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Places 🏙️ Buffalo New Yorkers, represent

I read all your words and don't understand how you get to the conclusion that the whole process wasn't systemically racist.
 
1) "No build" or "route it around the city" wasn't an option for planning what was then called the "Penn-Can Highway".

2) No neighborhood was seen as sacrosanct when it came to highway planning back then. Also, throughout the US, for every mile of highway that was planned to cut through a black neighborhood, there were tens of miles that were planned through white neighborhoods -- rich and poor.

3) There were no other reasonable options for routing an expressway into downtown Syracuse from the south except through the South Valley and 15th Ward. Other routes from the south would have been longer, more destructive, and have involved crossing significant natural barriers. Again, "no build" wasn't an option.

4) Displacement from expressway construction from the 1940s through the 1960s disproportionately affected African-Americans, not because their neighborhoods faced highway constriction, but because racial and family-based housing discrimination made relocation very difficult. However, not considering that aspect of displacement wasn't so much malice as it was ignorance. (Construction of the Kensington Expressway in Buffalo displaced far more white households than black households. The relocation program for the first phase took that into consideration. Still, it didn't change the fact that it was much harder to find new housing for black households.)

5) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. There's no evidence that the folks responsible for the routing of I-81 had racial malice (or anti-Italianism) in mind in planning I-81. Or anti-Polonism in the case of I-690 through Syracuse's Near Westside neighborhood. Making an assumption of racial or ethnic malice to fill in the blanks when documenting or retelling urban history is akin to rewriting history to favor a certain agenda.

6) Regardless of the above, construction of I-81 had a terrible impact on the 15th Ward and Syracuse's then-nascent African-American community, and that should not be ignored or forgotten.
 
Dan said:
There's no evidence that the folks responsible for the routing of I-81 had racial malice (or anti-Italianism)
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That's kind of my point: It's systemic. It's "just the system." Otherwise decent people accepted mistreatment of racial minorities (and don't kid yourself, Italians were a racial minority in that time period) with indifference. Malice on the part of the people planning the roads is not required, mere indifference is enough, since the malice is inherent in the system.

Most racists are not consciously, purposefully, maliciously racist; they're merely indifferent to the harm done to other races by "the system" because they lack empathy for people different from themselves.
 
Math lab. Uh huh. :heisenberg:

math lab.png
 
Ladies and gentlemen, introducing Miss Cheektowaga 1982!

miss_cheektowaga.jpg
 
Interesting article in Buffalo Business First, about the chains-go-to-Rochester-first phenomenon.


Rochester vs. Buffalo: Demographics tell the retail tale
By Lian Bunny – Reporter, Buffalo Business First
May 6, 2022 Updated May 6, 2022, 8:45am EDT

How close is Buffalo to Rochester?

When you’re talking travel time, it’s only an hour car ride away. But when it comes to demographics and shopping habits, the gap between the two metros can seem much wider.

“The difference between the way consumers shop in Buffalo and Rochester is striking,” said Jim Costello, general manager at Orchard Park-based Bert’s Bikes & Fitness, which has locations in both markets.

One difference that Business First research showed: Buffalo has more national and international brands than its sister city to the east, but you’ll find some higher-end brands in Rochester with no locations here.

Buffalo has a larger population and more people per square mile than the Rochester metro does, plus, it’s closer to Canada.

So why is that? How are the Buffalo and Rochester markets different?

To answer that question, Business First compiled data on each metro and compared the brands in both retail markets based on tenants in the two largest indoor malls in each: Eastview Mall and the Mall at Greece Ridge in the Rochester area and the Walden Galleria and Fashion Outlets of Niagara Falls in the Buffalo area.

The results? Buffalo actually has more national and international brands than Rochester, especially inside the Fashion Outlets. But only Rochester has higher-end brand-name stores such as Madewell, Von Maur, Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma and Athleta.

Buffalo’s largest mall, the Walden Galleria, does have some higher-end brands that the Rochester market does not (Coach, Hugo Boss, Swarovski) as well as some more affordable brands that Rochester doesn’t (Pacsun, Urban Outfitters, Zara).

Those retail market differences are likely driven by the metros’ demographics.

• Populations. Erie, Niagara, Monroe and Ontario counties are home to each metro’s two largest malls. Erie and Niagara counties have 295,001 more residents than Rochester’s Monroe and Ontario counties, according to five-year 2020 American Community Survey data. That means more potential customers, not including those from Canada.

• Proximity to the border. Easter weekend, about half of the outlet mall’s shoppers were from Canada, a number that’s improved as Covid-19 testing restrictions have been lifted, according to Jamie Bourbeau, senior vice president of the outlet division at Macerich, mall owner. Canadian shopper traffic to the mall fluctuates, she said, and the mall also draws customers from other countries, thanks to Niagara Falls tourism.

• Workforce. Retail trade contributes more to the Buffalo region’s economy. State labor department data shows the Queen City’s percentage of workers employed in retail trade compared to the total number of employed people has been a bit higher than Rochester over the past few years.

'Rochester is just a wealthier community'

When you measure by affluence, both Rochester counties beat Erie and Niagara.

Affluence scores are calculated using 12 components, from five-year 2020 U.S. Census Bureau data, including income, education and home values. Ontario County was the only county to beat the national averages. Erie and Niagara counties fell short of both Rochester counties in all 12 categories of affluence.

There are four instances – poverty rate, median home values, upper quartile home values and percentage of housing units with nine or more rooms – where one or both Buffalo counties beat out Monroe County but not Ontario County.

In other words, when it comes to education and income levels in particular, Rochester trumps Buffalo.

“You can argue we don’t have quantity but quality of demographics and density in certain areas is pretty substantial and can hold its own against that market,” said Jon Dower, vice president of leasing for Wilmorite Management Group, which owns Eastview, the Mall at Greece Ridge and other properties in that market.

Bert’s Bikes, founded in 1972, entered the Rochester market in 2010 and has grown to three stores there. Costello said his average sale per transaction in Rochester is about 25% higher than in Buffalo.

“Rochester is just a wealthier community,” he said.

Smaller market, more brands, more competition

Still, entering a smaller retail market loaded with brands isn’t always a win.

As Lindsey and Carmelo Cruz look to expand their Amherst-based healthy meal-prep business, 95 Nutrition, into Rochester, they’ve noticed less top-tier plaza space available and higher rent prices by about 20% compared to the Buffalo market.

They started the business in 2015 and opened their first spot in the Rochester area earlier this year. They have tentative leases to add two more locations in Greece and Webster, which they expect to open by year-end.

“People are willing to spend a bit more,” Lindsey Cruz said. “I think larger brands have recognized that, come in and that’s what’s warranting the higher rent.”

Dower said the Rochester malls will see an uptick in sales for a brand if it opens there and previously left or had never entered nearby markets like Buffalo and Syracuse.

“We will absolutely see customers traveling to Eastview from east and west,” he said.

But that’s not unique to Eastview, he added. Rochester customers will also travel to Buffalo if there’s a brand there that their local market doesn’t have.

How do mall locations affect other markets?

Having a brand present in only one upstate market isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

When big brands enter Upstate New York, they typically put locations off the NYS Thruway, which means, in no particular order, spots in Albany, Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse, according to Dower.

In other words, if one of those metros is lacking a brand, it’s typically just a matter of time, although sometimes that can take several years.

“You’re not going to find a whole lot of tenants that aren’t in both,” he said, referring to Rochester and Buffalo. “You can maybe find a handful. But usually, it’s a Costco situation where they haven’t found the right space or location yet.”

Costco Wholesale Corp. opened in 2014 in Syracuse and in 2015 in Rochester. The big-box retail chain was rumored to be coming to Buffalo for years and news broke earlier this year that the corporation will build a store in Amherst.

Athleta also exemplifies a coming-to-Buffalo trend. The women’s activewear retailer, owned by Gap Inc., is expected to open a store in Amherst this fall. Meanwhile, the brand has been open in the Eastview Mall since 2013, according to the mall’s website.

A big retailer in Rochester can have differing impacts on nearby malls, depending on how the shopping centers market themselves.

“You can have an outlet store and a normal store in close proximity, and it really just creates more brand awareness,” Bourbeau said.

Then there’s the Eastern Hills Mall in Clarence. The mall, owned by Uniland Development Co., had 100% occupancy, with about 80% of tenants being local companies, as of April, according to Ryan Weisz, senior marketing manager.

“Gone are the days where you could rely on national tenants to fill a mall,” he told Business First for a previous article. “We saw that trend and built an environment where people want to be.”

How did we calculate the affluence scores?

Business First compared data from the five-year version of the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 American Community Survey, the most current source of data at the local level, with national averages in 12 different categories:
  • Median household incomes
  • Per capita incomes
  • Poverty rates
  • Percentage of workers earning $100,000 or more
  • Percentage of household incomes of $150,000 or more
  • Percentage of adults (25 or older) with bachelor’s degrees
  • Percentage of adults (25 or older) with advanced degrees
  • Percentage of households with interests, dividends or rental incomes
  • Percentage of workers with management, business, science or art jobs
  • Percentage of housing units with nine rooms or more
  • Upper quartile (75th percentile) home values
  • Median home values
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My thoughts are with the familes of the victims of the Tops shooting, the residents of the Cold Spring neighborhood, and Buffalo's first responders.

Fuck you, Payton Gendron. Fuck your racist anti-Semitic fascist brony mall ninja ass. Rot in prison for the rest of your miserable life, and burn in hell.
 
Dan said:
My thoughts are with the familes of the victims of the Tops shooting, the residents of the Cold Spring neighborhood, and Buffalo's first responders.

Fuck you, Payton Gendron. Fuck your racist anti-Semitic fascist brony mall ninja ass. Rot in prison for the rest of your miserable life, and burn in hell.
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My thoughts exactly except I wish he would have been permanently maimed by the police before being disarmed. It sucks that he came out of this unscathed.
 
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Super Amputee Cat said:
My thoughts exactly except I wish he would have been permanently maimed by the police before being disarmed. It sucks that he came out of this unscathed.
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He's white. What did you expect?

It is domestic terrorism. Plain and simple. It is time to go after these f@ckers and the politicians and right wing media zealots who pander to them.
 
dandy_warhol said:
He's white. What did you expect?
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People have been saying that, but the Buffalo police have a pretty good record when it comes to not killing crime suspects.

In a case like this, you want to keep the suspect alive, to find out about his motive (they didn't know about the manifesto at the time), his mental state, if he's associated with any larger groups, and the like. We want to learn what drove him to hate so much, he wrote a nearly 200 page manifesto, and drive four hours to Buffalo to end what he hoped would be hundreds of innocent lives. We want to know where he got the money for such a huge arsenal of illegally modified assault weapons. We want to know how his parents might have enabled him.
 
dandy_warhol said:
He's white. What did you expect?

... f@ckers and the politicians and right wing media zealots who pander to them.
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Unfortunately there are MILLIONS of them. Millions of hate-spewing MAGAs - the vilest and most bloodthirsty and ignorant of human excrement - who will celebrate this mass shooting in Buffalo with masturbatory glee and eagerly await the next mass shooting and the next and the next, hoping that each will maim and kill more than the last.

If Trump were president, he would pardon this piece of shit and make yesterday a national Holiday. I blame Trump 100% for the empowerment of millions of bloodthirsty MAGAs and far-right fringe groups that have been growing like noxious weeds since 2016. (Actually they have been like that for decades, but until the past five years they have been seething just below the surface in their little sewers, waiting for the right moment to strike and kill with impunity. It almost happened on January 6th. It will happen again.)

Gendron is no lone wolf. There are millions that would gladly repeat his act of unspeakable evil. Or at least provide the money, guns, ammunition, lodging and transportation necessary to enable monsters like Gendron to commit their unspeakable acts.

Gendron may have pulled the trigger but their are millions that are complicit in this mass shooting.
 
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Dan said:
People have been saying that, but the Buffalo police have a pretty good record when it comes to not killing crime suspects.

In a case like this, you want to keep the suspect alive, to find out about his motive (they didn't know about the manifesto at the time), his mental state, if he's associated with any larger groups, and the like. We want to learn what drove him to hate so much, he wrote a nearly 200 page manifesto, and drive four hours to Buffalo to end what he hoped would be hundreds of innocent lives. We want to know where he got the money for such a huge arsenal of illegally modified assault weapons. We want to know how his parents might have enabled him.
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I understand your point but shouldn't they [all LEO not just Buffalo PD] want to keep all suspects alive. Even the ones holding toy guns or suspected of selling cigarettes or sleeping in their bed?
 
Dan said:
People have been saying that, but the Buffalo police have a pretty good record when it comes to not killing crime suspects.

In a case like this, you want to keep the suspect alive, to find out about his motive (they didn't know about the manifesto at the time), his mental state, if he's associated with any larger groups, and the like. We want to learn what drove him to hate so much, he wrote a nearly 200 page manifesto, and drive four hours to Buffalo to end what he hoped would be hundreds of innocent lives. We want to know where he got the money for such a huge arsenal of illegally modified assault weapons. We want to know how his parents might have enabled him.
Click to expand...

No, I dont see the need for the public expense of trial, lawyers, etc. This whole thing makes me ashamed to be a white American frankly. I dont want a trial where this "person" can spew his hateful nonsense.
 
Hawkeye66 said:
This whole thing makes me ashamed to be a white American frankly.
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Decades of collective self-flagellation by African-Americans about crime did nothing to help the community. Likewise, self flagellation by white folks isn't going to curb racism. It's just performative anti-racism that's ultimately going to leave more painful scars. It's also accomplishing what the white supremacists want -- a stronger collective white racial self-identity.

Shame or guilt doesn't change anything. Action does.
 
Dan said:
Decades of collective self-flagellation by African-Americans about crime did nothing to help the community. Likewise, self flagellation by white folks isn't going to curb racism. It's just performative anti-racism that's ultimately going to leave more painful scars. It's also accomplishing what the white supremacists want -- a stronger collective white racial self-identity.

Shame or guilt doesn't change anything. Action does.
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Yep, so the Buffalo cops should have shot the guy. Judge Dredd style.
 
I saw he's on suicide watch. I'm all for watching him commit suicide. Save us all a lot.
 
The Buffalo Bills, Sabres and Bandits (lacrosse) players went to the Jefferson Avenue neighborhood near the Tops shooting and hung out, brought flowers, served food, with the community. On the one hand I'm proud of the athletes and the time they're spending to help their adopted city, but on the other hand it just makes me sad that it's necessary and I know that although it will bring some cheer, it won't replaced loved ones who died in the attack.
 
I grew up in Buffalo but there is a certain tradition that either didn't exist or was in its infancy when I lived there. For the life of me, it seems like such an odd thing: The Meat Raffle. It's apparently a fundraiser where they give away meat as the prizes? Just seems weird to me.

 
Doohickie said:
I grew up in Buffalo but there is a certain tradition that either didn't exist or was in its infancy when I lived there. For the life of me, it seems like such an odd thing: The Meat Raffle. It's apparently a fundraiser where they give away meat as the prizes? Just seems weird to me.

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What should they be raffling? Tofu? No one gets excited about tofu.
 
Something about this ad screams "Old Buffalo". Not Boomer "bring back Sattler's and Freddie's Donuts and Pat's Hot Dogs and Danny Nevareth on WKBW and Sattler's" nostalgia, but "I remember when fish fry was blue pike", "There were three Deco restaurants within a five minute walk from my house", and "Half of the people on my block spoke German as their first language".

bce 11-30-1949 iroquois ad blue collar.png


The twist: those are the hands of a 118 year old Polish lady. :D
 
ExRocketSci said:
I remember when drinking a beer on your lunch break was not only acceptable, but expected.
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I know, right?

My first professional job was in Los Angeles. We didn't do it often, but maybe a couple times a year we'd have a group lunch, the managers and everything, and we'd swill pitchers with lunch. Then go back to work. Crazy.

When I subsequently took a job in Fort Worth I found out that kind of behavior would get you fired. :oops:
 
Doohickie said:
I know, right?

My first professional job was in Los Angeles. We didn't do it often, but maybe a couple times a year we'd have a group lunch, the managers and everything, and we'd swill pitchers with lunch. Then go back to work. Crazy.

When I subsequently took a job in Fort Worth I found out that kind of behavior would get you fired. :oops:
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Ah, the olden days. I attended UB when the drinking age was still 18, and the Ratskeller served mixed drinks and beer to students. At the Amherst campus, I would buy a beer and bag of cheese popcorn from a counter in the hallway to take into my 4:30 Engineering lecture.

Early in my career I worked for a couple of large oil industry companies in Houston. The first one did things like have kegs at conferences, open "hospitality rooms" for visitors, maintained a free taxi policy for employees in US and abroad (didn't want employees to lose licenses), and was not unknown for having prostitutes attend certain company events. Beer during lunch was common. However, they were very strict and ethical in business operations, and forward thinking in technology and practices.

The second company I worked for had a zero alcohol tolerance policy, based on its founder being a teetotaler decades earlier. A senior manager, who held many company patents and was on the path to VP, was fired for drinking during a customer luncheon. But they were very loose legally and ethically, requiring employees to smuggle illegal equipment into foreign countries, develop fake material orders to work around restrictions in import/export, and violated US restrictions on hardware development and deliveries to the USSR by creating a "foreign company" that was actually all Americans in the same building as us, using European letterheads and creating engineering drawings using European standards and European documentation.

In my later career, drinking at lunch became less and less accepted as the years went on, and it finally seemed to go away completely about 10-15 years or so. Before it did, the trend became "late lunch" and then not going back to the office. Finally, with the internet, most people just worked and ate at their desks anyway.
 
Meat raffles are like a new-ish Old Blue Collar Buffalo tradition. You don't see them in Rochester or Syracuse. They've quickly become one of the most Buffalo things ever, in my opinion. Why?
  • It's the modern day equivalent of the old Monte Carlo night.
  • They're often held in church basements, VFW posts, Knights of Columbus halls, and volunteer fire halls.
  • Pronounce it in a Buffalo accent. Meat reeeyaffle.
  • All you can drink beer.
I mean, look at this. It screams "BUFFALO!"

buffalo meat raffle 01.jpg


And there's this story from NPR.


At the Polish Falcons Hall in Depew, N.Y., one recent Saturday night, five women sat in the center of the crowd mulling the prizes on offer: pork tenderloin, top round roast, Italian sausage. Handcrafted meat-shaped dog chew toys dangled from colorful beads around their necks. Asked what they wanted to win, they exclaimed in unison, "everything!" as they eagerly waved plastic clappers and squeezed squeaking chew toys.

It's Buffalo Bills football season. It's Buffalo Sabres hockey season. But the game that's really sweeping Buffalo and its suburbs is the meat raffle. In the second weekend of November alone, there were at least 20 meat raffles in the area funding charities or pee-wee sports leagues. That Saturday night, at two events in Depew and Cheektowaga within a 10-minute drive from one another, nearly 600 people came out.

"We're right in the middle of it right now," said Erick Hansen, describing what could be deemed meat raffle season in Western New York. Hansen, who is the creator of MeatRaffles.com, said events here reach a crescendo from mid-October until Thanksgiving, take a holiday break, then pick up again from January right through to springtime.

The latest fad? A chance to win a freezer filled with meat. While regular raffle tickets cost $1, getting in on the freezer action usually sets gamblers back $5.

Mike Balling and his friends perched a homemade "Horrible Vegans" team sign on their table at the meat raffle at the Knights of Columbus in Cheektowaga. Balling, who said he might spend as much as $150 on raffle tickets at these events, wore a t-shirt declaring, "Meat Is Murder: tasty tasty murder."

The tickets used at the Falcons and Knights events featured three numbers per ticket. With three spins per round, participants got decent odds with nine chances to win per round.

"I love the hams," said Polish Falcons Ladies Auxiliary Member Cindy Szfranski, who attends meat raffles three or four times a month. "I was just at one over at the Eagles last Saturday," she said, referencing the Fraternal Order of Eagles organization, while waiting to order at the bar. Her drink was included in her cover charge of $5.

The promise of unlimited Labatt Blue or domestic brew is part of the appeal.

"The doors open at 6, at 5:30 there are people lined up waiting to drink," said Paul Kloc, a volunteer bartender at the Falcons event. By around 9:30 pm, attendees had gone through six or seven kegs, said Kloc. Six standard kegs would have provided around three beers per person in the crowd of 300 — and more assuming not everyone drank beer.

Despite the fact that Buffalonians have made them their own, meat raffles are nothing new. They've been smaller affairs held in pubs in the U.K. and Australia and midwestern taverns in places including Minnesota and Wisconsin for years.

Polish Falcon Ray Stack sucked on an unlit cigar while on meat table sentry duty, overseeing wrapped turkeys and racks of ribs as they emerged from a chilled storage area. Dennis "Zoots" Szuder bagged the prizes for winners.

When he's not volunteering at a meat raffle, Zoots brings props.

"I got the turkey hats, little hand clappers, little chickens that squeak — I bring a whole bag of that stuff," he said.

The five ladies wearing chew toy jewelry held court, each crowned in wobbling turkey leg headbands. "It's Thanksgiving," proclaimed Pat Mazur. "We found them at Wegmans."

However, the hot dogs, sausages and chicken cutlets scored at meat raffles here usually don't come from the beloved Western New York grocery chain. Instead, organizers keep it local. Most seem to get their prize supply from independent butchers and meat markets, some of which have been catering to the meat raffle craze.

"The groundswell is unbelievable," said Federal Meats Supervisor Tom Benzin. "I mean there isn't a week that goes by that we don't get an email or a request to talk about a meat raffle."

The local butchery has nine locations and runs underwriting messages on local NPR-affiliate WBFO to promote meat raffle services. The Camellia Meats website has a special note on its homepage: "Buffalo has its fair share of meat raffles throughout the year and we have you covered."

At some more elaborate meat raffles involving special wheels, even the tickets come from a local supplier, said Falcons event announcer Fred Schmidt.

Meat raffles are "a crazy thing," said Ed Nabozny, a Polish Falcons volunteer, recalling a time when his wife spent $51 on raffle tickets to try to win three pounds of Sahlen's hot dogs, a local staple her family already had a supply of in the freezer. She didn't win them.

"But we were happy. We had a few beers, we had a couple drinks, but you know, everybody leaves with a smile on their face."
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The last Belt Line station is for sale!

www.zillow.com

10 Starin Ave, Buffalo, NY 14214 | Zillow

10 Starin Ave, Buffalo NY, is a Single Family home that contains 1645 sq ft and was built in 1900.It contains 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. The Zestimate for this Single Family is $541,800, which has increased by $9,900 in the last 30 days.The Rent Zestimate for this Single Family is $3,033/mo...
www.zillow.com www.zillow.com

Doohickie said:
Yeah I still don't get it.
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Pay $10 for admission and all-you-can-drink Labatt Blue :canada: or Genny Cream :toilet::tpp:.

There'll be a bunch of different meat packages raffled off. Pay $1 for a raffle ticket for any of those packages. Buy more tickets to increase your odds of winning a certain package. If you don't win a cooler of Sahlen's, you won't care, because you'll be passed out on the basement floor of the Stanley Brzeczyszczykiewicz Post or Our Lady of Perpetual Blood social hall.
 
Dan said:
Pay $10 for admission and all-you-can-drink Labatt Blue :canada: or Genny Cream :toilet::tpp:.

There'll be a bunch of different meat packages raffled off. Pay $1 for a raffle ticket for any of those packages. Buy more tickets to increase your odds of winning a certain package. If you don't win a cooler of Sahlen's, you won't care, because you'll be passed out on the basement floor of the Stanley Brzeczyszczykiewicz Post or Our Lady of Perpetual Blood social hall.
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I get the cheap beer angle. The thing I don't get is why would an organization center a raffle around meat products. I guess maybe some random club tried it and was successful and everyone else copied it, but why would someone try it to begin with?
 
Doohickie said:
I get the cheap beer angle. The thing I don't get is why would an organization center a raffle around meat products. I guess maybe some random club tried it and was successful and everyone else copied it, but why would someone try it to begin with?
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Would you really go to a fruit raffle? A lettuce raffle?
 
Doohickie said:
I get the cheap beer angle. The thing I don't get is why would an organization center a raffle around meat products. I guess maybe some random club tried it and was successful and everyone else copied it, but why would someone try it to begin with?
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Why not? Meat is expensive and if you can win enough meat to stock your freezer and have some fun while the drawing takes place what's not to like?
 
Yes the kale photos convey the all too familiar smug, holier than thou vibe many vegetarians exude.
 
Buffalo Evening News, August 8, 1959. This real estate ad really captures the zeitgeist of the time.

move out of a two-flat 1969-08-08 BEN.jpg
 
Doohickie said:
$16,000? Who has that kind of money for a house???
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163K in '22 dollars. Still not a bad deal at all, compared to the 500k+ home prices that are now the norm in any major metro (with notable exceptions of course, you can still get a 16,000$ house in Youngstown, OH, just not one you can safely live in :p ). It just goes to show how over-inflated housing prices have become, and how cost of living in general has not kept up with wages.

I also love the "out of this world" ad, as aggravating as suburbanization was. The zeitgeist it portrays of that particular era in suburbanization is spot on.

Buffalo used to be very much a city you could get a $16,000 (un)livable house in, as recently as 5-10 years ago. The only catch is that you would be living on the East Side of Buffalo and would be buying a dilapidated telescope house that would need $160k worth of renovations. Now, both the good and bad kinds of urban revitalization are rapidly elevating Buffalo out of the "cheap and abandoned" class of rust belt city. The good kind being the reinvestment we are seeing spearheaded by working class people, the influx of Bangladeshi and other South Asian-Americans to the Broadway/Fillmore area is a great example. Working class newcomers who are buying homes and opening businesses.

The Bad kind of reinvestment is "Larkinville", Doug Jemal buying the Seneca One and half of Downtown, the reinvention of Black Rock as "Chandlerville" and the rapid gentrification of the West Side. I like that newer immigration is kind of serving as a counterbalance to outright gentrification on the East Side. Sure, there will be bound to be cultural and class conflict between African-American lifers and the new neighbors, but the displacement effect is mitigated by the fact that so much of the real estate that the newcomers are buying up was empty and uninhabited to begin with, as well as the fact that many of the newcomers are buying homes TO LIVE, not as investment properties.

A similar phenomenon happened in the Castle Hill and Zerega neighborhoods in the Bronx as well. The area by the year 2000 had come to be quite impoverished since the white flight (reading between the lines: institutional racism) that occured in the 70s and 80s. The late 1990s and especially the 2000s, brought in a large influx of Pakistani, Bengali, Bangladeshi and Indian families buying homes and businesses which really served to revitalize and stabilize the neighborhood.

Now as we enter the 20s in earnest, home prices in NYC have become beyond the reach of working class families and new immigrants, even when pooling resources between relatives of large families. Hence why you see more and more new immigrants leaving NYC for places like Buffalo, SE Michigan, Philly and the Sun Belt states, or just skipping over NYC entirely. New York City is no longer the cultural exporter and beacon of liberty that it once was, and it mostly has to do with the rapid rise in cost of living since 9/11 and its diluting effects on the city's cultural vibrancy. When there is no longer place for the Immigrant, the Worker and the Artist (even if artists are often the unintentional "shock troops" of gentrification), just the professional-managerial class, a city will naturally become vapid.
 
Dan said:
Buffalo Evening News, August 8, 1959. This real estate ad really captures the zeitgeist of the time.

View attachment 58346
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My dad tells the story of how my grandmother would have given her left ear for one of these suburban houses instead of the jerry-rigged together telescoping house they lived in on Sobieski St, but my grandfather was too cheap to move out to Cheektowaga in 1959 from Polonia even though they could have afforded too.

My dad was a high school junior/senior in 1959.
 
The Terminator said:
163K in '22 dollars. Still not a bad deal at all, compared to the 500k+ home prices that are now the norm in any major metro (with notable exceptions of course, you can still get a 16,000$ house in Youngstown, OH, just not one you can safely live in :p ). It just goes to show how over-inflated housing prices have become, and how cost of living in general has not kept up with wages.

I also love the "out of this world" ad, as aggravating as suburbanization was. The zeitgeist it portrays of that particular era in suburbanization is spot on.

Buffalo used to be very much a city you could get a $16,000 (un)livable house in, as recently as 5-10 years ago. The only catch is that you would be living on the East Side of Buffalo and would be buying a dilapidated telescope house that would need $160k worth of renovations. Now, both the good and bad kinds of urban revitalization are rapidly elevating Buffalo out of the "cheap and abandoned" class of rust belt city. The good kind being the reinvestment we are seeing spearheaded by working class people, the influx of Bangladeshi and other South Asian-Americans to the Broadway/Fillmore area is a great example. Working class newcomers who are buying homes and opening businesses.

The Bad kind of reinvestment is "Larkinville", Doug Jemal buying the Seneca One and half of Downtown, the reinvention of Black Rock as "Chandlerville" and the rapid gentrification of the West Side. I like that newer immigration is kind of serving as a counterbalance to outright gentrification on the East Side. Sure, there will be bound to be cultural and class conflict between African-American lifers and the new neighbors, but the displacement effect is mitigated by the fact that so much of the real estate that the newcomers are buying up was empty and uninhabited to begin with, as well as the fact that many of the newcomers are buying homes TO LIVE, not as investment properties.

A similar phenomenon happened in the Castle Hill and Zerega neighborhoods in the Bronx as well. The area by the year 2000 had come to be quite impoverished since the white flight (reading between the lines: institutional racism) that occured in the 70s and 80s. The late 1990s and especially the 2000s, brought in a large influx of Pakistani, Bengali, Bangladeshi and Indian families buying homes and businesses which really served to revitalize and stabilize the neighborhood.

Now as we enter the 20s in earnest, home prices in NYC have become beyond the reach of working class families and new immigrants, even when pooling resources between relatives of large families. Hence why you see more and more new immigrants leaving NYC for places like Buffalo, SE Michigan, Philly and the Sun Belt states, or just skipping over NYC entirely. New York City is no longer the cultural exporter and beacon of liberty that it once was, and it mostly has to do with the rapid rise in cost of living since 9/11 and its diluting effects on the city's cultural vibrancy. When there is no longer place for the Immigrant, the Worker and the Artist (even if artists are often the unintentional "shock troops" of gentrification), just the professional-managerial class, a city will naturally become vapid.
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Check you out, sounding all planner-y and everything!:`)
 
The Terminator said:
Sure, there will be bound to be cultural and class conflict between African-American lifers and the new neighbors
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Looking at my great grandparents' old neighborhood it seems like one potential cultural rift is religion. I see a lot of the old Catholic Churches are now Mosques and there are several Halal groceries.
 
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