CLOUD NOTHINGS’ CLEVELAND

Even though Cleveland is home to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the city itself isn't necessarily synonymous with rock. We're not sure that it's synonymous with anything, but a lot of our favorite garage bands (and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony) did in fact hail from the city, whose nickname Sixth City we won't use, since it does a terrible job of hyping it up (and also begs the question, which cities are third through fifth?). Aside from Bizzy Bone and Krayzie Bone, our favorite indie rock band Cloud Nothings was started back in 2009 by Dylan Baldi in his parents' basement as a way to keep busy, rather than become music blog famous.

Even though Cloud Nothings did become famous, Baldi still lives in his hometown. When we spoke with the frontman/guitarist he was chilling in Paris after a European tour, but here's we'll he go when he gets back:

My Mind's Eye (16010 Detrioit Avenue)

"It's my favorite record store in Cleveland. It's owned by this little guy named Charles who knows more about music than anybody I've ever met. He has a million records and they carry cool stuff. The last time I went he told me to watch all of these old Bill Murray movies, one of them being Quickchange. It's not even always about music, but he'll always teach you something."

The Islander (7581 Pearl Road)

"It's this really terrible bar. It's terrible in a really good way because it's such a terrible bar that no one is ever there and it's really nice to be in an empty bar."

Sokolowskis (1201 University Road Cleveland)

"They serve huge portions of really good homemade Polish food. Perogies and things like that—it's really great. I'm not Polish but there are a lot of things like that in Cleveland."

The Cleveland Public Library (325 Superior Avenue East)

"We have a really nice library that's way nicer than the ones I've seen in most cities. It's huge and they have a lot of old, rare, hard-to-find books that would be really expensive if you want to buy them. But they're at that library."