(upbeat music) - Hey, out there Akronites, welcome once again, to Around Akron with Blue Green and wow, do we have an amazing show ahead of us today?

I'm gonna go over to Cuyahoga Falls and check out some Ohio Valley pizza.

I'm gonna meet up with a local YouTube creator, Vanessa Michelle.

I catch up with a local comic artist, Chuck Ayers.

Now to kick this show off today, we're gonna head over to Kenmore Boulevard and catch up with Ethicrace.

They're an entire clothing company located right on Kenmore Boulevard.

Let's go see what Ethicrace is all about.

(mellow jazz music) - I would get up early in the morning and I would go to the candy store and I would go buy, it used to be Mr. Robertson's on Copley Road and we would all go up there.

We would buy Chick-O-Sticks, Jolly Ranchers.

You know, they were 10 cents back then.

So I would buy at least $5 worth of Jolly Ranchers.

I would go back to school and I would keep all my candy in my desk and all the kids around, you know, while we're doing our work and everything else, they knew I would have the candy.

So I would charge 25 cents per Jolly Rancher stick.

I always had lunch money and I always kept money in my pocket.

I just always liked money.

But clothing wise, I used to always, when I was little, I used to always want to always have my own clothing brand.

And I loved to dress, I loved to get like, match up stuff and look nice.

But I got going back to like, when I first, like, to be an entrepreneur or whatever, like I said, it was about fifth grade.

(upbeat jazz music) From just starting from a piece of paper, it's really like, when they say it starts from a thought and once you bring it from a thought, to you speak it and then once you speak it, you put it on paper, and once you put it on paper, it comes in reality.

And I never thought that I would, I always wanted my flagship, I wanted a flagship store, just to put my stuff in the store.

And another reason why I really did start my store because, you know, you get tired of, I kind of went around to so many places and trying to get my clothing into this store, this store and this store.

And I said, you know what?

I'm gonna open up my own store.

That way I ain't got to worry about putting them in other places, but I still want to, but you can come here now.

You ain't got to, I have an online store too, but I'm like, you can come, when you come to Akron, Ethicrace, which one day will be a multimillion dollar company.

But when they come to Akron, people that come from out of town, they'll always be able to come to Ethicrace.

I mean, like, well, this was from the City of Akron.

You know, like LeBron, LeBron comes from here.

We, the city, Terrence Bailey, we come from here, you know?

So I'm like Ethicrace.

(upbeat jazz music) I take pride in everything I do.

I've always been like that.

You know, what I would wear is what I want you to wear.

I don't want to give you something and then like my reputation, my name is on this.

I want you to come in here and feel like when you come into my store, you smell it.

That's the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna smell it.

You're gonna be like (sniffs) smells clean.

Then you start to look around and you're like, well, it's nice.

So if your presentation is nice, then the quality must be nice, too.

You want to make people comfortable, you know?

And that's just like with music, you know.

Like, I love jazz and I know jazz is soothing.

So, you know, when people come in or whatever, they'll be playing, I mean, you playin' it, it relaxes the mind.

You know what I'm saying?

When you looking at stuff, okay, you all right, go to this.

It'll make you buy something.

You know what I'm saying?

Because you relaxed.

And then, like I said, the smell, everything plays a part.

You know what I'm saying?

Everything has to come together.

(mellow jazz music) I'm big on ethics.

You know, people with morals.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I always say that if you don't have morals, you can't stand for nothing.

You know what I'm saying?

You have to stand for something.

And I've always been like that.

So it just came through, was God given, you know, ethic and then race.

And everybody's trying to put, like, pull us all apart, us as black, white, Chinese, Indian, every ethnic background, you know, we all one race, we're human.

We're just the human race.

So I feel like me with morals, my clothing is not just for one demographic of people.

It's for everybody.

It's for every race, you know what I'm saying?

And then morals just plays on everything.

Like I said, if you don't have morals to stand on, you just out here, you just livin'.

You have to have some type of moral, you know, so that's where it came from.

And that's like I said, everything was good.

It, I don't take no credit for nothing.

Everything was God.

And I mean that wholeheartedly.

Do it, go do it.

Don't hold back.

You know, like I say, it, all it takes is just that little bit of effort, you know?

I mean, if you think that you can do it, then do it.

'Cause sometimes you'll, like people will want to do something and they'll talk their self out of something because they'll be like, nah, I don't think I can do it.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, but you really can.

And as a kid, when they say the future is our kids, I get it now.

I was like, when you was younger, you'd be like, man, what do they mean by that?

The future is the kids, you know.

They're gonna make the difference in the world.

It only take one kid but back to what you were saying about, you know, telling the little kid, go out there and try, you know, don't give up.

If you feel like you want to do something, do it.

You know, like I tell it, like I said, put it on paper, you know, bring it to life.

And then go ahead and just do it.

Take a chance.

Because if you don't do it, you'll always wish that you did.

(upbeat jazz music) - Next up, I'm gonna teach you all about the pizza that I grew up with.

The Ohio Valley pizza, DiCarlo's pizza.

It's something like you've never had before.

And to my surprise, there's one in Cuyahoga Falls.

Let's go see what DiCarlo's Pizza is all about.

- I have a lot of people that walk in, they just can't believe it.

They're like, is this a real DiCarlo's?

And I'm like, yeah, it's a real DiCarlo's.

I was working at a restaurant in Portage Lakes and I met Jeff.

Jeff was a regular there, and we would have drinks after work.

And Jeff brought the pizza from West Virginia.

And it was cold when he brought it, but I was intrigued.

It was the most unique pizza I've ever had.

The crust was crispy.

The sauce was unique.

The cheese was fresh and it was just the best pizza I'd ever had.

And then Jeff tells me that he's thinking about starting a franchise with this pizza.

And I was like, okay, that sounds interesting.

And he had talked with the DiCarlo's and at first, they weren't too excited about opening a franchise, but then Jeff had met with them and they liked Jeff and, you know, they said, they'd take a chance on him opening a franchise.

And you know, Jeff needed somebody to manage it.

And he was considering people that maybe manage it for him.

And I was one of those people he was considering, and I said, I'd be honored.

And you know, and here I am.

(upbeat Italian music) We had a lot of training, David DiCarlo and his mother spent a lot of time with us making this pizza.

And I spent some time down at their shop making pizza.

David was very thorough with me down there.

He basically made me bake in his store for about a week by myself so I learned how to do it their way, but really it's a very regional thing for the Ohio Valley.

It's very unique to them.

And they're absolutely fanatical about it.

I have never seen a food that had such a following as this, ever, I mean, they love this pizza.

We have people come in that eat this pizza and it brings them back to their childhood.

I mean, they have such a sentimentality about it, you know, and people just, they love this stuff.

It's just, you know, it really makes us feel good that we can bring this up here because there are a lot of Ohio Valley people up here now.

You know they've fallen on tough economic times down there.

Like a lot of people have in the rust belt.

And there's a lot of people, you know, from that region up here and we have a big following up here and it's, yeah, it's getting bigger every day.

(upbeat Italian music) We start with a bowl of water.

I mean, you know, in the morning I start from scratch.

Water, salt, yeast, flour, turn on the green monster, which is my giant mixing machine for 15 minutes.

When she's done making the dough, I had a giant ball of dough.

I drag that over to my table.

I cut that into 45 balls.

I bag those balls.

I put them in the fridge.

I let them proof and then those balls are stretched into crust.

You can't get any more basic than that.

Everything's from scratch.

The most basic sauce you could ever want, it's made with the finest tomatoes in the world.

They come out of the Napa Valley region of California, simply tomatoes, oil, and spices.

That's it, nothing else.

We don't even own a freezer.

We don't know what a freezer looks like.

Everything here is fresh.

Everything, sauce, crust, toppings, everything.

(upbeat Italian music) The pans we bake on are old.

These pans are at least 20, 30, 40 years old.

They're like an old iron skillet, they're seasoned.

And the fact that we don't put cheese on it, it doesn't insulate the crust from getting baked.

So it allows that crust to get crispy on the bottom yet it's still soft on top.

I think it maintains that crispiness because it's not baked with the cheese on it.

I think that's what, that's the main reason that it's so crispy.

But yeah, it stands up.

It could basically sit in the fridge for two days and it still crispy and other people's pizza gets soggy.

Ours never gets soggy.

When you bake a pizza, most of the grease comes out of the cheese.

It doesn't come from the pepperoni or any of the toppings, it comes out of the cheese.

Since we don't bake the cheese, you don't get that grease.

We have nice fresh provolone cheese, straight provolone, not a provolone mozzarella mixture.

Straight provolone, unsmoked straight provolone, it's fresh as can be.

We do have a few people, they've requested cheese to be melted, which we will do.

You know, we're not crazy about melting it for 'em, but we will melt it for 'em, it's fine.

The pizza tastes wonderful melted.

You know, we, it's fine.

We'll melt it for 'em, it's okay.

(upbeat music) We have pizza and we have pepperoni rolls.

That's it.

Which are like mini calzones, made out of the same thing the pizza is, the dough and the cheese, all my, it's all melted, you know, it's baked in the oven, but that's it.

I mean, we do what we're good at.

When you call, we don't have jojos.

We don't have wings.

We don't have salads, just pizza and pepperoni rolls.

We feel like that's all we need.

You know, there are other places to fill that niche.

We fill the Ohio Valley.

(upbeat music) - Next up, I'm gonna meet up with a local YouTuber that has an amazing channel called Creating Impact with Vanessa Michelle.

Let's go see what Vanessa Michelle is all about.

- I've always been naturally curious.

And it just so happens that like journalism fits into that.

My grandma, ya know, she would always call me like nosy, like you're dipping into people's business too much or whatever, but I've always just been curious about why people do what they do, how they do it, and you know, what inspires them or whatever, or just listening to people's life experiences.

And I'm saying like, even when I was little.

So like me having a natural curiosity just took shape, you know, with being a journalist.

With the work that I do now on my YouTube channel and then just independently with the Devil Strip, everything that I do has a method to it.

So like making people comfortable, it seems as if it's easy, but it's not that easy.

And what I try to do is make the eye contact that's needed.

You know, I make them very comfortable beforehand.

I create a relationship with them beforehand.

And I think stuff like that is really important.

And I think oftentimes, it's overlooked, but that's how that relationship is built.

And I feel like when you build a relationship with someone and then you want to sit down with them, or you want to ask those uncomfortable questions, it makes it like 10 times easier because they already have a rapport with you.

So what people see in my shows, every single piece has a method, it has a reason, I've thought about it beforehand, from the location that we're into, how they're sitting down, to what chair they're on, to how their body is positioned, to the color that I'm wearing.

Like I'm looking at every single detail to make sure that person based on their personality is comfortable so that when they come and they share intimate details, they're not worried about anything else, but sharing those intimate details.

(upbeat music) With my YouTube show, I typically have someone coming on board with me to help me, a video guy, photographer, videographer, and then I edit.

So I'm always the one editing.

That process is very detail oriented and it is so challenging.

And it's challenging because you want to tell a story correctly through visual, but it's hard because we live in a world where everything is just microwaveable, you know, and everyone just wants to see things going sliding and stuff like that.

So with editing, it's hard to create these fast paced clips and fast paced storylines when you really wanna draw out a message and you want that slide, you want that story to be told like, you want it to be told correctly the first time.

And if you mess it up, you will lose the essence of the story.

And I never want to compromise that.

So I'm constantly thinking about, okay, what makes the most sense?

What could fit here?

What could fit there?

(upbeat music) Along with journalism, I also host events and I have such a ball with that, and I'm not gonna say that's easy.

It is very hard to be in front of people.

I don't care if they're small, big, large, whatever, eight, whatever, it is very uncomfortable.

What I enjoy is just being able to facilitate any event.

And I love the idea of being able to like meet different people and, you know, learn about what they do and why they do it.

I've done pitch competitions to poetry nights and you know, a lot of events on YouTube.

Like I have done so much with hosting and I still, there's so much I still want to do.

And that experience has taught me and I'm sure other people who are event hosts, has taught all of us really, like about the idea of how to communicate, being concise with information and making connections with people.

In 2017, is when I started my original YouTube channel, which was Coffee Talk with Vanessa Michelle.

And that was more like vlog based.

So I would take people on my adventures when I was going to get coffee.

I was still interviewing people, but it was more of a vlog style.

And about a year I was kind of burned out and I didn't know where I wanted to take my storytelling and things of that nature and I took a little bit of a break.

And when I came back, I wanted to have a more professional looking brand, something that would be easily, that would easily translate into the mainstream world.

So if Netflix calls me tomorrow, they can kind of see what my template looks like, it might not be totally up to their standards, but they can have an idea of what my show looks like.

So I titled it Creating Impact TV.

The reason why I titled it Creating Impact was because through, you know, through my journey with being nomadic and things of that nature, I learned that creating impact was essentially what I was trying to do.

And I was really involved in the community when I first started my YouTube channel in 2017.

And I was like seeing so many people wanting to have an impact on the community.

And I was like, wow, no matter what any of us do, we all essentially just want to create impact in our own way.

And I felt like that was so unique and so special.

So I named the channel that, Creating Impacts TV with Vanessa Michelle.

I just want to keep going, keep taking it, just so, to larger levels and showing people that whatever impact they want to make, it's possible.

(upbeat music) - Now to wrap this show up today.

I don't know if you ever heard of Crankshaft or Funky Winkerbean.

You know, the guy that did a lot of that artwork's right here in Akron.

Let's go meet Chuck Ayers and learn what he's all about.

(smooth music) - I've been drawing probably since I was two or three.

There was a show on called Andy's Gang.

It was Andy Devine, who was an old, he was in some old cowboy shows and he had this kid's show on Saturday mornings.

It was just this goofy kid kind of show and he had this little rubber frog that would appear, named Froggy.

I had a toy rubber Froggy, and I drew it and I was not quite four years old.

And I mean, it's Froggy.

My mom dated it and saved it and so that's, that's me.

That's how I think, it's what I do.

It's basically all I know how to do.

You have to imagine Howard was a school.

There was, I don't know, maybe 500 people in the whole school.

We had a football team that if we won one game a season, we thought that was a successful season.

Somehow I got the job of doing posters that went up in the hallways during football season.

And they were all cartoons about how we're beating all these other teams, which we never did, but it was my introduction.

It was the first time I ever did cartooning.

I remember one of my teachers, happened to be the head football coach and my history teacher, who came to me and said, "You know, I really like your cartoons.

"You're gonna be a cartoonist someday."

I'm like, no, no, no, I'm gonna be a commercial artist.

I'm not going into cartooning.

And before I got into college, I was focusing on cartoons.

Yeah, my first job right out of high school was with a small ad agency in town.

I was there two years and it was a good job.

I learned a lot, but it was enough to teach me that that's not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.

And after two years there, I learned of an opening at the Beacon Journal.

They were looking for a couple of new people for the art department.

I was still in school, so I could only come in part time, but they hired me.

And that was in the spring of '67.

And I stayed at the Beacon until 1994.

(upbeat music) I did political cartooning for 14 years.

I left the political cartoon side and the editorial page, and just went back into the regular art department as a staff artist.

With a lot of changes going on at the paper and everything, I was contacted by an old classmate from Kent State, Tom Batiuk.

Tom had already been working on the comic strip, Funky Winkerbean.

And he had introduced a character that was a crabby old bus driver named Crankshaft.

And that character was getting a lot of good reviews.

And people were talking to him saying, this might be a good spinoff comic strip.

He was already doing Funky.

He was already doing a strip that only lasted another couple of years after that called John Darling.

He knew that John Darling was on the way out and he was looking for another spinoff and wanted to do something with Crankshaft.

He was talking to a mutual friend of ours who said, Chuck's going through some changes at the Beacon, he might be up for something like that.

Tom contacted me, we sat and talked and we said, yeah, let's see where this goes.

And so I worked on Crankshaft from 1987 until I left Crankshaft in 2016.

And in '94, I started working on Funky Winkerbean with him as well.

And I'm still working on Funky, but I stopped doing Crankshaft about five years ago.

(mellow music) You know, it's the quote about follow your passions, follow your bliss.

You know, had I been in a different situation?

Had I been just in a family that no matter what the circumstances was that I didn't get the freedom to draw all the time.

I've known people that were good artists that came from families that that just wasn't important enough.

And so that sort of thing was stifled.

But, you know, just draw, draw, and draw and draw and draw.

It's following that passion.

And once you build that passion, I think that's when the doors start to open that if you are, if you're always drawing, people are gonna see that you're always drawing.

And my philosophy always was that the success in art or in most things is a passion and a talent and a lot of luck.

It's just being around the right people.

You know, I was lucky, but part of my luck came from the fact that when the only thing anybody ever saw me doing was drawing.

And that's the only thing they knew me for was drawing that somebody, somewhere along the line, might say, hey, you want a job, but you never know where people are gonna see your work.

The biggest part is if you've got that passion, just feed that passion to do everything you can to just keep it going.

Don't lose the passion.

- Thank you once again for watching this episode of Around Akron with Blue Green.

Now if you have any questions, comments, just want to drop me an email.

You can reach me at www.AroundAkronWithBlueGreen.com or you can catch me on social media.

Thank you.

Have an amazing day.

Oh, look at that.

With you here, I have done a good job.

- [Cameraman] I thought maybe that would rattle you a little bit.

- Yeah, I thought it did I thought it'd throw it all off.

I did good.

- [Cameraman] You did good.

- It's the first time ever someone's been here for their own intro.

Never had that happen before, I don't think.

That's right, content hungry.

I love it.

She's getting content right now.

Vanessa Michelle's here doing it.

It's amazing.

That'll probably be in the credits, I'm guessing.

Ba-dump-bum.

(laughing) All right.