I grew up in the Kensington-Bailey neighborhood and so did my mothers family starting from 1919 to1978. The life I lived in this neighborhood from 1965-1978 is unimaginable to people under 50 yrs old living in the USA today. For instance my mother thought nothing of leaving the kids in the car while she ran into a store. Many grownups thought nothing of leaving the keys in the car overnight. We were very close to our neighbors and would have block parties every other summer or so. All the neighborhood children played under the watchful eyes of other mothers and if you did something bad your mom most likely would know about it when you came home. We went to Public School down the street and would come home for lunch and play a bit of hockey or football in the street before heading back to school. In the evenings with good weather my folks would sit out on the porch and greet people who walked by. They met a lot of nice people that way including UB students. Usually neighbors would come over to have a cup of coffee and "shoot the breeze." In the Kensington-Bailey neighborhood people genuinely got along back then even if they had different views, different color skin or different religions. If it was a muggy summer night my parents would leave open the front door using only the screen door so the house could cool off with the night breeze. Sometimes a few Mom's in the neighborhood would take the kids for a walk on summer nights on Bailey Ave for an ice cream at either "Henry's" burger joint or down farther to "The Garden of Sweets" (more expensive but better). No one ever bothered us. We didn't even give it a thought. The neighborhood was completely safe. If we went on a day trip to say Crystal Beach my parents would leave the side door unlocked in case a neighbor needed to borrow a cup of sugar or something. We could ride our bikes anywhere as long as we were home for dinner and we always used the white water tower at Winspear Ave and Bailey Ave to find our way home. Our society has changed very much since the 1970's. Even if you live in a beautiful neighborhood with nice big spacious homes it's different. We've come a long way and we've made many advances but today's society is no where near as social and certainly not as safe. My folks were friendly and polite and I picked that up from them. However today when I greet strangers only half of them will say hello back. The majority of younger people in their 20's and 30's give me some sort of arrogant smirk and I can't for the life of me figure out what that means. Or they just ignore me completely turning their attention to their iPhones. Both my parents died over the last 2 1/2 years (not COVID related) and I sure do miss them. What was your experience growing up in Buffalo?
sad i remember this strip in the 70s, everything we needed .very far from that,east delavan and bailey was my life growing up, no longer,i wish for it to come back,but it wont,i grew up on moselle street
crazy drivers on that street, no one every obeys the speed limit, they don't even use turn signals when changing lanes. People don't stop for anyone walking.
This is only about 1/3 of Bailey Avenue, the northern third. Bailey runs north/south for almost the entire length of the City of Buffalo. Had our driver here turned in the other direction, he would have encountered the Fillmore/Bailey neighborhood famous as the home of Sattler's. Then on to become the western boundary of Kaisertown where I grew up. Finally reaching its southernmost stretch in South Buffalo, home of Tim Russert and Bishop Timon High School where I graduated in 1972.
You can't even walk down that street today expecting no one to ask you for money, looking at you wrong, the police checking you out, or the pushers looking to sell.
always shooting on the area. I live on the east side, on Holden next to ECMC. Baily ave use to be the safest street to walk on, when the Italians were there. When they italians left now is just filled with Drunk, fiends, hustler's and sellers.
I definitely remember leonardo's being on bailey. I remember quite a bit about ruff buff. I lived all around the hood of bailey delevan, Kensington. I lived on Hagen, oakmont, east end, that other street before e end. Dairy queen used to be right on the corner. My first apt in, moved from my granny's in Amherst NY was in the millicent townhomes. Loved them.
Anyone remember Leonardo‘s pizzeria on Bailey? Best pizza I ever had until there was a shooting in front of the pizzeria. They moved out along with all the other white people. The last time I was on Bailey it was at night to get ethanol free gas from a station that had it. I’m trying to pump gas and a bum would not leave me alone. All I could hear around me was yelling and police sirens everywhere. It was like another country or should I say zoo. And a zoo that no one cleans up after the animals. Never going back to that street.
