The second thing that decides a romantic delivery here is the front door. Lakewood is one of the most densely populated cities in Ohio and a large share of its housing is rental — walk-up apartments above the Detroit and Madison storefronts, the apartment courts along Clifton and Franklin Boulevards, two-family doubles on the numbered streets, and the high-rise buildings at the Edgewater Drive and Lake Avenue end that people here call the Gold Coast. Each one fails differently. The walk-ups and courts are locked vestibules with a panel of buzzers and nobody on site during the day: without a unit number and a working phone number, a driver stands in an entryway and then leaves. The doubles look simple and are not — a bouquet on a shared stoop is visible from the sidewalk, and the neighbor in the other half is not going to carry it upstairs. The Gold Coast towers are the reliable ones, because most have a desk that signs and holds, with the caveat that a surprise handed to a doorman stops being a surprise the moment your partner walks in and gets handed it. Put the unit or the half of the house on the order, add a phone number, and say whether anyone is home during the day.
Where romance actually happens in Lakewood is mostly outdoors and mostly free, which is part of the city's character. The Solstice Steps at Lakewood Park, the limestone terraces at the foot of Belle Avenue, are where couples go to watch the sun drop into the water with the downtown skyline off to the east — the most photographed spot in the city and a regular site for a proposal. Lake Avenue and the Gold Coast sidewalks are the walk; the Rocky River Reservation in the Cleveland Metroparks, down the valley at the western edge, is the longer one. Pier W in the Winton Place building at 12700 Lake Avenue is the reservation nobody can get on the 14th, and Mahall's on Madison Avenue, the old bowling lanes turned music room, is the Lakewood date that people from other suburbs drive in for. The Detroit Avenue bars and kitchens carry the rest. Notice what is missing from that list: hotels. There are none in the city, so an overnight means downtown Cleveland, fifteen minutes east on the Shoreway, or the Crocker Park cluster in Westlake to the west. Flowers, meanwhile, belong at the apartment or the house — before the evening starts, not carried around during it.