About 20 years ago is when I first remember seeing "buffalo wings" but I'm sure they have been around before that. Extended family members in Texas showed us how to make them with frozen "party wings" from safeway, a 6oz bottle of Louisianna hot sauce (like the Crystal name brand style) mixed with a stick of BUTTer. You cook the wings for about 30 min on a sheet in the oven, take them out, dunk em in the sauce then another 30 min. Keep the sauce on hand to dunk 'em if you like them spicier. You can skip the 60 minutes in the oven if you have a deep frier but then you don't have that "cooked in" sauce goodness.
For a local place, in the "buffalo wings" vein, "T's diner" in San Francisco had a sign that was the silhouette of a chicken sitting in a frying pan, screaming fire out it's beak while being cooked, presumably, alive. Several boasts about their hot wings and varieties of sauce got me to hit them up but I don't think they were any better than a Hooters restaurant to be honest. At least they offered order sizes up to 50 wings at a time so you didn't look crazy buying a bunch for parties. Nice thing is they offer crudities with it for free but they default to blue cheese rather than ranch as the side, so remember to ask for ranch if you're a fan of ranch.
As far as fried chicken wings go I like breaded or battered in some way. I remember grabbing some "hot wings" from KFC in high school and losing my mind at how good they were. I have to clarify though as apparently the San Francisco, Bay Area, KFCs have some kind of completely different layout on their menu from the rest of the world and I've shit deep in this conversation before. They look like the "fiery buffalo" wings here
http://www.kfc.com/menu/chicken_wings.asp but they have no sauce on them at all, just that breading and they offer the flavors on the side. (On a side note, we have ZERO access to the "boneless wings" they serve at all either, so strange...) Sizzler serves the same wings, basically, in their all you can eat salad bar hot section, if you have a Sizzler around for reference. I love that style with the KFC hot sauce in little black packets which I'd say is basically Louisiana Hot sauce again.
My sister is a recent convert to Popeye's chicken. Before that, the only time I'd heard anyone talk about Popeye's chicken was a standup comedian at Cobb's who said, "If you are forced to choose between a piece of chicken on the ground and a bucket of Popeye's chicken, you eat the chicken on the ground." :
As to spicy stuff vs. mild or whatever, my dad was an amateur "eater-of-hot-shit" so I was raised around a lot of that crap. I'm not so amazing pro but I find no spice really in stuff like Crystal or Tabasco sauce level spice. There was a short lived, spicy Crystal and that is about the level I start noticing the heat. I don't think it's worth eating if there is no actual taste to the spicier stuff but I also hate when the sauce might as well be ketchup!
