Last night at UB’s Center for the Arts, comedian Pablo Francisco graced the students of UB with his impressions and punch lines in a great one hour set. Earlier though, a local comedian opened up with a very slap-stick oriented routine which went over pretty well but in general, he recieved a lot of sympathetic applause. To be honest with you, I was suprised at how many people liked him (you could hear people raving about him as the audience left). Once he was done, Pablo took the stage in a UB hat and got the crowd going. A lot of his classics were in his routine (”Girl you’re fi-i-ine!”, the movie previews guy, latin music, male stripper roomate) even though a Pablo fan like me has heard those ones before, they were still hilarious with his unique, quirky delivery. Pablo’s new material was great, specifically pretaining to his drug days, encounters with William Hung, and Indian kareoke singers. For the locals, he poked fun at his stay at a hotel in not-so-safe Riverside before his performance. His Jackie Chan material was good but was dragged on for the 1st ten minutes. Other than that, he kept every part of his routine at just the right length to not get old.
Pablo does a great job at making jokes that other comedians simply cannot get away with. He held nothing back as he made fun of everysingle walk of life possible, and the diverse crowd enjoyed it entirely. As usual, he ended with his mock-trailer for “Little Tortilla Boy”-a great note to end on to send the crowd home. After the performance he took pictures and signed autographs for fans. With the performance he had last night, one assumes Pablo will be back in Buffalo soon, no matter how traumatized he was of his time in Riverside.

On a cool evening in the City of Good Neighbors, people of all genders and cliques lined up outside of the Town Ballroom in downtown Buffalo at 5 o’clock in the evening in hopes of witnessing an amazing performance. For some people it was yet another trip to see these two bands, but for some it was their first and most memorable time seeing them. At 7 the doors opened and the thousands crowded inside the extravagant Town Ballroom in downtown Buffalo. The anticipation kept on building throughout the night as two underground bands came on first, yet they earned the respect of the Buffalonians in the crowd. Mosh pits emerged and crowd surfers took the stage (almost literally). The first band was a metal/goth band from England. Decked out in tats, the English band rocked Buffalo and made many new fans. After about a twenty five minute wait the next underground band, Eighteen Visions took the stage swearing at the fans and trying to pump them up. The fans responded by even more moshpits, more crowdsurfers and many more cheers as they axniously awaited the two headliners. After a spectacular and talented perfromance by the Eighteen Visions, the crowd was just waiting for the big bands. About 45 minutes went by until finally CKY came out to chants of “CKY! CKY! CKY!” Deron Miller (rythym guitarist/vocals), Chad Ginsburg (lead guitarist/background vocals), Matt Deis (bass/background vocals) and Jess Margers (drums (and not to mention brother of badass Bam Margera)) came out and started rocking Buffalo. They opened with Escape From Hellview and played Frenetic Amnesic, 96 Quite Bitter Beings, The Human Dive In High Fi, Attached at the Hip, My Promiscuous Daughter, Sporadic Movement and ended with Disengage the Simulator. The people went nuts as Deron tossed his guitar picks into the crowd, Jess chucked a few drum sticks into the crowd as he had backups ready. After they finished their finale, the crowd was ecstatic with the adrenaline still pumping because the night was not over yet. About half an hour later, the people were becoming restless so finally at midnight, the headliner Avenged Sevenfold (A7X) took center stage continuing their “City of Evil” tour. As the band opened up with The Beast and the Harlot, the crowd was insane. Practically the whole floor was decorated with sweaty fans packed like sardines crowd surfing and mosh pitting. The band also played Burn it Down, The Wicked End, To End The Rapture, We Came Out at Night, Forgotten Faces and then to the crowds dismay they had to end the show and they ended it with their current rock hit which currently sits 7th on the billboard top 50 rock songs, Bat Country. After the 7 minute long song the cheers lasted for minutes and the crowd was exhausted but had a great time. They all got their money’s worth. After the bands completed their performances they stuck around the ballroom for a while at merchandise areas signing autographs for true fanatics. Needless to say Buffalo’s Town Ballroom was rocked hardcore and for many fans February 2nd will never be forgotten.

The Dominator has returned to Buffalo and unlike the handful of regular season games played by Detroit and Ottawa at the arena, Dominik will actually start this time against his former team (At least as of now). This is easily the biggest game the Sabres have played so far this year. Being outscored 21-5 this year agains the Sens and lagging 5 points back in the division, the Sabres want to make a statement. 1,500 tickets remain (between $50-$120).

As Western New York’s finest car salesman, Billy Fucillo would say…
It’s gonna be HUUUUUUUUUUGE!

Hmm, what’s that clock? Let’s look closer…

Wait a second…is that the Central Terminal clock? Me thinks it is, but I thought they returned it to the station…guess it would kind of be a waste since not too many people will ever get to see it if it remains in its original environment. Anyone know about this?

The Spill Canvas show on Monday, January 30th was nothing less of spectacular, but why expect anything less when it comes to The Spill Canvas? Getting to the doors early at the Icon is a must for any show I will go to in the future. Getting there earlier assures you place directly in the first row in front of the stage. This also requires you to stand through all the opening bands too of course, which could be either a good or bad thing, depending on the bands. The first band, Sleepaway, was your typical rock/indie/alternative band. Unfortunely, the microphone was turned down and it was hard to heard the lyrics to the songs, but the music was still very good. Then when As Tall as Lions came on the crowd came alive. Their style was more of an ambient/indie type. There were many fans in the crowd who knew the songs already. The best song was “The Carousel” hands down, with even a guest appearance by Nick Thomas, lead singer of The Spill Canvas, singing a few lines towards the end of the song. Lastly Hit the Lights completely riled up the crowd and caused unnecessary anarchy momentarily. They a generic emo/punk genre styled band, just like many of the others that are slowly becoming more popular today with many of the younger generations. Being in the front helps you to avoid all of pushing and shoving. That was one part of the night I would have done without. Then finally, after waiting for more or less three hours, The Spill Canvas came onto the stage. They started out with “Lust A Prima Vista”, which stoked the crowd immediately for what was left to come. Another song that stood out was “Staplegunned”, not a personal favorite of mine, but it was amazing live, especially since they finished off the song with a clip of “The Tide”. Out of the whole entire night “Self-Conclusion” was my personal favorite song on the set list. This is such an intense song, which very emotional lyrics, and when it’s sung live, it is overwhelming. I aboslutely loved it. They wrapped up the night with “The Night Will Go as Follows”. Then they did the cliché “leave-the-stage-make-the-crowd-want-more-and-eventually-come-back” stunt, and performed “Polygraph, Right Now”. They finished up the night in fashion and left the crowd elated and psyched for the next amazing performance to come.

Hmmm…could this be a weekly installment?!?!? It’s the second installment of finding downtown projects and seeing how they’re doing but since there aren’t enough projects and construction doesn’t make significant strides in appearance on a week-to-week basis, we’ll prolly make this monthly instead. Mkay? Mkay.

ERIE CANAL HARBOR



Okay so all these pictures suck. Besides that, you see that they are building some sort of shed-looking thing by one of the naval ships, and you can’t really see it (trust me on this one) they are digging out some dirt to recreate the original look of the harbor…the water hasn’t filled in yet but when you go there you will see a huge hole with metal around it.

COBBLESTONE

This is a 3 part development. The one pictured is the 1st step, it will be offices…the 2nd phase is another abandoned warehouse which will be lofts…and the 3rd will be a small warehouse inbetween the two which will be retail-relateed (a market could come in handy)

So thats what I got for you today…its nice to see some progress downtown.

After an afternoon walking around downtown (pictures in a later post) it was time to take the metro back to dear old UB…running after the train at Fountain Plaza a familliar large black man stopped me

Man:”Pssst…psssst….hey brotha!”
Me:”Yeah? I gotta catch this train [jogging towards train]
Man:”Hey brotha, check dis out man! [busts out approximatley 10 chains of gold] Come ‘on man!”

as usual, I declined his goods. At least this time he didn’t have his cronies say to him “Man, dat boy trippin’” (yes, this happens often on Main Street when the Gold-dealer findes me).

So I missed that train and walked down from Fountain to Church…got the train from there and then at Fountain a large grop of urban 20 year olds get on the train, led by their man in cornrows we get my quote of the day…the train was going extremely slow, and when I mean slow, I mean 2-4mph (underground, mind you)…this led the man in cornrows to shout out:
“Maaan, this muthaf**a run out of gas!?!? Man dis mothaf**a DID run out of gas…just what I need”
(NOTE: The Metro actually runs on electricity provided by a cable above the train)
So at Summer/Best they departed and two young men entered …one in his leather jacket and hat cocked to the side…aaaaand the infamous ticket lady…she comes to this man and the dialogue is as follows:
Ticket Lady: “Ticket”
Man:….
TL: “Tiiiicket?”
Man:”Yo, yo hold up man”
5min later
TL: “Tiiicket???”
Man:”Aiiite, here”
TL: “This is a one way from Amherst, this isn’t valid”
Man:”Man, I gaaave you my ticket”
TL: “Do you have a valid ticket”
Man:”Man, I gaaaave you my ticket”
TL: “Either show me a VALID ticket or your ID please”
Man:”Maaaan, I gaaaaave you my TI-CKET”
(This goes on for 5 more min)
(A young white male sneaks him his ticket when the ticket lady walks away…the day is saved.)

…I don’t know if the entertainment value transfered into this blog completley…but trust me, I wasn’t the only one enjoying it…like me and my friends say,

“Only. In. Buffalo.”

To be honest with you, this is the first time I’ve ever heard him address most of these issues, specifically keeping young people in Buffalo and the dealings with a pretty bad public school system…sounds good although it has hints of Masiello in it.

Buffalo Sabres’ forward, Jochen Hecht on living in America and more specifically, Buffalo:

“‘The cities over here are much bigger,’ said Hecht, who has represented Germany 12 times in International play. ‘When you go grocery shopping or something like that, you almost have to drive half-an hour. Not like at home. But Buffalo reminds me a lot of European cities I’ve been in. It’s flat and has lots of green trees. I go home every off-season. But I’ve found Buffalo to be a great place to come back to during the hockey season with my family. It’s a great place to live.’”

and it looks quite nice I might add. Buffalo lacks in modern glass structures (the only ones I can think of are the airport in Cheektowaga and the Alferio Center on UB’s Amherst Campus) so this to go along with the new federal courthouse will give Buffalo a bit more of a modern feel to it. Apparently some people object to the design…I can’t really see why, but you can read those nay-sayers on the link…

Apparently the preliminary designs will FINALLY be submitted. There was a rumor that Bass Pro was waiting to see commercial development in that part of Downtown before they started anything but apparently that is not true. It has been over a year since the deal was announced and it looks like we’re still a month away from seeing any concrete progress. I just looking forward to buying some damn seats from the Aud.

PS…I hope you guys enjoy the new layout here at “All Things Buffalo”. We continue to be inconsistent in updating. Unfortunatly we were really counting on our newest contributor but he went AWOL…regardless…2006 will be a much better and consistent year for “All Things Buffalo” and its readers…keep checkin us out, you’re bound to find some goodies…