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...now for Plan B.
Oct. 7th, 2004 09:18 amFrom Buffalo Business First:
Between the light academic load and the work of getting over my first serious girlfriend, I ended up signing up for a stage magic course taught by a would-be rock artist whose schtick included performing illusions either between sets or while his band played on, I forget.
When I ended up in Buffalo a year or so later, I began to spend an awful lot of my time at the Forks Hotel, doing close-up magic, and my tenure there was an education of sorts, too. I stopped by the place in 1984 as Galina and I were driving through, taking Galina's mom "to the airport," but to the airport in Toronto, Canada, as Aeroflot had no landing rights in the U.S. (imposed after the shootdown of KAL 007 the year before). If memory serves, the place was owned at that time by Bill Okal, who was one of the close-up artists when I worked there, and one of the best magicians I've ever seen, I might add.
Why am I waxing eloquent about this? Well, I just Pricelined myself a room in Toronto that turns out to be a mile from the conference hotel, but whose rooms run 60% of the cost of rooms in the conference hotel. (Whoever arranges for conference space at the ATA consistently picks hotels that charge close to $200 per night for a single room; this year was no exception.) I was fairly lucky last year to have stayed at a hotel that was closer to the conference hotel in Phoenix, for about the same savings.
The problem with my arrangements is that I set things up to check out on the last day of the conference, instead of on the following morning. I had toyed with the idea of driving down to Buffalo on Saturday night, to visit the Forks Hotel again, but the item quoted above put the kibosh on that idea.
Hmm. If truth be told, Saturday night is probably the night of the farewell banquet, which I have no plans of attending, but it may be that the small group of us that arranged our own "banquet" in Atlanta two years ago may decide to go out for dinner somewhere in Toronto that night. In any event, the Priceline arrangement is a done deal; the rest I'll play by ear.
Cheers...
The former Forks Hotel in Cheektowaga, once known as a mecca for magicians, has been purchased by the Cheektowaga Employees Federal Credit Union which plans to build a new office on the site.My fling with magic -- of the stage and close-up kind -- came about as the result of a fairly light last semester at school. After loading myself down with 22-24 credits of engineering in each semester of junior and senior year, I found myself -- in the second half of my fifth year at Stony Brook -- with something like 15 credits of literature courses, so of course I had -- or thought I had -- a lot of free time on my hands.
[...]
Beginning in the last half of the 19th century, the site in the center of present-day Cheektowaga housed a building that served as a hotel, railroad station, post office and most recently a bar.
The Forks Hotel, so-named because of its location in an area where there were a number of major roadways, gained a unique reputation in the immediate decades after World War II.
Until the 1970s, it was a magnet for magicians who came from around the nation and other parts of the world to see and learn from the famed Eddie Fechter, who owned the hotel. Fechter was one of the greatest close-up magical entertainers of his time. Several books have been written describing his top tricks, moves and comedy gags.
Between the light academic load and the work of getting over my first serious girlfriend, I ended up signing up for a stage magic course taught by a would-be rock artist whose schtick included performing illusions either between sets or while his band played on, I forget.
When I ended up in Buffalo a year or so later, I began to spend an awful lot of my time at the Forks Hotel, doing close-up magic, and my tenure there was an education of sorts, too. I stopped by the place in 1984 as Galina and I were driving through, taking Galina's mom "to the airport," but to the airport in Toronto, Canada, as Aeroflot had no landing rights in the U.S. (imposed after the shootdown of KAL 007 the year before). If memory serves, the place was owned at that time by Bill Okal, who was one of the close-up artists when I worked there, and one of the best magicians I've ever seen, I might add.
Why am I waxing eloquent about this? Well, I just Pricelined myself a room in Toronto that turns out to be a mile from the conference hotel, but whose rooms run 60% of the cost of rooms in the conference hotel. (Whoever arranges for conference space at the ATA consistently picks hotels that charge close to $200 per night for a single room; this year was no exception.) I was fairly lucky last year to have stayed at a hotel that was closer to the conference hotel in Phoenix, for about the same savings.
The problem with my arrangements is that I set things up to check out on the last day of the conference, instead of on the following morning. I had toyed with the idea of driving down to Buffalo on Saturday night, to visit the Forks Hotel again, but the item quoted above put the kibosh on that idea.
Hmm. If truth be told, Saturday night is probably the night of the farewell banquet, which I have no plans of attending, but it may be that the small group of us that arranged our own "banquet" in Atlanta two years ago may decide to go out for dinner somewhere in Toronto that night. In any event, the Priceline arrangement is a done deal; the rest I'll play by ear.
Cheers...
