(upbeat electronic music) - Hey out there, Akronites.

Welcome once again to "Around Akron with Blue Green," and wow, do we have a jam-packed episode ahead of us today.

I'm gonna head over to the north side of Akron to check out Zeber-Martell's Gallery and Clay Studio.

Then I'm gonna head over to the Pearl Coffee Company and learn all about their roasting process and Diana Coffee.

Then it's off to North Canton to the V-Rock Shop.

Now, if you love rocks and gems and stones as much as me, you're gonna wanna stick around for this story.

Now, to kick this show off today, it's a local Akron Cuyahoga Falls photographer, JW Cooper.

I'm gonna head over to the Jenks building, where he's currently residing at and taking photographs of all the musicians that come through and learn all about his unique style.

Let's go see what JW Cooper is all about.

(gentle guitar music) - Seagulls on Lake Erie, 1973, after I got my first camera.

You know, when I first graduated from high school, I got a job at Walt's Camera delivering film all over the state, so I drove about 400 miles every day, and you know, I headed up towards Vermilion and, you know, this lakeside kinda thing, but I'd be driving up there, and the weather would be changing every day that I'd be up there, and you know, the minimum wage was a buck 65.

I was actually, you know, they were actually paying me pretty good money, but I used my own car.

Of course, you'd never, you know, but then I started seeing a lotta really cool pictures and talking to guys in the pro shop every morning, and they got me hooked up, and Mr. Walt said, "Well, why don't we just sell you a camera?"

So it was over.

So I got seagulls one leg, and the other one was soaring.

There was another one, it only had one leg, so I just thought I was cool.

I was the stuff right there.

(pleasant guitar music) I sang rock and roll.

You know, I was big on rock and roll from sixth or seventh grade clear up into, you know, the mid, well, probably the end of the '90s, I was still playing.

You know, we were always an opening act.

I always had great musicians playing with me, and we always kinda did more of a blues, rocky.

You know, I was a singer, so I liked that songwriter kinda stuff.

You know, I wasn't big on the screamers or anything like that.

You know, I was more into, like, the Allman Brothers and old Free rather than Bad Company.

You know, well, I kinda kept my, you know, just that kinda vocal.

I like that bluesy, drivey, you know, kinda rock vocal.

So I had a fun time.

You know, we opened up for some incredible, incredible bands, and nobody remembers the opening act, but I had fun, so yeah.

(laughs) (driving music) You know, I was always into both at the same time, just had that artsy thing where that was always, like, the main focus was, you know, no pun intended, but you know, the main focus was just something artsy, so and I grew up on album covers, and I grew up, you know, staring at the old Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album cover for hours, that black and white, and the Allman Brothers cover in front of the Fillmore, and you know, those kinda things, and Roger Dean for Yes, and just that kinda stuff just gave me that, you know, that artistic thing where I'm, you know, I stared at that, so I know what an album cover needs to look like right now, so that's basically where my focus is in lately is just taking musicians' photos and, you know, bands and setting them up the way, you know, I envision them.

You know, let 'em come up with their own ideas, but you know, if I see something more artistic, I'll try to go for that.

You know, lighting's everything in photography, so you know, if I can light a band or light a, you know, light a musician or an artist, you know, the way they should be lit because artists back in the old days were just a candle or a window.

You know, you didn't have all that fancy stuff, so you gotta light for mood, and band's appreciate it, so.

(driving rock music) 'Cause I think it's the instrument of the camera.

It's just I love those clicks of the lens and, you know, just clicks in the aperture, and, you know, and how it feels in your hand, and you're not just holding up a camera, click, click, click, click, and you know you'll get a good picture out of 200, you know, but when you got film, you have 36 exposures in there, you tend to take your time a little bit, and you try to learn your craft, but it's the craft of photography.

You'll learn shadows.

You know, you learn because black and white photography, especially in a film camera, is a lot more shadows and contrasts.

You know, it's not so much your baby's pictures or whatever.

You know, with cheruby kinda things, and it's a little more edgy, so but I think film is making a huge comeback, and film cameras, everybody's got one laying around the garage or, you know, their grandpa left 'em or something.

It's just wasting there, where, you know, I'm trying to bring 'em back to life, and people were dropping some off here all the time, and I'm fixing 'em and getting 'em running again, you know, selling 'em to these kids for 75, 100 bucks, and getting 'em, you know, getting 'em working, and I'm gonna start teaching film classes.

I'm gonna be using a river down across the street.

I'm gonna walk down the trails, and I'll teach some shadows and, you know, teach people how to do some film photography, and then when they learn that craft, the digital comes early.

You know, it comes easy.

You start thinking a little bit.

It's not just, you know, letting the camera do all the thinking.

You know, and just get out there and make art.

(relaxed jazz music) You know what, I've never taken my best picture, so you know, that's what I have my eye on, my best picture.

You know, pretty much, someday I'll take it.

Someday I'll find it, but you know, and not to say anything bad about any of my photos, it's just, you know, and there's still that one that I know is gonna excite me to no end, but I hope I never take it because, (laughs) 'cause then, I could keep searching.

I'll just keep running around, trying to find it.

(relaxed jazz music) - Next up is Zeber-Martell.

Now, my story can only do it so much justice.

You're gonna wanna go in and see the beauty in this place.

They make elegant clay pottery that you're gonna wanna have a piece of in your home.

Let's go see what Zeber-Martell is all about.

(relaxed jazz music) - I decided when I was six years old that I wanted to be an artist, and I'll tell you how.

We had to draw a self-portrait in first grade, and this one girl in the room drew a self portrait, and it looked just like her, and mine didn't look anything like me, and I thought, "I am gonna learn how to do that."

Went home, told my mom I was gonna be an artist, and she said, "Oh, honey, you can be an art teacher."

"No, I don't wanna teach.

I wanna do art," and so it did start out with drawing and painting, but the minute I found clay, and my high school art teacher would brag that he was the first person to put a piece of clay in my hand, and to his credit, he did, and it's been a journey ever since then.

I love clay.

I could never go back to just a canvas, although you can see we do two-dimensional.

Well, they're still three-dimensional, but two-dimensional pieces.

(relaxed jazz music) My husband started out as salt glaze potter.

I started out with stoneware, and there was no color, really high fire, and it was all about just doing a certain glaze.

Well, I always wanted to introduce the painting back into the pieces, so I started with some what's called underglaze stain, started painting them on, putting clear glazes over pieces, started out with high-fire clay, gradually moved down to mid-range, and I got a lot more color, and then finally, we moved down to low fire 'cause we could get the whole spectrum, and in fact, the number one company that makes stains for the ceramic industry is right here in Ohio, and so we ordered 10 pounds of the color at a time, and it was just sort of a, just kept stepping it down to get more and more and more color, and then also the way that it's applied, you know.

I do paint on clay.

I paint on it.

I use airbrushes.

I use my hands.

I use underglaze crayons that we make, and then there's a clear glaze over top the whole process.

(mellow jazz piano music) This was actually my first studio, this long, narrow one here.

This building's been here since 1902.

I think it was an electric company at one time, like Ohio Edison, but I'm not sure that's what it was called at the time, but this building is just solid as a rock.

It's been here for a long time, but when we moved in, there were no sidewalks out front.

It was just warehouse space.

You know how artists go into areas and develop 'em.

There was no sidewalks.

We had an apron.

We angle-parked in the front of the building.

The lofts weren't there.

The hotel wasn't there.

The only thing that really was there was Luigi's, you know, and I think the Portage Broom and Brush, there was that over there.

So this was just sort of this really quiet little area 'cause it was sorta land-locked once they redid the bridge.

(relaxed R and B music) My husband's one of the best in the country as far as making those large pieces.

Technically, it's a very difficult process, and what he does is he starts with, it's multiple pieces of clay.

He starts with a base about maybe this big, pulls that up on the wheel.

We call it throwing, and puts a little divot in top, and then he has another wheel he goes to, and he throws a really thick collar of clay that is the same width.

Then he takes it over to the piece that he started, flips it over on top, pulls it down into the base, and then pulls it up, and he repeats that process until he builds a piece sometimes over five foot tall.

(relaxed R and B music) It's very equipment-heavy.

We have five kilns back there.

We have six wheels, a spray booth, a slab roller.

I mean, it's definitely a little mini-production area for sure, and these pieces do not happen overnight.

It's a process, so you work on large groups of pieces at a time, and you know, while one's drying out, the other's firing.

Then the next one's getting glazed, and the glaze firing, so it's like there's always multiple pieces in process at one time because that's the way to make it work, but from start to finish like a glass like this, or a mug, you know, it's probably three weeks before those are done, minimum, minimum, and then the bigger pieces even take longer 'cause they need to dry out longer.

(relaxed R and B music) I just love when people come to the recognition that they're talking to the person that made the piece and they're thrilled, you know, to get to talk to the artist, you know, and just know that there's that personal connection.

I mean, these are pieces that appeal to your soul.

I always love to say art shouldn't match your sofa.

It should match your soul, and I think that's a real mantra as far as, like, attracting people, and you know, they'll say, "Well, I don't know if this piece matches," and I go, "Do you love it?

Does your heart love it?

That's where you start."

A good example is a cup.

We have this saying that goes, you know, we handle that cup multiple times, and when a person buys a handmade mug and it becomes their favorite mug, it's like you're holding hands with the potter.

(relaxed R and B music) - The Pearl Coffee Company has been around since 1919, and they supply coffee to local restaurants all over the Akron area, so I know you've had their coffee once or twice, but you've probably never visited their shop.

They have a wide variety of coffee, and they've been roasting in their downtown location since the '50s.

Now, this place is amazing and a true hidden gem.

Let's go see what the Pearl Coffee Company is all about.

(mellow music) - All since I was a little girl, I would started early drinking coffee, and when my dad on Saturdays had an emergency call for the restaurants, they would call, "Oh, my gosh, John, we're out of coffee."

I would go with him, come down here, pick up the case of coffee, and then we'd go to the restaurant, and then we would always have lunch, and I was, of course, always had a grilled cheese sandwich, but that's my earliest memory of the roasting plant.

(mellow music) It all began in Greece, when my grandfather, Nicholas Economou, and his three brothers went to Cairo, Egypt, and that's where they worked with an English coffee company and learned all the different roasting techniques.

World War I broke out.

Coffee became very scarce, so they came to America around 1914.

They worked in different areas of the United States, worked odd jobs, pooled their money together, and then they started the company in May 22nd, 1919.

It was on Bowery.

It was a little small place.

That's where they first started, and then in 1952, they built this building.

(cheerful jazz music) We take the green beans.

We put it in the grate.

It goes into an elevator into our roaster.

Now, roasting is an art.

It's the type of beans that you're buying, the quality of the beans, time, and temperature, and that goes all into the roasting.

So we have a big roaster that we can roast up to 500 pounds of coffee at a time, but we like to keep everything here fresh, so we do it in small batches, and it's like a big drum.

It turns.

It's run by gas.

We set the temperature, and we set the time, and then it roasts, and when it's ready to come out, a light will come on.

It will stop the roast, and that's when we quench the roast, you'll see the smoke come out of the top, and then we draw it out into the cooler that turns.

Also, there's a big draft to help cool down the beans, and then from there, it goes up to our bins for grinding.

It goes into our packaging machines, or it goes for flavoring that's done in a different department because one thing about coffee, it's a sponge, and wherever it is, it will absorb whatever flavor's in the air, so we keep the flavoring in a different department, and we package it into individual fraction packs, or we do it in a five-pound whole bean or ground, whatever the customer desires.

(cheerful jazz music) Cupping is after the beans have been roasted and it's cooled down.

What we do, and this is every roast, we grind it to the previous roast, and we compare the colors, make sure it's perfect.

Gas during the wintertime and pressures are different, so we have to adjust for that.

After that, we grind the coffee, and we brew it, and then we all take a taste of it, and we cup it.

That means, some people slurp.

I don't slurp 'cause you wanna get the full effect, but then there's different things that you're looking for.

Does it have a woody taste?

Does it have a medicinal taste?

Is it have any chocolate, cocoa undertones?

That's what you're looking for in the cup of coffee that you're drinking, so that's what we mean by cupping.

(cheerful jazz music) So a lotta people forget that we can grind your Greek style, or it's Turkish style, but here, we call it Greek style because we are Greek.

It's a old stone mill grinder, and it just grinds it very, very powdery, and from there, you would use it in your briki over the stovetop.

(relaxed R and B music) A lotta people don't know about us, that we are open to the public.

You could come down here and purchase the coffee.

They mostly know us in the kitchens 'cause we serve a lotta restaurants, institutions.

We're in some coffeehouses, and we also partner with Acme.

We roast their Ball coffee, and if you go into the Acme stores, you'll see a big, black bureau roasted by the Pearl Coffee Company in the whole bean form, and then right underneath, you'll see our eight-ounce bags with the Pearl Coffee Company, and those are ground and whole bean.

(relaxed R and B music) How Diana came about, the name.

So my grandfather and his three brothers use Diana, who is the Greek goddess of the hunt, and every morning, before she would tend to the animals, she would drink a black nectar, so in mythology, she would drink coffee.

Now, they used the Roman name instead of the Greek name Artemis because the Americans can relate to the name Diana, and my father used to say, "Every time you're drinking the Diana coffee, you're kissing the lips of the goddess Diana," so that's the story on that.

(relaxed R and B music) - Now, to wrap this show up today, we're headed down to North Canton to the V-Rock Shop.

Now, if you love rocks and gemstones as much as me, you're gonna wanna go physically check this place out.

I learned so much, and I've had to see stones that I didn't even know existed.

Now, this place is one of the largest wholesalers in the United States of America, and it's right in our backyard.

You gotta take a trip there to see it for your own eyes.

I guarantee it'll be amazing.

Let's go see what the V-Rock Shop is all about.

(cheerful music) - It's a family business.

Every since I was a kid, I was involved in it.

You know, I was coming here after school, starting at probably 12 or 13, so it was always something I had big interest in, and it just kinda grew the hobby a little bit further.

I mean, my grandparents started it back in '75, and it's kinda just been passed down through the generations.

(upbeat music) My grandfather was working for a company called WT Grants.

It was kinda like the Walmart, Kmart type of formation.

When that went out of business, my grandmother as a hobby was making rings and things for a lotta the managers and things that was underneath him, and so she was doing it as a hobby outta the basement of her house, and it kinda from there, it became almost a full-time business before they shut down, where he was a warehouse manager there.

They decided they're gonna go full-time into it, see how far they could go.

It kinda just grew from a hobby that originally started from, my uncle was a Boy Scout and was trying to get a stone merit badge, and my grandmother started an interest on some of the stones and decided to start doing jewelry-making outta the basement of the house.

(driving music) That's the beauty about the shop here is we do a lot of geology standpoints to our stones, so we'll tell you how it's formed, where it grows, the different types of formation it comes in, and things of that sorts, and so you can get to see a little bit more information about what you have.

We have people that come in all the time, asking what type of stone they have.

Is this a meteorite, or this is something else, so we were able to kinda go through with them, kind of what they have as well.

We do that free of charge just to kind of, we love talking about it.

I mean, this is a passion of ours, so we enjoy talking about rocks, and that's kind of us.

(driving music) ♪ Oh, oh, oh - It does happen a lot, especially with meteorites.

People will believe they have meteorites.

Sadly, in the area and pretty much a lot of the United States, factories used to dump a lot of metal out into fields and things of that sort, so when people are going through what used to be a field, and now it's residential areas, and people are finding a metal stone in their backyard, and they're, like, "Oh, it has to be a meteorite.

It's heavy," so we get a lot of that, and a lotta the times, again, it's gonna be slag that's come from a factory, or same thing with glass.

They'll come in and say, "Oh, I got a really huge crystal," and it's, like, "No, that's glass.

You can see with the bubbles in the inside," but, like, the same time, I tell 'em, "You found something cool."

In that way, you know, it might not have value, but it might have value to you because of you finding it yourself.

(adventurous music) We're a retail wholesale business of rocks and minerals, gem stories from all around the world: China, Brazil, India, Pakistan, you name it, Madagascar, Morocco, pretty much from all around the world.

We're kinda like the supermarket of different rocks and minerals from all around the world.

We work with a lotta businesses but also with the local area as well.

(adventurous music) In Ohio, sadly, a lotta things were scraped.

When we had the glacier movement come in, everything was scraped down South.

Now, you can find a lot of sea fossils.

So we used to be underwater during that time.

You have a lotta sea fossils down South, like your trilobite, which is state fossil of Ohio.

You'll have your crinoid stems, other sea life that you can find a lot more down South.

We do have, like, Ohio flint, which is you get some really, really nice colors that you won't find anywhere else.

You will find flint, but you won't find the colors that we get out of Ohio - Indiana area.

There's Flint Ridge in Ohio, (indistinct) mining and things of that sorts, but yeah, we don't have as much deep color minerals and things.

We got some fluorite and things that you can find, but for the most part, that's why we import in 'cause there's so much around the world that you can find.

In the Ohio area, there's not as much.

Go to New York, you can get your Herkimer diamonds.

Go down South to your, like, North Carolina, you can get your rubies, your sapphires.

You can get a lot more unique stuff in the local areas, but sadly, with the northern part of the United States, with the scraping of the glaciers, a lot of our minerals and nice fossils or crystals and things of that sort woulda been scraped down South.

(adventurous music) (upbeat jazz music) We get about three containers a month right now, and it's constantly like Christmas.

Every time we get a shipment in, we get to see a lotta the new things as they're coming out, and again, like, for us, this is our collection.

This is what we enjoy, so, like, to pass on that collection and have, like, a revolving collection, being able to pass on some of the awesome stones that we get in is what's about.

(upbeat music) You think you know something about rocks, and then the next year, it's, like, "Oh, hey, here's this new find," and you're always learning.

There's always gonna be new stones out there.

You're never gonna fully understand every single one, and yeah, the business is constantly changing.

It's the beauty of having things come in and out.

It's a revolving collection.

We get such a wide variety of different stones, and there's always something new coming out.

♪ Hey (upbeat music) - Thank you once again for watching this episode of "Around Akron with Blue Green."

Now, if you have any questions or any comments, you can reach me at www.AroundAkronWithBlueGreen.co, or you can catch me on social media.

Thank you, and have an amazing day.