Buffalo

Missiles? What Missiles?

My friend came in from Ithaca this weekend for some exploring, and after some Friday night drinking and draining (making use of his crow-wrench tire iron that I took by mistake almost six years ago and *still* forgot to return), we thought we should try some new places out in Niagara Falls, see if we could find a "missile silo" someone posted on UER about a month ago. It didn't go according to plan at all, we went around in circles looking for it, found a few fenced off vacant lots, and finally something that looked like a plausible base.…

Continue ReadingMissiles? What Missiles?

Mines of Moria

The best and weirdest ideas begin with beer, specifically the consumption of it in the outdoors. (like this:) Not that any of you didn't know that I'm not normal, but with some liquid inspiration and the right friends, even something as strange as a weekend bike trip to Niagara Falls makes perfect sense, and less than 24 hours later we were off riding into the night, basically in search of the unknown, to go sleep in a cave. After 55 miles or so, we found the cave entrance, and in the morning it was time to explore. From all we…

Continue ReadingMines of Moria

When Life Gives You Columns

...you make colonnade? Or not? At least I had an unexpected opportunity to explore with Ian one more time. Although, more realistically, it turned into a chance to stand on the sidelines while he explored. His goal was one that I shared interest in for sure, but probably not the right physique, or state of mind -- climbing the Buffalo grain elevators. While they originally had stairs, due to a rash of suicides in the early 70s right after they were abandoned, none of these stairwells are complete, with the stairs up to 30 feet or so cut out, leaving…

Continue ReadingWhen Life Gives You Columns

Bits and Pieces

The rest of the places in Buffalo this weekend that weren't quite big enough for their own posts WILDROOT -- the product that made 50s hair the greased-up mess it was. Just by nature of what the factory made, and a precipitous drop off in demand once greasers were out and bowl cuts were in, Wildroot closed after just 14 years of operation, in 1963. A few later attempts were made to bring the product back, then to attach the Wildroot name to other hair products, but the association with crew cuts and grease was just too much for the…

Continue ReadingBits and Pieces

Sins and Trasspeses

Buffalo's Sacred Heart Cathedral, like so many other Catholic churches, fell into ruin at the loss of its flock. Once Buffalo's diocesan church, well before 1900, it became an early casualty in 1952 due to suburban sprawl and white flight, leaving behind a church building that soon after reopened as a prominent black church and religious school before fading away in the early 2000s, again facing the loss of its congregation. The church basement held a variety of religious leftovers from both the Catholic and AME eras of the church. Molding away in a few boxes were 1930s and 40s…

Continue ReadingSins and Trasspeses

How The West Was Lost

Through the days of the Erie Canal, Buffalo rose from a western outpost founded in 1802, into the 8th largest city in the United States by 1900, on its essential position as a market city and trading port to the frontier West. With the rise of the railroads, naturally this position translated into being a hub in that system as well, and just before the Depression the tracks along Lake Erie were the busiest in the world, with close to 200 passenger and 500 freight trains passing daily toward Chicago and New York. The previous station, located on the present…

Continue ReadingHow The West Was Lost