🏷️ buffalo

I kept up the bike death march with @paul, because @terry broke his big toe on the stairs ;(

Have you ever noticed the maze of signs near Church Street and the 190 talking about the Irish Famine Memorial? I've seen them before but never thought about it. Paul and I decided to follow through with them.

Starting at South Elmwood and Church, you zip across the street down Lower Terrace. There, you're sent under the 190, west via Erie Street. The last one just points into the Synacor parking lot on the Inner Harbor.
Which is where the memorial actually is.



At first I thought this was the memorial - a sign and some flowers.


It turned out it was 20 feet behind it. A big stone fountain that wasn't filled with water. I wonder if it was there before Synacor's office? The whole Inner Harbor is a suburban mess if you ask me.






Anyway Paul wanted clams, so we went to the Hatch. He seemed to like them a lot. There were a ton of people hanging around and lots of mom and gramma booty shaking going on to Sweet Home Alabama.






Our last stop was looking at Riverworks. It feels like a crazy big city entertainment area. Even on a Sunday they had people rollerskating on a rink, a big snackstand and double decked restaurant etc. I wonder how big it's going to get. They had the remnants of a warehouse nextdoor with the old rebar all artsily layed out. I wanted to jump over all the concrete and explore ;( too late to do that in Buffalo anymore.

Friday night we headed down to the Project Grant fundraiser at Buffalo Iron Works. @terry's friend Tina had organized it. The space itself was real nice and had a huge patio, plus a garage door that opened up the whole bar. Music on the other hand was not my style.

Before the event we stopped at Canalside where a house music event was going on. There was a man with a pico projector pretending to be an old Irish cop, telling about the seedy canalside days. He had a picture of these big madams that used to live there.

Last night we rode around the city, mostly in South Buffalo. It's really it's own separate city. I've only been on Abbott near Caz Park once before but it's pretty nice.

On the way home we hit up Seneca, and passed this weird parking lot Mary shrine in Larkinville. You can see the location better at 849 Seneca on Google Maps " >(MAP TO: ).

@paul said she looks like some Judy Garland version of Mary. The shrine also has a million different little postcards and old photos of people.

Already! Robert Delong was pretty good, Arkells, not so much. Blue is now $5! We saw Kevin for the first time in over a year.

I know it hasn't been the square forever now but it's always going to be one of those things people do just like old people who refer to Gold Circle and AM&A's.

The morning after we headed out to the Broadway market with @uchina. It was pretty bumpin. A lot of the food seemed good but a there was a whole bunch of grandmay knick knacks. Signs telling you to stay out of "mom's cave" etc. We got some treats and really amazing tangelos that were a fifth of the coop price.

The highlight was seeing my old boss there with his family. I actually forgot his name and somehow @terry remembered later. He told me knew I would land on my feet after I left right after I left. I don't know why but it felt good - probably because I love my new job a million times more.

Escalators down from the rooftop garage


Polish painted eggs.


I never knew butter lambs came in two poses - head-turned and straight-face. I think the head turned is way cuter. That's a lot of freaking butter though

Two creepy rabbits, one swallowing @paul. It kind of reminds me of the Jones Pond furry.

Jewelry for the favorite fist in your life

Fridays are half days, which is terrible because I can't get anything done at work, but awesome because usually its a day I don't work for the majority. After work I headed over to Terry's office to set up his tax program. His office can now all use the same data files for their local payroll program by using a local directory linked to a network share - no syncing needed.


The Roxy's building is looking worse than it did before - all that's been done in it so far is a party thrown by some douches I went to high school with. I wonder if Paul Rubino, the developer is actually going to be able to finish it.

When I got home, Paul and I decided to head to the Historical Society to look at some pictures in their library. It was pretty neat. We looked at our block of Linwood and saw all the houses that filled in the current parking lot gaps. The best part about them were all the wrap around porches that used to be here, and the amazing elm canopy. My favorite building, the Lin-Nor looked awesome even in the 20's. It had a Liberty Bank branch downstairs, everyone was walking, the street looked very complete. It's still my favorite building because it's the perfect scale, density, mixed use and even includes amazing greenspace in their garden.

The most ridiculous part of the visit was looking at the pictures themselves. All pictures must be requested through a librarian, who pulls them out of a file cabinet and gives them to you with gloves. You aren't allowed to make copies and nothing is digital. This seems insane given that the library is a public resource, most of these images are from the city, and the ones that aren't are out of copyright. Why are these not digital accessible? Paul an

Paul says the librarian, Cynthia Van Ness, likes keeping them this way because it draws people in for research. I say their goal is realized a thousand times over by making it accessible online for everyone. Plus, what if the library burns down? There's no way there's duplicates of anything in there right now. I think their funding should be contingent on scanning the maps and photos in - tagging and transcribing them could be crowdsourced for nothing I'm sure.







The historical society had a 21 inch all in one running on Android. And they said Linux on the desktop was never going to happen.



Paul Visco and Joe Herzig are now members of the historical society.

@terry and I took a wintry walk downtown to the new canals while @paul went out to hang with @hodown. It was also winter solstice which means it only gets brighter from here on out!


Waste of power!

The new ice canals are so freaking awesome. I want to a get a season pass for four people - only $75. Plus @YesThatCasey could ride the ice bikes. If we got skates it'd be so easy to go down there and it looked a lot nicer than the Rotary Rink.


Terry and I ran back and forth up to the concrete phallus that used to be HSBC. It's super trippy to look up at something so big from it's plaza.

The creepiness of the Sahlen's place is about as creepy as a hot dog is if you think about it.

Are the streets are paved with chicken wings. Gross.

aka Laura Robinson.
Don't cross @paul. Not without a web presence.

@paul and I decided to fight the last bits of our colds by going on a walk for groceries. What started as a simple trip to Elmwood Market and the co-op turned into a shopping tour of the West Side.

The coop has gotten as expensive, if not more, than Wegman's since their own renovation. Or maybe the Farmer's market is just too good. Either way, there wasn't much I wanted to get there.

The burned out Elmwood house has a new roof, and is getting new siding - I can't imagine that really fixes the problem, but at least they're not tearing it down. Maybe they can undo the remuddling.


We tried going to Guercio's to get dandelions for the tortoise. Unfortunately, they were closed.


So we warmed up with a PSL (so basic Paul), chai and egg sandwich at Sweetness 7.

@mike and @libertad, your neighborhood looks nice.

Lin Asian market was the first Grant Street store we stopped at. It was small but pretty clean, and still had a lot of good stuff. We got a 5 lb bag of jasmine rice for about $6.
They had egg tofu there - I wanted to try it but it was full of hydrogenated oil.


After we walked across the street to Vineeta International Foods. This store was not the best - it had a lot of rotting vegetables (or durian fruits?), and meats that looked like they had been defrosted a lot. Even Paul didn't want to get anything. Gross.

Frozen fried paneer. I would try it but I didn't trust it. Could probably make it much easier.



Golden Burma - the last stop on Grant Street

They did have this cute hund statue

The garbage on Grant Street was real gross

What's up with this building? The cornice is completely gone and so are the windows. I hope it's not getting razed for another dollar store.

Paul wasn't ready to buy any camel meat

We continued back down on Ferry and then cut over on side streets to Richmond. There was:

West side lawn Mary

and the Italian wrought iron everywhere.



Murrica.

We finished the day at Price Rite and getting some egg sammiches for @terry. Definitely got our 10,000 steps in.