I don't know the Harlem Road area very well and so had never visited Ja Fa Fa Hots.
So many people came to have their last lunch at Ja Fa Fa Hots that the Harlem Road landmark ran out of hot dogs Friday afternoon.
"I had to run up to Jubilee and buy hot dogs," owner Michael Zylka said a little sheepishly
After 60 years the place is closing, road reconstruction will take most of its parking. We all hate to see old favorite places shut down, but none moreso perhaps than Tim Tielman, preservationist extraordinaire. The Buffalo News even saw fit to get a quote from Buffalo's very own Miss Havisham on the occasion of the hot dog joint's last day.
"One thing that's not really recognized by a lot of people is the value of preserving the recent past," Tielman said. "These things are worth preserving just as much as the house of the first settler." [emphasis mine]
Um, no, Tim, they're not. Yesterday's Ja Fa Fa will be replaced by tomorrow's ___________. It's all part of the fun; it's change. Sometimes (in some places) it's even called growth. Stop insisting that we turn Buffalo into a city in a bottle. At some point, preservation at any cost begins to resemble nothing more than a fetish.
