FreddieSallad

This is a great opportunity to disparage Cleveland. I lived in Cleveland (on and off) for over THIRTY YEARS :-( I never met and successfully dated one single, solitary nice GL guy the entire time! When I moved here after college graduation, I got to know a lifelong Clevelander who told me straight out, "Cleveland is a great place to raise a family -- but if you want to live an alternative lifestyle of any kind, Cleveland is a 'noplace place'." She is right. Gay people in America who are "in the know"... know that Cleveland has one of the least desirable gay communities in the nation. I've heard more than one story where gay men were offered great jobs at "glam" employers like Cleveland Clinic, Deloitte and Touche, etc., with great salaries, where they could have lived comfortably here -- and they turned them down! They trusted the rumors that it would be near impossible to meet a GL dude for an LTR. Instead, they took more mundane jobs in huge cities like Chicago, made less money in a more expensive city, couldn't even afford to run the heat in winter sometimes! -- but they were glad to have made the decision not to live in Cleveland, because now they knew they could have a personal/romantic life, and not suffer Cleveland gay loneliness. The gay community is on the west side, and some of em cop a bad attitude toward you if you opt to live on the east side. It's a petty, silly, "local" rivalry that I wanted nothing to do with. Cleveland is still a conservative city, so gay folks still do a certain amount of sneaking around, being in the closet, being a little paranoid. Who needs this??? There's just other places to work and live. There's buttloads of deeply in the closet, married men who try to maintain their secret and even live a "double life." With Google and smartphones, you just can't do this... I ended up giving up on Cleveland in terms of living a gay life there; I wish I had made this decision to relocate a very long time ago. I squandered much of my gay youth and now I'm trying very hard to make up for lost time. I moved to a city with a great community where you can just be yourself and live your life. I feel sorry for guys trapped in Cleveland because they're in the health care sector, or they go to school there. Cleveland is the recipe for unhappiness re: just being gay. Before I sign off, I must mention bars were racially segregated in Clv well into Y2K. This is unheard of and extremely contemptible in the gay community at large. You don't necessarily want to live on the west side just to be around the fags, either: it generally has a lower socioeconomic status, less educated, very "Ahia," and even a little run down. Last but not least...hardcore drug abuse is part and parcel in the Clv gay scene. In case the message isn't clear: DON'T OPT FOR CLEVELAND IF YOU'RE GAY -- IT'S NOT NECESSARY!!!