Buffalo Is Beautiful~ The Preface

On a national weather forecast at the end of July, the presiding weatherman felt compelled to announce that surprisingly, there was no snow in the forecast for Buffalo, New York. His pasty cheeks then spread into a wide grin. For someone living no where near Buffalo, his eyeball-rolling remark was typical.

That weatherman, much like the rest of America, has very little idea what Buffalo has to offer. Most people, like Mr. Pasty Cheeks, think Buffalo is nothing more than a rusting, former steel town buried in snow 11 months out of the year. It's actually only 10 months. No, wait. That would be the dream of all local ski resorts. Okay, so it's really ripe for snow 5 months of the year. But Buffalo and its surrounding towns have the best snow-removal equipment and capabilities of any area in the country. Buffalo can dig itself out of any snowfall in world-record time. And unlike hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes and floods, snowstorms rarely kill or lay waste to property.

What America doesn't know is that Buffalo is beautiful. The architecture alone is jaw-dropping. The city ranks 9th in America for support of the arts and theater. Not bad for a city of 280,000 and surrounding area total of 1.1 million. Buffalo is a food-lovers haven, a sports haven, a music haven. Buffalo is lush with trees, lush with parks and lush with rare waterfowl along the speedy Niagara River. Perched on the eastern shore of Lake Erie, Buffalo is also lush with the gold of the future~ fresh water.

The best kept secret about Buffalo, aptly named "The City of Good Neighbors", is the people. No where in America will you find more down-to-earth residents. No where in America will you find more people willing to tell it like it is. There is less pretention in Buffalo. There is less ego in Buffalo. There is more friendliness in Buffalo.

The down-side of less pretension and less ego is a subtle, collective lack of self-esteem. The people of Buffalo are humble to a fault. They are largely unaware of the treasures they live amongst in their area because they are largely unaware of the treasures they live with in themselves. There is a low-grade, collective energy that pervades the people of the region. That energy projects, "we're not quite good enough". It is the mist that shrouds this Avalon of the Northeast.

Thankfully, the energy is shifting. It is shifting from the self-deprecating to the self-appreciating. The people of Buffalo are waking up to the beauty in their area and the beauty in themselves. Eventually, the positive momentum will lift the shroud on this cultural Mecca and the world will no longer be snowblind about Buffalo.