Streetcar City Premieres at Cleveland Public Library with Photo Gallery

Streetcar City premiered on Saturday, February 2nd at the downtown branch of the Cleveland Public Library. The public library offers another great space for expanding on the experience of community cinema. Libraries are one of those “neutral grounds” that generally welcome all people within a surrounding community. They are the “People’s University”- one of those places where education and learning are available to anyone who wants to step through those doors.

Premiering Streetcar City at the Cleveland Public Library almost seemed like “coming back home”. I spent countless hours perusing the vast collection in the photo archives and likely driving the staff crazy with an endless list of unexplored topics that each seemed to have their own urgency to completing my narrative.

Spending time in the archives was akin to hanging out with the ghosts of the departed crowding the Erie Street Cemetery just down the road. I would glance across the visages of people long parted who likely had many of the same doubts, hopes, ailments, and aches that I have today (well except for the disintery and yellow fever). The photos connect me to the past in my city. Photos of buildings, landscapes, streetcars, old neighborhoods- many of which no longer exist today- allowed me to resurrect and get at least a cursory feel of a Cleveland vastly different from what I know today.

For Streetcar City, the archives of the Cleveland Public Library, the Michael Schwartz Special Collection at Cleveland State University (my alma matter), and the Northern Ohio Railway Museum provided the ability for me to visually resurrect the Streetcar City- using archival film and photographic remnants spanning eighty years of Cleveland history. Since cameras in early 1900’s Cleveland were significantly less ubiquitous than today, there were many accounts for which footage was not available. Here I relied on the steady hands of J.D. Waldman and Gary Dumm- too collaborators with Harvey Pekar- to illustrate scenes from the past, using archival images as a springboard.

I worked with closely with Brian Meggitt in the Photo Archives department to highlight some of the images and newspaper clips from their collections that I utilized in Streetcar City and Freeway City. They are contained in a gallery on the fourth floor outside of the Photo Archives department.

My only regret with the film premiere was neglecting to get a haircut, following my wife’s urging. Oh well. See the picture below to see what I mean!