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Not everything, course. Work is work, getting old sucks, but some of the venues and businesses around here are going through more than the usual amount of flux.
Even the Timmmys is, a -changinnnnn. I mentioned a few weeks ago that Tim Horton's, local purveyor of drive-thru coffee named for a hockey star killed in a drunk driving accident, was jumping on the App Bandwagon to promote its rewards program. Apparently, this worked so well that the business is losing too much money on the deal, and they're now scaling back the gimmes, making it harder to earn any free stuff for everyone and harder still for anyone who hasn't signed up by next month. All of this went mostly unnoticed, but change an #OKBoomer promotion and EVERYONE pays attention:
It's just what it says on the Tim (or, if you're fromRemulak France, "Déroule Le Rebord Pour Gagner"). For most Februaries since I can remember, these cuppas came oot of the window and, when you rolled where the arrow told you to, you got, in my case almost always, a PLEASE PLAY AGAIN message. Once in a blue line, there'd be a free coffee or donut. The big prizes were cash cards, televisions and the grand prize of a car.
The good news is, the rim shall indeed return- but not until March, with fewer actual winning rims, and more tied to use of the rewards card/app to improve your chances. The cars do remain at the top of the prize list, and this year's model is our very own Hyundai Ioniq- ten of them, electric and hybrid.
I wonder what Alanis will make of THAT.
----
I'm also not sure what anyone these days is making of developments in the world of Buffalo development. In the almost 40 years I've lived or at least visited back here, the city and region have gone through a fairly common Rust Belt cycle of mostly decline: the death of downtown, major developments in the surrounding burbs, then government targeted efforts to bring things back, which did little to do so. For the past 20 years, though, private and organic efforts have enabled neighborhoods to survive and even revive.
The "Elmwood Strip" of mostly college bars of the 80s has evolved into the far more diverse and hip "Elmwood Village" of today. Hertel Avenue's Italian roots have been matched by taco joints and urban grocers, anchored by the one remaining movie palace within the city limits. What was once a site of architectural mourning- the Larkin Administration Building, Frank Lloyd Wright's most major and monstrous office achievement, fell to the wrecking ball in 1950- has reclaimed other structures from that business's era and now thrives as "Larkinville." Chippewa Street, as close as Buffalo ever had to a red-light district, became fashionable in the 1990s as a home to high-end chop houses and theater companies drawing from the nearby Theater District. And the pure power of immigrant exceptionalism, largely Somalian refugees, turned Buffalo's lower West Side into an eclectic combination of halal and lasagna.
One largely lost area, though, was in between all of these, north of downtown near, but not on, the Niagara River waterfront. (Asshole 50s planners plopped an interstate there to cut off the neighborhoods from the water.) The area(s) is/are known as "Black Rock/Riverside." The former was once its own town, independent (and not particularly fond) of Buffalo to its south, which finally annexed it in the 1850s. The latter was named, duh, for its pre-expressway proximity to the Niagara River. For most of my time here, they've been a combination of dying industrial, largely absentee-landlord residential and little cultural- but that has been changing at a frantic pace.
The poetry readings we've adopted since 2018 moved from their original Elmwood Village home to a new-to-us coffee shop on Connecticut Street known as Perks at Horsefeathers. Two nights ago, I made my own journey there for an open mic comedy night, drawing a completely different but still fun crowd. A few blocks north of there is the current home of a theater company that hosted the poetry slam we attended several weekends ago. And norther still, closer to Hertel, is the current height of hipsterism here- Chandler Street. In almost 40 years, I can say with certainly I had never put a foot or a tire on it despite it being right off the 190 and barely a quarter mile south of well-trod trails, but it's now hosting tons of new businesses ranging from fitness to baking to, what else?, brews. One of these, an offshoot of an Elmwoood craft brewery, hosted an Anti-Valentine party this past Saturday night which we went to.
The event space upstairs before it got started- about a dozen readers doing "Dear Diary" cringefests from their sixth grade notebooks and their 2004 high school LiveJournals. (Yes, I started my LJ in 2004. I was 44. Don't judge.) Downstairs was a full-on bar filled with mostly millennials, bar games, alcohol and hormones. (Also, a wood fired pizza joint, which we ordered from but brought the foods to the quieter space upstairs.)
All of this seems to be happening through happen of stance and word of mouth. Chandler Street is getting so cool that, once I read about some new business down there starting up (I forget the details, but I think it involved axe throwing and free-range chickens), I wondered out loud when this street was just going to secede and become part of Brooklyn. There's some concern about "gentrification," but some of the community organizations behind the revival have been working to make the process more inclusive and less threatening to the good neighbors who want to share in the upgrade.
----
Since our population is still stagnant, these new hot spots are necessarily taking business away from other ventures. Mall stores, and in some cases whole malls, are closing at remarkable rates- and today came word that one of this area's longest-running attractions has spun its last Ferris Wheel. Several miles and a toll bridge up that same riverside interstate, there's a small but beloved amusement park which continues to be remembered for a long-retired slogan which even before today's news was typically used in the most ironic of senses:
To locals, the words "Fantasy Island" never evoked the tacky old tv show (and certainly not the hideous horror remake of it that just came out). Those two words meant the park, and vice versa, even in eras when the owners either tried rebranding (would you believe "Two Flags Over Niagara"?!?) or sticking their name into the title (as carny impreasio Martin DiPietro did for years). It went through bankruptcy, changed hands numerous times, and most recently wound up sold to a B-to-C-level park chain that will never be mistaken for Six Anythings.
Yet nothing ever changed that anyone cared about. Right off the 190 and free parking? Check. Kiddie rides and water slides you could take a toddler to? Check. (I think we did, with Emily, once, though she likely went on camp or school trips other times.) A traditional coaster for the older kids? Check. A Wild West Show right out of 1960s television? Check check you're dead where ya stand, mister! As Mets fans often said in loving and now missing Shea Stadium, It's a dump, but it's OUR dump!
What it didn't have is probably what did it in. Tracts of land,mainly. I wrote a couple summers ago about the history of its main WNY theme-park competition out (and I do mean out) at Darien Lake. That joint's in the middle of a TON of nowhere, enabling its own many and varied corporate owners from over the years to expand it for bigger rides, more concessions and most importantly, a captive-audience concert venue that packs in the old crowd as well as the kids every summer. Fantasy Island is bound in tight space on an island that can't get any bigger, and established and larger concert venues lie either end of that interstate from Lewiston to Orchard Park plus in Buffalo itself in between. What made it popular were the same things that made it unsustainable: a day there was cheap, predictable and not enough to attract anyone not drawn by the nostalgia.
The town fathers are making noise about trying to Save Our Park!, but the corporate owner already has many of the signature rides, including its famed Silver Comet Coaster, up for sale. These are playtoys of the uberwealthy and the wet dreams of park developers in growing communities in this country and abroad. The only thought along those lines I've had is maybe we can get the current owners of the Bills and Sabres to bail out THIS attraction as they did those two teams in the oughts and teens. It all could work: they have enough fired coaches and GMs on the payroll to run all the rides; they can replace the Silver Comet with the Dreaded Playoff Drought; and they've got Dawson Knox and Carter Hutton to star in the Wild West show (don't worry, kids- one will drop his gun every time and every bullet will go right past the other).
Help us, Terry and Kim- we need Fun! NOW!
Even the Timmmys is, a -changinnnnn. I mentioned a few weeks ago that Tim Horton's, local purveyor of drive-thru coffee named for a hockey star killed in a drunk driving accident, was jumping on the App Bandwagon to promote its rewards program. Apparently, this worked so well that the business is losing too much money on the deal, and they're now scaling back the gimmes, making it harder to earn any free stuff for everyone and harder still for anyone who hasn't signed up by next month. All of this went mostly unnoticed, but change an #OKBoomer promotion and EVERYONE pays attention:
It's just what it says on the Tim (or, if you're from
The good news is, the rim shall indeed return- but not until March, with fewer actual winning rims, and more tied to use of the rewards card/app to improve your chances. The cars do remain at the top of the prize list, and this year's model is our very own Hyundai Ioniq- ten of them, electric and hybrid.
I wonder what Alanis will make of THAT.
----
I'm also not sure what anyone these days is making of developments in the world of Buffalo development. In the almost 40 years I've lived or at least visited back here, the city and region have gone through a fairly common Rust Belt cycle of mostly decline: the death of downtown, major developments in the surrounding burbs, then government targeted efforts to bring things back, which did little to do so. For the past 20 years, though, private and organic efforts have enabled neighborhoods to survive and even revive.
The "Elmwood Strip" of mostly college bars of the 80s has evolved into the far more diverse and hip "Elmwood Village" of today. Hertel Avenue's Italian roots have been matched by taco joints and urban grocers, anchored by the one remaining movie palace within the city limits. What was once a site of architectural mourning- the Larkin Administration Building, Frank Lloyd Wright's most major and monstrous office achievement, fell to the wrecking ball in 1950- has reclaimed other structures from that business's era and now thrives as "Larkinville." Chippewa Street, as close as Buffalo ever had to a red-light district, became fashionable in the 1990s as a home to high-end chop houses and theater companies drawing from the nearby Theater District. And the pure power of immigrant exceptionalism, largely Somalian refugees, turned Buffalo's lower West Side into an eclectic combination of halal and lasagna.
One largely lost area, though, was in between all of these, north of downtown near, but not on, the Niagara River waterfront. (Asshole 50s planners plopped an interstate there to cut off the neighborhoods from the water.) The area(s) is/are known as "Black Rock/Riverside." The former was once its own town, independent (and not particularly fond) of Buffalo to its south, which finally annexed it in the 1850s. The latter was named, duh, for its pre-expressway proximity to the Niagara River. For most of my time here, they've been a combination of dying industrial, largely absentee-landlord residential and little cultural- but that has been changing at a frantic pace.
The poetry readings we've adopted since 2018 moved from their original Elmwood Village home to a new-to-us coffee shop on Connecticut Street known as Perks at Horsefeathers. Two nights ago, I made my own journey there for an open mic comedy night, drawing a completely different but still fun crowd. A few blocks north of there is the current home of a theater company that hosted the poetry slam we attended several weekends ago. And norther still, closer to Hertel, is the current height of hipsterism here- Chandler Street. In almost 40 years, I can say with certainly I had never put a foot or a tire on it despite it being right off the 190 and barely a quarter mile south of well-trod trails, but it's now hosting tons of new businesses ranging from fitness to baking to, what else?, brews. One of these, an offshoot of an Elmwoood craft brewery, hosted an Anti-Valentine party this past Saturday night which we went to.
The event space upstairs before it got started- about a dozen readers doing "Dear Diary" cringefests from their sixth grade notebooks and their 2004 high school LiveJournals. (Yes, I started my LJ in 2004. I was 44. Don't judge.) Downstairs was a full-on bar filled with mostly millennials, bar games, alcohol and hormones. (Also, a wood fired pizza joint, which we ordered from but brought the foods to the quieter space upstairs.)
All of this seems to be happening through happen of stance and word of mouth. Chandler Street is getting so cool that, once I read about some new business down there starting up (I forget the details, but I think it involved axe throwing and free-range chickens), I wondered out loud when this street was just going to secede and become part of Brooklyn. There's some concern about "gentrification," but some of the community organizations behind the revival have been working to make the process more inclusive and less threatening to the good neighbors who want to share in the upgrade.
----
Since our population is still stagnant, these new hot spots are necessarily taking business away from other ventures. Mall stores, and in some cases whole malls, are closing at remarkable rates- and today came word that one of this area's longest-running attractions has spun its last Ferris Wheel. Several miles and a toll bridge up that same riverside interstate, there's a small but beloved amusement park which continues to be remembered for a long-retired slogan which even before today's news was typically used in the most ironic of senses:
To locals, the words "Fantasy Island" never evoked the tacky old tv show (and certainly not the hideous horror remake of it that just came out). Those two words meant the park, and vice versa, even in eras when the owners either tried rebranding (would you believe "Two Flags Over Niagara"?!?) or sticking their name into the title (as carny impreasio Martin DiPietro did for years). It went through bankruptcy, changed hands numerous times, and most recently wound up sold to a B-to-C-level park chain that will never be mistaken for Six Anythings.
Yet nothing ever changed that anyone cared about. Right off the 190 and free parking? Check. Kiddie rides and water slides you could take a toddler to? Check. (I think we did, with Emily, once, though she likely went on camp or school trips other times.) A traditional coaster for the older kids? Check. A Wild West Show right out of 1960s television? Check check you're dead where ya stand, mister! As Mets fans often said in loving and now missing Shea Stadium, It's a dump, but it's OUR dump!
What it didn't have is probably what did it in. Tracts of land,mainly. I wrote a couple summers ago about the history of its main WNY theme-park competition out (and I do mean out) at Darien Lake. That joint's in the middle of a TON of nowhere, enabling its own many and varied corporate owners from over the years to expand it for bigger rides, more concessions and most importantly, a captive-audience concert venue that packs in the old crowd as well as the kids every summer. Fantasy Island is bound in tight space on an island that can't get any bigger, and established and larger concert venues lie either end of that interstate from Lewiston to Orchard Park plus in Buffalo itself in between. What made it popular were the same things that made it unsustainable: a day there was cheap, predictable and not enough to attract anyone not drawn by the nostalgia.
The town fathers are making noise about trying to Save Our Park!, but the corporate owner already has many of the signature rides, including its famed Silver Comet Coaster, up for sale. These are playtoys of the uberwealthy and the wet dreams of park developers in growing communities in this country and abroad. The only thought along those lines I've had is maybe we can get the current owners of the Bills and Sabres to bail out THIS attraction as they did those two teams in the oughts and teens. It all could work: they have enough fired coaches and GMs on the payroll to run all the rides; they can replace the Silver Comet with the Dreaded Playoff Drought; and they've got Dawson Knox and Carter Hutton to star in the Wild West show (don't worry, kids- one will drop his gun every time and every bullet will go right past the other).
Help us, Terry and Kim- we need Fun! NOW!