The Aud like you've never seen it (YouTube gold)

[Sabel79]

The first three minutes of that video could have been an episode of Trailer Park Boys.

I'm too young to remember the Aud, but man, that place looks like a dump. I love it.

Dump doesn't even begin to cover it. But it was special. And frightening.

[LTS]

Memories... oh man.  The angles to the ice from the oranges... if only they built arenas that way today.. love it.

[PromoTheRobot]

Only set foot in the old Boston Garden once in 1994. They tore it down soon after. The Aud was practically the same building.

[Claude_Verret]

Great memories. Gurtler was/is such a grade A tool. I had my own "private" unauthorized tour of a darkened Aud circa the late 90s where we visited many of those places in the video. The locker room was littered with players' medical and fitness files, and one of the guys from our crew might have left with the Sabres logo adorned awning that the visiting team entered/exited the ice under.

[SwampD]

I have very few memories of the Aud with regard to the Sabres. My memories of it are all clouded with pot smoke and drum solos. Moving Pictures, Signals, Grace Under Pressure, Supertramp, U2,… Always ended up in that cement cube affectionately called The Beer Garden, though.

[sodbuster]

I have very few memories of the Aud with regard to the Sabres. My memories of it are all clouded with pot smoke and drum solos. Moving Pictures, Signals, Grace Under Pressure, Supertramp, U2,… Always ended up in that cement cube affectionately called The Beer Garden, though.

What I would give to have seen three of those concerts...

[Claude_Verret]

Saw Rush and U2 at the Aud.

[nfreeman]

This thread demonstrates why PAFan, baggage notwithstanding, is a platinum level poster. What a great find. The shot of the front doors and the entrance hall leading to the turnstiles really brought me back.

 

We sat for a number of years in the blues under that overhang.

 

The Aud was cramped and claustrophobic in the interior, but it was most assuredly not a dump. It was a fantastic place to watch a hockey game. There was no Chef and Muffy issue in that building.

 

The newer arenas have better food (that SportsSevice logo was another, less welcome, blast from the past) and are more comfortable, but too much has been sacrificed on the altar of creature comfort.

[PromoTheRobot]

SportsService...You were hungry until you saw the sign.

[Sabre Dance]

A link to this video showed up on BarDown, focusing on some proposed/rejected Sabre logo designs that were on display at the Aud during a season ticket holder open house in October 1994.

 

But that's just part of the video. The whole thing is almost half an hour long and was filmed by a young Canadian dude and his buddies and it starts as they cross the Peace Bridge. When they go through the doors of the Aud and into the lobby... chills. They snake their way through the dingy corridors, one of them wondering if the cracks in the floor were caused by an earthquake, and make their way to the top of the building.

 

You see Jerry Magill's cubbyhole where he sounded the horn from; the catwalk leading to the press box, giving one of the guys a chance to touch one of the "cigarette filters" that hung from the rafters; a dizzying view from the oranges; the "spectacular" luxury boxes they put in toward the end; the state of the art communication systems that made the out of town scoreboard go; the Buffalo News box; then down into the old-school lockerrooms; a very awkward meeting with John Gurtler; and finally onto the ice for a shot at an empty net.

 

If you remember the Aud, this is a must-watch. If you don't, well, this is exactly what it was like. What a barn.

 

 Wow....the first time I went to an event at the Aud (it was likely college basketball, not a Sabres game), I was impressed by how big and "professional" everything looked.  In seeing this video, you can see it for what it was: an updated minor league arena. Nonetheless, I would give back 50% of the (really) modern amenities at the FNC just to have an Aud-like experience just one more time.  It was a great old building.....

[Brawndo]

SportsService...You were hungry until you saw the sign.

 

 

The steamed hot dogs?

[JJFIVEOH]

I have more video. Gimme a day

 

Time's up!

[Norcal]

Cool video, thanks for posting. I remember going to games as a kid, sitting in the orange seats and loving every minute of it. Earned those tickets for participating in the read-a-thon in ps #77.

[Stoner]

Thanks nfreeman. Despite you being a world class ##### you do occasionally post something useful, like earlier in this thread.

[pastajoe]

My first memory of the Aud was my dad taking me to see wrestling.  All I can remember were the midget tag-teams that were hysterical, and the cloud of cigarette smoke that hung above all of us.  Other memories are seeing a double-header of the Harlem Globetrotters play before the Braves played Bill Walton's Trailblazers, and when a friend and I took a train from Syracuse to see the Sabres play the Atlanta Flames.  We sat in the oranges, and it was scary walking those steep steps.

[Sabres Fan in NS]

I spent many hours in the Aud as a youth ... we would visit my cousins in Elma and go to some games, although that side of the family were bigger Bills fans.

 

My wife and I loved coming to the Aud once we were married ... late 80's and early 90's.  In those days you could always scrounge good tickets for face value, or less.  We often would buy tickets prior to games (calling from Canada ... prior to the invention of the Internet) we really wanted to see ... almost always good seats available.

 

One thing really stands out in my memory ... I think they were playing the Penguins in 1990, maybe 1991.  Yuri Khmylev was sent in all alone and he missed the net by 2 feet, as per usual.  We had prime seats right behind the net.

[Weave]

I spent many hours in the Aud as a youth ... we would visit my cousins in Elma and go to some games, although that side of the family were bigger Bills fans.

 

My wife and I loved coming to the Aud once we were married ... late 80's and early 90's. In those days you could always scrounge good tickets for face value, or less. We often would buy tickets prior to games (calling from Canada ... prior to the invention of the Internet) we really wanted to see ... almost always good seats available.

 

One thing really stands out in my memory ... I think they were playing the Penguins in 1990, maybe 1991. Yuri Khmylev was sent in all alone and he missed the net by 2 feet, as per usual. We had prime seats right behind the net.

Before dad and l got our season tix, our usual method of acquiring seats involved walking up on a scalper right about at puck drop and getting tix for a pretty healthy discount as they were trying not to get stuck with them. Of course this worked against us when the games sold out. When we couldn't score tix we'd watch the game in a 1st ward bar. Edited March 28, 2016 by We've