Autumn's First dentist appointment

So, Feb 4th, 2009 was the date of Autumn's first Dentist appointment. Mom and the kids picked me up and we hightailed it two buildings over to the Dentist. The Dentist is on Main street in Buffalo, the site of the Train that Autumn loves to ride.

This is her and Dr. Donna looking out the window at the train (a huge selling feature of the Dentist!)


After checking out a few trains, Autumn sat down for her check up. Hamming it up as much as possible.
Mom joined in the picture and hammed it up too. I actually love this picture. you can tell the ladies are having a good time.

And just so you know, every picture I took, I had the little buddy in my hands. And he was smiling the whole time.


It was a successful visit. And since we're on Gavin, he turns 9 months tomorrow and doesn't have a single tooth. When those chicklets start coming, we'll actually get less sleep. If that's possible.

Yikes.

Why Buffalo?

Image via Wikipedia

"There is a fine line between something and nothing and Buffalo manages to walk it straight despite the large quantities of alcohol it consumed in hopes of blurring that line just a little wider."

This is one of many brilliant quotes in a piece called: "How Buffalo get a Warhol?"

Written in 1997, it's a look at Buffalo that's all at once proud, confused, funny and frustrating. Fact is, our fair city is the second poorest in the nation. Only new Orleans, where Katrina literally washed everything away, beats it.

And yet.

This weekend, we were walking along Elmwood with the kids. A couple with three kids stopped us and began asking us about Buffalo. They were moving here from Texas (had moved here) and were looking for houses.

It's at this moment, and after this weekend of glorious sunny weather that I feel the need to talk up the second poorest city in the nation. The city of neglect. The city filled with amazing things that are either reminders of a better time, or simply crumbling.

It's very easy to take a drive through the second poorest city in the nation and think things can't get better. It's just as easy though, to think that things can't get worse. And if you get there, then you can begin to see little signs here and there that there is progress.

There's a sense that Buffalo can be an architecture mecca. From the Gothic City Hall, to the Millionaires row on Delaware, there are architectural treasures in the city. There's a desire to take back the waterfront. Check out the waterfront, I just visited at lunch. It's right next to HSBC arena and you can see -- dare we say it -- progress.

At it's best, Buffalo offers a place to raise kids that's pretty solid. But clearly, it's not all rosy. We told the people on the street that the Elmwood village was nice and safe. We told them that there are a lot of kids on our street and in the neighborhood in general. We didn't tell them about our second place finish. We didn't tell them about the vacancies.

Indeed, last night at a BBQ, a young couple told me they were looking at buying a house for $30,000. That doesn't come up in conversation, although it does come up that Buffalo is a good place to buy a house.

It's kind of place that doesn't really need a traffic report because the traffic left years ago. But my commute is 8 minutes. I live in the city, work in the city, and everyone in a while, will stand up and defend the city. There's lots to see and do here.

There's also lots that needs to be done. It's easy to focus on that last part. We're good at wanting what we don't have more than we're good at noticing what we have. That's why people will go away and take pictures of gorgeous churches, but never once shoot Our lady of Victory National Shrine and Basilica. It's no slight to them, I've never shot it.

On that note, what else have I yet to do?

Soups no longer on

This is about the Sabres. They just traded Brian Campbell for a former fist round pick. A 23 year old (they were the youngest team in the league and they just got younger -- is that good or bad...Meg?)

Anyway, the argument I heard for trading his was that it was important so that they got something for him. I thought that if he stayed they would GET 3 months of him playing defense, which is a pretty significant thing, but instead, they traded him and got something else.

I think this something else is less significant, but it won't be going away at the end of this season. So it's a trade off trade.

And the thing is, he wasn't going to stay. He's not the number one defenseman on the team (that's Hank Tallinder and Tony Lydman), so you can't pay him number one money. And thus, he was going away. He was leaving.

So I guess the Sabres got something. Lets hope they didn't need Campbell to make the playoffs.

The winter classic

For now, let's talk Winter Classic.

It began, as all events at a football stadium do, with tailgating.



Then, we went into the stadium to watch the game with 73,000 other fans.



First came the national anthems. Or, the Canadian national anthem followed by God Bless America. Now, I'm not a citizen of this country yet. But, there is a national anthem, not national anthems. God Bless America is a nice song, but it's not an anthem. We were at the end with the Canadian Flag. Here's the American one.



Then the Sabres came out to flames. As did the mighty penguins in their equally mighty baby blue. Those were the uniforms they originally enter the league in. Sports teams tend to use names that either have meaning to the city (New Orleans Jazz) and/or invoke attack (Sabres, Predators, Sharks). Pittsburgh picked penguins and baby blue. No wonder Mario Lemiuex didn't want to go there.



It snowed. Interestingly, three different kinds of snows fell. In the first period, the snow was sorta blowy, but with little flakes. It was warmish out, so it melted immediately on us. On ice though, it sat. Meaning, even though the Penguins scored in 20 seconds, it was tough sledding out there.

They decided to zamboni the ice every 10 minutes, so each period was this drawn out affair. Still, it looked like hockey, it felt like hockey, and it was outside. It was cool.


The pile of snow in front of the Zamboni is what they were getting off the ice. Remember, this is just one of them. They use two Zamboni's in the NHL. And this was period #2.

If you click on this picture, you can see a bigger version. And in the version, you will see how much snow was falling. It was wild.

Overall, who cares if they lost? In this post I linked to a story from the New York Times, the Toronto Star and the Guardian Unlimited UK. This was a truly international event, and well worth some cold toes.

Snow day

We had a busy day today. We went outside in the snow; after getting on about 20 layers.



Then, Autumn went on the sled and I pulled her around. You can't tell from this shot (or any), but she was laughing hysterically the whole time. It was fun.



Winter in Buffalo, NY is nice. We get snow, then it gets warm again. And while we really get Autumn under some layers, she's never really in danger of being cold. Yes, things will get cold in a few months, but that's okay. The early snowfall on a weekend makes for a great day of playing in the snow.

Where to eat in Buffalo

Part of moving to a new city is being a cheerleader for it. After five years, the shine of Buffalo is wearing off. I don't think this a Buffalo thing. It's easy to get homesick and miss things about other places you've lived.

And yet, this is my home now, so one way to bring back the shine is to focus on what we like. So here, in no particular order, are the places we love to eat in Buffalo.

Hutch's:
Given the chance, and unlimited funds, we'd eat there every week. The specials menu is truly astonishingly good. We went last week, and it was great. I had the Duck Salad and a piece of Bass that was incredible. It was covered in capers, which I didn't think i liked, but tried. Truly awesome. Rhona had an eggplant salad and the Jambalaya Pasta. If you go, get the fruit cup for dessert.

India Gate:
They don't have a website, but they have a Buffet every Wednesday. The buffet offers a great variety of veggie and meat dishes, all at a relatively low level of heat. to get hotter food, order from the kitchen. Go there with 4 or more people, order a dish each, and create your own buffet. Start off by ordering the Indian tea (it takes a few minutes), then sample some Indian beer. The rice pudding is an excellent ending.

Kuni's:
We all shed a little tear when Kuni's on Elmwood closed it's doors. that was the location of our first date in Buffalo, and one of the finest Sushi restaurants I've ever eaten at. Then, Kuni's To go opened across the road from our house, and things got great. I personally love the Sashimi platter. I do however miss the Hot, Hot, hot Salad, but you can't have it all.

Pappa Jakes:
This one is for Rhona, however I will tell you that the meatloaf sandwich is worth the price of admission. They claim to have the best french fries in Buffalo, along with a nice assortment of beers on tap.

Saigon Cafe:
Another Elmwood strip restaurant, and another gem. The Tom Yum soup is excellent, as is the entire menu. Our friend Michael T calls is his favorite place in Buffalo. it's great for takeout, and eat in. I make a fairly mean coconut milk based curry at home, but I'll agree they do some things that are nice.

Falafel Bar:
This is our go-to take out place when we need something to eat for dinner. It's located in a tiny little place that has some serious history. the wraps are huge and really quite filling. The rice pudding is wonderful and served hot. Rhona likes the Lentil Soup. If you can't find something on this menu you'll like, you're just not trying.

So there you go. Those are the places we like to eat. There are others, but these are the ones that came easily. We don't get out as often as we'd like, but we did go to Hutch's last week. And we'll likely hit India gate soon. I drool every time I walk past Kuni's.

And notice. Not a single place was about Chicken Wings.

Buffalo V Ottawa

Tomorrow, I’m on my way to Ottawa to go curling, and I’m going to wear my Sabres sweater.

I don’t care that Ottawa is off to the best start ever and the Sabres aren't.

See, it’s cyclical.

Two years ago, they’re awesome, we beat ‘em.

Last year, we’re awesome, they beat us.

See? We have them right where we want them.

The 8-minute commute

Today's Buffalo Rising links to a study by Texas A&M on traffic congestion in the US. As one who knows anything about Buffalo can attest, there isn't much congestion here. A 20-minute commute is a 20-minute commute. There might be an accident on the road that adds a bit of time, but for the most part, the traffic reports are laughably boring.

"Everything's fine as you past the big blue water tower".

This comes on the heels of the weekend when I read this at Salon (you have to watch an ad). It talks about regulations in the US that demand parking:

Our story begins in the 1920s with the birth of a piece of esoteric regulation, the "minimum parking requirement." Before parking meters and residential parking permits, cities feared that they were running out of street parking. So municipalities began ordering businesses to provide parking and wrote zoning restrictions to ensure it. Columbus, Ohio, was first, requiring apartment buildings in 1923 to provide parking. In 1939, Fresno, Calif., decreed that hospitals and hotels must do the same. By the '50s, the parking trend exploded. In 1946, only 17 percent of cities had parking requirements. Five years later, 71 percent did.

In this article, Buffalo is cited, "Half of downtown Buffalo, N.Y., is devoted to parking." That means, we not only can get to where we want rather quickly, we almost always can find a place to park. Indeed, on my way to my car, I walk through a parking lot, and I pass two more of them. Buffalo is, indeed, a city full of parking lots.

And a parking lot adds nothing of value to a city. Nothing. Our company subsidizes the parking. I sort of wish they didn't. That would force people to contemplate different options. Maybe they would still pay. Maybe they wouldn't. Maybe they would consider a different options. Like living in the city, carpooling, or even transit. Because while Buffalo isn't that congested, less cars on the road would be better.

Maybe we could then build things on the parking lots.

Cleveland V Buffalo

So there we were, in Cleveland. We took a cab to a swanky place where they cook fresh, local, organic stuff into dishes with words like "reduction sauce", because we wanted to have a drink. We got the same cab home.

Like Buffalo, people don't take a lot of cabs. It's not a wave down a cab city. On the weekend. In fact, there's nothing really happening. We had a real hard time finding a place to have lunch on Saturday afternoon. In Cleveland's defense, we didn't go to the 'flats'. Apparently, that's rocking.

But here's the bigger point. Both cities have some hard-luck sports stories. Buffalonians know wide right and no-goal. Buffalo has OJ.

Cleveland though, has some moments of it's own. the aforementioned cabbie filled us in:

Their football team, the Cleveland Browns packed up and left.
Their Hockey team folded.
The only time the Indians win is in the movie Major League (in other words, it's funny that they are from Cleveland)

Cleveland has three iconic sports moments against them in three different sports:
The Shot: Michael Jordon's last second buzzer-beater -- widely considered to be his coming-out party as a superstar.
The Catch: A young Willi Mays makes a basket catch versus the Indians (who won a league record that year) in the playoffs
The Drive: John Elway engineers a game-winning drive of 98 yards versus the Browns.

Cleveland has had so many heartaches, in all sports, that ESPN has a top ten:

Weird stuff:
A starter on Cleveland's football team, when they got it back, was injured when a ref hit him in the eye with a flag. His career was over.
Our cabbie told us that Cleveland pitchers switched wives in the 70's, but at this point he was just piling on. One of the pitchers did at one point pitch for the Indians, but both were on the Yankees when they switched Wives (or in their words, Lives).

So there you go. Cleveland Fans have a case.

Winter Classic

With the weather hitting into the mid 70's today, a number I should say that has some, though limited meaning to me, it seems crazy to talk about the Winter Classic. most people in these parts say shut up. But this winter classic is a hockey game. Outside. On New Year's Day. And we're giddy up to go.

According to Business Week (a Buffalo rag), the game sold out in 30 minutes. That's 41K tickets sold in 30 minutes. And while there are reports that the NHL made tickets available to Toronto fans and Pittsburgh fans, the simple fact is that many of the people there will be like us, homers.

Yes, we got tickets. And there were many people left out in the cold (or is that the warmth?) According this article in the Globe and Mail, there are a number of people left out. But the simple fact is, the NHL needed this game to sell-out fast. If it didn't sell out, that would have been the lead. Instead, with the supposed help of Toronto Blue Jays season tickets holders, they could release this statement:

"Yesterday's sales demonstrated "once again that our fans are the most passionate in sports, more than 42,000 tickets to the AMP Energy NHL Winter Classic were sold in the first 30 minutes of availability this morning," a statement from the NHL said." (from Globe and Mail)

The game sold out. Many people are going. Many people can't go. Across the board this is a win for the NHL. And Buffalo. They picked our stadium because it had to be in the US for TV, and where else could they guarantee a sell-out?

Anybody wanna babysit?

inspiring

I like his last thought. Stop being a consumer, be a citizen. Think about where you buy from.

Pepsi admits it's bottling tap water

"The soft drink giant Pepsi has been forced to make an embarrassing admission: Its bestselling Aquafina bottled water is nothing more than tap water. Last week, Pepsi agreed to change the labels of Aquafina to indicate the water comes from a public water source. Pepsi agreed to change its label under pressure from the advocacy group Corporate Accountability International, which has been leading an increasingly successful campaign against bottled water."

I stopped drinking bottled water a while ago for these reasons:

1. The monetary cost. This article that I quote above, suggests that bottled water is 7,000 times more expensive than tap water. And, this points out, it's tap water they are selling. I didn't want to be a sucker.

2. The cost to the planet. All that plastic. Most of it non-recycled.

3. Regulations. Our Buffalo tap water is closely monitored by the authorities (PDF). bottled water isn't monitored by the FDA, a body that has zero authority. Although they have a handy article about it.

My advice. Bottled water is when you can't get to a tap. Tap water is when you can.

Our neighborhood is pretty walkable

There's a website called Walk Score. It basically lets you know if you live in a city. Offering a cool google map mashup that figures out what's around your house that's worth walking to, and then scores your ability to walk there. There's something weird about being told there are things worth walking to by your computer. Still, we walk Autumn a lot. And there's usually a lot to see, so we already thought we were walkable. Here's the proof.



Oh, and google maps has even more mash-ups. Check out my maps on google maps. I kinda dig the I want to see a movie now feature.

A fire in Buffalo

Growing up in Southern Ontario, we received US-based NBC, ABC, CBS on our basic cable. The Buffalo versions. We watched Irv Weinstein, we watched Commander Tom. We quoted: "It's 11:00, do you know where your children are?" as teens, at 11:00.

Thus, if we were watching the American Channel, at 11:00PM, we watched Eyewitness News, and Late Breaking, On your side, and all that stuff. And a patten emerged. It seemed to me that in the 80's, most of Cheektowaga burned to the ground. That's because Buffalo networks led with murders and fires. "Tonight, there was a murder in Lackawanna and a Fire in Cheetowaga." At the time, both of these places were foreign to me. I had no idea where they were, but they have a nice memorable mnemonic.

When Rhona and I started dating, I told her about the prevailing notion that Buffalo's surrounding area burned down. She was skeptical. But asking around, she discovered that more and more people in Southern Ontario shared that view.

For a long time, American networks and news have had the "if it bleeds, it leads" theory. Michael Moore took a look at network news in his documentary "Bowling for Columbine", and determined that American news is scarier than Canadian news. His 'study' might have been flawed, but if he asked people in Southern Ontario, what the perception of Buffalo was, he would have heard that there are a lot of fires and murders. Because those are always the leads, and people remember the leads.

This post isn't meant to be an indictment of the American media. I'm only telling you, anecdotally what I recall about news here in Buffalo. I suspect it's the same all over since the Buffalo networks are merely outposts. And the 'if it bleeds, it leads" theory is prevailing in the US.

Anyway, this post is entirely for this reason. There was a fire in Buffalo yesterday. We even saw it. And took some pictures. And it hardly made the news. That's a good thing. Here are some shots my wife took.