(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 head over to Copley Square, to check out the Velvet Vintage Boutique.

Then it's off to Downtown Akron, to check out Eddie's Famous Cheesesteaks, and it will not disappoint.

Then I'm gonna visit the Firestone Stadium and the Akron Softball Hall of Fame.

Now to kick this show off today, we're gonna head down to Kenmore Boulevard, to meet up with Better Kenmore and see all the amazing things they're doing to the Boulevard and the surrounding area.

Let's go see what Better Kenmore is all about.

(upbeat music) - Better Kenmore has been around since 2016.

I'm a new Executive Director, so the previous Executive Director and founder was Tina Boyes, now running for City Council, Ward 9, which is Kenmore.

Ward 9 is identical with Kenmore.

So I'm still getting my sea legs after six months.

I'm pretty new.

I can tell you, I'm really excited about being passed the torch and and carrying it forward, 'cause the work that Tina and so many other people have done here has just been awesome.

Better Kenmore, previously called, Kenmore Neighborhood Alliance, is really focused on revitalizing the Kenmore Boulevard Historic District, and it's a business district.

It's actually the largest neighborhood business district in Akron.

And maybe that's partially because Kenmore used to be its own township and this was the downtown of Kenmore, before it was annexed to Akron.

(upbeat music) We kinda have roots with music.

Historically this has been a music neighborhood, so we can kinda use some music terminology.

We create spaces that sing.

We amplify Akron's Music Row, and we are Akron's up and coming Music Row.

And we also ignite neighborhood-friendly developments.

We do a lot of community engagement.

I'd say those are the four things that we do.

So let's start with creating spaces that sing.

This has to do with the public spaces on the Boulevard.

When we're talking about the Boulevard Historic District, it is a three block area from 13th Street to 16th Street.

And a lot of work was done to actually get it designated as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places.

So that was a huge accomplishment.

One of the things we're working on now, is to get those historic district signs up, and to get those markers at each entrance to the district to show people that they're entering a historic district.

We're also looking at doing a lot of work with the different buildings on the Boulevard, telling the story about what they used to be at different times in history.

This is all part of what we call creative place-making.

(upbeat music) We are a historic district.

We are Akron's Music Row, and I say that because of deep roots going all the way back to the early 60s with places like Lay's Guitar, which has fame on an international level.

They're repairing guitars, selling originally produced guitars internationally.

We also have The Guitar Department.

We have a total of 14 music related places here on the Boulevard.

And then we have a record store, we have a total of six different recording studios.

We have a few different music venues, live music venues, like the Rialto and the BUZZBIN, which just recently opened and moved up here from Canton.

We have a heavy music focus.

In terms of public space, we have a lot of murals, a lot of public art focused on music, but an arts district.

So you'll see a lot of of public art out on the streets when you come down the Boulevard.

Historically, there were street cars that came down the boulevard and that's how people came and went to work was by streetcar.

Now when you come down the boulevard, you see the medians in between.

And so we've done a lot of work on the medians.

We have planted hundreds of plants and flowers on the medians, which we care for and water and weed.

In December, we do Light the Boulevard, so we actually put holiday lights in all the trees, and not to mention beautifying, making scenes in all of the storefronts.

We work with the shopkeepers to do that.

We put up big banners that say Boulevard, BLVD.

(upbeat music) Getting the word out.

We have weekly newsletters, we do promotions, we do all kinds of marketing and advertising to get people to come to the Boulevard.

And we also host events here on the Boulevard.

So we have our First Fridays.

This year it was June, July, August and September, First Friday of each month.

we're also doing a trunk or treat on the Boo-levard, and we do the, Light the Boulevard, which is the first Friday in December.

These are just some of the events.

I think in 2024, we're even gonna grow that to do even more events to bring people to the Boulevard.

That's how we amplify Akron's Music Row is through those events and through promoting those events.

(upbeat music) If you look at the Kenmore Historic District, it's a three block area.

One block above it on the exact same footprint, is Kenmore High.

And so we worked hard to convince Akron Public Schools to bring Miller South and also to bring Piper Elementary onto that campus.

And they're both gonna have brand new facilities on that campus.

Both are very important.

I think that being an arts district, Miller South, fourth through eighth grade, Visual and Performing Arts School, is just absolutely a perfect fit for our neighborhood.

And so we're looking forward to creating a space where there will be lots of arts-focused afterschool programming and just kid friendly, family friendly neighborhood, for whenever those schools are built and those school years starts, which is probably gonna be in about three years.

(upbeat music) - Are you looking for some clothes or some furniture and you want something with some style, something that's made well, maybe something vintage?

Well, I got just the place for you.

Let's go over to the Velvet Vintage Boutique and see what they're all about.

(upbeat music) - [Amber] I feel like it's been a forever thing with me, that yeah, as long as I can remember, I would just see something cool, like it could be very old or just something that I thought was special or unique or caught my eye.

Sometimes it'd be something I would wanna redo or just something that just caught my eye.

- [Angel] I feel like it kind of was just a natural thing.

Like my family is very creative.

We are very like artistic, and we like to see an eye for unique things.

My family just like growing up, like all the women in my family, always had like nice dainty gold, little diamond delicate stuff.

So I feel like I learned that at a very young age, and I grew like a love for it at a very young age.

So it kind of just came naturally to me.

(upbeat music) It started out as just like a little tradition I feel like.

So when we would go traveling around a lot, our favorite spot was going to like around in Florida.

We'd go down there a lot, and then we would always find some sort of vintage store to stop into and look around, 'cause we just always had so much fun doing that.

- Yeah, we just went into this one that was in Miami that just really was so cool and they took old things and new things and mixed 'em together and it just was a really good vibe.

And I just told her, I was like, "You should have a store like this."

- So planted a little seed.

And then I feel like I was like, "You know, mom, I think you're right, like, let's do it."

And it was just, it was really like a spur of the moment, but it was the best decision to do.

(upbeat music) We started at our first location and then we did a little bit, while we were at that location, we did a little bit online and made it to where you could come pick up at our location or we can ship out from our location.

So we're doing that here as well.

In our time of relocating, we kind of took a pause and did a little bit more just online.

But now that we're open now, like at our location, we are just gonna be doing both.

(upbeat music) - [Amber] Your home and then the clothes you wear, tells your personality.

That's why I feel like unique finds of clothing and furniture is important, because that's telling your personality.

I feel it's a very unique thing in fashion.

And just like music, I just feel like, and with my son's art too and the clothing that Angel finds, that's what I like about, because this is all very niche.

You're gonna come in here and you might never see that ever again.

It could be a one of a kind item.

That's kind of the fun of it too.

(upbeat music) - My mom is more of like the furniture, and I'm more of the clothes.

I have an obsession with clothes, like an actual addiction, and you know, retail therapy.

So that's my forte.

(laughs) I'm always bringing new stuff to the table, 'cause that's my therapy.

And then my mom has always like, just ever since I could remember, was refinishing, redoing items for my bedroom.

I know like even for my nursery, her and her mother literally did stuff for like my mobile and my crib and stuff like that.

So she did that at forever.

And then, yeah, I just, I do the clothes and she does the furniture.

- We're like two peas in a pod.

We finish each other's sentences and thoughts.

There's times where I'll go into a room and there was something I was going to put there already and then I'm like, oh my gosh, she already did it and she put it there.

We compliment each other where like she likes the clothing more, I like the furniture more.

And then mixed together is, you know, we have a lot of fun doing it and everybody has a good time when they come in.

Angel is more the one that you're gonna see, you know behind the counter and more in the store.

I'm a lot of times more behind the scenes out finding items or you know, in our garage cleaning them up or fixing them up.

Or after hours I'll be in like setting up displays.

(upbeat music) When I think of the word velvet I think of something luxurious, something that looks nice, that feels nice, feels good.

That's where the velvet comes in.

And then vintage to me is unique.

I don't really like to think of that as something old but vintage sounds to me of just something very special, very quality.

Characteristic.

(upbeat music) - If you have like a passion or if you love doing something try to make a career of that, because if you're already doing what you love you're automatically successful.

(upbeat music) - Next up is to downtown Akron.

If you're looking for a place that's like all about Akron you wanna head down to Eddie's Famous Cheesesteaks.

Not only are the cheesesteaks literally famous and legendary, which you'll learn about, but this place has some amazing art on the wall that really speaks to Akron.

Let's go see what Eddie's Famous Cheesesteaks is all about.

(upbeat music) - Well, I guess the entrepreneur bug got me early.

I literally sold tickets.

My mom and dad had a graduation party for all my brothers and sisters.

There was nine of us, big St V family.

But when I had my graduation party, it was good, at my mom and dad's, but I needed something bigger.

So I hired two bands, had 25 kegs of beer and a buffet and sold tickets for five bucks and had 500 people.

(laughs) (upbeat music) I'll never forget this story 'cause it was a really good friend of mine that told me I gotta put cheesesteaks on the menu.

And this was back in 1992.

You know, cheesesteaks weren't really a big thing.

They were of course, big in Philly.

You know, we never claimed to be a Philly cheesesteak.

All right, we're Eddie's cheesesteaks.

You know, we don't use cheese whizz, people ask us, but, I use real cheese.

I think it's a couple different things.

Alright, number one, it's absolutely the roll.

The one thing that we take from Philly is we use a really famous roll.

It's a really quality roll.

It's not cheap, alright?

It's called an Amoroso.

Folks that really are cheesesteak diehards definitely know the name Amaroso.

They've been around since 1904.

And so a roll is critical.

It's kind of an Italian style roll.

Obviously you have to have a high quality beef.

We use 100% grain fed Midwest sirloin, and we chop it, we season it lightly.

Good cheese, in our case, real cheese.

we use a blend of mozzarella and provolone.

But I think one of the other cheese to a really quality cheesesteak is your caramelized, sauteed onions.

'cause that's really what's gonna give it all that flavor.

So when you combine a really high quality roll, high quality cheese, high quality meat with a really good caramelized onion you create a flavor that is supposed to just melt in your mouth.

Some people will say, can you toast that bun?

A true cheesesteak does not have a toasted bun.

If you go to Philly, you'll never see 'em toast a roll.

There may be somebody that does it there, but I've never seen it.

They steam the roll.

So it's a chewy, ooey, gooey goodness.

So we literally put the product on the grill, put the roll on top of it for about 30 or 45 seconds, and it creates that synergy of amazingness.

(upbeat music) This was just an empty unit when I took it over.

I wanted it to be my tip of the hat to Akron.

We have four different curated artists.

I mean, these are, well some of 'em are very well known artists that contributed to the final look of Eddie's.

But I wanted it to be totally, as we like call it, totally Akron.

And so we did a, you know, a mural of some of the iconic buildings over here.

The backdrop here, this was a young kid out of Brunswick, Zach Slavin, that was here for seven and a half weeks doing that mural.

We had Dana DePuy, who's well known from all the Meltz.

If you go into Meltz, you see that quirky handwriting.

I had a designer out of Cleveland from Cleveland Art, Jason Wine, gave me a lot of ideas.

And so this kind of started to come together.

He said bleacher wood was important, hot, real hot item right now.

So we did bleachers.

These are literally, and when I bought these in Cleveland at a school yard junk house or whatever, the guy says to me, I found him on, you know, online.

Bleacher wood.

I looked it up, bleacher wood.

And so I went up to Cleveland to this cool place, all kinds of school stuff.

Everything school And he said, "You're opening in Akron, right?

You're gonna like this story behind this bleacher wood."

This bleacher wood is the bleachers from the old Ellet High School gymnasium.

I'm like, perfect.

So we created our tables out of bleacher wood, sticking with the industrial look down here in the piping.

And so the whole thing has, you know, it's Akron, so we wanted to have a little bit of an industrial look.

The industrial ceiling, the industrial walls kind of bringing it all together to have an Akron feel to the place.

And then I thought, you know, what better place than Eddie's on Main Street to tell the story of Akron?

And so it's not trying to be a bunch of pictures that I'm in, 'cause a lot of 'em I'm not in, right?

But it is the story of Eddie's.

Eddie's has been around now for 30 years and I'm pretty proud of that.

We are truly Akron's legendary cheesesteaks.

(upbeat music) One of the biggest joys I've gotten out of Eddie's and my career and it's the fact that I'm proud of Akron.

I'm proud of Akron, Ohio.

I'm proud of doing business in Akron, Ohio and downtown Akron.

As many know, it's very well documented.

It's been a challenge for the last, really to be quite honest with you, seven, eight years now.

Now we've got the Lock 3 construction going on which that's a great thing.

But it all poses challenges for business.

But my passion has never let those challenges, you know, steer me in a different direction.

I've always been very adamant.

People have even called me crazy to be that way.

Very adamant about the city of Akron.

I grew up right here.

I grew up in this downtown.

I grew up literally a stones throw from here.

I walked here for my first job at Tavern in the Square.

You know, I was a bus boy.

That's when I first got into the business when I was 15 years old as a bus boy at Tavern in the Square.

You know, I went to St. Vincent-St. Mary.

I mean, I came to downtown on a bus with my grandmother.

I went to Woolworths.

I ice skated across the street at Cascade Plaza.

I went to O'Neill's.

I went to Polsky's to see Santa.

I went to O'Neill's to see the windows.

But I'm in love with the town and I'm in love with the history and nothing could take the Akron out of me.

And that's why I'm so proud that, you know, to call Eddie's Akron's legendary cheesesteaks.

(upbeat music) - Now to wrap this show up today, it's down to the softball Hall of Fame.

Now, who knows, you probably have a grandmother, or a grandfather, or a uncle or a relative, or a mother or a father or somebody actually in this hall of fame.

Chances are, if they played softball, fastpitch softball, slowpitch softball, even baseball at one of these Firestone stadiums or the Goodyear Stadium back in the day, chances are they're in this hall of fame.

Not only am I gonna check out the Hall of Fame I'm gonna check out the amazing Firestone Stadium.

And let me tell you, it is pretty stunning.

Let's go see what the Akron Softball Hall of Fame is all about.

(upbeat 20s music) - The rubber companies going way back to the 20s were so competitive that they had baseball teams first and they would hire talent, baseball talent and give them jobs.

That's how competitive it was.

And from baseball, it morphed into softball which continued on down through the 1980s and 1990s.

They had an industrial tournament out here represented by a team from all of the different rubber companies, Goodyear, General Tire, Firestone, Goodrich.

It was very competitive.

And in the 1920s with the Firestone baseball team, the Yankees were to play the Pittsburgh Pirates in Pittsburgh on a Sunday afternoon.

And because of the Sunday blue laws, which a lot of people don't remember, where no alcohol was to be sold or consumed Pittsburgh still had a Sunday Blue law, Akron didn't.

And Harvey Firestone offered to have the game played out here at Firestone Stadium.

They came and played out here, and Babe Ruth played here and hit a home run up on the bank.

(upbeat 20s music) That baseball changed into softball, men's fastpitch.

And it was very competitive in the industrial leagues.

And anyone who was an athlete that played softball, played for Goodyear, Goodrich, Firestone.

They had their own leagues, industrial leagues and that, but that, that's how it got changed over to softball.

Then in 1925, well Harvey Firestone had this stadium built and there were actually three of them.

Goodyear had one, I believe it was General Tire and Firestones, three identical State Stadiums.

This is the only one of the three left.

It will turn 100 years old in 2025.

(upbeat 20s music) This area here, that is the Summit County Hall of Fame used to be a pistol range.

Harvey Firestone had a pistol range for his employees and for a few years the Akron Police Department used it too to practice.

When Tom Sawyer was mayor of Akron and Ray Capper was the service director, we started the Akron Amateur Softball Commission.

And that dealt with field usage.

And out of that, about three of us sat down and we said there are so many men and women that were tremendous athletes that played this sport, that it would be a shame not to remember them.

So we started up the Hall of Fame around 1980, 1981.

Our first class induction was 1986.

And we've had classes from 1986 all the way up through the present day.

(upbeat piano music) I'd love to see this stay here and be a focal point of interest in softball.

And a lot of people are just proud to be able to come down here and play or witness a game that their grandfather or their great-grandfather or their father or mother played out here.

That's the joy to me.

I know my own father played down here and my introduction to the stadium, I probably was about five or six years old when he first brought me down here, he played for a Firestone Industrial team down here.

This place was like home.

It still is.

(upbeat piano music) This is a typical comment that I hear.

"I never thought anyone would ever recognize what I did, that I loved to do."

We get people coming back just to see dad, just to see grandpa, just to see grandma or mom, their picture up on the wall.

And the people were really good because they gave us everything.

Pictures, programs, bats, balls, uniforms, gloves, you name it.

People came forward and they said, we want to give this to the Hall of Fame.

It's not doing us any good at home.

We want people to see what my dad did, what my grandfather did, what my grandmother did.

(upbeat band music) It's not exclusive to any particular time.

If someone wants to come through, we will set up a time to accommodate them coming down here because it's here and there's so many people that don't know it's here and don't know what we have.

We had the people from the Akron Summit County Library and the Summit County Historical Society come down here and I asked them a question, with all of this that we have here and all the history, when we're gone, I don't wanna see someone back up a dumpster and throw everything in it.

Would they be willing to take over that?

And they said that they would accommodate that.

This is a great place for it to be.

It's the seat of all the action of softball and the history behind it.

But who knows what's gonna happen down the road, you know, 20 years from now, 50 years from now.

But what we have here needs to be out there for people to see and not to end up in a dumpster somewhere.

(upbeat 20s music) - Thank you once again for watching this episode of "Around Akron with Blue Green."

Now if you have any questions or any comments, or you just wanna reach out to me, you can catch me on social media.

Thank you and have an amazing day.

Welcome once again to around Akron with blue, blah, blah, blah.

Can't even say my own name.

That's horrible.

Sheesh.

(upbeat music continues)