Cleveland's Lantern Nights and Port Clinton's Walleye Weekend

Two Ohio places had a good week for very different reasons, and both of them ended up on a hat. Cleveland spent its evenings under a few hundred paper lanterns; Port Clinton spent its weekend on the Lake Erie waterfront eating perch. Five designs came out of it — two metal, two wood, one stitched.

Cleveland, after dark

Through September 12, the paths through Cleveland's zoo are strung end to end with illuminated silk-and-wire lanterns after closing time. The walk has run for several seasons now, but this year it picked up something it never had before: a drone show that lifts off over the treetops as the last visitors come through. It is the first time the run has ended that way, and it is the reason the walk got extended in the first place.

If you have done it, you know the specific feeling — cool air coming off the lake, a paper glow overhead, and then a few hundred lights climbing into the dark all at once. Two patches came out of it.

The copper medallion

The first is the scene itself: a strung line of lanterns over a winding park path, stars above, the whole thing struck in antique copper with the patina left dark in the recesses. It is the most traditional shape in this drop — a round medallion, the kind of thing you would find on a park marker — and the copper does the heavy lifting, because a copper patch on a black or navy cap reads warm the way lantern light does. The Cleveland Lantern Nights Trucker Hat carries it at about two and a half inches across.

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The die-cut lantern

The second one skips the border entirely. Rather than putting a lantern inside a circle, this patch is the lantern: die-cut to the silhouette, hanging loop at the top, tassel swinging below, with the ribbing and a small tree line engraved into pale maple. Wood was the right call here — a paper lantern lit from inside glows the same warm blonde that maple does in daylight. The Cleveland Paper Lantern Trucker Hat is the one people ask about, because a patch with no border still surprises them.

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Port Clinton, on the water

An hour west along the lake, Port Clinton sits where the Portage River empties into Lake Erie. The town calls itself the walleye capital of the world and has the receipts: every New Year's Eve it drops a giant fiberglass walleye at midnight, which is exactly the sort of civic decision that earns a place permanent affection. The first weekend of September the waterfront fills up for a lakeside weekend built around perch, peaches, pierogi and polka — four things that have no business being on the same bill and work anyway.

Three patches came out of Port Clinton, and they are deliberately nothing like each other.

The walleye

Same idea as the Cleveland lantern, different fish: no border, cut straight to the silhouette. Spiny dorsal along the back, forked tail, scale texture engraved into gold-tone metal, and PORT CLINTON set into the body itself. This one is sized wide — about four inches across — because a fish shrunk down to badge size stops reading as a fish. The Port Clinton Walleye Trucker Hat takes up the whole front panel, which is the point.

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The carved banner

The quiet one. A dark walnut nameplate with rolled scroll ends and an engraved flourish underneath the lettering — no fish, no lake, no scene, just the name of the town cut into wood. It is the design for people who want the place without the explanation. Also sized wide, because a banner patch that is not wide is just a small rectangle. The Port Clinton Carved Banner Trucker Hat is the most understated thing in the drop.

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The stitched one

And then the whole weekend on one patch: a yellow perch, a peach and a pierogi stitched over a cream twill field, inside a scalloped oval with a merrowed border in deep red. This is the only soft-goods design of the five — everything else this week is metal or wood — and it is the one that looks most like a patch your grandfather would have had on a bowling jacket. The Port Clinton Lake Erie Trucker Hat is the sentimental favorite.

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All five

Every one of these comes on a Richardson 112 in five colorways plus a ponytail-friendly Infinity Charlie, and every one is made in Avon Lake, Ohio: Cleveland Lantern Nights, Cleveland Paper Lantern, Port Clinton Walleye, Port Clinton Carved Banner, and Port Clinton Lake Erie.