Mahjong Is Cleveland’s Game of the Moment: CLE Daily

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⛽ Pain at the Pump: Ohio gas is averaging $4.27 a gallon due to the Iran War (up from $3.16 a year ago).

🎨 The Cleveland Arts Prize crowns its class of 2026. The awards named this year's winners Monday, including $10,000 discipline prizes to playwright-actor Chris Webb (emerging artist), papermaker Aimee Lee and artist Dexter Lee Davis. Former Rock & Roll Hall of Fame CEO Terry Stewart earned the Martha Joseph lifetime-service prize, and Parade the Circle's Héctor Castellanos-Lara took the Bergman Prize.

🎤 The Jonas Brothers Return: The Jonas Brothers are taking their Burning Up Tour back on the road, and they’re bringing it back to Cleveland. Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas announced Monday that their 45-city North American tour will stop at Rocket Arena on Oct. 19, reviving the arena run that helped define the band and a generation of fans. Magnus Ferrell, Franklin Jonas and All Time Low will join the tour on select dates. Tickets go on sale to the general public at 10 a.m. Friday, with a Spotify Premium presale beginning Tuesday.

ICYMI: Fidelity Hotel chef Daniel Young, a Kirtland native who cooked at Flour, Michael Symon's kitchens and Denver's Halcyon before coming home, shares his favorite Cleveland spots: life-changing Margherita at Il Rione, Szechuan Gourmet's black-bean eggplant, a Big Al's Diner breakfast, Larder's pastrami and a West Side Market brat that "tastes like Cleveland." 

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Trivia Question

This 1968 gold medalist, famous for his clenched-fist salute on the podium, later served as a coach and athletic director at Oberlin College.

Arts & Culture: Mahjong is Cleveland’s game of the moment.   

By Julia Lombardo

The tile game your grandmother may have played is suddenly everywhere. Mahjong is finding a new generation of players around Cleveland, with local teachers, studios and social groups turning the centuries-old game into a fresh way to connect.

• New School: Mahjong Maison opened in Woodmere earlier this year as Cleveland’s first brick-and-mortar mahjong teaching studio, offering lessons for newcomers and experienced players.

• Social Scene: The appeal goes beyond the game itself. Mahjong is becoming a reason for friends and strangers to gather around a table, put down their phones and spend a few hours together.

• Retro Revival: Like pickleball and other resurgent pastimes, mahjong is benefiting from a renewed interest in analog, face-to-face activities — with social media helping introduce the game to people who may have never encountered it before.

Why Now: Mahjong combines strategy, pattern recognition and plenty of conversation, making it as much a social experience as a game. And Cleveland appears to be getting in on the revival in a big way.

Read the full story.

Talk of the Town

More Ohioans are losing power over unpaid bills. The state's six regulated electric utilities shut off 344,589 households for nonpayment from June 2025 to May 2026. That is about 7.7% of customers, and more than in prior years. The Ohio Consumers' Counsel calls it a sign of an "affordability crisis," noting new "Grid Smart" meters let utilities disconnect remotely.  

Plan around a Towpath closure. Cuyahoga Valley National Park will close the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail between the Boston Trailhead and Lock 29 in Peninsula from Aug. 24 to Nov. 20 to replace the aging Stumpy Basin boardwalk — with the stretch from Lock 29 to the railroad tunnel expected to reopen by early September. There's no detour, and half the Boston Trailhead lot closes too (try the Stanford Trailhead instead). The Towpath draws more than 1.5 million visitors a year, about 68% of the park's traffic. 

MetroHealth is planning a $9 million modernization of the emergency department at its main Clark-Fulton campus — a four-zone interior overhaul of a Level I trauma ER that treats nearly 80,000 patients a year, including 8,100 trauma cases. A $3 million lead gift came from the Samuel H. Miller Foundation; work could start by year's end.  

A "people's budget" gets a real-world test in Slavic Village. Participatory Budgeting Cleveland is running a six-month, $100,000 pilot letting residents vote — through Aug. 22 — on which neighborhood projects to fund, from a pet-food pantry to a year-round garden center. More than 175 have cast ballots, though some residents have raised transparency and vetting concerns.

Bibb's Burke campaign went to Washington before Washington said no. Mayor Justin Bibb spent June 25 in D.C. meeting Ohio's congressional delegation and a deputy assistant transportation secretary about closing Burke Lakefront Airport and then watched U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno and the FAA administrator call a shutdown a non-starter on Friday. City Hall says it's "disheartened"; the 450 lakefront acres aren't going anywhere yet.

A scandal-era charge is finally leaving electric bills. As of Aug. 14, a new state law (HB 15) ends the House Bill 6 subsidy that had forced Ohioans to prop up two 1950s-era OVEC coal plants — one of them across the river in Indiana — since 2020, at a cost of more than $683 million. AEP and FirstEnergy say the charge drops off regulated customers' bills; electric-cooperative customers keep paying.

A councilman wants Cleveland to put money where the groceries aren't. With Downtown's Heinen's shuttered and food deserts spread across the East Side, Councilman Starr says he'll introduce legislation this month creating a city fund to recruit and backstop grocery stores. "If we continue to sit aside and not do anything, then we're going to continue to get the short end of the stick," he said. 

It's Cleveland Wing Week

A great wing says a lot about a restaurant. Some let a buttery Buffalo sauce do the talking, and others stake their reputation on house-made dry rubs, smoked wings or signature sauces. Cleveland Wing Week, running Aug. 17-23, is your chance to compare them all, with more than 25 restaurants offering $10 wing specials throughout the week. Grab a few friends, split a few orders and discover a new favorite along the way.

Check out our guide to Northeast Ohio's Best Wings, too.

Arts & Culture: Mediahead expands its old-school offerings from its predecessor, Video Game Connection.

By Annie Nickoloff 

Inside Cleveland’s Mediahead store, Rob Kvasne organizes stacks of used video games behind the counter for the second stint in his life. Close to two decades ago, the owner of Mediahead worked in the same building, then known as Video Game Connection. When the former store’s owner Mike Gedeon retired last year, Kvasne bought the shop and expanded its physical media offerings to include movies.

• Vintage Variety: Games and consoles, ranging from handheld Game Boys to Segas, PlayStations and Xboxes, line the shelves. You’ll even find games for the Atari 2600, one of the first popular home consoles.

• Retro Rarities: Coupled with popular Pokemon and Super Mario games, Mediahead also offers harder-to-find items. That included, earlier this year, an Atari Jaguar CD attachment from the ’90s, and a coveted copy of Bubble Bobble Part 2 for the Nintendo Entertainment System, priced at $1,149.95. (Both have since been sold, Kvasne says.)

Rob Kvasne: “They’re very simple by today’s standards, but some people really like that. So often (modern) games are, like, 80 hours long; they’re very bloated with side quests, and not everybody has time for doing everything.”

• Phasing Out? PlayStation announced in July that it would end physical disc production in 2028 and limit future games to digital release. Sony, which owns PlayStation, also removed items from its digital library this year, erasing customers’ access to previously purchased media.

• Physical Media Forever: However, shops like Mediahead continue to cater to the local analog movement and video game fans that collect and play earlier releases.

Read more about Mediahead at clevelandmagazine.com.

Yesterday's Trivia Answer

Finish this Cleveland beer advertisement slogan: “Hey Mabel! … Black Label!” (Carling)

Check back tomorrow for the answer to today's question

From the Editor

Video games aren't really my thing, but if you hand me a controller for a classic (particularly Guitar Hero, Sega's Lion King or PlayStation's Glover), it's a different story. These games are full of nostalgia — all the hours spent with my siblings trying to tackle tough levels and songs. 

Beyond the home consoles, you can get a taste of classic games at arcades around town; just visit 16-Bit Bar + Arcade in Ohio City and order a beverage to have free access to their rows of vintage arcade games.

— Annie Nickoloff, Senior Editor

Have a story idea? Tell us what we should cover at conversation@clevelandmagazine.com.

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