Discovering Buffalo: The View From Toronto

If I lived in Toronto the only thing that would bring me back to this ghost town called Buffalo would be a Bills or Sabres game.

Buffalo is what you make of it. I had over 100 out-of-towners in for my wedding, and crafted an experience of Buffalo that included both the blight and the granduer and was thanked(and continue to be thanked) for the great experience. We are talking about identity, a sense of place, and Buffalo in all of its confounding idiosyncrasies has it. It is like getting wacked on the forehead by a tire iron...and it is pretty cool! We have such a dicotomy of experiences here, from the Broadway Market to the Galleria, from Mansion Row, to B Street...it is real! So if those Torontonians (and the rest of our own country) continue to pass us by and dismiss the rot and decay and the snow and the rust then it is their loss...the rest of us who "get it" need to keep this PLACE alive by showing off its uniqueness.

I was in Buffalo with a friend of mine for Garden Walk last weekend, and of course it is hard not to notice the decay and disrepair that marks parts of the city. It's hard for me to fathom, though, how anyone with powers of observation could not find so much of Buffalo to be interesting and beautiful.

The garden walk itself has become a unique Buffalo institution. It is a big undertaking that requires a lot of group and individual work to pull off, but, at the same time, it is a low-key and low-pressure event held against a backdrop that holds one surprise after another. I am not a gregarious person and yet something about the garden walk makes it a social event for me. I have conversations with dozens, maybe hundreds, of people throughout the day and always wish there was more time at the end. Buffalo is also a city in which it is truly heartbreaking to realize you have forgotten to charge your camera battery.

There are so many forces that make Buffalo a going concern and a fascinating place, despite the inertia and other challenges that weigh so heavy upon it. I appreciate what this article's author wrote and Arch's comments above.

Michael: Thanks for the shout out. We appreciate you taking on the role of ambassador and singing our city's praises when given the opportunity.

I wanted to let you and BR readers know that the Buffalo Niagara Convention & Visitors Bureau has been working to crack the Canadian market for some time now. Toronto is a large and expensive media market and we have limited resources, but we have met with some success in securing articles in publications like Dreamscapes, the Star, Chatelaine, Building and the Globe and Mail, as well as stories on CBC Radio and CityTV. In 2009 alone, we have advertised on CFRB radio, in Toronto Life magazine, CAA magazine, Crossings magazine and NOW Toronto. We have also employed paid search in the Ontario market; a contest we are running throughout the province has attracted more than 5,000 entries, many of whom have become subscribers to our e-newsletter. We also advertise on WNED-TV in Buffalo largely because of their reach into Southern Ontario. We are running a year-long series of spots on Antiques Roadshow, which has the largest Canadian viewership of any WNED broadcast.

We would love to scale up these efforts and increase the reach and frequency of our advertising as well our media relations efforts. The task is a large one and the costs necessary to do the job are beyond our current budget, but CVB staff and board members are working to secure the resources necessary to tackle this challenge.

Thanks again for your kind words. They are very much appreciated.

Ed Healy
Buffalo Niagara CVB

I just returned to Boston this morning after having a great 4 day weekend in Buffalo. The Gardenwalk just keeps getting better and better. One of the attitudes that I find amusing that visitors to Boston have is the idea that there is no poverty in Boston. About 98% of the people who fly into Boston then leave the airport and almost always come into the city to Downtown, the Back Bay, Beacon hill or Harvard Square. Going this route can certainly give one the idea that there is no poverty here. If you drive into Boston on the Mass Pike(Interstate 90), you drive through wealthy suburbs like Weston, Wellesley and Newton on your way in after the major toll boths and again can get the idea that there is no pverty here. It's quite a contrast for buffalo's visitors who come into town via Niagara St,, the 198 or the 33. I can testify, however, that there is plenty of poverty in Boston in neighborhoods like Dorcester, Roxbury and Mattapan as well as East Boston and communities just north of the Airport like Chelsea and Everett. These areas are just out of the public sight as I'm sure the poor neighborhoods of Toronto are just out of the sight of visiting, impessionable and superficial 20 somethings from Buffalo.

Michael mentioned getting lost on the East Side before I could even say it. It seems like evey Torontonian I've met has a story about taking a wrong turn and finding themselves at the corner of Genesee and Moselle. A vortex that naturally attracts Canadians must be centered there, because hardly anyone seems to take a wrong turn and end up on Elmwood Avenue or North Buffalo.

I hear a lot of the usual tired Irv Weinstein "Buffalo blaze buster" fire references whenever I meet a Torontonian. A brief education for the Torontonians reading this: Buffalo's housing stock is made primarily of wood thanks to its location near what was at the time the nation's largest lumber port. Building ltos in Buffalo are deep but very narrow, and houses were built just a meter or so apart. Combine a 100+ year old house with an 70+ year old electrical system, and the results aren't good.

The Buffalo area has a very strong fire/whacker culture, thanks to the prevalence of suburban volunteer fire departments that serve double duty as social clubs. That has its roots in the city's wave of German immigrants in the 1800s, and the volunteer fire brigades that were an important part of German culture in the era. The result: on a slow nes day, television newscasts will cover kitchen fires in small Southern Tier towns, because ... well, firefighting is as much a part of local culture as chicken wings.

Also, Torontonians of my generation grew up watching plenty of American television, so shows like Bowling for Dollars, Dialing for Dollars, It's Academic, Davey and Goliath, Rocketship Seven and Commander Tom were as much a part of Toronto's culture as Uncle Bobby and Mister Dressup. On a drive to Toronto in the 1970s, I always noticed that all the television antennas on the houses were aimed towards Buffalo.

Off-topic, but:

" houses were built just a meter or so apart. Combine a 100+ year old house with an 70+ year old electrical system, and the results aren't good. "

Houses don't simply burst into flame just because they're 3 feet apart, or old, or made of wood, or because the wires are old. Leading cause of house fires: cooking. Other main causes: carelessly discarded cigarettes, sparks from fireplaces, heating appliances too close to furniture, ARSON and children playing with matches. Overloaded wiring fires are relatively rare, because of protection by fuses and circuit-breakers. Proximity isn't much of a factor, due to the usually quick response by firemen - it's most likely that a fire will spread from roof to roof anyway, where brick walls won't prevent it.

Toronto is a beautiful city and knows how to market itself. Now it is Buffalo/WNY turn to do the same. I have lived here since the early 70s and I have never been at loss for something to do. Cycling in WNY and downtown Buffalo is incredible, Moutain Biking offerings in the Southern Tier EV NY in the Summer and Fall is top notch. Snowboarding and Skiing in the EV NY in the Winter months, priceless. Festival, food, music, culture and art.. it's all here. Thanks Mr. Binetti for the good PR.. we know we have it good here and our glad our friends up North are finding out WNY is a nice little piece of heaven for many of us..

Lovely picture of the Japanese garden. Who took it?

It seriously annoys me that photo credits are not up there with bylines.

The past number of years travelled to Buffao with the family and on every visit from Toronto, envy the the pace and the beauty of your city and the continious evolving neighbourhoods. I live in Downtown Toronto and am distraught with the direction my city has taken, overbuilt , dirty and people that are disenchanted with thier municipal governing( garbage and city wide strike for 38 days already) and therefore see even futher potential for you guys to develop at a more cautious and human scale pace. Love the Delaware area, cottage area and Allen neigh. but still mortified when I travel to that east side near the Central Treminal; what gives not develeping that horrible backside too an other quite a gem of a city

People who envy Toronto's growth truly do compare apples to oranges. Toronto's population explosion in the latter half of the 20th century has much to do with its southern location within or northern neighbor's borders.

Canada is a civilized, appealing first world destination for immigrants the world over. Within Canada, where else would you prefer to locate if you were they? Maybe Vancouver, but otherwise the list is short. Add to the foreign immigrants who have fueled much of TO's growth the exodus of businesses and population from Quebec in the 80s and 90s (due to uncertainty of separation from Canada), many of which relocated to Ontario. Toronto's eastern proximity to America's east coast also helps attract Canadians businesses to it. Within Canada, Toronto is the NYC. So sure, Toronto is vibrant and varied and happening in a way and on a scale that we're not.

But we shouldn't get depressed because we're not growing like they are. It's a different ball game. Comparing ourselves to Cleveland and Pittsburgh or other larger and smaller mid level towns is a much more realistic way to grade ourselves.