crobar — Restaurant in Cleveland

It disappoints me to write negatively about a bar I loved at first. But my complaints have gone unanswered, my trauma response continues, and so here we go.

The open mic night here is not a safe space for young artists. One time the hosts decided it would be funny to have “Showtime at the Apollo” as a theme. If you’re not familiar (I wasn’t), I guess it was a show associated with Soul Train, where the audience can cheer or boo the performers off stage. There would be an abbreviated open mic portion, then the game would begin.

Setting aside that this is a terrible idea to begin with, I went to great efforts to avoid playing this game. I know that their host is always late, never puts the list in the same place twice, and has “featured acts” for more than half the night sometimes; so I always went early to try to get a spot before midnight. Often my efforts were pointless, as he would come in while my back was turned, and I’d be stuck here until extremely late if I wanted to play. One time I arrived at 7PM and played after 1AM. Furthermore, the host was not a good sound engineer. On the night of this story, it took 5 performances before he figured out that no guitars were being amplified through his direct box. Also all of his SM58s were crackly, noisy, damaged to disrepair.

This night, apparently to control the game, the host insisted on operating the list himself. Then never put my name down, the list went out of his hand, nobody knew the program. He announced that no one had signed up for the open mic night portion. I raised my voice, said I was not here for the game, and performed my 2 songs. Then the game started.

So I was very surprised when my name was pulled out of a hat, and with no preparation, I now had a crowded room pressuring me to perform.

What ensued was terrible. Almost to the end of my song, I was booed. The cohost came onstage with a second microphone and started rapping “Mom’s Spaghetti” over me, which is quite ironic! And then, I learned that they hired someone to poke me under my ribs with a long stick until I left the stage. I was physically assaulted. (The stick guy did apologize later.)

I was interrupted and humiliated.

I am a career musician. My passion is for busking, and I travel around America hitting street corners. Since this incident happened, my trust in people is so low, I am afraid to go on stage or even go outside sometimes. I am really really shook up after this incident. It’s effecting my livelihood and my passion for music. I sacrificed a lot to hit the road and put trust in my abilities; with that confidence damaged, I am finding it very very hard to just keep food on the table.

I did reach out to the owner of the bar to attempt to sort this out, and since I never did get any response, and I’m here awake at 2:16AM again reliving this horror, it’s time I make my voice heard by someone. I still want what I wanted then- for you-know-who and you-know-who-else to NEVER advertise an open mic in this bar again. They have abused this privilege and hurt me and my friends.

I don’t expect to ever return to the Crobar again. I won’t recommend it to my friends. This sucks because once I thought the Crobar was in an interesting location where it had a chance to become a vestige for the music scene to expand eastward, into a part of the city that all of us want to finally grow and thrive after decades of injustice and unfairness and racism have ravaged it. The Crobar was initially described to me as a “metropolitan” bar where cultures were blending; I was seeing that in the bills that had rap and rock groups sharing the stage. How disappointing then to have such poor event management there.

I don’t want to gloss over the very best shining thing about this bar, though. Kerry, my bartender every time I ever went, was one of the friendliest bartenders I ever had. She hung out and chatted with us musicians till after 2AM many nights. Delightful and thoughtful human being. I hope she is doing well (and I hope I spelled her name right). Kerry is a 5-star bartender....

Best and most consistently fun dancey club I’ve found in Cleveland, and honestly competes well with bigger venues in bigger cities. They bring in a lott of killer djs, both local to Cleveland and from all over the world, and they host a variety of cool local events that aren’t just the house djs that initially brought me in. Very fun, pretty bisexual vibe. It’s not explicitly a queer club, but my pals and I think of it as a bi bar and love it for that. They’re doing something so right here… the energy every time I’ve been has just been so playful and fun, and I always meet great people here. I met one of my best friends dancing here a few years ago and am writing this review with heartfelt appreciation from Movement weekend with that friend in Detroit now. I love this place. Great service with sweet, caring staff who really set the tone for the place. They also have good non-alcoholic options. Thanks for keeping a water station near the bar, absolutely crucial harm reduction/safely measure that all bars should be required to have. Thanks for all the obvious love and care you put into making this spot so rad. I’m excited to dance here...

Closed Saturday 1/18 despite buying tickets for an event they were hosting and didn’t even post an update on the website. The issue isn’t that they’re closed for heating issues, but we bought tickets for the show they were hosting, Ubered there, show up and there’s not even a sign on the door. Would love a refund for our tickets and Uber’s but whatever. It’s not hard to post an update on your website. Also what bar has private social media?! We couldn’t even check for updates because...