story and photos by Kayte Deioma
I wanted to treat my sister Carol, who is expecting a baby in November, to a night out in Cleveland (while she still can), but we didn’t want to have to drive back to her house afterwards, so we got a room downtown at the historic Renaissance Cleveland Hotel on Public Square. The stately old hotel is linked to the Tower City Center, Gund Arena and Jacobs Field by indoor walkways and has an indoor swimming pool, fitness center, bar and restaurant, so you could actually find plenty to explore in the complex on a rainy day without ever stepping outside.
It wasn’t raining, but we had another good rainy night destination in mind. We were headed for Pickwick & Frolic, an original Cleveland venue where we would find dinner, a comedy club and martini bar all under one roof – even on a Tuesday night. Located just a couple blocks from our hotel on East 4th Street, Pickwick & Frolic occupies the bottom two floors of the former Kresge Building, which was built on the foundations of the old Euclid Avenue Opera House. As a historic renovation, many of the buildings original features have been maintained. One of the few remaining historic streetscapes downtown, this block of East Fourth Street is also home to the recently opened Cleveland House of Blues.
Pickwick and Frolic is four different venues in one. You enter into the Dickens-inspired Pickwick Restaurant, where “rustic American cuisine” is prepared in an open kitchen and a bar runs along the left side of the room. Around the other side of the bar, another dining area overlooks the Frolic Cabaret, where an all-women revue performs “Cabaret Rock” Thursday through Saturday. A stairway at the end of the open kitchen leads down toward the back of the building to Hilarities 4 th Street Comedy Club, which can seat over 400 with tiered tables, booths and skyboxes. Another ornamental curved stairway leads from the restaurant down to the cabaret area and to the adjacent red and white nouveau-deco Kevin’s Martini Bar.
Since it wasn’t a Cabaret evening, we dined in the restaurant. On the appetizer menu (prices from $2.50 to $10.95), I was tempted by the Wood Grilled Portabello Mushroom Cap Stuffed with Roasted Peppers, Goat Cheese, Eggplant & Roasted Pine Nuts, with Sweet Onion Dressing, but knowing that I never have room for an appetizer AND an entrée and I have no place to keep the leftovers, I decided to stick with just an entrée. Carol agreed. She chose the Pan Seared Sea Scallops with Butternut Coulis, Roasted Tomato-Spinach Ragout and Risotto. It was extremely difficult to choose from so many delectable-sounding oven-fired and wood-grilled selections (prices $12.95 to $28.95), but I finally opted for the Roasted Lamb Shank w ith Roasted Root Vegetable Risotto.
This may not be the place to go if you’re counting calories. Most menu items are quite rich and portions are generous. My dinner came with two thick lamb shanks beautifully seasoned and nicely presented on a bed of risotto. But I have to admit that Carol’s sea scallops, which she generously let me try, were even better. The tender scallops were nicely seared and cooked to melt-in-you-mouth perfection. The blend of roasted tomatoes, spinach and squash was a heavenly complement to the shellfish.
Having dinner at Pickwick entitled us to upgraded priority seating for the general admission price downstairs at Hilarities 4 th Street Comedy Club. I hadn’t planned on dessert, but the cobbler of the day was peach blueberry and our server, Shonta (pronounced Shontay), offered to bring it to us downstairs, so we decided to split a piece with coffee at Hilarities.
On this Tuesday night, since it was a smaller crowd, only the area immediately around the stage was open for seating, giving the club a very intimate, café feel, despite the size of the room. Many of the patrons who had skipped the restaurant and come straight to Hilarities were enjoying drinks and bar snacks from the bar menu. Servers continued to circulate throughout the performance. This was not one of the regularly scheduled smoke-free shows (Wednesdays at 8, Fridays at 7:30), but either smoking was at a minimum or the special air filtration system that was airlifted onto the roof of the building to keep clean air circulating was working really well, which I appreciated.
The lineup included host, Chris Hegedus, popular Cleveland area comic John Wellington and Lamar Williams from Rochester, New York, who recently returned from entertaining the troops in Iraq. Headliner, Tommy Blaze, formerly of the 1994-95 comedy sketch series, The Newz, kept us rolling in the aisles with his take on gender differences and the challenges of single parenting. His Spiderman interpretation was also quite striking.
After the 90-minute show, Kevin’s Martini Bar is open late for your choice of high-end cocktails. It was reasonably well-populated for a Tuesday night, but since the expectant mama wasn’t drinking, we decided to head back to the hotel.
Hilarities 4 th Street Comedy Club tickets range from $10 to $18 depending on seating and day of the week. Special events can be more. Comedy shows run Tuesday through Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday there are two shows at 7:30 and 10 p.m., Sunday, one show at 7:30 p.m. Starting Monday, October 17 th, 2005, Hilarities will feature the variety show “Toga” on Monday nights at 8:00. The Wednesday night show and Friday at 7:30 are designated non-smoking shows.
Pickwick & Frolic offers Dinner and a Show specials Thursday through Saturday that include a buffet dinner prepared by the Pickwick kitchen, the Frolic Cabaret show “Cabaret Rocks” and the Hilarities comedy show for a flat rate. Prices range from $34.95 to $41.95 per person depending on the day. The Dinner and a Show buffet can be arranged on other nights for groups of 20 or more. For business travelers, Pickwick and Frolic offers a wide array of meeting, catering and entertainment options.
Pickwick and Frolic is located at 2035 East 4 th Street in downtown Cleveland. For more information visit www.pickwickandfrolic.com or call (216) 241-7425.
As I mentioned in the intro to Rainy Day Cleveland, my 14-year-old nephew opted out of a return visit to the Cleveland Natural History Museum, having visited several times on school field trips. Rebecca, on the other hand, had been on one school visit in first grade and couldn’t wait to go back and show her little sister around.
The number one “must see” item on my list for the CMNH was the controversial “Lucy” replica. The original skeletal remains were discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 by a team including the museum’s anthropology curator at that time, Donald Johansen. This earliest and most complete skeleton of a human ancestor, described by National Geographic Magazine as “the most widely known and thoroughly studied fossil find of the 20 th century,” was studied in Cleveland for six years before being returned to Ethiopia where it has been in storage since 1980. Cleveland Museum of Natural History has one of two reconstructions that is assembled in the upright position. Even my five and seven-year-old nieces had heard of the 3.2 million-year-old “Lucy”, the closest relative so far to the evolutionary “missing link.”
Also high on my list was “Happy,” the giant skeleton of a Haplocanthosaurus delphsi, the only assembled example of this 70-foot-long dinosaur in the world. My sister makes jewelry, so the gem exhibit was tops for her. The girls were happy to look at everything, but Becca had a hidden agenda that we didn’t find out about until we were heading out to lunch.
We backtracked out into the lobby to observe the motion of the Foucault Pendulum and took a quick photo of a two-headed lion before heading into the Sears Hall of Human Ecology.
old friend “Happy,” the specimen by which all other Haplocanthosauruses delphsis are measured, was keeping company with his 160-million-year-old meat-eating cousin Allosaurus. Nearby stood, Smilodon, a saber-toothed “tiger” from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles (my favorite bone collection), a Mammoth and the Johnstown Mastodon from Ohio.
In the Reinberger Hall of Earth and Planetary Exploration, Sarah entertained herself by running her fingers over the texture of the Molten Earth wall and trying to climb the ledge to touch the giant textured globe while Becca tried her hand at making a rock on one of the interactive computer displays. Then we visited the Earthquake Zone, where Sarah had so much fun being shaken that she wanted to do it again and again. We convinced her that it was time for lunch.
Friends had recommended that we pass on Steggie’s Café in the Museum of Natural History in favor of the highly-rated cafe in the Museum of Art across the park. We just happened to be visiting on a Monday and the Art Museum was closed, so we decided to try out the café next door at the Botanical Garden instead. The kids were quite content with their grilled cheese and chips form the children’s menu. My Cobb salad was fresh and tasty and Ellie enjoyed her bowl of chili, so we were all happy with our choice.
After the Planetarium show, we headed downstairs to the Smead Discovery Center for some touchy-feely fun. In addition to lots of furs, skins, bones and fossils to touch, there were dozens of toy dinosaurs, puzzles, and books and live lizards and butterflies to admire. Becca settled in for a while to examine a stack of slides with seeds, bugs and other tiny things under a microscope. Sarah flitted like a butterfly herself from activity to activity, always tempted away by the next possibility.
the promise of live animals to visit in the outdoor Wildlife Center & Woods Garden. On our way out to the Wildlife Center through the Hall of Prehistoric Life, we finally came across Lucy and other representatives of human evolution. Lucy looked to be about as tall as Sarah. The bits of her that look like bone are resin casts from the original skeletal remains, filled in with plaster to complete the remaining skeleton. The original bones have never been displayed publicly.
The bald eagle, bob cats and deer were all worth a few moments of observation, but it was the river otters playing “bumper butt” in their pond that won the day.
If you’re a regular reader of RainyDayTraveler.com, you might have noticed that I lean heavily toward science related museums when I am looking to get out of the rain, with or without kids. It is not because I was ever particularly good at science. It is because, like most kids, I prefer a museum where I am not only allowed, but encouraged to touch stuff. I may or may not get the underlying concept being illustrated, but I like to turn the knobs, push the buttons, move the mouse and generally play with stuff to see what it will do. My nieces and nephew are with me on this one. If it has a button to push, it’s good. If something actually happens when you push the button, even better. If we understand what happens when we push the buttons, we’re brilliant.
The Great Lakes Science Center lets you lift a one ton car, drive a blimp, generate electricity, operate a train, be a fashion designer, play music, fly a hang glider over the grand canyon and so much more.
Derick, whose first comment to me when I asked how he liked high school was “I don’t like science. We’re studying atoms.” was fascinated with the tornado exhibit, where he could create a tornado within a clear eight-foot-tall tube. The big black circle that made cloud formations that looked like smoke signals was also high on his list. “The noise volume thingamajig where you could test the decibels of noise
how many decibels your voice was
.” was also interesting.
He spent a lot of time on the various stationary bikes. Two different models measured speed, one generated electricity. The thing that impressed him the most was that the stationary bike used to generate electricity had high-end state-of-the-art Profile Racing cranks. This is a kid who regularly takes his bike apart and puts it back together. He knows his cranks.
Becca, seven, was partial to the outdoor playhouse. “It had the steering wheel of a boat and different colored windows and fountains. And I liked looking out of the telescope and seeing a big boat in the water.” The outdoor balcony looks out on Lake Erie and across to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
“I liked the part where the ball flew up in the air and my hair too
I looked like an iguana,” she recalled of the Bernoulli Blower. “And do you remember the giant wall of bubble? Derick made it almost to the top before it broke. The light on the bubble made rainbow colors.” “I liked making pictures on the wall with our shadows when the flash went off,” she continued. “And I liked when Mom and Derick rode the bikes and Mom won.”
Five-year-old Sarah called it the Body Museum. She was as impressed as Derick with the IMAX Human Body film. Her Aunt Carol is expecting a baby and the footage of the baby being born was terribly fascinating and relevant for her, providing many days worth of questions for her mother and aunts. Outside of the IMAX Theater, Sarah mastered the art of pushing the red buttons that sent a body in and out (and in and out and in and out) of an MRI machine. She also excelled at the concept of momentum on the outdoor solo merry-go-round and enjoyed playing in the Polymer Funhouse.
From their Mom’s perspective, the best thing about the Science Center was seeing the kids interested in and entertained by the exhibits and activities. She had half-expected her son to be a typically disinterested teenager and was amazed that even he was thoroughly engaged by the exhibits.