Buffalo in the 90s: Searching for the fragments of Buffalo’s polka culture

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

For decades, Buffalo’s East Side was the cradle of the city’s Polonia culture. As people and institutions of Polish descent left the East Side, Buffalo’s unique blend of Polish and American traditions became spread out and not as easy to identify.

Twenty-five years ago, The News was asking whether Buffalo’s polka music culture was dead.

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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.