Potpourri for a Saturday

Juneteenth

The celebration continues today at the Underground Railroad Heritage Museum with tours all day on the hour and a community celebration including entertainment and refreshments at 4 p.m.

I worked two shifts as a tour guide in the Falls yesterday and doubled the content I used on Black History. I always include the Cataract House, Suspension Bridge and Harriet Tubman.

Friday’s guests got an extra dose of thriving Niagara Falls from the 50s and 60s when people moved here from the south for jobs in the chemical industry. I even touched on Bishop Sylvester Beaman of the AME church as well as Love Canal and Griffon Manor.

'Diamond the Body'

Stopped by the New Black Wallstreet this week to visit Demetreus Nix building out an entertainment facility at his property on Seneca Street which was the original Niagara Falls DPW complex.

They were building a stage, setting up lights and getting pumped up for an event last night featuring “Diamond the Body” from the reality television show “Baddies.”

There is a whole lot there going on there that I don’t understand, why they shake their butts that way, how anyone likes that music or even how the economy of the whole thing fits together.

I will still show up, listen, smile and try to understand things that are new to me.

The Bench guys

I was pedaling to pay our water bill this week when I looked up and saw Rob Braun of Then Bench Guys planting flowers in the bench near city hall.

He’s one guy, with some petunias and water bottles taking care of more than 100 benches in Niagara Falls and the Town of Niagara.

His bench is easily the only bit of positive landscaping at City Hall where the Cedar of Lebanon has died.