Although a dying downtown does have it’s advantages, like easy parking and relatively cheap loft space, it is still sort of sad. One bright spot is the new Frederick Douglas Susan B. Anthony Memorial Bridge. I heard Frank DeBlase call it the “Freddy Sue” which illustrates how crazy the real name is.
We checked out Gato Barbieri yesterday at Paetec Park. There are so many tenor sax players in the world and yet no one else sounds like Gato? He’s still got it. Peggi came home and put on a few of his digital files. I guess he is almost blind so he probably didn’t even notice how few people were there. We hung around by the fence near the admissions gate instead of paying to get in. We did that once at the old baseball stadium when the Dead were playing. They had a huge crowd hanging around for them. There was only one other couple outside listening to Gato yesterday. I talked to Brad Fox on the phone yesterday and he reminded me that we named one of our cats after Gato. I didn’t tell him that Gato is cat in Spanish.
We ran into Laurie Barnum who works for the city. She said she brought an ibuprofen to Mark Iacona, one of the concert promoters, when he was back stage with Gato. She opened her pill container and Gato grabbed one of the pils, popped it and then asked what it was. She told him and he said, “Good, I could use one of those.”
1 Comment
Paul, stop with the ‘dying downtown’ crap. You can’t buy a building downtown right now because developers from NY are buying everything in sight. There’s nearly 300 new units of market value housing being built or breaking ground this year (market value for a 3 bedroom townhouse? $300k +). Everyone is focused on Ren Square and Paetec but the real story is housing. High Falls, which was dying, is going through an amazing transformation with a completely new development across from Kodak office and loft for rent signs all over the place.
Remember Dajhelon, the recording studio next to the Little? Purchased for upwards of $400k, being gutted and a second story added for a single family residence. Same thing with the building next to Arena’s. And then there’s the Natatorium behind Geva…
As for Gato, where was the publicity and why did they book him on a Monday after the jazz fest when jazz fans are a little burnt out? What a waste, IMHO. Sorry I didn’t see it- always liked him.