Coming back to Buffalo after some time in DC, I forgot how much more…interesting…the train is here.

On today’s train, a middle aged woman who I would classify as a “crack head” talked to herself loudly for most of the ride, talking to her imaginary friend about the history of the NFTA.

No big deal, happens all the time, right?

But as she got off the train she came up to me and reached for my nose, saying “GOT YOUR NOSE!” and then did it to the guy next to me as well.

$3.50 for an all day pass takes you everywhere you want to go in the region, plus some extra entertainment on the side…guaranteed.

There’s something new on Main Street’s 1st floor, but you can’t shop there. An architectual firm specializing in historic preservation has opened offices on the 1st floor of the Pierce Building.

Downtown Buffalo is notoriously bad when it comes to signage anywhere that makes sense. The CVB however is trying to change that and put three different signs on Niagara Square explaining its’ history and its surroundings. Really good stuff. The one complaint I have is the font style. Cleary going for a late 19th, early 20th look. Since the signs are made in 2007, it should look like it but honestly I’ll find a way to live with that.

Benefit Screening of “Strange Culture” for CAE Trial Fund

Saturday, September 8th, 2007 at 7pm

Market Arcade Film & Art Center

639 Main St., Buffalo NY

You don’t have to be paranoid for ‘Strange Culture’ to scare the hell out of you. - Reuters

A special benefit screening of “Strange Culture”, Lynn Hershman Leeson’s critically-acclaimed new documentary about Buffalo artist Steven Kurtz, will take place on Saturday Sept 8, 2007 at 7pm at the Market Arcade Film & Arts Center, as a co-presentation with Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center. Tickets are $10, and all proceeds will go to the Critical Art Ensemble Trial Fund. The documentary, which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival,
will have its Buffalo theatrical run at the Market Arcade September 7-13th. The Market Arcade is located at 639 Main Street in downtown Buffalo, NY.

Professor Kurtz will be present to answer questions after the special Benefit Screening on September 8.

The Case:

Strange Culture (2007, 75min) chronicles the surreal nightmare of Steven Kurtz, an art professor at SUNY Buffalo and a founding member, with his late wife, Hope, of the internationally exhibited art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) critical-art.net Over the past decade cultural institutions worldwide have hosted CAE’s participatory theater projects that help the general public understand biotechnology and the many issues surrounding it. In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing to present Free Range Grain, a project examining GM agriculture, at a group show called The Interventionists: Art in the Social Sphere at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Police who responded to Steve Kurtz’s 911 call deemed the couple’s art suspicious, and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was illegally detained as a suspected “bioterrorist” as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife’s body. Today Kurtz and long-time collaborator Dr. Robert Ferrell, Professor of Genetics at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health, face trumped-up charges of mail fraud and wire fraud, punishable, thanks to the PATRIOT Act, by up to 20 years in prison.

The Documentary:

Since the ongoing nature of the case prevents Kurtz from discussing its details, Hershman Leeson has enlisted actors to dramatize parts of the story, skillfully interweaving dialogue with news footage, animation, interviews, testimonials, and footage of Kurtz himself. Tilda Swinton
(”Chronicles of Narnia” “Broken Flowers”) and Thomas Jay Ryan (”Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind”) play Hope and Steve Kurtz, and Peter Coyote (”ET” “Erin Brockovich”) plays Dr. Robert Ferrell. “Strange Culture” poses questions that are more universal than local at this point in our nation’s history. How can artists whose works are critical of government policy
continue to create freely given the escalating paranoia of the state? What liberties do we loose to protect freedom? The case of Kurtz and Ferrell is of concern not only to scientists, artists, and activists, but to anyone interested in contributing to vital public debate about the actions of their government. More information about the film, including trailers, can be accessed on the web at www.strangeculture.net

The Benefit:

Buffalo Art Community Joins Worldwide Support of Kurtz and Ferrell Because the case threatens to establish dangerous precedent for artists and for anyone exercising their First Amendment rights, it has attracted worldwide attention, with fundraisers to support Kurtz and Ferrell organized on five continents. On September 8th, at 7pm, join the many cultural organizations, individual artists and scientists, and concerned citizens who have responded to this outrageous, politically-motivated case, to raise urgently needed money for Kurtz and Ferrell’s legal defense.

For more information about the case please visit
casedefensefund.org

The Market Arcade Film & Art Center is located in Downtown Buffalo. For more

information about the Benefit, please contact Carolyn Tennant

(carolyn@hallwalls.org), Media Arts Director at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts

Center: 716-854-1694

Its’ all done. The biggest office building to be built in Buffalo since the Key Towers in 1990. What it lacks in height it makes up for in the huge amount of previously vacant land it absorbs. Will it be deemed as an embarasment to Buffalo as Cynthia Van Ness said? I doubt it. Its too generic to conjure up much emotion. And besides, the masses love glass.

Took less than a year to complete and looking very classy. Pretty darn good urbanism…go check it out for yourself next time you’re on Chippewa.

Niagara Square looks a bit different these days. A big gaping hole be exact…but not for long. The courthouse is finally on its’ way to being built. Completion apparently in early 2010 even though that sounds longer than it should be.

Downtown’s two newst office spaces succumb to the Buffalonian’s demand for surface lots. But there is an example of one that can have a good compromise of suburban lifestyle needs and urban design. There’s also an example of one that just doesn’t particularly care.
285 Delaware has mostly underground lots but still has some surface parking on its’ lot. The guys at HHL though had the 1st floor wall stretch out of the building to conceal a lot of it so the pedestrian doesn’t feel like they’re in a dense Amherst. It keeps the apperance of flowing from building-to-building much more than the building actually does. A good compromise.

The new HealthNow HQ’s? Not so much. The building itself is already pretty disconnected from its’ surroundings and already has a huge parking garage to absorb most if not all the need for parking. But for good measure, they throw in a surface lot anyways. They don’t try to conceal it by putting it on the side of the Niagara Thruway but instead throw it right up there against the sidewalk facing downtown. If any one could debate the suburban style of the building before, you can’t debate it now.

Downtown isn’t really in a position to be too demanding of how parking is done like NYC or DC or Boston can. But its’ no longer desperate enough to be allowing HealthNow to do what they did. But 285 Delaware is a parking situation I can live with…a good compromise between the man who wants to get in and out of downtown as quick as he can, and the man who walks Delaware Ave. everyday.

For the 1st time in I think ever-I have returned to Buffalo after a few months and things actually looked…different…in a…good..way.

The ensuing posts over the next few days will demonstrate how in one summer, all those plans and proposals are starting to finally take shape in concrete form.

American Apparel’s clothing doesn’t particularly interest me- I hate the 70’s. And if not for its sexual ads…
there’s no way in hell I’d see my urbanist/artsy peers busting out spandex, leotards and unisex clothing in 2007.

What fascinates me about their business model is that all the clothes are made in the USA. In downtown LA. Clothes made in the USA?! Wtf mate.

A large factory hosts workers who make about $14.00 an hour, get subsidized lunches, and a health care plan. This could clearly be replicated under the right circumstances.

As someone who is interested in opening a clothing store geared towards the same audience in downtown Buffalo after college, I’d love to be able to say that not only is my store downtown but my factory is too!

Sadly its’ highly unlikely. Unions are important but the Buffalo ones seem to be particularly crippling. I think a lot of people would love to have business here and even treat their employees with good pay and health care like American Apparel but simply don’t want to be tied down to the extensive pre-determined obligations of unions. And if the business is going out of its way to make their employees happy that should be a situation in which unions should step back and watch the local economy grow.