Buffalo
Entertainment

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Art, music and theater, historical sites and museums, pro sports and recreation, night clubs and festivals: you name it and The Queen City has it, including that great thundering attraction 25 miles to the north!

The natural place to start on any Buffalo entertainment quest is the Theater District, a 20-block area of downtown that's jam-packed with the second-largest concentration of performing arts venues in the state (next to NYC, of course).

As a National Historic landmark, Shea's Performing Arts Center (opened in 1926) is home to the Irish Classical Theatre Company, the Alleyway Theatre complex and the state-of-the-art Studio Arena. Here you will find every type of theatrical performance from operetta to full Broadway productions, avant-garde drama to modern classics.

Music and Theater

Another performing arts hub is the State University of New York at Buffalo campus in Amherst. The Center for the Arts is home to four theater venues including the 1,750-seat Mainstage, the only one of this size operating year-round in western NY. The 400-seat Drama Theater is ideal for musicals, the 180-seat Black Box is an experimental space and the 370-seat Katharine Cornell Theater was named after one of Buffalo's leading ladies.

Buffalo's musical tastes can best be described as eclectic, ranging from the Buffalo Philharmonic, considered one of the best in the country and playing out of the acoustically-perfect Kleinhans Music Hall, to blues and jazz, with native sons such as Grover Washington Jr., Bobby Millitello, and Spyro Gyra. In fact, Millitello gets to blow his own horn at the family-owned Tralfamadore Cafe, one of literally dozens of pubs and clubs where jazz is part of the menu.

Museums and Galleries

For a town that has spent most of its existence doing heavy industrial work, Buffalo has more than its fair share of art facilities. Start with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, world-renowned for its collection of impressionistic and abstract works including Picasso, Van Gogh and Warhol. Then on to the Burchfield-Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College with exhibits by watercolorist Charles E. Burchfield as well as regional artists.

Other important Buffalo galleries and exhibit halls include the Anderson Gallery, CEPA, Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center and the African American Culture Center, which sponsors African-American visual and performing arts and is home to the Paul Robeson Theatre.

For the true arts and crafts believer, no trip to Buffalo is complete without a visit to the Roycroft Campus in East Aurora. Site of the crafts colony founded by Elbert Hubbard in the late 1800s, the campus today carries forth the original spirit with the Elbert Hubbard Roycroft Museum, Roycroft Shops, Roycroft Inn and Roycroft Potters.

Through it all, Buffalo hasn't forgotten its railroad and steel past. The Iron Preservation Society of Lovejoy runs the Iron Island Museum in honor of the community named for the fact it was surrounded by railroad tracks. In the same vein, the Lackawanna Public Library plays host to the Steel Plant and Local History Museum with photos, exhibits and memorabilia from the days when steel was king.

Festivals

If galleries, museums and architectural gems are the muscle and sinew of Buffalo culture, then the numerous festivals are most certainly its lifeblood. It starts with ringing in the new year followed by a number of winter carnivals so that Buffalonians can thumb their noses at the snow. The snow melts just in time for the June Allentown Art Festival, a street event that draws more than 600,000 to the downtown area.

July brings the two-day Taste of Buffalo along the Buffalo Place strip with music, arts and crafts and the opportunity to sample food from the city's top restaurants. August means Lovejoy's Iron Island Festival will celebrate this special Buffalo neighborhood.

Nightlife

If you can't wait for the festivals, there are plenty of hot nightspots to keep you moving. Buffalo's nightlife used to center around the Elmwood Strip but the place to be these days is on Chippewa, which borders on the Theater District. Once the city's red light district, Chippewa now sizzles with live music and dance clubs to suit every taste.

Perhaps the wildest club of all is Club Marcella, described as the best techno/trance/trip-hop place in the city, not to mention the compelling Saturday night drag queen shows. The Coliseum Entertainment Complex offers a progressive dance club, a disco, retro dance club and a cigar bar all under one roof.

Sports

A visitor doesn't have to stay long to realize Buffalonians are passionate about their sports teams. It's your choice to root for football with the NFL Bills, hockey with the NHL Sabres, the triple-A baseball Bisons, soccer with the Blizzards or lacrosse with the Bandits. This is the land of the Sunday afternoon tailgate party to root the Bills towards yet another shot at the Super Bowl.

As you can see, there's more to Niagara-area entertainment than the falls with their deafening roar. What you get is the complete recreational package with 75,000 gallons of water roaring over a 300-foot cliff each second as the icing on the cake!