Reinforcing Stereotypes

Despite most of the snow falling in the Southtowns and the city getting just a dusting (by our standards), on Dec. 10 both NBC’s Today show and ABC’s World News Tonight reported live from WNY on the winter storm that hit much of the East Coast.

Gorilla Pimpin'

The Buffalo Zoo loaned Kwizera, one of its female western lowland gorillas to the Memphis Zoo on Dec. 11 as part of a breeding loan. Kwizera’s daughter, Sidney, is also being considered for a loan, proving yet again that pimpin’ is a ruthless game.

Falsifique A Mexicano

WNY got its first taste of the fast food chain Chipotle on Dec. 11 with a branch opening in Amherst. No, it’s not “real” Mexican food; yes, it’s a owned by the overlords at McDonalds. But where else can you get a $6 whale dick of a burrito?

Fiscal Solvency

It’s official. According to the governor, New York is broke. On Dec. 13, David Paterson announced that “the state has run out of money” and delayed $750 million in payments to schools, cities, and counties to balance the books this month.

Pipe Dreams

It was a good week maybe someday building a new bridge to Canada. On Dec. 14 the state revealed five finalists for a new and improved Peace Bridge. If all goes well, we should have a new bridge by 2017. We’ll believe it when we see it.

Percentage decrease in the ouput of the Buffalo economy over the last year according to a report by the Brookings Institute released on Dec. 15. This ranked Buffalo as the 24th strongest economy among the top 100 metro areas, below the average 2.4% decline, and was enough for experts to delcare the recession to be close to over in the region.