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Alan traveled across the country to see something he could have seen in Toronto. That’s me, folks: ahead of the curve! In front of the cutting edge!!! (I’m sure this wasn’t an epiphany on Alan’s part.) (UPDATE: And now I see that it’s Alan’s birthday. May his day be free of Libertarians and weirdos from Niagara Falls filling his comment threads with goofy prattle! Of course, never was a more futile birthday wish offered….) Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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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’sDown the rabbit hole….

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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. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….

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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 theDown the rabbit hole….

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I recently read Bill Bryson‘s latest book, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, in which Bryson recounts his experiences as a kid in 1950s America (Des Moines, IA, specifically). This was one of the more delightful reads I’ve enjoyed in a long time, full of the kind of loving naivete that marked, say, the funnier episodes of The Wonder Years or the less-serious parts of Stand By Me. People [in the 50s] looked forward to the future, too, in ways they never would again. Soon, according to every magazine, we were going to have underwater cities off everyDown the rabbit hole….

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One oddly endearing thing I always forget about when I go to Rochester, until I see it again, is the Inner Loop. This is an expressway that runs tightly around the city’s downtown core, presumably built for easy commuter access to downtown. I’ve done a bit of Googling, and I find that like many such expressways, it’s seen as a barrier between the downtown and the outlying neighborhoods, creating an artificial barrier to development or whatnot. Parts of the Inner Loop are below the normal street level (I’m not sure what the actual term for this is), but if we’reDown the rabbit hole….