Our Lady of Hope: melting pot of cultures

Our Lady of Hope Pastroral Associate Ronald Thaler

By Nia Peeples and Zach Williams

            With the continued growth of suburban life, churches located in urban areas have seen a decline in their membership. Even in Buffalo, local churches had been affected. Our Lady of Loretto, Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Annunciation merged to form Our Lady of Hope on Sept. 14, 2008.

            “This church, as well as the other two were declining in membership so in order to save the whole thing, they merged the three together so that we could build a better community,” Our Lady of Hope Pastoral Associate Ronald Thaler said.

            Our Lady of Hope, Grant Street at Lafayette Avenue,           is one of the most diverse churches in Buffalo, and Thaler described Our Lady of Hope as a “global community which holds about 16 plus languages.”

“There was a huge influx of Burmese people to the West Side, and they gravitated here by word of mouth, so it was other Burmese people that did it. We did not really evangelize. They were looking for a Catholic church, and they just came to this place.”

With so many different cultures coming together for the service, the church has slowly worked in pieces of the Mass, where invocations are recited in three languages.

            “One would be in Burmese, one would be in Swahili, and one would be in English. It’s not a lot, but it’s just little pieces.” Thaler said. “Since the merger, it has been a slow growth process. We have been trying different things to try to bring the liturgy to the people in such a way that they would hear their own language throughout the worship. It was something we developed over the last few years.”

 

Ronald Thayer, on incorporating different languages

 into the Mass at Our Lady of Hope:

https://soundcloud.com/zach-williams-80/thaler-on-church-service?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

 

            The church also has several televisions that are used during the service for those who do not understand the language that is currently being spoken.

            Buffalo Mass Mob is an organization that visits churches all around Buffalo, and Our Lady of Hope hosted the 40th Mass Mob event on Sunday, May 1. This is only the second time there has been a mass mob since the pandemic began.

            “We started in 2013 and noticed a need for a lot of the urban churches to get a boost of attendance and with the boost of attendance comes so many other things,” co-founder of Buffalo Mass Mob, Danielle Murtah, said.

            The mass mob helped fill the pews at Our Lady of Hope during the Sunday service, drawing more attention to these urban churches.

            “This Buffalo Mass Mob came here Sunday to experience this multi-cultural community, but also they are on their journey through Western New York because we have so much great architecture, especially in Churches,” Thaler said.

            Our Lady of Hope held a mass mob four years ago, though due to winter conditions, turnout was not a big as expected.  

            “People come and they leave a donation for the church because they are here, and they want to support these churches in hopes that they stay open,” Thaler said.

Our Lady of Hope now hosts Mass on both Saturday and Sunday, and more information can be found on the church’s website.

 

 

 

 

 

Scofflaws: Library fees a thing of the past

 

Daniel Lewandowski, the general manager of the Crane Branch Library, supports the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library System’s elimination of all overdue fines, effective this month. He says fines can be counterproductive, because library patrons not only suffer from the consequences of late fees but can no longer be able to use their library cards as a result of those fines despite returning the materials. “Our overdue fees would max out at around $10 an item, sometimes $15 an item, so you could get $30 in overdue fees from three books that you returned in perfect condition,” he said. “In a fine-free system, you can just return those books, and not get punished if they’re still in great condition, and there’s nothing wrong with them. You’re actually incentivized then to return the materials.” Fines account for less than 1% of the library system operating revenue. Lewandowski described that this is a win-win for patrons and library employees as it attracts more people to use the library by making patron interactions more enjoyable and saves time and money by alleviating the workload on employees such as paperwork for those who dispute fines. “When a book was lost before, I would just replace it because the patron may not return it due to the overdue fees, so now people are going to be returning the books, and I’m going to be spending less money on replacement copies I think,” Lewandowski said. By Cait Malilay and Natalie Gravino

W.S. International Soccer marks 10th year

 

 WestSide International Soccer, a non-profit organization, is celebrating its 10th year offering free soccer programs for boys and girls ages 4-19. Mateo Escobar, president and co-founder, says the program creates a safe space for kids to play and compete without the barrier of cost. The recreational youth program runs in the summer for 12 weeks where kids play every Saturday morning at Front Park. Escobar says most of the kids are refugees living in the West Side. “It was a nice pairing of being able to help refugees and also being able to provide soccer programming for kids of all ages,” Escobar said. The program has partnerships with FC Buffalo soccer club, Nardin Academy and D’Youville University and hopes to expand to offer more competitive and travel teams. By Peyton Fletcher & Valerie Ryan

Revolver Records thrives on vinyl ‘relics’

 

Revolver Records owner, Phil Machemer, sorts through new inventory of vinyl

By Elijah Robinson and Thomas Tedesco

            It was just 15 years ago that vinyl records were considered a relic of the past that were wallowing in a long period of obsolescence.

            The large black discs had been phased out of the mainstream music consciousness for the likes of the compact disc and subsequently, digital downloads.

            Then a cultural shift started to happen.

Music community members slowly and steadily began to embrace vinyl records once again as a complement to their digital music collections.

            “I felt kind of silly paying $15 for the CD, and then be putting it on the shelf and never touching it,” Phil Machemer said. “I can get this vinyl and I can have something cooler, and then it would come with a download code so I could also have it on my iPod.”

            Machemer, who is the owner and founder of Revolver Records, 831 Elmwood Ave., has found himself and his business amid a growing resurgence in the sales of vinyl records.

            According to the Recording Industry Association of America, vinyl exceeded sales of CDs for the first time in 2020 and continued to do so in 2021.

            Machemer, who used to live on Elmwood and started selling records at an antique market called The Peddler, 656 Elmwood Ave., said he always saw the need for a record store on the West Side.

            “Elmwood Avenue always needed a record store and I always thought, ‘Why couldn’t it be me?’ It's where people go to hang out. People want to have a good time, they want to shop, it's very hip and it was a no brainer,” he said.

            Machemer says he has felt this shift among music lovers of various ages and demographics on the West Side.

            “It's very diverse. There are people of all different likenesses that buy records here, you can't pigeonhole it,” he said.

            The vinyl craze has most notably transcended age groups, as individuals in their 20s are almost just as likely to purchase a vinyl record as someone in their 50s, according to a study from Statista.

            “The first time I went to Revolver was actually the first time I went to a record store,” Joey Bastian, a 20-year-old music major at SUNY Buffalo State College, said. “It’s a hotspot for me and it’s a great place to shop.”

            Around the same time that vinyl began to resurge in popularity, a cultural phenomenon known as Record Store Day began to spread across the approximately 1, 400 independent record stores in the United States and soon, across the world.

            Record Store Day coordinator Rick Johnson describes Record Store Day as the largest one-day celebration of music in the world.

 

Record Store Day Coordinator, Rick Johnson talks about how vinyl has seen a shift in cultural perspective since the inception of Record Store Day in 2007.

            Usually celebrated on the third Sunday in April, record labels, distributors and artists of all genres release limited edition records that are sold exclusively at independent record stores.

            “It was all started with trying to make the independent record store viable and trying to help the independent record store,” Johnson said.

            Machemer describes the day as the biggest on his store’s calendar and one that can have big rewards, but also carries big risks.

            “It's a gamble. I mean, we're essentially putting thousands of dollars into this idea that people are going to come and want this stuff, and we just have to hope and assume that they will,” Machemer said.

            Most years, Revolver Records has seen significant boosts in business due to Record Store Day, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the celebration split into three separate days.

            “I laid everybody off, ran the business just by myself and it was difficult. It was really ramshackle, but it worked,” Machemer said.

            Johnson said that not only was Record Store Day an integral part of independent record stores to surviving the pandemic, but it is also a testament to the loyalty of record collectors.

            “Vinyl customers are very tenacious, and they want their vinyl,” Johnson said. “They want the community of going to the record shop and they want their small businesses to stay in business and they want their small businesses to thrive.”

            While there has been significant growth in the sales of vinyl, it still leaves many wondering as to when it will reach its peak and subsequently decline.

            Johnson said that he doesn’t expect the interest of vinyl and its sales to dissipate anytime soon.

            “Every trend or every company has a trajectory and there is a point where the trajectory levels off. So, I've been anticipating it for a while, and it hasn't happened yet,” he said.

 

 

Universities sprouting on the West Side

            Some higher education institutions on the West Side are receiving slight name changes from the New York State Education Department.

             Medaille College, 18 Agassiz Circle, is in the process of applying for university status, just as D’Youville University, 320 Porter Ave., did in February.

            “Unless the rule changed, we were never going to be able to apply for university status,” Kenneth Macur, the president of Medaille, said.

            The department passed an amendment to their regulations in January that changed the requirements for a school to use the university designation.

             One of the major components of past requirements was that a school had to offer a minimum of three doctoral degrees to be considered a university. The department amended this to instead require a minimum of three graduate programs.

            The department along with several schools in New York state argue this will help with recruiting students locally, nationally and internationally.

             “We'll be able to better recruit students to the university without having to explain that we are in fact the same as universities in Canada, Germany, Spain, England and so on,” Macur said.

             He said the school’s application process has gone smoothly and predicts that the designation will boost enrollment for its graduate school and in turn, help grow the graduate programs substantially.

             “It just sort of levels the playing field and gives each school an opportunity to choose the designation that it feels fits best with its mission and its brand,” he said.

            Canisius College, 2100 Main St., does meet the criteria to become a university, but did not respond to a request for comment on its status.

            Buffalo State College, 1300 Elmwood Ave., said currently it is not considering a change. “The amendment by the Board of Regents to the definition of a university is interesting, but at this point we are not pursuing a change in status,” Katherine Conway-Turner, president of Buffalo State, said in a statement. By Elijah Robinson and Thomas Tedesco

 

 

 

Local to work on world timestamp project

Buffalo photographer DJ Carr, who lives on the edge of the West Village, was selected to participate in an NFT project titled The World Today. NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are a digital currency that include a digital medium, such as a photo or video. They are referred to as non-fungible, as they cannot be replicated or replaced. Carr is one of 138 photographers spread across six continents who are coming together to release 13,000 photos. “We’re supposed to be visually timestamping the 21^st century worldwide,” Carr said. The World Today says that this project promotes community effort which benefits both established and emerging artists. The project will be revealed on May 8. By Nia Peeples and Zachary Williams

Businesses anticipate return of Porchfest

 

 

Elmwood Village businesses expect this year's 2022 Porchfest to bring the same big crowd as previousyears. In 2021 over 110 bands played on 65 porches. Music lovers can hear any genre from classic country to hardcore heavy metal from 1 - 6 p.m on May 21. The locations in the village where you can listen in on bands play will be announced on May 14. The Porchfest originally began in Ithaca over 10 years ago, but the word quickly spread of the successful turn out, and soon the event became a day full of great music and good times as locals dance through the heart of the Elmwood Village. 

By Natalie Gravino and Cait Malilay