By Scott SuttellI just finished writing our 2010 year in review for the Jan. 3 print edition, so I'm in a looking-back kind of mood. With that in mind, I thought I'd break from the usual format and offer a list of some of my favorite things of the year. (Plus, I'm not actually here today and didn't feel like writing from home, so I needed to do something that could be written in advance.)
- Favorite Northeast Ohio business story: The deal reached in April to keep the Hugo Boss plant open in Brooklyn. It was a rare win (one that's not short-lived, I hope) for American manufacturing after the company had planned to take the operations overseas.
- Favorite Northeast Ohio business person: He probably wouldn't want the attention, but Gerald Blouch deserves a ton of credit for keeping Invacare Corp.running smoothly after taking over as interim CEO when A. Malachi Mixon suffered a stroke last spring. He gets the permanent gig Jan. 1. Mr. Mixon continues as chairman of the board.
- Favorite new restaurant: I'll be parochial here and make a choice that's three blocks from my house — the inventive gastropub Deagan's Kitchen & Bar in Lakewood. I love the renovation of the beautiful old space, and I'm a sucker for both the chicken and waffles and the cheap (but fancy and really good) tacos on Tuesday nights.
- Favorite Twitter feed by a Northeast Ohio resident: Not sure how Dominic Litten, leader of interactive marketing at Point to Point Inc., does it, but he finds something interesting every day that distracts me at work. Maybe I'm just jealous of the 3,300+ followers; I was glad to get to 300 this year. Then again, if your title is “leader of interactive marketing,” you should be good at this stuff. But keep those tweets coming, Mr. Litten.
- Favorite new holiday tradition: Cleveland Indians Snow Days. Loved the tubing hill from the bleachers and the skating mile, even if I'm shaky on skates. Hope the team can find a way to make money on it while lowering that top ticket price, as $25 is a little steep. There's still time to try it, as the event ends Jan. 2. The bleachers will never look the same to me, though.
- Favorite book: “The Imperfectionists” by Tom Rachman. It's a series of connected short stories about a dying English-language newspaper — sorry, you might find that redundant — in Europe. Mr. Rachman mixed dark humor, tragedy and fresh insight into the state of the newspaper business.
- Favorite movie: OK if I cheat here and name three?It's dull to name “The Social Network” because everyone liked it, but the script is too good to ignore (as long as you're not stuck on historical accuracy.) “127 Hours” was thrilling, then scary, and then exhilarating. James Franco was incredible, and the final shot of the real Aron Ralston on a couch, with only one arm but his life complete alongside his wife and baby boy, really got me. Finally, I hope “Winter's Bone,” about a young woman in the Ozark Mountains who must find her drug-dealing father (if he's not already dead), finds a robust audience now that it's on DVD. It's thrilling, though the subject matter is what some people might call “depressing.” I hate that criticism. A good movie is never depressing. Junk like “Little Fockers” is depressing.
- Favorite Cleveland startup: I'm pulling for Sideways, a tech company that's developing a publishing platform to leverage the multiuser, multimedia, multitouch capabilities of the iPad and other mobile devices. CEO Charles Stack was able to convince Eliza Wing, the longtime head of Cleveland.com, to join as president and chief operating officer. As an iPad user since August, I continue to be amazed by the device and look forward to what the folks at Sideways do to enhance the experience.
- Favorite rant: I'm not necessarily endorsing his politics, but I enjoy the often-cranky humor of U.S. Rep. Steve LaTourette, a Republican from Lake County.Last spring, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the government “is going to give bicycling — and walking, too — the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and the selection of projects for federal money.” He went so far as to note in his government blog, “This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized.”At a recent House hearing, Rep. LaTourette said “jokingly to a Transportation Department official that one explanation for the new policy is that the secretary's thinking has been clouded by drugs,” according to the Associated Press"Is that a typo?" Rep. LaTourette asked. "If it's not a typo, is there still mandatory drug testing at the department?"He added, “So is it his thought that perhaps we're going to have, like, rickshaws carrying cargo from state to state, or people with backpacks?"
- People who died: Not a “favorite” category, per se, but I didn't have room for the “People who will be missed” section in the year in review, so I wanted to close with three names here. (This is not, by any means, a comprehensive list.)John Bukovnik Jr., the CEO of software developer Easy2 Technologies, died last July after collapsing at the company's downtown headquarters. He and Paul Schutt founded Easy2 in 2000, and today the company employs more than 30 people.Harvey Pekar, the comic book writer and well-known Cleveland curmudgeon, was a great loss in literary circles.Less well-known, but also beloved by those who knew him, was Greg Stiles of Heights Guitars; you can find a fine story about him here, written by Dan Shingler, our manufacturing reporter.