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Play nice people! I think the area can absorb some hipsters to keep the area stable, while at the same time keeping its blue collar character. Buffalo isn't NYC and the forceful type of gentrification won't happen in Buffalo. Seems like the working middle class and hipster types co-exist happily in the Hertel/North Park area, why can't they further to the west?
No one said you need to like what people are discussing. "Pathetic" is when you need to read Artvoice to decide if the place is "hip" enough to visit and if the neighborhood rates on the "vibrant" scale. Most of us who are talking about the neighborhoods grew up in them (like my husband) or lived in them (like I did on Ashland when in college when it was slumlords) before the area had anything 'hip' in it. Reality check time for you./.. give it 30 or 40 years and you will see it differently..
How dare someone refer to a publication to determine an area that best fits their lifestyle? I know I wouldn't waste my time visiting an area that is slummy when I could go to an area and get great food. I want a hip vibrant place. Is that wrong? I love you long for the times when things were unsafe. Is there really a need? There are plenty of sections that are slummy and dangerous to go around. I wish the hipsters and classy upscale businessmen would take over more areas of Buffalo and make it into a respectable city once again. One that gets regarded as a great hip city, instead of some snowy wasteland of violence.
You're making some big assumptions on age, how I learned of the bar etc. etc. Just because you are old, cranky and still sour that you never fit in with a 'hip' crowd doesnt give you the right to blast everything. Unlike you, I didn't just spend my college years on the West Side or in the City of Buffalo for that matter, I have a vested interest and care of how it does. Maybe you like the filth and grime of a blighted neighborhood thats fine, I'm sure your neighbors love you. shouldn't you be out painting the skirting on your trailer?
Mike, our entire faminly -- except me -- is from Buffalo for generations back. I am a transplant: college, living in Buffalo and working here my entire life... a lot longer than I led other places. But my husband's family...Many grew up in places ( when they were honest Blue Collar areas) like the Fruit Belt ( husband's grandmother), my SIL's mother ( Tonawanda St), and my hubby ( Fillmore-Ferry area). Just because we ( hubby and I) left the city to buy house on lots of land doesn't mean we abandoned the city. [We wanted land, not looking in the neighbors windows -- plus, it was really cheap -- and you don't get it in the city]. Our daughters currently both work in the city -- one downtown on Elmwood -- where she finds used needles in her ( expensively paid for) parking lot. The other works near E. Ferry.
A grown man with kids (saw another post) who hangs out nights drinking in bars sounds like every blue collar guy of our parents' age. The only difference is you call the bar gentrified, and therefore, hip. This city was able to revive Elmwood -- a neighborhood of "good bones" homes where people who built them were far from blue collar -- they were the ones who hired the blue collar servants (yes we have family who did that as well back 80 years ago). The difference? Black Rock and Riverside are just about the same as the blue collar areas where my husband's family is from and the homes are not worth the cost of "gentrification". You can not make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. This is not glorious Victorian Buffalo or homes which are full of architectural splendor. You can maybe rehab the old factories into lofts, change sturdy buildings like abandoned churches into multi-use buildings, but gentrify the area? You drive out the older people who worked hard to buy those homes and live on fairly low incomes.
Time to leave the industrial areas the way they were... Kielbasa and pirogi and beef on weck and no silly "plating" is right! Forget the gentirfication.
The Elmwood strip wasn't a strip when I went to college. And we paid ridiculous rents per student to landlords who demanded it because they could....( we moved to our first apt. in Kenmore and then out here to a house!). No fancy, no snotty... and Chippewa was drunks and female streetwalk*ers ... girls just didn't walk there.
I wonder if anyone under 45 has a clue what Buffalo was like?
"I wonder if anyone under 45 has a clue what Buffalo was like?"
sadly no.....I want to cry when I drive down Grant Street. It is unrecognizable. Most of it looks like outtakes from a third world movie. I can't even understand the signs in front of the stores!
The old Elmwood all gone...they ruined the Park Lane too! I could go on and on...you move back to Buffalo and find it only exists in your memory.
How dare someone refer to a publication to determine an area that best fits their lifestyle? I know I wouldn't waste my time visiting an area that is slummy when I could go to an area and get great food. I want a hip vibrant place. Is that wrong? I love you long for the times when things were unsafe. Is there really a need? There are plenty of sections that are slummy and dangerous to go around. I wish the hipsters and classy upscale businessmen would take over more areas of Buffalo and make it into a respectable city once again. One that gets regarded as a great hip city, instead of some snowy wasteland of violence.
"I want a hip vibrant place."
Uh, that would be Brooklyn or Silver Lake..I hope Buffalo stays "cerulean" as long as it can Don't mind me..I hold that the minute something is deemed hip it ceases to be.
How dare someone refer to a publication to determine an area that best fits their lifestyle? I know I wouldn't waste my time visiting an area that is slummy when I could go to an area and get great food. I want a hip vibrant place. Is that wrong? I love you long for the times when things were unsafe. Is there really a need? There are plenty of sections that are slummy and dangerous to go around. I wish the hipsters and classy upscale businessmen would take over more areas of Buffalo and make it into a respectable city once again. One that gets regarded as a great hip city, instead of some snowy wasteland of violence.
I love you long for the times when things were unsafe.
uh, no the neighborhoods we remember were far safer than those same neighborhoods are today.
I was up in Buffalo a few weeks past and I was shocked to see all the new Hipster activity on Amherst Street. I'm glad to see that the neighborhood won't fall down the hole and now has a second life.
Like I said before, don't worry about old residents being forced out. This isn't NYC we are talking about, prices are not going to become unaffordable. I think it's great that the Dom Polski Hall can coexist with the latest Hipster bar. This is what I like about Buffalo, and want to see more of it; the area is finally moving into the future while still coexisting with the past.
"I wonder if anyone under 45 has a clue what Buffalo was like?"
sadly no.....I want to cry when I drive down Grant Street. It is unrecognizable. Most of it looks like outtakes from a third world movie. I can't even understand the signs in front of the stores!
The old Elmwood all gone...they ruined the Park Lane too! I could go on and on...you move back to Buffalo and find it only exists in your memory.
The Park Lane was ruined when the original burned down. That was a classy place!
But on Grant... well, Guercio's is still there... I hope.
The Park Lane was ruined when the original burned down. That was a classy place!
But on Grant... well, Guercio's is still there... I hope.
Heck yeah it is. Guercio and Sons
I'm related to the Guercio's (through marriage) I love that market!
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Don't mind me..I hold that the minute something is deemed hip it ceases to be.
