Wednesday, May 24, 2006 | Twenty years ago today YESTERDAY was the day I set aside to visit the Amherst Campus of SUNY Buffalo, where I graduated 20 years ago this week. That's the new campus, which has grown up beautifully. I spent the day in Starbucks, writing horoscopes and looking out at the new Student Union building that was built after a long, relentless campaign by a succession of student editors educating the student community that one really did belong there. The evening before, I made a disturbing visit to the Main Street campus, the old campus, where Generation, the student magazine I started in 1984, had its offices when I was editor. Disturbing because any trace of the campus as I knew it had been erased, torn down, renovated, converted, covered over, trees planted, unrecognizable. There was a little lawn where my Service Vehicle parking spot used to be, constantly adorned by my gold 1972 Dodge Dart. I attended UB, as it's called locally, in a time of enormous transition for the university. The original campus, located in the city and more than 100 years old, was being converted to a health sciences center. A new campus was being created three miles away in the town of Amherst on some swamplands. The crux of the transition was around 1982, when Squire Hall, the student union on the old campus, was closed down (amidst a pretty huge controversy) for conversion into a dental school. The closing of Squire was in part a practical move; that really was the place the dental school was planned. But it was also a spiritual gesture, taking out the heart of the campus and the place that had served as the student headquarters during the anti-Vietnam War protests and riots. Some student organizations were moved out to Amherst immediately, and others were moved into an ancient, previous student union called Harriman Hall that was taken out of mothball status put back into service. Gradually, those were moved out as well. Generation was one of the last student organizations in that building since nearly everyone else had been moved out to new space in Amherst. As one organization after another was relocated to the new campus, Generation's suite of offices expanded regularly. I used to have keys to about 14 rooms down there, and in many ways the magazine was the last vestige of student organization life on the Main Street Campus, the last little trace of the Squire Student Union spirit. We shared Harriman Hall with the Theatre and Dance department. It happened, as a result, that I had a lot of occasion to see my dance professor, Tom Ralabate, even after I stopped taking jazz dance classes, because his studios were right upstairs from my offices. When I went back to the Main Street campus Monday night, I saw for the first time where the whole end of the building where my old offices and the dance studios were had been razed and replaced with a few trees. Dreams of the Generation basement suite of offices had haunted me for many years after I'd graduated. I had been aware for years that at some point that side of the building would be removed (to move construction equipment into place, the administration told me). So I was prepared for what I would find, but it was still pretty strange. I went into the remaining part of the building and instinctually walked down to the basement like I had done thousands of times before. Instantly familiar. I was in a maintenance corridor off to the side of the student activity rooms on that level. But all the corridors and rooms where I had worked and in truth lived for years were gone; they had been buried. It was like being in a dream where the adjoining dream was inaccessible. I roamed around, reluctantly took some pictures, then took a tunnel to the old student union, Squire, which was now very much a dental school. The conversion began right when I arrived on the campus, and went on long after I had graduated. But I did have memories of Squire Student Union, including one from when I visited the campus as a high school senior, walked through the building and felt the life and vibrancy pulsing through it, and knew I had to come to that university. That was the deciding moment. Twenty-six years ago. I explored the basement a little, went into one of the pre-clinical labs, took some photos, using a flash -- nobody questioned me...I roamed around with perfect freedom...either security was pretty casual, or some of my old walk-through-walls magic that had taken me through nearly every inch of that campus was still at work. This was the basement that had housed a Rathskeller, bowling alleys, and student organizations, and the last time I had been there it was packed with students, and vibrating with intensity that was really the residue of the student spirit of the 1970s. Now there were things like Central Sterilization and a flammable materials storage room. Enough. I looked for the nearest stairwell and went upstairs. I looked down at the steps. Despite a total renovation, they were the exact same steps. Instant flashback. My feet knew where they were and I could very nearly hear the echoes of so long ago. Finally I headed off campus to Anacone's Inn, looking for Andrew Galarneau, Generation's first writer, who would be there watching the Buffalo Sabres in the playoffs. The walk seemed endless. Neighborhoods that had once been off-campus student housing were now like a slum. Block after block, unrecognizable. I kept reminding myself that everything, all the undergrads, had now moved out to Amherst, that the life and student culture existed somewhere else. But it was like another world with the same layout as the real one. Finally I got to Anacone's. Andrew was there, screaming at the television with a bunch of other Sabres fans. It really had been twenty years since I had seen him. He was a little heavier, a little older, with a picture of his three kids in his wallet, which he showed me 15 seconds after I got there; but still very much the person I knew, the extremely intelligent, cynical, loving, wiseass, not quite a badboy but not quite a good boy, either. Andrew, at age 18 or so when he showed up in my office, was the writer of the column that, from the first issue, guaranteed that there would never be a leftover copy of Generation -- a series that ran for four years consecutively, written anonymously by "Bitter Twisted." Back then, hours before deadline, Andrew would need to be located sleeping and hung over somewhere, dragged in front of the computer, propped up, given coffee and cigarettes, and then he would come out with the most brilliant thing in the magazine every week. He now writes for the Buffalo News. A while later Reg Gilbert, who had been a kind of mentor to Generation, arrived, wearing pajama bottoms because he refused to get dressed at 9 pm. He was one of the people who taught me how to write, in particular, to write persuasively. Then Doug Levere walked in, someone who I was not expecting to see. He was a photographer who joined the magazine shortly after I stepped down as editor. Reg summed up the 32 years it took him to finally get his undergraduate degree. Doug, who had recently moved back from Manhattan, told his story of refusing to photograph the World Trade Center as it was burning. We talked about the world and where it was going, a strange experience considering that I had not hung out with these guys since Ronald Reagan was president. At the table with us was a guy named Chris, who was something like the 22nd editor in chief of the magazine. I kept buying the drinks and nachos. http://planetwaves.net/chart.php?c=andrew