Ristorante Lombardo

Date night. Becky and I went out for dinner at one of our favorite restaurants tonight.  We love going to Ristorante Lombardo. 

We've been going there regularly for the past twenty years and least several times a year. Sometimes a lot more. It's located nearby on Hertel Avenue and is about a five minute drive from home. We often go there for special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries but tonight we went just because we like to go there and have a nice dinner.

We first went there a few times in the 1980's but we were not particularly impressed at the time. We thought they were somewhat overpriced for an ordinary Italian restaurant. There were lots of them in Buffalo at that time. We stopped going there and I do think we went at all during the 90's. Then around 2000 they renovated the restaurant and significantly stepped up their game. The food became outstanding and the decor of the restaurant improved dramatically.

The bar was a lot more comfortable and they had high top tables in the barroom where they served wonderful pizza and small plates. The owner has always been the host which was a nice touch and then over the years his son began to take over the operation.

An outstanding restaurant.

Readings 1990

Readings 1990. Looking back on the list now I'm shocked that there is only one nonfiction book which was a history of the Vietnam War. I was reading about one book a month and I was also going to graduate school at this time so I had a lot of school reading to do in 1990. A lot of what I was reading here was in the summer and some of these books certainly look like summer reading well except for that Salman Rushdie which was a disappointment.

It looks like I discovered Tom Clancy and read three of his political techno thriller novels.  I also went back and read some Edgar Allen Poe and James Cain. I liked that H. P. Lovecraft collection of his and others writing some very weird horror tales. Of course I also had some science fiction reading list.

1. The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris, 1988
2. The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie, 1988
3. Billy Bathgate - E.L. Doctorow, 1989
4. Burning Chrome - William Gibson, 1986
5. Red Storm Rising - Tom Clancy, 1986
6. Double Indemnity - James Cain, 1936
7. The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales - Edgar Allan Poe, 1839
8. The Hunt for Red October - Tom Clancy, 1984
9. Count Zero - William Gibson, 1986
10. Rama II - Arthur C. Clarke, 1989
11. Patriot Games - Tom Clancy, 1987
12. The Shockwave Rider - John Brunner, 1975
13. Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos - Jim Turner, 1990
14. Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam - Frances FitzGerald, 1972

Readings 1980

The books I read in 1980. I really wasn't a big reader that year but I did enjoy what I read. Probably too much going on. Not even one book a month.

Most of the books were bestseller types except for the Howard Zinn book which was influenced by a course I took at Temple in 1978. I had read some earlier works and we talked about his new book that would be published in 1980. I've always loved reading books on history and this one was unique. I really enjoyed The Year of the French which was a historical novel about Ireland and one of their wars of independence from England.

These were some of the first books I had read by Stephen King.

1. The Right Stuff - Tom Wolfe, 1979
2. The Stand - Stephen King, 1978
3. The Year of the French - Thomas Flanagan, 1979
4. A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn, 1980
5. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams, 1979
6. The Book of Daniel - E.L. Doctorow, 1971
7. Carrie - Stephen King, 1974
8. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher - Thomas Lewis, 1974
9. The Island - Peter Benchley, 1979

Sy Fy 1 - a mix

And here is another page and another mixtape taken from my 1980-81 mixtape notebook. I was asked to put together some music for a science fiction costume themed Halloween party in 1980. I remember that fun night with a large weirdly costumed crowd squeezed into a small apartment with loud music. The host had asked for lots of David Bowie and Talking Heads which of course I did.

The mix was modified a couple of times in a later CD version and then became part of my regular collection of Halloween mixes. 

Here is some of it on Spotify.

Next Door Neighbors

1974-1975… back then I lived next door to a house full of members of the Society for Creative Anachronism or “the medieval people” as they were known in our Philly neighborhood. Bishop Bob, his Lady, their serf and the Wizard on the third floor. Lots of swordplay in the backyard. Interesting times. They cooked some nasty smelling gruel too.

About twenty yeas later I would get to know someone who was also in the SCA but found that out about him another ten years after working with him. It turns out he knew Bishop Bob from next door back in the day.

The First Mix Notebook

I recently found a box of old notebooks and most of them were used for tracking my mixtapes and then later some for CD mixes. It was interesting looking through them and the oldest notebook was from June 1980. Unfortunately, that earliest notebook had some of the first entries written with a green pen that had faded considerably over the last 40 years. I could still read the song lists but barely.

The interesting thing about finding the notebooks was the insight into the thought process of making those early mixtapes and the ongoing progress and evolution over time as changes were noted on the pages. Some of the mixes look to have been created very quickly but most had ongoing edits. There were also notes about the mixes, their purpose, and comments concerning who were getting copies as gifts.

The first notebook starts in June 1980 with a mix called “Play Something Sweet”. Creating this mixes originally had specific purposes, for and event, a party, a wedding. It was also just after we had moved to Buffalo from Philadelphia and I was doing a lot of road trips back and forth. I really did not want to be chasing radio stations during these all day trips. I wanted lots of tapes filled with the music I wanted to hear and when I wanted to hear it.

From looking at these early notebooks I saw that at this time in 1980 I started naming mixes after a track on the mix as a title track. I was also at that time not against having an artist on a mix more than one time or even back to back songs by the same artist. It seems a little shocking to me now.

At this time I also started numbering my mixtapes and that Play Something Sweet mix was #1. The last mixtape in that first notebook was #66 and covered the time period of June 1980 to June 1981. That was more than one a week. The first several mixes in the book were played at our wedding in June 1980 so that must have been a particularly strong motivation to come up with some new mixtapes at that time.

It was interesting to look at that first year of serious mixtape making. I have several more of these notebooks but eventually began keeping track of my mixes on a computer using word processing documents and then spreadsheets. I got my first computer in 1982 but probably didn’t seriously one for mix tracking until 1983. I doubt I have those original files because they would be on a floppy drive somewhere.

Mix Motivation

I was motivated to make mixes by various things over various times but the one overriding factor probably was my regular road trips back and forth between Buffalo and Philadelphia several times a year beginning in the mid 70's and still going on. I hated fumbling with the radio for 8 hours. Albums were OK but I really wanted constant variety and control over what I was listening to.

I made hundreds of mixtapes throughout the 80's including our own wedding in 1980. I also did wedding tapes for my brother in law. His wife was Polish and wanted some polkas on the mix for her older relatives. I had one memorable sequence where the polka music was blaring and the old Polish folks were all dancing.  The polkas led to Elvis Presley doing All Shook Up and the dancing continued. Suddenly Brand New Cadillac by The Clash was playing and the elderly Polish people were still dancing. My new sister in law was amazed that her aunts and uncles were dancing to The Clash at her wedding.

I made mixes for parties too and during my bar DJ days I sometimes had mixes as backups to play if I needed to be away from the sound booth for any amount of time. I occasionally would record a set of music to a tape.

Then burning CDs came along and the mix making process moved from the tape recorder to the computer.  Playing a CD in a car for the long trips was a primary motivation to convert mixes from tape to CD.

The Art of the Mix online group was another motivation to make more and better mixes. Later I was putting them up on MixCloud and then eventually on Spotify.