Here in Cleveland, we love our scalawags and scamps, our crooks, cads and clowns. They give us character, a history. They make Cleveland a real city, unlike all those prefab, just-add-water Sun Belt towns. Just like we’re half appalled, half entertained when our unemployed cousin gets drunk at our wedding reception and brags about his time in jail, a mischievous part of us loves our history of vice. We’re fascinated by our bank robbers, bribe takers and brothels — even our mad butchers — as long as they’re safely in the past. And just like we love our uncle who wears the powder-blue suit and too-short tie, we love our city’s bloopers and bad ideas. We tell Cleveland jokes and laugh. We’ve lived so long with our moments of citywide shame, we find them endearing. Hence, this collection of the most notorious people, incidents and places in Cleveland’s history, all the way from the 1790s to 2006. Notorious enough to capture our fascination, to keep us buzzing (even 200 years later) but not so disturbing as to haunt us. That’s why you’ll find murders, but not recent murders, in the pages to come, and why you won’t see stories of suffering children (Beverly Potts or the Kirtland cult killings). In fact, we want to know who or what you can’t resist reading about. We’ve even laid odds on it. We’ve collected all 64 of our notorious people, incidents and places in a Notorious Cleveland Tournament Bracket at the end of this section. Please fill it out and send it in to us, and we’ll tally the results and let you know which days and names will live forever in Cleveland infamy.

Can't afford life on the lake?  Make yourself feel better by finding out why you wouldn't want to live there anyway.

Know much about Lakeland or Timberlake?  We didn't either, so we set out for a drive.

You can spend more than a million dollars just to get a lot in Rocky River.  You can buy a historic estate fro double that in Bratenahl (but brace yourself for heating bills).  You can get it all -- private beach, huge new home -- for $2.5 million in Madison.  But if you're not rich, you've got options, too.  Would you consider a 960-square-foot house in Lorain?  For $239, 900. it can be yours.  Whether your goal is a castle or a cottage, we've found out what it takes...

To Live on the Lake.

Northeast Ohio's best restaurants judged in 45 categories.  Plus, our food writers share their favorite place to sit down for a bite.

Spring has finally arrived, and we're celebrating.  It's the time of year when the days have a shimmer of anticipation, when we remember how exciting it is to dress up and play with our look.  So, we primped, cut, colored, waxed and pampered our way through 34 salons.  we found beauty, freshness, rejuvenation -- and you can too.

Schools, cities, businesses and neighborhoods take off the pounds together.

We're fed up. We don't need another magazine ranking telling us we're fat any more than we need another world-famous corned beef sandwich. (Actually, we do need to do something about those corned beef sandwiches.) But instead of letting it get under our skin, we looked under our skin, and found our fat cells thriving, our favorite foods add to the problem and some local experts have recipes for fat reduction that could compete with Jenny Craig. So get off your adipose (that's fat) backside and get moving toward a healthier you.

There's a scene in "Supersize Me" when Morgan Spurlock, the firm's director and bemused star, meets a guy who only eats McDonald's Big Macs - vanquishing more than 19,000 of them in his lifetime. He's just an eccentric guy who loves Big Macs as much as, or maybe more than, he loves his wife. My story isn't quite that bad.

Talk to your doctor.

It's solid advice. We hear it all the time when it comes to our health.
Our doctor knows which drug will make us better, which surgery will fix us and which lifestyle choices will help us live our best lives possible. When our doctors talk, we listen. We take their advice on just about everything - even what doctors we should see next.

The truth is there are many outstanding doctors in Northeast Ohio. The medical journals and popular press abound with stories about the strides they've made in research and patient care. But when you're just one patient, looking for just the right doctor for you, it?s easy to go wanting in a land of plenty.

We have published the Best Doctors list this year to highlight 589 of our area's best physicians in 35 specialties. All of them made the list because their peers voted for them. (Consider it a big referral list.) The six we profile in the following pages possess the qualities that make a good healer - tremendous clinical skills, a caring bedside manner and a deep dedication to their profession.

They are models for why "Talk to your doctor" is such good advice - and the reason we recommend you take it.