Word: schaaff
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...public transportation, the Gay Games Federation announced that Cleveland will host the games in 2014. An abundance of enthusiasm, some Midwestern pluck and a boisterous night on Lake Erie didn't hurt. "It was obvious that these guys worked very hard on this for over a year," says Darl Schaaff, who led the site-selection committee for the federation. "The level of community support was just amazing...
Perhaps most important is the opportunity to recast the region's image, local leaders say. In the national psyche, Cleveland remains a blue collar factory town in a conservative farm state, neither of which are particularly innovative or gay-friendly. "We've never really gone to the heartland," says Schaaff, who lives in Anchorage, Alaska. "Here was an opportunity to boldly go to a place that is perhaps not recognizable throughout the world as a gay center, but where real change is starting to happen...
...show community support for the games. A few hundred people attended the events in Washington and Boston. In Cleveland, 7,000 people packed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to capacity, overflowing into an adjacent park on the Lake Erie shore. "It was a truly amazing evening," Schaaff says. The Gay Games are still five years off, but some Clevelanders already wonder what comes next. "Chicago had the Gay Games in 2006, and now they're bidding for the Olympics," Anderson says. "Could it happen in Cleveland? Absolutely...
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