Reality - BuffaloRising Need Not Apply

[Edisonic]

I have friends from Brooklyn staying for a few days ... I fetched them from the airport, around 6pm. "Oh, take us through the City!", they asked... ack.

So, I did - I tried to show them some bits of this area, in the dark. Genesee to Bailey, out to William, then all the way downtown. Most of William was a horror show - just NOTHING, from the city line to the Central Library. They couldn't believe it, and hardly could I, as I hadn't been past the William Street post office for years. No stores, no people, nothing but empty lots, abandoned stores and subsidized cheesy houses. We had the entire pot-holed street to ourselves.

Downtown was slightly different - I parked near Main St, so we could have a look: Friday night, and there was NOBODY but us.... we Four and the empty storefronts. Sad. So, back in the car and up Franklin, where we encountered several Happy Hour loser drivers who were already drunk and trying to cause accidents. Chippewa "revival" = a bunch of bars and their drunks, don't ya know. Yeehaw.

At least the friends like my house, which seems big by Brooklyn standards and has a yard.

Go, Buffalo! Abandoned Industrial, Post-Apacolyptic Wasteland (and that includes its suburbs)

[speaker]

Edisonic--don't know what age group your friends are in, but, what they saw that night was what I saw many years ago when I first saw Brooklyn.

Deserted, grey, dirty, ramshackle, covered with graffiti broken windows and mean looking people. This was Flatbush Ave, and I had missed Brooklyn's heydey, the beloved city of gardens, neighborhoods and safe traveling. Great people came out of there.

But I stayed there for a few years and I knew I had lucked out. All of the city's beauty was being rediscovered and there were people willing to take a chance on it. Today it's one of the greatest urban areas to live in, if you like cities.

Buffalo can do the same, but it takes work, faith and lots of money and endurance. Don't worry about your friends. They've seen it all.

[300miles]

You could have shown them some of the nicer areas of the city too, to get a broader picture.

Delaware, Hertel, Elmwood, Linwood, Richmond, Allen, Nottingham, Chapin, Bidwell, Lincoln...

Main St is often dead at night (unless there's a big theater show that night), but Hertel, Allen, Chippewa, and Elmwood have foot traffic for their bars and restaurants. Also Saturday is generally busier than Friday.

Next time

[Linda_D]

William Street? In its heyday, William Street was lined with stockyards and meat packing plants, so it wouldn't have been a show place decades ago! William Street and urban renaissance have never been mentioned in the same sentence by any serious person. If you were at the airport, why didn't you drive in Genessee, BTW?

As for showing visitor the city, I have to wonder how you could miss the areas that 300 miles mentioned? And since you knocked the 'burbs, too, I have to wonder how you missed Kenmore or Snyder or Williamsville? Was this the "look at how pathetic the Buffalo area is compared to Brooklyn" tour?

I'm sure you made your friends feel very smug and superior.

[steven]

Ditto All of what Linda and 300miles said. sounds like you went out of your way to take them thru the worst areas

Going back to the 60's I cant remember william st ever being anything but an industrial area, why on gods green earth would that be a destination to "show" people anything?

and what does any of that have to do with buffalorising???????

[300miles]

I didn't get them impression Edisonic meant to purposely take them through the grittier parts of town. He admitted he hadn't been downtown in years so maybe he's not too familiar with the city and wasn't sure where to go when his friends put him on the spot for a tour of the city.

Hopefully next time friends are in down he can show them the other side of Buffalo

[NoCtUrNaL]

[Edisonic]

I took them in a fairly straight line from the airport to where I live, without using the 33/198 but still going through some of "downtown". Sadly, if I had taken Broadway, Clinton, Sycamore, Genesee or even Kensington, the view would have been about the same: abandoned buildings and empty lots.

'BuffaloRising' only recognizes the little wedge of surviving City around Elmwood, which is why I mentioned it. The visitors got to see some of Elmwood and other parts of Buffalo, later ...

[Linda_D]

I took them in a fairly straight line from the airport to where I live, without using the 33/198 but still going through some of "downtown". Sadly, if I had taken Broadway, Clinton, Sycamore, Genesee or even Kensington, the view would have been about the same: abandoned buildings and empty lots.

'BuffaloRising' only recognizes the little wedge of surviving City around Elmwood, which is why I mentioned it. The visitors got to see some of Elmwood and other parts of Buffalo, later ...

Okay.

I also understand your disdain for the 'BuffaloRising' crowd. I was into the site for a while because I really liked that they talked about rebuilding neighborhoods -- they had stuff on Harvey Garrett and the anti-tagging task force, etc. I even wrote an article for them, but too many of their readers/contributors are out of touch with the reality that is Buffalo, NY. They seem to think they live in Manhattan on the Buffalo River.

[300miles]

Buffalo Rising does not paint a complete picture of Buffalo. It's definitely an optimist / rose colored view of our future.

But why is that such a bad thing? How many resources does buffalo have that try to pump up the city? People involved with BRO actually make an effort to bring people here... to market Buffalo and WNY. They get the word out about what we have going for ourselves here.

There are dozens of websites, tv stations, blogs, newspapers that constantly harp on the negative (aka "well-rounded"). There are former Buffalonians all over the country that are more than happy to tell everyone around them how Buffalo is worse than Beirut, even if they never actually set foot in the city.

Buffalo's image is 10 times worse than it's reality. Buffalo Rising is making an attempt to change that. Why nitpick about it? Let them have a shot. If it results in new businesses, new development, or God forbid... new jobs... then it should be encouraged!

[NoCtUrNaL]

Buffalo and WNY's image will improve when the conditions are created that will nurture prosperity, not by a web blog.

[Linda_D]

Buffalo Rising does not paint a complete picture of Buffalo. It's definitely an optimist / rose colored view of our future.

But why is that such a bad thing? How many resources does buffalo have that try to pump up the city? People involved with BRO actually make an effort to bring people here... to market Buffalo and WNY. They get the word out about what we have going for ourselves here.

There are dozens of websites, tv stations, blogs, newspapers that constantly harp on the negative (aka "well-rounded"). There are former Buffalonians all over the country that are more than happy to tell everyone around them how Buffalo is worse than Beirut, even if they never actually set foot in the city.

Buffalo's image is 10 times worse than it's reality. Buffalo Rising is making an attempt to change that. Why nitpick about it? Let them have a shot. If it results in new businesses, new development, or God forbid... new jobs... then it should be encouraged!

I have no problem with being optomistic nor do I have a problem with being pro-city, but I do have a problem when contributors adopt a "them (ie, suburbs) vs us (ie, city)" attitude and paint everything in the city as "good" and everything in the suburbs as "bad" and constantly push the "great suburban conspiracy" as the source of all the city's woes. The fact is that Buffalo's "leadership" has let city residents down by ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens who don't have the $$$ to live in the Delaware District or Elmwood Village, and that's at least as big a cause of the city's decline as anything else.

I simply get tired of the condescension and the assumed superiority.

[300miles]

I simply get tired of the condescension and the assumed superiority.

I totally agree. Some of the writers have a very urban-elitest attitude that should have been reigned in before it aliened people.

[300miles]

Buffalo and WNY's image will improve when the conditions are created that will nurture prosperity, not by a web blog.

But a good blog certainly doesn't hurt.

Also, like I said, the people involved with BRO have actively brought potential investors to see and tour Buffalo. They are more proactive than just a passive blog bitching about the same old arguments of "what's wrong with buffalo." They're actually making calls and getting people on a plane.

Many people new to buffalo have said repeatedly that they had no idea how great it was here. In those cases, the image was more significant than the real conditions... because people across the country are completely unaware. A good reason to have a positive blog.

[NoCtUrNaL]

But a good blog certainly doesn't hurt.

Also, like I said, the people involved with BRO have actively brought potential investors to see and tour Buffalo.

Investors? Investing in what? U-haul-It franchise opportunities?