Category Archives: toledo

In Enemy Territory

personal, sports, toledo 2019.04.15 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

NBA Playoffs 2019: Bucks make a statement to the rest of the Eastern Conference with Game 1 destruction of Pistons (CBSSports.com) Growing up in Toledo has a way of making you painfully aware of whatever Ohio State-University of Michigan sports rivalry is dominant at any particular moment. There used to be a whole chain of stores in Toledo devoted solely to clothing and other merchandise from the two colleges; it’s down to one location now, but it’s still a testament to how Northwest Ohio and…

Klatsch Klutz

food, personal, toledo 2019.04.01 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

It wasn’t exactly like coffeehouses were invented in the nineties, but that might have been their modern heyday. The fictional coffeehouse that was central to a certain NBC sitcom may be the most iconic of its era, but in the middle part of the decade, back when independent stores and media were thriving, the coffeehouses that popped up around the Toledo area were lovely, and even though my hopes of becoming more social by sitting around drinking coffee there never really materialized, I still have…

City Permanence

personal, toledo 2019.02.11 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Recently, I loaded up the busiest intersection near my old house on Google Maps and went into street-level view so I could have a first-person Google Street View of it. As much as I recognize how every corner of that intersection has changed over time — although the Internet has been failing me in my attempts to photographically prove that some Toledo staples of my time, like Centre supermarkets and Gastown gas stations, existed before they were driven out by bigger competitors — part of…

Glass City-Eyed

mom, personal, toledo 2018.12.03 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

Eight days from today will mark the first anniversary of my departure from Toledo. Very early that morning, before the sun was even close to rising, a friend drove me from her house, where I’d been staying for a few months, to Detroit Metropolitan Airport. It wasn’t the first time I’d been to that airport — I’d gone there before with family members who were flying, and even to help pick up a traditional Japanese music ensemble that was hired to perform in the greater…

Out of Order

mom, personal, toledo 2018.10.01 Sean Shannon Leave a comment

The strong desire I had to be famous when I was very young might be attributable to a number of factors. My hyperactive imagination is certainly high on the list of potential reasons, not only because it facilitated my daydreams of fame, but also because I could think of lots of ways to harness that imagination to create works of art that would lead to me becoming famous (or so I believed back then). The rise of cable television in my early years, and MTV…