captainsblog | Welcome to the Great Experiment....

Right. Now I’ve got a whole Styx song in my head. I am taking Eleanor’s phone out with me on a fairly short morning walk to see if there’s any improvement in dictation with her upgraded hardware. So far, Siri’s only missed two words (Red for right, Stick for Styx), so that’s an improvement.

Oh, and it is Eleanor’s birthday, and we have reservations at a Mexican place we’ve never tried before. I can’t remember the time just the two of us went out to dinner, so I’m looking forward. I have nothing else scheduled today; and yesterday, other than a lot of miles on the car, really didn’t amount all that much either, so it is a much needed break from being out and about as much as I, and even we, I’ve been the last couple of weeks.

(Nope, this dictation is just as much shit as the other one. Many a slip betwixt the audio and this post:P)

Tuesday represented an interesting opportunity to cross over a couple of my cohorts. I have a number of them in everyday life- including work, music, poetry, fitness, and after last week, even comedy. Throw in friends from childhood, college, neighborhood, trivia, and the Mets, and you get even more streams to cross.

Tuesday night involved just two of them, though. Three musician friends were playing in a fairly new Tuesday night tradition around here where are a local retail and office cluster south of downtown has been hosting a rodeo of food trucks on Tuesday late afternoons. Prepare this with free white entertainment (I said "live entertainment," Siri, but you're not too far off with this crowd:P). You’re not going to get the Beatles, but you might get a Beatles cover band. Totally independently, the gym I go to decided to pick this very Tuesday night for one of their periodic summer out-and-about member events, which typically will also involve a ballgame or a beach or somesuch thing. They were not scheduled to get there until six, after their last class at 4:30 in Amhurst (wtf, dude, you misspell that way on my phone too!), but I went down right after work at five to find a place to park, get the lay of the land, and taking the history of the place. There’s a lot.

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The neighborhood designation is Larkinville. The sign atop the activity says it's-

Ah, but who or what was Larkin? It was basically Amazon a century before there WAS an Amazon.

Larkin Company was a massive mail order house largely based out of these very buildings, with one tragic exception. Their administration building, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright at the height of the company’s prominence, was demolished by the City of Buffalo around 1950 and that act of architectural murder ranks among the worst ever anywhere. I first visited the bare remaining shrine to that destruction a few years ago when I had to visit a law office in one of the buildings that remained or was built on the site near it:

It was colder back then. Clearing the snow from that sign told more of the sad tale:

That's a bit beyond where the Square now sits, and closer to it, signs do remain of that failed company’s legacy. This literal sign, for one.

The actual Larkin who founded the company in the 1800s eventually gave way to an executive named Darwin Martin. He spearheaded the company’s growth through the first half of the 20th century, engaging Frank Lloyd Wright not only for the bulldozed business building but for his own home in the city that still bears Darwin Martin's name and a summer home on the lakeshore called Greycliff, that still survive as crowning examples of the great architect’s work.

I parked on Exchange Street in front of that monogrammed building and headed over to where the action was. Plenty of people checking out both tunes and food:

Getting the fans signed up when they're young; there were others there, dancing, making up their own lyrics and possibly chewing on one of the singers' electrical cords between sets.

My friend Kathryn in front, with our friend Jeff behind the drums and Tom Petty's portrait on them. The food offerings included the clever-

- the slightly kinky-

- and the less photogenic ones I opted for: pastelillos, an empanada-like meat in crust creation, from a Latin offering; a pulled porlk sammich from a truck from North Tonawanda; and the equivalent of ice cream in the eighth inning from Green Acres of Depew.

The tunes were excellent. The crowd, an interesting mix- maybe not of all ethnicities, but in close proximity without war breaking out, I saw women in burkas and a dude in a Benghazi t-shirt; and a Second Amendment wearer bearing an AK-47 on the front within feet of an "I READ BANNED BOOKS" woman. The only thing we could all agree on was that the guy in the hated Jack Eichel jersey just HAD to go:P

Key Bank sponsors this rodeo. We've always found them to be a little off their game, and maybe this proves it?

A Key Bank ATM, it's a gas, gas, gas!

Never did find the group from the gym down there, but there'll be other times and places. There's a Bisons game next month. Maybe I'll invite some poets to come with and we can do burpees in groups of five, seven and five:)

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Two workdays in the can since then, and now it's off for Mexican tonight. At a restaurant that isn't on wheels.