Artvoice: Buffalo's #1 Newsweekly
Home Blogs Web Features Calendar Listings Artvoice TV Real Estate Classifieds Contact

2012 Buffalo Guide

An Off Campus Guide for Getting to Know the City

Classes for Fall 2012 begin any day now. You’ll be unpacking, tripping through class selection, registration, orienation, textbook purchases, and so on. When all that’s done you’ll want to assess something more than the campus layout and class schedules; like what do with your life besides study. Buffalo offers a variety of activities to keep you entertained. Listed here is a sampling. Of course, there’s more than we could possibly include, but read Artvoice each week to stay informed.

Week in Review

Most NYS Senate Candidates United on Key Issue

by Buck Quigley

Nate Hangs in the Balance

by George Sax

The Public Accountability Initiative on the University of Texas Frack Study Controversy

by Buck Quigley

Getting a Grip

Grisanti Takes Cue From Romney / Gingrich / Santorum Playbook

by Michael I. Niman

Televisions came ablaze in the battleground states last week, with Mitt Romney pants on fire ads accusing Barack Obama of issuing an order to free public assistance recipients from forced labor requirements. The ad goes like this, as if speaking directly to imagined welfare bums: “Under Obama’s plan you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check.”

Music Feature

Illegal Art

by Cory Perla

Not many musicians can make their listeners ponder the question “what is art?” Gregg Gillis aka Girl Talk deals with that question every day. That is because Gillis makes his music in a very unique way; he takes bits and pieces of songs you know, songs from the last four decades of music, and weaves them in and out of each other.

Art Scene

Pat Pendleton, Curious Evidence A Three-Decade Survey

by J. Tim Raymond

Drew W. Eaton, Anita Johnson, and Lawrence Kinneyon view in the current Art Dialogue exhibit

by J. Tim Raymond

Theater Week

Silo City Show

by Anthony Chase

Dan Shanahan of Torn Space Theater has made a career of exploring neglected Buffalo spaces, with his site specific avant-garde performance pieces, so when Mark Goldman, Buffalo historian-entrepreneur and visionary called him with the idea to use “Silo City” as the site of a collaborative performance piece, Shanahan jumped at the opportunity.

Play Ball!

Who's Going to Fenway!

by Andrew Kulyk & Peter Farrell

As if it wasn’t enough that the Buffalo Bisons are winding down a memorable 25th anniversary downtown season. Or that the team and the city hosted the AAA All Star Game last month. Now this. The team is heading down the I-90 this weekend for another road visit against the Pawtucket Red Sox.

Film Reviews

Farewell, My Queen

by M. Faust

ParaNorman

by M. Faust

Listings

On The Boards Theater Listings

Movie Times (Friday, August 17 - Thursday, August 23)

Film Now Playing

Featured Events

See You There!

Artvoice's weekly round-up of featured events, including our editor's picks for the week: Party on the Portico, featuring The Albrights and The Steam Donkeys, this Friday the 17th at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

Letters to Artvoice

Will Gov. Cuomo Listen to the Lobbyists and Gas Industry Consultants? Or the Citizens of New York?

by Gabe Elsner

Mounting evidence suggests that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is eschewing science and public concerns in an effort to curry favor with the gas industry. As rumors mount that Cuomo is considering a 2016 presidential run, he may be working to boost his ability to raise campaign funds from the fossil fuel industry.

Offbeat News

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

A bar in Horry County, S.C., named the Suck Bang Blow filed a lawsuit in May challenging the county’s new ordinance prohibiting motorcyclists’ “burnouts” (engine-revving with back-tire-spinning, creating smoke—and enormous noise). The bar claims that burnouts are important expressions of its customers’ “manliness and macho” and as such are protected by the First Amendment.

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): One of history’s most notorious trials took place in Athens, Greece in 399 BCE. A majority of 501 jurors convicted the philosopher Socrates of impiety and of being a bad influence on young people. What were the impious things he did? “Failing to acknowledge the gods that the city acknowledges” and “introducing new deities.”

Advice

Ask Anyone

I have a friend who is a pretty strict vegetarian—so strict that he doesn’t eat cheese that’s made with animal rennet, because to get animal rennet, the animal has to be killed. This doesn’t bother me, of course, because I’m a meat-eater, but I do respect his choice. The thing is, he only avoids animal rennet cheese if he knows it has animal rennet in it. If he doesn’t know—because he doesn’t get to inspect the label, or because the label is unclear—then he happily eats it.