Steel had left Cleveland for good, at least in large part. I was told time and again that the industry had packed its bags and headed for China. In college, I noticed that the orange flame still shot from the stacks of the old mills, but I figured that Cleveland couldn’t possibly be a competitive producer in the market. If anything, the flames from the mill symbolized a breed of stagnation that typified the Rust Belt. We weren’t innovating. We weren’t moving forward. We weren’t embracing the booming tech industry. Cleveland was a city built on sad stories, or so I thought. I didn’t yet realize
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