Illustration by Doug Davis

My Town: Buffalo


Illustration by Doug Davis

By Susan M. LoTempio

As I write this, there’s a thick layer of ice outside my window, covered by several inches of snow. Getting around in this kind of weather is treacherous, if not impossible, so I telecommute to work and stay safe and warm inside my home. Unless, of course, the power goes out. A few “weather days” can be welcome breaks from the daily grind, but what really gets me down is the lack of sunshine between October and May, which leads me to ask for the 999th time: Why do I live in Buffalo, N.Y.?

Buffalo, the center of a sprawling region at the western end of the state, represents the best and worst of America. Its suburbs are thriving: Million-dollar mansions are going up, weekend traffic is horrendous as everyone heads out to shop, and the school districts are the best. Buffalo, the city, is a different story.
Last year it was ranked the second poorest city in the nation, just behind Detroit; it is steadily losing population; its school system is a mess, and crime, drugs and poverty are the trifecta of social ills.

I was born and raised in Niagara Falls, about a half hour from “The City,” as we refer to Buffalo. And even though the region gets a bad rap (I’ve heard all of the snow jokes), it is part of the fabric of my life. For example, not many people can say they were lulled to sleep by the sound of Niagara Falls, but for the first 18 years of my life, I could hear the rushing waters that were just a few blocks from my bedroom window. In fact, it wasn’t until I went to college in another state that I noticed how quiet the night could be.
Niagara has always remained a powerful force in our family. When one of my brothers was being treated for cancer 10 years ago, he asked for a recording of the sounds of Niagara to calm him during chemo treatments and when the pain was severe. Who knew that such recordings could be purchased in tourist shops?

After I finished college in Illinois, I returned home for my first newspaper job. Then, as now, the best career opportunities seem to be elsewhere, so five years later I moved to Washington, D.C., for one job, then to California for another. By 1986, I was a single mom with a baby daughter and a full-time job at an Oakland, Calif., newspaper. My day-care bills were sky-high; we lived in a lovely but fatally flawed apartment (it had no washer or dryer for the stacks of dirty baby clothes and diapers), and the California dream evaporated because of crime, traffic and a soaring cost of living.

It was time to go home. How fitting that my going away gift from the newspaper was a drawing of my daughter and me sitting on a buffalo-pulled sled, heading out of the sunshine and into the snow. It hangs in my Buffalo office today.

I never expected to stay in Buffalo for more than two decades, but as any parent knows, the years fly by when your life is focused on your child, her schools, activities, friends and social life. Before you know it, you’re part of the community, you’re back in the warm embrace of family and friends, and there is no looking back. That old adage – “you can’t go home again” — is, thankfully, not true for us.

I don’t think there’s one Western New Yorker who doesn’t have a love-hate relationship with Buffalo. The “hate” part is obvious: winter, slow economy, high taxes.

For me, it also includes access issues. Public places like Buffalo’s restaurants, theaters and museums have improved since ADA. But rarely can I visit friends in their homes — often beautiful Victorians, quaint cottages or modern townhouses – because they are so step-infested. When I want to look for a new place to live, the pickings are obviously slim.

It’s the “love” part of the equation that keeps me here. First, we love our summers and autumns (spring is often more like winter, so we’ll ignore that season) because the weather is beautiful and the sun shines often.

Buffalo is a Great Lakes city — Lakes Erie and Ontario — and connecting them is the Niagara River, which eventually becomes the falls. So, it’s no surprise that water is the center of our summer lifestyle with beaches, boating, parks and sunsets. Boaters here need to be experienced — a few wrong turns (or a few too many beers) and they may find themselves caught in the upper rapids, not far from the brink of the falls, also known as “the place of no return.”

Boating is a big lure for tourists. We have boat rides that navigate the rapids in the gorge beyond the falls and we have the Maid of the Mist, which gets riders close to the base of the thundering water. I rode the Maid a few years ago when it finally became accessible. Getting that close to the water and its roar is experiencing nature at its finest and most powerful.

Buffalo also has some amazing architecture, much of it inaccessible, but beautiful nonetheless. The mansions that line long, majestic streets in the heart of the city date back to Buffalo’s heyday in the early 20th century. But more important than the city’s buildings is its food: This is the birthplace of the Buffalo chicken wing. The Anchor Bar still serves them up in mild, medium and nuclear heat levels. Ironically, the revered restaurant where they were invented is a block from one of our major hospitals and its renowned cardiac care unit. No one ever said chicken wings were good for you, but they did put Buffalo on the culinary map.

By the way, both the restaurant and the cardiac unit are completely accessible.

Buffalonians like to brag that they can drive anywhere — say from Buffalo to Williamsville, the village where I live — in about 20 minutes. Our rush-hour traffic is minimal; we may have to slow down, but we rarely have to stop.

However, we do stop at customs when we cross to and from Canada. One of the great features of living here is being able to cross one of the four international bridges and arrive in a foreign country. It takes just 90 minutes to get to Toronto, Ontario; 30 minutes to travel to the prestigious Canadian wine region; and just a few minutes (or hours during the height of the tourist season) to make it over to Niagara Falls, Ontario. Canada claims to have the best views of the falls, but you also have to deal with bumper-to-bumper traffic and a town that’s about as honky-tonk as it gets.

One requirement for living here is a healthy sense of the absurd. For example, even though Americans think Canada is our neighbor to the north, it’s actually west of Buffalo. And, though we assume that snow and cold are to the north, the most extreme snowstorms go south of Buffalo into our ski country. Despite what the Weather Channel says, Buffalo doesn’t get the highest snow totals. Syracuse, N.Y., just down the New York State Thruway, gets piles more snow than we do.

Even more absurd is that our pro football team — the Buffalo Bills — plays in an open stadium. No roof means fans sit in the snow. Talk about loyal — and to a team that lost the Super Bowl four times. Still, how can you not love a city where 74,000 fans flock to a game in December in below-zero temperatures and arrive early enough to “tailgate” for a couple of hours in the snow?

Buffalo calls itself the “City of No Illusions,” but it is so un-assuming, so honest about its strengths and weaknesses, that it really is a wonderful place to live. Challenging, yes, but also wonderful.

It’s not likely that my daughter and many of her 20-something friends will settle in this Rust Belt city, but when they refer to home, they are referring to Buffalo.

We may be low on sunshine and high on snowfall, but we make up for that with our warm hearts, our generous residents and a way of life that suits me just fine.


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