Depending on the time of year… or the day of the week, I hear more and more people bringing up the city’s different strengths. This time of year it is the overbooked festival season that keeps us on our toes – yet do you think that folks in Toronto know that? We’ve had some very interesting food-related discussions on BRO – but are we ready to shed our chicken wing skin to tout some of our other cuisines? Have you heard about the ‘French Dip Sandwiches’ craze in LA? It sounds a heck of a lot like our very own ‘Beef on Weck’. And the guy who brought the dipping sandwich to LA passed through Buffalo 100 years ago (see story). Hmmmm.
Even our local music scene has its own sound. If you talk to musician Eric Crittenden he will tell you that there is a sound that we should be building up… just as other cities do. “It’s blue collar funk,” he recently told me. “I’ve been trying to peg and articulate this for ten years. DJ Cutler (25 years old) came out with a disc called Blue Collar Funk four months ago that I believe he totally nailed. It’s a culmination of an economically challenged impoverished city that produces a strong work ethic, which transcends into a lifestyle. There are so many different music elements that are formulated by Buffalo’s hard-working people and that comes across in our sound.”
Do we find our ‘green’ niche and build upon it? Maybe the future water turbines in the Niagara River will be our ‘feather in the cap’. I believe that a healthy mix of historic and modern architecture will be one of our major building blocks – that’s a big sticking point with BRO contributor David Steele (correspondent living in Chicago). ‘Cost of living’ feeds into all of these strengths and happens to be a strength on its own. Our fresh water supply will work more and more to our advantage, especially as we continue to learn how to protect it.
As we develop our strengths we must learn to better broadcast them at the same time. How do we prove that we are a college town? Who knows that we have one of the country’s ten best neighborhoods? How do we attract more artists to our extremely art-friendly city? We have four seasons and we like it that way… we should use that to our advantage. I am very curious to see the different paths, both wide and narrow, that we as a city will be taking in years (and even months) to come. I’m also looking forward to Buffalo Homecoming this weekend to see what our ex-pats think of their hometown.
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