Chico's Journal

11/15/2007 22:11 #42153

888 Main
Category: food

Yesterday Ami and I checked out 888 Main, the new restaurant/bar on Main between Allen and Virginia. It's just a few doors south of Hyatt's art supply store. It was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, stopped by for a beer after work and stayed for a pizza. Lo, and it was good, my peeps. I definitely recommend it. Dan, the bartender (and owner-operator?) told us about using premium-quality ingredients for the pizza, etc. I don't doubt it because it was the tastiest Buffalo-city-style pizza I've had in Buffalo. If you don't know what I mean, it's that not-quite-deep-dish, way-too-thick-for-New-York-City-style-thin-crust pizza that seems to dominate around here. If Buffalo itself is somewhere between New York and Chicago, so is its local pizza. Anyway, I digress. We had a hot-sausage white pizza and it was delicious -- a perfectly baked, crispy-edged pie with sliced sausage, peppers, and onions. It tasted fine with a cold PBR on tap. Other tap beers included Hefe Weissen, Anchor Steam, Southern Tier IPA, Otter Creek Stovepipe Porter, and a few others. The decor is stylish, tall ceilings and a big blood-red wall behind the bar, and the tables looked potentially cozy. Ami took a couple of camera-phone pix:

A little slice of 888 Main

The whole shebang (drooling...)

Tried to go back tonight with (e:chica) for after-work beers and snacks but to no avail. Doors were closed and locked at 5:50 p.m. Hmmm. But I'd guess this is an anomaly. I was disappointed because there are a bunch of other pizzas I want to try, and there are appetizers that sounded tempting, plus I think they do a couple of pasta dishes or something. I liked the stylish-but-not-over-the-top bar, low lighting, and good-noshes-at-good-prices vibe of the place. Plus Dan was playing some mix tape his gf made that had a pleasantly odd mix of tunes.

Only problem is that the facade does really identify the place very well, and there are no sidewalk signs or anything either. Look for the Southern Tier neon bar light in the window. For now it's dinner-only, but we were told that if it catches on with people at the medical campus that lunch was a possibility.

Oh, and apparently mine was the very first credit card transaction that the bartender processed (ever!), so that was kinda cool I guess. If you go, post and let us know how it was for you...

jbeatty - 11/16/07 12:55
Welcome back Chico, I saw ther were hiring a few weeks ago and was curious when they were going to open. We will have to get a beer there sometime.

mrmike - 11/16/07 09:16
Nice beer listings, might have to put it on the "to-do" list

jenks - 11/15/07 23:04
nice first-post-in-3-months, chico! ;)

james - 11/15/07 22:41
disliking pizza any thicker than a piece of paper, I will have to give this place a try to say that I didn't care for the best Buffalo-style pizza.

Just to be fair.

That and the beer list looks delicious.

08/10/2007 11:35 #40473

tribute to kookcity2000

Just wanted to post a belated thank-you to (e:kookcity2000) for the free oldy-school stereo [see (e:kookcity2000,39165) ]. Here's a pic of the stereo with some goofy/fabulous speakers i picked up for six bucks at a garage sale on the West Side.

(Sorry for the poor photo quality, it was taken with an old cell phone.)

In other, more disturbing news, looks like (e:joshua,40409) 's post on Jim Cramer's freakout session a week ago was rather prescient.

World stock markets tumbled on Friday and central banks in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere continued an unprecedented infusion of cash into the financial system, as concern spread about the state of the U.S. credit market and the complicated array of investments it supports.

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industial Average was down nearly 200 points after the first hour and a half of trading on a day that was expected to add to Thursday's 387-point drop. Though still up for the year, Thursday's decline was the second-worst of the year and knocked nearly three percent from the index's value. Other U.S. indexes were down as well...

It was much the same overseas, as benchmark indexes across Asia and Europe shed upwards of three percent on Friday. Japan's Nikkei 225 lost 406 points, a decline of 2.37 percent, while the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong lost 2.88 percent.

Europe followed suit: near the end of the trading day, London's FTSE 100 had fallen 184 points, a decline of nearly three percent; France's CAC 40 was down around three percent and Germany's Dax 30 had shed nearly 1.4 percent.

To calm the markets and meet a surge in demand for cash, central banks on Friday continued pumping money into the financial system -- adding to the more than $150 billion that authorities in the U.S. and Europe released on Thursday...

"What we have at the moment is just an all-around sense of panic," Marc Ostwald, a bond analyst at Insinger de Beaufort in London, told the Associated Press. "Quite clearly there's a lot of deep-seated fear out there and it's going to take a while to resolve this."

The sell-off overseas represents the expansion of a problem first glimpsed through rising default rates for U.S. home mortgages -- particularly among riskier "subprime" loans to less creditworthy borrowers. It has evolved into a global credit crunch, with borrowing costs for corporations and global dealmakers on the rise, and investors urging policymakers to help.

drew - 08/12/07 08:52
I've had fun following this. I am by no means a serious investor, but I love watching Cramer just for the entertainment value. A lot more entertaining than watching the value of my retirement account go up and down. (mostly the latter of the past month)

Here's my dumb question, but I haven't had economics since high school, and I really don't know.

When the fed puts money into the bank system, how does it do that? Does it just give them money? What money goes where? Is it through loans? If so, how?

joshua - 08/11/07 13:31
Nice stereo :)

Its interesting that none of this stuff came to light until Cramer freaked out on national TV. Its not like this stuff came up out of the blue!

The Fed tried to pump $24B into the bank system in an attempt to calm the fear, but it didn't work. They have been ignoring the deflationary nature of our market to fight inflation... and in a fit of irony dumped billions into the system on a "temporary" basis? No wonder nobody bought it.

The private equity firms - screw them. They made their bets and losing money is part of the risk. They were hedging their risky bets by buying a lot of this mortgage debt, which is why they are screwed. To make things worse, the credit problem makes it so they cannot borrow any more money. I'm with Cramer when he says that the equity firms should not be bailed out for making bad bets... but the people who are losing their homes? What about finding a way to have the government guarantee these variable loans so that people don't lose their homes, as a result of fluctuations in the market they can't control?

Another thing people talk about is the potential failure of several banks if this problem isn't straightened out, but if you look at the reaction of the world markets they seem to believe that this is a bit of a snowball thats beginning to gain momentum down the hill. I heard a rumor about an "emergency" Fed board session to potentially lower the rate. We'll see.

I saw an interview with Cramer that he did the same afternoon after his meltdown, and he explained that he felt obligated to speak up because nobody else would... and also said that he wouldn't be able to live with not saying anything about what he thought was not an "if" but a "when" kind of scenario.

08/07/2007 16:27 #40428

Letchworth Hike, 08.04.07

chica and I went hiking at Letchworth State Park for the first time on Saturday. We hiked nearly half of the Gorge Trail, enough to see the three sets of waterfalls and some nice woods. The trail was very easy overall for being rated "moderate".

Here are some photos, mostly taken by chica. If you haven't been to Letchworth, go. It is a beautiful park.

trailhead

thanks random Asian tourist for taking this shot!

perched turkey buzzard that chica snuck up on

random trash i picked up--people are such savages...is it so hard to understand "pack in, pack out"?

joshua - 08/07/07 19:47
Excellent.

imk2 - 08/07/07 19:12
and this was the same trail that we were on. but we didn't go all the way down into the gorge because it started getting dark and i started getting scared that we'd get eaten by wolves or bears or werewolves or orcs or something.

imk2 - 08/07/07 19:08
hey, we were there on sunday! you guys should have called or something. are you coming to india gate night?

libertad - 08/07/07 17:37
wow chica looks different. I didn't recognize her and said "who's that "until I read the captions. ¿Donde estas chica? Why don't you post here anymore?

07/26/2007 11:49 #40261

Burgers at Sterling Place Tavern
Category: food

Fantastic* hamburgers and good draft beer at Sterling Place Tavern on Hertel Avenue.

Had heard the burgers were "best in the city" and beyond, and while I've had some fine burgers here in B-lo, I'm inclined to agree. The burgers are big, thick, juicy (well, mine was medium-rare, but even medium-well looked juicy to me) and utterly delicious. (sorry, no pic)

Service was a bit slow at times, since there was just one bartender to cope with a modest bar presence and probably 7-8 tables of people ordering drinks and/or food, but the bartender was nice and apologetic, and the owner, John, was very personable and pleasant.

Beers on tap included some of the Great Lakes Brews out of Cleveland ("Eliot Ness" and "Burning River"), Newcastle Brown Ale, Flying Bison's Oatmeal Stout, a fine wheat beer or two, Stella Artois, Pilsner Urquell, and two or three other brews I'm forgetting.

Anyway, it's not much to look at from the outside, and the service may be slow, and (rumor has it) that the tavern is sometimes closed on non-obvious nights (Friday, Saturday) for seemingly no good reason, but if you're on Hertel Ave and have a ravenous appetite and a hankering for red meat and good beer, check out the Sterling Place Tavern. If it's open, get your butt in there and ask to order up a tasty burger.

Yum.

also, thanks to my partners in crime, Amy M and Ami... :-)

mrmike - 07/26/07 15:53
Sounds like a plan. Beer and Burger......Homer like drool.............

07/12/2007 15:39 #40082

one more reason to love Buffalo
Category: buffalo

Check out this article from the New York Times about the $225,000 parking spot.

Yes, you read that correctly, $225,000 for a PARKING SPOT.

I know there are some days in early February in Buffalo, after driving around the neighborhood for 30 minutes looking for an open space, when we'd all consider paying through the nose for a spot.

But $225,000????

I know it's Manhattan and all, and you just can't beat New York City, it's an amazing city, yadda yadda yadda.

But $225,000? Really? Really??

Here's what $225,000 will get you in B-lo today:

293 Highland Avenue (near Norwood)

Victorian 4 bedroom house, 2 full baths, 2760 sq ft
w/deck, fully fenced yard, 7-person hot tub, shed, porch, fireplace, full attic and basement, driveway (aha! parking space included!), laundry room, inlaid hardwood floors, pocket doors.

(MLS# 287216)

New York City is fine, but you gotta love Buffalo!

james - 07/12/07 16:58
Our addresses share one thing in common with NYC, and that is the state code NY. Thus Buffalo and NYC are open for constant comparison by anyone who knows anything about the two cities. Yes, if you know that we have snow here and that Sex in the City took place in NYC then you are qualified to say how much Buffalo sucks. Eh, the two cities are so different and the two have their own pleasures and downfalls.

So what I am getting at is, thank you for highlighting one of the great pleasures of Buffalo: housing is so cheap we can afford to enjoy life.

carolinian - 07/12/07 16:55
Of course, they don't mention that a typical buffalo old house has insane amounts of dust, lack of insulation and storm windows resulting in massive heating bills and the feeling you're never truly warm, no central air and having to constantly take out air conditioners and put them pack in 9 months later (and doing the same with window plastic), lack of sufficient electrical outlets (esp properly grounded w/ 3 prongs) and whacked out electric systems that throw circuit breakers if you dare run an A/C and microwave simultaneously, dry rotting wood, mildew, and creepy crawlies. And many big old houses are set up as duplexes and require that you become a landlord.

Don't get me wrong. I love that area, and I live there, but there's definitely some fine print to buying a house in buffalo. Probably still cheaper than the NYC equivalent, though.

fellyconnelly - 07/12/07 16:28
wow. just... wow... this really just brings it all into perspective, doesn't it?