Al's Blog-o-Sphere

Well, the summer concert season has officially begun with the first Thursday at the Square concert in Buffalo. They kicked it off with Alejandro Escovedo last Thursday.

This week provides more choices in free outdoor concerts in the Erie-Niagara area. Artpark opens it’s Tuesday series with War with Then and Now billed as openers.

Thursday at the Square continues it’s run with Ingrid Michaelson. A. A. Bondy opens.

With only two concerts this week, the choice is pretty clear. If you want familiar, comfort-food music, you’re going to go see War at Artpark. If you’re the type that goes and sees America there every summer, (June 29 this year) and thinks The Boys of Summer is a great local band, then you know who you are.

But if you want to hear something new and embrace something that isn’t being spoon-fed to you by 97 Rock, (or worse, WJYE) then Thursday at the Square is the clear winner. I hadn’t heard of Ingrid Michaelson or A. A. Bondi, but a quick listen online (I’ve put MySpace links in above) has tweaked my curiosity. They’re both worth a trip to see.

Kudos to Buffalo Place for getting “It” and bringing in some new and upcoming talent, rather than just the latest in the milk-it-for-all-it’s-worth touring greatest-hits has-beens.

Incidentally, MySpace may be getting kicked around by Facebook when it comes to popularity in social media, but it’s still the best place to find and hear new music. Every band has a page there. It must be required by law or something. Even when they have other outlets for their online presence, a MySpace page is an integral part of any musicians self-promotion kit.

The Bicycle Man shop

I took a trip yesterday to Alfred Station NY to visit a bike shop. I know I could have found a bike shop closer to home, but not one like this. This was The Bicycle Man, a shop whose simple name gives no clue to the rare and special product they have.

Just as an idea how special this is, I visited the largest bike shop in my area last week, a mini-chain with four stores, and out of the hundreds of bikes they had on display, they had only one model of a recumbent!

The Bicycle Man, you see, specializes in recumbent bikes, those laid-back, weird-looking bikes you might have seen on TV, a movie or rarely in real life. I had been wanting one for a long time and finally decided to try some out. This shop is a rarity in that they almost don’t want to sell you a bike, unless you try several out and are sure it’s right for you. It’s really cool that they spend so much time making sure the customer is happy before they take a dime. I spent most of the day there, and there were several customers besides me who also spent considerable time trying things out. Some went away without making a purchase. Maybe they will be back, but not until they are sure! Continue Reading…

I had an interesting trip home from Cleveland this afternoon.

Do you know how when you’re traveling on a highway, you often see another car going your way and seem to follow them for miles and miles? I saw a SUV with New York plates in Ohio on Route 90 not long after leaving Cleveland. I assumed we were both heading towards NY. So I kind of hung back and followed him.

He was making pretty good time, passing semi-trailers and slower traffic. I won’t say we were speeding, but we might have pushed the “Speedometer error” excuse a little. Sometimes I was a little behind. Other times I was maybe a quarter-mile back with several cars in between. It was working out fine.

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, another car from NY comes up from behind us. They sort of joined in our little caravan. But this car had those extra-bright extra-white headlights. You’ve seen them. They’re probably after-market bulbs someone put in the vehicle. Some of them ore okay, others are too bright and should be illegal. Continue Reading…

Yesterday, I was listening to our local radio stations’ call-in talk show. The main topic seemed to be the latest lawsuit trying to block the Wal-Mart Supercenter proposed for the Lockport Mall location.

A lot of the people seemed to want to know who exactly was behind the Lockport Smart Growth, or as Scott Leffler, the show host referred to as “Citizens for No Growth.” There was speculation that there was ties to both the owners of the local Tops store and Lockport Developer David Ulrich. No one seems to know at all who are ‘members’ of the group, but the idea to “follow the money” seemed to be the idea. But it might be hard to do.

What if Wal-Mart itself, were a secret contributor to the Smart Growth group? I’m not saying it is, but my evil side wonders. It wouldn’t be hard to funnel some money their way through some intermediary. Wal-Mart seems to be benefitting from their efforts as much as Smart Growth thinks they are hurting them. Continue Reading…