‘Yes’ To Slaughterhouses, ‘No’ to Urban Farming, ‘Probably’ to Strip Mining.

By Hardy Astrom and Frank Brutus

Mayor: "Dig this."

Answering questions from his Tampa Bay ‘Situation Room,’ Brown defended recent decisions that have left many of the city’s citizens dumbfounded.

“It’s really a matter of zoning laws,” he said. “Citizens are not free to engage in the seeding of Buffalo soil. You can cultivate, you can harvest, you just can’t seed. You could, however, slit the throat of a cow, for meat processing or for sport.” Brown referenced the zoning law, which he found in City Hall Archives.

“A gentleman by the name of Griffin put it on the books in the 1980’s,” Brown chuckled. The law apparently was put into place to discourage citizens who grew rutabaga, a vegetable the late Jimmy Griffin despised. The Ruse investigated the legitimacy of the claim, and found a quote from Griffin at the signing of the zoning law.

“They smell like the south end of a north bound goat.” Griffin said. “They won’t be growing in my town.” The same day, Griffin also signed a law limiting artworks commissioned by the City to shapes that, “don’t resemble a honeymoon do-jigger.”

“Strange but true,” said Brown. “So my hands are tied in this regard, but like my friend Larry Quinn over at HSBC taught me, you don’t go changing things just because you’re mired in mediocrity. You work within the system, and you hope for something magical to happen.”

And according to Brown, that magic might be right under our feet.

“We hope to begin excavating vacant lots throughout the city, to harvest the resources we have been ignoring for centuries.” Brown said the City’s strip mining potential was brought to his attention by Councilman Brian Davis, who recently returned from a Back to Work seminar in Zimbabwe.

“Mr. Davis saw thousands of citizens who had previously been unemployed, working diligently under the supervision of diamond surveyors.” the Mayor said. “Young and old, many of them handicapped and amputees, all of them, working.”

Brown said that while Buffalo can’t boast gems like diamonds, there are other possibilities.

“There’s definitely rock. At least I hit many when I garden.” Brown added that gypsum was once mined in the area, and that he wouldn’t mind a surprise or two.

“You won’t catch me complaining if we happen across a little bling or gypsum.”

Davis concurred. “I’d give my right hand for a little of what they were digging up in Africa. That’s a lucky group of worker bees.”