Buffalo in the 40’s: Frank Sedita’s Booze Shop

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

I found this postcard a while ago, showing two men standing in a West Side liquor store in the 1940s.

Anthony Tauriello and Frank Sedita. Buffalo Stories archives
Taurielllo & Sedita Liquor Store, 436 Niagara Street. Buffalo Stories archives

The Man on the left would become a congressman in the 60’s (Anthony Tauriello) and the man on the right would become Buffalo’s Mayor– Frank Sedita, the current DA’s grandfather.

Now that I dug out the card, I’m giving it to the Sedita family. Neat heirloom.

Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com
Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com

Buffalo in the 50’s: WWOL’s Guy King arrested hanging out on a billboard

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It was the craziest radio prank to date in Buffalo and Tom Clay– who was one of many men who used the air name GUY KING on WWOL Radio– kicked off Buffalo’s Rock’n’roll radio era in style.

Leading into the Independence Day holiday, Clay played Bill Haley & The Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock” over and over again, while hanging outside the studio window out on the WWOL billboard in Shelton Square, urging motorists to get a look at him and beep their horns to say hello.

Shelton Square, late 1940s, showing street cars, the Palace Burlesk, and WWOL Radio. Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo Police and Buffalo Fire didn’t appreciate the prank, and Clay spent part of the night in the clink.

Buffalo Stories archives

New Book! The Complete History of Parkside

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The Complete History of Parkside, Buffalo, NY
A New Book by Buffalo Author Steve Cichon

A history of the Frederick Law Olmsted designed neighborhood, from its place in the history of the Seneca Nation, to its role in the War of 1812, to Olmsted’s design and the turn of the century building out of the area, and the neighborhood’s 20th century evolutions. Included are discussions of the area’s earliest colorful settlers, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House, Delaware Park, The Buffalo Zoo, and the stories and anecdotes of many more struggles, individuals, and institutions that have made Parkside one of Buffalo’s premier historic neighborhoods today.


Questions You’ll Have Answered as You Read:

  • Where is Parkside’s mass virtually unmarked grave?
  • How did a Parkside quest for riches turn to… naked women?!?
  • Why did the FBI have Parkside staked out for most of a decade?
  • You’ll also learn details on how America’s first jet plane was built in Parkside, and the scandal with Parkside roots that nearly brought down a Presidency.

135 historic photos, 172 pages.

Steve CichonABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Steve Cichon is an award winning journalist with WBEN Radio, where he’’s been a news reporter and anchor since 2003, having worked in Buffalo radio and television since 1993. Steve and his wife Monica became Parkside home owners on Valentines Day 2000, and quickly fell in love with the neighborhood. They continue to renovate and restore their 1909 EB Green designed American Four Square, and will likely continue to do so into perpetuity.

Books available for purchase NOW online… and at the following locations:

  • Talking Leaves Books (Main St. and Elmwood Ave. Locations)
  • The Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society Shop
  • The Darwin Martin House Gift Shop
  • WNY Barnes & Noble Stores
  • Borders WNY Locations
  • Buy online at the Buffalo Stories Bookstore

Steve is available to talk about Parkside History. Please email Steve for details.


Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com
Reformatted & Updated pages from staffannouncer.com finding a new home at buffalostories.com

Buffalo in the 70’s: The Forest City Auto Parts Guy

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Buffalo Stories archives

 

The Forest City Auto Parts guy, whose LONG neck was featured on the Buffalo Phone Book and the signs in front of the several area locations for years.

 

I best remember him from the corner of Seneca & Bailey. They probably could have kept this sign for the porn shop in that building now?

 

Buffalo in the 90’s: Ice and the Hammer at the Aud

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Hammertime!

Buffalo Stories archives

“Exclusive” sticker patches from Kiss 98.5’s Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer concerts from the early 90s at Memorial Auditorium.

Vanilla Ice played Buffalo March 7, 1991 and MC Hammer played the Aud on October 13, 1990.

These were in the drawer of the desk I inherited down the hall from Kiss 98.5.

Buffalo in the 50’s: Before there was Irv..

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

From the Buffalo Evening News, Nov 29, 1958– the day before Channel 7 signed on the air for the first time.

Irv Weinstein was a newscaster at KB Radio at this point– Channel 7’s first news anchor was Roger Lund.

Stan Barron was on the sports desk, and Rick Azar– who was also the announcer who signed on the station– was Channel 7’s first weather man.

Buffalo Stories archives

The 13th Annual Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame Honorees Announced

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This story was published in Forever Young magazine

The Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame swells its ranks by 5 once again this September, and in this, our lucky 13th year, we have finally begun to catch up. When the Buffalo Broadcasters began this process in 1997, we had 75 years worth of Western New York commercial broadcasting talent to consider.

Now, after dozens and dozens of inductees from the earliest days of radio and television, peppered with many of the more modern superstars along the way, the pendulum has swung. We are at a point now where we can honor broadcasters who’ve made their impact in the last quarter century,  while still honoring those greats who have passed on to the announce booth in the sky. Each of the broadcasters tapped for induction this year have been active during the last 18 years, and all but one within the last few.

One of the missions of the Buffalo Broadcasters is to celebrate great broadcasting past and present. We are proud that The Hall of Fame Class of 2009 celebrates some of both.

_

Marie Rice- A respected, straight street reporter at Channel 4 for an entire generation, Marie came on at WBEN-TV in 1977 as the woman in the vaunted station’s on-air news stable.

It was soon after her sign-on in Buffalo that the story perhaps best suited to her brand of straight-laced compassionate journalism began to unfold; it was one she’d continue to report on until she left WIVB in 2004. Marie Rice was one of the earliest journalists on the scene at Love Canal; at a time when home owners there just wanted to know what the ooze in their basements was.  She hopes, she says, that through her reporting she was able to make a difference. It’s all a part of public service; giving a voice to the voiceless.

The Ohio Native says everyone is blessed with a gift, and she counts her husky, commanding voice as hers. And while the tonal quality of that familiar voice struck the proper mood in reporting from murder trials and city hall scandals, before working in television news in Buffalo and Albany, Marie was known as “Misty,” as one of the country’s first female disc jockeys at an all-jazz station in Pittsburgh.

_

Pat Feldballe- The name would leave most wondering, but the smooth, consistent voice is one you’re unable to escape in Buffalo. From Channel 2’s promo pieces, to Valu Home Centers to Paddock Chevrolet, on on-hold messages, to the national Time/Life commercials, for a quarter century, Pat ihas been Western New York’s go-to independent voice-over king.

In 1970s you’d have heard him at WBUF, WGR, WGRQ, and WUWU playing rock’n roll, and hosting a magazine program (and working with Terry Gross) at WBFO. Pat eventually got the point when he’d show up for his jock shift and find a handful of production orders taped to the console for him to do. Figuring it was his destiny, he did a stint as a radio production director, but quickly decided, in 1982, that he could do production on his own. He hasn’t looked back.

In an industry where many production guys will try to sell clients on the latest and greatest gadget, Feldballe’s used the same microphone since 1986. It’s a part of all his success. “I’m the most consistent guy I know, I always sound the same, and I take pride in making sure reads time out,” says Pat. Just showing up and doing the work, doing it well, and making it easy for whoever’s using his work. “I just hung out the shingle 27 years ago, and here I am.”

_

Fred Klestine- Like most Lackawanna boys in the 1940s, Fred worked at the steel mill once he got out of school. But his bellowing voice and friendly, mellow personality helped him land a job as the morning man on WWOL Radio in the 1950s.

Whether at WWOL, WBNY, or during his decade at KB Radio during its 1960s Top 40 prime, Klestine always did what he could to share his love of jazz with his audience. He knew the music, and knew many of the performers personally. Klestine was a natural for the jazz-centric WADV-FM in the 70s, and worked at WBUF through the 80s.

To those who listened, he was a calm, straight-laced elder statesman type with a deep melodic voice. Off the air, he was a coffee-swilling funnyman. Longtime co-workers like Dan Neaverth and Sandy Beach count him not only as one of the funniest people each one has ever known, but as a great friend. Klestine was 68 when he died in 1992.

_

Randy Michaels- Randy Michaels became Randy Michaels in Buffalo. Literally. He made the most of federal deregulation in broadcasting in the mid 90s, and became Arguably the most powerful man in radio. He oversaw and led in the acquisition of over 1,000 radio stations as the  President of Jaycor Broadcasting, and later Clear Channel Communications.

Michaels started his career as an engineer and on air talent at the SUNY Fredonia campus station in the early 70’s. After an on-the-spot tryout at the Erie County Fair, he quickly moved to commercial radio at Taft-owned WGR and WGR-FM, where he took the pseudonym by which he’s still known today. Working in programming and as the nighttime disc jockey on WGR, Michaels soon left Buffalo for national programming assignments, moving his way up the food chain, eventually running the 1,200 Clear Channel Communications stations.

Michaels is now in Chicago at the top of the Tribune Company, which is the nation’s third largest newspaper publisher, and whose 23 television stations reach 80% of US households.

_

Don Polec- From 1977-1982, when Irv Weinstein smiled wryly and growled… And finally… at an Eyewitness Newscast, it was Don Polec’s time to shine; bringing the offbeat and, well, goofy to the airwaves.

A native of Buffalo’s Riverside section, Polec tried radio at WKBW, but found it wasn’t quite for him. After two years of managing a handful of different Burger King restaurants around the Western New York, Polec looked for work as a videographer. He sending Irv a resume that listed experience as an “urban sheep herder” and “professional vagrant.”  He was on the air, with that same sort of silliness, almost immediately thereafter.

Polec left Buffalo in 1982 for Philadelphia, where Action News featured antics his Western New York fans would recognize in “Don Polec’s World” reports until earlier this year. Polec’s Buffalo brand of zany-yet-artful reports were also featured on the national stage when he was a Good Morning America correspondent in the late 80s and early 90s.

_

The Buffalo Broadcasters are also celebrating several Golden anniversaries this year. WNED-TV, WBFO-FM, and WGRF-FM are each celebrating 50 years of broadcasting over the airwaves of Western New York.

For details on attending the Hall of Fame Ceremony, Tuesday September 22, 2009, at the WNED-TV studios; or for more information on the past inductees of the Buffalo Broadcast Hall of Fame, please visit www.buffalobroadcasters.com.

Steve Cichon is a news anchor at WBEN Radio, and a director and past President of the Buffalo Broadcasters. He’s also the webmaster at www.staffannouncer.com, a website devoted to Buffalo radio, TV, and pop culture history.