By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The essence of Buffalo Stories is defining and celebrating the people, places, and things that make Buffalo… Buffalo.
That’s Buffalo’s pop culture heritage-– and that’s what you’ll find as you scroll through these stories or search the collected works of one of WNY’s most prolific pop culture historians of the last decade for something specific…
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Since no fewer than 300 friends have called, texted, emailed, and sent telegrams about the cool sign uncovered at the old Record Theatre (thank you all!!), I took a ride over and snapped a couple of pics— featuring the vintage sign as well as the Lenny Silver Way signs.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Finally, the perfect last minute gift is now available in stores.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The NFL of 25 years ago was completely different. The Buffalo Bills were great and the New England Patriots were terrible.
Buffalo had been to four straight Super Bowls, and New England, under second year quarterback Drew Bledsoe, was in the midst of the team’s first winning season in seven years.
Facilities were different, too. When the Bills eked out a 38-35 win at old Foxboro Stadium in 1994, there was no room with a table, microphone and a logo backdrop for Marv Levy’s postgame press conference. It happened only a few feet away from the stands, separated by a tarp-covered chain-link fence.
If it had happened today, one fan’s heckling of Marv Levy on that day would have gone viral.
Instead, it remained mostly an inside joke among the reporters who were there at the press conference as well as a teen radio producer who was recording the press conference for use on the Buffalo Bills Radio Network.
Only weeks removed from the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, I hit record as I listened to the feed from New England as a Patriots fan accused Levy of being involved in the slayings. He then moved onto pointing out the Bills’ Super Bowl losses.
“Marv’s a loser,” screamed the man with a thickly barnacled New England accent, sounding more like “Maav’s a loosah!”
“0 for 4, you’re a joke,” he continued, referring to the string of championship game losses.
Throughout my years as a sports talk show producer in the ’90s and 2000s, I would use pieces of the clip on the air – especially the throaty ranting, “Marv’s a loser” – more to make the host laugh, than to entertain listeners.
With Bulldog on WBEN and later Mike Schopp and Howard Simon on WNSA, I’d occasionally play the clip in reference to the serene nature of Boston sports fans. Later, working at Channel 4, I was excited that videographer Jeff Helmick had captured the event, and that producer Mike Courtney had saved it on the station’s file tape.
Howard Simon can be seen on the video, and in a longer version of the audio, the current Voice of the Bills John Murphy can be heard asking, “Hey Buddy, can you quiet down?”
The screaming fan was escorted away from the fence before Levy even showed up for the press conference. Drew Bledsoe lead the Patriots to a playoff berth that season, while the Bills went 7-9.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Nine years ago today, I wrote:
My good friend and Hockey Hall of Famer Jim Kelley died today. When we last spoke a few weeks ago, he knew it wouldn’t be long. I told him I love him, and he said it back. I’m glad we had that conversation. I wish more friends could/would. God bless you Jimmy, and your family.
I started out in the “real world,” with an adult job in an adult environment at the age of 15, surrounded by an amazing cast of people who made me think the world was made of great men like them.
There were many, but none was better than Jim Kelley.
He was a hockey writer, but more than that he firmly believed and professed that there was truth and falsehood. Further, he believed that anyone who tried to make gray out of black-and-white was probably up to something and as a citizen and a journalist, it was his job to figure out what.
I miss him personally as a friend, and more broadly as the kind of guy this world needs more of… now more than ever.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
When he was the Sabres primary back-up goalie, Andrei Trefilov was a funny guy.
One day, I was covering the morning skate and a bunch of us reporters and media types were waiting for all the guys to leave the ice.
Not too long after Dominik Hasek roughed up Buffalo News reporter Jim Kelley, Trefilov came pounding off the ice with an angry look on his face, scowling at the assembled media.
He stopped, narrowed his eyes as he looked at us reporters and growled, “F**K YOU ALL!”
He then waited a moment, smiled, and said, “That means ‘Good Morning’ in Russian!” and walked away laughing. Hahaha.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
My “new” old Bills sweater is the exact same one Gramps used to wear as a ticket taker at the stadium. Gramps would let us into Bills games— I remember going to a Baltimore Colts game during the 1982 strike.
We weren’t allowed to acknowledge or say hi to Grandpa, and we had to give him a matchbook to rip and hand back to us in case the bosses were watching.
Paid attendance at Rich Stadium: 80,080. Non-paying Cichons: 3,347. Hahaha
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The truth is, Jackie Jocko didn’t know me from anyone. We’d met a bunch through the years, and I even drove him home from EB Greens a few times toward the end of his career, but with Jocko, it didn’t matter who you were anyway– if you were in his company, he was there to entertain you with his musical ability but also to touch and warm your soul as one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met.
He didn’t know me from the guys from Iowa at the next table, but when he sang, “My friend Steve is a good guy,” he meant it. He meant I was a friend, and he meant that he saw the good in me… Because he was literally everyone’s friend and he saw the good in everyone.
If it was just the size of his talent behind a piano keyboard, it would have been an honor to have spent some time with him through the years… But he was a genuine and thoroughly good man to a degree where it seemed like he turned over his entire existence to the well-being of the people around him.
What else can you do but hold up a paddle that says SMILE, and sing… “My… friend… Jock… ko… is… a… good… guuuuy….. ”
May perpetual light shine upon him.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
For as long as I can remember, stopping at the light next to Kenmore West High School has made me smile.
When you were stopped on Highland, you were looking straight into a picture window which, forever, had a lovely glass collection displayed in it.
Driving by the other day, I was a little sad to see the house was up for sale and the colored glass bottles were gone.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
When I was a general assignment reporter, I always loved the angle that when something big happens, anything that anyone is doing becomes a story. “How did you ride out the storm?” “How did you celebrate the big win?” “Where were you when the tornado hit?”
No matter what your answer is…it’s part of the larger story and worth celebrating. As a researcher and historian who combs through other writers’ and journalists’ archived works to re-tell their stories in the light of present day life, I love finding those little bits of everyday life set against the backdrop of big stories.
That’s why these ladies watching TV at a City of Tonawanda department store is my favorite image from the lunar landing. A million people are telling Neil Armstrong’s story– But we here care just as much about what was going on in the Twin-Ton Department store as he was making that giant leap.
Watching TV rarely gets you on the front page of the paper, but it seems appropriate that it did for the staff at Jenss Twin-Ton Department store 50 years ago next week.
That man would step foot on the moon is an unimaginable, superlative, epoch-defining feat in human history. But that more than half a billion would watch it happen live on their television sets made it a definitive moment in a broadcast television industry that was barely 20 years old at the time.
Gathered around the TV “to catch a few glimpses of the Apollo 11 events” were Mrs. James Tait, Margaret Robinson, Marian Feldt, Jack Dautch, Grace Hughes, Dorothy Wiegand, Rose Sugden and Rose Ann Fiala.
By the time of the 1969 moon landing, Jenss Twin-Ton’s future was already in doubt as city fathers in the Tonawandas were looking to expand already present Urban Renewal efforts to include the store at Main and Niagara.
Founded in 1877 as Zuckmaier Bros., the department store was sold in 1946 and became Twin-Ton in 1946. Jenss Twin-Ton closed in 1976 when the building was bulldozed as urban renewal caught up. Plans for the department store to rebuild on the site never materialized and the Tonawandas’ only downtown department store was gone for good.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
“A sea of humanity floods Allentown” read the headline in the Courier-Express as the 1969 edition of the Allentown Art Festival set new attendance records topping 250,000 people.
With 500 exhibitors, the 1969 show was the first where Allen Street was closed to vehicular traffic.
“The crowds were remarkable patient and didn’t seem to mind the surging mass of humanity on all the sidewalks and streets in the area,” wrote Courier reporter Deborah Williams. “It is truly an event for all tastes and ages.”
