A few weeks back, I kicked up some dust when I posited that perhaps the good people of Buffalo and Western New York are boring, and I don't regret it in the least. I wanted to generate some discussion and I succeeded, with a livelier than usual comment section and even some fellow buffaBLOGGER's jumping in, I can't help feeling that I accomplished my mission even if I sold/damaged/tarnished my soul in the process by essentially becoming an Internet troll. But then I read Josh Gordon's take last week, and I realized that I might have been a tad wrong.
Now that's a big "might" by the way, and I still stand by my contention that we've got a lot of boring people in the area. That said, I started to have my doubts the day after my piece was posted when Hertel Avenue had its best night ever. The North Park was beginning the end of its most recent phase with a big premiere and attendant hullabaloo for Queen City, and it really seemed like Hertel from Romeo & Juliet's to Parkside got in on the act, with packed restaurants and bars, crowded stores, and chic people seemingly everywhere. As a longtime denizen of both Elmwood and Hertel Avenues, I had never seen anything like it. Of course, Hertel doesn't have premieres every week, and the North Park's marquee has since gone dark, but that energy still remains, and it's not confined to Hertel Avenue.
Reading Josh's piece led me to believe he's onto something when he suggests that rather than being boring, Buffalonians are faced with too many choices, and if they're not at a show somewhere, they're busy somewhere else. Now I don't know if it's the music scene that's so crowded with hot shows that we're over scheduled, but when you look beyond the music scene at the burgeoning stand up comedy scene, the area's ongoing fondness for good food and drink, new restaurants, and other events... there's all of a sudden a lot competing for our attention and our dollars. Maybe there is just too damn much to do.
So, maybe I do stand corrected. I still think local boringness is an issue, and that a mass buy-in to the new vision of Buffalo that's developing is needed, but that development is definitely happening, and for now that's something. Maybe... I'm pulling a Glenn Beck maneuver and I'm actually projecting, and seeing boringness elsewhere when in fact I'm the boring one. Both of my "Best of 2013 So Far" choices were for Daft Punk after all, and it's certainly not out of the realm of possibility. Damn, isn't that a bitch. This is why you don't troll the Internet.
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