One Giant Stamp for Man, One Rockin’ Hall for Mankind!

So I had an extra day off for Memorial Day weekend and thought it would be a good opportunity to take a road trip to somewhere new.  How about a 7-hour drive to Cleveland, Ohio?

The main attraction we wanted to see was the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which sits near the shore line of Lake Erie.  I found a local DoubleTree hotel that offered a “Rock Package” – hotel night, free city parking, buffet breakfast for two, and two tickets to the Rock Hall – for one solid price, so we had to take it.  The DoubleTree was about 4 blocks from the Hall, so it was an easy walk over to the Hall.

One unique landmark on the walk to the Hall is the giant stamp with the word “FREE” on it – created by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen and dubbed the "world's largest rubber stamp.”  It’s an odd outdoor sculpture that sits in the middle of a grassy are of Willard Park and not easy to miss.  Apparently, it does attract some tourism – including us for a quick photo op!


The Rock Hall has a pretty cool building design – large triangular shapes with glass windows to the top – it’s a unique structure that helps define the Cleveland harbor front.  I was happy to see that the special limited time exhibit at that time was dedicated to Jersey’s own Bruce Springsteen!

The Hall does not allow pictures inside except for its lobby area, so we were not really able to capture most of the cool memorabilia that we saw on film.  Despite this, we took the elevator down to the basement floor which contained most of the exhibits in the museum.  You could spend several hours here reading through every decade of rock music from jazz influences to reggae superstars – this place was filled with tons of artifacts from music’s greatest performers.  There were tribute sections to The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rollling Stones and many more.  We even saw Michael Jackson’s actual white glove that he used in his videos.  You’ll find everything from Justin Timberlake’s stage outfit to John Lennon’s grammar school report card (which said he could do better if he concentrated more).

True to the triangle shape of the building, each floor going up got smaller and smaller.  The top two floors contained the Bruce Springsteen exhibit with many of his guitars and records on display.  They even had the actual ripped jeans and hat from the “Born in the USA” album cover.  It was fun to see cards and posters from some of the venues he has performed at throughout Jersey.

A few painted guitars in the lobby

One area I was hoping to see was the actual Hall inductees area.  We had been to other Hall of Fames, and I knew there had to be a place that displayed those that were enshrined in the Rock Hall.  For some reason, it was not an easy find, but we did stumble upon it after eating at the little café on the same floor.  There’s a theater at the end of the corridor, and a short tribute film on the Rock Hall inductees had already begun when we arrived there.  As I took a peek into the dark theater, I noticed this thin ramp that walked up and around the circular auditorium.  Despite being dark, I could see on the wall that there were signatures glowing in the dark.  I found it!  This was the list of inductees, shown in alphabetical order by last name and/or band name and enshrined with their signatures.  We walked up the ramp trying to make out the signatures of name after name from Louis Armstrong to Genesis to Bob Marley to Stevie Wonder.  This was a very unique way of putting the inductees all in one place.  We read the entire list all the way to the top, and it was a nice finish to conclude our visit to the Hall.

As probably with most people, the Rock Hall was our main attraction for our visit to Cleveland.  It certainly did not disappoint.  We did other things in and around town, but I’ll save writing about those adventures for another time.