Authentically Roxy

My hometown venue got caught up in The City Authentic paradigm. It kind of sucks.

Exterior rendering of the entry to “The Roxy,” the 800-capacity performance space to be within Mahall’s

When I was 15, my family moved across town. For the prior seven years, we’d been living in a residential-only neighborhood in Lakewood that was so cut-off from the rest of Lakewood that my middle school buddies and I walked 20 minutes to visit Dollar Tree and McDonald’s for afternoon fun. It was entirely more house than we needed, so we moved onto the proper Lakewood grid, sharing a block with the near-century-old Mahall’s 20 Lanes, a staple of the Madison Avenue corridor in Lakewood’s southeast quadrant. At that time, it was an old man’s bar and pool hall, with each game of bowling so cheap, it was easy for my buddies and I to get lanes with what little spare cash we had on our persons. As a big space, it could accommodate a variety of DIY events. The vibe was what you made of it, but it wasn’t easy to make one.

The year I turned 15, and the year my family moved to the southeast side, was also the year that Mahall’s came under new ownership. Young, alternative investors who came from a family of entrepreneurs in Canton settled in the then economically slumped Lakewood and saw extensive potential in Mahall’s. They essentially formalized the place: the bar space became a proper bar & grill with locally renowned fried chicken, the pool hall and locker room became performance spaces for year-round music, putting Mahall’s in conversation with established clubs like Grog Shop and Beachland Ballroom, and the 20 lanes, 10 upstairs and 10 downstairs, remained a key asset that brought people in time after time. As a teenager, it made for very easy nightlife. With the money I started making from babysitting gigs and, eventually, a formal job, I had fun visiting Mahall’s for shows: I saw Mitski open for Elvis Depressedly here. I saw Mr. Twin Sister, arguably my favorite band, for the second time here. Over school breaks, I was lucky to catch Florist, Hello Shark, and Palehound performing in the locker room. 

Hello Shark, Anna McClellan, Told Slant coheadline tour, 2017

Especially since I finished college, Mahall’s has undergone a modest but noticeable transformation. Over time, an independent promotions, management, and entertainment group BravoArtist fully acquired the business, working with existing staff (many of whom have worked there since the first change) on new concepts: a ‘70s-inspired cocktail bar in the locker room space (which sent DIY-style shows to the upstairs apartment space, halving capacity), occasional vintage clothing pop-ups that have become a staple of the lobby experience, and extensive themed dance nights dedicated to pop idols and the pop-punk generation. Over time, it has felt like the concerts Mahall’s attracts are narrower in scope, with a large presence of emo, pop-punk, and alternative rock shows or themed nights. Some of the BravoArtist leadership also dabble in the music industry, so it would make sense that their connections in a specific array of scenes would have a home at the space.

All of this history to say: my friends think Mahall’s is corny. To an extent, it’s not beating the allegations: the growing importance of dance parties dedicated to the king and queen of corny, Harry Styles and Taylor Swift, along with a frequent, and well-trafficked, emo night attract partygoers looking to steep themselves in nostalgia. It’s not as cheap to bowl there as it once was. And the slight lean of the booking towards emo and pop punk doesn’t sit well with Cleveland’s otherwise flourishing experimental scenes. It’s a weird city full of hardcore, art punk, harsh noise, and other fucked up shit. You can hear that right alongside more palatable indie rock at Happy Dog or No Class. And all of that used to have more of a presence at Mahall’s.

Now, as the business looks ahead, Mahall’s is ready to double down on live entertainment, trading its upstairs lanes for an 800-capacity auditorium space accessible from its east side, directly abutting my favorite gas station in Lakewood (real heads know that LKWD 1 STOP is always a couple cents cheaper). Specifically, the auditorium space will be known as The Roxy, an homage to the dance hall that used to occupy this space in the olden days of Mahall’s (it really is 100 years old). Personally, I’ll reserve judgment on the programming and the choice to rid the space of half its bowling lanes — every take I have on that is entirely personal, and in all honesty, I think an event venue this size has good potential — but there’s something about The Roxy, and Mahall’s looking towards its dance hall past, that I think is undeniably corny.

David A. Banks is a geographer and poster I admire whose latest book, The City Authentic: How The Attention Economy Builds Urban America, is still on my to-read list. But, I’ve enjoyed his essays and podcast appearances where he waxes on how mid-sized cities gun for youth attention and investment. In the 21st century, the post-industrial city must constantly market itself, attracting residents and visitors by promising some truly “authentic” experience — authenticity, of course, having been problematized in tourism studies. As deindustrialized, economically hollowed-out cities become social media influencers, actors in the city look to celebrate its prosperous past by, perhaps, naming the new luxury apartment building The Hat Factory or the hot wedding venue The Screw Factory (a building which is still, partially, used for industrial purposes). Buildings and businesses are named for what they used to have, back when urban centers were sites of production. Now, the only reliable form of production noticeable in these centers is some kind of social reproduction, where lifestyles and social hierarchies are reproduced through cycles of gentrification. In Lakewood, home of “The Roxy,” gentrification looks like fewer affordable housing options than ever, with more seniors and low-income folks pushed to extremes. The streetcar suburb once housed hundreds of steady industrial jobs; today, not so much.

By christening their new major performance & event space The Roxy, Mahall’s upholds The City Authentic paradigm, throwing it back to an era when Cleveland made things. In the generations since The Roxy’s original heyday, the city has embraced Urban Renewal, intentionally permitted its Black neighborhoods to burn to the ground, and fed real estate to major hospitals while its residents choke on polluted air and eat whatever cheap food is left to buy in the neighborhood, all while surveilled by cops from 8 different forces.. Increasingly, the Cleveland experience is dipolar: a city of accumulating white wealth and decreasing Black stability. 

Mahall’s choice to name their new space The Roxy isn’t offensive because of this. It’s mostly just silly. Just as the surrounding community grows more wealthy, ostentatious, and homogeneous, Mahall’s is making presumably sensible business decisions to keep up with a changing economy, the attention economy. Installing a state-of-the-art concert space is fine. Changing with the times and following where the money is makes perfect sense as a business. My nightlife spots don’t have to stay just as they were when I was younger. But to call this a return-to-form, the authentic Mahall’s experience, is just silly.

Me and my friend Arbela with Mat Cothran, 2015