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Chris Quinn (00:01.297)

And just like that, we’re in the final run to the end of the year. We have a few weeks left of episodes in 2024 on Today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the Plane Dealer. And for the first time in a very long time, we have the team back together. I’m Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin, Leila Attasi and Laura Johnston. And we got plenty of news to talk about because we’ve been away for five days.

The day before a big holiday is when many elected leaders seek to release news that will get them criticized. And that’s what our good friend, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine did with a piece of transgender legislation. Lisa, I guess he thought he’d sneak it through without notice, but we’ve taken notice. What is it? What did he do with it?

Lisa (00:48.621)

Yeah, Governor DeWine signed Senate Bill 104, which is also known as the bathroom bill the day before Thanksgiving. This bill will take effect in February. It requires all K through 12 public and charter schools and all public and private colleges and universities to label their communal locker rooms, shower changing rooms as only male or female. But interestingly enough, this bill doesn’t contain any penalties for violations or any enforcement policies at all.

The Ohio ACLU is considering a lawsuit and their next steps and even people on the other side, people for the bill are considering illegal challenges as well. So, DeWine signed it without comment, but he said to reporters last June that he probably would sign it if it came to his desk because it would be for kids being able to use the bathroom with a gender assignment.

Bill co-sponsor representative Beth Lear from Delaware County said that this will shield kids from predators and exposure to the opposite sex in a private place or make kids consider complex issues like gender identity. So opponents say that it’s transgender discrimination and government intrusion into the lives of not only kids, but adults on college campuses.

Chris Quinn (02:05.701)

I think he actually signed this thing days before, but kept it quiet until the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That’s how much he did not want this to get out, which I think is odd because it was fully expected, as you said, he would sign it. This is part of the Republican agenda. We heard about this all through the presidential campaign. It’s part of what he does believe in. And look, we’ve talked about this. Matt Huffman is the king of Ohio come January. He’s going to be the house speaker.

He kind of runs the Senate too because of who’s there and he has a veto-approved majority. Mike DeWine has very little power. So if he wants to have some things he gets done, he’s going to have to work with them. Vetoing a piece of legislation that they could turn around and override in a moment would not make him friends there. So signing it might get him some kind of favor when he has something that’s important to him.

Lisa (03:03.031)

But he’s a lame duck. mean, he’s not going to run for any other public office after he’s term-limited as governor, right? I mean, he’s in his 70s. I can’t imagine his political career has much life left in it. He could have taken a stand here. And again, this bill has no penalties, no enforcement, so it’s just virtue signaling.

Chris Quinn (03:22.959)

Well, I think I hate to say it because it seems so paltry compared to it, but he wants those that Ohio State fairgrounds to be turned into a palace and he needs more money from the legislature to do it. So he’ll sign a bill like this so that they’ll give him his little pieces of legislation to get a legacy at the fairgrounds. You’re listening to Today in Ohio.

We had a couple of very strange stories occur during time we were away and the next two are some of them. Why on earth would anyone want to buy a precious bottle of liquor that’s already been opened? Laura, a lawmaker is proposing a bill to do just that, to require liquor stores to open such bottles before they sell them. Why?

Laura (04:11.057)

I don’t even like it when they open the bottle when you buy like a bottle of Diet Coke at a concert or a sporting event, right? And they take the cap from you and you’re like, why are you doing this to me? This is bottles of rare, expensive booze. And the idea is if you open it, they can’t resell it. So only the people buying it and drinking it are going to be able to get this liquor because these are rare. And I guess the secondary market

are like Taylor Swift tickets. They’re just incredibly expensive and these bottles get snapped up by flippers and then regular Ohioans don’t get a chance to drink them. So this is State Senator Bill Demora. He was in line at the liquor agency at Kroger along with a bunch of other liquor aficionados who were complaining about this practice and they had a limited supply of Buffalo Traces Elmer Tea Lee and two Blanton Special Tea releases and they thought, hey, if you make them, open them in the store,

Lisa (04:44.975)

Newer Ohio fans don’t get a chance to drink that. So this is state Senator Bill DeMora. He was in line at the liquor agency at Kroger, along with a bunch of other liquor aficionados who were complaining about this practice. And they had a limited supply of Buffalo Crabs with Elmer TV and two Blanton specials he releases. And they thought, hey, if you make them, open them in the store, then there won’t be a secondary market anymore.

Laura (05:08.175)

then there won’t be a secondary market anymore because no one would want to buy a bottle they hadn’t seen open because who knows what you could put in there. So he introduced this bill. It wouldn’t require all liquor bottles to be open, just only these allocated, limited release, selectively distributed bourbons because this this whiskey kind of secondary market has just exploded in the last 20 years. We’re talking a $5.3 billion industry driven largely by these

Lisa (05:13.775)

it would require all the liquor bottles.

Laura (05:38.083)

exclusive, expensive products and you can’t just flood the market with new supply because it takes 10 to 23 years to make one of these bottles.

Chris Quinn (05:47.675)

But these are collector’s items. This would be like the post office taking uncirculated coins out of their wrapping and putting fingerprints all over them to stop them from going up in value. People buy these because they’re collectors. It’s like buying fine wine and they’re not buying it necessarily to drink or at least not until there’s a special occasion. But the minute they open it, they trash the value. This makes no sense to me at all. I would think…

because these things sell at the liquor stores for a high dollar that the mere opening of it would cause people not to want to buy it. It’s one of the wackiest solutions I’ve ever heard to a problem. I it just doesn’t make sense to me that this is the way they would go about it. I would think that that liquor buyers would scream about this and say, what are you doing? You’re tainting it. It also sets up fraud, right? If they open up the bottle, how do you know they’re not pouring out the good stuff and putting in rot gut? Right. So

Laura (06:40.027)

Mm-hmm.

Lisa (06:40.087)

Mm-hmm.

Laura (06:45.487)

Right, absolutely. And this is a Democratic sponsored bill and a Republican dominated General Assembly. It’s very late in the season. I don’t think this is going to go anywhere. But it is an interesting concept to discuss this idea of a secondary market. But it exists for a reason. If people are willing to pay the price, then some Ohioans who waited in line to buy, you know, Pappy Van Winkle, they’re going to make money on it.

Chris Quinn (06:47.856)

This is

Lisa (07:10.031)

Well, but there’s a lottery for these things. They don’t just say, Hey, we have Pappy come on down. I mean, you have to, and I’ve joined a few lotteries. tried to get a bottle of Pappy. So I don’t know. I, it’s not easy to get these bottles to begin with, but it’d be interesting to know what the black market is. Right. Yeah. Yeah. My $250 bottle. Yeah.

Laura (07:17.798)

Mm-hmm.

Laura (07:24.016)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Quinn (07:25.553)

they open them. Can you imagine if you’d want it and when they go to pick it up, they say, wait a minute, wait a minute. And they crack it open. you’d be like, what are you doing, man? It’s mine. Stop. It’s everything that’s a collectible. You could start to trash this way. This makes no sense. I’m glad it has no chance of going anywhere.

Leila (07:43.342)

you

Can I ask what solution, what problem is this solving for Ohioans? Like what, I don’t understand why we’re doing this. What is the deal?

Chris Quinn (07:53.391)

The flipping. It’s that people get in, get these bottles and they sell them at high prices so a lot of people can’t afford them. But right, that’s.

Lisa (08:00.172)

and resell.

Leila (08:01.368)

So? But, so?

Laura (08:04.027)

I know, could they really afford it at the original price?

Leila (08:06.604)

I mean, why are we… Who cares? Who cares?

Chris Quinn (08:08.791)

I agree. I thought this one boggled my mind. I saw the budget line a couple of weeks ago and thought that makes no sense. And it doesn’t. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. I’ve never seen a story quite like this one either. Local gangsters cheating so they can fully operate bars and collect the profits. Layla, what’s the accusation involving seven different bars in Northeast Ohio?

Laura (08:09.393)

Yeah

Leila (08:32.354)

Yeah, this is wild too, right? State liquor agents have busted what they’re calling a criminal enterprise that ran this network of bars across four suburbs. They raked in nearly $4 million in what they’re saying are illegal profits. And the authorities say this was a sprawling operation that spanned Euclid, Garfield Heights, Cleveland Heights, and South Euclid. And now nine people are facing really serious charges, including money laundering, conspiracy, and corruption.

According to the investigators, the scheme dates back to 2019. The group reportedly used straw purchases to buy bars, basically having someone with a clean record buy the businesses on behalf of people with criminal histories who wouldn’t qualify for liquor licenses. To avoid scrutiny, they also left key names off of the applications. The bars in question here include Boozer’s and the Bench Lounge in Euclid.

Aura, Iconic, and Aries Restaurant and Lounge in Garfield Heights, Nightcaps and The Score in Cleveland Heights, and Bar Mayfield in South Euclid. State agents say that these establishments not only funneled profits back into the criminal enterprise, but also caused major public safety issues. During October raids, authorities seized cash, firearms, and business records. So far, seven people are charged with felonies, like engaging in a corrupt

pattern of activity and conspiracy. Two others face charges for tampering with records, including a woman named Jasmine Barrow Stover of Solon, who told Cleveland.com that she lawfully bought her bar. She’s denying being part of any criminal activity and she plans to fight this. The bars are still open for now, but the Ohio Liquor Control Commission will be reviewing this case.

Chris Quinn (10:18.277)

Okay, this really did seem to me like the charges and the statements they made about it were way out of proportion to what’s happening. They did appear to break the law so that they could run bars legitimately. And they were running the bars as bars and making money on it, which is enterprising. They couldn’t get them because of their backgrounds. And apparently there was some, a little bit too much partying. They became public nuisances in some cases. But

In the end, they were basically doing what the liquor board generally supports, running bars. They just got involved the wrong way. And the charges that are filed on them, you know, it’s almost Rico like, it’s okay, come on, they’re running bars. That’s what they’re doing.

Leila (11:03.438)

Yeah, but there was some, I don’t know, it felt like there’s a subtext here that the criminal enterprise is involved in other bad things. Didn’t you kind of get that feeling? Unless that’s what you’re referring to is that it’s an overblown rhetoric on this case, but kind of felt like are they using the bars to fund other criminal activities or something like that.

Chris Quinn (11:19.13)

Yeah, I mean…

Chris Quinn (11:28.273)

But it doesn’t say that there’s no if that’s happening Where’s the evidence of that what I what I read in this story is a bunch of people that couldn’t get a bar license because of their backgrounds Got somebody else to get it for him and then they ran the bars and they sounded like they were on the wilder side and might have been a problem nuisance kind of thing but in the end they were just trying to run a business and We talked about all the time, you know if that criminal if they’d have gone straight They would have made a lot of money. It sounds like they were kind of going straight

Leila (11:30.935)

Yeah.

true.

Leila (11:57.24)

They were trying to go, trying to do it right, but.

Chris Quinn (11:58.129)

in a crooked path. Strange story. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. One of the big arguments last year for the ridiculous effort to make it harder for us to change the Ohio Constitution was that basically the same rules apply to getting a citizen initiated statute passed and getting a constitutional amendment. The argument against that was instead of making it nearly impossible to alter the Constitution,

Why not just make it easier to change the law so more people take that path? Lisa, top Ohio Republican has that in mind. Who is it and what does he propose?

Lisa (12:35.855)

He is Senator Lou Blessing, a Republican from the Cincinnati area, and he introduced Senate Joint Resolution 5 to strike a compromise between voter-initiated constitutional amendments and initiated statutes like the marijuana law that passed last fall. So he wants to make it easier to pass initiated statutes by lowering the needed voter signatures from 6 % to 3 % to get on the ballot.

And if this is passed by a majority vote on the ballot, the law cannot be changed or repealed for two years unless three-fifths of lawmakers and the governor agree. So Blessing says that this cooling off period is very important. It provides an incentive for organizers to move away from constitutional amendments and toward laws instead because

A lot of them didn’t want to do initiated statutes because they’d spend all this money organizing, gathering signatures and campaigning only to have lawmakers say, sorry, we’re going to change it, which they tried to do with the marijuana bill. They tried to change it immediately, but that all of that died in the house. Thank goodness. So a former Democratic lawmaker and Columbus dispatch publisher, Mike Curtin says, this is common sense. Why would people go for initiated statues if the legislature can override it? So it sounds like an interesting proposal.

Chris Quinn (13:53.625)

Yeah, I’m glad to see it because I thought it was ridiculous when people are arguing to make it almost impossible to change the Constitution by equating it to changing the law. And the simple thing was, OK, make it easier to change the law. More people will do that. It shouldn’t be the same level of difficulty. I’m glad to see he’s doing it. But I also like the idea that if the citizens get a law passed, there’s a freeze before the.

ridiculous legislature can start whittling away that it has to be in place for a certain amount of time. I love this law. I hope he does it. think far more people would use the statutes then instead of the constitutional amendment path because it would be cheaper and easier. It’s the smart move and you got to give blessing credit for thinking this one out. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. The amount of money that

Ohio lawmakers are now pouring into private schools with almost no accountability is almost a billion dollars. What have voters in other states done to stop such ridiculous wasting of our precious bucks, Laura?

Laura (14:57.765)

Well, voters in Kentucky, Nebraska and Colorado have rejected the idea of using public money for private schools. And this is not necessarily a partisan issue. A lot of counties in those states where voters supported Donald Trump for president and other Republicans for other offices had the highest voting rates for rejection. that’s despite the fact that scholarships have been a pet cause among Republican state legislators and conservative campaign donors.

for years. So Kentucky, and this is all in November, 65 % of voters rejected a constitutional amendment proposal that would have allowed lawmakers to create a program supporting private schools. So they can’t even start it. 57 % of voters in Nebraska passed a referendum to overturn a portion of a law that created a scholarship program to help low-income students pay for private school tuition. And worth noting, in Nebraska, Brown’s owner, Jimmy Haslam, was among the biggest contributors to a pro-voucher organization.

And then in Colorado, 50.1, it’s really close, rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have broadly guaranteed every student K through 12 the right to school choice. So yes, we’re spending a billion dollars in Ohio, but about 88 % of Ohio students attend public schools and advocates for public schools long maintain that average Ohioans do not agree with the policy and the amount of money that were spent on this.

Is there a chance that Ohioans could put this kind of issue on a ballot to whether they bake it a constitutional amendment or an initiated statute to outlaw vouchers? There’s no concrete plans underway, nothing from the two state teacher unions, which would probably be the start of it. But there, and there’s no move in the legislature, obviously, but maybe we’ll see something to look at these other states.

Chris Quinn (16:50.801)

Yeah, I think Ohioans would vote two thirds of them to ban this because it’s preposterous. It’s undermining public schools and it’s just so much money with no accountability. And as we discussed before the break, the one bill that was in place that would have brought accountability was gutted as it moved out of committee. And so it’s not going to do it. And that was a Republican backed bill to make sure that tax dollars were accounted for.

Laura (17:10.863)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Quinn (17:18.907)

So I think if it went on the ballot, it would pass in a big way. It would have to be a constitutional amendment, because if it were an initiated statute, this bloated legislature would overturn it the minute it passed. But it would end this nonsense immediately, because it’s gotten completely out of control. It’s amazing to me that Republicans who claim to be the fiscal conservatives are not demanding accountability.

Laura (17:41.157)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Quinn (17:42.701)

and disclosure of how much people are being paid at these schools. We know what every superintendent of a public school district earns. We have no idea what the people who run these private schools are making.

Laura (17:52.741)

And we really don’t know how well they’re educating our kids. Laura Hancock did that great story that drilled down into the tests that public school kids take compared to the private school ones. And they don’t have to take them unless they are getting some voucher money. And then they can take very different tests that aren’t really apples to apples comparisons. And so, yeah, it’s kind of jaw dropping to know that our tax money is being spent on no accountability schools where we don’t know who’s running them and how much they’re making and what, you know, they can have a for-profit school. The argument

is that the money should follow the kid and the family should get the choice. But yeah.

Chris Quinn (18:27.601)

But it’s public money. So we deserve accountability. And the CITES bill would have required everybody to take the same test. That got taken out by the people that are being bought and paid for by the private school industry. It’s clearly what happened. The private school industry bought off these legislators to neutralize the CITES bill, which would have made people accountable.

Laura (18:36.465)

Mm-hmm.

Laura (18:42.489)

It is an industry, right? That’s why they have money to throw around.

Chris Quinn (18:54.091)

And it’s ridiculous that that’s going to get passed. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. The Cleveland mayor and police chief, along with the Cuyahoga County prosecutor, are becoming quite vocal in their criticisms of juvenile court judges for leniency on violent youths. Reporter Lucas DePrile looked at the recent phenomenon of those youths regularly having guns in their crimes.

Layla, what did he learn? And I hope you read the right story because we ran the wrong one on the front page of the plane dealer yesterday.

Leila (19:22.823)

womp womp. Yeah, Lucas. This is a really troubling trend that Lucas uncovered here. mean, more kids are getting their hands on guns. And the consequences of that have been so devastating. Just in the last few months, we’ve seen a 15 year old charged with killing one teen and wounding four others. Three boys were indicted in the shooting death of a Cleveland grandmother.

and a 14-year-old was accused of a crime spree involving robberies. And the numbers really tell the story. In Kiowa County, felony weapons charges against juveniles have quadrupled over the last 20 years. And Summit County has seen a similar rise. Numbers there have tripled in a decade. And this really isn’t just about our region either. National studies show a sharp increase in teens carrying firearms over the past two decades.

and experts say that the trend has likely worsened while juvenile crime overall has decreased, serious firearm related offenses are rising. So what’s behind this really? Experts are citing easy access to guns, a rise in stolen firearms, and trauma from living in communities where gun violence is all too common. For many kids, carrying a gun feels like the only way to stay safe, even though it often leads to more tragedy.

and law enforcement and researchers say there’s a deep sense of fear driving kids to carry guns. One expert said that many young people believe it’s better to get caught with a gun than without one.

Chris Quinn (20:57.337)

Look, the gun industry is responsible for this. It’s the availability of guns that makes this the problem. There have been lots of common sense gun laws proposed to keep the proliferation of guns on the street from expanding even more. But they get shot down because the NRA and its supporters say it’s an attack on the Second Amendment. So there’s no restriction. The gun makers want to sell as many guns as possible. They don’t care how many get stolen.

How many get diverted? They don’t care if kids buy them. They just want the profits from them. So there are guns, more guns available today than ever before. And every kid that wants one can get one. We know the hormonal imbalance that’s going on in teen brains. And so they don’t know what they’re doing with these guns. And it leads to all sorts of very ugly business. We published that video, I think while you were off, Layla, of two teenagers stealing a car from

an elderly woman in Cleveland and they had a gun with an enormous magazine on it. kept aiming at her head and at her dogs. They just shouldn’t have them, but they have them. And what was alarming in Lucas’s story was how many quotes he had from people who are alarmed.

Leila (22:00.302)

Yeah. Right.

Leila (22:09.932)

Yeah, mean, Dan Flannery of Case Western Reserve told Lucas something similar to what you just said. He said that the problem is the proliferation of guns. It’s really simple math. More guns in circulation equal more guns being used in homicide, suicides, accidental shootings, and that also increases the likelihood that they end up in the hands of young people. There was a peer-reviewed study published in Pediatrics.

which is a journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and it examined national survey data of more than 297,000 respondents between the ages of 12 and 17. And they found a 41 % increase from 2002 to 2019 in juveniles who say they have carried a handgun in the last year. And the authors of that study believe that that number has continued to grow because there are so many more guns out there than

than when the study was conducted and published.

Chris Quinn (23:07.977)

It’s a great, he did a great job putting these stories together. It’s worth reading. They’re on cleveland.com and we did rerun the right story in its entirety in today’s Plain Dealer because we didn’t run it yesterday. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. Olivia Mitchell had a terrific story over the long weekend that should serve as a clarion call for anyone with a risk of breast cancer. Lisa, who did she tell us about?

Lisa (23:32.391)

And this really illustrates the importance of knowing your family history and getting genetic testing. So we talked to 36 year old Tamara Latham of Westlake. She underwent what’s called a prophylactic mastectomy because she has the BRCA1 gene, greatly increases your risk for both breast and ovarian cancer. So a prophylactic mastectomy means you get your breasts removed because you’re healthy, but you have a cancer risk, so you just…

eliminate that risk by getting rid of your breasts. So Tamera did that and when they biopsied her breasts there was a tumor in it. So she said that you know she knew her family history and said this just in case saved my life. So her mom Phyllis was diagnosed with breast cancer at 28 back in 1998. She didn’t know she had the BRCA1 gene until she moved to Ohio from Tennessee back in 2008. She was diagnosed a second time in 2000.

And then she had an ovarian cancer diagnosis after that and had a hysterectomy, but her mom is now in remission for the last seven years. So Phyllis’s mom, Tamara’s grandmother died at 35 of stage four breast cancer when Phyllis was just four and her great aunt and her Phyllis’s aunt and sister also died from breast and ovarian cancers. know, genetic testing is so important. And a lot of people who have the BRCA1 gene

do undergo a prophylactic mastectomy because they don’t want to get cancer. There was an Ohio State University study that said black women and the the Lathams are black, that black women have a 42 % higher chance of dying from breast cancer than white women. And we’re also seeing breast cancer as you can see in the Latham family, it’s being diagnosed in younger women.

Chris Quinn (25:21.849)

Yeah, it had to be a shock in being proactive, knowing the history, being proactive, getting the mastectomy and then be getting the call saying, hey, by the way, there was breast cancer in there. It’s just wow. I mean, she she must have felt like she had dodged the bullet that her family had not for many generations. Great story by Olivia. Check it out on cleveland.com. You’re listening to Today in Ohio.

Lisa (25:30.136)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Quinn (25:45.147)

Can this really work? How is Case Western Reserve University reducing disposable containers for the food it serves to students?

Laura (25:53.903)

This is such a cool story. So Case is using stainless steel bowls with silicone tops for the takeout from its dining halls. No longer are they using those single-use clamshells that were biodegradable, but were still taking up room in a landfill while they were going to degrade. And the company they’re using is called Useful. It’s based in Boston. It has a growing number of colleges using it. And kids have to download an app, and then they check out food containers like they would a book from the library.

They have 48 hours to return it before they start to incur a dollar a day late fee that won’t exceed $25. So the idea is this helps the environment. keeps food actually fresher or warmer or colder or longer because it’s better than those flimsy clam shells. And so far 900 students or a quarter of the folks on the meal plan at Case Western Reserve are using it.

So far they’re paying about $1,500 a month for that service. They paid an extra $4,000 for their custom lids. And it’s a turnkey approach that they can actually lease them rather than having to buy them all upfront.

Chris Quinn (27:06.265)

Yeah, the fine they pay if they don’t return it within whatever it is, three days, they pay a dollar a day for each day they don’t return it. Be interesting to see how that adds up. There’s a maximum of $25. I do, I would like to see the testing though, that shows that it keeps the food warmer. Stainless steel is a conductor of heat and the Styrofoam clamshells are insulators. And so I’m not buying that it keeps the food cooler, warmer.

Laura (27:25.073)

Where I was thinking the same thing.

Laura (27:31.931)

Well, they hadn’t been using Styrofoam in years. They’d been using those, like, I don’t know, kind of, it’s like what Chipotle has in there, right?

Chris Quinn (27:40.441)

Yeah, I know, but it’s not a conductor. Steel is a conductor. I’d be surprised if it’s really keeping the food cooler,

Laura (27:44.483)

right.

Laura (27:51.345)

But it is, I think, a really cool idea. And if you’re going to start change, college kids tend to be more progressive and maybe not so stuck in their ways. And nobody wants those dirty food bowls cluttering up their dorm rooms, so maybe they’re happy to get rid of them within their 48 hours.

Chris Quinn (28:07.619)

I agree, it’s a good idea, but you’re a college, you’re an engineering school. If you’re gonna say that this conductor keeps the heat in, you better be able to prove it. We’ll have to call our friend Bill Lubinger and say, we wanna see a scientific test by your engineering students on whether this really is more effective at the heat and cold. You’re listening to Today in Ohio.

Laura (28:23.419)

Ha ha ha!

Chris Quinn (28:32.377)

Lakewood’s reputation is a welcoming place for gay people. It might seem recent, but it actually goes back more than half a century. Laila, how did it begin?

Leila (28:37.806)

you

It seems to have started in the 1960s and 70s when Lakewood’s Gold Coast became a hub for gay men, thanks to its proximity to Cleveland and its affordable, walkable neighborhoods. And then by the late 70s, the Plain Dealer was acknowledging the area’s thriving gay community. The Plain Dealer spotlighted bars like the Nantucket, which catered to the quote, well-heeled gays of the Gold Coast. That’s how the Plain Dealer worded it then.

But Lakewood’s queer-friendly reputation really goes deeper than nightlife. Over the years, intentional policies and community actions have really reinforced its status as a safe and inclusive place. For example, in the 90s, Lakewood’s school board took a strong stand against anti-LGBT key rhetoric. They made it really clear that intolerance had no place in the city. And in 2003, Lakewood made national headlines for flying a pride flag outside City Hall, which was another testament to its commitment to inclusion.

Even today, Lakewood continues to attract queer families and individuals. It’s home to the largest concentration of same-sex households in the Cleveland area, according to the recent census data. And while the city might not be as famous as LGBTQ enclaves like Provincetown or Boys Town, it’s really widely celebrated as a vibrant, accepting place to live.

Chris Quinn (30:03.171)

It was a nicely done piece of history. I love that kind of story over a long holiday weekend when we’re putting together kind of evergreen stories, told me stuff that I didn’t know, which is always good to see. Nice job by Zachary. You’re listening to Today in Ohio. That’s it for the Monday episode. We’ll be back Tuesday talking about the news. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Leila. Thanks, Laura. Thank you for being here.