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captainsblogLike many Northern cities, including dozens across upstate New York, Jamestown once thrived on an economy where people designed, made and built Things. Binghamton with shoes, Cortland with typewriters, Buffalo with everything from steel to windshield wipers, Rochester with all kinds of imaging. One of Jamestown's exports was of furniture. The name lived on in a Buffalo-based warehouse store that gave up the ghost the year we moved here, and "Jamestown Furniture" is still a sought name in places like Lowes and Wayfair. But the making was once done in a place near Jamestown called Maddox Furniture. The Maniacs opened their set the other night with a homage to their home called "Maddox Table," one of the songs I didn't know that went back to one of their earliest releases. The music video for it played on the big screen behind them, showing the city of an earlier time:
Today, the city is taking the bigger turn to tourism, including the arts among its biggest sources of import-export. As my friend Ellen described it on her return from our adventures the day after I got home: I always say the three most extraordinary things to come out of Jamestown are Lucy, Southern Tier Brewing Company and my hometown band, 10K Maniacs.
The band, we've been with and will return to. The beer, well, I wasn't there for that. Lucy, though? That would be native daughter Lucille Ball. In my first years in Buffalo, I may have vaguely known that she'd grown up in the Southern Tier, but it wasn't on the list of tourist destinations for Western New York. Nowadays, as you pull into town, she's the first thing you see:
Spoiler alert: Desi grew up someplace else, but the pair is embossed on walls and displayed in windows all over town. Lucy herself has a park named for her in nearby Celeron, which I never made it to, in which a statue derided as "Scary Lucy" once greeted visitors (the one on the left of that last clicky); it's now been replaced with the kinder gentler one on the right, and her scary self has been relegated to a distant corner of the park.
Jamestown also has its own "Little Theatre" now named in her honor, likely spawned from the same early-20th trend of studios sponsoring smaller cinemas to attract the smaller crowds for some films; Rochester's far more famed Little is the only one in the downtown core there to have survived while the bigger movie palaces were all bulldozed. There's also this on a prominent Jamestown corner:
That is not the "comedy museum" it may be mistaken for, although we will pass outside it later on this walk back. There's relatively little of Lucy in the newer and broader National Comedy Center a few blocks away, and that's the one for which one of our fellow Maniac fans (also from UB Law, though I never knew her there) kindly gifted me an extra ticket.
The Center (NCC sounds too Star Trek) is a curated museum which traces the history of American comic material from the early film age forward. The museum is very interactive; you tap your wristband to activate many up-close features, and it collects what you choose to watch, then tells you what makes you laugh the most when you exit. You begin by picking off this display:
Among my picks you see yellow-boxed there, the Bobs: Newhart and Klein. I was happy to see the latter, since he's not much in circulation these days and he remains among the funniest and closest-to-vest comics I've ever heard and quote most frequently.
Then the displays- of memorabilia, from Andy Kaufman's Elvis outfit and Tonight Show notes, to angry letters sent to Saturday Night Live. Some comics got whole sections- George Carlin, on the weekend of his documentary debut I've yet to see, got the PG stuff displayed in the main wing-
The interactive displays came next. Tables featured iPaddy displays of actual shooting scripts by Alan Alda, Carl Reiner, the creators of Mary Tyler Moore- as you scrolled through them, the final-cut scene appeared on a smaller Pad to your right. Down the hall, the prop room: pick a plastic object, put it on an air-hockey style table, and watch as it explained the prop's comedic history and then showed it in action. You'll never guess which one I went with:
Cartoons, and other non-living comic characters, were also prominent. From the original design of Marvin the Martian-
- to an early Trey Parker design from South Park-
Oh my God, you drew Kenny! You bastards!
Late-night and standup were also heavily represented. I was happy to see that Garry Shandling got a very big shoutout; his was another voice taken from us way too soon. The fullsize set to his second and longer-running comedy show:
♫This is the set to Garry's show, the museum set to Garry's show....♫
The wristband also ages you, which allows adults entry to the lift down to the Blue Room, where things are a little more NSFW:
Okay, a LOT more NSFW. George gets his own NC-17 section down here, as do Andrew Dice Clay and the pride of W.C. Mepham High School one district over from mine:
Back up, to a few final exhibits: one focused on comedy albums, including laughter in song, which are a big part of my heritage. From Lehrer to Weird Al, the latter getting the big display here:
A deep dive into this place would take days, but it was time to rejoin more serious society. ("Me, serious? I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.") I did one final tap to get my comicanalysis, which was not the least bit surprising-
- and then headed out under the final, and perhaps only unintentional, joke in the joint:
----
Friends were on other pursuits, and we'd set 5:30 as time for dinner at a Mexican place near the Center, so I devoted one final hour or so to just taking in some non-Maniacal sights.
There's a Chautauqua County Sports Hall of Fame on the main drag. I have no idea who's in it, but this poster for the local low-minor team was in its window. Like many others from Batavia to Binghamton, the former Jamestown Jammers decided to go with the silly name to sell more merch.
Then back across the street after closing time at Lucy and Desi's own museum. I didn't exit or enter through the gift shop, but I could see some of the stuff in it:
A toy to-scale version of the title character in the movie The Long Long Trailer, the big-budget attempt to translate I Love Lucy to the big screen. It pretty much marked the beginning and end of the Ricardos’ film career, probably because nobody ran previews for it.
A block or so away, this charming place:
This is your salon, enjoy it!
After all this picture taking, with more than a few stops to rest on assorted benches and try to recharge the phone (and possibly do something that would be important later), it was time to meet for the meal before the show. Which will be coming soon to a third post near you.
Thanks. I'm here all week. Or at least something to remember me is /spoiler
Today, the city is taking the bigger turn to tourism, including the arts among its biggest sources of import-export. As my friend Ellen described it on her return from our adventures the day after I got home: I always say the three most extraordinary things to come out of Jamestown are Lucy, Southern Tier Brewing Company and my hometown band, 10K Maniacs.
The band, we've been with and will return to. The beer, well, I wasn't there for that. Lucy, though? That would be native daughter Lucille Ball. In my first years in Buffalo, I may have vaguely known that she'd grown up in the Southern Tier, but it wasn't on the list of tourist destinations for Western New York. Nowadays, as you pull into town, she's the first thing you see:
Spoiler alert: Desi grew up someplace else, but the pair is embossed on walls and displayed in windows all over town. Lucy herself has a park named for her in nearby Celeron, which I never made it to, in which a statue derided as "Scary Lucy" once greeted visitors (the one on the left of that last clicky); it's now been replaced with the kinder gentler one on the right, and her scary self has been relegated to a distant corner of the park.
Jamestown also has its own "Little Theatre" now named in her honor, likely spawned from the same early-20th trend of studios sponsoring smaller cinemas to attract the smaller crowds for some films; Rochester's far more famed Little is the only one in the downtown core there to have survived while the bigger movie palaces were all bulldozed. There's also this on a prominent Jamestown corner:
That is not the "comedy museum" it may be mistaken for, although we will pass outside it later on this walk back. There's relatively little of Lucy in the newer and broader National Comedy Center a few blocks away, and that's the one for which one of our fellow Maniac fans (also from UB Law, though I never knew her there) kindly gifted me an extra ticket.
The Center (NCC sounds too Star Trek) is a curated museum which traces the history of American comic material from the early film age forward. The museum is very interactive; you tap your wristband to activate many up-close features, and it collects what you choose to watch, then tells you what makes you laugh the most when you exit. You begin by picking off this display:
Among my picks you see yellow-boxed there, the Bobs: Newhart and Klein. I was happy to see the latter, since he's not much in circulation these days and he remains among the funniest and closest-to-vest comics I've ever heard and quote most frequently.
Then the displays- of memorabilia, from Andy Kaufman's Elvis outfit and Tonight Show notes, to angry letters sent to Saturday Night Live. Some comics got whole sections- George Carlin, on the weekend of his documentary debut I've yet to see, got the PG stuff displayed in the main wing-
The interactive displays came next. Tables featured iPaddy displays of actual shooting scripts by Alan Alda, Carl Reiner, the creators of Mary Tyler Moore- as you scrolled through them, the final-cut scene appeared on a smaller Pad to your right. Down the hall, the prop room: pick a plastic object, put it on an air-hockey style table, and watch as it explained the prop's comedic history and then showed it in action. You'll never guess which one I went with:
Cartoons, and other non-living comic characters, were also prominent. From the original design of Marvin the Martian-
- to an early Trey Parker design from South Park-
Oh my God, you drew Kenny! You bastards!
Late-night and standup were also heavily represented. I was happy to see that Garry Shandling got a very big shoutout; his was another voice taken from us way too soon. The fullsize set to his second and longer-running comedy show:
♫This is the set to Garry's show, the museum set to Garry's show....♫
The wristband also ages you, which allows adults entry to the lift down to the Blue Room, where things are a little more NSFW:
Okay, a LOT more NSFW. George gets his own NC-17 section down here, as do Andrew Dice Clay and the pride of W.C. Mepham High School one district over from mine:
Back up, to a few final exhibits: one focused on comedy albums, including laughter in song, which are a big part of my heritage. From Lehrer to Weird Al, the latter getting the big display here:
A deep dive into this place would take days, but it was time to rejoin more serious society. ("Me, serious? I am serious. And don't call me Shirley.") I did one final tap to get my comicanalysis, which was not the least bit surprising-
- and then headed out under the final, and perhaps only unintentional, joke in the joint:
----
Friends were on other pursuits, and we'd set 5:30 as time for dinner at a Mexican place near the Center, so I devoted one final hour or so to just taking in some non-Maniacal sights.
There's a Chautauqua County Sports Hall of Fame on the main drag. I have no idea who's in it, but this poster for the local low-minor team was in its window. Like many others from Batavia to Binghamton, the former Jamestown Jammers decided to go with the silly name to sell more merch.
Then back across the street after closing time at Lucy and Desi's own museum. I didn't exit or enter through the gift shop, but I could see some of the stuff in it:
A toy to-scale version of the title character in the movie The Long Long Trailer, the big-budget attempt to translate I Love Lucy to the big screen. It pretty much marked the beginning and end of the Ricardos’ film career, probably because nobody ran previews for it.
A block or so away, this charming place:
This is your salon, enjoy it!
After all this picture taking, with more than a few stops to rest on assorted benches and try to recharge the phone (and possibly do something that would be important later), it was time to meet for the meal before the show. Which will be coming soon to a third post near you.
Thanks. I'm here all week. Or at least something to remember me is /spoiler