This Life Makes Me Wonder

Pussy willows, polish sausage, placek, hand painted Polish eggs, peeps and everything you can think of dipped in chocolate- The annual family trip to the famous Broadway Market in pictures!

Today the family and I took our annual Easter trip to the Famous Broadway Market. As a kid, I spend many a Saturday morning with my Grandpa at the Market and I have many fond memories. I have made sure my girls will know this experience and I have been taking them for all their years so far. It is not the same as when I was a kid, but in some ways it is a snapshot of a history captured in time.

This is the best time of the year to go as the stalls are filled with vendors and the place bustles with people. We actually go to the market often, but it isn't as exciting is it is this time of the year.

Below are some snapshots of out trip. A great way to beat the rainy (snow, wha?) blues of a Monday, plus it gets really busy at the market as the week progresses. Click for larger views!


Army of rabbits, and my Grandma's favorite treat, the chocolate cross.


Candies & more candies....


The guy at the end is wearing a 'Polish Mafia' T-shirt.


Peeps- some of the hundreds of 'things dipped in chocolate.'


Handcrafted Polish gifts.


Hand-painted wooden eggs.


More Polish gifts.


The ever-popular butter lambs (side facing and front facing).


Pussy willows ready for Dyngus Day, coming up the Monday after Easter.


Sausage fest.

Shadowplay

From Violet to Hazel: Postcards From Our Past (part 4)
this space for writing messages

This may be it, I think I lost the postcard scanning buzz I had going last week. This last batch has some cool images including another Kleinhann's, which looks like it is Florida for some reason. There aren't a lot of trees and very little structures beyond the building- which is odd to see after living in this neighborhood off and on over the the last 20 years or so. The Main Street Shopping District is amazing in it's New York City-ness as it is has people galore on the streets among theaters, street cars and the famous AM & As Department Store. The back is great too- it is postmarked Nov 20, 1933 and begins "Hello Mother" and includes the calming "We did not have to use the car chains coming here as the road was in pretty good shape."

The crowds of people in the Zoo card and the Boat House at Delaware Lake are impressive, as well is the street scene which includes several folks on bicycles (including a woman), horse drawn buggies, Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building, the St. Louis Church and that big building, which is no longer there but I think was the old City Hall. The back of this card has "Besser's and Sons, Buffalo. No. 104. Printed in Germany." But no tell-tale postmarked date, unfortunately. Oh and the interior shot of the Historical Building which is postmarked August 22, 1912, looks pretty close to how it looks now.

All these vintage postcards have a beautiful haunting quality to the coloring and especially the people frozen in Buffalo's past. In fact these four with the people in it have become some of my favorites. If you look close you can pick out certain people and I wonder about their day captured at Hoyt Lake or the Buffalo Zoo.... were they having a good time?


Sunny afternoon in Buffalo with smiling lady in a big hat.


Feeding the seal at the Buffalo Zoo. Only one seal.


Eerily similar to today, the History Museum.


Another awesome Kleinhann's painted postcard.


Biking in downtown Buffalo, NY. This shot was the cover image used on the original Buffalo vintage postcard book, Buffalo Views by Rich Kegler.


Busy downtown shopping district, in 'beautiful river"....


This is the end, my friend...

Since I've Been Loving You

Postcards From Our Past (part 2)- this space for message

Here are some more really great old Buffalo postcards (1st batch posted here) which are very graphically pleasing. This collection of six images represent some of Buffalo's lost treasures including the Chippewa Market (dated 1910) and the D.S. Morgan Building which has two businesses located in its lower level, one being a turkish bath, baby!

The aerial view of downtown features a great view of the waterfront with the Aud in the center and the Statler Hotel postcard includes the hotel and it's garage and notes it has "1100 rooms with bath and radio reception." Handy.

Last note, the Ruins of the Seneca Building is dated 1909 and seems like a strange image for a postcard, a building being destroyed? Very Buffalo though, if you think about it.


Seneca Building ruins- please explain...?


Rand Building shooting death rays to fight nazis, apparently.


Hotel Statler with a really nice parking facility.


Chippewa (meat) Market without 3rd Room


Cool Downtown (must be 30s with Aud).


DS Morgan Building- anyone know where this was (is)?

Fill Your Heart

..and the walls come tumblin' down...

I just took a tour of the once great Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. It is under deconstruction for tear-down. It was quite an experience- this is how it looks right now on a cold, October 21, 2008 morning.

Click here to see thirteen of my snapshots- Bleed For The Blue and Gold.





The last days of the AUD, October 22, 2008.

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!

The Seeker

Paint brush graffiti.


When I was a kid, I spent a few years growing up on the East Side of Buffalo on Kuchuska (sp?) Street living with my folks in my Dad's Dad's house prior to packing up (at the age of 3) and moving to Tonawanda. We still went to my Mom's parents home on Beck Street every Sunday afternoon, until we took up the family camping trend in the mid Seventies and we split town every weekend for such faraway lands as Darien and Niagara Falls.

My grandparents home was across the street from the back parking lot of some department stores. The back wall of the store had this awesome paint-brush rendered graffiti that was there until the knocked the building down to build a (big K) K-mart. Not out-of-a-can sprayed, but authored with a brush. I could always picture this rockin' long haired East Side Pole-- a braver, more vandal-happy version of myself-- with a bucket of white paint and a fat 'ol brush scrawling this Who-based sentiment: Keith Moon Lives.

In the world of Krylon-applied tags, this brush scrawl stood out in my mind. Hey, I was a teenager and I loved the Who! You could tell the artist started to speed things up when they got to the end, the 'es' in 'lives'... maybe the cops were coming! It is harder to run with a gallon of house paint than a can of spray-paint! But the artist did take the time to add the 'eyes' or 'boobs' or whatever is in the O's in 'MOON.' What a skilled craftsman!

I found this picture in the flat-file cleaning mentioned earlier. I had used this as an submission to a college photography class where we were all given 5-6 phrases and were instructed to go out and photograph images that we felt represented the words. This one was for "scholarly communication."

Hey Now

... little paintings, little works of art.

So they always say don't do it, but I always did.

I would pop up with my Polaroid One-Step and snap goes the flash! The click and the whirl of gears and out it comes, a little off-white square. Then I would shake it! They told you not to, but I always still did. The professional photographer next to me with the real camera once said, "You know, you don't have to do that." What?" "Shake it like that....."

But I would always do it- if you shake it hard enough the bottom seam would bleed cracks of other colors. It looked cool, then I would scratch them with the but end of a Sharpie cap and it would turn colors.... cool. I would deface and write on them. They became little paintings, little works of art. Cool.

News that Polaroid would discontinue manufacturing film was met with fear, anger and sadness by many. The Polaroid Camera would soon be extinct. I read a great article on the AIGA website that tells the story of Polaroid (Gone in Sixty Seconds June 10, 2008) and their inevitable demise. There is quite a movement to Save the Polaroid and it's lifestyle!

So when I was going through the very messy flat files I kept coming across lots of Polaroids. The are from various times in the past and events to be remembered. They include snapshots from the last night Ray Flynn's Golden Dollar Bar was open on April 3, 1999, and some from an Xmas in our Main Street loft that same year. There are a few from the rubble that was Flynn's the day they flattened a classic Buffalo drinking hole on my Birthday the Summer of '99. I have bits of the ceramic 'Golden Dollar' from the front sign in my garden.

I thought these snapshots were great, so I scanned a bunch of these little paintings and put up this gallery for you to view. I love my Nikon digital camera- I shoot many shots, delete the crappy ones on the spot, download them onto the laptop, organize them in iPhoto, and print them to already cut 4 x 6 photos sheets, full bleed. Easy... but so was pushing a button and watching the photo come out before your eyes..... Goodbye Polaroid.

POLAROID GALLERY- Found Snapshots (June 30, 2008)- click me!

Little Red Corvette

Today as I reach another age milestone, I am thinking about the past more than usual. I am always musing about days gone by, especially apparent with the Slack magazines I have been resurrecting as of late. But on my B-day, a little more than usual.....

This day, my birthday, May 28th was always was a signal that Summer was fast approaching. After the Memorial Day festivities have past and the promise of June was right around the corner, all I could think of when I was a kid was Summer! All I did all summer in 1973, when I was 8, was camp and swim (the year of the accompanying photo).

Top Things I Am Going To Do On My B-day Today:

1. Work- well, it's not glamorous, but it's true. I can't get out of that, I do own my own company...
2. Wear my new B-day shoes (wearing 'em now!)
3. Drink a beer (maybe 2 or more...).
4. Eat some Bocce's pizza.
5. Get a lot of kisses from my girls.
6. Read email-wishes from some friends.
7. Talk to my Mom & Dad on the phone- they always calls.
8. Listen to music (everyday- it's my lifeblood- keeps me going).
   
9. Bask in the glory-- read my name on other blogs/websites (see Typecon Events page, DJs deja blu at the saturday Night Gala)
10. See my friend Edreys rap live at Allen Hall tonight!
11. Watch Playoff Hockey at Casa- maybe Sid the Kid will score a goal tonight? eh?

Happy birthday to me!

Listed M.I.A.

As I crammed for a 'tomorrow meeting' I listened on the radio as the Sabres last gasped and missed the playoffs... owwwwww.... It is time to end this 11 hour workday, just about 10 hours too long if you ask me- it had highs, it had lows..

The Infamous Top 5
For Thursday (April 3, 2008):

5. Corner store (Lex General Store aka Mike's Place aka The Newspaper Store Where They Have The Ice Cream- as my one daughter calls it) and The Place still closed as Spring arrives.

4. Should have had the burger, not the chicken.

3. Nice weather = Johnny Liquor sightings in the neighborhood are on the rise.

2. Speeding Ticket handed out by the OPP.

1. Sabres bowing out of the race.

I couldn't resist talking more grainy office photos with this here laptop. The images all have a security camera aesthetic that is irresistible at 11:35 PM. This is how my eyes are seeing now! So without further adieu, more OW office shots (click for larger).

Only 6 months or so until hockey training camp.


The coffee corner (the OW water cooler).


More LPs (and 12"s) than your average design corporation!


Blue Monday: My Peter Hook autograph.


The hockey game listening radio (for music too).

We Got Our Own Thang

A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind.

At least that is the often quoted tip given to me by an old boss of mine, Dan Shuder. He is also the guy that told me, "If you are going to hoot with the night owls, you better be able to fly with the eagles in the morning".... or something like that (but that's another story).

Often a design studio is a cornucopia of things, posters, gadgets, clippings, artwork, ads, postcards and such. The walls and shelves are pilled with things- inspiration! Ever since I was little, I have always attached things to my walls, mostly posters (ah... Farrah in her red bathing suit....). But it advanced to drawings, magazine photos, snapshots, labels and anything flat that inspired me, or just things I liked, applied with scotch tape. I remember my dad coming home from work and flipping out when he found I had stapled an entire wall in my room (in his house) with things, meticulously (spent all day) arranged things. He made me meticulously take it all down the same night!

As a designer and an artist I always found inspiration in the walls of stuff vs. the blank wall. I love the DJ booth of the Old Pink covered in stickers. The last job I had (employed by someone else) had me in a small office with no windows and blank, light blue walls. Well the first think I did was bring some stuff from home: some photos, little toys, plastic characters and posters. My boss thought I was a little nuts, but I had to have things on the wall. The blank canvas cried for stuff!! My office was so boring!!

Our current office has quite a bit of stuff around and I find it fun and stimulating. Others may find it messy and distracting. The more wall space, the more stuff we need. Things to look at often inspires me, and it gets me thinking of other things. I often take snapshots of the office space to use for the stories I write here, so I thought I would add a few more to give you a good idea of the cornucopia of stuff that surrounds me. There is lots of room for more stuff.

Here is a link to an article on Behance magazine about designers and their workspaces- click here.

OtherWisz Office (click for larger):


Old Mac and books, samples, swatches...


The Bat Phone really works, kids!


The files aren't always in the cabinets.


Not the actual Stanley Cup.

Blu Bayoo

An era gone by: the year 2001.

I found these 2 vintage video clips that my DJ parther and I had made to promote our deja blu Friday night gigs at Blu, a sushi/club on Main Street in Buffalo, NY. It was like finding old Super 8 movies in the family attic, but 2008-style.

We had an early (2001) digital camera that could capture Quicktime video clips and and we filmed these between periods of a Sabres playoff game we were watching at Faherty's on Elmwood. We emailed these out in the Summer of 2001, to entice the masses to come on down to groove with us. We had a semi regular gig at Blu and we marketed it fiercely with nights of flyering, hanging posters and email blitzs.

As I was moving the dejablu website to a new server I stumbled across these. I thought to myself, these need to be on YouTube for all to enjoy.

The first one is is the classic titled deja blu.. on the run staring DJ Scotty. the second is Indian Food: "No indian food, but we like Indian food..." starring me and my rockin' sweater vest. Enjoy.

>> deja blu... on the run video clip: click here.
>> deja blu indian food video clip: click here.

Window Sill

Hands tied.

The blessing and the unfortunate thing about graphic design is it has been tied to the use of the computer. Of course to be able to really design, you have to be able to do it without the computer. But there is no way in hell, you could be a practicing graphic designer and not use a computer. If you can't send an email, you are hopelessly unattached to society today. Or so it would seem....

I spend the better part of today on the phone with my internet service provider, swapping cables, turning computers and modems and routers on and off and on and off, etc. etc. There has been 0% thing designed by me personally today, all part of the job. I used to have a modem in my house and I remember why the internet used to suck before it got fast! ! ! Anyway, I am going to draw something on paper tonight, with a pencil, and live to fight technology another day... tomorrow.

The attached photo is not a made up still life, this is really what my desk looked like- Cat5 and phone lines all over, scraps of paper with scribbled notes >> Click to enlarge >>