Buffalo Unbound, page 10
Mary’s three kids can’t get away with much nonsense since she knows every dodge and how it’s played—though I understand that school pranks are much more sophisticated these days. Letting a greased pig run through the halls, dropping a thousand marbles down the stairs, setting alarm clocks to go off at noon in all the lockers, placing dry ice in urinals, and putting For Sale signs on the lawns of the faculty is as passé as a Mr. Bill bobblehead. Such Paleolithic hijinks have apparently been replaced with hacking into school computers, creating controversial blogs and provocative Facebook pages, and secretly bidding against teachers on eBay during study hall.
Still, other routines remain the same. People in the Buffalo area often eat dinner between five and six o’clock, a remnant of being a factory town. After all, it’s Amherst, not Argentina. Suddenly, the mall is empty but for a few dead-enders and latchkey kids. Despite whatever diet or health craze is sweeping the nation, Western New Yorkers still enjoy hearty foods like casseroles, meatloaf, chili, and lasagna. The body’s internal pipes are viewed the same way as the ones inside your home—they need to be lined in order to keep from freezing. Substantive meals also contribute to the congeniality of the population. People who dine strictly on chopped salads, Soyjoys, and celery stalks are tired, cold, and hungry all of the time and tend to be irritable. Ask any rancher: in a blizzard, it’s always the undernourished that fall away from the herd.
Our storybook Main Street, which goes from downtown Buffalo through cloverleafy Amherst, has been under construction since before I was born, and locals like to say it’s how you can tell that a Democrat is mayor. Over the past forty years, Amherst has been home to a certain amount of urban sprawl involving office parks, big box stores, chain restaurants, and displaced deer, all of which have caused other towns to put laws on their books specifically intended to prevent them from “becoming like Amherst.” That said, having the University at Buffalo’s North Campus in the backyard offers local residents beautifully appointed hiking and biking trails, along with easy access to numerous lectures, sporting events, films, concerts, theater, and dance. And some good grazing for the deer. When it comes to grazing for bipeds, you can’t beat nearby Duff’s, on Sheridan Drive, where they make wings hot, serve beer cold, and stay open late. The suburban eatery recently edged out Buffalo’s famed Anchor Bar as “Lord of the Wings” in an episode of the Travel Channel’s Food Wars.
Amherst is just large enough to require left-hand turn signals at major intersections, but not so big that my mom can’t listen to the police scanner and match up the addresses with people she knows. However, I still use my Amherst address on my driver’s license since the Manhattan DMV is Dante’s ninth circle of hell. Mom loves to call and give dramatic readings of the letters accompanying my speeding tickets that start with, “Driving is a privilege, not a right.”
The Best-Kept Secret
When I was growing up in the seventies, there was no diagnosis of attention deficit disorder. The more kindly teachers said you were energetic, while the others jotted down “behavioral problems.” My brain was like a television set with 100 channels (an anachronism since we only had four at the time) continuously flipping to the next show. Somehow I discovered that high doses of sugar helped reduce this frantic state of mind. At the time it didn’t make sense that a stimulant could help calm down overstimulation, but then I don’t understand how Ritalin, also a stimulant, is supposed to help ADHD. Anyway, it worked, and so I had something called sponge candy squirreled away in my locker and desk drawers. My sponge habit had no side effects, other than some rascally mice occasionally helping themselves to my stash and perhaps a bit of acne.
Most Buffalonians don’t know a MoonPie from a bear claw. But sponge candy—carmelized sugar with spun molasses surrounded by milk or dark chocolate—thrives in cool, overcast weather (not unlike silverfish) and makes up the top layer of the Buffalo food pyramid, right between chicken wings and beef on weck (thinly sliced rare roast beef and horseradish sauce on kummelweck—a roll topped with kosher salt and caraway seeds), but without the international notoriety. Sponge candy is inside information, what you learn from actually living in the Buffalo area, like how to turn the wheel into a skid on an icy road. People say Buffalo’s best-kept secret is the gorgeous summer weather, but it’s actually sponge candy. You can find it everywhere (even in the supermarket bulk bins) in the Sponge Triangle, which reaches from Rochester, New York, in the east to Erie, Pennsylvania, in the west, but pretty much disappears beyond there. By the time you reach Albany or Pittsburgh or Cleveland, you’re out of sponge range. A few isolated places around the country claim to make it under names like sponge taffy, cinderblock, sea foam, molasses puffs, honeycomb, and fairy food, but it’s like eating Buffalo wings or pizza outside of Buffalo, and who are they kidding?
You can find terrific sponge candy at any local candy shop, including Fowler’s, Watson’s, Sweet Tooth, Aléthea’s, Bella Mia, Antoinette’s, Condrell’s, Oliver’s, Platter’s, Yia Yia’s Goodies, Ko-Ed, and Park Edge Sweets. Trust me, I’ve tried them all. And at Easter time, most carry chocolate bowling balls and bowling pins! Grocery stores and specialty food stores are hit-or-miss because sponge candy goes off once outside a narrow band of temperature (so don’t put it in the freezer or take it to the beach). It also goes stale rather quickly. And if the chocolate coating flakes off and moisture gets inside, think cotton candy in a rainstorm.
My favorite sponge dealer is Parkside Candy on Main Street. Around since 1927, this old-time soda fountain is now like a crumbling French château, complete with the original mirrored mahogany doors and windows. Another Parkside location was so reliably unrenovated that scenes for the 1930s-era movie The Natural were filmed there in 1983. I was originally in the film but ended up on the cutting-room floor, probably because I accidentally rode through on my ten-speed Takara bicycle while wearing a Walkman blaring “Message In a Bottle” by The Police and was oblivious to the classic cars lining the street and the film crew frantically waving their arms at me. But honestly, who’d ever heard of a movie being shot in Buffalo? People turned out in droves to watch filming and to catch a glimpse of Robert Redford. As a result, there was no shortage of volunteers to be extras. I just wasn’t one of them.
More recently, Keanu Reeves was in town for the movie Henry’s Crime, in which he plays a toll taker involved in a bank heist. The plot requires a Prohibition tunnel, which makes Buffalo the perfect location. Over the years the city has been called “snowy” and “damp” and even “dreary,” but never “dry.” When asked his opinion on what is the best part of Buffalo, Reeves replied, “The people.”
Nowadays I like to sit in the romantic alcove booth in the back of Parkside Candy, where it’s easy to imagine people coming in for a fifteen-cent sandwich and paying ten cents for a twelve-ounce Coke during the Great Depression, when waitstaff made fifteen cents an hour and tips were rare. Or during the fifties, when Buffalo was in its rock-around-the-clock heyday, and on a Saturday night teenage boys with duck’s ass hairdos brought in girls wearing poodle skirts and cardigan sweaters for sodas and sundaes. Although the licorice pipes and chocolate cigars are long gone, in addition to their sponge candy and other confections Parkside still has pecan dixies and wonderful old-fashioned homemade lollipops in flavors like Irish cream, peach schnapps, and piña colada. I’m thinking that if you’re trying to make it from a three-martini lunch to happy hour, the lollipops might work along the lines of a nicotine patch and tide you over.
There’s an old, worn booklet about the founding of Parkside that the waitresses will let you see if you ask for it. It’s the only remaining copy, and in New York City they’d have it enclosed in a glass case instead of allowing it to be passed around while sticky-fingered customers down parfaits and tin roof sundaes. The text insists the employees are so happy and contented because of all the light and air in the factory adjacent to the restaurant. I especially like to read that part aloud to the staff.
Although Buffalo and beer can often be found in the same sentence, we have another highly esteemed local libation: loganberry. Much like Buffalonians themselves, loganberries are sturdy and resistant to frost and disease. And like many Buffalo children, this concoction was developed by accident, when lawyer and horticulturist James Harvey Logan was crossing berry plants in his Santa Cruz, California, garden. In the late 1800s, loganberry juice went on sale at Crystal Beach, a popular amusement park and summer resort across the Niagara River in Ontario, Canada, and has been a regional specialty ever since.
Other local favorites are fried bologna and onion sandwiches, and a fish fry where the beer-batter-laden haddock hangs off the edge of the plate. When it’s accompanied by a generous helping of glistening French fries, you can almost hear your arteries snapping shut as the plates hit the table. Although standards for Catholics have been relaxed with regard to not eating meat on Fridays (the day Christ died, so one refrains from blood-based entrees), the fish fry is still a popular practice in Buffalo as dictated by the Bible, in Paul’s letter to Mrs. Paul. What’s not in the Bible, or apparently any grammar book, for that matter, is whether a plurality of these events should be advertised as “Fish Frys” or “Fish Fries.”
At the Taste of Buffalo festival, one can sample ethnic fare from Afghanistan to Venezuela. It’s the second-largest food festival in the United States after Taste of Chicago, with over 450,000 people enjoying fun and foodstuffs by the forklift. Delicacies include barbecued spaghetti, roast beef sundaes, and beer-cheese soup. Check, please. If you’re not in a carb coma by then, get ready for the annual Sorrento Cheese Italian Heritage Festival, which usually runs the following weekend on Hertel Avenue in North Buffalo’s Little Italy. Devout Pastafarians won’t go away hungry or disappointed. Fortunately, it’s possible to work off a few calories by building cheese sculptures and playing in the bocce ball tournament.
Labor Day weekend brings the National Buffalo Wing Festival, with over a hundred varieties of chicken wings, including garlic parmesan, Cajun barbecue, and Thai chili, along with competitions such as the US Chicken Wing Eating Championship, various sauce-offs, the Blue Cheese Bowl (bobbing for wings), and the grueling .5K Chicken Wing Run. In an example of life imitating art, Buffalonian Drew “The Wing King” Cerza got the idea from Osmosis Jones, a movie that stars Bill Murray as an indiscriminate eater training to attend the Super Bowl of junk food, the National Buffalo Wing Festival. A rip-roaring success since its founding, in 2002, one wing has led to another and now there’s also a National Buffalo Wing Hall of Flame and Cluckers for Cash promotion. Hollywood thought the joke was on Buffalo, but the film lost money, whereas this wingding of a festival attracts thousands of out-of-towners and pours lots of cash into local coffers in addition to raising funds for several charities.
Gone but not forgotten is the locally owned and operated Freddie’s Donuts, which had the best glazed donuts from the 1930s through the 1980s. When Krispy Kreme arrived in Manhattan in the late 1990s, Buffalo expats phoned one another and yelled, “Freddie’s Donuts!” We ran. Or took the subway. They weren’t as good, but close. And rumors continue to swirl that the Krispy Kreme secret recipe was purchased (or stolen!) from local proprietor Freddie Maier.
One can still get great donuts at places like Paula’s, home of the celebrated Texas donut, Dickie’s, Famous Doughnuts, and Russ’s—and Budwey’s makes a mean apple fritter—but it sure was sad when they recently tore old Freddie’s down. Nothing said quadruple bypass quite like a dozen Freddie’s hot glazed donuts in the maroon-and-white box.
Let’s Go, Buffalo!
The universal Buffalo sport, or maybe it’s more of a dance step, is the flamingo. This is where you stand on one foot while yanking on or off your boots. It’s easy to spot Buffalonians and other Snowbelters in airports—people of all ages, shapes, and sizes deftly removing shoes while holding luggage without needing to sit down or even balance against the metal detector. It’s an acquired skill, like thumping bricks of greasy black snow off from underneath the car without getting your shoes or pant legs dirty.
The Buffalo News (one of the few profitable papers in the country!) has oft been criticized by the intelligentsia for having a daily sports section, but not a daily arts section. As Judy Garland said about singing “Over the Rainbow” for the umpteenth time, “Give the people what they want and then go out and get a hamburger.” Well, Buffalonians are ballpark-frank-carrying don’t-cry-for-me-Buffalo-Sabres to-the bleacher-born wild about their teams.
Buffalo was one of the first American cities to have a pro baseball team, which began playing on August 3, 1877. In their many incarnations, the Buffalo Bisons are one of the most senior teams in baseball history. The minor-league Bisons play to good crowds in the downtown Coca-Cola Field, but the hope of major-league baseball coming to the city is right up there with a Bass Pro shop moving in and the Virgin Mary appearing on Lake Erie. It’s the Buffalo version of fantasy baseball.
War Memorial, better known as “The Rockpile,” a demolished stadium where the Bisons and Bills used to play, was employed to depict a major-league stadium from the 1930s in filming the 1984 Robert Redford baseball movie, The Natural. It wasn’t much of a stretch since the downtown Buffalo stadium had been a Works Progress Administration project, constructed between 1935 and 1937 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. However, the once majestic edifice was poorly maintained, and sportswriter Brock Yates said that in later years the stadium “looks as if whatever war it was a memorial to had been fought within its confines.”
From 1970 to 1978, the city was home to the short-lived Buffalo Braves basketball team, now the Los Angeles Clippers. Likewise, two similarly ephemeral soccer teams, the Buffalo Stallions (1979–1984) and the Buffalo Blizzards (1992–2001), both indoor leagues (for obvious reasons), briefly kicked the ball around town. The Buffalo Bandits have been playing lacrosse since 1992, with encouragement from their whimsically named cheerleaders, the Bandettes.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, four-time New York Democratic senator and big Buffalo Bills fan, once said, “I don’t think there’s any point in being Irish if you don’t know that the world is going to break your heart eventually.” He could’ve been talking about his favorite team. Or, as one local T-shirt proclaims, Buffalo is a drinking town with a football problem.
No, Buffalo’s football team is not named the Bills in honor of all the exorbitant heating bills local residents receive every winter, or for the number of repo men wandering its streets, or for the fact that we’re currently the debt-collection capital of the country. “The Bills” was the winning entry in a local contest, which named the team after the Buffalo Bills, a football franchise from the All-American Football Conference that merged with the Cleveland Browns back in 1950. That team was named after William Frederick “Buffalo Bill” Cody. The Bills’ cheerleaders are known as the Buffalo Jills, and the mascot is Billy Buffalo.
In September of 1962, the Buffalo Bills claimed future congressman Jack Kemp (1935–2009) for a $100 waiver fee in what’s been called one of the biggest bargains in professional football history. Kemp completed twenty-one of thirty-five passes for 230 yards and two touchdowns in his very first game before delighted fans carried him off the field.
Buffalo is the only team to win four consecutive American Football Conference Championships and lose four consecutive Super Bowls. The most legendary moment and moniker in Bills history comes from Scott Norwood’s missed kick in 1991’s Super Bowl XXV against the New York Giants, famously noted as “wide right.”
Oddly enough, this incident became a plot point in the 1998 hipster movie Buffalo ’66, about a guy born during a championship Bills game (forcing his mother, a die-hard fan, to miss the blessed event). As a young adult, Billy (of course) places $10,000 on the Bills in a Super Bowl game that’s lost by a player named Scott Wood missing the winning field goal. Angry Billy winds up in prison after taking the rap for a crime he didn’t commit in order to repay his bookie, and upon release he wants to murder the Bills kicker. Buffalo comes across as a gritty working-class city with slab concrete buildings and corner saloons cemented in the seventies. Meantime, Billy’s love interest appears to have self-esteem so low that the battered women’s shelter is holding a cot with her name on it.
The team was also part of one of the most controversial episodes in NFL history, known as the catchy “Music City Miracle.” Late in the fourth quarter of a wild card playoff game against the Tennessee Titans in Nashville on January 8, 2000, Titans tight end Frank Wycheck fielded a kickoff and threw what appeared to be an illegal forward pass to Titan Kevin Dyson, who ran down the sidelines for a seventy-five-yard touchdown. Following a long official review, the touchdown ruling was upheld and the Titans won the game 22–16.
A year after a famous 2007 end zone fight following a game against the Cincinnati Bengals, The Wall Street Journal anointed Buffalo Bills fans as some of the most irrationally exuberant in all of sports history. Well, those weren’t the exact words they used. On the bright side, a Sports Illustrated survey ranked them first in tailgating and about sixth in fan IQ. Buffalonians are quick to point out that some rabble-rousing must be attributed to the 15 to 20 percent omnibibulous Canadian turnout who like to get started early when it comes to team spirits. A popular tailgate breakfast is kegs and eggs followed by roasting a pig on a spit and bowling-ball shots (yes, these involve a real bowling ball, but you can wear your own shoes).
