Buffalo and Niagara Falls....

[kz1000ps]

Best vacation spot EVER. So I went to SUNY Buffalo (aka UB) for two years in the 2000s and one of my best friends from that school still lives out there. Last time I visited him and spent any meaningful time out there was 2009, so when he buys a house last year and I'm now living a car-centric lifestyle AND he's gonna be one of my groomsmen in my wedding next year, we realized we have to make something happen this summer.

So my fiancé has never seen the midwest, in which case Buffalo and its Great Lakes industrial nature was something quite different from her suburban Boston upbringing. For instance, she had NEVER seen so many semi trucks on a highway, and she had NEVER seen a proper landfill before. LOL!

Either way, between her shock to some things she was witnessing and then my lack of recent history with the place, even I was a bit thrown by the overall vibe there, which is one of.... lowered expectations? Compared to when I was there 20 years ago I would say there's less abject examples of unsecured buildings crumbling apart in broad daylight, but the flipside is that I got this vibe that people have now accepted the reality that financial wealth probably isn't coming back to the region any time soon whereas 20 years ago there was still raw feelings, maybe even hope? I'm trying to make sense of what I felt and I could be waaaayyy off on this assessment... who knows.

Ok time to shut up and post some photos...

^^ Allentown is an actual neighborhood that precedes Josh Allen

vv Bill Burr sighting?????

The new Canalside development. In the wintertime this is filled with ice for skating, and in the summer it's for roller skating

 

[kz1000ps]

Buffalo City Hall is easily one of the coolest buildings in existence

Oops.

Buffalo Central Terminal aka their grand deco train station that's been abandoned for 40++ years

Took the drone up after dinner in the Larkinville neighborhood

 

[kz1000ps]

Day two, sunny. Heading for Niagara Falls with a quick detour to see UB North Campus aka the newer campus planned in the 1960s and built in the '70s. Bad planning and brown brick huzzah!!

^ That's my old dorm, nicknamed Legoland, while below is the main academic "spine"

And on to the Falls

I did Maid of the Mist for the first time in at least 25 years and it's still as amazing as I remember it being. It's such a full sensory experience and there's nothing else like it out there

And then for all that natural beauty, there's the reality that Niagara Falls the American city is an extremely depressed and rough place. I had no intentions of visiting Love Canal but our route took us past it both on the way up and back, and I just had to show my fiancé what the fallout from an environmental disaster looks like. These were once pleasant residential streets now left to decay.

And finally Day 3, travel back to Boston day. Here's my buddy's neighborhood

I-90 through upstate NY

Lastly a quick dinner stop in Albany at my parents and catching the sunset

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Bravo.

 

[Winston3D]

The former Buffalo State Hospital is so incredibly beautiful (lets go HH Richardson!), and you captured it very well. Is the hotel that was there still closed?

 

[kz1000ps]

I'm pretty sure it's opened back up. There were people going in and out of the building that certainly looked like they could be hotel guests.

 

[dhawkins]

I just went in July, I wish this was posted earlier I would have looked around Buffalo a little bit more! We stopped overnight in downtown Buffalo for Dinosaur BBQ but it was closed so we went down to Chippewa Street to have some drinks to watch the people cruising around in their cars. Definitely a car centric city but very cool cars, I wish I took photos. But a short and sweet visit and then went up to the falls. Next time I'll know to spend more time downtown.

.

 

[393b40]

That Buffalo train station... oof.

Great photo's.

 

[Charlie_mta]

I lived in NW Pennsylvania in the late 1980s, and my wife, our kids and I would drive up to Buffalo and Niagara Falls every so often. I loved that part of the country, the people, the small towns, the countryside, and Buffalo. Thanks for the great photos!