Susana Cazares, Leo’s Beer Barn owner in Cleveland, helps her nephew Santiago Lopez, blow bubbles at her business on April 12, 2024, in Cleveland. A longtime Colony Ridge resident, Cazares fostered her entrepreneurial spirit in the development and included her family in the business growth.
Behind the counter, you can find Daniela Roachford, sporting an orange apron and hair wrap, taking customers’ orders. In 2007, Roachford left Panama for the United States to be near her daughter’s father. She arrived in New York and remained there until she and her ex separated. Eventually, Roachford remarried and had two more children.
David Thibodeau gets shaved by his barber Johnathan Johnson at Johnson’s barber shop on March 12, 2024, in Cleveland. Johnson runs his business, Johnathan Bladez Men’s Hair Care, from the garage of his home in the Colony Ridge development.In Colony Ridge, you can’t just Google “barber shops near me.”
Before cutting hair, Johnson was a welder for a shop that made drill bits, but he didn’t appreciate being unable to control his own schedule. So, during the pandemic, Johnson headed to barber school and joined the Bad Boyz Barber Shop in Houston, but always had a dream for something bigger.Johnson, Johnathan Bladez Men’s Hair Care owner, shakes hands with regular customer Thibodeau, in Cleveland on March 12, 2024.
Left: Irving Aragon Ramos, Tlayudas House owner, prepares a Tlayuda Oaxaqueña for photos on March 8, 2024, in Cleveland. Right: Tlayuda Oaxaqueña dish, with queso de hebra, or Oaxacan cheese, fried black beans, pork lard, plus lettuce and your meat of choice.Irving Aragon Ramos vividly remembers watching his mother manage her business in Oaxaca, Mexico.
In the beginning of 2022, Ramos' brother told him about Colony Ridge, which had attracted a large population of Oaxaqueños to the area. He never imagined operating a food truck but he decided it was worth a shot as long as he found a place to permanently station it. Susana Cazares, Leo’s Beer Barn owner in Cleveland, serves a frozen mango beverage called mangonada, on April 12, 2024, in Cleveland. Cazares, a longtime Colony Ridge resident, fostered her entrepreneurial spirit in the development.From the moment Susana Cazares and her family arrived in the U.S., they always had a job — usually two.
Cazares, the family matriarch, runs the restaurant — from mixing drinks to helping her son, Leonidas Lopez prepare crawfish. On a Friday evening in April, Cazares tends to customers that pull up to the drive-thru before stepping away to keep an eye on her family’s children. She blows bubbles with the kids as the sun sets.
Lorenzo developed Barbacoa El Maguey into the restaurant that stands today in the development’s Santa Fe subdivision. Twenty-two years ago, he left his home country at 15-years-old with hope for a better future, but never could have imagined where he would wind up.