I’ve been living in the city of Buffalo for what seems like an eternity now (going on nine years), but never really though t of this place as a city. I came to Buffalo at the beginning of the mass exodus that started in the mid 1990s, and thought to myself, "Damn: Is the place that bad?" Well, I suffered throughout the Blizzard of ’96, Buffalo’s short run for the dubious title of per capita murder capital of America, and fiscal instability that probably should have sent my ass packing a long time ago. Thinking back now, I think part of the reason I’ve stayed in Buffalo was this Vaudevillian sideshow aspect to the way life goes on around here. Then I started thinking about why that was. It all revolves around controlling space and people, in a crazy game to maintain social distinction and group identity.

Simply put, Buffalo has put a sinister twist on a classic model of urban development, that turn of the century model that says all activity radiates from some central business district (CBD), typically downtown. This model sprung up as result of the U.S. shifting from a farming mode to an industrial mode of making money. Then all these broke-ass farmers decided that they couldn’t make enough money to eat anymore, so they went to live as close as possible to where the money was, and voila: the ghetto. For people with money in the first place, the city was fun because it was the first place all these highfalutin’ folks got a taste of all the world has to offer. The lure of the good life looms for all in the bounty of the city-hooray!! That bounty basically boiled down to having places to make money, spend money and forget about reality.

So now you’ve got relatively, and desperately, poor people mixed in with the relatively well-to-do and the extremely rich, walking the streets together. The extremely rich are trying to pretend the rest don’t exist, the well-to-do are trying to be just like the rich ones, and the broke ones are just worried about not dying from starvation, disease, a factory accident, or interethnic violence.

Being jumbled together like that renders obvious some harsh social contradictions over time. It’s hard to just pretend somebody doesn’t exist. After a while the people you try to ignore make it painfully clear that they know you know they’re there; the ones you try to hang from lampposts fight back, and it’s time to make some decisions.

The pursuit of wealth and human dignity took two distinct paths, as both groups needed a psychological safety valve to release the growing tension of disparity. The ones who had enough money to relocate say "Let the sons of bitches have that stinking, godless, rat infested cesspool! I’m moving!" Well, they went to some place not too far from the city they came to loathe, and entered suburbia. The rest of the people who stayed (by choice or lack thereof) were left to bitch and moan, or make excuses why the city is not so bad, while they secretly aspire to live in the suburbs.

The flood out of the city was fed in part by independent transportation – vehicle ownership. People with cars didn’t have to depend on the streetcars, subways, etc. to get back and forth to work. But the city still held the lock on the amenities that made it worth going there in the first place. Modern cities still have a functional relationship with the outlying areas surrounding them, sort of like a geographic feudalism. But what keeps the two tied together is a public transportation system. Mass transit unites divided spaces.

One of the things that add to the city draw is retail. How many people do you know in Buffalo that go across the state once or twice a year to go shopping in NYC? Where can you go shopping in major retail stores in the city of Buffalo? How many people have you seen grocery shopping in corner stores or Walgreens? As much as I Like the Lisbon-mart and We Never Close, there ain’t shit I can buy there worth buying! Who do you typically see at the farmers’ markets in Buffalo?

The act of buying in itself is a social experience. What you buy is a perceived reflection on the consumer. The spaces where you buy things reinforce established distinctions. They’re small enclaves. The mall encapsulates a setting and reflects its intended consumers, giving people a shared communal space. The two area malls that most people go to are both in suburbs of Buffalo, one of which had to have a poor girl get run over by a truck to get easy access to! Then there’s the Boulevard Mall, which I’d rather burn to the ground for the insurance money than waste time talking about. Creating a focal point of shopping outside the city silently reinforces the "fuck you" elitist mentality of suburbia through its location-limited access, leaving city residents with a donkey-turd of a shopping center right off a major transportation artery.

Another obvious draw is the sports and entertainment factor. Is just me or is it a little absurd that the four-time Super Bowl contenders, named the Buffalo Bills, are a half-hour drive FROM the city? Using the NYC comparison again, the options there are pretty infinite. Buffalo’s a whole lot smaller, but it still seems like there might be some goddamned thing to do if the stadium was closer to the city, if not downtown.

The sporting event is a strange phenomenon in its social dynamics. People from all backgrounds get together and act like they’re at home watching the shit on the tube together! There’s a great sense of unity at a major sporting event. Victory and loss are collective; and regional divisions disappear when people "place" themselves with a larger geographic identifier.

Those pull factors that make the deserters come back for more (people, jobs, shopping, and entertainment) have, to varying degrees, been displaced.

For example, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA to NYC heads) spans all through the Hudson Valley, Long Island, and Connecticut. It’s the same with the New Jersey Transit (NJT); all tie people to a city center, regardless of physical distance. And beloved Buffalo would seem to be pretty much following the same story except for a few details. Part of Buffalo’s tragic downfall (in my simplistic analysis) is its spatial relation to, or dislocation from, its suburbs.