MY VIEW
Without local variety, we could be Anyburb
Updated: 07/31/08 6:47 AM
I love to cook and entertain family and friends. Having traveled widely, I am Buffalo’s best ambassador and I can’t imagine living anywhere but here.
For the last four years, my job required that I travel weekly. In that time I have been in 36 states, racked up a half a million hotel points and enough airline miles to circumnavigate the globe. I am now an expert in MapQuest and locating the nearest gas station to any airport. But recently I realized just how close to home all those other places are.
Last week I found myself driving down Transit Road into East Amherst, something I don’t generally have a reason to do. I wondered just when civilization as we know it, that is retail and restaurants, exploded beyond the intersection of Transit and Maple. As I marveled — well, OK, gawked — at the strip malls and big-box stores that have sprung up like weeds, I
got an eerie sense of deja vu, I have seen this all before.
Not here in Buffalo, but on Ole Hickory Road in Brentwood, Tenn.; J. W. Clay Boulevard in Charlotte, N. C.; Goodman Road in South Haven, Mich.; Wood Road in Braintree, Mass. Blink and you could be in any of those locales and thousands of others. Familiarity is a good thing, homogenization not so much. Do we really want to become just like everyone else?
Panara Bread, Bonefish Grille, Red Robin, Applebee’s, Olive Garden and Friday’s are just a few of the chains that have invaded the Buffalo restaurant scene. I could be in Boston, Boca or Boulder and the food would all taste the same. The food served in these establishments is OK as long as you favor taste profiles taken to the lowest common denominator. Santasiero’s Pasta Fasoola it is not.
While as a traveler I appreciate the safety of knowing what to expect from a chain, as a foodie I decry the lack of verve and local flavor of these new outposts. And I am not referring just to the new outposts in Buffalo. When asking a hotel front desk clerk anywhere for a dinner recommendation, typically the first few choices you are offered are chains.
Borders, Lowe’s, Gap, Ann Taylor and the venerable Macy’s; these are now the stores we shop. Blink your eyes in any of these stores and you could walk out the door and be in another city. The only thing missing would be your car in the parking lot. The aisles and product selection are the same, no matter what city or state you are in; the red sweater is there in your size, one of the millions purchased by the store’s merchandise buyer who resides in, well, not Buffalo.
An insidious aspect of homogenization is where the money goes — most of it does not stay here. Of course the wages of the employees remain local, but the profits go to headquarters, wherever that may be.
But there is hope! Elmwood and Hertel avenues abound with local shopping and dining choices. Ellicottville, Williamsville, East Aurora, Lewiston and other towns have great shops where unique items can be had and local restaurants where great food may be consumed. Quirky gifts, boutique clothes and one-of-a-kind art is all here, just beyond the strip mall.
So, if you are shopping for a sweater for your niece who lives in Montana and whom you are sure has grown four inches since you last saw her, by all means go to one of the national chains so she can return it. But if she lives in Sloan, Snyder or South Buffalo, find something nearer to home and help keep Buffalo looking like Buffalo, not Anyburb, USA.
