The Beginning of the End for Canal Side

Several years from now, when the old Aud site is still a flat concrete wasteland, we’ll look back to March 16th as the day the Canal Side scheme fell apart.

Today, the Common Council of the City of Buffalo decided beggars can be choosers. They decided they’d rather have theoretical good paying jobs that don’t exist, rather than lower paying jobs that do exist. They made this decision on behalf of the public, many of whom I’m sure don’t share their sentiment, the rent being due and all.

Today the Common Council adopted a number of requirements, lobbied for by various small advocacy groups that have the hubris to presume they speak for the public at large, that will scuttle the Canal Side development. Some of those requirements are laudable and reasonable – green building initiatives for example. But one particular requirement, that businesses larger than 20 employees pay a “living wage” – a completely unrealistic number not paid by retail establishments anywhere in the country, will be the nail in the coffin for skittish retailers wary of expanding anyway.

The City of Buffalo Common Council makes all sorts of ridiculous pronouncements, and most are easily ignored. Unfortunately, in this case, the Common Council has teeth. If they don’t transfer the land to the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corp, then Canal Side doesn’t get built. And if they stick to their guns on this provision, the City will continue to own empty land. But don’t worry – there will be plenty of well paying imaginary jobs waiting to exist.

Last summer, two years after I moved back, I wrote about how 2010 and 2011 looked hopeful, because of a number of projects in the queue. Now, with Canal Side beginning the slow downward spiral, the Statler and Hotel Lafayette closed, and other projects stalling, I’m not so sure.

A couple of additional thoughts to head off arguments at the pass. First – what of the idea that such demands are justified since public money is involved? First, its not the City of Buffalo’s money – its the state, feds, and NYPA paying for the bulk of this development. If they demand a living wage, they are at least in a more reasonable position to do so. Second, the requirement is inconsistent and arbitrary – plenty of other projects, far less important, get subsidies and public money without this need. And third, hasn’t the city living wage requirement caused enough problems already? It’s already keeping groups like Buffalo Reuse from hiring workers to take apart more homes. It’s already driving out business (for- and non-profit) and raising costs, and Buffalo is no less poor. Perhaps it’s time to try a different tack, other than driving away jobs by making demands.

Second argument to debunk – wasn’t Bass Pro not coming already? After all, they haven’t signed any binding agreements? For two years, ECHDC and Bass Pro have been saying they can’t sign a binding agreement until all the environmental reviews are complete. We are days away from that being done. Now we’ll never know if they are telling the truth or not – Bass Pro has a gold plated excuse to no longer come. Congrats, City of Buffalo Common Council – you let Bass Pro off the hook.

The “Face” of the Stimulus

In the early 1930’s, with the United States still in the early stages of the Great Depression, FDR proposed a stimulus bill. Besides being a supremely confident egotist, tireless liberal advocate, cut throat politician and war leader, FDR was also a master communicator and marketer. Obama would do well to learn a thing or two, despite his rhetorical reputation.

FDR realized that Americans needed more than money, or jobs, or nice words on the radio that things were getting better. They needed tangible signs that the country was getting better. They needed proof they could see with their own eyes that their neighbors were back to work, and the government’s money was being spent on real projects of use to the community. They needed facts to confront fear and cynicism. Thus, the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps were born.  

Those two organizations did projects around the country that continue to benefit us to this day. They built schools, roads, bridges and public infrastructure. They hired artists to paint murals and include statues and carvings in new public buildings. They built the national park infrastructure that we know today, including iconic lodges and roads that are marvels of engineering at some of America’s crown jewels: Yellowstone, Glacier and Rocky Mountain. In Buffalo, WPA projects are scattered throughout the city, from small school reconstructions to the Old Rockpile and Buffalo Zoo. Regionally, Allegheny State Park and Letchworth extensively use infrastructure built by the CCC. In all cases, FDR was smart enough to place a plaque at each site, and remind the public where these projects came from.

Contrast this with our current “stimulus” ARRA bill. One third of the $786 billion has been spent, and very few people can tell you where it has gone. Tangible projects we all can see have been replaced with a website that is heavy on wonkiness and light on clarity, and provides ambiguous information on a variety of projects. I suppose its mapping function works well if you care more about what agency got the money than what work is being done. If that’s not an insight to the federal bureaucracy, I don’t what is.

So where is Stimulus money being spent in Buffalo? Can you name any projects off the top of your head? Buffalo Business First did an analysis a couple weeks ago, and ranked the projects by jobs created, and money spent.  The top of both lists? $73.6 million and 111 jobs at West Valley, to speed up clean up work that has been on-going for years. Six of the top ten job producers are work study programs at area colleges: 230 students working at libraries and delivering AV equipment at UB, Buff State, Canisius, Daemen, St. Bonaventure and ECC. Rounding out the top job producers are the NFTA (33.8 (?) workers upgrading batteries along the Metro Rail line), WNY AmeriCorps (22 VISTA positions) and the VA (19 folks paving the parking lot at the hospital). Top spenders of stimulus money? A new drain to keep floaties out of the Commercial Slip at Canalside ($17.7 million), $20.5 million to Buffalo Public Schools to retain teachers, $30.8 million to three agencies to help weatherize homes, $14.5 million for 56 hybrid buses for the NFTA, $6.5 million for BURA, and $7 million to repave Maple Road. Wow – Maple Road.

This Stimulus Plan had the potential to be as transformative as President Obama’s salesman-in-chief rhetoric. How about $786 billion in these five areas: public WiFi, high speed rail, next gen green energy, basic scientific research and national park reconstruction. Projects in those areas would be an investment in the future, not a propagation of the status quo or a finger in the dike. There is a smattering, as an afterthought, of those items in the stimulus bill, but they are dwarfed by the mass mush of uninspired projects that were going to be done anyway. BURA just granted a couple million to help redevelop the abandoned German orphanage on the East Side, making David Torke happy. Was that stimulus money? Who knows. Out of the biggest projects I laid out for Buffalo, how many are transformative? New hybrid buses, maybe?

This stimulus plan has not lived up to any of its hype, and seems unlikely to do so in the future when the rest of the money is spent. Instead, it has become another symbol of the narrative of the first 14 months of the Obama administration: over promise and under deliver. The seas don’t have to recede and lions need not lay down with lambs – I’d be happy with a couple jobs and projects more inspired than a 2 inch asphalt lift on a suburban road.

Heathcare Questions

A couple honest questions – see how many you can answer:

1) If healthcare is such a priority now, how does it help to have most provisions of the current bill not start until 2014, and to not try to pay for it until 2018?

2) Speaking of which, if the costs are such a problem, how does it help that the plan is modeled on Massachusetts, where coverage is expanded but the state’s healthcare premiums are skyrocketing?

3) If Medicare is underfunded, how does it help that $500B comes out of its budget?

4) If insurance company profits are the problem, how does it help to mandate insurance and let insurance company profits go up?

Note that I have not used the words “Democrat” or “Republican” is any question, so if the answers could not contain the phrases “Its all Bush’s fault” or “The Republicans want Obama to fail” I’d appreciate it. KTHX.

On Critics and Slush

The lines were too long. The hill was too slow. The food was too meager. The snow was too slushy. The games were too late. And, surprisingly, the weather was too warm.

And yet.

And yet tens of thousands of people of all ages turned out for a winter festival in downtown Buffalo. Few declared it a bust. Most seemed to enjoy themselves. My family and I went on Saturday. We believed the hype and took the Metro Rail from UB – my sons later declared the “train ride” the best part of the trip. We did not sled the hill (line too long), eat any fried dough (ditto), or stop in the beer tent. We made it 1/4 of the way through the ice maze before shin high 33 degree water soaked little boy boots, and we were forced to elbow back through the crowd the way we came in. We trudged a half mile on uncleared sidewalks and unclosed streets to the Pond Hockey Tournament, and saw a couple minutes of one “game” on the far side of the Marina. At the Sahlen’s tent we got four cups of perfect hot chocolate and one hot dog – dog only; they had run out of buns. And yet . . . we’ll go next year if they have it again.

The main trouble with the Powder Keg Festival was lack of capacity – the clear result of large crowds that were unanticipated and unplanned for. That is a good problem to have. Buffalo clearly craves a reason to get outside in the middle of winter and muddle through group activities. The drought between football season and Allentown is far too long.

I applaud the organizers and their rebranding efforts. Better to have tried and achieved mixed success than not tried at all. A couple tweaks and I sense a winner. Add more food. Move the date back a couple weeks to have a better chance at colder weather. If you like the intersection of Seneca/Pearl at one end, close all of Seneca and Erie streets between there and the Marina, and make a 1/2 mile long festival – there are enough people to fill it. Or, at least have better transportation than a horse drawn carriage, no matter now quaint that is. You are in a good place if expanding the festival is the best way to improve it. Ottawa has a fantastic winter festival every year – once Canalside is built, we can skate on our own canals.

For the Love of Sport

There are a little over 300 million Americans, and a little over a million Buffalonians. So, for rough math, one out of every 300 Americans is from Buffalo.

There are 205 athletes on the US Olympic team. Which means, if we’re lucky, we could statistically hope to have one athlete represent our city.

Instead, we have four directly from Buffalo (Matt DePeters, Patty Kane, Steve Mesler and Brooks Orpik), who competed in freestyle skiing, bobsled, and hockey. Between them, they are bringing home a gold and two silvers to Buffalo. Not bad. The British would refer to that as “punching above our weight.” 

We also have tangental associations to a couple others, due to the Buffalo Sabres, and connections to the US women’s team. When the Sabres play again on Wednesday, a medal of each color (Ruff-Gold, Miller-Silver, Lydman-Bronze) will walk onto the ice.

Buffalo is a quirky northern town, half-Canadian at times, and often overlooked by the country. The Winter Olympics are a quirky set of games, not the powerhouse favorites of the summer set, and often overlooked by America. But for the last two weeks, our hometown boys have been winning, and our goalie has been the hero of American kids everywhere. I have friends who were in the Atlanta airport (an average cross section of America at any given time) during the gold medal game today, and they said every bar was packed with fans screaming like you normally only see for the Superbowl. That’s pretty cool. Enjoy it.

Quick Snarks

A couple quick items of irony from reading the paper this weekend:

- Charlie Rangel is getting a slap on the wrist for taking at least three corporate bribes trips to the Caribbean in 2007 and 2008. How did he avoid further discipline? While his aides wrote memos to Rangel detailing that accepting the trips was illegal, no one could prove that Rangel actually read the notes. Incompetence and illiteracy win as a defense. Speaker Pelosi, for her part, says she’s going “just see what happens next.” So much for running the most transparent, ethically pure Congress in history.

- A white sorority is being accused of cultural theft for winning a “black” stepping competition. Stepping is a form of performance clapping and foot stomping, and there are big competitions around the country. But when a white sorority won, not only did event sponsor Coca-Cola give the runners up (a black sorority) an additional first place prize, but the white group is being told to “let the Black folks have their own thing for once.” Quick! Is it too late to kick Jerome Iginla off the Canadian hockey team, because he is stealing white Canadian culture? Only in PC America is it alright to beat down racism and sexism everywhere we see it . . . unless it involves “historically black colleges” and African-American culture.

- If you think Forbes lists are crap, so are all those ballot-stuffing “awards” Buffalo loves to get. Just sayin.

- Turns out we’re not the third poorest city in America. Turns out we have poverty rates equal to just about every other city the same size. Of what, oh what, will the “third poorest city” rebranders do now that their sound bite is debunked?

Branding Buffalo

In a couple recent posts, I’ve identified the brand of Buffalo as our biggest business and redevelopment challenge, and I’ve established that our culture in Buffalo is holding us back from progress. Today I want to examine our brand, and rebranding efforts, more closely. Why now? More on that later in the post.

Cities have brands the way any other product does. Just as Nike shoes will forever be linked with an image of Michael Jordan sailing to the basket, cities have brand reputations. And this goes beyond “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” (though that is great branding). New York is the Big Apple where anyone can make it, and anything can happen at any hour of the day or night. Los Angeles is the center of glitz and Hollywood. Nashville and Austin have fun music reputations. In the latter two cases, a couple streets and a couple bars (plus a music festival or two) is all it takes to keep that reputation intact. If you don’t like your city’s brand, you can remake it, a la Balboa, where a new famous museum changed everything. Brands morph and change. Hummer used to be known for rugged strength. Now it is a poster child for everything wrong with the American car industry, and is being shut down.

So, as a review, what is Buffalo’s current brand? I described our potential logo as “an over taxed rusting factory covered in snow.” Chris Smith, in an article from a couple years ago, described it this way:

I would argue that our current national brand is that of a snowy, dying, heavily unionized, rust belt town that is still reeling from the death of our local manufacturing base.  Marketing organizations like the Buffalo CVB, Buffalo Niagara Enterprise, Buffalo Homecoming and Buffalo Rising have attempted to demonstrate that we are more than that confining description through urban and regional boosterism.

City brands are important because they help to attract (and retain) business, draws tourists, and attract (and retain) population. Phoenix’s reputation as a boom town became self reinforcing at a  certain point. Residents of the midwest, where there are “no jobs,” would move to Arizona because there “were jobs.” Many took construction jobs, building houses for the next wave of midwesterners with the same thoughts.

Buffalo’s snowy, rusting, dying brand is so important because not only does the rest of the country believe it, much of Buffalo believes it too. If Buffalo had a good reputation among more of its current residents, we would be shedding less population. Likewise, if the rest of the country had a different impression of Buffalo’s brand, jobs, tourists and population would be attracted to it, and the reality would change in addition to the illusory brand.

So its the brand boosterism efforts Chris references above that I really want to talk about, because I think the impression of Buffalo (brand) is more important than the reality of Buffalo. And in any case, the impression is much cheaper to change.

The first major rebranding effort I term the Drew Cerza Plan. Drew is the Wing King, of course, and organizes the yearly Buffalo Wing Festival, among other things. The Drew Cerza plans says “What good things is Buffalo already known for? Lets enhance those.” So if America already thinks of chicken wings and sports (Bills and Sabres) when they think of Buffalo, lets do more of that. Cerza himself was spotted in Pizza Hut adds selling more chicken wings nationally, and if you like sports, 2010 is a good year for you to be in Buffalo: the Sabres are winning, NCAA basketball in March, Empire State Games in the summer, and World Juniors Hockey in December. The CVB and new Buffalo Sports Commission have also been pushing smaller events – Buffalo will host the New York State high school swimming state championships soon. Those events add up to a real tourism industry, real jobs, and real visitor impressions changed. The benefit of the Drew Cerza plan is that you are altering the reputation of Buffalo, not completely rebuilding it.

The second major rebranding effort I call the “Donn Esmonde Plan.” This plan says “Everything people know about Buffalo is wrong – lets show them all the great things Buffalo really is.” This plan gives great satisfaction by finally showcasing the “real” Buffalo. But it is also a constant uphill fight because 60 years of Buffalo brand opposes it. So we package up the historic buildings, biomedical research, and a flourishing arts community and try to sell it to a skeptical audience. Every time we are named a Distinctive Destination by a niche organization, or our architecture is mentioned in a national publication, we cheer that America has finally noticed. We count each visitor to the Darwin Martin House, and hang on Cleveland Biolabs bringing 15 workers to the medical campus. One commenter on Chris Smith’s post mentioned above, Nathan Wallace, suggested Buffalo’s brand should be “Historically Innovative.” I love it – we do have great architecture and a great history of medical innovation (like the pacemaker). But you’d have to educate 98% of the Buffalo community on this history before you try to sell it.

Beyond these two major efforts, I find it interesting what major brand resources we have that seem outside of the rebranding process: Niagara Falls, major banking giants, and a huge college population. Note that the Buffalo Niagara Partnership’s efforts and taregeted industries (agribusiness, advanced manufacturing, life sciences, logistics, professional services and renewable energy) seem separate from either rebranding effort, or those three resources I mentioned.

For me, I’d be happy to rebrand our image into “fun.” As in, “Oh, you’re from Buffalo? I hear that’s a fun town.” Buffalo is a fun place already. We have enough known commodities (sports, chicken wings, beer), and enough unknown items to share (festivals, food) that staking out a reputation as “fun” should not be overwhelming. “Fun” would go a long way to dismiss some rust belt blues – Detroit is not a fun place.

So, to my original point: why talk about this today. Because a major rebranding effort, in the Drew Cerza model, is taking place this weekend downtown. While local high schools are playing their hockey championships in HSBC Arena, Labatt is hosting its massive pond hockey tournament, and the inaugural Powder Keg Festival is sandwiched in between. This expanding event combines not just our love of hockey, beer, and food, but it adds a little rebranding with a love of winter too. I will be taking my kids downtown to watch a little pond hockey, walk through an ice maze, and do some skating. Despite global warming, Buffalo will continue to have a reputation, and a reality, of long snowy winters. Colorado, Vermont and New Hampshire have long winters too, and yet are seen as winter sports paradises. We don’t have the mountains, but we should be able to find a way to play hockey, drink, ice skate, snow shoe and cross-country ski our way into a “fun” reputation.

Ungovernable, or Simply Ungoverned?

It is currently trendy among the commentariat to declare the US federal government broken. The circus surrounding a healthcare summit, where President Obama has finally put pen-to-paper and outlined some solid proposals over a year into his healthcare push, is yet more evidence for the chattering classes to declare our system beyond repair. Various remedies are offered, from changing the rules of the Senate, to electoral reform. Both proposals are no small change, but desperate measures seem needed, as the “big issues” are not being fixed, and Senators and Congressmen of both parties are deserting rather than endure the struggle.

Such breathless analysis is proof that the pundits have as short of an attention span as the average American. Krauthammer recently reminded us that in the 1970’s, the Presidency was seen as too big of a job. Turns out it was the man who was not large enough, and once Reagan filled the oval office, such talk stopped. Likewise, it seems currently that our system is similarly not able to fix the Big Problems: healthcare and global warming being the latest to top the list.

A moment of reflection is needed, and as per usual, this week’s Economist provides it. While there are certainly issues that Congress has not dealt with recently (immigration, social security, climate change, healthcare), there are many issues in the last 15 years that have been addressed: welfare reform, education, reorganizing homeland defense, prescription drugs in Medicare, a financial crisis and the Great Recession. I make no judgment on how well each reform worked, but bipartisan action was taken in each case. Perhaps the current gridlock says more about the slate of current proposals, and the men and women pushing them, than the system as a whole. As the Economist notes:

America’s political structure was designed to make legislation at the federal level difficult, not easy. Its founders believed that a country the size of America is best governed locally, not nationally. True to this picture, several states have pushed forward with health-care reform. The Senate, much ridiculed for antique practices like the filibuster and the cloture vote, was expressly designed as a “cooling” chamber, where bills might indeed die unless they commanded broad support.

Broad support from the voters is something that both the health bill and the cap-and-trade bill clearly lack. Democrats could have a health bill tomorrow if the House passed the Senate version. Mr Obama could pass a lot of green regulation by executive order. It is not so much that America is ungovernable, as that Mr Obama has done a lousy job of winning over Republicans and independents to the causes he favours. If, instead of handing over health care to his party’s left wing, he had lived up to his promise to be a bipartisan president and courted conservatives by offering, say, reform of the tort system, he might have got health care through; by giving ground on nuclear power, he may now stand a chance of getting a climate bill. Once Mr Clinton learned the advantages of co-operating with the Republicans, the country was governed better.

I am in the middle of reading a short history of the Byzantine Empire (there is a sentence I can’t write very often). The Byzantines ruled for a 1000 years, formed out of the eastern ashes of the imploding Roman empire. While it may also be fashionable to compare America’s potential dimming to that Roman analogy, I found a different pattern in the scope. Not every Emperor conquers new lands, institutes new reforms, and brings greater progress to the people. For every Constantine and Justinian, there are five or ten Michael III’s, Phocas’ and Leontios’. Not every President is Jefferson or Roosevelt. Perhaps Obama is closer to Carter than Lincoln, no matter the magazine covers, and certainly Reid is no LBJ. That great figures are not present now does not mean we are incapable of producing or electing them. Let’s replace the players before reforming the system.

Penny Foolish, Pound Foolish

Governor Paterson says he wants close 41 parks and 14 historic sites next year, to save $6.5 million. Included in those 41 parks are perpetually sewage filled Woodlawn Beach, Joseph Davis in Niagara County, and Wilson-Tuscarora. Oh, and he wants to cut funding to interpretive programs in the few parks actually making money, or holding their own.

Since nothing in Albany is as it seems, there is more to this, of course. $6.5 million is a rounding error, less than 0.1%, of the $8.5 billion hole. Even Paterson knows that estimates of sales tax revenue vary more from week to week than $6.5 million. So this isn’t about the parks. This is about playing chicken with the NYS legislature. Paterson himself flinched last year when attempting to layoff thousands of unionized state employees from the bloated bureaucracy. Now the legislature won’t take him seriously, and is giving him no traction on any other spending cuts. Buoyed by some recent polls that show him with some political life, but still trailing significantly, Paterson is willing to bet people will start paying attention if he recommends the absurd. Offer something no one wants, and get back a compromise with more of his items. Will it work? Paterson isn’t as popular as he thinks he is, so I bet no. More legislative dysfunction will follow, and the budget gap will grow.

Highways and Byways

In the last week there has been some debate, none of it new, on the chicken and the egg, and the relative importance to each. In this case, the chickens are large highways, and the egg is the perpetually under-developed downtown Buffalo. Is Buffalo under-developed because large highways are in the way? Do the highways need to be removed for Buffalo to prosper? How important are the stupid highways in the grand scheme of things?

I love new shiny objects. Especially when they are over 10 stories and cost $100M or more. But let me make the layman’s common sense case for new shine being neither here nor there.

Which is more important: having great infrastructure, or how you use what you have? If you answered the second, why do we always seem to argue about the first? Alan comes down squarely in the “play the hand you’re dealt” camp. A comment discussion between myself and STEEL yielded the admission that highways may not be the most important thing, but they are not an asset.

Since Buffalo doesn’t have $5B or $10B to start over, I think how we use what we’ve got is more important than arguing about what we wish would happen, or would have happened. “But hold on,” the infrastructure first crowd chants. “We just trying to better use the money we do spend. Like not spending $50M on reinforcing Route 5 and the Skyway.” If only the Southtown Connector was the only project on the docket. Its hard to talk about one highway project without hearing a chorus of “Tear down the Skyway! Tear out the I-190! Pull up the 198!” If you’re not careful, that starts to turn into real money . . .

Even the most cursory review shows that both flourishing and floundering cities have all manner of infrastructure. For every Vancouver touted for explosive growth with no highways in the urban core (though plenty of gridlock), there is Chicago, Milwaukee, Toronto, Portland and Seattle that are riddled with expressways. Few would say highways are the main feature holding back Detroit. And does Pittsburgh’s resurgence have more to do with renewed medical and education industries, or reclaiming a little parkland where three rivers come together? Portland has a Skyway interchange hanging over the Willammette river. Know what’s surrounding it? Filled to the brim bike paths. STEEL challenged me that I didn’t spend a lot of time under Portland’s highways. Actually, my favorite place in Portland is under a highway:

Which makes my point completely. What Buffalo is missing is attitude. Our highways, empty grain elevators, rusting factories, abandoned warehouses, urban prairie, and old housing stock – all seemingly negatives – can be assets with the right attitude. Warehouse to loft conversions, PUSH, Buffalo Reuse and the Wilson Street Farm are a couple examples of new attitude. That those four, and few others, sprung to mind so quickly perhaps shows how far we have to go.

I spent the last couple weeks in Yakima, Washington. Yakima is to Seattle as Jamestown is to Buffalo. Yakima has many shiny new buildings in one small strip of downtown.

Two blocks off downtown is another story.  

While many complain that poor Buffalo is surrounded by rich suburbs, much of small town America shows that rich suburbs are better than no suburbs. At least Buffalo, theoretically, has a financial cushion of the county to fall back on. What if poor Buffalo sat alone? Welcome to Yakima, and similar poor, hollowed out metros, lonely and isolated. Yakima’s alternative music school is closing, but it has shiny new infrastructure. How much do brick-accented sidewalks matter?

Form Follows Function. The bike and walking culture of Portland was not created because a forward looking city council created bike paths everywhere, and the average citizen one day decided “You know, there’s a bike path out my front door – maybe I should try it.” The culture came first, and demanded bike paths and pedestrian friendly light rail. The politicians followed, and built it.

Where does this meandering column lead? To this conclusion: The Buffalo we have is the Buffalo we deserve, because it is the Buffalo we chose. The union bound, small minded politicians we have accurately reflect and represent our interests. The infrastructure we have is the infrastructure we chose based upon our priorities: cars and industry. We replaced factories with call centers and back office paper shuffling. When there is a new initiative for the city, we spend more time planning for its failure than helping it succeed. We are not Portland because we do not wish to be. The problem is attitude.

If you are troubled by this, you have three choices: accept it, leave, or try to change it. While seemingly superficial advancements and events, like the giant ice maze, are greeted with jeers, I respect them. They attack the root problem: attitude. If Buffalo became a more creative, fun, progressive (for progress, not liberal) place, then perhaps our form would follow that function instead.