🏷️ buffalo

In the morning, Tyler made us some breakfast while I installed the bidet we bought for his birthday. He has a standard toilet so it could use a 1/2" connector while our stupid Toto needs a special adapter that only supports 3/8". The water pressure difference is substantial.

@terry and Tyler serenaded us with Toni Braxton while we got ready and then ate.

We biked back home in the morning and got ready to take @terry's mom and aunt to the Allentown Art Festival.

It wasn't that crowded since Saturday was so beautiful and it was threatening to rain.

Honestly most of what is being sold doesn't really interest me, but I don't mind doing a lap unlike @libertad who says it's his worst nightmare.

Turns out the rain forecast was right and it torrentially downpoured. We hid in the tunnel behind Rick's for a minute while Franklin Street turned into a babbling brook.

Once home @paul and I napped before @terry and I went to do karaoke at Susanna and Yames's place for her grad school graduation party. The day also ended with Terry singing Toni Braxton.

Some wet dogs.

Two Fridays ago, I went with @paul down to the central library. Our original intent was to check out the 3d printer, but taking a class is required and we hadn't signed up. So @paul got a library card and we're going to do that another time.

I hadn't been to the library outside of the auditorium since I was starting to pick up PHP 3 years ago.

They have a high-end maker bot 3d printer, and a second smaller one. You only have to pay for materials.
They also have a 3d scanner in between the two. I'm interested to try that out.

After that we checked out the science book exhibit on the second floor. There were exhibits about Galelio, Bernouli etc - light on information, and though the books were obviously old there was no indication about where or when they're from (if they were originals they should have said it).

What's with this crazy creature on a this map? Breasty mer-bird?


Also an artifact of time - payphones. The second last one I can think of in Buffalo besides the one on Elmwood and Summer.


The most interesting part was the Grovesnor room. It has almost any Buffalo related book that was ever written - including books like "Parolees and pensioners in the first ward, report 1912". The room probably contains the most arcane info about Buffalo anywhere, that almost noone left living knows. I wonder how many of these have been scanned, if any.

There were books on being carless in Buffalo, written in the 1960s!

And all the original bike culture in Buffalo.

And an encyclopaedic book written about the NFTA and all it's predecessors, with every line and model of the rolling stock cataloged in depth.


A whole bookshelf dedicated to Timothy McVeigh. Creepy.

And a workbook about immigrants in Buffalo, where one of the activities is "Draw and color pictures of Buffalo immigrants in native costumes"

In one of the sections there were annual reports from Roswell Park. At one point there was a semi-famous BMT doctor there named Geoffry Herzig. Not related to my grandpa as far as I know (this one is from Cincinatti) bu he resembles him a lot.

instagrams of @paul

As seen in the Grovesnor room in the Buffalo and Erie County central library. While @paul was geeking out over Roswell Park and 50 years of annual reports, I found this picture.

I mean I get that they needed to conduct the research but what a crazy photo to use for PR.

The mice are trapped with corks in glass tubes, with burning cigarettes attached. They were setting out to research the correlation between smoking and cancer. There even was a tobacco farm in Orchard Park and West Seneca where they grew different types to compare against commercial tobacco.

I wish I could actually could find this study to find out how many cigarettes they made these mice smoke.

I got @paul to go on a walk with me on one of our Fridays off. I was hoping to see a wall of lake effect snow over the southtowns like you see in the super dramatic pictures, but it was more like a distant band of grey.

In order to get into city Hall now you have to through airport style security and take everything out of your backpack for a scanner.

Later Paul and I walked over to lunch at Casa Azul on Genesee. it's in the same fake shipping container building where Dog E Style was before. The one vegetarian okay was taco and way overpriced, but they also served this amazing hot drink that tastes like vanilla pudding.

On the day Louis P. Ciminelli gets a day in court to face charges of state briber -

I had to take these pictures. They have a $375 million project and they can't spring for a real garbage and recycle can for their employees and contractors?

Instead they leave a little bucket that overflows on High Street in front of the Langston Hughes building. The rest of the garbage from lunch and breakfast just gets left in the street and blows around for over a year now.

I wrote an email to their PR department, let's see what happens. If they don't answer me within a day or two I'll share this post with them.

We rode to Delaware Park and Hoyt lake water was green, thick and smelly! I hope no one has heard that one before.

I'm guessing it's because it's been so dry, and the scaj has no flow. They also turned off the aeration pump.

The Greatest Place(TM) in America

Back home on the fourth of July.

I spent the afternoon with some of my family and Emily's friend Lauren at Letchworth. The pool is free now with entry. It was human soup but even soup felt good on the 85 degree day. Plus the diving pool is always emptier.


oma Mid wrapped in his blankets

We cooked out - I had some Lebanese food and veggie snausage.
When I got back I sped over to the fireworks at the outer harbor. I shouldn't have rushed because they were 40 minutes delayed.


They also caused a fire.

And everyone to run away from imaginary gunshots at Canalside - wtf

Yesterday we went with @mike and @libertad to Scherer Furniture on Genesee Street since they were looking for a couch. It's this giant four floor furniture warehouse full of every type of couch, dresser or weird table thing you can imagine. It's pretty overwhelming but the old building is neat.

Everything was very expensive but hardwood. I'm not a huge fan of furniture shopping or decoration, but I have to admit it was fun to run around and try out as many of the chairs as you could (before the salesman would mention the single seat you sat on cost $1500!)



This picture was on an office set they were trying to sell. Apparently if you can afford this, you don't use the computer that often - it's off on the side of the room. @paul thinks it's because it would only be your secretary using it.

For lunch on Saturday, @paul wanted to go to Sato. He refused to ride a bike and I refused to drive a car, so we took the metro rail to the new University Heights location. I used to take it everywhere before I had a decent bike (I would still refuse to drive with people then) but I haven't taken it regularly in over two and a half years now.

Despite most of the stations looking worse than ever, the red subway tiles are still just as awesome.





The Sato menu at this location has new stuff like rice bowls. I had one with fried tofu and spring rolls - it was really good except for the ranch on it. Still not a fan of gross condiments.
Paul and his comically oversized ramen

The restaurant was very cute. I think I like it better than the Elmwood one, less fancy and more smiling food.

Paul wanted a shopping spree so we walked down a few blocks of Main Street, with a stop at Parkside Candy.

And this tiny shop (probably 10x20ft) called MerMaid and Weasel. It was supposed to be a shop for nerds. They didn't have much in the store but the owner was in there knitting little fox faces, which I liked. Paul got @mike some candy cigs.

Why is a car dealership allowed to steal the sidewalk to sell their shitty machines? Pretty sure we



On the way back we took the Lasalle station home. It looks like water must be leaking in the tunnel at the top because some areas had a shit ton of paint peeling off the metal panels. Good thing we can get $40 million dollars of federal funds to put cars on three blocks of Main Street, but can't spare any for the NFTA!

I'm not a fan of light pollution but the lights on the grain silos were pretty cool. @paul, @terry and I rode down to check them out. I think they're supposed to go for a year so you have more than enough time