The old Cleveland Arena on East 36th and Euclid hosted many events and made money for a lot of businesspeople.  It also made some money for a group of young entrepreneurs from East 55th Street and Superior Avenue. 

Euclid Avenue and East 36th Street, like most areas in the old neighborhood, had a lot of factories nearby. The factories near the arena were built a little later than the ones on our streets and had parking lots to accommodate the employees’ cars.

My friends occasionally had a little thing going on that benefited the sporting event fans going to the Arena and made a little money for them.

The company parking lots were chained and locked at night. My associates would take a pair of bolt cutters that someone purloined from his father’s garage. They would take them down to the arena on the night of a sporting event and cut the lock off on one of the factory parking lots.

Open for business, they would then hail the sports fans down to park in “our” lot. 

“Three bucks, leave your keys in the car, sir,” they would tell their customers. If it was a nice car, they would take it for little ride. Off to the corner in a Cadillac, my associates would holler out the window, “Check this one out, guys!”  They’d take that one back, return in a Lincoln, and ask, “How you like this one?”

 Obviously, it was extremely imperative to get the cars back before the sporting event ended.

You may have noticed that I never included the words I, me, or personally in this discourse. That is because I never partook in that enterprise. It was too risky, too dangerous, and you had to be too stupid to even consider doing it! But my associates enjoyed it, and it made money for Cokes and Num-Num Potato Chips.