January: Copley teen Emily Trunko gets two book deals and worldwide media attention as a result of her viral Tumblr blogs, The Last Message Received and Dear My Blank.
February: Former Hudson resident Caila Quinn becomes a finalist on The Bachelor and is spotted filming around town. She ultimately is the runner-up and the subject of much breathless social media coverage.
March: Twenty-seven arts projects win $1 million in the first Akron Knight Arts Challenge.
March: Believeland premieres at Cleveland Film Fest. The documentary depicts the region’s more than 50 years of professional sports futility. In two months, filmmakers will be forced to shoot a new ending.
March: The craft cocktail craze hits Akron with the opening of Chop and Swizzle in West Hill, and a month later, the Speakeasy in the Northside district.
April: The Black Keys are chosen to present Steve Miller at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and are caught up in the media firestorm as Miller uses the occasion to criticize the institution.
April: Sounds of Akron, a piece commissioned by the Akron Symphony that incorporates snippets of sounds submitted by area residents, gets its world premiere.
April: The owner of Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood house offers it for rent for the Republican National Convention. Later in the year, a movie version of Derf Backderf’s graphic memoir My Friend Dahmer shoots scenes around the area, including at the home.
April: Two new concert venues, Goodyear Theater and Goodyear Hall, open in the rubber company’s former headquarters in east Akron.
May: Myopia, an exhibition of Devo co-founder Mark Mothersbaugh’s art, takes over the Akron Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland. It includes visual art, sculpture, experimental musical instruments, Devo memorabilia and thousands of postcards Mothersbaugh has drawn every morning for decades. Mothersbaugh makes appearances at both museums to promote the exhibit, and in August joins his bandmate Gerald Casale for a talk and Q&A.
May: Fairlawn teen Marcus Martin is the inaugural recipient of the Kyle Jean-Baptiste ’15 Music Theatre Scholarship, in honor of the late Broadway actor and Baldwin Wallace alumnus who was the youngest actor and the first black actor to play Jean Valjean in Les Misérables on Broadway before he fell to his death from a Brooklyn fire escape.
May: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exhibit Louder Than Words focuses on political and social activism in the music world.
June: Akron-born costume designer Paul Tazewell is one of the winners in the Tony avalanche for the Broadway sensation Hamilton. Later in the year, Tazewell will add an Emmy to his award shelf for the live TV production of The Wiz.
June: Periodical cicadas make their 17-year reappearance in Northeast Ohio, leaving some sick-looking trees in their wake. Some suspect they fed an outbreak of another pest that had been little known in this area, the oak leaf itch mite.
June: Richfield’s historic Farnam Manor gets a reprieve when an investor comes through with a loan, allowing the Farnam Manor Foundation to buy the property out of foreclosure.
July: The highly anticipated Melt Bar & Grilled restaurant finally opens its first Summit County location, in a renovated Friendly’s in the Montrose area.
July: Akron Art Museum opens its Bud & Susie Rogers Garden, a 1-acre urban park in the shadow of the museum’s cantilevered Roof Cloud.
July: The area embraces the Pokemon Go craze, with events drawing hundreds of players and businesses setting up “lures” to draw people in.
July: The BBC follows Chrissie Hynde around Akron for a documentary, and she speaks alongside photographer Jill Furmanovsky at the Akron Art Museum about the 1970s punk scene.
August: Cleveland Hustles, a reality series about entrepreneurs in Northeast Ohio produced by LeBron James and Maverick Carter, premieres on MSNBC. Among the small businesses featured is Akron Honey Co., owned by Brent Wesley. James and Carter’s company has several more productions in development, including a documentary on Muhammad Ali.
September: Jazz icon Roland Paolucci passes away. He founded the University of Akron’s Jazz Studies program and was a tremendous influence on the local music scene.
September: E.J. Thomas Hall’s box office reopens after more than a yearlong hiatus.
September: Kent native Seth Stewart takes over the roles of Thomas Jefferson and the Marquis de Lafayette in Hamilton on Broadway.
October: The Pretenders’ new album, Alone, is an Akron twofer, produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys. In a July interview, Hynde said of working with her fellow Firestone alum, “He has just stellar ideas and his instincts are really good, and he’s just fun to work with.” Touring to support the album, the Pretenders play a show at E.J. Thomas in November.
October: The Akron Press Club brings in Patrick Carney of the Black Keys to mark its 40th anniversary.
October: Nineteen new grass-roots projects win $1 million in second year of Akron Knight Arts Challenge.
November: TV weatherman Dick Goddard retires after 55 years on the air. He plans to continue to work with animal causes and his beloved Woolybear Festival.
December: After nearly a year, the West Point Market opens the first phase of its new incarnation, mostly packaged foods and a wine shop and bar, in a storefront in Fairlawn. The second phase, expected early in 2017, will bring back the bakery, prepared foods, heat-and-eat and other favorites.