Buffalo Unbound, page 13
The rest of the year I head to Allentown to enjoy all kinds of great food, from The Towne restaurant’s famed spanakopita and Cozumel’s stuffed mushrooms to Quaker Bonnet’s elephant ears (crispy, sweet cinnamon Danish) and the Rue Franklin’s warm raspberry gratin, and to walk among a mixture of fine and funky architecture. The Secrets of Allentown tour, held in early fall, will gain you entrée into some spectacular private residences. However, the recently renovated Wilcox Mansion, where Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1901, following the assassination of William McKinley, is open daily to the public and offers tours on the half hour. The twenty-sixth president didn’t stay long in Buffalo, but I think this American original and foremost urban cowboy, who actually had to borrow a proper suit, coat, and shoes for the swearing-in ceremony, would have felt right at home living here in Allentown.
Buffalo Past and Prologue
It’s a shame the entire Western New York workforce didn’t triumph the way local working girls did at the start of the 1901 Pan-Am Exposition. When out-of-town prostitutes invaded their turf, what followed was eight hours of scratching, biting, and hair pulling that police classified as a full-scale riot. The interlopers were ordered to leave, and a Buffalo newspaper reporter described it as a “noteworthy victory for hometown industry.”
The Rust Belt blues is an oft-sung and well-known tune by now. Heavy industry and manufacturing moved south and overseas, taking half the population along with it. Grain transportation, which had once been the lifeblood of Buffalo, bypassed the city following the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway, in 1959.
Meantime, the advent of electric refrigeration put an end to the harvest and shipment of ice throughout the Northeast, and as far away as Cuba and the West Indies. The subterranean springs that fed several lakes southeast of the city, Cattaraugus County’s Lime Lake in particular, created marvelous crops of clean ice that could be used in cooking and refreshments. At its peak in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the industry harvested and sold over 150,000 tons of ice while providing jobs for six hundred men per season and almost as many horses. One clever quadruped soon caught on to the fact that if he fell into the water he received a shot of moonshine to warm up, and thus he began diving into the drink whenever he felt like a quick pick-me-up. I suspect that when the ice age dried up, this enterprising horse hoofed it to Atlantic City and took up high diving off the famous Steel Pier.
Mark Twain, who famously exhorted, “Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer, we’d have all frozen to death,” took a one-third interest in and was coeditor of the Buffalo Express (which would merge with the Buffalo Courier in 1926 and go out of business in 1982), but left in 1871, after less than two years. Our city somehow became a stopping point rather than a staying place for a number of people on their way to better things. American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, who epitomized the Jazz Age, spent the years 1898 to 1901 and 1903 to 1908 in Buffalo, where he attended Holy Angels and then Nardin Academy while his father worked as a soap salesman for Procter & Gamble. When Fitzgerald was almost twelve, his father lost that job and the family returned to Saint Paul, Minnesota. Most people think his short stories were inspired by Saint Paul and take place there, but we know better. Fitzgerald cleverly disguised his work so as not to have statues erected and parks and theaters named for him all over Buffalo.
The 1980s gave rise to a local organization called Buffalonians by Choice as a way of distinguishing between those freely opting to reside in the area and those being held against their will in hostage/captive situations. Similar optimism-turned-desperation produced a T-shirt that reads Buffalo—Looking Better Every Day. This goes nicely with the existential moniker coined by local artist Michael Morgulis, City of No Illusions. That’s right. We don’t walk around acting as if we’re Pittsburgh or Milwaukee.
Since the decline of Big Steel and auto manufacturing, Buffalo has been working on nurturing replacement industries to satisfy the New World Order. Medical research and development has burgeoned in the areas of human genome research and bioinformatics (the application of information technology to the field of molecular biology), led by the University at Buffalo and the world-renowned Roswell Park Cancer Institute. The area is now said to be the hub of a “golden horseshoe” containing 650 biomedical firms within less than a ninety-minute drive, a veritable Lake District, but with an emphasis on cell replication as opposed to romantic poetry.
Buffalo serves as the headquarters of M&T Bank and First Niagara Financial Group, along with being home to major operations of other financial institutions such as HSBC Bank USA and KeyBank. It’s the headquarters for Merchants Insurance Group; Rich Products, one of the largest privately owned companies in the country; global food service and hospitality provider Delaware North Companies; and Labatt moved its US home office there in 2007. Sports licensing headwear company New Era Cap, the exclusive manufacturer of the official on-field caps worn by every Major League Baseball team and their minor-league affiliates, has taken over the former Federal Reserve Building (with a government deficit like this, who needs a bank?).
M&T Bank is a great corporate citizen, and you’ll see their name on everything from the rain forest at the zoo to the refurbished clock in Central Terminal, along with being listed as a donor, sponsor, or underwriter of numerous sporting events and cultural activities. “The city went through a tough time, but we have great people, arts, architecture, restaurants, sports teams, and a wonderful zoo,” said Bob Wilmers, M&T Bank’s chairman and CEO. “It’s my city and I want to see it be one of the best in the United States.”
Can any or all of this work? In 1972, when Chinese politician Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution of 1789 he replied, “It’s too early to tell.”
There are problems, just like anywhere else, especially those that go hand in hand with high rates of poverty and unemployment. While 80 percent of African American workers live in the city, many new jobs are in the suburbs, and sufficient public transportation isn’t available. Currently, there are plans under way or on the drawing board to improve education and literacy, provide more job training and summer youth jobs, and deal with derelict housing.
The Buffalo schools are hit-or-miss. Some, like City Honors, regularly make the lists of top schools in the nation, along with Tapestry Charter (K–12), famous for its low teacher/student ratio and heavy parent involvement. International students, mostly from Asia, are increasingly enrolling at local private schools Nichols, Buffalo Seminary, and The Park School. On the opposite end, there are closures and failures. City schools are burdened with massive legacy costs from aging infrastructure, a declining tax base, rampant bureaucracy, and the problems attendant upon indigent families. Meantime, the high rate of teen pregnancy and STDs would suggest that an Unplanned Parenthood is operating in the area.
More than two dozen colleges and universities provide an excellent source of growth, according to urban activist and social entrepreneur Newell Nussbaumer, since they bring in ten thousand new students a year, some of whom will decide to stay. Also known as the unofficial mayor of Buffalo for all of his creative boosterism, Nussbaumer started the website www.navigetter.com as a resource to learn what’s going on locally. It includes bike trails, meeting places, events, shopping, activities for a cold day, and community gardens and other projects you can work on.
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, with its world-renowned collection of modern and contemporary art, has been delighting locals and visitors since 1905. In fact, the US Postal Service recently released a new series of ten stamps based on the abstract expressionist movement, and four of them feature artwork from this famed Buffalo gallery.
In 2008, the Burchfield Penney Art Center moved to a new home on fashion-forward Elmwood Avenue. This sleek zinc and stone museum is dedicated to displaying local artists and contains over a hundred works of watercolorist Charles Burchfield (1893–1967), who spent all but the first few years of his career in the Buffalo area. With Burchfield’s moody, probing, and often phantasmagorical style, it couldn’t be more appropriate that the museum is located right next to the imposing Scooby-Doo-spooky Psych Center. And the nearby Grecian templelike Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society Museum mounts some terrific shows, including one for the Buffalo Bills’ recent fiftieth anniversary, but perhaps it’s better known as the place locals go to research the details of their history-filled homes and ascertain what ghosts to expect.
Buffalo-area book lovers are well served by chain stores Barnes & Noble and Borders; indies Talking Leaves and Book Corner; and secondhand shops such as Queen City, Rustbelt Books, Oracle Junction, Second Reader, and Old Editions. Furthermore, the most complete collection of James Joyce manuscripts and memorabilia is housed at the University at Buffalo. It includes writer’s notebooks, letters, and fantastic photographs, thereby making the area a natural to host Joyce conferences, exhibits, and an estimable Bloomsday celebration. Why all this Eire on Erie? one might well ask. Well, um, for starters the words Buffalo and Ireland both contain seven letters.
The outdoor Allentown Arts Festival in July and Taste of Buffalo a few weeks later both attract half a million people. Meantime, there’s no need to go to Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer on Broadway when, with more than twenty area theater companies, an excellent production is available at the New Phoenix Theatre on the Park in downtown Buffalo. Same with The Farnsworth Invention at the Kavinoky Theatre. Our very own Nickel City Opera offers high-class productions at the historic Riviera Theatre in North Tonawanda, home of the Mighty Wurlitzer Organ. And simulcasts from the Metropolitan Opera beamed live into local movie theaters play to packed houses. The good news is that the price is one-tenth what a Met ticket would cost, and you can’t get Jujubes at Lincoln Center. The bad news is that cell phones go off and there’s a line for the ladies room during intermission in both places. In addition to plenty of movie theaters, there are also several film festivals that draw thousands of participants.
Buffalo has always been home to a thriving music scene, and many people believe the city held a legitimate claim to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which eventually wound up in Cleveland. We can thank the early Canal District, where sailors, saloonkeepers, and ladies of the night with names like Pug Nose Cora and Deadly Dora were in need of a soundtrack for their métier prior to the advent of radios and record players. In fact, the minstrel show—variety acts, songs, and dance performed by white performers in blackface—is thought to have originated in 1839 with a performance by Edwin P. Christy in Mrs. Harrington’s dance hall. This popular entertainment grew into Christy’s Minstrels, featuring their big hit song “Buffalo Gals,” and moved to the more respectable Eagle Street Theater outside of the red-light district. From there, it was off to a long run on Broadway.
As the population grew and the economy flourished, so did the number of ballrooms, gin mills, and dance halls. African Americans had their own prosperous combos, singers, clubs, and local union up through the 1960s. In Buffalo’s melting pot, many different cultures combined their musical traditions and lots of Jewish kids were forced into lessons at an early age. Before people aspired to be sports stars, supermodels, reality show contestants, and TV judges, they dreamed of being musicians. With so many bars and churches, there were always plenty of places for garage bands and fledgling groups to find their groove. Then there’s the stellar Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, which named JoAnn Falletta its music director in 1999, the first female to hold this post in its seventy-five-year history. The orchestra has won two Grammy awards and can be heard on the soundtrack of Woody Allen’s film Manhattan. Performances take place in the neoclassically radiant Kleinhans Music Hall, a national historic landmark designed by Eliel and Eero Saarinen and considered to be one of the finest concert halls in the country.
In addition to oodles of Bach, blues, brass, head-banging rock, indie pop, and hip-hop, one can just as easily find polka, barbershop quartets, square dancing, a cappella, karaoke, and the chicken dance (mostly at weddings). Reminiscent of its days as a key stop for vaudeville (George Burns, Gracie Allen, and Gypsy Rose Lee), performers on the Chitlin Circuit (Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Wilson Pickett), and the big bands of the 1940s, Buffalo continues to play host to world-renown musical talent, such as the Grateful Dead, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Janet Jackson, Garth Brooks, and most touring Broadway shows. Homegrown Grammy Award–winning Ani DiFranco and her manager Scot Fisher recently saved the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival–style Asbury Delaware Methodist Church from the wrecking ball and converted it into a light and spacious center to worship the visual and performing arts, rechristening it “Babeville,” after their Righteous Babe recording label.
Plenty of live music can be heard in Buffalo’s hottest club-hopping neighborhoods—rowdy Chippewa Street; the hipster- and alternative-lifestyle-encompassing Allentown; Elmwood Village, which attracts a mix of young and old; and the college-crowd hangouts on Main Street that are within walking distance of UB’s south campus. Disc jockeys presiding over dance parties of electro, techno, trance, and hypertempo can be found throughout Buffalo and are so popular that exciting DJs come from around the country to guest host. Upcoming gigs and reviews are listed in The Buffalo News’s “Gusto” section and the weekly Artvoice, which also offers intelligent commentary on local business and politics.
You can’t enjoy good music without good beer, and Buffalo has never been known to let anyone go thirsty. In addition to the many and various gin mills, local breweries such as Pearl Street Grill & Brewery and Flying Bison Brewing Company keep quality libations flowing. The popular Buffalo Brewfest is a beer-tasting festival that brings hops connoisseurs together every August while raising money for local charities. Designated drivers are admitted for free. (Fortunately, the Buffalo Chili Fest is several months beforehand, in April, since it might not be wise, gastrointestinally speaking, to attend both on the same weekend.)
Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the World’s Largest Disco, a tribute to the 1970s, attracts not only thousands of partygoers to the Buffalo Convention Center, but half the cast of The Brady Bunch. Tickets to this charity fund-raiser sell out in minutes, so don’t expect to make it to the box office in time wearing high-heeled sneakers or rainbow wedgies. Why Buffalo and disco? Maybe because local Litelab Corporation produced the lighted dance floor seen in Saturday Night Fever. Then again, maybe not.
The Colored Musicians Club in the Michigan Street African American Heritage Corridor is opening a museum to celebrate being the longest continuously operating colored musicians club in the country and the only remaining African American music club in the United States. It was formed in 1918 by members of the Colored Musicians Union, which had been started a year earlier by black musicians denied membership in the white musicians’ local. Despite having (just barely) survived the seventies, the Colored Musicians Club is all about jazz and big band, so please don’t show up in a unitard and expect to do the hustle. Or to see any stars from The Partridge Family.
All the big-name comedians come through town, including Jerry Seinfeld, Paula Poundstone, Lewis Black, Jeff Foxworthy, Chelsea Handler, and Katt Williams. We may not have good body surfing on Lake Erie, but Buffalonians know how to laugh and tell jokes. How could we not have a sense of humor with area funeral homes named Amigone (add your own question mark) and Bury? And with runners in the annual Turkey Trot, one of the oldest road races in America, dressing as actual turkeys among a crowded field of centipedes, superheroes, and flamingos. Some singing. A few on stilts.
As a kid, I remember most of my teachers and neighbors and especially the local shopkeepers as being funny. Today I find the same sort of casual jokiness that makes life more pleasant during daily transactions with almost everyone I meet, except for the immigration officers at the Peace Bridge, who go so far as to put out signs warning that they possess NO sense of humor. The families of my Jewish godparents hailed from Fiddler on the Roof Russia and war-torn Europe. For this reason, my godfather, Irving, wouldn’t allow any German music played in the house, German art on the walls, or German cars in the driveway. He loved auctions and once purchased a lot that contained a painting by a Teutonic landscape artist that quickly ended up in our living room. I used to wish he’d accidently purchase a Mercedes-Benz that would land in our driveway to replace our Detroit lemons, which started on alternate days of the week. Whenever something small went wrong, like when Irving’s electric car window wouldn’t go down or when his plastic fork snapped, he was fond of saying, “First Hitler, now this!” That was my introduction to Yiddish humor.
To up the local fun quotient, if that’s possible, boating and ice-skating have returned to Delaware Park, a pastoral oasis in the middle of the city with 350 acres of meadow, forest, and lake. At least it’s tranquil, aside from the Golf War—a spirited debate over whether the park should or should not boast an eighteen-hole golf course, which it currently does. Since 1976, the park has also been host to a popular free Shakespeare festival. On a glorious summer night, behind the rose garden, it’s possible to hear Hamlet exclaim from a Tudor-style stage beneath a sky quilted with stars, “The play’s the thing!” while chirruping crickets provide the chorus. On the flip side, occasionally an actual tempest interrupts The Tempest.
Despite all this activity, there are rarely any traffic jams in Buffalo, even during rush hour, when you can still rush from one place to another in a matter of minutes, or to a Bills game. In fact, rush hour usually means exactly that: people driving faster because they need to get to work or want to go home. And best of all, the bars stay open late in order to cut down on drunk driving.
The new Squaw Island Park is located in the Black Rock section of Buffalo and accessible by railroad swing bridge. This converted landfill is now ready for fishing, bird-watching, walking, biking, and picnicking. It’s largely hidden and still somewhat undiscovered.
