Category: Buffalo’s Pop Culture Heritage

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

AM&A’s ad, 1979.

The cry seems louder this year than it ever has — buy local this Christmas. With Covid protocols putting so many small businesses teetering on the brink of extinction, Western New Yorkers are putting extra effort into making sure the holiday money they spend stays here with Buffalonians.

Forty-one years ago, the Thanksgiving Day ads in the Courier-Express tell a slightly different story for Black Friday 1979 — one where most of our retail choices were made in stores that were locally owned and operated.

If you had kids in mind or kids in tow for Black Friday shopping in 1979, you might have stopped by Hengerer’s downtown location or the Boulevard Mall, both of which promoted their visits from Santa in the Thanksgiving Day paper. Child World, with locations at Main and Transit and the Summit Park Mall, might also have been a good stop.

Among the stores with ads on Black Friday were Ulbrich’s Books, the Pop Shoppe touting 26 different pop flavors in stubby glass bottles, Attea Brothers on Clinton Street, Pitt Petri and Poise ‘N Ivy. Buffalo’s three area Champion Factory Outlet stores also had an ad. What was then a bargain label for Western New York kids is now a much trendy sought-after pricey brand name.

Hills and Sattler’s ran relatively small ads, and Twin Fair touted its layaway plan. Sears’ ad was very small — just letting possible Black Friday shoppers know the big store at Main & Jefferson would be open to accommodate them. Brand Names and Century catalog stores both ran several ads showing off hot products like Mr. Coffee’s latest brewer.

The gift of music was on the mind of advertisers in 1979, with big ads from AM&A’s, Twin Fair, and Naum’s Catalog Showroom. Record Theatre, calling itself “the world’s largest record store,” promised to stay open 84 straight hours for holiday shopping.

Buffalo’s big department stores were well-represented, too, including The Sample, Hengerer’s AM&A’s, Kleinhans, Jenss and L.L. Berger.

Both Krasner’s and Scott-Del started in the Southgate Plaza. DonLevy’s Backroom was a New England chain store with late 1970s locations across the street from Southgate Plaza and in the Clarence Mall at Main and Transit. Morrison’s was a longtime downtown ladies apparel store that branched into suburban locations before closing in 1983.

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

It was one of the more notorious moments in Buffalo Sabres history, 24 years ago this week.

On Nov. 16, 1996, shortly after the Sabres and the Boston Bruins finished their morning skate in preparation for their game that evening, the 20-ton Jumbotron scoreboard hanging over the playing surface crashed at center ice without apparent cause or explanation as crews did routine maintenance.

The manufacturer, Daktronics, had just given the 23-foot-tall unit a clean bill of health in a tune-up a week before. No one was injured in the thunderous crash which shook the arena as well as those who worked there.

“If it was meant to fall, it happened at the right time,” Sabres President Larry Quinn told reporters.

The eight-sided scoreboard cost $4 million and was the centerpiece of the new $127.5 million facility which had just replaced the 56-year-old Memorial Auditorium as the home of the National Hockey League team.

“The 40,000-pound scoreboard laid in a heap of parts and wires on the ice surface,” reported the Associated Press in newspapers around the world. The front page of The News read “Jumbletron.”

Marine Midland Arena

The arena had only opened weeks before the crash at the start of the Sabres’ 1996-97 season. Since being opened as Marine Midland Arena, the name of the building has changed a handful of times reflected the changes in the banking industry in Buffalo. In 2000, the building was renamed HSBC Arena as the area branches were rebranded.

Ten years later, in 2010, HSBC sold off local branches and the naming rights to the arena to First Niagara Bank, and the building was called First Niagara Center until 2016, when First Niagara was bought out by KeyBank.

After replacing the scoreboard shortly after it crashed, the audio/visual in-game presentation system was again upgraded during the 2007-08 season.

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

Fort Makowski

More than four decades removed from the time he left office, there aren’t many Buffalonians who can claim to be a better representation of what it means to be a Buffalonian than Stan Makowski.

Buffalo’s mayor from 1974-77, Makowski was a World War II vet and a lifelong member of the Grain Millers’ Union. He lost half a finger in an accident at a grain mill, but it didn’t stop him from representing Tippie’s Social & Athletic Club in statewide bowling tournaments – even as mayor.

The pride of Buffalo’s Valley neighborhood, just about everyone loved Stan Makowski. Outside of being remembered as a good guy, he is remembered as the mayor during the Blizzard of ’77 and for an ill-fated public works project that became the talk of the country for a few weeks in 1976.

The opening paragraph in a New York Times story about the brick enclosure being built around Niagara Square summed up the saga surrounding what’s remembered as “Fort Makowski.”

Mayor Stanley Makowski

“A six-foot brick wall being erected around the square in front of City Hall here in a $575,000 public works beautification project is being torn down next week because the public finds it too ugly,” reported The Times.

The official name was “Niagara Square Beautification Project,” but almost immediately, it seemed as work got underway in August 1976 that “beauty” was not the first thought of most folks.

“When are they going to learn, what we need in this city is simplicity, taste and restraint,” said Virginia Tillou, one of Buffalo’s great artists, arbiters of taste and Allentown Association leader.

Opponents said the dark bricks walled up around the McKinley monument not only clashed with surrounding architecture, but also would become “a haven for muggers and rapists.”

Designer Robert O’Hara’s idea was to wall off the outside world so that downtown folks could take a peaceful breather on a patio surrounded by planters and greenery near the fountain at the center of the square.

Tillou said it would be like “some local artist painting over a Rembrandt” to make it look better.

Opposition also came from those who questioned whether the federal funds being used in the project – originally earmarked for fixing the McKinley monument fountain – were being misdirected.

At a time when Buffalo’s massive hemorrhaging of good jobs had only just begun, Makowski buoyed the project by underlining the thousand-plus desperately-needed trades jobs that were created as the structure was being built.

But as newspapers around the country poked fun at Buffalo, our giant brick wall and our mayor, a nine-member panel organized by Makowski agreed that the wall should come down. Work began almost immediately.

As Makowski watched the structure come down, he told reporters, “It proves you can fight city hall and win.”

In the end, “Fort Makowski” wasn’t a total loss.

Eventually, most of the bricks were used in a project sprucing up sidewalks and pathways in the Allentown and Day’s Park areas, where the construction materials brought no aesthetic protests, only smiles and appreciation.

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

A famous slime dog from Seneca Texas Hots.

Whether you call it a slime dog, scum dog or “some kind” of a canoe, the “Texas hot” is a Western New York institution and one of those tastes you just can’t find outside of the 716.

Generally, it’s a skinless Sahlen’s hot dog that is griddled, often within sight of the spot where the ordering is done. The insider will order “two dogs up,” because anyone in the mood for a slime dog is almost certainly in the mood for (at least) two. The dog comes on a steamed roll with mustard, silver onions and a zesty, overflowing trough of “special sauce.”

The sauce is what makes or breaks a scummer, with many Buffalonians swearing by the secret recipe of their favorite Texas hot stand, and many places offering their ever-so-modified versions of the sauce for sale, ladled fresh into unlabeled paper takeout containers.

Of course, any good Buffalonian who has ever stopped in Rochester has tried the city’s most Buffalo-like regional dish, “the garbage plate,” which traditionally includes hot dogs covered with a sauce that is close to what you might expect on a Buffalo Texas hot – but not quite. The same can be said for Greek dogs in Erie, Pa., and Michigans in New York’s North Country.

As painful as it might be, Buffalonians – and anyone else who enjoys a hot dog with spicy hamburger meat sauce – have to acknowledge a downstate ancestry to one of our region’s iconic specialties.

Buffalo’s first “Texas hot wiener lunch” was billed as “famous Coney Island sausage” next door to Loew’s Theater at Mohawk Street between Main and Washington in 1921.

An advertisement for a “Texas Hot Weiner Lunch” in 1921.

Fifty-seven years later in 1978, the then Century Theater was torn down and took that same restaurant – then “The Quality Texas Wiener Restaurant” – down with it.

The restaurant, best known as “Texas Red Hots” for most of the 57 years that it was run by the Pappas family, was generally acknowledged as the maker of Buffalo’s best slime dog. The sauce was concocted by Greek immigrant brothers John and James Pappas – who obviously gave a nod to Coney Island in the ads that ran in the Buffalo Commercial in 1921 shortly after their lunch counter opened.

Heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey and sparkling pianist Liberace were among the millions who ate a red hot from the Pappas family’s downtown location.

Since that first Texas hot was served 99 years ago, dozens – if not hundreds – of small stands and restaurants have made the slime dog their main fare. Two of Buffalo’s most successful and best remembered restaurant chains started as hot dog joints – Deco Restaurants and Your Host Restaurants.

These days, the most celebrated Texas hot joints have been around for decades and have loyal followers. Seneca Texas Hots on Seneca Street in Buffalo just over the West Seneca border is known affectionately in South Buffalo as “Slime on the Line.”

I once spoke with Rod Roddy about his time working in Buffalo at WKBW in the 1960s. Before I could ask any questions, the famous “Price Is Right” “Come on down” announcer of the ’80s and ’90s asked me “if Seneca Hots was still there near where the buses turn around. Best hot dog I’ve ever had.”

A 1981 advertisement for Seneca Texas Hots.

Louie’s is another Western New York slime dog institution, with stores on Bailey Avenue and around the city for decades.

The headlines these days seem to go to the Sahlen’s hot dog that’s char-boiled and served with the spicy relish sauce, pickle, mustard, onion and sweet relish the way that another Greek immigrant, Ted Liaros, started serving them under the Peace Bridge in 1927. For some, that might be the definitive Buffalo-style hot dog.

But doesn’t it suit Buffalo’s personality perfectly to be the home of two distinct and beloved hot dog styles? I’ll take one of each.