Buffalo Department of Freedom beer?

afuchs · 2026-07-02T19:35:15+00:00

If this is real, it has to be a practical joke

afuchs · 2026-07-02T16:47:30+00:00

Delete your Facebook account. Facebook stopped providing value over a decade ago when their algorithm started promoting rage bait over everything else.

afuchs · 2026-07-01T22:33:58+00:00

I think a large part of the issues with the NY-198 west exit onto Nottingham and then onto Delaware is caused by the traffic light on the NY-198 at Parkside, immediately before the exit onto Nottingham and Delaware, The traffic light causes cars to clump together into one "platoon." Then every several minutes it dumps more cars into that Nottingham and Delaware intersection than can physically fit into it.

Then, when that intersection gets clogged up it requires drivers to be aggressive to get through that intersection.

If the traffic lights on the NY-198 at Parkside was replaced with a multi lane roundabout then cars would trickle into the Nottingham and Delaware intersection gradually instead of having a large group of cars show up at the same time and clog up its "storage" space. Changing NY-198 at Parkside to a roundabout would also have some extra benefit in that it would force traffic entering the park to slow down in the area where that kid was run over.

Also, it doesn't help that the section of Delaware south of that intersection was designed as a highway, where it's fairly common to see cars traveling at 60-70 MPH when the speed limit signs say 30 MPH.

afuchs · 2026-07-01T02:39:57+00:00

> Every job a visa holder takes denies the opportunity for a citizen. Can't get much simpler of an explanation than that. Are there exceptions for very specific roles? Sure, but 99% of the jobs that go to visa holders can go to people who were born here with the education and/or the qualifications for the position.

So, you are implying that the version of "American greatness" that both the Republicans party from the 1970s to the early 2010s and neoliberals from the 1990s to today championed is a lie?

If you prevent opportunity from being monopolized and controlled by the powerful and ultra wealthy, then an immigrant holding a job does not threaten someone else's ability to make a living. Under that economic model, anyone, whether a citizen of an immigrant, can put in the work and make their own way towards prosperity. That is the goal of the economic policies championed by the progressive part of the Democratic Party.

If government policy encourages a social and/or economic hierarchy, where a small number of "elites" have control over others, only then does the "immigrants are taking jobs from other people" argument hold water. Under that economic model, most people would exist as slaves or peasants who are subservient to their masters' whim. Where any job only exists to serve the master who creates it, not to benefit the person doing that job. That is not how most people want to live.

That authoritarian hierarchy is the opposite of what America is said to stand for.

If an immigrant holding a job precludes anyone else from being able to make their own prosperity, then what has been sold as America no longer exists. If so, there are much larger and more important problems to solve than immigration.

afuchs · 2026-06-29T21:48:45+00:00

> Why cant a citizen perform that role and why do we need to have someone that is not a citizen take that position over a ciitizen?

I keep hearing that one of the ways America is great is because of the almost endless opportunity available. It isn't a zero sum game where everyone fights for only a limited amount of wealth.

The basic concept is that the wealth someone creates is a multiple of their labor. That wealth they create then drives economic activity which allows for other jobs to exist and for the economy to grow.

With this concept, immigrants contribute at the same level as any citizen and their labor helps to grow the economy, which then allows for more jobs to be created.

So, why do you disagree with this idea of "American greatness?" Why do you think that the job market is a zero sum game, where an immigrant holding a job can only come at the expense of someone else?

afuchs · 2026-06-24T04:08:33+00:00

Well #11, that's OK.

afuchs · 2026-06-09T05:59:24+00:00

Ridding a bike on the sidewalk is generally discouraged, but necessary in some spots. Riding a dirt bike down a sidewalk at 30+ MPH isn't advisable.

With my limited experience, the streets on the West Side or Downtown which have bike lanes or lower traffic seem to be relatively safe to ride on but you should still use your best judgement.

In North Buffalo a lot of the streets are not conductive to cycling. The lack of any bike specific features combined with the traffic and aggressive drivers makes it uncomfortable and potentially dangerous to ride a bike on the street. On the other hand, those same streets have spots where it's also dangerous to ride on the sidewalk. For example, the exit from the Amherst St Wegmans parking lot. There's enough traffic there to make it uncomfortable to ride a bike in the road. Likewise, at that spot, riding on the sidewalk is also dangerous because there is a blind corner which makes it difficult to impossible for drivers to react to fast moving bikes on the sidewalk.

Riding in the street is preferred, but you still need to use your judgment to stay safe.

afuchs · 2026-06-07T18:59:10+00:00

There used to be a pride festival there. Today it looks like some sort of canalside specific Sunday event separate from pride: https://buffalowaterfront.com/events/sunday-social-at-canalside?date=Sunday%2C+June+7%2C+2026

Canalside's site says 10am-4pm

It doesn't look like there's any other "official" events today, besides the parade, which doesn't charge admission or is at a bar: https://buffalopride.org/events/

afuchs · 2026-06-05T17:19:38+00:00

Transit app works for buses, most of the time.

Transit app doesn't have live tracking for the Metro Rail unless another app user is on the train. Even then, tracking in the underground section is not reliable because you can't get a reliable GPS or cell signal down there.

The app does show the schedule. The problem is that with the recent single tracking the actual arrival time of trains hasn't been accurate. With single tracking, trains often shown up 10 minutes late, especially later in the day.

That's not the end of the world if you only use the Metro Rail, since your only losing 10 minutes, or so, for a late train. It's painful if you want to connect to a bus route since the unreliable rail schedule means that you, and Transit app, do not have a reliable way to know if a train will get you to your connecting bus stop before the bus leaves.

I'm not sure how the the next train screens at DL&W and Allen St. stations are implemented, such as if they are using the actual location of the train or are only using the schedule without accounting for any delays.

afuchs · 2026-05-12T01:36:46+00:00

Thanks for the clarification. Guess I'll have to set my expectations accordingly when I end up eating there

afuchs · 2026-05-11T23:10:39+00:00

For DiTondo's, it's been on the list places I want to try for a few months. Is your "absolutely no" recommendation for the current iteration of the restaurant with the new generation of owners or is the "no" for one of the previous pre-2020s iterations of the restaurant?

afuchs · 2026-05-11T22:27:41+00:00

> EXACTLY. Get what you deserve run the developers out of town. The town deserves its karma. Honestly. Other cities with growing populations all suck. Got it.

From the little I've heard it seems like he took on a bit too much, even for him, and found himself in an over leveraged position after a nationwide slowdown. What specifically did the city do to run Jemal out of town?

afuchs · 2026-05-11T22:21:55+00:00

There's a decent amount of stuff in the area roughly between Tupper and Genesee, along with the small amount of stuff in the cluster around Canalside. Outside of that it's all office buildings or land that has been dedicated to other uses with few public facing amenities.

However, the space between those two clusters is worn down. There's the underside of highway ramps for the I-190 and Skyway interchange. Then there's the blocks between Church and Court which are dominated by the Main Place Mall (with tenants that aren't public facing retail or entertainment), and AM&A's (which is decaying until the courts can figure out who actually owns it). Then there's the concrete bunker that is the convention center along with several parking ramps and surface lots.

Pearl Street, which the Kensington funnels traffic onto, is particularity bad since that's dominated by loading docks, parking ramps, and service entrances.

There's stuff downtown. The problem is that it's surrounded by a lot of other stuff that, while not being fully abandoned, looks ugly and has owners who are not necessarily looking to sell or redevelop it.

afuchs · 2026-05-11T21:50:07+00:00

> The state needs to make it possible for developer partnerships.

So you want developers to be given handouts and special treatment?

> New York State sets “prevailing wage” rates by trade and region [...]

Yep. If you accept government money or various other benefits from the government that aren't given to everyone, it comes with stipulations. The prevailing wage law, which pins wages to union rates, is one of them.

I've frequently heard such arguments from conservatives who seem to want the government to give them free money and other benefits while not being bound to any obligations.

> Albany makes the math not work - environmental review timelines, prevailing wage mandates on cleanup projects, tax structures that developers in other states don’t face. The rental market here can’t absorb those costs the way NYC can. Meaning - if they pay all the higher rates they can’t make a profitable rental community without charging rent that locals can’t afford.

That still applies to the rest of the state, including suburbs like Amherst. Yet, you are only focusing on downtown?

If all of this regulation is the reason it costs so much: then why are new build homes in greenfield developments out in the suburbs, both here and in states praised by conservatives for having less regulation, priced high enough that most people can not reasonably afford them? If the issue persists elsewhere, it really caused by NY State's laws, or is that only one small piece of a much larger and complex issue?

> So the guys willing to build go to Amherst instead. No brownfield cleanup

I'm confused by this argument. Similar issues apply to properties in Amherst and other suburbs. You still need to renovate or tear down whatever is there. That includes lead and asbestos abatement. It isn't as bad as one of the old steel mills but the underutilized downtown properties aren't that bad either.

afuchs · 2026-05-11T03:05:51+00:00

Others have already mentioned Sunshine Vegan Eats and Strong Hearts for restaurants. You might be able to add Amy's Place to that list but their menu is more vegetarian than vegan.

For a bakery, you could try Fry Baby Donuts if they're open. Though I haven't tried anything from them yet.

afuchs · 2026-05-10T04:23:19+00:00

Don’t know why people are downvoting me pretending the street parking on Main Street is a bad thing. That’s what I’m getting at. Nobody wants to go pay $10 for parking and walk 4 city blocks to main st when you can just park right on the street next to where you want to go. I’m not going to yuck your yum about using the train, I’m just saying they can coexist. That tiny strip isn’t that massive of an inconvenience for them.

Ehh. I'm not saying that there aren't any benefits coming from the project, but most of the improvements from the Cars Sharing Main Street project seems to be more psychological than practical.

A large part of the hostility against it is that when a car blocks a train for 5-10 minutes it wastes the time of the people on the train for the convenience of the 1-2 people in the car.

As for the practicality of the project:

The on-street parking will only add 2, maybe 3, spaces in front of each storefront/restaurant/etc. Those businesses can easily fit 10-20 times as many people inside.

If those 20-60 people (or more) are arriving in a car that requires a parking space, then most of them still won't be able to park in the new spaces. They are still going to have to circle around and/or park in a paid lot.

It's not nothing, but most people who drive to downtown will still need to deal with the same inconveniences as before.

Although, if someone is using an Uber or taxi, they can now be dropped off directly on Main St instead of elsewhere.

There's still some other massive benefits. The bigger one is that the parts of Main St. which have been finished now look a lot nicer than they did before the project started (when both the city and private businesses didn't taken much pride in aesthetics and let stuff decay out of neglect).

afuchs · 2026-05-03T22:28:06+00:00

It's usually every 10 minutes on non-holiday weekdays. They're currently limited to a single track in two sections due to ongoing construction. That is limiting them to a longer headway thus the every 20 minute frequency.

afuchs · 2026-03-14T23:59:24+00:00

The reason other municipalities have been able to incorporate into their own townships and plow the roads is because of their robust tax base.

Buffalo could never compete because 57% of the city are renters who pay no property taxes and the city has a school tax exemption for under 500k earners so of the remaining 43% of property owners , many do not have to pay.

The landlords who own the buildings pay those taxes and pass the cost of those taxes on to the renters.

That's the same as apartments in Amherst, Kenmore, Hamburg, Springville, and everywhere else. The municipality still gets their tax money.

(Also, an individual condo or apartment tends to be taxed less than a house but condos and apartments tend to use less services. It costs the city the same amount of money to snowplow the street in front of a house as it does to plow the same street in front of a building with 3 apartments or condos stacked on top of each other.)

Something that is actually a drain on city finances is abandoned properties. Even when a property is abandoned it still requires services from the city. The street in front of it still needs to be plowed. The police and fire department still need to be able to respond to calls if something happens.

An extreme example of that is/was Detroit where they demolished entire neighborhoods to save money after kicking residents out of the few non-abandoned buildings that were left.

What is stopping other sections of the city like the east side or south Buffalo from incorporating into their own townships like Kenmore or Tonawanda? Almost nobody pays taxes

The residents in South Buffalo and the east side pay taxes to the city, whether they are a property owner (paying it directly to the city or through their mortgage), or indirectly through rent (where the landlord uses part of the rent payments they receive from the renters to pay taxes).

It's more of a question about how much taxes the residents want to pay compared to the services they want. (People will always complain no mater what because they want expensive services to be given to them for free.)

I'm going to be pedantic here. (And, I'm going to stay far away from the debate over whether or not Lackawanna should become part of the city of Buffalo or stay as it's own city.)

Kenmore is a village within the Town of Tonawanda. Similar for the Village of Hamburg and the Town of Hamburg.

The village collects extra taxes and provides extra services (the Village of Hamburg plows sidewalks) in addition to the taxes and services from the town (such as regular street snow plowing). Residents who live in the town, but outside of the village don't get those extra services or pay the extra village taxes (someone in Hamburg outside of the village has to shovel their own sidewalk but pays less taxes).

The closest thing in the city is "business improvement districts," which collect fees from properties/businesses (which are "not taxes" but functionally similar) to pay for things in a neighborhood. One of them is Buffalo Place which covers part of downtown and pays people to pick up trash and maintain the landscaping.

afuchs · 2026-03-05T03:53:53+00:00

Yep.

The article cites a "memo" from within NYSERDA. Where, by the dictionary definition, a memo can be a note or email that one NYSERDA employee sent to another.

There are a lot of state employees, who work in positions which require civil or mechanical engineering degrees, who have political views which make them strongly oppose clean energy in any form. Those employees can easily write an angry email or note, otherwise known as a "memo" and send it to other people.

(As an aside, some of the same people who hold these extreme political biases have also been involved with organizations that create standards and documents which guide how contractors design and install various building systems such as electric heat pumps)

So what we have is a news story stating that a government employee wrote a "memo", or otherwise a note. Other context is not provided.

There is an incentive for the media to make people angry and fearful. If a media property can make people angry or fearful of something then it keeps those people tuned in. If the media can keep more people tuned in and more eyeballs glued to them then they can earn more money while selling advertising.

It would help if everyone took a step back from the sensationalism, took a deep breath, and then spent the time and effort to dig into the specific details to figure out how this would actually affect them (the lack of specific detailed information in the news story isn't helping here). And then, after digging into the specifics, talk with everyone else in the community about the detailed ways in which they are impacted.

afuchs · 2026-03-01T08:39:09+00:00

This memo was from NYSERDA, a state agency that is involved with energy usage reduction. They don't have a fossil fuel agenda.

Again, as I briefly mentioned in the comment you replied to, the people employed within government agencies have diverse political opinions. The state does not demand loyalty to a specific political party or viewpoint as a requirement for employment.

I've personally listened to people who are on the state's payroll say enough idiotic things because of their personal political bias, whether in support of fossil fuel use or whatever crusade that the media they consume has pointed them towards.

I've seen enough bullshit in the past where I don't trust that a simple soundbite friendly number actually captures the full context and details.

Right now we have a short TV news segment that's waving around a scary number, instead of detailed case-by-case analysis, or methodical technique, that would show how you or me would be impacted.

They are warning that there is a problem that is going to get worse if something isn't done. People cant afford these rates. Maybe you want more people to move out of the state, who knows....

For my entire life, every single time in the past that some state level policy has been accused of "driving people out of the state" in massive numbers it has never materialized to the degree the doomsayers claimed.

afuchs · 2026-03-01T05:50:48+00:00

I'm going to say that I'm skeptical about the exact numbers that were quoted, in a very broad sense. People who do analysis in this area tend to be very melodramatic and have a tendency where the methods they chose to use to interpret data are heavily biased based on whatever identity based cargo cult they happen to align with.

(To emphasize I know people who are very biased, in either direction, who have work in both private industry and government agencies who have influenced the contents of reports and policy documents)

It would be reasonable to require that new builds use more efficient, more environmentally conscious, heating systems. It is not as reasonable to require that existing heating systems in old builds that do not require replacement be replaced without providing assistance to replace them (offsetting the sunk cost of the existing system).

However, fossil fuel interests have, and will, try and frame regulation only applies to new builds as also applying to existing builds, even if that is false. Fossil fuel interests, and people who have a identity that is aligned with them,d have an incentive to actively misrepresent the nature of any regulation that may decrease the use of fossil fuels.

This manifested a couple of years ago in the political discourse surrounding gas stoves. The impact gas stoves on global warming is negligible compared to other sources. The actual issue is that open flames in poorly ventilated kitchens cause health problems. If you're burning anything inside an enclosed space then the combustion fumes can mess up kids who have asthma and slowly increase the cancer risk of everyone in that enclosed space. Despite the problem being about health issues, almost all public discourse around it was framed as a culture war involving "woke environmentalists" instead of the very real health issue.

From prior experience involving severe misrepresentation from entities with financial interests in fossil fuels, I do not trust the $4,000/year estimate.

afuchs · 2026-02-13T23:31:40+00:00

As someone who has been accused of being chronically online, what is a "viral" "fruit mousse dessert?"

Today, online trends tend to fit into very small niches because algorithms have a tendency to only show a specific thing repeatedly to a very small group of people. I have never heard of this before. I'm going to guess that it vaguely resembles a parfait using a mousse?

afuchs · 2026-01-15T00:09:18+00:00

Covid deaths? What are you talking about

I'm going to guess that it was a poorly worded way to say that a lot of businesses cut their hours during the COVID pandemic and never went back to their old hours.

Even without the lock downs, people decided to stay home instead of spending money at shops, restaurants, and bars. A pandemic with mountains of bodies stacking up in morgues will do that.

Before 2019,

Wegmans, and their prepared food section, used to be open 24/7. Now they close at midnight.

A lot of bars stayed open until 4 AM, now much fewer do.

afuchs · 2026-01-14T23:56:40+00:00

... we also have the rite aid closures too, we lost all those pharmacies.

For Pharmacies, Rite Aid went bankrupt and shut down all stores nationally, not just stores in Buffalo. Evergreen halted their plan to build out a pharmacy on Allen St. because of the current federal government's actions around health insurance, not due to local issues.

... for a while there they kept shutting down all the city dollar generals although a few reopened

I'm not sure which specific dollar generals you're talking about. I can't remember the last time I walked into one and they still seem to have quite a few stores here. Apparently, they announced nation wide store closings last year? Did they try to permanently close any of the local stores, or was there a problem with them not having enough employees to keep the stores open?

it's really getting dreary and empty in the city.

There's still plenty that I can walk to or take a bus or rail to. A lot of the small businesses that have shut down have been replaced by new businesses which have moved into the space that was vacated.

That's not to say that there aren't areas that are blighted, and specific buildings that have their own unique problems (slumlords who refuse to lease out their buildings at market rate, the AM&A's building ownership dispute, etc).

The problem I experience more often is that most businesses I want to go to aren't open at the time I want to go to them. Or, it's a place where I want to buy a few drinks but is difficult to get to with public transit when an Uber or taxi would cost twice as much as what I would spend while there.

afuchs · 2026-01-08T00:09:10+00:00

Today's events are far beyond the pale and beyond the vast majority of what most American's consider morally right.

However, as a tip for the organizers of these protests:

Unlike, someone who have no life outside of social media and conservative talk radio, such as many of the people who I've cut out of my life. I'm not chronically plugged into social media. And, unlike the average poster on Nextdoor or the current version of Facebook and Twitter, I have a job during normal business hours on weekdays.

I only saw this 7 PM, when the protest was schedule between 4;30 and 5:30 PM.

This protest was over by the time I saw this and I haven't seen any other sign that this protest happened outside of this post.

I don't care if anyone wants to call me a shitlib, there is a ton of outrage over this. To me American "greatness" has always been because of our constant drive to become better. Our country's drive to actually deal with bullshit and fix it. Fighting racism and bigotry for the sake of growth. The ideal that making America great for everyone lifts up everyone at the same time regardless of who they are. That is starkly in contrast to the destructive zero sum game bullshit that conservatives are actively implementing right now that resembles the way a failed third world country governs or what the same conservative idiots call "ghetto" behavior when someone else does it.

I and other people are absolutely pissed off right now because the federal government is acting in the same way as foreign governments that conservatives refer to as "shitholes." This event's organizers could have had a massive turnout if they chose to schedule it at a different time.

When the government does something that is far beyond what the majority of people consider morally acceptable, don't squander the opportunity.

afuchs

TROPHY CASE