🏷️ buffalo

The International Institute dinner was Thursday at the Hotel Lafayette. @paul and I joined the Allen Street crew after work.

The food was real tasty but sadly they ran out of a lot of the veggie things before I got to try them. The best part was that I think the desserts - Bavarian Nut company, and Gelato Gypsy included.

We also saw Seth play for the event.

The new stainless steel metro stations in the 500 block look so much freaking better than the old rusty green ones. Too bad they're only replacing two stations worth - the rest make us look stuck in the 80's. They've also kept the creepy classical music playing.

I don't care about football but it looks like it might be good for something for once. The $1.4 billion Terry Pegula paid to buy the Bills is going to mostly split between Ralph Wilson's charity in Buffalo and Detroit - in comparison, the Oishi foundation is the biggest in Buffalo, and it's endowment is "only" $300 million.

On the other hand, should we feel weird about this? Terry Pegula's money all came from fracking in Pennsylvania which is fucking disgusting. He's choosing to spend it all in Buffalo, and now Ralph Wilson is indirectly spending a bunch more.

I can see it now - a "Burning Tap Water" ward at Children's, pro-fracking cancer research at Roswell. Replanting trees in Buffalo after they've been leveled in the Allegheny.

Pittsburgh and Cleveland had the Carnegies and Rockefellers, I guess we have the Pegulas and we'll all be dirty frackers.

The UB med school construction is in full swing. The foundation they've dug is the second deepest hole I've ever seen. It's going to straight to the Allen Street subway station - I'm guessing that's why.


They may be good at digging but not so much at spelling.

Main Street is much better without cars. Especially when there are giant climbable cranes in the street.

We looked at @AllenStreet's new office space further down on Franklin. It was so crazy huge - over 2600 square feet. It once was two side by side apartments above the flooring company. Now they're connected and a mix of office and living space.

The place was very catty - even I felt allergic - but part of the lease would include new flooring and changes to make it more office friendly. I feel like it has a lot of potential.

Even crazier is the back office which is also for rent. It wraps all the way around the block to Founding Fathers/

After the Italian fest we continued our bike ride through Parkside and the Park before heading home. The Starin Parkside neighborhood is so ridiculous and I always forget about it. Not only are the houses huge but the roads and lawns too.

One of my favorites that is not so big but so cool is the old belt line train station at Starin and Amherst. It's sunk below the street next to the tracks and has this old cobblestone driveway down to it. You can rent it on airbnb for $300 a night.


We had a pretty shitty experience at the park (ask @paul) but Hoyt lake was especially bad that day. I assume it was the rain.

@paul, @terry and I went on a bike ride after getting our hair did. Terry wanted a cannoli so we stopped at the Italian festival for a bit. For once the stands were a little less fair and a little more Italian food.

The cannoli were so amazing. We also got an eggplant roll up and free cheese samples. Yum.

Making it rain on them ho's.


The crowd was not very Italian but is North Buffalo even Italian anymore?

Jewel of India served lasagna and pasta. I wonder if they were forced to have an Italian menu.
The city of Buffalo would like you to recycle the crap they are handing out.

Are they about to demolish the burned out building on Franklin near Allen? They've started to remove the asbestos. I hope not. The block looks bad enough with all the parking lots and I'm sure this would just become another. Imagine this building gone, and the boarded up yellow one next to Hill Hotel demolished too. The street would be empty.

@paul and I looked at the building and it's really three separate ones - an originial house, an added on storefront and then a cinder block rear building.

Franklin Street for the most part is the ass-end of buildings on Main Street and Delaware. But the west side of the 500 block is especially bad with unmaintained parking lots spilling out onto the sidewalk. This fence for lot at 603 Delaware is so messed up. It's the jankiest on a block of already terrible looking lots. Why even bother with a fence at this point? Who are you stopping from entering when it's only partially there?

The county GIS system says the property is owned by DANFB LLC, which according to this Buffalo Rising article is a subsidiary of Benderson (blech), or possibly just Alliance Advisory Group right now. I want to find out who so I can write them.

Nothing drives me crazier than fences and parking lots.