Erik Brady: Book outlines hidden gems in Western New York and author’s lifetime of loving his hometown

One was a marriage proposal, the other a book proposal.

He got married in May. And now the book is out: “111 Places in Buffalo That You Must Not Miss.”

It so happens that 11 is a lucky number in Cologne, Germany, where the publisher of this series of travel books is based.

“But you can’t write about only 11 places in a book,” Hayden says, “so they stuck another ‘1’ on there.”

The 111 places in and around Buffalo and Niagara Falls are not the usual suspects. (No Anchor Bar, for instance.) This isn’t that sort of book.

“It doesn’t purport to be the top places to visit,” Hayden says. “It’s meant to focus on hidden gems, off-the-beaten-path locales, and lesser-known stories of the more well-known places.”

• Old Fort Niagara, but with the story of Betsy Doyle, a laundress and nurse who carried hot cannonballs during a battle in the War of 1812 as the Americans traded fire with the British across the way at Fort George.

• F. Scott Fitzgerald’s onetime home at 29 Irving Place, in Allentown. His biographer Andrew Turnbull once described it as “a lovely spot for a poet to grow up in.” You can’t go inside, but you can see it from the street. (And be borne back ceaselessly into the past.)

• Doris Records, where a young James Johnson, later known as Rick James, promised store owner Mack Luchey that he was going to make it big one day. Buffalo’s oldest record store, at 286 E. Ferry St., is run today by Derrick Luchey, son of the late owner.