Jim Lanza encapsulates the essence of Cleveland's alternative entrepreneurs, combining underground culture, music, fashion and community in Ohio City where he fronts The Modern World, an alternative/vintage/skate/punk merchandise business. He also collaborates with Pride of Cleveland Scooters, located below his store on West 25th. He talked with Cool Cleveland about making money from your passions, fire breathing and contemporary rock/punk music's state of crisis.

Cool Cleveland: At heart, you are an entrepreneur. While some people start businesses solely to make money, your enterprises seem to be driven by other factors. Do you have a philosophy about your businesses? Jim Lanza: My businesses reflect my personal interests; my friend has a bar in Chicago called Delilah’s, and it's like walking into his house. It’s a punk rock bar but you can listen to Black Flag on the jukebox or buy a $20 bottle of beer. I'm also doing everything I like and bringing it into my work. It’s not just about making money, it’s about what I love to do.

What else do you filter it through? Does the market matter?
The market has something to do with it because I have to pay bills, obviously. So, I look at the market and my time - I don’t want to spread myself too thin. But I’m kind of at the point where I’ve got so many things going on. Like this motorcycle show I set up, because no one else was doing anything like it. I also have a sign company [Target Signs, 623-1441] that is taking up a lot of my time. And I’m at the breaking point where I need to concentrate on certain things; I want to open up a store at a different location and add more things, like extra tiki bar stuff. We also merchandise for Hot Topic and supply them with a lot; they cater to the 14-21 crowd with rock shirts and novelty merch. We also custom manufacture their novelty stickers and t-shirts. It’s a huge account and my attention is never far from them. And then we sell to places in Spain, Amsterdam and England - everywhere from Chain Link Addiction [in Madison Village] to a store in Portland, Oregon. We also do the magic trade show in Vegas where all the buyers walk the aisles and see what’s new. There I sell my line, and a few rows away is Pamela Anderson’s line of clothing.

Did you maintain your own business, or did you work for the bands?
I worked for various screen printers in Cleveland right out of high school, and went to school for photography at Cleveland State University, I also worked at Daffy Dans and was on the air for four years at WCSB. I started doing t-shirts for local bands, and started my own company called Black Cat. My friend Mark O’Shea [manager of the Sign-Offs at the time], he was on tour managing Nine Inch Nails, and they were looking for a guy to go on the road and sell t-shirts, so from there I ended up running their wholesale company. Then, after I came off the road, I started Hellbomb. And when Marilyn Manson was opening for NIN, I spoke with Marilyn Manson’s manager, Tony Ciulla, and I offered to shoot my 35mm camera for a week, which turned into 6 months, which then turned into a video. I ended up going to OzzFest and Europe filming the shows, and it turned into a video that’s sold in stores called Dead To The World, it's a tour documentary.

I saw the NIN video of life on the road, and it was the most outrageous thing I've seen.
It was the same with Marilyn Manson in Europe - one time they were in the dressing room and had all this Chinese take out, and they were throwing it against the wall, along with the beer and making a total mess.

For the cameras, though...
Of course...but I’m not really in touch with that scene so much; Twiggy Ramerez is in A Perfect Circle, and he comes in and says high once in awhile. And I hear from drummer Chris Vrenna [of NIN] who is in Tweaker now and they’re opening for Skinny Puppy this year [in their currrent reunion tour].

How did you get into fire breathing? Doesn’t sound like a pre-meditated career move.
A friend of mine, Dave Araca, did some of my tattoos and he was in a few bands, the Guns and False Hope, and his father Frank did the USO shows as a firebreather, his name was El Diablo. That kind of sparked my interest, as well as the mixture of what I was drinking at the time, and I saw a little lighter fluid there, and then I started to perfect the technique...

So, you weren’t trained?
No...just self-taught, it's a hobby. I could shoot a flame 15 feet high. The Jim Rose Circus Side Show opened for NIN, and I offered to breathe fire for them.

Our friend Marky Ray toured with Jim Rose.
He did Bed of Nails, played guitar, and they slammed cinder blocks with a sledgehammer on his stomach.

What other skills do you have that people may not know about?
I DJ every now and then, but DJing got old for me. I did the radio for a long time, and I bartended at Edisons, and had vinyl night and did one of the first DJ nights in a bar in Cleveland at that time. It seems like the big thing now. I did it at Capsule a couple of times, and Touch a couple of times. And I guess I’m DJing at the Hi-Fi in Lakewood.

Why did you want to start The Modern World in Cleveland? Did you consider other cities?
For sure. Cleveland’s a hard sell for this type of store. For one thing, it’s on the second floor. In Chicago or NYC they’ll go up to the 10th floor, but not in Cleveland. I always wanted to have the retail store, and we always had the website, but the store give me a chance to experiment and carry some of the other vendors I’ve met. Some of the stuff we have no one else in Cleveland carries; the Ben Sherman stuff, Nordstroms also has it, but not like we do. The scooter kids know what Ben Sherman is, and the people who know fashion know what it is. At our store, punk rock kids can find something and the fashion kids can find something, so it's a good mix. The store is very music influenced by the bands I love: Ziggy, Ramones, Iggy, Sid Vicious. The next headache I’m making for myself is to do an online store of everything we do in this store. Hellbomb is just stuff that we manufacture: a line of tattoo t-shirts, where we hire tattoo artists to use their designs and we pay them royalties. At the same time, we've merchandise that appeals to teenage girls with cute sayings that have been featured in Teen Vogue and Cosmo Girl, and we get all these letters from 15 year old girls. We’ve had merch featured in the movie Like Mike and the new movie called Cheer Up. We’ve had Billy Zane in here, from Titanic or something, they see things on the website that are unique and then want to use them in the movies.

What are the advantages or disadvantages of doing business in the city of Cleveland? Advantages are that it’s still relatively cheaper to live in Cleveland. The disadvantages are the people here who are followers and not trend setters; people who wear a Von Dutch shirt because they saw it in a movie or something. The other disadvantage is being in this part of town where it seems everything North of Lorain is booming, but South of Lorain it’s the dead zone. The first space I looked at was located left of Moda, and that would have worked if I had just wanted a store, but I needed extra space in the back for my warehouse company. Some of the spaces on that side of Lorain are like $12 per square foot, so for 1000 square feet, you’re paying $12,000 a month. It seems that people make it hard for entrepreneurs to start businesses in Cleveland.

In what ways?
I know that there are certain hoops that you have to jump through to have a business in Cleveland. Even to have signage or a sidewalk sign is a nightmare. We’ve both been here for a year now, and they are constantly breathing down our necks about signage, and it has to be approved by their board. But North of Lorain, you can put up a banner with nails and no one says anything. But it would cost $4000 to have a sign in this neighborhood.

Talk about the avant-garde in Cleveland. Is it hard to find?
It’s a lot harder to find these days than say, 20 years ago, for sure. I come from a time when we would go to punk shows in 1981; people back then were a handful. Now, it’s so over the top commercialized that it’s hard to know what’s avant-garde and what's not. Even the avant-garde has been commercialized. I don’t want to sound like an old guy...but when I was a kid, the music was so different, you had The Adults, Ronald Koal and the Trillionaires. I was fortunate to have been around at the beginning of new wave, punk and metal. It’s hard for me now to deal with the new music coming out. The Strokes are popular, and I thought they were Sonic Youth when I first heard them. And when I first heard Einsturzende Neubauten, it was great because they freaked me out with what they were doing. But now there’s nothing to me that’s unique and interesting anymore. There's Blink 182 and The Vines, and so I find myself pulling out my old Bowie records or T-Rex. I would rather drive around in my minivan and listen to T-Rex than listen to these morning shows with the Jeff and Flash kind of goofballs that are a strike to everyone’s intelligence. And the music they play is terrible. Anymore, my favorite band is the quartet on Ernest Angley's show from the 700 Club.

Tisha Nemeth: We can definitely relate - I’m really into British boys' choir and church sounding opera, like Libera.

Thomas: We’re going to head out to Cuyahoga Falls to do a Cool Cleveland field trip to see Ernest Angley's Miracle Service on a Friday Night, before he dies...

Tisha Nemeth: Then we can stand up and evangelize everyone with the Cool Cleveland doctrine...

He does this thing where you put your hand on the screen and he heals you; my aunt did it and got healed. Anyways, I went to SXSW and saw a million bands and it sucked because millions of bands all sound the same. There is one band I liked called the Ugly Beats and they are very much like The Seeds.

Where do you hang out in Cleveland?
That’s a rough one. Probably my favorite bar is Jerman’s (Mitzi’s Tavern, in the 30’s on St. Clair). I go out to a lot of places but I don’t have the patience to deal; there’s nothing for me at any of those West 6th places.

Many people stick around in Cleveland because of the cool people. Who are some of the people you are happy to have live near you?
Well, I would say Chris Andrews [who started Capsule and Madison Village], but he moved. I’ve known him since high school, and Tom Lash is a very interesting person from Lucky Pierre and Prick; he's now in business with computer display technology. And some of the musicians that I knew when I started seeing bands like Jim Jones from Pere Ubu, like Mike Medoff from the Pagans and the Cramps, Scott and Keith Pickering.

Talk about the Scooter and Vintage Motorcycle Show.
To me there’s no one else doing this kind of event, so why not? I’ll give it a shot. This year it kind of blossomed into what it is. Music wise, it’s kind of like what Lollipalooza was when they started. We'll have heavy metal, punk, rock and roll, swing jazz, 60’s garage, and Uncle Scratch - how can you describe that? Then there's the in-between bands, we have DJs Kristin who plays garage rock, and Roger who’s in a band called Gizmo and the Spudmonsters, and I’m gonna DJ, so music is very much a part of this event. It is nice to see a mixture of motorcycle people and scooter people - it’s usually either/or, but this event brings them both together. Plus we’ll have 30 hot rods and low-riders and a Cleveland group of breakdancers. Kind of like an avenue for me to put some bands together with a hodgepodge of musical tastes, a vendor village with artists and stores that can have booths. This Friday night our event kicks off at Rain night club with a DJ. Saturday is the show at the Scene Pavilion, then on Saturday night there's an after party on the second floor of Harbor Inn - a '60s surf party, where people can wear grass skirts or coconut bras and get in for free. Sunday we’re organizing a four hour bike/scooter ride through Cleveland, and while that's going on, The Modern World will be open from noon to 6 and have different vendors inside our store selling their different wares. We're also going to show Quadrophenia and have a DJ spinning surf music; so this will be just a weekend of strangeness, something unique to Cleveland - because no one else is doing it. We’ll possibly have another one on a smaller scale in August at Scene Pavilion, and maybe in Lakewood on a smaller scale.

2nd Annual Scooter and Vintage Motorcycle Show Rockabilly, garage and punk bands, cool merch vendors and a slew of retro scooters and vintage motorcycles, allorganized by Jim Lanza, this Sat 5/29 from 11AM-8PM at the Scene Pavillion. Afterparty at Harbor Inn - wear a grass skirt or surfware and bypass the admission price. On Sun 5/30 at 1PM meet up at Pride of Cleveland Scooters for a ride around Cleveland, at 2078 West 25th St. Call 623-1226 for info. Stop by the Cool Cleveland booth, say high and register to win a Modern World gift certificate. http://www.hellbomb.com

Interview and photos by Thomas Mulready (:divend:)