Buffalo Rising Online

Oct 9th, 7:17am By STEEL

I have been contemplating a new BRO story series for over a year now based on my experiences growing up in the city. It's not that I think my life is so interesting that it must be exposed on the little screen, but I do have my memories.

This new series is meant as more of an analysis of where my love for the city comes from. This will be the first and hopefully not last in the series. If it proves interesting, I would like to also invite you, the BRO audience, to send in your experiences for inclusion. I don't intend this to be a nostalgia trip, though that will be somewhat unavoidable. I also don't want it to be a whitewash of the city experience.

Though my city childhood was extraordinary, I know full well that there is a very dark side as well to urban living for many. Even so I know that there are many across this country including those in my own family who have no understanding of the city and could not conceive of raising a child there. My intent is to shed light on the real benefits of growing up "city". I can not imagine the loss to my own life learning if I had not been exposed to the city at an early age. So if you will indulge me, here we go with part one.

Those familiar with my writing on BRO might be surprised to find out that I started out life as a suburbanite. Back then, the city was a distant and mysterious place. My suburban roots give me a bit of an un-city insight into the city, but that story is for another episode. This story starts in the middle of my city childhood. Lately, I have been thinking quite often about a picture that I thought I had taken but which after many hours of fruitless searching I have come to believe has only existed in my mind. The picture is of the old (original) Elmwood Taco and Sub at the corner of Elmwood and Delevan. The picture is in black and white at night. It is summer and the corner door is open. There are 2 or 3 people eating at the window counter. I think this image seems so much like a photograph because it represents a memorable and important time in my life.

Lets back up a bit. In the late seventies I somehow got hooked up with a photography program at the CEPA Gallery which was then located in a former Ice warehouse on Essex Street along with Hallwalls Gallery. These two now familiar institutions were fledgling start-ups at the time. The space was raw, and the people who worked there were very exciting. My exposure to this highly experimental and creative environment was in no small measure responsible for boosting my future career in architecture. The program I was involved with was a community darkroom. For a small fee you could use the CEPA darkroom facilities. They taught you how to develop black and white film and make prints. I fell in love with photography and took as many pictures as I could afford film and paper for. Looking back, most of my images were horrible--but this new interest gave me a way to capture what I was seeing in the city's rich architectural landscape.

So what does this all have to do with Elmwood Taco? The darkroom was open to the public once a week in the evenings. After printing my images I would walk home in the dark past the city's hulking Victorians, taking a detour to grab a late night bite to eat. I would peruse my newly created masterworks over a drippy delicious Taco Supreme. The memory of these great evenings is burned into my memory and the smell of one of those tacos brings me right back to that CEPA darkroom 30 years ago.

Though, as I said, the vast majority of my images from my CEPA days were pretty crummy, I did get a few good ones such as the one shown here. The gallery even gave me a public show of my work for a week or two.

If you have a story to tell, please drop me a line with the private message tool at the top of the page.

Coming up next - "Part 2: First Contact".