Wed 4/8 @ 7PM
Cindy Barber will be Music Box Supper Club co-founder’s guest for the next edition of its Cleveland Stories program, and what a Cleveland story Barber has!
When she and I, both of us longtime music journalists, were working together at the Free Times in the 1990s, she’d talk about how so many creative people – musicians, artists and patrons of the arts — were moving into her North Collinwood neighborhood, and how she’d like to find a space — maybe a coffeeshop or a bar — to serve as a hangout for them.
Toward the end of 1998, both of us left the Free Times. I went on to freelance online during the dotcom boom and write for the Plain Dealer, and she soon found her place: an old Croatian home on Waterloo Road that the Croatians wanted to get off their hands now that they’d moved to a new place in Eastlake. Just over a year later, in March 2000, she and her partners opened the newly named Beachland Ballroom and Tavern in that space. You can still see the building’s ethnic history, something meaningful to Barber, in the paintings depicting peasant life in Croatia that still adorn the ballroom.
In the club’s 26 years, it’s hosted a wildly eclectic array of artists from punk to folk, blues to metal, pop to one of Barber’s favorite genres, Americana/alt country. It’s also hosted benefits, makers’ markets, memorials, campaign rallies, awards ceremonies, burlesque and drag performances, and many other special events. It’s not only become the place to go in North Collinwood, it’s become the anchor Barber envisioned for what’s now called the Waterloo Arts District, attracting other businesses — restaurants, bars, coffee shops, fitness facilities, retail businesses, galleries, artist studios — to the once forlorn street.
In that time, she’s also served on numerous boards and neighborhood groups, founded a nonprofit called Cleveland Rocks: Past Present Future to give musicians the tool and resources to advance their careers and helped organize area club owners to push back against an admissions tax that landed most heavily on smaller venues such as hers. Along with Happy Dog owner Sean Watterson, she co-organized the northeast Ohio branch of the National Independent Venue Association, originally formed to help small entertainment venues survive the COVID pandemic.
The program is free. They’ll be serving the regular dinner menu along with specials. Make a reservation here.