Welcomed and watched.
When I was walking around in the afternoon – probably around 4pm – a guy approached me and asked to use my phone. He told me he had just been robbed. I said no; I didn't actually add voice calls to my outrageously expensive roaming bundle, and thought that this could just be a ploy to grab my outrageously expensive cell phone and run.
He then headed down the block to talk to the occupants of the two nearby police cruisers.
Not a ploy.
The public transit in Buffalo let me combine my enthusiasms for old signs and long exposures – not in the same photo, but you can't have everything.
Five assorted photos from an afternoon in Buffalo.
One of the first things that struck me about downtown Buffalo – the stretch where the light rail line runs down Main Street – was how empty it was. I live and work in downtown Toronto, and I can bump into more people during a day's walking commute than I could see most of the time in Buffalo. Look at that last photo: I can use a slow shutter speed to blur away people, and often do that when I'm at home, but this one is at a hundred-and-twenty-fifth of a second.
I count three people, not including all of the drivers.
When there are so few people around, the very act of standing becomes an aberrant act worthy of suspicion. The bubbles of personal space and isolation grow until it feels intrusive just to walk past someone on the same side of the road. I'm self-concious about using a camera in Toronto, where tourists and oddball photographers are unremarkable. In Buffalo I felt like I had a flashing light on my head, and that was just when I was carrying the little pocketable Canon S100.
I'm glad I didn't have my D800 with me.
Of these three only one was clearly open for business, and it was part of a four-brand franchise. It certainly made a strong opening statement about what the employment prospects for young people in Buffalo are like.
I don't know if the Visitor Center was open or not. I didn't see anyone going in or out, but I'm pretty sure that I was the only tourist on Main Street on that thursday afternoon. But I did notice people inside other stores that looked dark from the street, so either tinted windows are very popular or there's a strong energy-conservation ethic. Either way, it didn't come across as being particularly inviting.
Obviously, I've really liked being able to include many photos as sets with a common theme in each post recently. But posting just two is a very awkward: a pair needs to be strong and connected in ways that larger sets don't.
And no, I don't think these really work as a set, but I couldn't come up with a third.
I think I have enough credibility that I can get away with posting all of these. They were taken through the window of a Greyhound bus, somewhere between St. Catharines and Niagara Falls.
Hit `Em Up Style
Jackson
Cornbread and Butterbeans
Sourwood Mountain
A few final photos from Thursday's show. The way everyone was arranged made it impossible for me to include Hubby Jenkins in any small-group photos, but he was there for all of it. Almost. There was one song that Dom Flemons played from a solo album – My Little Lady – and the other three left the stage for it. I don't know what the usual etiquette is, but it struck me as odd and unsupportive. Even if that's the usual way of doing things, having him come back from the break alone would have been less awkward than having the others leave without a word after playing just a couple of songs.
There are two things that disappointed me out of an otherwise excellent show. One is that they didn't play Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine. They played it in a very similar condensed set from Mountain Jam 2012 – I may have recorded it – and did an awesome job. Extended to over five minutes long, it had everything: a bones solo, cello, scat singing, and even a kazoo. I would have loved to see that again.
The other disappointment: Rhiannon Giddens didn't play the kazoo at all. Sad.
