When people think of Ohio (if they ever do), some key words generally come to mind: Midwest. Rural. Hicktown. And yeah, a lot of Ohio could easily fall into those categories. Avon Lake, however is not one of those places, even if it feels just as low in terms of progressive thinking sometimes.

Avon Lake, Ohio, is a suburb nestled in the Cleveland area, directly on the shore of Lake Erie. We make fun of Erie, because we know it’s full of actual trash and carp mating on the top of waves because they don’t give a rodent’s tuchus, but we also know, deep down, that the lake is probably our best asset. Because of it, we’ve got beaches, ferry rides to islands like Put-In-Bay, and expensive shoreline real estate.

If you live in Avon Lake, you know the following things to be true. To keep things lucky, we’ll narrow it …show more content…
We bleed maroon and gold, even though being in Ohio means that everyone only pays attention to the football team, and the football team sucks ass.

6. AVON AND AVON LAKE ARE TWO DIFFERENT CITIES, and only people from Avon and Avon Lake know that.

7. Of all the cities in all the states, we live in a pretty boring but decent one.

Avon Lake, like most nonfictional locations, is a total mixed bag. It’s been my permanent address for close to 20 years, and I like to think that I had a pretty good childhood there on the whole, but I was also straight, white, upper middle class, and raised Catholic in a town where Christians bloom like magnolias in a New Orleans summer.

There is bigotry. There is racism. There’s definitely sexism. I see these things in my friends and family all the time.

There’s also beauty. Lake, trees. Buffalo Wild Wings.

There’s bored teenagers running around drinking and sticking bologna to each others cars at 2am. You many never know the wonder of being 5 years old, and being awoken in the middle of the night to the sound of teenage boys scurrying off your front lawn, and rushing out to play in a newfound forest of TP’d