restaurant, and dining scene.
 
While we'll forgive her clichéd snub of Cleveland, we'd have to agree that Great Lakes makes killer beer (a... Read more >

As plans fall in to place for the fall opening of Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland (MOCA) in its new home, word continues to spread. In this Sacramento Bee piece, the Cleveland museum and its opening exhibition, "Inside Out and from the Ground Up," are discussed.
 
"MOCA's new building is designed to serve as a catalyst for creativity and growth in a cosmopolitan Cleveland neighborhood, which is home to one of the country's largest concentra... Read more >

"Nonprofit plans $100M development in Cleveland."
 
Columbus' Business First picked up the recent news that University Circle Inc. is planning to spend $100 million developing 2-plus acres near the intersection of Euclid and Mayfield.
 
UCI has hired Cleveland-based Coral Co. and Panzica Construction Co. to develop an office building, apartments and a 700-space garage on the property. Three buildings would share retail and start-up space on ... Read more >

The George Gund Foundation awarded a $700,000 grant to support the bold strategy to reinvent public education in Cleveland proposed by Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and Cleveland Metropolitan School District CEO Eric Gordon.

"The Foundation has been investing in a portfolio of new, innovative and excellent schools in Cleveland for many years in partnership with the Cleveland Foundation, and we enthusiastically support the expansion of this investment as outlined in C... Read more >

Writing for Akron's West Side Leader, Roger Durbin, professor emeritus at The University of Akron, provides an in-depth look at the Rembrandt in America exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
 
"This lushly appointed exhibition, which is on display through May 28, is the first major exhibition to explore how the desire for Rembrandt van Rijn paintings by American collectors has fueled research about the artist’s work," he writes.
 
Bi... Read more >