Tag: Buffalo

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But for the Grace of God….

On a whim I bought a copy of the Buffalo News this morning — usually I just skim through the website — and found a story that hit me right in the gut, about a family that is currently undergoing struggles with their newborn child that are eerily similar to those that we endured with Little Quinn, only their struggles are even harder since their boy has a tracheostomy to go along with his G-tube, where Little Quinn (in about the only time in his life that his medical problems broke in his favor) was able to avoid the trache.

They’re blogging his life’s struggle as well, at Mikey’s Love. Love, it turns out, doesn’t conquer everything — but dammit, you’d think a force that powerful would, you know?

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When “Gotcha” journalism goes awry

So I’m watching Channel 2 news tonight, and they do a story on Buffalo’s waterfront development. It seems that Mayor Byron Brown has just returned from some kind of retail convention thing in Las Vegas where has was reportedly schmoozing retail company execs about the current development of Buffalo’s waterfront. One company mentioned was IKEA.

So Channel 2 actually called IKEA, whereupon a rep for the company says that IKEA currently has no plans to open in Buffalo or anyplace else in Upstate NY, mainly because of population issues. (Which makes sense. Nothing wrong with IKEA’s thinking here, although it’s a bummer when some company says no to our city.)

Having that answer in hand from the IKEA rep, a Channel 2 reporter then confronts Mayor Brown by saying something like, “You said you were talking to IKEA about expanding in Buffalo, but we called them, and they say they have no interest! Can you explain that?” The question was clearly phrased with the underlying assumption that Mayor Brown had been BS-ing everyone last week when he mentioned possibly talking to IKEA.

Well, of course, he did nothing of the sort; conventions like the one he intended aren’t where one goes to ink final copies of deals, but rather to just make contacts with people and put the proverbial bugs in their ears. Brown never said that he was entering formal negotiations with IKEA or anything else of the kind. Channel 2’s attempt at a “Gotcha” moment was just plain lame.

(On the topic of IKEA, though, I wonder if that company were to announce a waterfront store if it would then draw the same kind of “anti-big box retail” sentiment that Bass Pro seems to be drawing. Especially since I’ve never yet seen an IKEA that was not of the “suburban big box” variety — a single-use building containing just the IKEA store, surrounded by a giant surface parking lot.)

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Denver International Airport??!!

Via MeFi I see FavoriteArchitecture.org, which purports to be “America’s favorite architecture”, in which 150 buildings are listed in a ranking determined by some kind of public polling methodology.

There are some very notable buildings here, but some are headscatchers — a hotel in Vegas, Denver International Airport, and so on. One wonders if the World Trade Center would have made the list had it not been destroyed, since I’ve yet to read anything highly complimentary of that building’s architecture.

And in the entire list, not one building from Buffalo. Harumph.

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Hey! I know them!

The folks on the front page of the Buffalo News looked familiar to me, and sure enough, they were: Kevin and Val were there, as part of an article on how Blogistan has abetted the efforts of Sabres fans in building a virtual community therein. Very cool, and congrats to them; I always assumed that if Kevin and Val made the front page of the News, it would be as they were carried away in handcuffs by police officers after they protested something George Bush did.

UPDATE: OK, I just perused the article online, and only then did I realize that while the article specifically mentions Kevin and Val prominently, the name of their blog is never mentioned, nor is a URL given. And down the page, they again omit a URL — for the Sabre Rattling blog — even though they at least mention that blog’s name.

Come on, Buffalo News. If you’re going to mention a blog, you have to mention the blog names, and you have to give the URLs. Someone is going to read that story and wonder just how they can find all these nifty Sabres blogs, and they’re not going to know how. This is basic stuff. Could we please get it right, someday?!

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Parking, parking, parking!

In this post from yesterday, I discussed my belief that parking garages need not be disastrous ugly buildings that destroy cityscapes. In comments, “Bill” responds:

The problem is not the ugliness, per se– it is really more that the street life disappears around parking structures. There is no pedestrian activity, and a big block of space becomes the urban equivalent of a desert. Worse, actually– the lack of activity can make these areas more dangerous. We have plenty of parking– and plenty of arid desert in downtown Buffalo.

But again, my point is that this doesn’t have to be the way it is around parking garages. It just doesn’t. I’m not suggesting building a prettier parking garage that is still just a parking garage. Here’s what I’m thinking of:

That’s Eaton Centre in Toronto, facing south on Yonge Street. (Photo filched from this Toronto blog.)

See all that street facade, there? You can make out the actual parking structure lurking behind that, and in the middle of the photo you can also see the entrance to the garage where the cars go in. But flanking that garage entrance, and in front of the parking garage itself, is a regular old streetscape, with stores and, therefore, pedestrian activity. If the new waterfront/Central Wharf project is going to have its own parking — and it will have to, nobody’s going to walk all the way from the parking at HSBC Arena or farther into downtown to this thing, no matter how much parking exists in downtown already — that’s the way to build it.

A building that is primarily parking garage doesn’t have to just be parking garage, and it certainly doesn’t have to be a big gray box. (And note that there’s nothing mysterious about this: it’s just simple urban design principle at work. Build to the street, and hide your parking.)

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We Believe!

Thanks to Buffalo Hodgepodge for pointing out this wonderful Sports Illustrated article about Buffalo and the Sabres.

Weather was the last thing on our minds on Jan. 27, 1991. Not with paradise a mere 47 yards away in Tampa. I looked at the clock to preserve the moment: 9:37 p.m. Around town, similar scenes played out. Byron Brown, then the director of Equal Employment Opportunity for Erie County and now the mayor of Buffalo, was at a Super Bowl party at his mother-in-law’s house on Blaine Avenue in Hamlin Park. Mark Hutchinson, the chef and owner of Hutch’s, one of the city’s most popular eateries, watched with his pals above Casa Di Pizza on the Elmwood Strip. Finally, it was Buffalo’s time. Adam Lingner’s snap was pure, and when the ball arrived in the hands of backup quarterback Frank Reich, I felt a tug on my hand. Our group stood up as one and screamed. Scott Norwood gave it a ride.

You know the rest. SUPER HEARTBREAK The Buffalo News declared on its front page the next day. They wept at Byron Brown’s party. Hutch recalled how one of his friends kicked a table across the floor, stormed out of the restaurant, and locked himself inside his home for seven days. On Montrose Avenue, we were all numb. Barely anyone spoke a word after the kick as we headed out into the darkness, a journey that became all too familiar for Buffalonians in the 1990s.

Tell me about it. I do not doubt for one second that every year on January 27, late in the evening, if you venture out into the still of an wintry Iowa cornfield, and if you listen as hard as it’s possible to listen, you’ll still hear my scream of NOOOOOO!!! echoing across the icy prairie.

What began as a magic ride for an underdog last season has morphed into a collective confidence that hasn’t been felt among Buffalonians since the kickoff of Super Bowl XXV against the Giants. This season the Sabres clinched their first Presidents’ Trophy title and set a franchise record with 53 victories. They hold home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs.

But the euphoria surrounding this Sabres team comes from more than just the winning. It’s the manner in which they have won. In a league that now rewards skating over brawn, the Sabres are the fastest team on the ice. They play with flair and panache, traits normally not associated with rust-belt Buffalo. They win games by coming from behind — 10 times they have overcome a two-goal deficit — which plays to a city predisposed to the underdog role.

By unanimous accounts the locker room consists of character guys. (“They are the most accountable team I have ever been around,” says Buffalo News columnist Bucky Gleason. “And they don’t have much to be accountable for.”)

For seven consecutive months Buffalo has been the top-selling team on Shop.NHL.com. Sales of Sabres merchandise in March increased 657 percent compared with last year. In mid-December there was a 12-week waiting list for a Sabres jersey; the wait has now receded to eight weeks. All 41 home games this season were sold out (as is every playoff game), and 90 percent of the team’s season-ticket holders have already renewed for next year.

Let’s go Buffalo!

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Sixteen more wins!

It seems that the Buffalo Sabres are pretty good. Lots of people seem to think that this might be their year.

Seriously, this is the most excited I’ve seen Buffalo about a sports team ever. I can’t really compare this level of excitement to the Bills’ run of four straight Super Bowl appearances, because for the first three of those, I wasn’t in Buffalo during the playoff runs. I was in college, in Iowa. So the Super Bowl run was a big deal for me, but in a different way; the Bills at that point were my main reminder of home, the way I “spiritually” kept in touch with Western New York. Those teams are special to me for that very reason. For three years I would watch the Bills play at Rich Stadium and say, “That’s my home.”

(I was back in the area for the last of the Super Bowl runs, but by that time the excitement didn’t quite seem as real. I’m not sure that anybody really expected the Bills to be able to beat Dallas in that game; we were happy just to get back for the fourth time in a row, something nobody else has ever done. The iconic image of the fourth time was the guys at the stadium who brought the sign reading, “We’re Back! Deal with it, America”.)

So I can’t say that the excitement surrounding the Sabres this year is similar to the Bills’ run. Maybe it’s more exciting, maybe it’s the same. I suspect that it’s most like the 1990 Bills run, which was the first of the Super Bowl appearances — that was when it most felt like they were on the cusp of winning it all. And that’s the feeling right now, that this is it, and that when this set of games is over, we’ll all know what it feels like to live where the local team really has won it all. Let me tell you, folks: I personally have never felt this pervasive a sense of optimism around these parts, about anything. That means something. We Buffalonians are a hearty bunch, but optimism doesn’t tend to be our strong suit. We tend to be the chip-on-our-shoulders types, the ones who find it advisable to give The Fates the finger before they give us the shaft.

But right now? None of that applies. It’s a new season, and the team that wins sixteen games wins the Stanley Cup. So go Sabres, and get those sixteen W’s. And to everyone else watching, this is the city of chicken wings, beef-on-weck, Sahlen’s hot dogs, and Labatt’s beer. When they win that Cup, we’re going to throw a party for the Ages. The kind of party that Homer would have composed a 6,000 line poem about.

Go Sabres!

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Mall for sale?

According to the Syracuse Post-Standard, Robert Congel, the head of The Pyramid Companies, is considering selling his portfolio of malls and shopping centers except for Syracuse’s own Carousel Center, which is the starting block of his Destiny USA dream/project. Pyramid’s major local holding is the Walden Galleria.

Pyramid’s complete portfolio can be reviewed here. They also own The Shops at West Seneca, which if you’ve been by that location, consists of a Tops grocery store, a K-Mart, and a wide expanse of fenced-off undeveloped land where the old Seneca Mall used to reside. It seems that Congel has put his properties up for sale before, in 1998, but removed them from the market when prices for shopping centers dropped.

(If you’re not familiar with the Destiny USA project, go check it out. I’ve never been able to decide if it’s “out there” in a good way or in an outlandish, “gimme a break” kind of way, but it’s definitely “out there”. The idea makes me imagine if they took a couple of city blocks from Coruscant and plunked it down on the west side of Syracuse.)

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The basses are loaded

Apparently the long-simmering deal to bring a Bass Pro store to downtown Buffalo’s waterfront has finally been brought to a boil: a deal was announced the other day for a newly-constructed complex right down by the water which will include the Bass Pro store and — well, a whole bunch of other stuff.

I have to admit that I’m a bit conflicted here. If they build this thing as proposed, I’ll yield to no one in my happiness about it. But I also will not believe it until I see actual construction being done. And when I say “construction”, I mean cranes and workers and actual work being done. I add that last because I remember the hoopla in Syracuse a few years back when then-Governor Pataki showed up for the “groundbreaking” for Destiny USA, and the repeated hoopla a year or so later when a whole bunch of steel beams were delivered to the site for the “impending” construction. And guess what? That steel is still sitting there, with nary a construction person in sight.

I know, the Bass Pro project isn’t remotely on the insane scale of Destiny USA, but there are other reasons to be skeptical here as well. Buffalo’s history with projects like these is not encouraging, and the history with this particular project is itself particularly spotty. There was a Big Announcement like this two or three years ago, with smiling politicians and Bass Pro senior managers and architectural drawings and all that, but it all came to nothing thus far. I need to see more, folks, before I get excited.

Here’s a quote from a Buffalo News story that gives me pause:

While the pact inked Friday is nonbinding — as was the memorandum of understanding the retailer signed in 2004 — this time around, Hagale said, the potential is greater and the hurdles are fewer. Shifting focus from the Aud to the Central Wharf made a key difference, according to the Bass Pro executive.

After more than three years of talking about Bass Pro, we’re only on our second nonbinding pact, on which there are apparently still “hurdles” to be surmounted.

Here, by the way, is what it supposedly will look like:

I note that they didn’t put the Skyway into their rendering.

I love the way this looks, don’t get me wrong. But I’m not getting excited until the Big Machines start cutting into actual earth. Over the years, Buffalo’s seemingly eternal quest for waterfront development has produced lots of scenes that look like this:

With all due respect (and hope), I’ll withhold my excitement until there’s a scene on the waterfront that looks like this:

Now that will be something worth getting exited over.

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Tales of a Dead President

Over at Buffalonews.com, they’ve posted the nine finalists for the short story contest online, including the Grand Winner of All The Universe (ahem). Apparently they’re only up for thirty days (after which time I’ll probably post my own story here, thus ensuring its permanent location on the Interweb). The stories are as follows:

Twelve Presidents, by ME!!!
The Color of Dreams, by Jennifer Cantie
Goodnight, Ernest, by Partho Sarkar
McKinley’s Blood, by Meg Jones
The Red Carnation, by Lou Rera
One of a Set of Two, by Timothy Driscoll
Love and Anarchy, by Trudy Cusella
The Wilcox House 4, by Beatrice McManis
Far Away Places, by Cynthia Keiken

As of this writing, the only of these stories that I’ve read is Ms. Cantie’s, which I enjoyed. I’ll peruse the others over the next week or so as well.

Maybe next year’s contest will have a futuristic, Science Fiction theme; if so, I’ll set my story at the 2147 Grand Opening of Bass Pro Buffalo!

(And thanks to Sharon LoTempio of the News for the notification that the stories are online.)

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