By MK:
You touched a nerve with your article about winter possibilities in Buffalo (see here).
I am 40. My wife and I leave Buffalo every Thanksgiving to go to Utah to ski for the winter. We come back in June or July.
One of Buffalo’s biggest assets is its seasons: We have a vibrant spring, followed by an enduring summer full of festivals, followed by a fall full of color and recreation. Winter is seen as our Achilles’ heel, when in reality, it should be our sword!
Back to being 40… Do you know how old it gets when one of the talking heads on TV says “Don, the four letter word is back.” Or worse, “Don, when is this snow going away?” For whatever the reason, this attitude permeates WNY to our own detriment. Embracing the winter, making it unique for WNY families, companies and individuals should be what is done in Buffalo. I remember the Turkey Trot sells-out annually, in usually crappy weather, and it’s just a fun party… Why can’t Buffalo find a snowshoe sponsor to run a similar race in the winter? Why does Buffalo always succumb to its dreary winters, instead of livening them up? I recently spent time in northern Iceland where we produce fish for the US. Their northern town of Akureyri embraces winter and the people are just as much outside enjoying it as they are in the summer, except in the winter it is very dark for a long time.
Buffalo is so close, imagine a festival season, downtown, lasting 6 weeks or more. We can tie-in all the current winter events like pond hockey and highlight the recreational opportunities and businesses available to WNYers and tourists. Include fishing, whether it is ice fishing or not, I imagine we can put more people out there fishing than Bass Pro ever intended! The Niagara Region in Canada, where my wife is from, has a weeks-long celebration, every year, “Grape and Wine Festival,” with many venues and events.
I imagine that organizers would have coffee and tea and hot chocolate companies tripping over each other to be sponsors! And you can’t have a festival in Buffalo without beer!
Granted, I am not in Buffalo in the winters, I have searched for more snow and frankly, people who embrace the winter, but when I come back, summer-after-summer and see the possibilities screaming out loud at me, I cannot help but be so frustrated.
Unfortunately, I always come back to the same rhetorical question: “Where is the leadership?”
Lead image: The original Powder Keg Festival