Summer, sun, fun, water, boats! Five unique water landmarks around the Buffalo/Niagara region. You know Buffalo but have you ever seen it at sunset from Lake Erie with a drink in your hand surrounded by friends? Time to check out Grand Lady Cruises. This episode also features the upcoming Roycroft Summer Fest.
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Coming up, summertime is here and June is appropriately named National Get Outdoors Month as we take in parks and picnics galore. We just had the thunder on the Buffalo Waterfront Airshow that was here this past weekend. And speaking of such, it's time to enjoy the water and boats.
These plans should include Grand Lady Cruises, who we sat down and talked to for this week's interview. Grab your boat shoes because episode 13 of the Buffalo Brews podcast starts right now. Welcome, everyone.
It is Tuesday. Tuesday equals Brews Day, and you know what that means. Brews Day equals an all new episode of the Buffalo Brews podcast.
Hey, how are you doing? You doing good? You enjoying summer so far? What? I'm Jason Ettinger, and thank you for listening. Where are you listening at? Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts. That just is some of the platforms that we are available on.
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We made it. We made it. We made it.
Summer's here, and it started with a roar here in Buffalo this past weekend with the thunder on the Buffalo Waterfront Airshow. It was an idea that was put together in pretty short fashion, and as far as I'm concerned, went quite well, even despite the bad weather and partial cancellations they had to do on Saturday. The logistics seemed very well done all around, and I see it definitely as a great big success.
So, in years past, the 914th played host to the Thunder over Niagara Airshow at the Air Reserve Station, and I love that show personally and had looked forward to attending. However, the impact of COVID overflowed into 2021, as we know, and military installations are far more stringent than your regular population, and sadly, those protocols that they had to deal with the public just didn't make it possible for them to be able to have the air show, and trust me, I know personally the impact that that has. My son's movements over the last six months since he joined the military, his combat training to his advanced individual training to his forwarding duty station, you know, two canceled trips in there for me, so I haven't seen him since the day he left for the military.
I take that back. He did come home for a few weeks over the holidays, so I did get to see him for about a week in there. So, when the chance came up for the air show to come to the Buffalo Waterfront, I wasn't surprised to find out that they had jumped on the opportunity.
Incorporating the Outer Harbor, Canal Side, the Naval Park, it was the perfect backdrop. It was a complete win-win for Buffalo after a very long 14 months of next to nothing to do. If you'd like to see something that's really spectacular, head over to the U.S. Navy Blue Angels Facebook page and check out a specific video on there.
It's about two minutes long that was filled from inside the canopy of pilot number five, that's Commander Ben Walborn, as they practiced over the Buffalo Waterfront. And that, and there's several videos of the air show itself that they posted over there. And what a sight to behold, having lived both on strategic and tactical Air Force bases in the 1990s myself.
I'm always in awe at what the pilots are able to do for our great nation. So, a personal thank you goes out to the Royal Canadian Air Force, Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Barnes Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, the United States Marine Corps, and of course the main eventers who were the United States Navy Blue Angels. So many great photos and videos that I saw online, and it looked like Sunday did not disappoint at all.
And now we have a waiting game. We get to see whether or not the Thunder Over Niagara show might make a return, maybe in 2022 or 2023. There are times when I look forward to talking to folks about their events, but sometimes schedules, they just don't jive.
The downside of working a Monday to Friday job, unfortunately, is sometimes I'm not available until five o'clock and after in the evenings. And other folks, they have family lives and kids, and some of them have second jobs, and the schedules just don't meet up. As an interview that we had set up with the Roy Crofter's At-Large Association just didn't fall in the cards, I decided to talk about it here for them.
So, the Roy Crofter's At-Large Association is known as the RALA, I swear I can talk some days, and is an association of juried artisans who created handcrafted work in many different medias and non-artisan friends who support the RALA. So, in 1976, a group of East Aurora residents with a common interest in the Roy Croft campus and the philosophy of Albert Hubbard set in motion a plan to preserve those ideals which had made the campus a center for arts and crafts and during that movement. So, some of the founding members of the core group were Nancy Hubbard, who was a great-granddaughter of Freya Hubbard, Chris Hamilton, who's a historian and frequent author on Hubbard and the Roy Croft, Kitty Turgeon, who is the innkeeper for the Roy Croft, and Rickford Jennings, who is one of the local artists who grew up as a paperboy on Hubbard's campus, who along with a meeting room full of other folks, decided that there was something too important to let slip by into the dust of an attic-bound history book.
So, after several meetings and energetic discussions, the Roy Crofters at Large Association was formed. The bond they created was blessed by the spirit of Roy Croft, and today the not-for-profit organization is still actively working to keep alive the history and philosophy of Roy Croft through special events centered on and around the Roy Croft campus. Through the efforts of Kitty Turgeon and the RALA organization, the campus became a national historic landmark.
You're invited to come and visit East Aurora, New York. It's the home of the Roy Croft and the RALA through the website. Their website is at ralaweb.com, or you can come by in person, and they want you to join in their spirit and their journey as they come along.
Last year, obviously, things were canceled because of COVID, so they didn't have their 44th anniversary, but skip forward. Now we have the 45th annual Roy Croft Summer Arts and Crafts Festival. That's going to take place this coming weekend, Saturday, June 26th, and Sunday, June 27th, both days from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Classic Rink, which is located at 41 Riley Street in the village of East Aurora.
They'll be selling raffle tickets for the RALA goodie box, and then that goodie box contains items created by the Roy Croft artisans and master artisans and is valued at over $5,000. The drawing will be held on February the 20th of 2022, and that drawing is going to take place at the 35th annual Arts and Crafts Conference at the Grove Park Inn, located in Asheville, North Carolina. The winner doesn't need to be present, but as somebody who has visited Asheville, North Carolina before, it is an incredible little town with so much available.
It's definitely worth the drive to stay down there and take in the wineries, the sites. It's just really a beautiful little town, and perhaps you should go and maybe even go down in February and check out that Arts and Crafts Conference. So to get into the Summer Arts and Crafts Festival, there's a $5 admission charge for adults.
It's free for children 16 and under, so you follow the Roy Crofters at Large Association Facebook page or the Roy Croft Artisans Instagram page for updates, and like I said, you go to their website at ralaweb.com for a list of the artisans that you'll see there, and it's a very large list. While you're going to mark things down on your calendar, make sure you block out Saturday, December 4th, and Saturday, December 5th as well, because they're going to do the Roy Croft Winter Festival. They're still working on the location of that.
That'll be announced at a later date. Hey, seeing as this is the opener of the show still, you might be asking yourself, Jason, what is it that you're drinking today during the opening? Do you have a new bourbon for us that you're going to talk to us about? Is it something that you recently found on tap? Note today what I found actually at Consumers Beverages. This is the newest from Ellicottville Brewing Company.
This is just peachy. It's a sour ale with sweet peach and black tea. It's a simple, easy summer sipper at 4.2 ABV.
I'm drinking this actually out of a tasting glass. The aroma up front, you get the peach right up front, but you can get just a hint of that black tea in there. But once that hits your taste buds, you get this wonderful combination of sweet, almost southern-style peach tea with the black tea combined.
It's almost like a peachy Arnold Palmer. So this one I'll definitely recommend. I picked it up in a four-pack, so the other three are going to be hidden safely in my fridge for the warmer days that are coming up.
And I recommend going out and grabbing some today. I got mine at Consumers Beverages. And while I was out there also, I picked up the newest summer pack because I am one, because of my fitness regimen, I have a tendency to like to stock my fridge with seltzers.
Last season, it was Truly. This season, it's Bud Light Seltzer. I know, it's a domestic name.
You don't usually hear domestic names come off my lips, but trust me, their seltzers are pretty well on point. This is their Retro Summer Limited Edition, the dye pack they call it. They're like a series of three tie-dyed cans.
Comes in the cherry limeade, blue raspberry, and the summer ice, which is almost like a bomb pop. So 100 calories, less than one sugar. A friend of mine told me that for you, the Weight Watchers Conscious people, that those are a four pointer per drink.
But for me, what matters is not a lot of sugar, low on the calories. And if I want to have something to cool down, this might be my go-to reach while I'm still doing my summer training regimen. All right.
And the last part of the opening that I have for you this week is I want to talk to you about a little project that I have been asked to take part in. I know, like I don't have enough to do in my day, in my evenings, and then I went and took on another project. But I was kindly asked by Tom Whitmarsh, who is the head of Western New York Beer Trail, to help him in moderating their new Facebook site.
So if you go on to Facebook and you go to the Western New York Beer Trail group and join up there, I'm going to ask you now to join up. And here's why. We're about to get some things rolling over there.
So right now what you can do is you get in a few of the things that are getting posted here and there. And then we have our almost nightly roll call that if we don't have a roll call already started, you can be the first one to initiate. How you do that? Simply post a picture of what you're drinking.
And then everybody's going to follow in that thread with what they're drinking. You know, tell us where you got it from. You know, tell us a little bit about it.
And let's keep the ball rolling on all the great craft beers that are going on around Western New York. And we're working on something really special coming up hopefully in the fall. More details to come.
In the meantime, what I would like you to do, because you won't be sorry for doing this, head over to Instagram and follow Western New York Beer Trail at Western New York Beer Trail. And there you're going to find their monthly giveaways. You're going to find some of some of the things that Tom and his wife are taking part in around Western New York.
And you're going to find his stories are constant and rolling as people are using the trail pass out there. You know, go to their website. You can do that at WesternNewYorkBeerTrail.com if you want to purchase one of the trail passes yourself.
That's going to give you well over 30 breweries around the Western New York area that are basically you get two pints at half price. Or if you want to do the math even further, I'd like to do the math. That's buy one, get one free.
So you can go in and have two for the price of one for the evening. Go out with friends. Take your significant other.
Enjoy everything that Western New York has to offer. So follow them at Western New York Beer Trail. There are some things upcoming.
I promise you, you're not going to be sorry. In the meantime, you know, participate in the roll call. Let us know what you're drinking around the area and stay tuned for something really nice.
Living in and around the Buffalo and Niagara region, we have so many bodies of water around us that we can enjoy all summer long. Whether it's Lake Erie, you can go up to Lake Ontario. If you're up in Niagara County, Orleans County, we have the Buffalo River.
We have the Niagara River. You know, we have the waterways that are around Grand Island. You know, whether it's taking a kayak or if you're out on the boat on Lake Erie with friends or maybe you're out on a jet ski going up the Niagara River.
But consider a change of pace if you're looking for an opportunity to have a little fun, dress up a little bit, take in some food and some good times. Jump online now and go to grandlady.com and see everything that Grand Lady Cruises has to offer. I took the opportunity to sit down with Jenna Deegan at Grand Lady and we talked about the then that was COVID in 2020 and what's coming up now and in the future for Grand Lady Cruises.
Grand Lady Cruises and we're at 359 Ganson Street, which if you follow ways will put you right in the middle of the Buffalo River, which is fun. Don't take that sudden left turn. And then we're located behind the ice rink here at River Works and all kinds of things going on here.
So I'm going to jump right into this because the Grand Lady Cruises and then we're looking at her right outside the door here. So when I came in I mentioned that I remember the Grand Lady coming to Buffalo in 1998 when I came home from the military and you started off at the holiday inn in Grand Island. So have you been with the Grand Lady the entire time? I have, yeah.
My father purchased the vessel, started the business back in 98. So at the time I was in elementary school. So I kind of just grew up, you know, helping out where I could and started working, you know, when I was in high school and, you know, all through college and then just kind of never left, you know, even though I went to school to be a social studies teacher.
I went to SUNY Geneseo and then I got my master's from Buff State and then I said, yeah, I'd rather just stay here at the family business, I guess. And then the boat used to be, before 98, it was the Naples Princess in Naples, Florida. That's correct.
And before your father purchased it and brought it to the below. And so it's an 80-footer. Yes.
And tell me about the boat itself. Yeah, it's 80 by 20. So it's 80 feet long, 20 feet wide.
It has two Caterpillar diesel engines that power it. We are licensed to carry about 130 passengers, but, you know, as our capacity has kind of decreased as the Americans have gotten a little bit bigger, actually, so we don't put more than usually 100 on it in pre-COVID times. You know, right now we are limited more in like the 50-60 person range with everything going on at the moment.
Understandable. And then, so one of the questions I would usually reserve for the latter part of the interview, one of the reasons I started the podcast was because a lot of businesses had, we didn't know the level of suffering that was going on across the different industries in Buffalo. And obviously now we're finally getting back to whatever normal that this is going to be going forward.
It looks like, you know, eventually we're going to come out of this completely, you know, 15 months later and we didn't think we were ever going to see the light of day or in America like we do, you know, now. But how did the regulations work when it came to you folks? Were you just completely shut down from everything? We were shut down. You know, normally our season would start Memorial Day weekend.
So last year we were not able to get started until indoor dining was able to reopen, which was right Father's Day weekend last year, so middle of June. So we lost a little bit of time from even being allowed to sail. And then I think, you know, the capacity restrictions were, you know, the toughest thing for us to work with.
You know, we can't make the boat any bigger. You know, it's hard for us to add more tables or more space to it. So, you know, we're still limited to, you know, 60 between tables and that's really brought our capacity down tremendously for us, which, you know, obviously hurts, you know, your bottom line and being able to generate the revenue that you're used to.
This year, we're very encouraged with the return of private events. We have always done a large portion of our business, you know, weddings and, you know, social gatherings, anniversaries, birthdays, all that good stuff. And last year we did a few, but, you know, they were so small and so limited and people were just so, you know, uncomfortable or kind of timid about planning such events.
Even when we were able to reopen, you didn't know if we were going to get shut down. We didn't know, you know, what the numbers were going to do. So we are encouraged by, we've noticed a lot more group bookings, private bookings coming up for this year, which is exciting for us.
Just taking a sweep over your calendar online, I mean, you've got a lot, you've got a lot of bookings that are locked down and one of the things I enjoyed looking through is the types of events that you had. And I noticed that one of your more popular ones is the bubbly brunch. Yeah.
Yeah. Our bubbly brunch, we started in 2019 and it really took off for us. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it.
You know, that that's probably the type of cruise that we've had to make the most adjustments to for COVID. You know, pre-COVID we were doing a brunch buffet and it was pretty, just kind of a loose atmosphere where, you know, everyone came on board. We didn't assign seats.
It was just kind of a nice little brunch party, you know, where we had live music and the would be out. People could help themselves when they wanted to and kind of just mingle around the boat. With COVID, we've, you know, we have assigned seating for everybody and we've done a boxed brunch as opposed to the buffet that we were doing before.
So a much more limited capacity, but you know, still people, probably one of our most popular cruises and people are still very much enjoying those. I like that. I like that.
And one of the things that I learned just in recent years, I didn't realize how much of a brunch city Buffalo really is. And if you ask, you know, different, I would say age groups versus, you know, one versus the other, they'll, they have some definite favorites out there, but they're not too eager to tell you about it because they don't want you going in and taking up all the space. And a lot of, a lot of great places along the outsides of the Elmore Corridor, Richmond Avenue, there's a lot of great places down through there, down through the State Street District.
So yeah, I'm going to have to start taking in a few brunches. Yeah, definitely. Back in my days of driving Uber, I couldn't tell you the number of conversations that would go on in the back seat about, really, we're that much of a brunch city around here? Yeah, they're real popular.
We get a lot of like little, little bachelorette parties or little just definitely, you know, the female focused crowd on those for the most part, though we do get a lot of couples and things too, but we notice a lot of groups of like eight to ten girls that are getting together and celebrating a birthday or a bachelorette or, you know, a little shower for somebody, which is nice to see. And it looks like you can, you know, really run the gamut on going from a, even from a bachelorette party, right up through a rehearsal dinner, up through, you have showers and weddings. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. It's for us, we have a lot of success, especially, well, I mean, right now everything's a small wedding, but, you know, even, you know, pre-COVID, we do a lot of second weddings, a lot of smaller weddings where, you know, people just want to have a good experience for all the guests aboard and do something a little bit different than just, you know, get married in any sort of, you know, shoreside banquet hall.
Exactly. You get married on a small boat with a small group of people in the Buffalo Harbor or in the Buffalo River or out in Lake Erie, wherever it is that you go. I mean, it's a story to tell.
Definitely. Yeah. And the photos, the sunset, I mean, it's, it's beautiful.
And then you have your, so you, with your different types of cruises that you have, you have your sightseeing cruises. Now, where would a sightseeing cruise, where would we go if we left here? Sure. So, so we sail for here from Buffalo River Works.
We usually go up the Buffalo River here just a little bit to the Ohio Street Bridge. We turn around there and then head out past Canal Side to Lake Erie. From, on our narrated cruise, we typically then will go down the Black Rock Canal to the Peace Bridge and back.
So lots to see and talk about between here and there. Definitely. And, you know, go by the entrance to Lake Erie and the water intake and, you know, the lighthouse and all those, you know, the highlights of the Buffalo Harbor.
You know, so much to see and such a different view from out there. I mean, it's been many, many years since I've been out on Lake Erie, anywhere near the Buffalo shoreline. But you just, you only see it through pictures and videos.
And until you get out there and experience something like that for yourself, which I'm hoping to do, maybe I do it on the Grand Lady, you know, and then it's a completely different experience, a completely different look at the city than, you know, driving down the 190 or coming in through the 33. Absolutely. Yeah.
I mean, well, you know, obviously Buffalo tends to get a bad rap anyway, but whenever, whenever we're out there in the lake looking back on the city, we always kind of say like, you know, it looks like a real city from out here, you know, just the skyline. And there's so much more activity along the waterfront and going by Canal Side and seeing everybody walking around. It's nice to see so much going on in Buffalo now.
Yeah. And Canal Side is, you know, it's really starting to turn into this small phenomenon down there. Now they have the carousel open and I've already heard a few people who stopped by last weekend to check it out.
Said it was, you know, definitely a great little project. Yeah. I got to check that out.
Yeah. So now, yeah. So it would be them.
And I guess the Carousel Museum up in the Herschel Museum up in North Tonawanda would be the two big ones to, to visit. So yeah. And then now as you also have, so dinner cruises, you have sunset cruises, which my father always told me don't waste a good sunset.
So that's another one that seems appealing to me. So I'm going to have so many choices when it comes to when I finally do this again. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, we do a little bit of everything where if you're looking to have, you know, a full meal on board or dinner cruise or a brunch cruise, you know, we're the only sightseeing boat, tour boat in Buffalo that you can sit and have a meal, you know, while you're, while you're here with us. And then we also do non-meal cruises as well.
If you're looking to do something a little bit more casual, get the group, you know, your friends together and just, yeah, listen to some live music and enjoy the sunset. That's great. And then you do corporate events as well, as well as fundraising events, the Cruise for a Cause.
Yeah. So on, we started doing a few years back, probably five or so years ago, our Cruise for a Cause series. They're on Sunday evenings.
We do, you know, just a two hour boat ride, live music, the bars available. And a portion of the ticket sales goes towards each week. We have a different organization that we work with and, you know, donate.
This year it's $35 for adults to ride along and $8 of that goes right to the charity. And then also 15% of the bar sales that we, that we make that evening on board. So we have cruises lined up with Feedmore of Western New York, Western New York Heroes, ABC Basset Hound Rescue 10 Lives Club.
We do a number of Paw Creek Wildlife Center. So a lot of animal charities. We have the Alzheimer's Association of Western New York.
So try to, try to get some different groups that, especially this past year or so, obviously fundraising events and all those just, you know, weren't in the cards. So it's nice to be able to help them generate some sort of money. Yeah.
These organizations, they just took such a horrible hit. And I heard you mention the 10 Lives Club, which I guess they're going to be back here in a couple of weeks, I guess, for an event here at Riverworks that I, I kind of have a pencil down on my calendar to stop down to enjoy. And then I guess, I guess one of the big wrap up questions I have here is we already talked about, you know, your COVID troubles and scheduling and availability, but what are your personal favorites having been here in the time that you've been? Oh, you know, I mean, my personal favorite, like I said, brunch, I think is great.
A nice little kickoff to like, you know, whatever you're going to do on a Sunday, Saturday, you know, this time of the year. But personally, anything with a sunset I'm down for. So, you know, any of the sunset cruises this year, we're also, I'm very excited.
We're doing some trivia cruises on Tuesday nights. We tried them out a little bit last year with, you know, with COVID. It was something where, you know, people were relatively stationary, kind of came on board, stayed with their groups.
And it was a nice way to still get people on board and do something a little different. And we have, they're all themed night. So we have a Schitt's Creek trivia, we have a Buffalo history, Buffalo sports history.
And we're doing office, the office, of course, everyone loves the office. So we have those usually Tuesday evenings, each week. So, you know, a little different, whatever the theme is going to be, but those are fun for me.
I'm kind of a little history nerd and not myself. So that's fun for me to develop the questions and then be on board, you know, doing the trivia as well. I like it.
I like that. Yeah. And yet, I mean, you have the right idea there too, also with, you know, keeping kind of people fixated in one, in one spot.
And it's, you know, now you get, you get everything, you get the view, you get the boat, you get the trivia, you get to have some fun and spend a few hours, take a, take a time out from life. Yes. While things were, you know, as crazy as they were.
And I don't know if the mics are picking it up, but they get the music already rolling over at Riverworks. Oh my gosh. It's always something over here.
And I guess the final question I would have for you would be what's, what's in the future for, for the Grand Ladies? You know, I mean, you know, hopefully just, you know, more of the same and more of a, being able to expand, you know, what we've been able to accomplish just over the past, you know, three, four years specifically, since we've moved here to Riverworks and be able to establish a little bit more of a regular, you know, schedule as well. You know, we've always been very group driven and very, you know, private charter focused. And the move here has allowed us to, you know, develop more of a regular public schedule for, for individuals and we're in more of a high traffic area.
So we're just looking to be able to, you know, make use of our time as best as we can and, you know, kind of pack in those weekends and, you know, get a little bit of everything from families coming down for a river cruise to, you know, the brunch cruises for your girlfriends and the sunset cruises, you know, to try to kind of maximize, you know, the best that, you know, Buffalo Harbor has really. All right. And that's the part where I'll cut that off, but I'm going to leave it rolling because I'm going to ask you a couple of, like, tail questions and notes.
But when somebody, when somebody books online, is there now, is it going to require a deposit or do you pay everything up front? So for public cruise, they do pay when they make the reservation. Okay. Yeah.
So, I mean, for larger groups, if, you know, we have some other flexible, you know, we do deposits and things like that for people or you're chartering the whole boat or, you know, people are bringing in a group of like 30 people or something like that. But for the most part, people pay when they make their reservation. Okay.
Great. Thanks.
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