One of the joys of living in Southern Ontario, is the fact you can be so near, and yet so far away from the US at the same time. Its kind of like having an ill-disciplined crazy relative, who gets ignored by the family most of the year, but every so often, has something that you just can’t do without, and so you pull down the shutters, don the hard hat, and brace yourself for impact as you knock on the front door.
Yes its nice to have that arms-length distance, where you can ignore and dismiss their inane near-madness ramblings when you like, but then take advantage of the few good things they offer. For me in June, one of the advantages that Buffalo (and Western New York State in general) offered, was a border with Canada. As the end of my working-holiday visa neared, I realised that to avoid staying in Canada illegally (and potentially cause any number of problems for future plans), I would need to exit the country and re-enter as a tourist.
From Toronto, the quickest, cheapest and easiest way to do this is to catch a greyhound around the “Golden Horseshoe” of Lake Ontario, past Niagara Falls, and down into the city of Buffalo. This was a journey I should have taken about 18 months before to fly south, but due to other, far more powerful forces at work, I never made it. So this was to be the first leg of the trip that never happened.
*As a brief aside here, I still actually have copies of the tickets for the flights I was supposed to take heading south from Buffalo to Nashville and New Orleans, and even the long out-dated bus ticket from Niagara Falls to Buffalo.
So, arriving on a very warm and bright Friday evening, I gave myself the chance to see the city in its lively happening Friday night party outfit, and then in its chilled-out relaxing summer dress on Saturday, before heading home in the late afternoon. Buffalo may not have the vast blocks of mile-high skyscrapers that Toronto and New York boast, but the few it does have were shining in their grand, regal and elegant best in the evening sunlight.
A steady stream of people greeted me on their way to the ballpark for an evening baseball game, as I left the bus station and headed for my hostel. All boded well for a fun 24 hours. How wrong could I be?
After checking-in, I headed, full of anticipation, straight for the bustling entertainment district to grab something to eat, and experience Buffalo’s party side. That entertainment district came as a bit of a shock to find just two sparsely populated street blocks with a handful of bars and restaurants. It would be fair to say the atmosphere was less than buzzing. Still, it was safe, friendly enough, and I was able to get a nice meal and enjoy the evening. Tomorrow was sure to be a bright sunny day full of promise for a bustling Saturday in the heart of the city.
As you can probably sense from the way this story is progressing, a bustling city centre is not what greeted me on that fine Saturday morning. Infact, there was no-one to greet me on that morning. I walked for almost 20 minutes up and down the main streets of the city to find somewhere for breakfast, before finally resorting to a branch of Tim Horton’s, that appeared to be the only thing open for miles around. I counted the total number of people I saw on that walk on both hands.
Still, sightseeing is better without the masses, so I took a path around the city that meandered past all those elegant and grand buildings, pausing regularly for photographs and long leisurely gazes at the skyline. Fancying I might not be short on time, I even read all the very interesting (if rather dry) information points posted around the city, detailing how each structure was built, and how Buffalo came to be the powerhouse city that it now is. Surely now was time for lunch and then the bus home. Alas no. I could have stopped to chat with all the thirty or so people I saw on that walk, and still had an hour before even needing to think about lunch. Yes, it was turning into one of those days.
This is not to say that Buffalo city centre has nothing to enjoy, it just seems people stopped enjoying it a long time ago. Many of the buildings are very impressive, and include the first ever “skyscraper” built in the USA. Somehow, the city manages to combine architecture types from many different design styles, and far from looking out of place, they actually compliment each other. The baseball stadium is a lovely example of an “old American ballpark”. It’s the concrete boxes built in the last 50 years or so that put the city to a bit of shame.
Like many cities in America, and the way some cities in Britain now appear to be developing, people are no longer drawn into the city. They no longer want to enjoy it, live in it and use it as a social space. They would rather drive around to out-of-town shopping malls, eating, shopping, drinking, and even nightclubbing in carbon-copy boxes. City centres aren’t like that. They’ve grown-up. They’ve evolved. They’ve developed of their own accord, going through all the growing-pains it takes to reach maturity.
But as the people start leaving the urban centres, so to do the businesses and attractions that draw them there, and so it’s a vicious circle. Hopefully soon, people will start tiring of these identikit concrete boxes, and return to enjoy the sights, sounds, people and general environment of cities like Buffalo.
As a final, ironic, twist to this story, when re-entering Canada, I was puzzled why the border guards didn’t stamp my passport. When I asked the guard, he replied “you’re ok for another 4 months with this one they stamped in April”. Yes, that’s right! On returning from the FA Cup semi-final in April, immigration at Pearson Airport stamped my passport. The realisation that the whole trip was effectively pointless hit me as I sat down on the bus, and I could only smile the rest of the way back up the QEW to Toronto.
Sadly poor Izzy was left with nothing to do but read the paper for a Saturday in Buffalo.
No comments:
Post a Comment