Donn Esmonde: Hands off swingers weekend
Just when you thought there was nothing to do around here, . . . The Holiday Inn Grand Island will be filled this long weekend with married folks who have sex with other people’s spouses. The doors are swinging open for “Entice the Falls,” an annual swingers convention billed as “Four Days of Wicked Temptation.” (Updated: 10/16/09 7:45 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Plant owner should clean up his act
Iam not in the habit of conveying messages, but in this case, Iamhappy to make an exception. Note to J. D. Crane: Anna Hackett is calling you out. (Updated: 10/14/09 8:41 AM )
Architecture is area’s new gold mine
Let the payoff begin. The steel mills are gone. The auto plants are shells of their former selves. The high cost of doing business here drives businesses away. (Updated: 10/11/09 7:18 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Insider tells town boards’ dirty secret
To hear some of these town board members tell it, they are as essential to our existence as bathroom towels and a winter coat. (Updated: 10/09/09 7:44 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Bills are run like General Motors was
Once again, this town is in a funk about its football team. Four games into the season, and already the Bills are diving headfirst into the dumpster. (Updated: 10/07/09 7:43 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Pork dollars are in essence buying votes
Santa Claus keeps coming to town. And coming. And coming. If you are a soccer league, fire department, AMVETS Post, Boys&Girls Club or similar group, there is a good chance that you are on his list. (Updated: 10/04/09 3:59 PM )
Donn Esmonde: Downsizing trumps voter suppression
Meet Bob Wohlgemuth, victim. Wohlgemuth lives in Alden. He last week put up a lawn sign in favor of downsizing the Town Board. By the next morning, it was gone—taken, with dozens of others, by a town official. (Updated: 10/02/09 2:56 PM )
Donn Esmonde: City should keep its hands off Olmsteds
The folks at City Hall should have enough sense to leave well enough alone. The key word in
that sentence is "should." (Updated: 09/30/09 9:30 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Parents are on a crusade for the truth
They are on a crusade. They are on a crusade to prove that their daughter was murdered, and to find out who did it. They have questions that deserve answers. (Updated: 09/27/09 4:05 PM )
Donn Esmonde: Downsizing is being fueled by frustration
I guess it now is official. This is not an accident or an aberration. It is a movement. (Updated: 09/25/09 10:50 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Why not turn vacant lots into gardens?
Most folks would see a weed-strewn vacant lot squeezed between two houses on a largely forgotten street. (Updated: 09/23/09 8:48 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Pioneer rewarded for his patience
He talked as he walked, sounding like a starving man reciting the menu for a promised feast. (Updated: 09/20/09 5:04 PM )
Donn Esmonde: Nothing to hide? Then stop hiding
If I am running the U. S. Justice Department, my next step is obvious: deputize Keanu Reeves. The actor, in town last weekend to scout locations for an upcoming movie, toured the Erie County Holding Center. He boldly went where no Department of Justice investigator has gone. (Updated: 09/18/09 7:57 AM )
Donn Esmonde: Brown’s win should be his wake-up call
Once the celebration dies down, I hope that Byron Brown sees a surprisingly tough primary campaign as a wake-up call. (Updated: 09/16/09 7:40 AM )
A guide to the best of the East Side
As a wake-up call and a cry for help in a violent summer, I recently laid out a personal tour of blighted sites on the East Side—the toughest part of America’s third-poorest city. (Updated: 09/13/09 7:09 AM )