ArtsBeat

A couple poses for wedding pictures in front the exposed guts of Memorial Auditorium in early June. Photo by Colin Dabkowski.

I was riding my bike yesterday, as I often do, past the craggy remains of Buffalo's Memorial Auditorium on my way to work. No sooner had I locked up my ride to the rack outside The News than I heard a thundering crash, and looked up just quick enough to catch the cloud of dust and dirt that signified the final, official demise of the storied edifice on Buffalo's burgeoning waterfront.

At certain points during the demolition, the Aud looked a lot like a target of the war it was built to memorialize. But yesterday, the long project, the messy evisceration that seemed to drag on for moths (because it actually dragged on for more than a year), the painful vision of crumbling concrete and fractured steel, had finally reached its protracted end.

Having observed the destruction almost day by day, like many of my colleagues, what struck me most were not the incremental physical changes the building underwent from the start of the demolition to its completion yesterday. Riding past the building, no matter the time of day or night, I always saw at least a few onlookers who'd come to be in the presence of the building's iineffable and epic denouement.

Some came simply to gawk at the building, others to take a few snapshots for posterity, and some to genuinely reminisce about moments they spent in the nosebleeds, drinking gallons of Molson and shouting boozy benedictions or obscenities at the likes of Gilbert Perreault and Pat LaFontaine. Nostalgia surely had something to do with it, but more than anything the crowds seemed to be motivated by something a lot simpler: an entirely healthy appetite for destruction.

Visually, there's something innately impressive about the intentional dis-assembly of something with as much cultural, social and physical impact (say what you will about its design) as the city's Memorial Auditorium. It's a conscious decision to do away with a cultural symbol that for one reason or another has shed the bulk of its meaning. And when that decision is in the throes of its execution, it's practically impossible to look away. The question, for those who made the trip down to see the last days of the Aud, is whether the motivation was really deep reflection and nostalgia or a base desire to see a massive object meet its end.

One couple decided to have their wedding pictures taken in front of the building while its rows of terraced seats were still visible. With the happy couple on the left and the crumbling building on the right, a friend of mine said he hoped it wasn't a before-and-after picture. What might have motivated the couple to commemorate what was probably the biggest decision of their lives in a scene of such seeming ugliness says a lot about our culture, about the institutions it creates, and what happens when it destroys them.

If you came down to see the Aud's last gasps, tell us what made you come.

--Colin Dabkowski