Wings, Wiseguys, and Wind

"What were you in for?"
"I killed my wife and her four friends"

Adam and I stood there, stupefied, dumbstruck, slowly sipping our drinks and planning our escape.

"Nah...Just messing with youze..."

Adam left for the bathroom to hide his money in his sock. I was stuck alone with "Franky Carcioffi", our brand new self-proclaimed Mafia wiseguy friend. As Franky had told us, he had been up for days, ingesting a variety of drugs, drinking "urine with a little bit of ice" (Seagrams and 7-Up), and enlisting the services of a number of call girls.

For at least an hour, we sat there at the bar with Franky, trying to figure out how to stop talking to him, a bit too scared and a bit too interested to leave. We heard a bit about his five years in Attica, learned all about his daughter's skills as an estetician ("she colored my hair with streaks of blonde! Makes me look young), and were regaled with vague details of Franky's business ventures ("construction", money collection, drug dealing).

We certainly hadn't planned to be hanging out with wise guys in Buffalo, having never planned to even stop in Buffalo. We left New Jersey on Monday afternoon, planning to drive straight through to Toronto, where our friend awaited our arrival. Inclement weather and the unstoppable course of time forced us to reconsider our options.

A brief stop for the bathroom and a snack at a rest stop found us gazing upon a map of the region. It was only then that we realized that our trajectory would take us straight through Buffalo, and with a very small deviation from our course, past the famed Niagara falls. We immediately changed our plans, and decided to stay the night in Buffalo and spend the next morning at the falls before heading to Toronto.

Arriving in Buffalo, driving down Main Street, we took notice of our surroundings. Buffalo was anything but impressive, much as we had expected. At this point, our only true motivation for continuing to enter the city was to unlock the truth of our hopeful doubts regarding the origin of Buffalo Wings.

This question had occurred to us shortly after deciding to stop in Buffalo, when we mutually and suddenly realized that Buffalo Wings must have taken their name from the New York town of Buffalo. Unsure of the truth behind this conjecture, we spent some time considering other possibilities:

--some sort of surrealist/jocular naming of the foodstuff
--A connection to the American West
--Issues of translation from the Italian Buffala --> Buffalo

In this last possibility, we came up with delightful little stories that involved Italian immigrants, a new appetizer that involved spicy chicken wings and mozzarella di buffala, and the eventual cutting of the mozzarella from the plate, leaving the wings with the name buffala, which at some point (goes the tale) had eventually changed to buffalo.

After considering these possibilities, we came to the conclusion that Buffalo Wings must be tied to the New York town, and we became increasingly excited to try out the original, unadulterated and elusive real wing of pub grub lore.

We finally arrived in downtown Buffalo, and were pleasantly surprised to find a beautiful little pedestrian area and an area of bars and nightclubs. Our doubts regarding the wing question were quickly erased by the hostel worker Michael Myers, and after chatting briefly with a strange Ugandan man that shared our room, we headed out to chow on some wings and enjoy some after dinner beverages.

We quickly found the place, ordered up a pitcher of beer and a plate of hot wings, and dug in with gusto and fervor. The wings were delicious, and had a certain crunchiness that is often difficult to find with wings. Best of all, the entire meal, beer included, cost only twenty dollars. Things were looking up in Buffalo.





Having finished dinner, we headed out for some drinks to an Irish pub down the street. It was at this point that we made the acquaintance of Franky Carcioffi, from whom we eventually escaped after accepting his offer of a drink and evading vague invitations to join him on his bender.

Leaving the bar, walking down the street, we decided that after the stressful and somewhat frightening experience that we had had with ole' Carcioffi, we deserved a last drink before heading home. Unfortunately, however, the only bars left on the walk were a string of Buffalo gay bars. After finding one quite strange and a bit scary, we headed to another (much calmer) and settled in for a beer that was only rarely interrupted by a strange older man that seemed to take quite a bit of interest in us, our conversations, and our bathroom habits.

More to come soon, including:

Niagara Falls
&
The Pancake Quest