"You'll never come back," they say.
I'm moving to Boulder, Colorado in the fall for grad school. Four people, including two family members, have told me that my return to upstate New York is unlikely.
The sun shines 300 days a year in Boulder. They say the people are more outgoing, less embittered. It's one of the fastest-growing areas in the country, in terms of population and economy.
But I have my doubts that these selling points will so enamor me that I never move back. It's not just that all my friends and relatives live between Buffalo and Syracuse. Even if it is cloudy, cold and poor, the area has a specific appeal that I don't think a sunshine capital could match.
Cities like Boulder, San Diego and Fort Myers Fla. have an almost entirely plastic aesthetic that just doesn't seem real. The development that lines the pockets of its residents has no character. One can't argue that it's not nice to bask in the sun and to be able to choose from a diverse menu of upscale dining locales. But a town should be measured
Obviously, what is most popular is not necessarily the most fulfilling. The Olive Garden may be the most successful Italian restaurant chain in the country, but their tomato sauce doesn't hold a candle to my mother's. And for all its purported page-turning addictiveness, I don't think "The Da Vinci Code" is worth reading. The sentiment can be extended to one's preference in the people they surround themselves with and, I'm anticipating, the area they prefer to live. Something isn't better just because it's easier..
People find Buffalo's aging architecture to be an eyesore. They find the crime rate frightening. They find the poverty, the weather and the sports franchises depressing. And it's true that it can all be a bit overwhelming at times. Like mid-January when the front page of our beleaguered major newspaper has only bad news to tell and the door to your home is frozen shut and you know that odds are, within a few blocks of your home, some kid's skipping breakfast so there'll be money for an increasingly costly heating bill.
But these things give Buffalo residents a personality all their own. Their tongues have been sharpened on a harder stone. Take The Beast for example. How could anyone picture this gem publication of modern satire anywhere but in New York's Windy City? In their best moments, the writers aren't just funny, they take precise aim at the issues that are pressing to the city's residents who care.
Our pro sports teams haven't brought home a championship in recent memory, but where would you rather live? In New York in 2000, when the Yankees won their 26th World Series in the last century, or in Boston in 2004, when the Red Sox won their first in 86 years?
I can understand the sentiment of wanting to get out, of wanting to experience something more pleasant on a regular basis. But I think I'd rather visit the ideal than live in it. Married couples don't move to the Cayman Islands just because they had the perfect honeymoon. They come back and they settle down in their homes and savor the memory, perhaps with the hope of someday returning. But once you live in it, where do you go? Someplace that is differently picturesque and perfect?
The desire to forever decry one's hometown in the hopes of someday escaping it makes little sense to me. People run from the challenge in search of the path of least resistance.
It will certainly be harder to feel a sense of purpose in a city that certainly doesn't need my help, or anyone else's. For all the bad there is in Buffalo, there is that much good that can be done.
Teachers, doctors, police officers and, yes, even journalists have the opportunity in Buffalo to make a difference, and do a service to the area when they stay. Boulder, Colorado doesn't need another young white kid who wants to stake out his claim and soak up the scenery and ski on the mountains and eat granola for breakfast as he watches the morning weather reports with the good-news-bearing meteorologist.
What fun is the sun when it shines every day?
(Go Sabres.)
