Last spring, Poppy Wright was sitting at the computer in her home in Sacramento, Calif., looking for places to live that would bring her closer to her husband in New York City.

On Flickr.com, a photo-sharing Web site, Wright found a group of Buffalonians who share their photos and ideas.

One picture showed part of Allentown, near Days Park, with a mural and architectural details captured in vivid colors.

The photo caption began: “You should move here.” So she did.

“I love that it looked like the Village. I loved the architecture. Just the creative, photography side of me goes, ‘Wow, it looks like a city,’ ” Wright said.

Wright, who had no previous connection to Buffalo, moved here last summer after receiving advice from local Flickr users on everything from house-hunting to beef on weck.

Now, Wright and her husband are buying an old bar on Niagara Street that they plan to renovate and reopen.
This is a story of how a set of images of Buffalo made enough of an impression on a Californian to pull her across the country to the Queen City.

But it also illustrates how Flickr and other social- networking Web sites are linking people in unconventional ways.

“It’s interesting how the virtual world is translated into the real world. We’re finding new ways of seeing things, new ways of connecting,” said David Torke, who writes about and shares photos of East Side neighborhoods on his Fix Buffalo blog. This all starts with Wright, a native of Monterey, Calif., who has worked as a cocktail waitress, a welfare-to-work employment specialist, a loan processor and a health care clerical employee.

Last year, she was living in Sacramento but wanted to move closer to her husband, Sean, who was manager of the legendary Comedy Cellar club in Manhattan.

Wright was a photography buff who got hooked on Flickr.

The Web site provides a dedicated space for people to host and share photos.

On Flickr, members can “tag” their photos with searchable terms that let users look for, say, photos of sunsets, flowers or buildings in Buffalo.

Some members create and join groups centered on a common photographic subject or other shared interest.

“It gives people a chance to meet and communicate who never would have run across each other if it weren’t for the Internet,” said Jim Lindley, administrator of the Buffalo Flickr group, which has 285 members and about 6,600 photos.

Poppy Wright started writing to the Flickr group last spring, saying she was considering moving to Buffalo and asking for the pros and cons of life here.

Local Flickr members touted the region’s low cost of living and great summers and warned her about the lagging economy.

“I’m a transplant myself, and I say come to Buffalo, you’ll love it. It’s the kind of town where if you have a good idea, there’s room to make it grow,” wrote Thomas Woods, a D’Youville College computing services employee, under the Flickr name “doubtingthomas_ blog.”

Last July, Poppy Wright drove crosscountry with her oldest son, Alex, 13.

On their first day in Buffalo, they picked up maps and brochures and drove to Allentown, the downtown medical campus and other places she’d learned about on Flickr. They had dinner at the Anchor Bar, of course.
Wright then found out about a former tavern on Niagara Street, owned by the same family that owned her apartment.

She said she’d dreamed of owning her own nightclub, and knew after seeing the old

Danny Zack’s bar that she wanted to buy it.

She called Sean Wright to ask if he thought buying a bar in Buffalo was a good idea.

“I thought she was joking,” he said. “I said, ‘Yeah sure.’ ”

“I’m really glad he said yes because I had already put in an offer,” said Poppy Wright.

Sean Wright arrived here three days before the October Surprise storm, but the community’s response to it reinforced the Wrights’ view of Buffalo.

The couple, Alex, and their youngest son, Mike, 7, now live in an apartment above the bar that, they say, previously housed a crack addict.

The transplanted Wrights rave about Wegmans, the city’s school-choice program and their ability to walk into City Hall and meet the building inspector handling their bar renovation.

“In New York we’d be struggling to get by, but here we could live comfortably,” said Sean Wright, who is working as manager of a Wilson Farms.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to help lifelong Buffalonians appreciate what we have here, said Robert Franke, founder of the Grant-Ferry Association.

“It does point out to me that we do have something here, something that the locals don’t see all the time,” Franke said.

Wright’s move to Buffalo also reveals the power an image can have when the right person finds it on the Web.

“I tried to capture on film the feeling of being there,” said David Coffee, a photographer and Web designer who posted the photo of Allentown that first grabbed Wright’s attention.

It’s not the only time this has happened here.

Rod McCallum, director of compliance at King Center Charter School, read about an upcoming tour of the area near the Artspace project on Main Street on Torke’s Fix Buffalo blog.

McCallum was interested in one property, the Engel House at 194 E. Utica St., on the tour.

After taking the tour late last year, he became intrigued by the possibilities he saw for the property and some nearby vacant lots.

Now he’s working with city, county and private-sector officials on his idea for a 2z- acre urban farm.

Some of the farm’s yield would be sold to high-end restaurants and grocers, McCallum said, while the rest would be given to anyone willing to help plant, tend and harvest the crops.

The Engel House would serve as co-operative housing and community space.

“Seeing the photo of the Engel House on the Internet is what inspired me,” McCallum said.

Back on Niagara Street, the Wrights are just as enthusiastic about their tavern, at which they plan to offer live music and finger food before eventually adding a full menu. In a nod to Sean Wright’s Brooklyn background, the bar will be called Fuhgeddaboudit.

The Wrights have run into some setbacks in taking ownership of the bar and they now hope to open by September instead of May as originally planned.

Danny Zack’s wood paneling, stucco walls and pleather banquettes remain in good shape, though the Wrights plan a major updating of the interior.

Still, leading a tour of the once-and-future bar by flashlight, Poppy Wright is convinced she was right to buy it.

“I didn’t even look at anything else. I didn’t know if the price was right. I just said, ‘It’s perfect,’ ” she said. Picture perfect, in fact.

swatson@buffnews.com