On Sunday, April 10, from 1 to 9 p.m. at the Slovenian Society Home in Euclid at 20713 Recher Ave., the National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame will hold the 34^th annual Super Button Box Bash.
 
Attendees are invited to polka and waltz to the sounds of more than sixty accordions, along with jam sessions all day, or bring their own squeezebox, banjo, bass, sax or tuba and join the fun. Billed as "a musical reunion of top button accordionists from across the continent at the largest festival of this kind," the event will also feature awards and performances by notables such as the Hoboes.
 
Fortifications will be available for purchase throughout the day and will include smoked Slovenian sausage, savory roast beef and strudel, while the Polka Hall of Fame pop-up shop will have items for sale such as polka music CDs and shirts.
 
Tickets are available at the Polka Hall of Fame, 605 East 222^nd St., which is open Tues., Wed., Fri., and Sat. from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. or call 216-261-3263, or email polkashop@aol.com.
 
Visit the National Cleveland-Style Polka Hall of Fame for more information.

The Cuyahoga County Public Library invites patrons to reduce their library fines throughout the month of March by bringing in up to four of the Greater Cleveland Food Bank's "Super Six" food items, which include peanut butter, cereal and canned soup, vegetables, beef stew, and tuna. Patrons will get a $1 reduction in fines for every food item donated, up to $4 per visit, per account.
 
Cash donations will also be accepted during the entire Harvest for Hunger campaign.
 
Get all the details here.
 

The Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA), in collaboration with Cuyahoga Arts and Culture is holding a series of free "Lunch on Friday" events, in which CIA invites the public to spend a lunch hour learning about the latest in art and design. Each lecture features a variety of artists and designers from around the world, including CIA faculty and visiting artists. The lectures are from 12:15 – 1:30 p.m. at the Peter B. Lewis Theater at CIA.
 
Notably, there's free pizza.
 
This Friday, Feb. 26, the subject will be "Walking the Talk of Engagement." Come and hear from some of the many CIA faculty members who are connecting their classes to professional engagement beyond the classroom. What are these "engaged practice" classes about? Why are these faculty members interested in this type of teaching? What is the benefit to students?
 
Get all the details and the full speaker line up here.
 

Enrollment for the 2016/2017 school year is underway and the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) has new tools to ease the process including an enrollment portal that allows prospective families to create an account, explore schools and submit their choices online.

Per CMSD: "Choosing the right school matters. CSMD has launched a new and improved school choice portal that empowers all families, whether they attend a district school or not, to make school choices right now. Families can visit ChooseCMSD.org where they can learn about new school options, compare school characteristics, and choose the schools that are right for their family in a matter of minutes."
 
CMSD also invites enrolling families to take a short survey so it can best serve its constituency in making choices for the 2016-17 school year. The survey takes less than five minutes to complete.
 

The Reinberger Gallery kicks off its visiting artist series with internationally acclaimed sculptor Chakaia Booker's Take the Highway exhibit.

This weekend, Space is the place: take a cosmic journey with The Sun Ra Arkestra and visit SPACES for their out-of-this-world Galaxy Annual Benefit. Don’t miss flower-infused fun at CMA’s MIX, a live broadcasted podcast with Belt at the Beachland and more. 

Matthew Jackson traveled to Cleveland from the UK this past summer to get an idea of US cities' economic redevelopment efforts. He shares his impressions and compares Cleveland to the UK.

This weekend, hop on a trolly at SPARX City Hop and visit events throughout downtown, Ohio City and Tremont, check out local music at Heights Music Hop, get inspired at Creative Mornings and more.

Patrick Siegel has lived all over the country, the last 10 years in Minneapolis honing is trade as a tobacconist – hand-blending pipe tobacco.

Although he is originally from Chicago, when Siegel saw Lakewood on a recent visit to his fiance’s home town of Rocky River, he knew Lakewood was the place to open his own shop.

“It just seemed to click,” he recalls. “I love Lakewood, it’s just fun. I love the fact that it’s a walking community.”

So in May, Siegel opened Robusto & Briar, what he describes as the “perfect cigar shop and lounge,” The shop sells premium cigars, house blends of pipe tobacco and accessories in a refurbished 3,000 square-foot storefront at 1388 Riverside Drive.
 
Before Siegel could open for business, however, he had to rehab the former software company space all the way down to the floor. “We had to cut the whole place down to the studs and re-do it,” he says. “It was a hazard to the public.”
 
Siegel rebuilt the space using locally-sourced reclaimed and recycled wood, including the floors, barn doors made of alder and an 1880 back bar made of wormy chestnut that he scored from one of the oldest cigar distributors in Ohio.
 
Rather than use smoke eaters, which cause air pollution while clearing the room of tobacco smoke, Siegel opted for an environmentally-friendly air-to-air heat exchanger to clear the smoke inside.
 
The walls are adorned with pipe and cigar art “We have the obligatory picture of Winston Churchill, French impressionists and plenty of guys smoking cigars,” Siegel says. Two lounges feature high definition televisions and customers can relax in plenty of leather chairs and couches while enjoying their purchases. Siegel is in the midst of building some private meeting spaces in the lounge.  
 
The biggest feature is a 360 square-foot walk in humidor made of Spanish cedar – one of the largest humidors in the state.  “It’s the elephant in the room,” Siegel jokes. “We built the whole thing around it.”
 
Siegel has found backing for his shop from some unlikely people. “Even the non-cigar smokers have been supportive,” he says. “They say, ‘oh, I’m going to go find my friend who does smoke cigars.’ The decision to be here in this town was good.”
 
Right now Siegel has one employee and his fiancé, Nicole, helps out at Robusto & Briar.
 
 

Northeast Ohio's top computer programmers, doctors, patient advocates, entrepreneurs and other healthcare professionals will use their talents in innovation and technology to address problems facing healthcare at the first-ever Cleveland Medical Hackathon on September 26th and 27th at the Global Center for Health Innovation.
 
The event is designed to leverage the region’s strength in healthcare against technology and diverse skills in medical innovation. Lead partners behind the Cleveland MedHack include Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, CWRU, Ingenuity Cleveland, Flashstarts, MetroHealth System and BioEnterprise.
 
“Hackathons have been very successful in uniting people for a successful cause,” explains Will Morris, associate Chief Information Officer for the Cleveland Clinic. “This is about better healthcare delivery – better, faster, cheaper. It wasn’t so much ‘why don’t we do this” as it was ‘why aren’t we doing this.’”
 
Nesco Resource, one of the nation’s top staffing and HR firms with headquarters in Mayfield Heights, is sponsoring the Nesco Innovation Awards, which will be awarded to the hackathon teams that excel in developing projects that lead to out-of-the-box solutions. 
 
“Nesco Resource has been a long-time Cleveland based company that has been about connecting talented engineers and IT people with needs in the community,” says James Krouse, Nesco’s director of marketing and communications. “We’re happy to be presenting this event in that tradition.”
 
First place concepts will receive $3,000, second place will get $1,500 and third place will receive $500.
 
Organizers are hoping hundreds of participants will attend the MedHack and that it will become an annual event. “This is truly a grassroots effort with an eye toward the North Star of the global issue of how we deliver better patient care,” says Morris.
 
The event is free to attend, but applications are required to participate. The deadline is to apply is Wednesday, September 2nd.

This holiday weekend, go on a hot date to Mahall's for music, food and cocktails, visit Platform Brewing in celebration of their first anniversary, enjoy reggae by Carlos Jones at the kickoff of Lakewood’s porch concert series and more.

Engaging with patrons and the community has always been a priority for Cleveland Public Library, says youth services librarian Maria Estrella. CPL is taking this all-important mission on the road this summer with a brand new "book bike."

The bike, actually an oversized orange tricycle, will serve nearby neighborhoods as a roving book depository and checkout station. Community members will be able to sign up for library cards on the spot, and search for reading materials in the system catalog thanks to the bike's capability as a traveling Wi-Fi hotspot.

"We'll have popular books and new releases as well as children's books," says Estrella.

The bike, introduced to the public on May 29 in the main library's Eastman Reading Garden, will act as a roaming literacy advocate and outreach tool at downtown events like Walnut Wednesday. Daycare and school visits will also be part of the bike's hot weather agenda.

"Local branches can borrow the bike, too," says Estrella. "It's going to be all over the place."

The three-wheeled library joins CPL's BookBox, a mobile unit of the main library that will offer its wares this summer at University Circle for the Wade Oval Wednesdays concert series. Both book-distributing entities are meant to reach communities lacking easy library access, with the hope of catching interest from downtown Cleveland pedestrians.

Ultimately, CPL's newest initiative is pedaling a creative way to implement library services, Estrella maintains.

"The bike is a wonderful opportunity to get information to people and show them what we're about," she says. "It's great to be able to bring the library to the community." 

"It's cheap, their museum is on point, and they have excellent taste in beer." So says Buzzfeed.

Check out what other cities made the list. Read the full story here.

"Begin at the Canal Exploration Center in the 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park, a lush woodland few visitors expect to find 10 miles south of Cleveland. The drive follows the twisting Cuyahoga River (crooked river in the local Native American dialect) past stands of towering oak, hickory and maple trees and through rocky ravines carved by glaciers millennia ago. Exhibits at the center explore this watery highway."

Read the full story in Midwest Living here.