I recently learned about a bit of Brew City humor that the creators of "This is Spinal Tap" would certainly appreciate, and that I'm sure you'll all tell me via talkback that you've known about for years.

And that could be true. I admit that when taking off from and landing at Mitchell Airport, I might be looking at landmarks in other parts of town, or, frankly, just digging my nails into the armrests, my eyelids clamped tightly together.

So, maybe it's for those reasons that I never noticed that photographer Mark Gubin has a sign on the roof of his studio – Bay View's old 970-seat Lake (Bay) Theater, 2893 S. Delaware Ave. – that reads "Welcome to Cleveland."

The sign has reportedly been up there since 1978.

The classical revival theater, incidentally, was designed by architects Urban Peacock and Armin Frank (architects of The Ambassador Hotel and the regrettably lost Venetian movie palace on Center Street) and was in operation from 1926 through 1956.

There was talk of it reopening at the dawn of the 1970s but that did not happen. (Sound familiar, Bay View?!)

It's been home to Gubin and his photography business since, well, at least 1978.