terrorist cell providing material support to al Qaeda in 2002.
“Like a dowager in decline, Buffalo still has good bone structure to remind people of her more prosperous and glamorous days,” wrote R. W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times. “Buffalo has an even longer history of architectural distinction than Chicago; you could do worse than take it as a textbook for a course in modern American buildings.” Indeed, it was home to some of the country’s first skyscrapers and outstanding buildings, such as the Art Deco City Hall and Shea’s Theater. Five local residences were designed by master architect Frank Lloyd Wright: Barton House, the Gardner’s Cottage, Heath House, Davidson House, and the crown jewel, the prairie-style Darwin D. Martin House, with its wide terraces and overhanging roofs. In 1938, the famous father-son team Eliel and Eero Saarinen designed Kleinhans Music Hall, a major work of modern architecture still renowned for its acoustic excellence and home to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.
Buffalo is ranked among the top twenty-five arts and entertainment communities in the country by Places Rated Almanac. It has a vibrant and diverse music scene. Major concert venues routinely bring jazz, chamber music, rock, blues, folk, country, bluegrass, musical theater, and world music to town. Meantime, a homegrown alternative-rock scene has produced acts as varied as the Goo Goo Dolls, 10,000 Maniacs, and Ani DiFranco. DiFranco runs her music label, Righteous Babe, from Buffalo and is active in the preservation of local architecture.
Lake Erie is no longer a repository for industrial waste and sewage runoff. Fishermen, kayakers, and swimmers enjoy the clean water, which is once again home to walleye, bass, trout, lily pads, bald eagles, and great blue herons.
Despite being better known for having double the country’s unemployment level and triple the snowfall, Buffalo has earned the designation The City of Good Neighbors, where small-town values prevail over city-slicker anonymity. Meet anyone from Buffalo at a party and within minutes you’ll come up with a list of people you both know. Six degrees of separation can usually be pared down to one or two at the most. Many will say that describing the Buffalo area as “a big small town” isn’t reduction enough, and that it’s actually one big living room. People talk to strangers, and one can easily wake to find the front walk shoveled, no note. A four-way stop results in a massive round of
waving—“No, you go!” Citizens keep an eye out for those who live alone, and a stranger is just a friend with jumper cables you haven’t met yet. A wedding wouldn’t be a wedding without the hokey pokey and the chicken dance. And the management at the Holiday Valley ski lodge doesn’t frown upon people bringing along their own Crock-Pots for a home-cooked meal; they’ve installed extra outlets so that hungry skiers can enjoy their own three-alarm chili.
The locals, of course, remain loyal to their Buffalo Bills football team in victory and, more often, defeat. In subzero weather it’s always possible to see middle-aged men cheering from ice-encrusted bleachers, their shirts off and “Steelers Suck” painted across their chests. To these enthusiasts, the four seasons aren’t winter, spring, summer, and fall, but preseason, regular season, postseason, and off-season. When the Bills win, many people think it’s quite acceptable to take the following Monday off work. In fact, Buffalonians are such colossal sports fans that they have not one, but two large sports stadiums in the heart of downtown.
Regardless of gray skies, it’s a city of good cheer, where when it rains, people are likely to say, “It could be snow.” When it snows, they say, “It could be a blizzard.” And when it’s a blizzard and the vast whiteness eventually covers the rooftops and thereby provides free insulation, they say, “Now we can turn down the thermostat and save some money on heat.” Buffalonians are, by nature, optimists. How else could so many people install unheated outdoor swimming pools that remain covered with tarpaulin nine months of the year?
Canada is a short hop away on the Tim Hortons trail. Stratford and Niagara-on-the-Lake have theater that’s as good if not better than Broadway or London’s West End. The big difference between Canadians and Americans is that Canadians have a lot more guns, only they tend not to use them on one another. And perhaps the cuisine is not yet entirely fleshed out—the country being best known for Canadian bacon and Tylenol with codeine, at least back when I was growing up. No, you’ve
never heard anyone say, “Hey, let’s go out for Canadian food!”
Meantime, weather records continue to be broken. On October 2,
2003, Buffalo was on the national news for having the earliest snowfall. But because winters are a varsity sport, in this friendly city everyone’s on the team. A freak blizzard struck in October 2006, while the leaves were still on the trees. It left the area without power for days and killed almost half the trees. Professionals and volunteers headed out with chain saws, and a massive replanting is under way.
Buffalo earned the nickname Barfalo because of its numerous bars, most with a last call of 4:00 am. Such conviviality has resulted in one of the highest gonorrhea rates in the country. Though with a house of worship on almost every corner, generating a church-to-bar ratio of about one to one, it could be argued that they cancel each other out. Still, the area is a wholesome place to raise children. It’s so cold outside that rather than open their trench coats, flashers just describe themselves. And people trying to smoke outdoors in wintertime can’t tell when they’re finished exhaling.
Since the invention of air-conditioning, the inspired citizenry has gone on to create the pacemaker, nondairy creamer, the Moog synthesizer, and, most importantly, the technology to put the M on M&Ms. Though the most celebrated development would have to be that of the buffalo wing, which everyone knows is the best part of a buffalo. According to local lore, these were invented at Frank and Teressa
Bellissimo’s Anchor Bar back in 1964. Mrs. Bellissimo made a late-night snack for her son and some friends with the ingredients on hand, which included chicken wings and hot sauce. When ordering the extra-hot variety I’d highly recommend keeping the toilet paper in the fridge.
Another Buffalo specialty is beef on weck—roast beef sandwiches slathered with horseradish and served on kummelweck. The distinguishing feature of these rolls is the caraway seeds and snowball-sized chunks of salt dotting the outside, which one assumes can be put to good use if a car gets stuck on the way home from a tailgate party.
I think what the city needs for completing its big comeback is to be the focus of one of these charming travel narratives like My House in Umbria, A Year in Provence, and Under the Tuscan Sun, so as to spark a flood of tourism. I’ve taken it upon myself to write one called My Split-Level in Lackawanna. I don’t want to ruin it, but basically a single woman from a lovely and quaint Italian or French village sets about refurbishing a house just south of Buffalo, along the cheery shores of Lake Erie, in the dramatic shadow of the rusting Bethlehem Steel plant, aka The Buffalo Riviera. At the beginning, she argues with the man next door, a former union machinist who now runs a failing Sheetrock business. Then one night, she’s frightened by the appearance of Good & Plenty–sized silverfish, and this outwardly gruff but secretly bighearted neighbor comes to the rescue with a barrel of strong pesticide he found buried at a construction site. The two end up falling in love. Only, they don’t marry, because it would mean receiving less public-assistance money. Perhaps the obligatory quirky neighbor will be a Mafia don who loves gardening and bowls a perfect three hundred. Since Buffalo has no shortage of character and characters, the possibilities are endless. And as they say, the only difference between comedy and tragedy is where you end the story.
About the Author
Laura Pedersen was the youngest columnist for The New York Times and, prior to that, the youngest person to have a seat on the American Stock Exchange. She has a finance degree from New York University’s Stern School of Business. Her nonfiction book Play Money, about working on Wall Street, became a best seller. In 1994, President Clinton honored Pedersen as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans.
&
nbsp; Pedersen’s first novel, Going Away Party, won the Three Oaks Prize for Fiction. Her short stories and humorous essays have won numerous awards and have been published in literary journals and magazines. Her second novel, Beginner’s Luck, was selected by Barnes & Noble for its Discover Great New Writers program, by Borders for its Original Voices program, and by the Literary Guild as an alternate selection.
She has appeared on CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning
America, Primetime Live, The Today Show, and The Late Show with David Letterman. She has also performed stand-up comedy at the Improv, among other clubs, and writes material for several well-known comedians. Pedersen lives in New York City and teaches at the Booker T. Washington Learning Center in East Harlem.
More information can be found at www.LauraPedersenBooks.com.
© Denise Winters
Buffalo Gal Page 33