Today is July 16, 7-16, or…716 day! Which means it’s time to celebrate the 716!
Here is a bunch of photos that I have taken since the last 716 Day. Long live the 716!!! It was hard to pick which ones to use…I limited myself to two photos from any Flickr album I have devoted to images taken of or at a 716 location. (So, no Ithaca or Toronto or Letchworth photos here, among other places!)
I truly believe in the beauty of this region and the loveliness of its people, and I hope my photos capture that.
As I write this, it is Sunday morning, 9 November 2025. Outside it is cold and cloudy and rainy, but according to the local weather predicting folk, that rain will be turning to snow later today, for our first actual snowfall of the 2025-2026 wintry-weather season. Now, longtime readers will know that I, for one, love the snow and the winter and I welcome our wintry overlords, but as happens every year, social media is alive with WNYers saying things like “Ugh, here it comes!” and “Stop saying the S-word!” (as if “snow” is the weather equivalent of “Lord Voldemort”).
I’m not going to lecture people as to why they should embrace the snow, but…yeah, I’m gonna do that, actually. Buffalo and WNY have a lot of problems and there are many things that need to happen if this region is ever to truly rebound, and this one probably isn’t the most important one on the list, but I quite firmly believe that self-image matters, and the degree to which the people of a region communicate their love of their region matters. And like it or not, snow is a big part of living here. It just is. And I don’t think it sends a great message to the rest of the country if a lot of people living here seem to convey that for at least a quarter of the year (and, I’ll be honest, as much as a third of the year), they’d rather be living someplace else.
So once again, Buffalo, let’s embrace the snow. Let’s make it a positive part of our identity instead of making it sound like the “mushy peas” part of our year. Let’s embrace warm clothes and colorful sweaters and fuzzy hats and hot beverages and winter wonderlands, shall we? It’s coming anyway.
DISCLAIMER: I reserve the right to complain about any snow that arrives after St. Patrick’s Day. I have adopted March 17 as my personal cut-off point.
Marv Levy, the great football coach who guided the Buffalo Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls from 1990-1993 during his Hall-of-Fame career, is 100 years old this day.
Those Bills teams hold a strong place on my emotional life, even now that the last Super Bowl appearance is more than 30 years in the past, and at this point we’re nearing the entire run of Coach Levy’s time with the team being 30 years in the past. Those Bills teams were my touchstone for home when I was in college, nearly 1000 miles away from home; when I got homesick, there were the Buffalo Bills. Watching Levy on the sideline, occasionally laughing and more often shouting (and there were times when his lips were very easy to read). Levy’s erudition was always a matter of note and humor around the team; he was noted for including lengthy discourses on historical battles in his gameday pep talks. He would give a long story about a battle and then he’d sum it up by noting that the guy who lost the battle “couldn’t win on the road”. But he also clearly knew some much shorter words, and was not afraid to use them sometimes, even if he was on camera.
Levy also attended Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which is an hour and a half south of Waverly, Iowa, where I went to school at Wartburg College. I don’t recall Coe being one of the schools Wartburg played on a yearly basis…but we drove right by Coe several times a year when passing through Cedar Rapids while on the long drives between home and school.
No, Levy never did manage to get the team over the hump to win the Super Bowl. Did that say something about him as a coach? Maybe a little…but as those years and those teams have passed farther and farther into memory (and some of those players have even left us entirely), the question of “Why did they lose all four!” fades farther into memory as well. All that really matters is the good times of watching those games. I remember the moment in the AFC Championship Game in January 1991, where the Bills earned their first trip to the Super Bowl by beating the Raiders 51-3. At the end, in the last few minutes, quarterback Jim Kelly (who had left the game already, since it was a blowout) was chatting with Levy on the sidelines…but in actuality, Kelly was the straight-man, the distraction to keep Levy from realizing what was coming from behind: the inevitable dumping of the Gatorade. Levy’s look of “Oh, come on, how did I fall for this!” is classic Marv Levy. (You can see the whole moment, including a slow-motion analysis by Dick Enberg, at the 1:55 mark here.)
The best tribute to Marv Levy that I’ve seen came a few years ago, courtesy of former wide receiver Andre Reed, who included this passage in his speech when he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame:
There wasn’t a better teacher than our head coach Marv Levy. He was the definition of ‘speak softly, but carry a big stick.’ He became our father figure, very much of a father figure, and he became even more of a father figure to me when I lost mine. In 1996, when I lost my father, he told me just take as much time as you need. Marv, I’ll always remember those words, your compassion you gave me when I needed it the most. You had to deal with so many egos, I don’t know how the heck you did it. [At this point, the cameras caught Levy on stage, muttering “Neither do I!”] Those big words you used, yeah, we needed dictionaries. We actually needed a thesaurus, too. But one thing we admired about you as a coach was that word respect. We respected the heck out of you. When you respect your coach, you’ll do anything to win for him. I love you, Marv.
I thought about titling this post with the quote that Levy is most known for, something he has made his trademark phrase, which he has used time and again over the years, especially when addressing fans at the stadium: “Where on Earth would you rather be than right here, right now?” But I suspect that chestnut is getting a lot of work today, so I decided to go with another at least quasi-famous Levyism. This one’s from when he coached the Kansas City Chiefs (another reason I can’t totally hate the Chiefs, even if they’re close to 2010s-era Patriots levels of annoyingness):
And finally, I don’t want to allow the 100th birthday of a great football coach to pass without also noting his other great skill, which makes one wonder if a great Broadway composer and songwriter was lost when he decided to go into coaching football instead:
Well…maybe not.
Anyway, Happy Birthday, Coach Levy! I’m glad you’re still right here, right now.
I haven’t edited this photo yet, seeing as how I jut took it yesterday morning, and I’m a couple weeks behind on my photo edits. But I wanted to share this one now because I really love this vantage point. This was taken on Fuhrman Boulevard on Buffalo’s Outer Harbor, down by Wilkeson Pointe (which is supposed to be open this year and sure doesn’t look close to being open, but that’s another thing for another time). I love how the Skyway dominates, but as it falls away, the city rises beyond. Unfortunately this vantage point is slightly marred by the presence of a chain link fence (I’m just now realizing that I should have taken my lens hood off and got closer…but in all honesty, I actually rather like the effect the chain link gives. It lends a bit of perspective, a suggested framing, to the image.)
I wanted to like this more than I did, but it’s worth watching, even if it’s way too frantic: it’s a short film comprised of drone footage of many of Buffalo’s architectural gems. I’ve been nearly everywhere in this film, and it does capture some of the most beautiful buildings and structures in this city. I don’t think the film needed this much fast-cut swooping around, though…but still. Here it is:
A few weeks back I was able to spend an hour or so walking around the main drag of East Aurora on a Saturday evening (The Wife was out with friends! Can you believe that!). I was hoping for some nice street photography, but while the light was pleasant (overcast but it was getting dark by then), there weren’t many people about because aside from the restaurants, all the businesses were closed. I like doing streetscapes more when there are people around. There was action at the local hockey rink, but it wasn’t even hockey! They had a kid’s soccer thing going on there, so that was a bust.
I did get some nice things, though:
A few more in this album. It wasn’t the most productive night of shooting I’ve ever had, but I did like some of the results!
It took a while: we recorded one of our latest initial snowfalls, if not the latest initial snowfall, ever. It didn’t actually snow until November 30, and then last weekend we had our first trademark lake-effect storm of the year. This one didn’t clobber us too badly where we live, which is kind of a change from recent years; we got maybe two feet plus some change. That sounds like a lot, but it fell over two days and really, given some of our recent experiences, two feet is pretty much toward the “inconvenience” end of the scale. (Areas to the south, called “Ski Country”, got the brunt of it this time, and honestly? Good.) And as I write this, we’re in the upper 30s and nicely melting, and we’re going to be in the 40s the next few days. That’s the cycle we like to see: we get popped with snow and then melt a lot of it off. Lather, rinse, repeat–until March or April.
Photos:
This is Hobbes’s first real winter with snow! Last year he couldn’t do much of anything because of the injury that he dealt with until Spring.
All together now: BIG STRETCH!!!
Cazenovia Creek in West Seneca, just outside my workplace, looking upstream
Cazenovia Creek, West Seneca, NY, looking downstream
Fall isn’t here yet, but we can certainly feel it knocking on the door. And I’m fine with that! Fall is my favorite time of year, followed by winter, and lately summer has been rising in my esteem. The summer that’s entering its final weeks was a particularly pleasant one, if my photos (many of which are still awaiting editing!) are any judge. There’s one big post about my day shooting around the City of Buffalo that’s still waiting in the wings…but for now, here’s my latest panorama of the Buffalo Niagara region as imaged from the sledding hill at Chestnut Ridge Park. Note that now you can see clearly the emerging superstructure of the next home of the Buffalo Bills, and between the cranes, on the horizon, the faint skyline of Niagara Falls, ON.
Last Sunday morning, after leaving the Outer Harbor on a photography walk, I grabbed my camera as I was cresting the Skyway heading into downtown Buffalo. (Relax, there wasn’t anybody behind me for about half a mile…it was a really dead morning on the Skyway right then.)
Some folks want to tear down the Skyway because…you know, actually, I think I’ll save that topic for another time. I’ve got another photo that I haven’t edited yet that I think will work better in the context of talking about the Skyway. For now, I still feel a thrill whenever I’m driving on it toward Buffalo and the road crests as the city rises beneath you….
Downtown Buffalo does look kind of small from this angle, because it’s a narrow and lengthy downtown. Still an exciting vista!
