Angles with John Richmond

John sits down with Matthew DiCamillo, fourth-generation co-owner of DiCamillo Bakery in Niagara Falls - one of the most beloved and enduring food brands in Western New York. Matthew’s path to the bakery was anything but direct. He spent a decade as a classical voice major, adjunct professor at Elon University, and aspiring opera performer before the 2008 financial collapse closed the door on arts...

John sits down with Kevin Heffernan, Executive Director of Go Bike Buffalo, the 16-year-old nonprofit operating community bike workshops, education programs, and a planning and design department that is actively reshaping how Buffalo thinks about its streets. Kevin came up through advertising and college admissions before founding Rise Collaborative, a creative agency, and eventually finding his w...

John sits down with Mike Shatzel, second-generation owner of Cole’s and one of the most respected figures in Buffalo’s bar and restaurant industry. Mike grew up busing tables at Cole’s at ten years old, played D3 basketball at Johns Hopkins and the University of Rochester, got an MBA, and came back to Buffalo to take over the family business. What he built from there - Blue Monk, ABV, Moor Pat, Mo...

John sits down with Joseph Gramaglia, Retired Commissioner of the Buffalo Police Department and President of the Major City Chiefs Association - the organization representing the 70 largest urban police departments in the United States and nine in Canada. Joseph spent his entire career in Buffalo policing, rising from the Buffalo Housing Police at 23 to the commissioner’s chair in 2022. He retired...

John sits down with Lisa Smith, President and CEO of the Buffalo Zoo - the third oldest zoo in the United States, a 151-year-old institution that has survived two world wars, the Great Depression, and 115 days of Covid closure, all starting from a donated pair of deer in 1875. Lisa spent nearly 30 years as a zookeeper and curator before becoming what she calls the Accidental CEO: an interim appoin...

John sits down with Catie Stephenson, Executive Director of the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, the first nonprofit in the country to manage an entire historic urban park system. Catie oversees 850 acres, six parks, seven parkways, and eight circles - the first complete park system Frederick Law Olmsted ever designed, conceived a decade after Central Park but as an interconnected network of par...

John sits down with Jim Sandoro, founder of the Pierce Arrow Museum in Buffalo, for a conversation that spans nearly seven decades of collecting cars, buildings, and history. Jim traces his obsession back to age three, when he pulled back a tarp in his neighbor's garage and found a Pierce Arrow up on blocks. That moment sent him on a path from restoring Model A Fords as a teenager to running...

John sits down with Jonathan Borden, double bassist for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra and a Juilliard trained musician who chose to build his career in Buffalo. Jonathan walks through growing up in a musical family, the teacher who changed his path at 16, and the leap of faith that sent him to Juilliard instead of Northwestern. He also breaks down what it actually takes to survive an orchestr...

John sits down with Christen Civiletto, Niagara Falls-born environmental attorney and author of Thundering Waters: The Toxic Legacy of Niagara County, published by Princeton University Press. Christen has spent 23 years researching the 89-plus documented hazardous waste sites in Niagara Falls after her father was diagnosed with a rare ionizing radiation-related cancer. The conversation is timely:...

John sits down with Beth Machnica, Director of Health and Wellbeing at Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and registered dietitian whose big hairy audacious goal is to make Buffalo a blue zone. Beth grew up in Cheektowaga on pizza, wings, and Hamburger Helper, started a cooking blog at 16 after a high school nutrition class exposed how badly she was eating, and has spent the decade since bringing $1 m...

John sits down with Tom Eoannou, one of the most celebrated criminal defense attorneys in Western New York with 44 years in practice and a reputation built on taking the cases nobody else would take, giving money back when it was the right thing to do, and caring deeply about the human beings behind the charges. Tom is also the man responsible for saving the North Park Theater, restoring the Corne...

John sits down with Laura Fitzgerald, cemetery historian, longtime docent at Forest Lawn, and current director at Oakwood Cemetery in Niagara Falls. Laura has spent over two decades learning to read the stories carved into headstones, buried in burial permits, and hidden in the lives of people most of Western New York has never heard of. This is one of those episodes where you walk away looking at...

John sits down with Brian Higgins, former U.S. Congressman and current President and CEO of Shea’s Performing Arts Center. Brian is South Buffalo born and raised, the son of a bricklayer-turned-city-councilman, and a man whose grandfather helped lay the 520,000 bricks in the historic Shea’s theater itself. He spent 19 years in Congress on the Ways and Means Committee, secured the $300 million New...

John sits down with Matt Fairburn, staff writer at The Athletic covering the Buffalo Sabres and one of the most trusted voices in Western New York sports media. Matt has covered both the Bills and the Sabres across his career, spending years at Syracuse.com before joining The Athletic at its Buffalo launch in 2018. He’s a Boston kid who came to Buffalo for a job, met his wife here, and stayed. Thi...

John sits down with Shane Stephenson, Director of Museum Collections at the Buffalo Naval Park. Shane is an archivist by trade who came to the career at 35 after a trip to the National Archives in Washington changed everything, and has spent the years since cataloging, preserving, and telling the human stories behind the three vessels docked on Buffalo’s waterfront: the USS Sullivans, the USS Litt...

John sits down with Julie Blackman, owner of Farmers and Artisans in Snyder and sixth-generation farmer of Blackman Farms in Niagara County. If you live anywhere near Snyder, you probably already know the store. If you don’t, this episode will make sure you go.   Julie’s story moves from milking cows before school to a 20-year career in physical therapy to a trip to San Francisco that changed ever...

John sits down with Howard Cadmus, owner of Sweet Jenny’s chocolate and ice cream shop and 1811 Comics and Collectibles in the historic Williamsville Mill. Howard is one of the funniest, most self-aware people to sit across from John in 56 episodes. He runs two beloved businesses out of a 215-year-old building with a waterfall out the back, guides every decision by two questions he has asked himse...

John sits down with Tim Herzog, founder of Flying Bison Brewing Company and the man known as the Godfather of Craft Beer in Buffalo. Tim is one of the best storytellers you will ever hear, and this conversation covers all of it: a four-pack of Guinness in 1978, a gag gift from his wife that started a business, six years without a salary, and a 100-year-old brewery license nobody at City Hall knew...

John sits down with Dr. Kevin Williams, director of the Whitworth Ferguson Planetarium at Buffalo State University, for a conversation that covers black holes, Mars, dark matter, life on other planets, and why most of us have completely lost our connection to the night sky. Dr. Williams walks through his origin story, how the planetarium works, and what it actually takes to explain the scale of th...

In this episode of Angles with John Richmond, John sits down with Anthony Greco, Director of Exhibits at the Buffalo History Museum and host of the Buffalo History Museum podcast. Anthony has spent nearly 20 years going down rabbit holes in old newspapers, building exhibits, and telling the stories of a city that most of its own residents only think they know. From the chaos of mid-1800s Canalside...

In this special Mental Health Awareness Month episode of Angles with John Richmond, John sits down with two of Western New York’s most dedicated voices in mental health advocacy. Dan Lukasik is an attorney with over 35 years of experience, the founder of the website Lawyers with Depression, the creator of the Buffalo Depression Project, and a man who has lived openly with major depression for 25 y...

For episode 50 of Angles with John Richmond, the tables are turned. Producer Brett Tuttle steps out from behind the camera and into the host chair to interview the man who has been asking the questions all along. This is the episode John never fully planned for: a honest look at who he is, where he came from, what building Richmond Vona actually cost him, and what he has learned about himself alon...

In this episode of Angles with John Richmond, John sits down with Charlie Specht, one of Buffalo’s most recognized investigative journalists. Over a 15-year career at the Buffalo News, Channel 7, and Channel 2, Charlie built a reputation for breaking stories that matter: police corruption, government misconduct, and one of the most significant local scandals in decades - the Diocese of Buffalo sex...

In this episode of Angles with John Richmond, John sits down with Dawne Hoeg, founder and executive director of Stitch Buffalo, a nonprofit on Buffalo’s West Side that brings together refugee women through the craft of textiles. What started 12 years ago as a grassroots community workshop in a borrowed basement has grown into a full organization with a team, a board, a new facility, three distinct...

In this episode of Angles with John Richmond, John sits down with Lexi Varecka, founder of Flex Yoga, a Buffalo-area yoga and wellness studio with locations in Clarence and Orchard Park. Lexi’s story starts in Washington, D.C., where a yoga teacher training she signed up for just to deepen her own practice turned into the seed of something much bigger. She took that passion to the West Coast, spen...