Running past empty

It's a rather common belief that the slower you go, the more you'll see. In other words, when you take a walk, you'll notice more than if you drive through the same area in a car.

And since I'm not exactly the fastest runner in Western New York, I have plenty of time to notice the neighborhoods when I'm hitting the streets.

In the past few weeks, I've had the chance to visit a couple of areas in Buffalo that aren't on my usual list of destinations, thanks to running in races. In the first, we started at Roswell Park, went up to Main St., down Dodge, around on Jefferson and past the site of the late War Memorial Stadium, back down Best, and over to the hospital. In the second race, we ran a long rectangle from William and Emslie. It went down Emslie to Clinton, all the way down around the library and back down William to the starting point.

For those unfamiliar, let's say these are not the neighborhoods that Mario Williams saw when the Bills were recruiting him as a free agent. Poverty is depressing to witness at close range.

On Emslie, an abandoned church watched over us within the first half-mile of the race. It looked beautiful, once upon a time. I talked with someone who went to a wedding as an usher there once upon a time. He said it was a elaborate facility; he still has the pictures from the ceremony. Now, it's boarded up, except upstairs where the old windows are mostly in pieces or are missing altogether.

On both race routes, there were two constants -- vacant houses and empty lots. I'm not sure which is worse -- the idea that someone is living in a rundown home, or not living in it so that it can become a drug house and drag the cycle of poverty in the area to greater depths. Meanwhile, you may have heard about the "urban prairie" that's developing in such places. We're a few demolition projects from turning blocks of city into something that would resemble Western Nebraska. Youngstown, Ohio, answered the situation by simply kicking everyone out of certain blocks and turning off city services. There are a few pockets of better situations in Buffalo, thanks to government- or church-built housing, but there aren't enough of them for anyone's tastes. And they sure aren't on the side streets for the most part.

Poverty obviously has existed forever. Still, what comes to mind when running through such situations? Sadness and helplessness. In other words, I have absolutely no idea what can be done about these areas.

I don't know if anyone else can do anything about it, either. But I sure don't hear anyone talking about it on the campaign trail these days because -- perhaps, to be cynical -- that there aren't many votes to be gained there. Then again, part of the Republican base seemingly would be much happier if we cut away the safety net from the poor with the sharpest knife possible. Meanwhile, the Democrats don't seem to be bursting with new ideas on the subject either.

And that's what we need -- fresh ideas. We really need to turn small urban areas into laboratories, find out what works, and spread the word. I'm sure Jack Kemp's "enterprise zones" wasn't the last such idea on the subject, although it seems like it.

Talking about it would be a good start, though. Then we could look for answers -- one step at a time.

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Traveling man

One of the great things about traveling is that you get to see what other areas are up to. For instance ...

A just-completed vacation took me through the city of Sacramento, California. This was my 25th state capital -- I have no plans to make it to all 50, by the way. It's a growing area, no doubt in part due to business associated with the state government.

In the good old days, much of Sacramento's business was conducted right along the river. Not unusual, of course. Years later, that section of town had become rundown and underused. So, when someone came up with the idea of making it an historic district and fixing it all up to look like it was the 1800's again, others followed suit. Supposedly "Old Sacramento" has been around since 1976, and it seems to be doing OK -- at least the stores seemed to be occupied.

The district is about six blocks long and two blocks wide. It has some restaurants, museums, bars, a comedy club, souvenir stands, etc. That's about the mix you'd expect.

OK, here's the point. Buffalo has a waterfront, and it has some old buildings left over from the good old days. Buffalo has something called "The Cobblestone District," which has about two streets near HSBC Arena. You would think that it would be easy to put some seed money in there, expand the district between the arena and the planned casino, and have an instant draw for tourists as well as the locals.

I've had similar thoughts about Buffalo when I've traveled elsewhere. Baltimore had an empty waterfront, and now it's filled with activity with such projects as an aquarium as well as top-line restaurants. Buffalo couldn't get away with year-round water taxis, but other parts of Baltimore's plan certainly could be stolen, er, copied or adapted for inspiration.

At least we'll have a big fishing supply store on the waterfront soon. But it can't be that hard to get the wheels of progress in motion.

Can it?

A week in the life

Ah, March, the cruelest month. At least in Buffalo.

You get just a hint that spring isn't far away, and then you get slapped.

Let's take the last seven days. On Monday, the forecast was for temperatures close to 50. The actual high was around 63. People fled their houses to go for walks and runs in the park. The roads had tiny rivers along the curbs as the snowpack was quickly disappearing. In fact, by Monday night, the grass was more or less exposed everywhere except for areas that had man-made piles of snow on them.

Tuesday morning, it was already snowing by morning drive. So much for the grass. By midafternoon, there was an inch or two on the ground. Then at nightfall the temperature aloft went up just enough to turn a light snowstorm into a good-sized ice storm. Words fail me when trying to describe the sound of the freezing rain hitting the windows of my house at 1 a.m.

By Wednesday, the driveway needed plowing, if only to get another coating of snow off of the top of the icepack that had formed on the pavement. Thursday was calm, and the warm late winter sun actually did a little melting of the snowpack.

Now you know where the phrase "the calm before the storm" started. Snow was falling lightly on Friday morning, and the weather service was full alert status -- winter storm warning!. The light to moderate snow continued through the day (another snowblower run), leaving things a little slippery. By late evening, we probably had roughly six to eight inches on the ground ... with a forecast for heavy snow on Saturday.

The snow kept coming on Saturday (another snowblower run), interrupted by ice pellets every so often. That may have kept the accumulation total down a bit, but it was still pretty significant. A representative of the Weather Channel was in town on Saturday, which is never a good sign ("Don't you have a tornado or something to cover?"). On Saturday night the side streets were pretty messy; cars simply aimed down the middle and bounced their way to the main road.

By Sunday morning, the storm was gone and the sun was out ... but about 21 inches of snow officially had been left behind (one more snowblower run). That's a lot, enough to disrupt life a bit even in Buffalo, but at least the snowfall was spread out over more than two days so it was more of an inconvenience than an interruption.

I'm fond of saying that snow totals after March 1 don't bother me too much because I know they won't be around for two months. This week tested my resolve.

A warming trend is forecast for the rest of the week. I'm not getting my baseball glove out quite yet.