CLEVELAND IMPRESSED THE NATION THIS WEEK

The beautiful city of Cleveland,
photo courtesy of flickr.com

What a great week for the national image and perspective of Cleveland! The city made an absolutely fantastic impression on the people that came from out of town.

Although there were many benefits to the convention being hosted in Cleveland, there were also downsides; according to John Petkovic at the Plain Dealer, many of the bars and restaurants further away from East 4th Street (one of the most active areas in Cleveland) had little to no business despite the projections for increased crowds. In some circumstances businesses actually did worse this week in business than during any other week of the year.

The most impressive aspect of the city hosting the convention was the huge variety of police and security officers from all around the country coming together to make the RNC run as smoothly and safely as possible. With tensions between the public and the police at a very volatile point I think the police handled situations very controlled and professionally. I retweeted a lot of videos from downtown throughout the week featuring positive encounters between police and the public @ChenkusNews.

One of the craziest events I got to see from a unique perspective was when Donald Trump arrived for the first time in Cleveland: my father works in the fourth tallest building in Cleveland and his boss captured a video of Trump's plane arriving at the private landing strip along Lake Erie.

What made Trump's entrance so, well, Trump? Along the entire coast line there were coast guard boats lining the entire view while no other boats could be found out on the water; after getting off the plane Trump's transportation team [of what looked like somewhere around fifteen cars] led Trump through a route that had police lined along the entire street route. My father said the only time he's ever seen that level of security control for an individual was when Barack Obama flew in while as president - so what would Trump's entrance look like if HE were president during his next trip??

References
Petkovic, John. (2016) RNC 2016: Downtown bar scene is a ghost town. Cleveland.com. Retrieved from http://www.cleveland.com/rnc-2016/index.ssf/2016/07/rnc_2016_downtown_bar_scene_is.html.