Niagara Falls

Damn the Stooges. When I'm introduced, usually in the workplace, and the "where you from" question is asked, and I answer... someone (usually my age) always chimes in with "Ni-a-gara-falls... slowly I turn." I can't laugh anymore. I can barely smile in a friendly way. It's just not funny anymore. Fortunately this particular joke is passing into history.

The falls are special. My father grew up within a mile of the falls and used to ride his bike around Goat Island. We lived about ten miles away, in the country, and I couldn't get my parents to take us to the falls nearly often enough. When relatives visited we could get in a visit. I also fell in love with the regional history, well before I learned that my family had roots in it. I loved the two summers I spent taking tourists around the falls. I learned that one cannot make a living off tourism in Niagara, not without having a second livelihood to carry you in the cold weather. What's worse, there have been some questionable decisions in the recent history of Niagara Falls, from the demolition of the South End to the building of the Robert Moses Parkway, and the more recent gift of the South End to the Seneca Nation to build a casino. The city today looks painfully like Atlantic City.

In the years since I left Niagara (1978), the Internet has changed the world. I can now read the Niagara Gazette online, as well as the Niagara Falls Reporter, which is primarily online. I can say that not much has changed since I first left the area. Niagara's loudest voices tend to be small-minded and petty. The Gazette is too much a mouthpiece of the city's vested interests, and the Reporter is a vinegarish, perpetually cantankerous broadsheet. The city has also lost people, and this past year sank below 50K people, a (un)healthy percentage of which are on public assistance. The city is poor and hurting.

So I will opine here. The view from 500 miles might be clearer than from 500 feet.