Friday Videos

It’s Friday. Have a good one. 

Here is how you race a car: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7yg8INgjz4&w=640&h=360]

Here’s what Canalside looks like: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOwxUzMeGmY&w=640&h=360]

Here’s what it looks like to land a huge aircraft in heavy crosswinds: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMvLuUJFHYk&w=640&h=360]

Here’s what it would look like if you rode a solid rocket booster with the Space Shuttle: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aCOyOvOw5c&w=640&h=360]

Here’s police response times in Detroit: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1KmTAY67zA&w=640&h=360]

Here’s Lou Reed with Gorillaz: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkmKBDYigU0&w=640&h=360]

Here is Warsaw commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Uprising

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ejd2rsXoQSI&w=640&h=360]

Here’s a pilot’s eye view: 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWHUPsMKWbI&w=640&h=360]

 

Did You See the Mayoral Debate & Other Things (UPDATED)

1. Federal prosecutors may soon ask  to exhume a dead convicted drug dealer who died while awaiting sentencing. Well, there’s a death certificate, but the government has reason to believe the guy’s not dead. An ingenious getaway attempt, if true, to escape on paper. This would make a great script. 

2. I watched the last half of last night’s mayoral debate. Unfortunately, not one channel saw fit to broadcast it live on TV. I had to find a stream online (and thanks to the magic of Apple TV, we were able to Airplay it to the TV after all). The local media – Channels 2, 3, 4, and 7 and YNN all abrogated their responsibility as FCC licensees to inform and educate the population. It is unconscionable that Channel 4, who had one reporter acting as moderator and another on the panel, couldn’t see fit to preempt a couple of Merv Griffin game shows to get this debate to as wide an audience as possible. Absolutely disgusting. 

You can watch it here at WIVB.com. Mayor Brown seemed petty and defensive – his closing argument implored voters to pick him over a bunch of “novices”. Burn.

But when the sitting Mayor can’t accomplish simple, promised reforms in his seven years in office, why not consider the novices? I also think Tolbert’s work history is far more extensive and accomplished than Brown’s, and Rodriguez was a Marine. Denigrating their backgrounds and experience is hardly a winning strategy for someone who went from being a legislative staffer to the Common Council to the State Senate, and never stood out for bold initiatives or ideas, but relied instead on the power of the political machine. 

For their parts, Bernie Tolbert acquitted himself well, but Sergio Rodriguez was a standout. He was conversational – he didn’t sound like he was reading off a script or memorized group of talking points. He was answering questions in a way that really connected with an audience that was audibly hostile to the sitting Mayor. Tolbert’s substance was very similar to Rodriguez’s, and they pressed the Mayor relentlessly on crime, jobs, and education. 

The only advantages I think Brown has now is his massive, loyal-by-necessity machine, and his huge pile of cash. Well, they’re actually pretty huge advantages when you put it that way. But in terms of connecting with voters and really questioning the engagement and competency of a Brown Administration which is taking undue credit for progress with which it had nothing to do, Tolbert and Rodriguez have a real shot if they can get their messages out. You could hear, if not feel, the frustration and dissatisfaction rolling through the assembled crowd. 

When Rodriguez and Tolbert said they wanted to make the city more business-friendly by streamlining permitting, lowering fees, increasing predictability and uniformity, and setting up a “one-stop shop”, Brown said the city was working on it. 

Working on it?! You’ve BEEN THE MAYOR FOR SEVEN YEARS. YOU CONTROL – WITH ORWELLIAN EFFICIENCY – EVERY EXECUTIVE FUNCTION IN CITY HALL. SEVEN YEARS AND YOU’RE STILL “WORKING ON IT?” City Hall is – and has been – a fetid swamp of bureaucratic sloth and mendacity.

When describing Yugoslav communist self-preservation, corruption, and stasis, Milovan Djilas wrote that a “New Class” had been created, comprised of dictatorial bureaucrats. In Buffalo, we have the same phenomenon – marginally educated people hired and retained not for their merit, but for their politico-financial loyalty to the bureaucrat-di-tutti-bureaucrats, Byron Brown. Forget the “political class” of WNY – our larger problem is this new patronage class. They are neither working class nor transitioning into middle / upper middle class; they have instead carved out their own patronage class whereby your social mobility is founded on the political ties – and donations – you make, rather than your labor, smarts, or merit. It takes seven years to do simple things because the patronage class is united in its opposition to any reformation of the bureaucracy that guarantees it its oft-redundant jobs. 

Byron Brown cannot take on the patronage class because his entire political career is founded on their interdependency. 

The candidates can talk about downtown domed football stadiums until the cows come home, but there is a huge question mark hanging over the city of Buffalo that Mayor Brown hasn’t even seen – much less answered – in the 7 (SEVEN!1) years he’s been occupying the 2nd floor of City Hall. 

3. The Congressional Republicans’ descent into nihilistic brinksmanship continues apace. When your only philosophy and platform is to hate Obama and deny millions of people access to affordable health insurance, I guess that’s what you’re left with. 

Travel Warnings, The Aud, and Obamacare

1. The US State Department gives free advice to travelers going abroad, advising people about problems, issues, customs, and other matters. The UK’s Foreign Office does the same for Britons, including this

2. A movie is being shot in Buffalo right now, starring Matthew Broderick. The crews were right outside my office on Monday, and there was a “NY *hearts* Film” placard on each vehicle’s dashboard. So, I went to that website, which the state has set up to help convince motion pictures to shoot in New York. If you go to the Western section, you find this interesting potential location – “vacant arena, Buffalo”. 

The Buffalo Memorial Auditorium was demolished in late 2008 / early 2009 – about 4 years ago. 

3. The Republicans have spent millions of dollars, hours of time, and almost 40 votes to try and repeal Obamacare. You see, logic dictates that Obamacare is going to be such a “trainwreck” that instead of letting the law go into effect and fail on its own, they will try their darndest to repeal it because they care – they care so much that 50 million people continue to be uninsured, that families’ health insurance be capped, that our idiotic status quo – so broken that they did absolutely nothing to make meaningful changes to it at any point in recent history, but have attempted incessantly to block every Democratic effort to bring about reform – be maintained, that they will go down fighting against a national implementation of Romneycare.

Guys, you’ve done such a good job lowering people’s expectations to nil. Your scare tactics and horror stories have been somewhat effective, yet you’ve failed and refused to offer any reasonable alternative whatsoever. You pledge to keep the parts you like in Obamacare, ignoring the economics that make Obamacare work – the insurance mandate is the quid pro quo of the lower rates. When Obamacare doesn’t fail and people find that they have access to reasonably priced health insurance, you’re going to look like idiots. You used the same scare tactics when we passed Medicare and Medicaid in the 60s. Now, Medicare is one of the most popular government programs in existence. 

But to top it all off, Republicans will refuse to help their constituents – residents and businesses – navigate the law. A more petulant and childish thing I have never seen. We are run by 5th graders with behavioral issues. 

Elections, Tolbert and Brown, Vouchers, Pope Francis, and Stone/Spitzer

1949_poll_tax_receipt1. Who would have thought that striking down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act would result in certain conservative, mostly Southern, states moving immediately to placing restrictions on people’s right and ability to vote?

2. Has the Bernie Tolbert campaign explained why he’s running to anyone’s satisfaction? Compare Brown’s ad, which is positive and sets a tone and theme right away, to Tolbert’s. Brown’s ad has people setting forth a specific alleged Brown accomplishment. Tolbert’s just has random people saying that they “believe in Bernie”. Believe in what, precisely?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkEWK9t9P8E&w=640&h=360]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoY8h_S1ydA&w=640&h=360]

3. Republicans and the tea party don’t believe in public education – most of them just don’t have the balls to come right out and say it in so many words. They want to incrementally abolish what they will inevitably call socialized education, using Frank Luntz-style weasel words. You don’t say you want to abolish public education and throw every kid into a private or parochial setting; you don’t say you’re going to allow big business to set up mediocre for-profit schools that will accept whatever cheap, underfunded voucher program the conservative dystopia will offer to worker-drones with few rights or privileges of citizenship (remember – the system has made it costly and difficult for them to vote – see supra). But when they set up a system to judge the quality of these private education “choices”, the right people will be able to change their scores because they’re big political donors. This is the future that Americans for Progress and Donn Esmonde foresee for America, and it can best be described as a rapid descent into Central American plutocratic despotism. The third world is the conservative model.

4. It’s news that the leader of the largest Christian denomination in the world decided not to heap fire and brimstone hatred and eternal damnation on gay people. Well, gay priests, to be specific, but there’s hope that the new Pope may hold a more conciliatory view towards gay people in general. The last Pope thought that being gay was an inherent evil and a mental disorder. So, progress, I guess.

5. If you thought Anthony Weiner sending post-resignation dick pics wasn’t odd enough, Republican political dirty trickster Roger Stone Tweeted this yesterday:

Spitzer’s Sorry, Silver’s Moving, Food Truck Drama

1. Disgraced former Governor of the State of New York, Eliot Spitzer, famously began running for New York City Comptroller just a few days before nominating petitions were due. As one might expect, Spitzer’s attempt at a comeback is made difficult by his hypocritical whoring. Here is his “apology” commercial, which I think is rather effective. 

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TYfjg0dILo&w=640&h=360]

2. Alien wizard Nate Silver took his work analyzing baseball statistics into the political arena with his blog Five Thirty Eight, and got picked up by the New York Times. That contract expired, and former Buffalo News editor Margaret Sullivan – now the Times’ Public Editor – explained that Silver simply didn’t “fit in” to the Times’ “culture”, and that some of the Times’ writers simply didn’t like him. Sullivan explained that Silver was “disruptive”; i.e., he disrupted the old model of covering politics. 

In Buffalo, we’re all-too familiar with the way politics have been covered for the past few decades, and its lazy, unsubstantive focus on fundraising and the never-ending horserace. Now, admittedly, Silver’s specialty was the horserace, but the way in which he analyzed and wrote about it was based on mathematical and scientific probability informed by trends, polling, and past performance. Silver had a knack for taking some extremely complicated and convoluted data and making it digestible for average readers, and his record is really quite striking. But in Buffalo, we have political columnists who simply dismiss and ignore candidates who do not fit the 40 year-old mold of a credible machine candidate. We’re all worse off for it. 

3. The City of Tonawanda is contemplating a food truck ordinance to regulate how these mobile entrepreneurs might be able to do business within the municipal boundaries. Unlike Buffalo and Amherst, the CoT is poised to introduce fantastically restrictive regulations – so ridiculous that they effectively amount to a ban on food trucks. $1,000 for an initial license and application, and trucks are forbidden from setting up within 1,000 feet of an open kitchen – farther than three football fields away. (The Buffalo and Amherst rules require operation at least 100′ from any open kitchen). The exercise underscores how stupid it is that all these ultimately pointless municipal entities can regulate business to this extent, and how much better it would be if the trucks could just pay a single regional fee and operate throughout the county under uniform rules. Hell, that’s how the US and EU work, but we can’t (genuinely cannot) do that within Erie County. 

Best of Buffalo: Food Dissent

The Artvoice Best of Buffalo 2013 winners were announced Monday, and I suppose it’d be gracious to congratulate the winners, so congratulations. 

But voters, jeez have I got some bones to pick with you. 

BEST BBQ
Fat Bob’s Smokehouse

Best BBQ? Fat Bob’s location might be swell, and its food may be passable, and it might have a lively bar scene, but best BBQ in Buffalo? Absolutely not. The best BBQ joint in Buffalo is Suzy Q’s – hands down, and it’s not even a competition. This scrappy little joint up near the GM Powertrain plant is a diamond in the rough, which serves up smoked pork, beef, chicken, and Polish sausage that’ll make your taste buds sing and a grown man weep. 

BEST BRUNCH
Betty’s Restaurant

Not quibbling with this result, although it’s not my first choice. But do people even do brunch anymore? Is this still a thing? 

BEST BURGER
Grover’s Bar & Grill

This is a knee-jerk reaction people have, but it’s totally wrong. Grover’s had burgers the size of frisbees, but although the meat is still big, it’s not like it used to be. At a recent visit, the meat was gray and dry and totally unsatisfying, especially given the lengthy wait. Ruzzine’s Rock Bottom directly across the street is infinitely better.  The Roaming Buffalo makes a fantastic burger. Vizzi’s is good. People swear by the Sterling Place Tavern. But Grover’s? Only in your memories, not in real life. 

BEST CHEAP EATS
Mighty Taco

Mighty Taco deserves to be on no list. It is emergency food; when you’re too broke or too drunk to eat anywhere else. 

BEST COFFEE
SPoT Coffee

If I can make it better at home, it doesn’t belong on a “best of” list. I can make better coffee at home. 

BEST DINER
Lake Effect Diner

I have a problem with Tucker Curtin after his lobbying against the food trucks. I’m not a big fan of rewarding anticompetitive behavior. 

BEST FISH FRY
Papa Jake’s Saloon

Wiechec’s. But really, best fish fry is who can best dip a frozen fish from SYSCO into a Pitco Frialator. 

BEST ICE CREAM/FROZEN YOGURT
Anderson’s Frozen Custard

Are you out of your mind Buffalo? Anderson’s is fine, but my God the ambiance in there is 70s Burger King. The ice cream is ok, but it’s not the best in Buffalo. The best ice cream being made in WNY right now is Lake Effect Ice Cream out of Lockport. They make wonderful, rich ice creams and create innovative flavors.  Get your heads out of your asses. Hell, even for custard, Abbott’s and Hibbard’s are way batter. 

BEST ITALIAN
Chef’s Restaurant

I love Chef’s as much as the next fat white guy, but it’s not the best Italian food in WNY. Not by a long shot. It is a spaghetti parm factory. San Marco (caution: annoying noise)? Mulberry? Lombardo’s

BEST PANCAKES
Amy’s Place

I’m not in college anymore, so The Original Pancake House

BEST PIZZA
La Nova

Not remotely. Romeo & Juliet’s, Trattoria Aroma, Siena, 800 Maple, Rocco’s, La Hacienda of Niagara Falls, Pizza Oven, Elm St Bakery all make pizza that’s head and shoulders above La Nova’s floppy stuff. 

BEST SUBS, BEST PLACE TO EAT AT 2AM
Jim’s Steakout

I don’t know from after 2am, but the best subs are at DiBellas and Weggies

BEST STEAK
Russell’s Steaks, Chops & More

There’s room for improvement. 

That’s it. Get it together, Buffalo. Don’t make me tell you how to vote next year. 

Post-Bratstvo i Jedinstvo

License plates are little, mundane slabs of metal or plastic that generally serve two purposes – to identify vehicles, and to promote a culture. I find them fascinating.

We just returned from a phenomenal, once-in-a-lifetime 3-generational tour of the former Yugoslavia, from where my parents emigrated in the 60s. Since breaking up in 1991, these countries have gone from waging war against each other to varying degrees of recovery. Slovenia is in the EU, and Croatia will join this July. Bosnia and Hercegovina is almost perpetually in political / ethnic crisis, while Serbia and Montenegro have just recently gone their separate ways, having dissolved their confederation. Macedonia is plugging away, nestled between the Serbia-Kosovo conflict and the Greek economic crisis. 

The title of this post is the slogan of the former League of Communists of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – Tito and his successors promoted “Brotherhood and Unity” among the Southern Slavic peoples, who were united after World War I under Serbian rule and then fought each other mercilessly during the second World War. Perhaps it was always doomed to fail, as the Yugoslav nations had distinctly dissimilar backgrounds – Slovenes and Croats were under the Austrians and/or Hungarians for centuries. The Serbs, Macedonians, Kosovars, and Bosnians under Ottoman rule. Serbs and Croats essentially share a language, but the Serbian Orthodox Christian heritage didn’t always mesh with Croatian Catholicism, and while the former writes in Cyrillic, the latter uses the Latin alphabet. Small differences that, with the right spark, can result in inexplicable cruelty and violence. 

I have a similar fascination with international frontiers. It seems astonishing to me sometimes to think how an arbitrary, imaginary line on a mountaintop or the middle of a creek can so starkly separate two distinct languages, histories, religions, and cultures. 

During our trip, I cataloged the plates I saw that represented a once-united country. The only ones I didn’t see were Kosovo’s (although I saw several new and old-style Albanian plates, which were unheard-of when I was a kid and Albania was Europe’s North Korea.) 

Only Slovenia can display the blue Euroband with the gold stars of the EU. All the rest, except Croatia, have a blue area for the Euroband without the stars, but with the country’s international vehicle registration code. (Slovenia = SLO, Croatia = HR, Bosnia and Herzegovina = BIH, Montenegro = MNE, Serbia = SRB, Macedonia = MK, Kosovo = RKS – note that Kosovo used to be a province of Yugoslavia and then Serbia, and the two countries have not yet resolved their dispute over Kosovo’s independence). Croatia has no Euroband, but left room for it to the left of the regional code that precedes the Croatian coat of arms (shown here is PU for Pula). 

A lot of blood was shed to get to this point, where there now exist seven independent and sovereign republics where once there was one federal entity. The irony, it seems, is that they all seek to enter a troubled European confederation where the movement of people and goods would once again be completely without frontier or limit. 

Shoes

UK Border

During my recent travels, I was lucky enough to encounter a security scheme that was distinctly post post-9/11 and rational.

Security at Toronto Pearson and London Heathrow did not make us remove our shoes.

At Pearson, it was because my family holds NEXUS passes, meaning we are pre-screened and designated as low-risk, trusted travelers. We flash the NEXUS card and get to cut the line, and when we arrive at screening, we were able to keep our shoes on. Oh, glorious day! 

Although Heathrow made us remove iPads as well as laptops from our carryons, shoes could stay on there, too.

When approaching security at T5 at Heathrow, there were greeters at the entryway handing out free liter-sized ziploc bags for passengers to use for liquids. There were easily 20 open security lanes, all moving rapidly with minimal lines. The bins used for loose items were conveniently obtained via an automatic dispenser under the conveyor belt – not by having to go back for a mess of buckets for 4 people and their stuff.

But the shoes – not having to remove shoes makes a huge difference in terms of speed and at least perceived convenience.

A Question

Which is Buffalo and WNY’s bigger problem?

The poor quality of substantive policy decisions, or the process and its utter lack of meaningful merit or transparency? Or is it simply that the process is the direct and intended result of poor policy, thus making the whole thing an interconnected, overcomplicated mess that help keeps government acts and omissions from adequate public review and scrutiny? 

 

Leaving and Coming Home Again

I was out of town for a week visiting London, and neither know nor care what may or may not be happening in WNY politics, much less general American politics. So, instead, just a few logistical observations: 

1. The HAILO app that works in New York, Boston, and Toronto, is fantastic.  It tells you how long you’ll have to wait to hail a cab to your location, tells you when the cab is coming and sends you a receipt. You can pay by credit card with an automatic tip precalculated. Check out the screenshot, which identifies the driver who’s coming, and see how the license plate given matches up with the car that pulled up. I was impressed. You can tell the driver via the app where you’re headed, and when it’s particularly busy, the app gives you the option of letting prospective drivers know that the fare will exceed a certain threshold, bringing a quicker response time. The driver was great. 

 

2. One of the secrets of traveling with little kids is to just let stuff go. Didn’t make it in time for a parade? Go somewhere else. Also – put limits on museums. Two hours max is plenty, and be choosy about what you see. Get a map, select what you like (say, 15th – 17th century Flanders art) and go see it, then leave. Take the kids for ice cream or something. We found that the kids actually enjoyed and didn’t complain about the museums, ice cream notwithstanding. We went to one museum 1 1/2 hours before it closed, so we were forced to keep it short, but learned it was one of the best of the bunch. Another museum was a bit disappointing, so we just left after about an hour. Be flexible, and check your coats; museums suck when you’re too warm. Also, if you go to foodie paradise like Borough Market and it’s 34 degrees out and windy, you don’t eat street food outside while standing up, after 2 hours at the Tate Modern. You find a little Italian place, warm up, sit down, and have pizza and pasta. 

3. Bus vs. Subway – subway bypasses traffic, so it gets you places quickly. However, you see nothing. Bus may be slower, but you see things. Also, kids love the upstairs of double-deckers.  We used buses maybe 85% of the time we were commuting. 

4. From London, we did a day trip to Canterbury to see the historic cathedral of Thomas Becket and Chaucer. It was something of a counterpoint to seeing Chartres two years ago. The cathedral has guides wearing sashes who are all too happy to tell you stories about the history there, and the town itself is a charming reprieve from London bustle. To reach it, we took the high speed rail from St. Pancras, which reached speeds of 140 MPH. 

5. Rent an apartment as a home base. We used www.ivylettings.com and rented a one-bedroom apartment that had a washer/dryer. It had plenty of room for 4 – it was difficult to find affordable hotel rooms for 4 – as well as a full kitchen. We bought groceries like locals and became regulars at local restaurants and cafes.  It was cheaper than most hotels, and although you sacrifice things like daily maid service, the washer/dryer meant we could pack a lot less clothes. 

6. The signage at Toronto Pearson Airport for the Viscount Discount Parking Garage is atrocious. Upon arrival after going through immigration and customs, the first sign we saw for it was a small plaque by an elevator up on the departures level. There was all kids of signage for the daily lot across the street, but nothing for the airport’s own discount lot. This is also true of the signage as you approach the airport – I had to circle both terminals before I finally got a sign directing me to that lot. 

7. I thought this was the coolest food truck: 

 

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