by Ken Stuczynski
Buffalo is the City of Good Neighbors. Like Cleveland, it is sometimes called the Queen City of Lake Eire, and it is the Nickel City, from the old Indian Head nickel coin with a Buffalo on the back. It is an All America City, though no one is sure why or what that means.
The Buffalo of 100 years ago was the Grain Capital of the world. It was the terminus for the Erie Canal and the biggest Railroad city in the country, with the Lovejoy Neighborhood,
once farmland owned by Millard Fillmore, then first called Iron Island for the tracks that surrounded it.
It was the home of the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, where money was lost, President McKinley was shot, but
with power cables strung from Niagara Falls countless bulbs illuminated the
century to come. With its brightly coloured buildings and visitors from
around the world, an Edison crew captured this post-Spanish-American War celebration
of peace on film. It was truly the Rainbow City, the City of Light.
Industry and local Vaudeville slowly slipped away over the decades, with
growing de-urbanization and suburban sprawl to today's diminishing population of
both city and county. The railroads gave way to thruways, the Canal was
replaced by the I-190, and Bethlehem Steel
and the largest grain elevators in the world are now all but abandoned.
Service industries and Information Technology are forging a new economy, while
we can't even build a bridge to Canada, where our money is spent on the
weekends.
Buffalo is a sports town, where the Home Team fandom borders on
religion. It's about the Buffalo Bills and Sabres, and championships that
just can't be won year after year, leaving us to shout, "Wide Right!"
and "No
Goal!" It's about winning teams like the Bandits and Bisons that we
just can't keep.
It is about the Blizzard of '77 burned in our mythos like the Great Flood of
the Bible. Eager national news reports cry our city's name at the drop of
the hat where snow is involved, even when the real storm is no closer than Syracuse.
Our sunsets are scarce, but twilight is always a palette of God's brightest
colors.
Buffalo has a Common Council that outlived its usefulness, where the rally
cry of politicians to develop downtown with more elite housing, inaccessible
parks, building stadium after stadium, parking lot after lot built with a
vengeance. A beautiful subway that only goes "back and forth"
surfaces to a brightly decorated, but relatively deserted downtown shopping
district.
The neighborhoods, the true heart of the city, fend for themselves.
Here, where the "good neighbors" are found, is a mosaic of ethnic
foods, festivals, and traditions. A handful of small news publications
fight for hometown identity under the shadow of an uncontested Buffalo news
paper run by outsiders.
Buffalo is about crazy drivers, but someone always lets you in. It's
about tragedies and hardships, but there's always somewhere to go for a helping
hand. Buffalo is all these contradictions, a fine balance of frustration
and hope.
My Buffalo is perhaps different from Your Buffalo, which is different from your Neighbor's Buffalo, and the Buffalo of our children who choose to stay here when they grow up and grow old. And that Buffalo, for better and worse, will be something to see and to remember.
January 2000
