Buffalo In New York Magazine

As part of our media outreach efforts during Buffalo Homecoming this year, one of our Steering Committee members reached out to New York Magazine and invited them to join us for the annual celebration of our fair city.

We welcomed the opportunity to have a writer from a major publication visit and share his experiences with  a national readership.  Although, I was a bit apprehensive that we dispatched Newell Nussbaumer from Buffalo Rising to escort him during his stay. Newell is a friend of mine, but he is a bit of a hipster doofus who can seem a bit too eager to please outsiders.  In order to tone down the Kool-Aid effect that Newell represents, we also matched the writer up with people who have a more realistic view of Buffalo…as it is and what it can be.  What came of this was one of the most balanced articles about Buffalo that I have read in a national publication.

It dealt with the decision to move to a place like Buffalo from a place like New York City without it seeming like an admission of failure. I’m familiar with the agony of leaving a big city to move back home and all of the conflicting emotions that come with it.  I still struggle with my decision to move here and I think many of us who made the leap understand the feeling.

Some people will read this as a story of defeat. They will look at Herbeck and Cloyd and think, They came; they couldn’t cut it; good riddance. That’s also a familiar New York narrative, one that’s especially comforting to those of us who stay and stick it out. Because, sure, stained glass and spare bedrooms are nice and all, but no one moves to New York because they think they’re going to get a great bargain on an apartment. You move here because you want to live in New York City.

But I am here to tell you that this is not a story of defeat. Rather, it’s a story about choices.

It spoke of our challenges and our history.

In 1901, Buffalo was the eighth largest city in America, a booming industrial metropolis, and the site of the World’s Fair. By 2008, thanks to white flight and industrial decay, its population had dropped by half, from a mid-century high of 580,000 to about 270,000—fewer people, in fact, than lived there in 1901. As a result, large tracts of Buffalo are essentially abandoned, turned into “urban prairie,” full of boarded-up buildings and weedy vacant lots. The silver lining of this exodus is that you can drive anywhere in Buffalo in ten minutes or less, a fact that was repeated to me often by local boosters, including the mayor, which always struck me as odd—like claiming the best thing about living in a ghost town is that there’s never a line at the movie theater. (Geek Notes:  AMEN Brother!  Can we drop this ridiculous talking point?!?)

It spoke about the perpetual optimism of some our citizens.

And yet, one quality common to everyone I meet in Buffalo is that they see opportunity everywhere. Where you see a boarded-up building, they see a future arts co-op. They use the phrases blank canvas or blank slate a lot.

As well as the realities that people like Aaron Bartley deal with each and every day.

On my last day, Horowitz and Bartley take me on a tour of one of the most depressed parts of the city. It seems a strange way to end my visit, but fitting as well, as these neighborhoods, with their rows of empty houses each available for $1, represent exactly the kind of possibilities that drew the two of them back.

This article did a nice job summing up the experience of someone who moves here from somewhere else.  Especially if you moved here from a place like San Francisco, New York City, or like me, Chicago.

I miss many things about Chicago…mainly, I miss the bigness of it all.  I miss that my client list in Chicago included the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Chicago Board of Trade, Aon Insurance, Allstate, ABN AMRO Bank, and dozens of other world class companies.  I miss the demands of working in a big city and the hustle needed to keep up.  Hell, I also miss the improv theaters, Cubs games on a Wednesday when I should be at the office, world class dance and theater, and well, you get the point.

I moved home to take a breath for a few years, save some money, and eventually head back into the big city battle.  Instead, I stayed, bought a house, had a few kids and settled down.  I’m an accidental Buffalo repatriate.  Will I stay forever?  I really don’t know and some days I want to run screaming for the hills, but for now, it just fits.

Over the next couple of days, I’d like to discuss our collective reasons for staying, our reasons for leaving, and ask you to help me define the “Buffalo Experience” and tell me why it is that you stay.

Maybe we can all learn something.