Thoughts on Buffalo and Paterson

So far, on this tour, we’ve been to Baltimore; Buffalo; Hartford, Conn.; and Paterson, N.J. Here are a few random thoughts on Buffalo and Paterson.

BUFFALO: When you’re in Buffalo, you know you’re in Buffalo, because there are buffaloes everywhere. There are, of course, Buffalo Bills signs. And, there are artistic buffalo sculptures, which were placed around the city in some sort of art/tourism campaign a while ago. The name Buffalo, however, comes from the French beau fleuve, or “beautiful river.” It is not named after the animal. Heck, I don’t even know if buffaloes ever lived in the Buffalo area.

Buffalo, like many other cities in upstate New York, has been extremely depopulated over the past 40 years or so. You can really feel this on the East Side. This is where Central Terminal is. Once a busy train station for what was the eight-biggest city in the country, it has been abandoned since 1979 and is now a giant, abandoned ruin. The East Side used to be mostly Polish. Today, from what we saw, it’s mostly uninhabited. We drove around the area surrounding the train station, block after block of abandoned, boarded-up houses.

We went to a bar – Arty’s. It’s in the shadow of Central Terminal, and the only sign of life left in the immediate neighborhood. The people inside were friendly. There was a big Polish flag in the window; the vibe was regular neighborhood/working class bar. We drank Genny out of those short, fat old-school bottles, and on the way out, we got a recommendation for a good Polish restaurant in nearby Cheektowaga.

PATERSON: About a year ago, before we had even conceived of the “Gritty Cities” tour, I was on a train to New York City. One of the stops was Paterson. I looked out the train window, and saw a bunch of abandoned factories. It looked like a German city from 1945. I knew I had to visit there someday.

Even by urban northeastern standards, Paterson has an inordinate amount of litter. You walk along the Passaic River, and the shores are full of garbage and the water close to shore has an oily sheen on it. There’s tons of litter everywhere in the city. Weirdly enough, when we went, there were broken TVs everywhere. We must have counted at least 40 of them, on curbs mostly, but also in vacant lots, next to the river, in Hinchliffe Stadium, wherever else you could throw them. It’s like everyone decided to throw out their TV on the same day.

Hinchliffe Stadium is one of a handful of Negro League stadiums still standing. It’s right there after you cross the Great Falls, over to North Paterson. It feels a bit like, I imagine, looking at the remains of a Roman amphitheater would. You can get a sense of its former glory, but today it’s falling apart and full of garbage. A lot of car parts, weirdly enough. It’s like people use it as a spot to dump parts after they crash their cars.

Paterson feels more crowded than Baltimore or Buffalo. With about 120,000 people packed into eight square miles, this makes sense. Unlike Buffalo, where you can sometimes look out on a main street and see no people, Paterson is full of people. Its vibe reminds me of a gritty neighborhood in New York City, which I guess makes sense given its location.