I came across two awesome websites for us Buffalonians.

One is a great site for Buffalo sports called The Buffalo Sports Museum and another, for those of us that have moved from the Queen City, Buffalo Ex-Pat.

I love this quote from the text of the latter:

“Now in the same way that Dan Quayle is no Jack Kennedy, Buffalo is no Chicago—or any of the other places I‘ve lived or frequented since leaving Bills Country—Denver, Santa Fe, Miami, Southern California.

You could say Chicago is Buffalo in its heyday on steroids. There are more than a few similarities. Chicago hosted the World’s Fair within a few years of the Pan Am Expo. Some of the buildings that survive from the Fair resemble their counterparts in Buffalo. Obviously we’re both on a lake. And Chicago is a commercial center now, as Buffalo was when the lights first came on from the Falls. Lots of old money. Lots of new money. And lots of immigrants: Poles, Germans, Italians, just like old Buffalo. And industry too. Buffalo had Pierce Arrow. Chicago has Boeing. And so on, and Scooby Doo.

But Buffalo isn’t just a place, it’s a state of mind, a religion, a cultural overlay that works like ethnicity even though it isn’t exactly. It isn’t but it is.

Being Buffalonian is like being Jewish in a way. Even if you’re Buffalo Blueblood. Even if your grandparents actually owned one of the mansions on Delaware when they were still single family homes. Being Buffalonian in Buffalo is the great equalizer. Being Buffalonian outside of Buffalo, is like being Jewish in Tehran.

And therein lies the bulk of my experience. The ex-pat. The diaspora. If there is a Jewish bar in Tehran, I can imagine the comaradery there. Pretty much like what you’d find at the Nickel Bar in Tampa or the Buffalo bars in a hundred other cities that get less snow. It’s instant kinship. Run into someone with a Bills or Sabres baseball cap or t-shirt or jacket, in the airport, on the beach, in some other city’s stadium when the Buffalo teams are not even playing, and it’s always the same. It’s like meeting the twin you never knew you had. All you have to do is say, “Wide Right,” or “In the Crease” and you’ll keep buying each other drinks until you both need a designated driver.

You can imagine how excited we ex-pats get when the Bills are scheduled for Sunday night or Monday night. At least we get to watch the games at home on our own TV sets and we don’t need Sunday Ticket.

Now in the same way that Dan Quayle is no Jack Kennedy, Buffalo is no Chicago—or any of the other places I‘ve lived or frequented since leaving Bills Country—Denver, Santa Fe, Miami, Southern California.

You could say Chicago is Buffalo in its heyday on steroids. There are more than a few similarities. Chicago hosted the World’s Fair within a few years of the Pan Am Expo. Some of the buildings that survive from the Fair resemble their counterparts in Buffalo. Obviously we’re both on a lake. And Chicago is a commercial center now, as Buffalo was when the lights first came on from the Falls. Lots of old money. Lots of new money. And lots of immigrants: Poles, Germans, Italians, just like old Buffalo. And industry too. Buffalo had Pierce Arrow. Chicago has Boeing. And so on, and Scooby Doo.

But Buffalo isn’t just a place, it’s a state of mind, a religion, a cultural overlay that works like ethnicity even though it isn’t exactly. It isn’t but it is.

Being Buffalonian is like being Jewish in a way. Even if you’re Buffalo Blueblood. Even if your grandparents actually owned one of the mansions on Delaware when they were still single family homes. Being Buffalonian in Buffalo is the great equalizer. Being Buffalonian outside of Buffalo, is like being Jewish in Tehran.

And therein lies the bulk of my experience. The ex-pat. The diaspora. If there is a Jewish bar in Tehran, I can imagine the comaradery there. Pretty much like what you’d find at the Nickel Bar in Tampa or the Buffalo bars in a hundred other cities that get less snow. It’s instant kinship. Run into someone with a Bills or Sabres baseball cap or t-shirt or jacket, in the airport, on the beach, in some other city’s stadium when the Buffalo teams are not even playing, and it’s always the same. It’s like meeting the twin you never knew you had. All you have to do is say, “Wide Right,” or “In the Crease” and you’ll keep buying each other drinks until you both need a designated driver.

So in a way I feel guilty. I don’t have to live with the misery of Buffalo fandom full time. I can forget I’m from Buffalo when the Bulls are winning. And I have been lucky in ways no Buffalonian deserves to be lucky. I lived in Denver the first time the Broncos won it all. (When I went to Sears to buy a TV, the clerk asked me if I wanted it in Bronco Orange.) I lived in Chicago the first year the Bulls did it. And the second, and third and the next three after that. And I was here when the Sox won the series. (Poor Cubs!)

In a way I feel guilty, but in a way I don’t. Because the success of teams in my adopted home towns only deepens the pain of the failures of the teams where my heart is still firmly planted. It’s like, why the hell couldn’t I have brought this luck to the Bills or the Sabres? Do I need to move back? Would that do it? And why don’t I move back?

One word. Four letters. S-N-O-W! But you live in Chicago, you say. True, but do you know the difference between East and West relative to lake effect? Winter, in the middle of a lake effect squall, is the one time I feel no guilt for having abandoned my tribe. I watch footage of white-outs as the school closing list scrolls across the bottom of my TV screen, laughing because all of that is going on in Northwest Indiana– the other side of the Lake. Hammond or Gary might as well be Buffalo. Or Upper Michigan. I watch them get buried over and over again all winter long and feel pretty damn smug. I might have to shovel my driveway five times in an average winter. Hey, you idiots. I figured it out! I moved to the West side of the Lake. And then someone says, “If you’re so damn smart, why Lake Michigan and not Lake Havasu?” Touche. But I digress.

I’ve spent all this time talking sports, mainly, but it isn’t really about sports at all. Sports are the metaphor, the religious rite. It’s what makes the Buffalo sort-of-but-not-but-sort-of ethnicity so similar to being Jewish. We are bonded not only by our common roots but to the ritual. Watching the Bills or the Sabres, or to a lesser degree, the Bisons or even the freaking Braves (I mean Clippers) is like going to Temple for Yom Kippur. We have this common ritual of atonement.

Atonement for what? In a way, for being Buffalonians! We’re like Rodney. We don’t get no respect. Our homeland is often reviled as Cleveland’s ugly stepsister. Queen City? Not unless it’s Drag Queen. And we’ve done a lot of this to ourselves. Especially in the past. If you’re old enough, you remember Stan Roberts on KB Radio giving the weather report on Lake D-reeeear-y. Like the Jews, we’ve wandered in the wilderness for generations awaiting deliverance. We await the coming Messiah, having endured many false prophets. We thought it would be O.J., then Kelly and company, then Dominick Hasek. We thought the second coming of the Mighty Marv might finally lead us to the promised land. (And it still might, after the fact, but it hurts too much to hope.) So, like the Jews we wander. We hope. We have our hopes dashed. We hope again. And we go to Temple. The Ralph. The HSBC. We fast. We sacrifice. We sob. We celebrate.

We wait. We celebrate. We curse! But we do it together. As one. We are the chosen people. We still don’t know what exactly we’re chosen for, but we’re chosen.

But here’s the good part about leaving and coming back, albeit temporarily. You notice the changes for the better. In the time it takes me to drive across the entire Niagara Frontier (you don’t use that term any more, I don’t think, but it stays with me) I might get through two stop lights on the main drag outside my far suburban house. In the time it takes to drive from the Airport to the Peace Bridge I’d still be in line on the on-ramp to the Kennedy at rush hour. I come back and hear your bemoan the fact that 200,000 people have left Erie County and I see the wide open expressways and say, you don’t know how good you’ve got it.

And housing prices? What you spend a hundred grand on, even in this depressed market, would cost me easily three times that.

But here’s the best part. Your restaurants are as diverse and as rich with ambience and gourmet gravitas as anything in Chicago. Your arts and cultural life is vibrant, just as good, but much more accessible and much more affordable than in Chicago, or just about anywhere else I’ve spent any time.

Downtown’s making a comeback. The Niagara Thruway is no longer lined with belching factories. South Buffalo no longer reeks of sulfur. And what other city has the equal of Our Lady of Victory? Throw in the Falls, the scenic drive on the Canadian side—the Canadian suburbs in general—and Buffalo can hold its own against any city anywhere. I know, ‘cause I’ve been there.

Ok. It’s no Chicago. But it’s also no Dan Quayle. It’s a Buffalo simultaneously mature and reborn, retro and post-modern, Art Deco and just art. Whenever I come back (which for the past three years has been once or twice monthly, on business) I don’t want to leave. But in a way, I never do, and I never have.

God bless you, Tim. (Tim Russert always will be the quintessential Buffalo ExPat.)

Go Bills!“