Buffalo Unbound, page 11
In January 2008, the Bills became the only American football team to play annual home games outside the United States by moving one of its games for each of the next five years to the Rogers Centre in Toronto, Ontario. In 2009, they celebrated their fiftieth anniversary to great local fanfare, complete with the Bills logo appearing on Labatt’s beer sold in New York State. However, the team enjoyed only one winning season in the past ten years, which has resulted in the usual round of jokes. WBFO radio host Bert Gambini told me, “I had two Bills tickets on my dashboard when I stopped in at the store. When I came out, the windshield was smashed and there were two more.”
Making an infinite loop on the Internet you’ll find:
Q. What do the Buffalo Bills and Billy Graham have in common?
A. Both can get 70,000 people on their feet yelling, “Jesus Christ!”
Q. How many Buffalo Bills does it take to win a Super Bowl?
A. Nobody knows, and we may never find out.
Still, they’ve managed to put Buffalo on the map in another way. Bills receiver Terrell Owens had a seven-episode VH1 reality series called The T.O. Show. How could visitors not be attracted to lines like “Get your fur underwear out because it’s going to be cold.” If locals decide to purchase a pair of his $137,000 asteroid-sized diamond earrings to go with said ermine undies, not only will it do wonders for the economy but we can save energy by turning down the streetlights at night. Even though Owens didn’t take the Bills to the play-offs, after his one-year contract expired, fans didn’t ask him to leave his copy of the key to the city in his mailbox on the way out.
Win or lose, snow or shine, members of Bills Backers, a Buffalo Bills fan club with 330 chapters in all fifty states and twelve countries, gather together in their local bars, restaurants, and community centers around the world to support their favorite team on game days.
The Buffalo Sabres ice hockey team joined the National Hockey League in the 1970–71 season and were also the product of a name-the-team contest. Previously, the Buffalo Bisons were an American Hockey League franchise that played in the city from 1940 to 1970 and became Calder Cup champs in 1943, 1944, 1946, 1963, and 1970. Despite twenty-eight trips to the play-offs, the Sabres have never taken home the Stanley Cup. However, in 1973, when they lost to the Montreal Canadiens in game six in Buffalo, the night memorably concluded with grateful fans chanting, “Thank you, Sabres!”
The “wide right” equivalent for Buffalo hockey is “in the crease” or “no goal” and was deemed by ESPN as the worst call in sports history, made during the 1999 Stanley Cup finals between the Sabres and the Dallas Stars. In front of each goal there’s a goal crease surrounded by thin red lines and filled in with light blue. At the time, it was illegal to score a goal if an offensive player’s skate entered the crease before the puck did. During the sixth game, Dallas Stars winger Brett Hull scored a triple-overtime goal with his skate clearly in the crease (but the puck was not) and ended the series, with the Stars taking the cup. This was most certainly the inspiration for a T-shirt that says Buffalo Hockey—Un-Puck’n Believable.
Mike Harrington, longtime Buffalo News sports reporter and columnist (and classmate of mine at Sweet Home High School) takes a Dickensian approach in summing up fandom. “Is this the best time in ages to be a Buffalo sports fan? Or is it the worst? Depends on your view. The Bills and Sabres are struggling to put winning products together but they’ve never been better at putting together the experience of going to the game rather than staying home on your couch.”
There’s not a lot of armadillo racing in Buffalo, or rodeo, unless you include a few holdouts still driving Isuzu Rodeos, long rumored to be chick cars, with wider berths to accommodate “the cake effect.” But you’ll find no such softies in my favorite local sports league, the Queen City Roller Girls, who engage in full-contact roller derby. They can pack a rink to fire-hazard proportions with their porn-star personas and WrestleMania maneuvers, such as “bootie blocks,” which involve pushing a butt up in the jammer’s face, and I won’t even get started on “whips.” Launched in 2006 with three self-proclaimed “radical, free-thinking, free-wheeling women who love the smell of the rink and the feel of eight wheels under their feet,” QCRG now numbers more than 120 women on five teams—the Suicidal Saucies, the Nickel City KnockOuts, the Devil Dollies, the Lake Effect Furies, and the Alley Kats. Halftime means a live rock band and dozens of loaves of Al Cohen’s seeded rye bread being energetically tossed into the crowd. The leaning-forward-in-our-seats evening concludes with a raffle, oftentimes a crash couch donated by the local FWS. Following one particularly vicious bout, a number of bad asses had their heads shaved to benefit Buffalo’s Roswell Park Cancer Institute. Be sure to pick up a program, which, in addition to listing the rules and participants, encourages “clever shouts” and warns against yelling something stupid such as, “Nice tits, ladies!” which could obviously be harmful to your health.
When I eventually form my roller derby team, the Sweet Home Sweat Hags, we’ll need some kick-ass names to match our moves. I considered going with Lunachick, but Mia Psycho’s Roller Derby Name Generator, found online, had other ideas. She’s got me down as Slaughter Pestilential, which for a vegetarian with seasonal allergies sounds positively harmful.
Connecting the Drops
Yes, there is a Buffalo Yacht Club. Only there aren’t any yachts. It’s more like the Buffalo Sailboat and Two Cabin Cruisers Club. Still, formed in 1860, The BYC is the third-oldest yacht club in America, with quality boating facilities in both the United States and Canada, thereby having the added cachet of being an international yacht club. But size doesn’t matter (please relay that to Forbes magazine when they’re discussing our incredible shrinking population), and despite the relatively short season, locals love being on the water. You needn’t join any club to enjoy the waterfront’s fabulous views, picturesque pathways, ice cream gazebo, clam bar, and restaurants. It’s an ideal place to spend time whether you’re a sailor, diner, picnicker, sunbather, or just in the mood for a stroll.
Of such strategic importance are the chain of five inland Great Lakes—Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior—that control over them has been fought for by the British, the French, the Americans, the Indians, and even the Confederates during the Civil War.
The Iroquois called it Erie Tejocharonting, later shortened to just Erie by Franciscan friars, and it was the last Great Lake to be discovered by white men. Lake Erie is the second smallest by surface area, and the shallowest, thereby making it the most treacherous—home to the largest storms that kick up in the least amount of time, and thus a graveyard for ships and their sailors. It’s also home to a large number of ice-fishing mishaps, although a number of those can be attributed to excess beer and human error rather than weather conditions. (Technically, I do not consider fishing a sport since, like hunting, the other side is unaware that they’re engaged in a competition.)
Warm southern air masses collide with cold fronts coming down from the Arctic to produce gale-force winds, waves of legendary might, and even waterspouts—funnel-shaped columns of air and spray, basically water tornadoes. Lake Erie is also the most likely to freeze, enabling a wall of snow to blow across the surface unimpeded, the way it did during the Blizzard of ’77. When I was growing up, WKBW radio personality Stan Roberts used to give the daily weather report for “Lake Dreary.”
Going back in time, Lake Erie is most famous as the battleground where the United States dealt a devastating blow to Great Britain’s Royal Navy during the War of 1812, a turning point that was to ensure American control of the lake. The Battle of Lake Erie also gave Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry occasion to hoist the famous flag that read “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” and then scribble his legendary message on the back of an old envelope—“Dear General: We have met the enemy and they are ours. Two ships, two brigs, and one schooner.”
The Barbary Coast and Somalia have nothing on the Great Lakes when it comes to swashbuckling. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these freshwater seas were rife with plundering. However, pirates were more likely to have wool scarves on their shoulders rather than a parrot, and because of a distinct lack of gold in the area, the booty was timber, munitions, fish, supplies, women, and liquor, though not always in that order.
The Buffalo waterfront was equally perilous, with sailors spoiling for a fight and con men seeking out marks. Taverns with heartwarming names such as Tub of Blood and Peg Leg House usually had trapdoors leading to a room where suckers were served drugged drinks, robbed, and then rolled down a slide into the canal with a stone around their necks to make it look like suicide. Bottoms up!
The most complex, or perhaps convoluted, Great Lakes character would have to be Mormon marauder James Jesse Strang (1813–1856). He crowned himself king of a breakaway Mormon sect, then claimed Beaver Island in Lake Michigan to be a separate country from the United States and his subjects its citizens. Passing ships were raided, the men murdered, and the women taken captive. While Strang became the only (self-appointed) monarch in US history to actually control shipping lanes, the government cried treason.
In addition to piracy, Strang practiced polygamy and animal sacrifice. All that was left was to run for public office, so he campaigned for and won a seat in the Michigan state legislature as a Democrat in 1853. Strang was reelected in 1855, but his term was cut short upon his being assassinated in 1856 by malcontents among his own people, in part for his decree that female Strangites must wear bloomers.
Though Strang and other Friends of Jolly Roger were finally stopped, plenty of booty still gets smuggled into Canada today—diamonds, drugs, tobacco, firearms, and liquor. From Canada to the United States is a regular illegal flow of nonpasteurized cheese, fireworks, and prescription drugs. Best when used together! Admittedly, it doesn’t make much sense that we’re taking such great pains to smuggle in bottle rockets and Ambien when automatic weapons, crack, and smack are available on certain street corners in downtown Buffalo. Then there’s the question of why so many idiots wait until July 1 to try and sneak fireworks across the border.
In olden days, as now, Niagara Falls has always tried to drum up business with new and exciting attractions (sadly, the Elvis Museum didn’t last). On September 8, 1827, long before PETA and the SPCA were formed, a condemned double-topsail schooner called Michigan was decorated like a pirate ship, with fake humans tied to the masts, and sent over Horseshoe Falls to provide entertainment and, more importantly, cash for local businesses from the more than ten thousand onlookers who came to see the spectacle. To make things even more interesting, the boat was fitted out as a veritable zoo, filled with dogs and cats, two bears, two raccoons, an Arabian camel, an elk, a fox, several hawks and geese, and a swan, though accounts differ as to the exact contents of the menagerie. Many animals were caged or tied to the ship and thus were doomed. The two bears jumped free and were able to swim to Goat Island. A goose made it to shore and was rescued, probably just in time for Sunday dinner. And one assumes the more intelligent birds flew away. Had the Buffalo Zoo been around, they could have cadged a few deer.
Nowadays, entrepreneurship is mostly under control, and visiting the falls is truly breathtaking. There are public parks with spectacular vistas, nicely appointed trails along the top, a boat ride underneath, and a guided climb behind the falls. The last two attractions are very egalitarian, as nobody looks cool in a blue or yellow plastic rain poncho, not even Brad Pitt. The falls are open twenty-four hours, 365 days a year and illuminated with different colored lights every night. On Friday and Saturday nights in the summer there are fireworks. Still, you can only gape at mighty Niagara for so long, so when you’re done, although there is a whole host of amusements for young and old, I recommend a visit to the nearby Butterfly Conservatory, where the free-floating luminescent creatures appear to be auditioning for sleeping-pill commercials, and cute little toads hop about.
The Niagara River, of which the falls is a part, flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario and forms part of the border between the province of Ontario in Canada and New York State, thus making regulation an international affair. When people say how Richard Nixon almost single-handedly destroyed democracy, I like to throw in, “Yes, but he cleaned up the Great Lakes.” Likewise, when anything untoward is said about George W. Bush, I can now say, “Yes, but he prevented large-scale diversion of water from the Great Lakes.” More recently, President Obama’s 2010 budget proposed $475 billion to restore the lakes, protect native species, and prevent against dangerous intruders, in particular huge Asian carp, which are as ugly as they are aggressive and jump so high that they’ve given boaters black eyes, broken bones, and concussions.
The Great Lakes Compact was signed into law in 2008, thereby banning the diversion of water to places outside the region and regulating large-scale water use. The legislation was prompted when, in 1998, the province of Ontario approved a proposal to take water from Lake Superior for the purpose of shipping it to Asia in a tanker. This outraged citizens across the region and highlighted the need for strong protection of the lakes, which contain 90 percent of the nation’s surface freshwater and 20 percent of the world’s available freshwater. In a time of global warming and climate change, when water is more valuable than oil, the agreement is a major step forward in protecting the environmental health of the area. And as a result, the three poorest cities in the nation, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo, will soon be transformed into the Rust Belt Riviera, the US equivalents of Nice, Monte Carlo, and Cannes.
So buy now, while lakefront property is still available! In January of 2009, Forbes ranked Buffalo as the fourth-strongest housing market in the nation, although the reason behind this is that there hadn’t exactly been a boom to begin with. Still, your real estate dollars go far in Western New York, where a picture-perfect four bedroom, three bathroom house with a big backyard and a bowling alley nearby can be had for under $300,000. While overextended national banks were failing or needing bailouts, Buffalo’s were in good shape, making loans, and experiencing fewer foreclosures. BusinessWeek named it one of the top twenty communities to ride out a recession. I’ll be renewing this subscription, unlike the one for that other business magazine.
To Be Perfectly Frank
The National Trust for Historic Preservation named Buffalo one of its 2009 Dozen Distinctive Destinations, highlighting the city’s “staggering range of cultural resources as well as some of the country’s most captivating architecture.” Indeed, the city contains landmarks by almost every great American architect of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “The interweaving of great architecture, landscape architecture and important historic sites makes Buffalo a must-see destination,” according to National Trust president Richard Moe.
Buffalo lays claim to five Frank Lloyd Wright houses. Wright (1867–1959) is considered by many to be the greatest architect of the twentieth century, with an organic style that blends locale and landscape with earth-hugging profiles and low-slung free-flowing spaces. The Darwin D. Martin House, a prairie house complex of five buildings with a new and highly inventive glass-walled visitors’ pavilion designed by Toshiko Mori, is open to the public while undergoing a much-welcome renovation after the University at Buffalo installed that groovy 1960s harvest gold kitchen. The Graycliff Estate (thirty minutes away by car in Derby, New York) has been lovingly and painstakingly restored and is also open for tours.
As it happens, you’ll often see the word Wright in conjunction with restoration because although he was a groundbreaking architect, his engineering left a bit to be desired, such as firm foundations, waterproof roofs, and all those other tiny touches that not only make a house a home, but also keep a building standing upright.
The volunteers at the Frank Lloyd Wright properties are nothing if not dedicated, and I’ll go so far as to say devoted. Pete and I were out joyriding one bright winter day and pulled up at Graycliff to see how the renovations were coming along, even though we knew the lakefront property wasn’t open for tours at that time of year (back then—now there are winter tours). A man was locking the door on his way out, but chatted with us excitedly about the ongoing work. The next thing we knew, he was opening the house up again, turning on the lights, and taking us on the most wonderful two-hour private tour. It transpired that he lived not far from Pete’s place, so Pete gave him the address and invited him to stop by sometime in the summer to see his woodland garden. The man said that he was dying of cancer and wasn’t expected to live that long. It was so moving and memorable that he’d decided to share his precious time with us along with his love for the Graycliff property. I often think back to his kindness and generosity. Sadly, this story doesn’t end with a joke, unless our friend beat the cancer and is still giving tours of his beloved Graycliff. That would indeed be an excellent joke.
It’s possible to do drive-bys of the privately owned two-story stucco Walter V. Davidson house (locally known as “Frank Lloyd Wright on a budget”) and the redbrick William R. Heath House, with its massive square porch supports and art glass windows. And this being Buffalo, it’s feasible to linger outside for a long while without neighbors calling Homeland Security, especially if you hold a Perry’s ice cream cone. In fact, I was standing in front of the Davidson house chatting with a group of itinerant professors when the owner, Russell J. Maxwell, came outside with two enormous Irish wolfhounds. Instead of loosing the hounds on us, we were invited in for a terrific tour and liberally basted with canine saliva. It transpired that the Irish wolfhounds had recently come off a celebrity encounter with Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein fame, but they seemed neither to suffer from dry mouth nor be at all starstruck—true Buffalonians.
