Before heading over to the opening of Resurgence Brewing Company and the debut of BT&C Gallery on Niagara Street last evening (see here), I watched an interesting video that someone had passed along to prepare me for… crossing Niagara Street?
The video featured Mexico City’s caped crusader and masked tactical urbanist Peatónito. This real life super hero spends his life in Mexico doing battle against aggressive drivers who don’t pay attention to crosswalks. Peatónito will literally walk out in front of an illegally stopped car at an intersection and push it backwards so that pedestrians can access the crosswalk. See here:
When I heard that Peatónito would be attending the event, I naturally assumed that someone from BT&C had procured a friend with a wrestling mask to act the part of Peatónito. I was wrong. It turns out the urbanist George Grasser had solicited Peatónito to come to Buffalo for the CNU conference. The set of openings on Niagara Street was just one of the places/events that the “defender of the crosswalks” was scheduled to attend.
I spoke to Peatónito about his trip to Buffalo and he mentioned to me that this was the first time that he had ever left Mexico City to ensure that people were also safe in another part of the world. I’m sure that Mexico City is wondering where its caped crusader has disappeared to.
Happily and enthusiastically, Peatónito proved his point last night (as did George Grasser), that streets like Niagara Street need to have traffic calming measures introduced. Fortunately for Niagara Street, a road diet is on the way (see here). In the meantime, we were lucky to be under the watchful eye of Peatónito so that Sugar Citizen’s (previewing Sugar City’s new digs), gallery-goers and brewery fans could all have some peace of mind while crossing the street.
Rock on Peatónito! Thanks for protecting the citizens of Buffalo…