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I’ve got a feeling that AV’s venerable Best of Buffalo poll has reached the beginning of a new age. More voters than ever before participated in the poll: 3,800 ballots were started online, and nearly half of those followed through and submitted valid, completed entries. Of the 1,812 valid ballots, only a couple hundred were delivered by the US Mail. A sign of the times. A number of aspirants launched vigorous (and usually successful) Facebook campaigns, enlisting friends and strangers alike to vote for them.
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We see the most votes in this category every year, hands down. And the nominees for best food and drink are usually running neck-and-neck, proving again that Buffalo has more than enough to offer in terms of cuisine. Previous years’ polls have seen the answer to “Best Thing About Buffalo” be “the food” more often than answers like “the people” or “the weather.” (Go figure.)
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We put out two gift guides each year around the winter holidays, which serve as our annual ode to shopping in the Queen City. But shopping is an activity only made more pleasant by nice weather, so arguably we are just coming up on the prime retail season for Buffalo.
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Through these tough economic times, Buffalonians can still party in a dizzying array of establishments—especially when one considers the city’s relatively small size. There are bars that cater to every strata of our community—from upscale salons to downscale saloons—where you can tilt highballs with highbrows, lowbrows, and everyone in between.
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Talk to a great many musicians in town who’ve either had a taste of the touring life or who’ve sought greener pastures in music centers like New York City, LA, Austin, or Nashville, and you soon discover that Buffalo is a great place to hang your hat.
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One thing, among many, that surprises visitors to Buffalo is the depth and breadth of the art scene. With internationally renowned galleries like the Albright-Knox and the newly renovated Burchfield Penney Art Center, this city is definitely “on the map,” having been called a “rising giant” this year by AmericanStyle magazine and voted the number one mid-sized city (number one!) in its annual Top 25 Arts Destinations readers’ poll.
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Even before he announced his bid for governor of New York State, developer Carl Paladino struck a powerful note in the popular imagination this past year: Carl placed in six categories this year, a feat not equaled since the heyday of Joel Giambra, who was perpetually a finalist for both best and worst politician, Western New York’s savior and its millstone, its brightest star and its biggest dunderhead.
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First of all, a big hello to the reader who voted, under One Thing You Hope Will Happen This Year, for “Byron Brown public nudity scandal.” We’re crossing our fingers in the newsroom, too.
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by Geoff Kelly
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by Zachary Burns
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by M. Faust
The Jewish Film Festival celebrates its silver anniversary this week with a dozen films that for the most part have neither played in this area or been commercially distributed in the United States. Second only to the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival as the oldest of its kind in the US, the JFF is this area’s most reliable annual presentation of quality world cinema.
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by Jack Foran
The best of the bunch of feminist videos now on view at the Carnegie Art Center in North Tonawanda are distinguished by a generalist comic quality. That is, if the comedy is feminist, it is mainly in the sense that it is the product of the lively comic imagination of a feminine artist, Shannon Plumb.
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by Javier
The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC just concluded the run of Nights at the Opera, a five-week celebration the plays of Terrence McNally. The series included Golden Age, The Lisbon Traviata, and Master Class, which starred Tyne Daly as Maria Callas.
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by M. Faust
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by M. Faust
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Artvoice's weekly round-up of events to watch out for the week, including our editor's pick: The Artvoice Best of Buffalo party, where we'll announce our winners. It's at the Town Ballroom on Monday the 26th, and is free to attend.
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Buffalo native George K. Arthur has been active on the local political scene for nearly half a century. Notably, he served on the Erie County Board of Supervisors from 1964-1967, as Ellicott District Councilman from 1970-1978, and then as Councilman-at-Large in 1978, eventually serving as Common Council President from 1984 until his retirement in 1996.
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by Jim Corbran
No matter what my kids might tell you, even I looked cool driving the new Camaro. And yes, I look like an old fart when I’m driving my rusty, woodgrained ’95 Buick station wagon. Like the headline says…
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by David Landrey
Howard Frank Mosher has lived for decades in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Out of the land and people there, his imagination has projected a series of books, beginning with Disappearances in 1977.
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by Thomas P. Cino
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by Bob Lovejoy
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by Chuck Shepherd
Computer hardware engineer Toshio Yamamoto, 49, this year celebrates 15 years’ work tasting and cataloguing all the Japanese ramen (instant noodles) he can get his hands on (including the full ingredients list, texture, flavor, price and “star” rating for each), for the massive 4,300-ramen database on his Web site, expanded recently with “hundreds” of video reviews and with re-reviews of many previously appearing products (in case the taste had changed, he told journalist Lisa Katayama, writing in April on the popular blog Boing Boing).
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Buffalo has a large and diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. For further information about its numerous organizations and activities, visit Gaywatch at Artvoice.com, call the Western New York Pride Center (852-7743), or email WinterDanny@AOL.com.
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by Rob Brezsny
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Rachael Yanetta, a young English woman, got a bellyache while working her regular job at the local pub. Despite the pain, she toughed it out until her shift was over, then went home.
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I go out with a bunch of friends most weekends, and we usually close the bars down. The problem is one of my friends, “John”, gets wasted and will go home with any girl who seems willing.
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