WNYBAC: A New Chapter

by Mark Norris

The past few weeks have been a particularly busy time for Rich Kegler and Carima El-Behairy, founders of the nonprofit Western New York Book Arts Collaborative (WNYBAC). Along with running their business, P22 Type Foundry—an internationally known, locally based computer font company—and raising two children, Rich and Carima have accepted the daunting challenge of renovating a downtown building and bringing a major conference to the area.

The Casino Craps Out

by Bruce Jackson

The small casino currently operated in downtown Buffalo by the Seneca Nation of Indians is an unlawful operation. The Senecas own the land and it benefits from and carries the special conditions regulating land that, in federal law, is “Indian country.” But it is not the narrowly defined and strictly regulated kind of Indian country on which gambling can take place. The Senecas can build whatever they like there—hotels, theaters, shops, hospitals, schools, anything at all. They can even build a gambling joint. But they cannot legally permit anyone to gamble in it.

The Local Government Tour

by Kevin Gaughan

On my way to speak at the Brant town hall this past spring, I visited the town cemetery. Brant was the 29th stop on my tour of Erie County’s 45 municipalities, and in each locale I tried to see as many historic sites as I could.

The Return of Good Ideas

by Bruce Fisher

Barack Obama is getting an earful these days. His speechwriters’ work seems to indicate that he is at least beginning to listen to some of the new thinking on cities, regional economics, regional planning, and other critical issues, even though there is yet little evidence to show that Obama understands the need for a genuine paradigm shift in federal policy.

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

Three Freakin' Giants of Jazz

by Phil Sims

Hit an interview home run on Jim Rome sports radio and you receive a new and well-known middle name: “freakin’.” The moniker has been honestly earned by three Buffalo jazzmen who will converge on McGee’s Restaurant in the University Plaza, Main Street near Bailey, on Tuesday, July 15, at 8:30pm.

King Lear & Wicked

by Anthony Chase

It’s the final weekend for two of the biggest theatrical events of summer 2008. It is your last chance to see Shakespeare in Delaware Park founder Saul Elkin as King Lear, opposite his real-life daughter Rebecca as Cordelia; and it is the farewell weekend for Wicked, the Broadway mega-musical that recounts the tangled back story of The Wizard of Oz.

Fish Guts

by Joe George

A Star Spangled Bisons Celebration

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

The Buffalo Bisons have hooked up with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra for an annual baseball/concert doubleheader for 14 years now, and this year’s event hit a milestone of sorts, as total attendance for the series of July 3rd performances crossed the 250,000 mark.

Jumping Off The Screen: Journey to the Center of the Earth

by M. Faust

Remember how in the 1980s everyone was worried about how home video was going to kill off movie theaters? It hasn’t happened yet, and with luck it won’t happen, as long as the movie business keeps finding ways to make the theater experience unique. And thus Journey to the Center of the Earth, which star Brendan Fraser describes in his best techno-nerd voice as “the first feature-length digital narrative-driven live-action family adventure picture in 3D.”

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Breszny

Ask Anyone

I’m in a committed hetero relationship, and years ago my girlfriend said she’d never get married so long as gay couples could not marry legally. Fine by me—I don’t believe much in marriage anyway, and have always shared her opposition to institutional iniquities suffered by minority groups.