Ten years ago or so, when I started writing for Buffalo Rising, the regional mood was very negative. After 50 years of massive decline it was trendy to “brag” about how bad Buffalo was. The haters liked to tell you about how all their friends had left town, how the people sucked, how the buildings sucked, how the weather sucked, and how there were no jobs; also crack addicts and taxes. Back then, development in the city was relatively rare and preservation was still seen as obstruction. I could not write a positive story without hearing about the murder around the corner, the crack addicts down the street, and how stupid the people who stayed around Buffalo are. This was all amplified by the local media. I remember one silly Buffalo News story ranting on about how the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus was a massive failure before its first two buildings were even completed.
In the face of this mentality of gloom, Buffalorising.com (BRO) was started, largely to promote the good in Buffalo that was going mostly unnoticed. My early stories extolling Buffalo’s virtues were met with this negativity full force. If I wrote about a house renovation, the haters chimed in en masse to make sure I knew about the crack dealers across the street and the murder around the corner and the taxes and the no jobs thing, and hay all my friends are leaving this dump. As recently as 2010 I penned this retort to the negativity.
Today, the mood in Buffalo has swung 180 degrees. While the Buffalo region still has many challenges the positive recent developments have given people new hope for Buffalo’s future. This new hope is palpable in the population and it is feeding positive change. Now, when I write a story dare suggesting that yes the region does still have challenges, I am met with complaints that I am an ignorant out-of-towner, I don’t know anything about Buffalo, how could I not see how great Buffalo is, and how can I say anything bad about Buffalo!? Change!
As a point of comparison, take a look at this short video below. It was posted about 5 years ago when the Buffalo mood was still quite low. It was shot in the middle of a snow storm and mockingly portrays Buffalo as a very grim place characterized by corny music and bad weather that has no hope of ever amounting to anything ever again. What it showed was true, though with a very narrow focus. Watching this video again, I was struck by how much of the city had changed for the better in this very short period. See how many changes you can find. It is quiet dramatic. People in Buffalo even seem to enjoy their winter weather more these days!
Video created by Alex Karas, Mark Byrnes, and Andrew Zona, described on Youtube as “a remake a classic Buffalo-boosting commercial from the 1980’s with brand new, breathtaking footage! Yeah Buffalo!” It was originally posted via WNYMedia.