If you've been anywhere near Delaware Park lately, you may have noticed a ton of trees being planted. Many of the trees were planted last week to commemorate the 300 fallen War of 1812 soldiers that are buried in the meadow. Not many people are aware that the soldiers are buried in the park, as the major activity surrounding the gravesite these days is golf (meaning that it is a rather obscure area where they are buried). The soldiers were originally buried at Flint Hill (near the corner of Main and Kensington), before being relocated to nearby farmland (pre-Olmsted). Along with 298 smaller

It's almost on a weekly occurrence that I hear good news about the Buffalo maritime Center. Whether they are building a replica harbor ferry that once operated at the Inner Harbor, or are hosting a class on how to build a bateau, the news of more and more historic replica boats means that Buffalo is getting on the map for a craft that is respected the world over. I recently

Meeting highlights include:  Of the proposals received for the LaSalle Park Skateplaza Master Plan, New Line Skateparks, Inc was the lowest bid for the skate plaza, with a proposal of $24,600. (see project history)
The Council adopted a resolution sponsored by Council Members Michael J. LoCurto, David A. Rivera and David A. Franczyk endorsing the Gender Expression

Featured throughout the month of May, Impact Artists' Gallery will be hosting a holistic fair that showcases the art of healing the mind, body and soul through artistic expression. The idea of healing in this manner has been been implemented all over the world, by different cultures, as the commonality of art as personal expression has become a release of pent up emotion and anxiety. By introducing different artistic mediums to the public at a fair that is being called Fine Art Healing and Health, the hope is that participants will take away various healing techniques via mediums ranging from

Where are you from originally?  
Corfu, NY  I've lived in Buffalo for 25 years now.
What is your medium? 
Cigar Boxes, recycled materials, wood
Where do you draw your inspiration from? 
All my fellow builders I've met, all across the world and my family
Name an artist (or more) that most inspires you? 
Shena Speal, Mark Freeland
Is

Buffalo will soon be home to a state of the art Cosmetology Training Center located at 2629 Delaware Avenue. The news of the center is great for a number of reasons, but a couple that immediately come to mind are retention and proximity. Over the years I've covered a handful of salons and barber shops opening in the city, and every time I asked an owner where he or she got their start they always mentioned another city. They told me that Buffalo was seriously lacking in this type of training, which meant that not only were future barbers and hair stylists leaving for training, many

To be fair to Charles Gordon, we didn't have access to all of his image files this morning, so I figured that it would be best to post additional visuals to go hand in hand with his original post. In these images we see a number of the issues that he pointed out, including the various lamp standard designs, the interruptions in sidewalks and roadways, his references to benches, signs, garbage cans, etc.
To me, there have been so many great advancements at

By Charles Gordon:
Renewed interest in our Downtown waterfront has undeniably resulted in some improvement.  Efforts continue to make the  historic Central Wharf area more user friendly with the addition of painted chairs, some imported white sand, and a hot dog shack.  Residents and visitors reacted positively to these changes, possibly because after the expenditure of untold millions of dollars in planning and design work the public is starved for anything resembling progress.    
The reality is that this

In a stroke of genius, Visit Buffalo Niagara (VBN) has announced that it is opening a visitor center at the airport. I'm sure that collectively there are a good number of us that are thinking, "Better late than never." That's not a slam against the VBN, it's just that this measure is long past due. "Four years ago, Visit Buffalo Niagara created a strategic plan that called for adding a Buffalo Niagara Visitor Center in the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Today, we are making that plan a reality," said Visit Buffalo Niagara President and CEO Dottie Gallagher-Cohen. "Five million passengers

Who would have thought, that in such a relatively short period of time, Bethlehem Steel would be becoming known as a natural regeneration site? Once a booming industrial steel factory, then a forlorn and decrepit scrapyard, and today an ambiguous property dotted with windmills and reclaimed patches of green... this green partnership between man and Mother Nature, a combination of remediation and alternative energy, has caught the attention of Mark Byrnes at The Atlantic

By Joshua Bauer (Football Nation):
By the time they announced their seventh round pick, you almost didn't care that the Buffalo Bills took a kicker. See, Buddy Nix had a script for the 2012 Draft, one that included things like depth and value, one that laid out their needs and their dedication to addressing them. Offensive line depth, pass rush, cornerback, wide receiver; these were the perceived needs for the 2012 Draft, those last few pieces

Up until the Give for Greatness campaign was launched, I had only heard of musicians singing about lawyers and politicians (Public Enemy and Warren Zevon for example). Never had I heard of lawyers singing or playing musical instruments. Maybe doctors, but not lawyers. On Tuesday May 1 at the Ellicott Square Building, you will have a chance to see and hear something that may seem a bit foreign - an event thrown by lawyers where the money raised will go towards the arts. To top it off, a number of lawyers and politicians will actually

When I first sat down with Julie Leatherbarrow the fall before last, to discuss what it would take to start an artisan market at the Inner Harbor, it sounded like a good idea, so we began to brainstorm. Unfortunately time began to fly and the market was called off last summer purely due to time constraints. In the end, that turned out to be the best thing that could have happened, because it gave Julie a full year to solicit artisans and fine tune the concept. 
Not

My first glimpse of St. Ann's Roman Catholic Church on Broadway came in 2006, when I still lived in Rochester.  I'd organized an industrial heritage tour of Buffalo for a Rochester-area local history group, and on our way home we were capping things off with a visit to the Central Terminal.  Heading there from downtown, seeing monumentally Gothic St. Ann's loom up as we drove down Broadway left a first impression I'll never forget.  But in passing by, seeing plexiglass panels where my eye expected stained glass windows left me wondering if what I was seeing was a closed church, or

The 0.5k Stiletto Run started off as a very successful benefit and race that has raised thousands upon thousands of dollars for ovarian cancer. With each race the number of runners grows, while at the same time the post race party has become an event unto itself. With runners participating from all over Greater Buffalo, and some of the most outrageous outfits to be seen outside of the bedroom, this is one race that has not only done a great job raising awareness of ovarian cancer, it has helped to increase the overall agility of stiletto wearers, which is in itself beneficial.
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I just finished reading an interesting and sometimes confounding new book by Bruce Fisher.  Fisher is the well known Artvoice writer and local commentator who is also of founding director of the Center for Economic and Policy Studies at Buffalo State College. Fisher grew up in rural Western New York and left the area for several years to work in Chicago as a journalist before returning to Buffalo.  The full name of the book is Border Land: Essays From the US-Canadian Divide. The historic etching of the old Niagara Falls lighthouse on the cover ties it to the Buffalo

Buffalo is the least fashionable city in America, according to a new ranking from Bundle.com. 
How did Bundle.com come up with this ranking? Did they just rank cities inversely to their Zubaz-density? No, the methodology was a little more complicated than that. 
Bundle used their data on retail transactions in the 50 biggest cities in their database. Using this data, Bundle created an index of "fashion-conscious households" which were defined as households that had at least four transactions

When I stepped into the building that now holds Community Beer Works for the first time in November of 2010, it was a far cry from the scene I witnessed there earlier this week. In what used to be a quiet, bare space waiting to be renovated now lies a fully-functioning nano-brewery, buzzing with the sounds of active brewing equipment: a dream finally realized after a long journey of planning, fundraising, acquiring permits, remodeling and, finally, producing beer.  
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Canisius College has launched a truly inspirational program in conjunction withe Rich Products that is already reaping major benefits. The program is called Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE). The initial beneficiary of the program is Kaji Sunwar, the proprietor of Sagarmatha Groceries, a Nepalese/Bhutanese food market that hosted a ribbon cutting at 489 Grant Street earlier today. 
The way that the partnership works is that students from SIFE's Classroom and Community Partnership for Economic Development (CACPED) program were given a $30,000 student-managed micro-loan.

Where are you from originally?
Tonawanda, NY 
What is your medium?
Wire Wrapped Jewelry
Where do you draw your inspiration from? 
Mostly from other artisans on the internet Keystone Jewelry & Raven Mountain from WV
What is your preferred subject matter?
Semi-precious