Description
Bad behavior makes for good stories …
These 45 true tales of Cleveland vice, scandal and misbehavior reveal a side of the city you’ll never see in a tourism video. And the lowlights are a lot more entertaining!
SEX … The porn king of Shaker Heights, who built an empire of dirty-book shops and defied law enforcement while throwing lavish parties in his suburban mansion … The Cleveland mayor whose obsessive war on pornography produced a special police Smut Squad and a “porno poll” delivered to residents by city garbagemen …
BOOZE … A burning river of whiskey that flowed down a Cleveland street past thirsty onlookers during Prohibition … A downtown watering hole denounced by a state liquor agent as “the dirtiest, filthiest place I’ve ever been” …
CROOKS … The fake heiress who swindled local banks and merchants with little more than a story and a signature … The famous crime fighter who led a high-profile gambling raid and later ran into DUI trouble after a night out at a downtown hotel …
AND MORE … The “rock-and-roll hotel” that catered to stars with an anything-goes attitude (just as long as you paid your bill) … A hidden brothel that served bands and roadies near a popular outdoor music venue … The Beat poet convicted on obscenity charges … The wild rise and spectacular fall of the Flats …
From con artists to strippers, celebrity arrests to bootlegging, these are the strange, outrageous and sometimes unbelievable stories lurking in Cleveland’s past.
Because respectable history is only half the story.
Table of Contents
Introduction
SEX
- The Porn King of Shaker Heights
- “I Know I When I See It”
- The Naughty Schoolgirls
- Propeller Pasties
- Ralph Perk’s War on Smut
- A Redoubt of Raunch: The New Era Burlesk
- Karen Panek’s Little Black Book
- Selling Sex to the Suburbs
BOOZE
- Cleveland’s First Burning River Was Made of Whiskey
- The Rumrunner That Sank a Police Department
- Wayne Wheeler, Prohibitionist and Kingmaker
- A City of Speakeasies
- The “Girl Mayor” Fights Bootleggers
- The Love Me, Dearie Scandal
- The Day Eliot Ness Raided the Harvard Club
- The DUI That Brought Down Eliot Ness
- 10 Great Bars We Miss
CONS & CROOKS & OTHER CRIMINALS
- The Saga of “Fast Eddie” Watkins
- Cassie Chadwick: “Swindling Was Her Art”
- The 1928 Mafia Summit
- Jimmy and Frank and Cuyahoga County Corruption
- East Cleveland Brothers Become Middle Eastern Con Artists
- All the Hits: A Tour of Northeast Ohio’s Most Notorious
- Gangland Murders
ROCK ’N’ ROLL
- Overdoses and Encores: The World Series of Rock
- The Blossom Brothel
- Swingos, the Ultimate Rock ‘n’ Roll Hotel
- Busted in Cleveland: Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics
- When WMMS Stuffed the Ballot Box
- The First Rock Concert Was a Riot—Literally
- When Rock ’n’ Roll Was Banned in Cleveland
- Death Threats and Pig Heads: One Manager’s Story
- Tales from the Club
SPORTING TYPES
- The Rise and Fall of Kevin Mackey
- The Mobster Who Owned the Browns
- Browns Quarterbacks Who Got Sacked Off the Field
- The Indians Reliever Who Bought Drugs for His Dog
- Tales From the Dawg Pound
VARIETY
- Short Vincent: The Street at the Heart of the City
- The Tragedy of d.a. levy
- The Rise and Fall of the Flats
- The Walleye Cheaters
- Rude and Raunchy: Cleveland’s Shock Jocks
- The Forgery That Fooled Baldwin-Wallace
- Naughty Fun at Jean’s Fun House
- Jane Fonda’s Mugshot
Bibliography
