In 2010, the Caveliers got into the playoffs. One of the satues on the old Lorain Carnegie Bridge was adorned with a Cavs cap.
Eventually the so-called “guardians” would also become outsized symbols for the city itself, as the city changed, and, like most cities, bought into gentrification, art districts, breweries and the culture of rehabbing the city’s image for profit and growth. While, not really taken for granted, these statues became more important to Clevelanders and more in the spotlight, eventually being used to give the Cleveland baseball team a new name and look, to match the times.
The Cavs lost to the Celtics in 2010, then Mr. James went to Miami, but the guardians lived on, in close proximity to both the baseball and basketball venues. The Cavs were the original outliers, having played nowhere near Cleveland, since 1974, in Richfield, Ohio, during the really “bad years” of Cleveland flight, when Pittsburgh was supposed to join with it, in a giant maegapolis that never happened. The Rust Belt hit with a fury in the late 70s. There’s money to be made in downtown now, with its gentrification, and the basketball team, having started there in 1970, leaving in 1974, returned in 1994.
Cleveland and Pittsburgh shrunk into much smaller cites, and, somehow, hung on to their pro teams, through hard times. Back in the bad old 1970s Cleveland woke up to the irony and insult, of having its basketball team be nowhere near Cleveland, let alone its downtown. In fact it was far closer to the teams’ future star whose only true allegiance is Akron.
Perhaps they found out being local is being native, just like the seemingly permanent statues that were built just as Cleveland peaked in population and wealth. And, in these hyper-PC and IP times, there are no connotations to these eight pylons celebrating anything other than glorious transportation, their intention, borrowed to finally connect a city’s history with its culture. I just don’t see the link between transportation and the baseball team.
In the old days they used to get the fans involved with things like choosing a name, but this time, the owners floated some possibilities, and completely ignored any fan input. Rockers or catfish sounds better to me. It says a lot that the owners and mangement would treat their base like this. I feel sorry for the statues, their connection seems tenuous other than they are close to the stadium.
In 1952, when the city began its population decline, still ongoing, for my generation, transportation meant leaving, and a way out of a declining city, but i always admired them and have shot them since 1979. Of course, now they mean something else, more of part of a riduculous level of fandom, and a wider culture thats into blowuing things up literally and figuratively.
Rarely do cities really die. Hell, they can even become what they weren’t. And one of those things, i’m sure, that if the Cleveland baseball team gets into any playoff, the pylons will be sporting Cleveland Guardian attire, its stock having risen enormously with the decision to rename the baseball team.