I've Been Waiting For Tomorrow (all of my life)

Postcards From Our Past

I am working on a project that entails borrowing Rich Kegler's (from P22) collection of vintage Buffalo postcards. Rich was the publisher of the original Buffalo Views- a collection of 26 historic postcards of Buffalo, New York. I say 'original' because someone put out a book recently containing a lot of the same images which was confusing to me, since Rich put out his book in 1991.

Anyway, I started looking at the postcards and I was struck by the imagery. A lot of old postcards have this hyper-real color quality to them (C.T. Art-Colortone is what it notes on the back of a few of them) -- which I just love. The illustrations are cool and some are colored or drawn-over photos. The architectural type on the first City Hall one is really great. I have a pack of stock art line drawings from the 30s and a lot of the hand drawn text looks kind of like this. It's kinda funny, when I was a kid, I used to think everything from the 40s was suppose to be in black and white-- I guess I assumed they were rationing color because of WW2! And I also had this view of the 60s and 70s as super vivid colors. All our old Polaroids were bright like these postcards. I just thought the 70s were 'vivid'- I guess for some it was. Hee, hee.

On top of that, these images of a Buffalo past are just amazing in the fact that Buffalo looks like a bustling metropolis... Viewing an era gone by, where people inhabited our downtown at night (like NYC, for goodness sake) and the football stadium was in the city.

This is my first post containing some of may favorites of a Buffalo long gone by... enjoy these Postcards From Our Past- click to enlarge!


Looking down Delaware Ave showing City Hall and Statler Hotel.
This is the cover of a souvenir folder of 18 mini photos.


Electric Building at night (look at this bustling city, traffic at night, what the...?)


Phil Amigone's Chez Ami, "The Nation's Smartest Theatre Restaurant". Never a cover charge, rotating bar and 'on a direct route to Niagara Falls and Canada."


Buffalo's Civic Stadium, which is the future Rockpile!

BONUS BEATS- further sign that the end of the world is near. I just heard a commercial for the Siberian Orchestra playing hyper-crappy, super charged x-mas carols. Attention marketing genius- it is October 6, Christmas is over 11 weeks ago. For the love of pete- you have gone too far!