By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
News Food Critic Janice Okun spoke with the director of the Cooperative Extension’s Sea Grant advisory program, who offered some preparation ideas beyond pan frying and whose office was looking for ways to help Buffalo eat those fish you’d probably just want to throw back.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
News Food Critic Janice Okun and photographer Merrill Matthews take readers on a tour of Buffalo’s outdoor dining spots of 40 years ago.
Brinkworth’s Hatch remains, although as just the Hatch.
The Main Place Mall Café is but a memory, and Voskerichian’s is now a vet’s office on Delaware Avenue near Amherst.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
This grainy 1975 photo was published to show the progress being made on repairs to the Skyway, but looking at the area with the eyes of 2015, 40 years of progress and change couldn’t be clearer.
Missing from the photo are the 1979 Adams Mark Hotel, and its neighbors WNED-TV and WKBW-TV. To the left of the Skyway, toward the top, you find an empty field where there is now Canalside.
The Aud and the Donovan Office Building stand just to the right of the Skyway at the top of the page. The Aud site is now home to the canals used for skating and boating. The bones of the Donovan Building live on inside the Phillips Lytle building.
For decades, city planners wrang their hands over the Webster block. In 1975, it was a parking lot, which it remained until only three years ago, when the Pegulas broke ground on HarborCenter. Also not in this photo — because it was 20 years from being built — is First Niagara Center.
By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo
The item that was “The Red Ryder b-b gun” of my youth has now been branded as hateful. When I rode my “Dukes of Hazzard” big wheel around the streets of South Buffalo as a 6 and 7 year old, the Dukes stood for what is right and wonderful in this world.
The Dukes always did the right things, for the right reasons, the right way. (Except maybe climbing into their car through the window without opening the door– Copying that move in our old AMC Spirit got me in trouble a few times.)
I don’t think I gave much thought to the “rebel flag” that was clearly a featured emblem on their car “The General Lee,” and also, as seen in this photo, clearly a part of my big wheel. I really hope you don’t find it racist that I still harbor warm feelings for my big wheel and my one-time favorite TV show (even though you couldn’t pay me to watch more than five minutes of it now– not because it’s racist, but because it’s dumb.)
Of course, in the years since cruising down Allegany Street in the saddle of my orange plastic pride and joy, I’ve given plenty of thought to the meaning of that flag.
First I’ll say seeing it fly makes me uncomfortable. But I’ll also say, I’m certain there are many who have displayed that flag who are not racist. I’m also certain that not everyone who has displayed the flag has done so with the thought of doing so as emblematic of racism or a racist culture.
I honestly and earnestly believe that the familiar rebel flag offers many folks a feeling of connection to ancestors and a sense of pride in history. But when you fly a flag… or put a bumper sticker on your car… you are allowing a symbol to represent you, and symbols always have nuanced meaning for every individual under the sun.
Many of us all have a visceral reaction and likely pass immediate judgement about people who put those place oval stickers on their cars. What might be true of someone who likes Key West? The Outer Banks? Ellicottville? How about a Yankees bumper sticker? Or a Vote Bush sticker? Or a Vote Obama sticker? How about MD physician plates on a Honda Civic? MD plates on a BMW SUV? A rubber scrotum hanging from the tow hitch?
It’s fair to say that each of these different instances will cause different reactions in each one of us. It’s also fair to say that each of these reactions were created by someone making a choice on how to present themselves in public.
Generally, I know my reaction to someone flaunting the rebel flag is a negative one. Regardless of what the symbol means to that person inside, I wonder how they can offer that symbol up as representative of who they are– when we all know for so many people it means little other than backwards racism.
But here again, I understand the dichotomy, as I warmly remember the care-free summers I spent cruising around my neighborhood, my ride emblazoned with what is now an official symbol of hate.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Utica Club promised, in this ad from 40 years ago today, that if you “taste the beers and not the labels,” UC matched up to and surpassed brands such as Budweiser and Schlitz.
From July, 1975:
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The Buffalo Police Department disbanded its mounted division in 1955 and sold off the horses at auction. But 20 years later, a retired officer and the horse with whom he shared a beat still spent time together in the Boston Hills.
Also, at the bottom of the page– a great look at the classic Olaf Fub.
From July, 1975:
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Sadly, as one thumbs through decades of pages of The Buffalo News, it becomes clear that the Buffalo Public Schools have been in a perpetual state of crisis for at least half a century.
New fixes and hopes come and go — but one long-standing positive influence was South Buffalo’s Eugene Reville, whose 15 years running Buffalo’s schools started 40 years ago this week.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Pioneer announcer and journalist Lou Douglas has died. He was 85.
The Korean War vet came to WBEN-AM/FM/TV in 1957 and his unflappable, smart, level-headed approach to news anchoring and interviewing was part of the fabric of the station for 30 years. Douglas was considered by most as the dean of broadcast journalists.
In his early years as a junior announcer at The Buffalo Evening News stations, television still played second fiddle to AM radio. Many of his early assignments were on Channel 4, including regular 6pm walks from WBEN’s Statler studios to The Buffalo Evening News’ building near the foot of Main Street. There, he’d read the 6 o’clock news as prepared by The News’ staff, broadcast–as was announced at the beginning of each newscast– “From the Editorial Floor of the Buffalo Evening News.”
Douglas would continue to appear as a reporter, host, and announcer on TV through the 1970s, but he is best remembered for his work at WBEN Radio.
It was his voice that anchored coverage of President John F. Kennedy’s visit to Buffalo in 1962. He broadcast from inside the prison complex during the Attica uprising. Living in Kenmore, his home was closest to the WBEN’s Elmwood Avenue studios– which meant extended duty for Lou during the Blizzard of 1977.
He always sounded even-keeled on the air, and was the same way in the newsroom, where he was remembered for reading the Wall Street Journal and never being afraid to pick up the phone to calmly make the most outlandish and seemingly impossible interview requests for his afternoon and evening interview spots.
In spanning three decades, Douglas really had two separate careers; one as a staff announcer, and one as a journalist. Through the 1950s and 1960s, the people you saw on Channel 4 and heard on WBEN were announcers– and only announcers. Union rules dictated that they could not and would not write their own news scripts or conduct news interviews or gather information.
By the mid-1970s, those rules had changed, and most of the “announcers” who had been bringing Buffalo news and weather since the ’40s and ’50s were gone. Not Douglas, though– his abilities as a staff announcer complimented his ability to gather the news, interview the newsmakers, and write his own newscasts.
He retired from WBEN in 1987, and spent a brief period at WWKB Radio a few years later before retiring for good.
In 2010, I spoke to Lou about his days in radio, and the possibility of the Statler building facing the wrecking ball. This interview wasn’t meant for broadcast, but is wonderful none the less. That interview, along with some career highlights, are listed for playback below. Please feel free to use any of the audio or photos in the celebration of Lou’s life in any media.
Steve with Lou Douglas, 2010:
WBEN’s Election 85 coverage: Kevin Keenan, Lou Douglas, Brian Meyer, Mark Hamrick, and John Murphy
WBEN News with Lou Douglas, 1973. Attica uprising, will Mayor Sedita resign?
WBEN News with Lou Douglas, January 1977. The Blizzard of ’77.
WBEN’s Coverage of JFK’s Visit to Buffalo, 1962. Lou Douglas live from Niagara Square.
For immediate release
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
While saying accepting kisses and listening to the screams of female fans are a part of the job, flashy singer Tom Jones told reporters in a Niagara County news conference 40 years ago today– July 1, 1975– that he “doesn’t understand” women’s liberation, doesn’t know what “they want to be liberated from” and that “you’ll notice a lot of these women who talk about liberation are not pretty.”
One has to wonder if there were fewer kisses and screams at that evening’s concert?
The entertainment had more of a Buffalo feel at The After Dark nightclub on Transit Road in Lockport where Talas and The Road were featured in the coming week.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Forty years ago today, July 1, 1975, the tolls at Black Rock and Ogden crept up from 15 cents to 20 cents, leaving many motorists searching their seat cushions for a nickel — and one kind Thruway employee ready to help.
Another now-useless skill that thousands of Western New Yorkers perfected was the slow-down to 10 or 15 miles per hour to toss our exact change into the plastic basket of the toll booth.
The advent of EZPass diminished the importance of this skill, which for some was left entirely in the Stone Age when the Thruway Authority removed tolls from the downtown Buffalo portion of I-190 in 2006.
