People from Buffalo hate it when others ridicule and complain about the city -- that's their job. They do it with relish and vengance.
I'd like to sentence each anti-zealot to an indefinite stay at Camp Red State - southern "progressive" city style. Where they can discover:
- Children can be concieved and born during the same "rush hour" in Houston and Atlanta. We complain when it takes 15 instead of 12 minutes to get from downtown to the airport.
- You must buy satellite radio in South Georgia if you want much more than country, gospel, Rush or "classic" (Skynyrd) rock. Between Buffalo and nearby Toronto I have almost as many stations for free.
- Yes, blizzards suck. But they do not come in your front door unless you open it (hurricanes), strike with only minutes warning (tornadoes) or level your home (earthquakes). Get over it. It's snow. It melts. The house where my father was born still stands here. The block where my daughter was a baby in Biloxi is gone.
- Born yesterday, cookie cutter , neo-colonial monster housing costs twice as much the grand old dames who have been lining our streets for a century. No one blinks an eye at having stained glass or artisan brass fixtures in a working class home here.
- Great and grand architects have left their mark all over our map. We have several Frank Lloyd Wright structures, in Houston the majority of the public spaces were designed Thursday by a guy named Billy Bob.
- At a city-sponsored street fair last summer I watched Black, White and Hispanic kids dancing together in front of the bandstand where a band of Lesbian rockers played out. In certain Southern places I have lived, this tableau would have existed only in the news story that describes what happened before the riot. Here, everyone was simply listening to the music and it was good.
- Music and art here refuse to believe the city has shrunk. The local scene is vibrant. National artists come to play. The Monday night Robert Cray show last week was standing room only. Free open mic nights abound and the talent is solid. With one-sixth the population I have at least as many options on any given night as I did in Houston.
- Concerned Southern parents pay thousands, upon thousands of dollars for private education at a level generally below what we accept as simply normal in our public schools. The public schools in Texas, Georgia and Mississipi teach the kids to count to 48th, 49th and 50th (and that's only because they don't include Puerto Rico).
-Our children can commute to a world-class research university at UB, the largest in the SUNY system, or make their higher education choice from more than a dozen other quality regional choices. In Georgia, our choice was community college/ leave home.
This is not to say that Southern cities are devoid of education, art, culture or beauty... just that the abundance here goes largely unheralded and underappreciated.
Most of all, there is a sense of shared community and experience here that is impossible to quantify, but informs the way we treat each other.
Last night Jen and I wanted to see a play. There were only scattered singles left when we stopped by the box office in the afternoon. Because we couldn't sit together, the ticket clerk gave us a discount -- we didn't ask, but it was very much appreciated.
When we found our seats, a single seat next to Jen offered to trade with me. So we ended up with great aisle seats, discounted, on a sold-out production buying tickets that day.
And the show was pretty good too.



Copyright 2005 Judi Griggs