A strange, albeit temporary, quiet has settled over the streets of Buffalo’s Allentown neighborhood early this week, as the Infringers that have been a fixture in the neighborhood for nearly two weeks enjoy time at home. The Wambulance is notably absent from its spot on Days Park, and art lovers across the city are left, pleasantly exhausted, wondering why we all don’t Infringe more often.

There is a spirit to the Buffalo Infringement Festival (BIF) – the grassroots arts festival which took place from July 28 to August 7 – that would benefit us all if infused into the other 354 days of the year. It’s a sense of exploration, discovery, creativity and celebration. It seems during those 11 bustling days that anything is possible because there are no boundaries, no restrictions and no judgment. It’s a space where art is created organically and with intention, with the support of a strong and organized community.

There’s a little inter-Rust Belt rivalry going on right now.
The antagonist is Buffalo. Inspired by Detroit’s DIY art scene, especially Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg project, Buffalo is nurturing a cross-regional artistic competition.
Artist Christen Clifford, a NYC-based Buffalo expat, is the brains behind a large scale art installation that seeks to imbue the Buffalo art scene with the same activist flavor as Detroits’.
Clifford is asking Buffalo area residents, as well as expats from near and far, to contribute to a knitting project. They are planning a 167-foot knitted strip, representing the 16,719 …

Look out, Silicon Valley.
Read the report from Brookings here, which notes the success Rust Belt cities have had in attracting skilled immigrants.
The report notes:
“Perhaps most notable is the very high concentration of high-skilled immigrants in older industrial metro areas in the Midwest and Northeast such as Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Syracuse. Detroit, for instance, has 144 high-skilled immigrants for every 100 low-skilled immigrants. Immigrants in these metropolitan areas tilt toward high-skill because they blend earlier arriving cohorts who have had time to complete higher education with newcomers …

The Buffalo News reports The Travel Channel will feature Buffalo this summer in an hour-long show that has yet to be named.
The show’s host told the paper:
“It kind of awes me that much of the country, like myself, is in the dark as far as what Buffalo means in the evolution of the United States. Buffalo was such a profound part of this nation. If I can do a television show that has any part in teaching that, that’s terrific.”
The series features places that are off-limits …

We’ve previously written about Cleveland’s lawsuit against 21 big banks over the mess that was created by the foreclosure crisis.
This article in Cleveland Scene summarizes the case nicely:
“The case against the banks isn’t a class action about individual homeowner losses, or whether they were tricked into signing commitments they couldn’t keep. (Attorney Joshua) Cohen knows that’s a common misunderstanding. Instead, it’s about the big picture from the city’s point of view — an attempt to recover money Cleveland has been forced to spend cleaning up …

Take a look at the pieces created by Buffalo artist Dennis Maher using materials salvaged from demolished buildings.

The Baltimore native came to Buffalo eight years ago and finds the city to be a very inspiring place, he said in an interview with Rust Wire.

“There are very few places where I could do the kind of work I’m doing here,” working with debris, Maher said.

When he first came to Buffalo, he worked on a demolition crew to earn extra income.

His interest in demolition has different aspects, he said: the physicality of it, the political aspect of it as a development strategy, and as a process of erasure.

Continuing with our photo tour of the city of Buffalo, today we offer some landscapes from the natural world in an urban setting.
This shot was taken by Joseph M Verrastro in the city’s Tifft Nature Preserve, a reclaimed area minutes from downtown Buffalo:

An avid photographer of the natural environment, Verrastro also took this picture of wildflowers in front of the grain elevators of Republic Steel Company.

Those elevators loom large over the Buffalo River and have been the subject of many a local shutterbug. Here’s a different angle by the same …

The bad news is, we ticked off some Buffaloians with some of the verbiage in our photography solicitations. The good news is, a bunch of them sent us photos offering some of the more appealing scenes in the City of No Illusions.

So now Buffaloians are going to show us what the city is all about.

We have received so many submissions that I had to break it down into a few categories. This first one is dedicated to Buffalo’s beautiful buildings. (Next post will be on natural landscapes.) Unfortunately, this won’t be an exhaustive look at all the fine architecture in Buffalo, just a taste of some of the more memorable. Thanks to everyone who submitted! Sorry about the inadvertent slight!

This shouldn’t surprise anyone, but nevertheless:
#1. Detroit
#2. Cleveland
#3. Buffalo
#4. Milwaukee
#5. St. Louis
#6. Miami
#7. Memphis
#8. Cincinnati
#9. Philadelphia
Poverty workers in Cleveland blame the increase on unemployment.
This should send a message to the federal government. If we’re serious about addressing poverty in this country, we need to address the way the economic restructuring has affected Rust Belt cities. Taking tax dollars from the people in these cities and giving it to bankers in New York isn’t much of a solution.
-AS
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Billions of dollars of infrastructure investment are needed to stop untreated sewage from Great Lakes cities that flows into the Lakes, according to a study released earlier this month.
From January 2009 through January of this year, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Milwaukee and Gary, Indiana, discharged 41 billion gallons of untreated sewage and storm water into the Lakes, according to data analyzed by the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition.
“The Great Lakes are under siege from sewage overflows,” Jeff Skelding, campaign director for the Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, …