Are We Moving to Buffalo?

Like clockwork, every time Rob visits a city, he comes out of it telling Patrick "I think I should move there." You will not be surprised to learn that Rob had a similar awakening while spending a few days in Buffalo this past weekend, in theory to simply attend a Buffalo Bills game.

But in reality, this trip near Niagara Falls was a meetup with our community, falling for a city that wasn't on our radar, and a commitment to come back.

That commitment might be sooner than you think, too, in the grand scheme of things. One Remap supporter told us the Bears are likely destined to play the Bills at their new stadium in 2026 and promised us two tickets to the game.

You in, Rob?

Patrick: I have never had a reason to visit Buffalo. I still don’t have a reason to visit Buffalo. We discussed this a few times over the weekend, including the Sports! recording we did in your hotel room, but especially as you get older, finding moments to travel, or escape your daily rhythms, become harder and harder. You might be in a better financial position to travel, but actually lining up the various parts of your life—time off, someone to watch your pets and/or kids, etc.—become a reason to push back that trip you’ve been talking about over and over.

Thing is, that’s what happens with trips you want to take. Trips you’ve been planning to take. Trips that would be checking a box on “yes, we finally did this.” This is with no offense meant to the great city of Buffalo, a city I can now comfortably say is actually great after having spent even a brief time enjoying it, but Buffalo was not exactly a city that I needed to check off a box! After we successfully pulled off Europe with the kids over the summer, I’m cracking my knuckles and trying to figure out if they could survive 16 hours on a plane towards Tokyo in a few years.

(Truth be told, 16 hours feels like nearly too much for me.)

But man, for all that’s fucked up about this country right now, this place is massive and full of cultural secrets hiding just around the corner. Buffalo is a 90-minute flight away from me, you basically go up and down. It does not cost very much to come here. The wallet hit to have a good weekend packed full of adventure is not much. Between my adventures in Pittsburgh a few years ago seeking out a haunted house beyond my own backyard and this trip to Buffalo, I am more convinced than ever that I need to start setting my sights a little lower, so to speak, on what it means to get outside of my house and experience something new. It’s not that far away.

I sat in a car outside of the General Mills factory and inhaled the cereal particles in the air.

I ate plates and plates of buffalo wings—one of my favorite foods—in the city of Buffalo.

I slapped the benches of Highmark Stadium like a ravenous wolf, willing the Buffalo Bills to defend the run on third down. 

I talked shit with a cab driver who was deeply suspicious my Chicago Bears gear for the Bills game was secretly hiding a Buccaneers fandom. (At the end of the ride, I asked her to look me in the eye while I whispered “Go Bucs” while frantically heading towards the Bills tailgate.)

I watched a community of people come together in sprawling parking lots to share food and drink with one another. A formerly tortured group of fans who have hope and only want you to feel a sliver of it, too. 

It was wonderful. Buffalo was wonderful. There’s no doubt I want to go back next year.

Rob: I think next time I'm going to want to spend about 4 days there. Triple the time I spent tailgating, hit a few more food spots, hang with some of the people we met, and maybe see if someone offers architectural tours. You want to come see The Oldest (Court) House?

The truth is, I have never really met a city I didn't at least like and I love most of them. I'd move to Berlin in a heartbeat. I moved to LA fully prepared to hate it and have felt like I'm missing something ever since I left. I came back from your birthday trip asking MK, "So are we sure there's no world where we move to Chicago?" 

There are two things that immediately cause me to withdraw any respect for someone. The first is using the word "illegals". The second is people who sneer at a city where they don't live. It betrays a narrow-mindedness and eagerness to embrace stereotypes that usually correlates with lots of other awful beliefs. Cities are fascinating organisms, shaped by such unique combinations of geography, immigration patterns, economic history, and, yes, sports culture. The fun thing about a city like Buffalo is that it's small enough that you feel like you can kind of get your arms around it in a way that megalopoleis like LA will resist. It has a lot of things in common with Chicago but as a Northwest Indiana kid, Buffalo feels a lot like an overgrown Whiting or a Gary that survived its worst economic distress. I am sure it also has a fair bit of stratification, like any city, but its small scale made the downtown feel less like a corporate retail preserve than larger cities, where downtowns can feel completely divorced from the life of anyone who calls a city home.