Off Main Street: Bills on billboards
The Bills have a new marketing slogan: “It’s amazing how long a moment can last.” At least two years, if you go by one billboard visible from the Niagara Thruway, near Exchange Street.
The ad features former Bills quarterback J.P. Losman, arm cocked to throw a pass, and reads, “Something exciting is going to happen. Be There.”
It gives a phone number for people interested in ordering season tickets— for 2007.
The billboard isn’t owned by the team and, despite frequent requests, the owner won’t take down the Bills ad until he sells the space to someone else, team spokesman Andy Major said.
Two years is nothing compared with Steve Christie’s lengthy service pitching Artvoice from the old AM&A’s building.
The ad dates to Richard Taylor’s ownership of the building, and removing it would require renting a lift from Syracuse that’s able to reach the ad, said Publisher Jamie Moses, who added he doesn’t mind seeing the former Bills kicker.
“I like Steve Christie, and anything we can do to promote Steve Christie is fine with me,” Moses said.
Old soldiers may fade away, but old Bills clearly don’t.
Blessings on the run
Runners in Sunday’s Buffalo Marathon were surprised to see two men in religious garb standing outside St. Clare Catholic Church, offering encouragement as the race passed by.
The Rev. Michael Putich, a Franciscan friar and the church’s temporary administrator, and acolyte Dennis Gordon greeted passing runners prior to 8:30 a.m. Mass at the Elk Street church.
“I think my line was, ‘Welcome to the Valley,’ ” Putich told us. “Other folks started spontaneously giving me high fives and low fives, and I was just as delighted as they were.”
Runner and Off Main Street contributor Sharon Linstedt said one man running in front of her approached the pair to say, “Forgive me, father, for I have not trained.”
“I can’t help you with that,” Gordon replied, according to Putich.
The Rev. Mattel presided
As destination weddings go, this one should have been held in East Aurora instead of Michigan, where it really happened.
The Jackson Citizen Patriot reported on the nuptials of Chad Fisher and Susan Price of Blackman Township. As in a Fisher-Price wedding.
And if you think toys would make silly wedding gifts, guess again. The paper reports the couple has an 11-month-old son.
A fox! In Cheektowaga!
The black bear found dead a few miles from City Hall added wildlife to the list of worries in the city. And suburbs.
At a Cheektowaga meeting this week, people talked about problems with decaying, abandoned houses, rat-welcoming weeds and crime in the neighborhoods along the city border.
Yet, one woman spoke up in alarm about another menace.
A fox. In her yard. From the overgrown park by her house.
There were titters in reply.
This was the first big public meeting of the Buffalo Cheektowaga Neighborhood Revitalization Task Force. Her problem seemed to pale in comparison to gang hangouts and surly teenagers blocking the road.
A woman in the audience, not the panel of officials, had an idea about the fox.
“Send him over to my house,” she said with a wry smile, “to eat the rats.”
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