The project pledging to provide free Wi-Fi to thousands of
people on the West Side that was promised to come by January will likely not be
ready until late spring.
Buffalo
Public Schools Acting Director of Instructional Technology Sarah Edwards says
the project is just now in its early stages and that plans to have the project
done by the beginning of the year were too ambitious.
“I’m
honestly not sure where that goal came from,” Edwards said. “The story came out
just when the RFP was awarded, which meant we were still going through the
planning and contract procedures. We are trying to move forward with more
concrete plans.”
The free
Wi-Fi zone on the West Side will extend from West Ferry Street south to Carolina
Street and extend east from Richmond Avenue to the I-190.
The project
will give Buffalo Public School students access to free Wi-Fi in order to do
schoolwork at home. Family members will be able to use the Wi-Fi, but there
will be filters to block social networking sites and streaming services.
The project
is being partially funded by a grant from the State Department of Education.
According
to Edwards, the plan is to place large antennas that will amplify the school’s Wi-Fi
signal to the surrounding neighborhood, on the following schools: School 3, Frank
A. Sedita, Herman Badillo and Harvey Austin. The project organizers will be
looking to work with businesses and community organization to put equipment on
their buildings as well. By Francis Boeck
and Emmanuel Rodriguez
Shops all along Elmwood Avenue decorate their
storefronts to attract customers during this holiday season. “The decorations
went up a couple of weeks ago,” said Sandra Brown, a sales associate at Renew
Bath and Body, 927 Elmwood Ave. “We were eager to get the decorations up and
embrace the season.”The Elmwood Village
Association is hosting “Holidays in the Village”, on Dec. 13 and 14.A series of events will take place, one of them being the annual tree
lighting at 7 p.m., Dec. 14 at
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, 875 Elmwood Ave. By Gabrielle Kime and Conner Wilson
Gaetana Schueckler who is co-owner with of The Treehouse Toy Store with
her husband David feels that technology can not replicate the types of toys
that are personally hand-picked by for their store located at 793 Elmwood Ave.
Schueckler feels that hands on play with toys such as Glitter Snow Globes and
Peppermint Snow Tube should be valued instead of playing on a tablet or a
phone. Playing with hands on toys can develop social skills and teach children
how to share with one another. By Christian Gaffney and John Propis
As a
child growing up TJ Veith would find himself with a pencil in one hand and his
drawing pad in the other drawing superheroes for hours. As he got older his
passion for drawing grew and he realized he can turn something that he loves to
do into a business.
Next
month, Veith’s dreams will become a reality as he opens hispop culture gallery, Flippin’ Comics. Thenew comic book store at 218 Grant Street, is just one of the many new
businesses calling the West Side home.
Veith,
a resident of the West Side, has been selling comic books online for the past
five years.Flippin’ Comics
will not only be a place for
customers to find collectible comic books but a shop where local and
international artists can showcase their work. Veith combined his two passions
of comic books and pop culture and created his first brick and mortar that will
be both a comic book shop and a gallery dedicated to pop culture.
“Having
a brick and mortar establishes a sense of legitimacy to a business where online
presence is kind of fairweather,” Veith said.
Veith
flashes back to a time where Grant Street was considered to be “sketchy” but
now it has made a full turnaround and was the ideal place to fulfill his dreams
of turning his online comic book publication to a brick and mortar.
Veith’s
vision for Flippin’ Comics was to create a hub for art and music lovers in Buffalo. He plans to not only have comic
books in his store but to have a platform for people creating podcasts,
recording music, and showing their artwork.
Veith
found success in art mainly on the social media site Instagram.
Social media plays a large role in Veith’s business. He’s able to share his
artwork with hundreds of people who share and repost his work, which he credits
for being the reason his online sales have increased.
Veith
seems
to be bucking a shopping trend that is shifting away from storefronts in favor
of the online marketplace.
“People that do what I do with online sales
that target comic books they’re the ones who spend the majority of the money
because they are trying to resell, whereas an online consumer would usually buy
one book and a reseller would buy comic books in bulk. Those are the people
that will come to a shop like mine,” Veith said.
Prish Moran, store owner of the Sweet Ness 7
Cafe who is also the landlord of the building where Veith is renting said Veith
should set and keep regular store hours.
“Be
consistent in your opening and closing hours, that is the biggest thing I see
with new businesses. It’s slow, so they decide to close and that is the worst
thing you can do,” Moran said.
Moran
also disagrees with the idea that Grant Street is not safe.
“The
media and everyone has made us believe that it is unsafe here, and that's not
true things happen, sure they do but they happen everywhere,” Moran said.
Renovations
for Flippin’ Comics are set to complete within the next month.
President Donald Trump’s repeal of the 2015 Clean Water Act
brings ambiguity to current water protections regarding the Niagara River watershed and other
bodies of water across New York. The changes in regulation leave a grey area
for organizations like the Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper working to protect the environment. Amendments through the repeal will leave the
complex issue a matter of litigation and referral to decisions of past court
cases going forward. Margaux Valenti, legal and programs adviser for Buffalo
Niagara Waterkeeper, discusses the potential implications. By Tommy Corsi and Ryan Williams
Lower West Side native Stefan Coker has started a brick-and-mortar
business, What's Pop-in' Gourmet Popcorn, 418 W Ferry St. Coker, right, and
co-owner David Whelan, left, opened the store on Nov. 2. “It’s super important
to be here. My children go to school in Starpoint. It’s important to me that my
kids see all demographics,” Coker said. What's Pop-in' Gourmet
Popcorn boasts unique favors including Cajun ranch, beef-on-weck and apple
pie. Coker and Whelan are getting set to debut their holiday flavors: gingerbread,
eggnog, lemon blueberry and Claus crunch, which is a mix of Chex Mix, pretzels
and M&M’s. They will also be revealing a new flavor on their Instagram page
in the coming weeks.By Francis Boeck
and Emmanuel Rodriguez
Compass House, a shelter for runaway and homeless
youth, will be hosting a Thanksgiving dinner on Tuesday, Nov. 26 for its
residents and clients. Compass House will
also be donating boxed Thanksgiving dinners to families in its programs. The resource center is located at 1451
Main St. and the emergency shelter is located at 370 Linwood Ave. By Gabrielle Kime and Conner Wilson
The growth of Grant Street has led to many
headaches for business owners when it comes to parking around the corner of
Lafayette Avenue. Steven Zaionz of Sweet_Ness 7 Cafe, 220 Grant St., and Vinnie Guercio of
Guercio & Sons, 250 Grant St., feel the city needs to do something about it. By Francis Boeck and Emmanuel Rodriguez
When walking into Gather & Game, don’t
expect to see ordinary games like “Monopoly” and “Sorry” but instead games you
may have never heard of. Games like “Ticket to Ride” “King of Toyko” and many
more you will find at Gather & Game.
Located at 212 Grant St., Gather & Game is
attracting gamers from the West Side and elsewhere. Owner Joe Petri, who also
owns Westside Stories across the street, has been creating a fun gaming
atmosphere for many to enjoy.
Gather & Game has been open for about eight months, but Petri said he has
seen good progress with the new store. He sees many new and old faces that come
in every week.
Gather & Game features over 200 games
throughout the store and wants to bring in more. The store carries many
older games and a lot of new games as well and runs gaming tournaments.
T-shirts, gaming cards and board games are available for sale.
Josh Boyle, game coordinator for game nights every Friday, always
pitches new ideas in order to help the store to draw more people in.
“The more games we have the better. Right
now, we have a couple hundred games, and the community is starting to build
around us,” Boyle said.
Gamers’ ages range from 8- to
30-years-old and pay $3 to play. A frequent gamer Nicholas Griffith, 26, says
he loves coming to Gather & Game.
“I live in Allentown, so this is this the
closest gaming place for me. I don’t own a car so I usually either ride my bike
or take the bus. This is a place where I feel comfortable at and have fun
playing and learning new games each week,” Griffith said.
Petri
likes to provide a fun and comfortable for the gamers to play in and snacks and
drinks for refreshments. There are memberships and tournaments to be entered to
win cash prizes.
“It’s hit or miss. On a bad night we will get four and on a good one we will
get 10 to 12, usually around 8:30 p.m. is when more start coming. We definitely
see an increase on weekends or when there are tournaments,” Petri said.
Falley Allen Bartender Hannah Dwyer and patron
Scott Martin.
By Gabrielle Kime and Conner Wilson It’s Friday night, and you’re out with your friends in
Allentown. Based on its past reputation you choose to walk in a group to ensure
your safety. In years past, you would
run into many nefarious characters and may even witnesses a fight or two.Although tonight you notice that everything
is simply fine.
Perhaps the area isn’t as unruly as it once was. Staff at Allentown
bars sure think so.
Bars in Allentown are beginning to see a change in crime in
the area.The area is no longer the
chaotic place it once was.
“When I started it felt like there were fights every night
and there were cops everywhere,” said Madeline Barker, who has bartended at Falley Allen,
204 Allen St., for two years. “They do their patrols but they don’t linger too
often.”
In years past, Barker said police had often just parked in
one area of Allen Street, but now they have switched to active car patrols
around Allentown at night.Since then,
she has noticed that there hasn’t been as much violence.
There have been four reported crimes in Allentown in the
month of November, according to crimereports.com. That compares to areas such as the Elmwood Village with three reported
crimes this month.
Clare Ahne, a waitress at Falley Allen, said working in
Allentown is not exactly how she expected it to be.
“Even like six-seven years ago when my brother was going
out, it’s getting safer,” said Ahne.
Ahne, on greater sense of safety in Allentown at night:
“I’ve worked in this place for over five years,” said Amanda
Markovich, bartender at The Alley Cat,
199 Allen St. “They’ve definitely upped the police presence.”
Markovich has noticed in the past few years that businesses
have been doing their part to clean up the area and create a safer bar scene.
“The neighborhood has taken a stance,” said Markovich.
“People are more involved to make it a safer place.”
Business owners and police aren’t the only ones keeping
Allentown safe, residents have stepped up.For example, an Allentown resident organized a clean-up on Allen Street
just before Halloween, Markovich said.A group
of residents spent Oct.30 cleaning up trash on
the street for all of the children trick-or-treating the next night.
“The police are around more,” Markovich said. “Businesses
are calling them and working with the police now.”
The amount of people who disrupt customers and businesses has
decreased, according to Markovich.
“There used to be a bunch of drugged-out homeless people
walking into places,” said Markovich. “They must’ve moved off somewhere else.”
Hannah Dwyer, a bartender at Falley Allen, said that with
the change on Allen Street, the chaos has seemingly migrated more downtown.
In past years, on Friday and Saturday nights, the bar used
to be mayhem that can develop when crowds and alcohol mix, Dwyer said.
“I never walk out of here feeling unsafe,” Dwyer said.
The first heavy snowfall marks the end of bicycle season on
the West Side. From left, Matt Rebmann and Nate Schultz pick up the Reddy Bikeshare bike
racks on the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Bidwell Parkway for the season. Reddy
Bikeshare is a programthrough Independent Health that offers a bicycle rental
service through which bikes can be picked up from any of the service’s racks. There
are approximately 20 bicycle rack locations around the West Side. Rebmann said that the bike racks will be rolled back out
around March and the program should be back up and running by the beginning of
April next year. By Tommy Corsi and Ryan
Williams
When he
looks back at it, Tom Coppola’s decision of what to do for high school didn’t
have much to do with where he wanted to go.
It was
about who he wanted to be.
In the
summer between his seventh and eighth grade year, Coppola attended Canisius
High School’s Higher Achievement Program and quickly become enamored with the
teachers of the program, realizing he wanted to be just like them.
“It was
immediate that I felt connected to the place, I felt like this was beyond just
a school but a community that I wanted to be part of,” Coppola said. “All of
the teachers were alums and they were all guys who I wanted to become. They
went to cool colleges and projected to do these great things in the world and
then they were just gentlemen. It gave me an idea of that’s what I wanted to
be.”
Coppola, ’01,
later returned as a teacher and is now the Dean of Students at Canisius.
He has also
been running the summer program for the past eight years as well, introducing
that same culture to middle school boys.
It’s a
cycle that has been going on for the past 150 years, since the Jesuits started
Canisius on Ellicott Street back in 1870. It ash been at its current location
at 1180 Delaware Ave. since the 1940s.
Jay
Josker, ’01, director of alumni relations, and Ken Liszewski, ’10, director of annual
giving, reflect on the success of Canisius High School the past 150 years:
“It’s
pretty cool,” said senior Daniel Sippel, a fourth-generation student at
Canisius and high-ranking member of the school’s student government. “It’s
understandable to see how this school has made it this far.”
As a Jesuit
school, Canisius works to create men who are “for and with others,” according
to Coppola and Sippel. Canisius students are required to perform 100 hours of
community service, locally and internationally, travelling to Nicaragua
annually.
Service is
as important as academics, spirituality and athletics in helping to form the mind,
body and soul of each student, Principal Andrea Tyrpak-Endres said.
It’s that
idea of shaping the whole person that brought Sippel to even consider pursuing
medicine.
“If you
told me four years ago, that now I’m thinking about going pre-med or studying
medicine for the purpose that I can interact with people for the rest of my
life, I would not have believed you,” Sippel said. “It has come from things
like retreats, service programs on the other side of the world and connect with
people, it all builds up.”
A few of the distinguished alumni Canisius
High School can boast about are: the late Tim Russert, host of NBC’s “Meet The
Press”; Tom Perez, current Democratic National Committee chairman; Tom Fontana,
Emmy winning producer; Most Rev. Joseph A. Burke, former Bishop of Buffalo and Larry
Quinn, former minority owner of the Buffalo Sabres.
Qadree Ollison,
’14, and Ryan Hunter, ’13, are playing in the National Football League and several
others on Division-I rosters. John Urschel ’09 recently retired from the NFL to
get his PhD in math at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
“People who
have gone on to do incredible things in all kinds of walks of life also have an
infinity to the place so they always want to give back,” said Coppola, who is
also an assistant football coach. “When someone like John Urschel is always
willing to come back, I think that’s unique. I don’t think most people have
that appreciation of their high school like most people who went here do.”
The school
has arguably one of the strongest alumni bases in the region, with a footprint
prominent both locally and internationally in many different walks of
life.
“I never
get on jury duty because they always say ‘does anyone know any of the attorneys
or judges?’ and I say, ‘yes, I taught them all’,” Tyrpak-Endres said. “We have
a lot of guys out there working at Roswell and Millard and in the court system
and contributing to the business world in Buffalo as well.”
But for
Coppola, Canisius is more than his alma mater or place of work, it’s a second
home.
“Some of my
best friends in the world are people I went to school with here,” Coppola said.
“Now all of the sudden I’m at point where guys I’ve taught are getting married.
I’m now seeing the connections from Canisius High School has in all parts of my
life. This place is super important to me.”
The Forest Lawn holiday season production
of “It WAS a Wonderful Life” has been canceled due to a natural disaster within
St. Matthew’s Cemetery in West Seneca.
The production of “It WAS a
Wonderful Life” has been a Forest Lawn tradition since 2012. This production
consists of some of the cemetery’s permanent residents giving musical and
comical glimpses of Christmases past, when they were alive. The production
typically runs from the end of November through December. All shows for this
season have been canceled.
A statement issued by Forest Lawn Group
of Cemeteries said, “A portion of the St. Matthew’s property collapsed into
bordering Cayuga Creek, threatening the sanctity of more than 200 burials,
which were at risk of falling into the creek.”
The precautions taken to save burial sites and
relocate others were estimated to $600,000 to date.
Refunds for already purchased
tickets are available and Forest Lawn intends to re-install this holiday
tradition in 2020.
Forest Lawn is also known for
various walking and trolley tours. These tours range from architecture, and
famous residents to historical Civil war tours. These tours are still
instituted seasonally. By Bethany Clancy
and Kristina DiBlasio
Journey’s End has
launched the Refugee Asylee Mentoring Program, to help refugees make
connections within the Buffalo area, particularly the West Side, says Program
Director Paige Kelschenbach. The program will pair refugees with mentors, who
will act as life coaches, introducing and guiding them through life in
America. The program is funded by a
state grant for five years. After that the program will look to renew and
expand, says Kelschenbach. The program
is accepting mentor applications.
Journey’s End offices are located at 2495 Main St. By Gabrielle Kime and Conner Wilson
SUNY Buffalo State studentNicole
Stewart signs into a guest log at Campus Walk Apartments while the security
guard Michelle Howell protects the front entrance of the building. New security
measures were put in place in September for the two buildings,
140
Rees St. Campus Walk made headlines in September when shots were fired during a
fight outside the complex. More recently, robberies on the property have left
residents feeling unsafe. Robert
Wombles, assistant general manager, made several safety adjustments to the
property. “Guests now have to sign in once the office is closed for the day.
Security officers are posted at exits in both buildings,” Wombles said. Campus
Walk also has an after-hours emergency hotline. By Jasmine
Huntley and Bianca Moise
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, The Salvation Army,
is doing its part in providing dinners on Thanksgiving Day, November 28, for people
who may not have anywhere to go.
The day will begin with a worship service at
10:30 a.m. prior to the dinner, and food will be served at noon until 1:30 p.m.
The events will take place at its main
location, 960 Main St.
Laurie Krajna, who is the development director
for the Western New York region, has been organizing Thanksgiving dinner for
the Salvation Army for over 40 years.
They plan on serving over 200 dinners
throughout the day, many to those who are homeless and would like to have
fellowship with them.
“Lots of
new people come in each year to be part of our mission but also many of the
same, some who are homeless, and a lot come who don’t have family or friends in
town to share it with,” Krajna said.
More
than 50 volunteers come out every year and help on this day to serve the people,
but the Salvation Army is always looking for more.
“Most
of the people that volunteer come in only on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but we
need people to reach out 365 days of the year to reach our mission. It is
important to us that we give back and provide food and shelter to the one’s in
need,” Krajna said.
Krajna has seen progress throughout the years
during the holiday season, with more people willing to donate their time and
give to others. By Christian Gaffney and John Propis
The
Albright-Knox Art Truck recently visited The Belle Center, 104 Maryland St., and
Program Coordinator Vicente Rondon, led a button-making activity with the children there. The Albright-Knox
instituted its new Art Truck in October, “to bring art activities to different
community centers in Buffalo, but not just Buffalo, but to all eight counties,”
Rondon said. This is a free program and can be accessed by request
form on the Albright-Knox website. By Bethany Clancy and Kristina
DiBlasio
Mike
Watson runs the 738 Elmwood Ave. location of Watson’s Chocolates, a fourth-generation business
that has been in Western New York for over 70 years. Watson's makes sponge candy by hand, from the beating of ingredients, to letting it rise, to slicing it and finally coating it with chocolate. With the holiday season
approaching, Watson says this month begins the company'sbusiest time of the year, with sponge candy in demand through to Easter. By Christian Gaffney and John Propis
