Buffalo

The largest city in New York State's Niagara Frontier, Buffalo is a city full of surprises. Though Buffalo is sometimes the butt of jokes about chicken wings, its long-suffering sports teams, and the mountains of snow under which it is supposedly buried each winter, those in the know tell a different story: one of vibrant nightlife, world-class museums and cultural attractions, tight-knit neighborhoods with strong community spirit – and the sunniest summers in Northeastern United States.

Understand
Buffalo is New York State's second-largest city, with (as of 2020) a population of 278,000 in the city proper and 1.1 million in the metropolitan area. Buffalo is the cultural and economic center of the Western New York region. Once an industrial powerhouse, the city suffered the effects of deindustrialization in the 20th century and developed a reputation as a stagnant working-class city. Buffalo's economy turned around in the early 21st century with the arrival of cleaner, high-tech industries and services, yet the city retains a palpable sense of its history as an important industrial center, with majestic historic buildings and sites telling the story of its rise, fall, and resurgence.

Beginnings
Though the area had been settled by the Iroquois since well before Columbus and was visited periodically by French fur trappers beginning in the 17th century, Buffalo's history begins about 1789, when Cornelius Winney set up a trading post at the mouth of the Buffalo River. At the time, this site was still far beyond the frontier of white settlement. It was not until 1793 that the Holland Land Company, a syndicate of investors from the Netherlands, purchased the tract of Western New York wilderness that included Buffalo. Land agent Joseph Ellicott, who arrived at Winney's trading post in 1798, felt that it had the potential to be the site of a thriving city. He gave the name New Amsterdam to the village he laid out there, though it was soon renamed Buffalo after the adjacent river. Ellicott laid out a grand radial pattern of streets and public squares inspired by the one designed by his brother Andrew for Washington, D.C.; however, despite his lofty aspirations, Buffalo remained a tiny outpost whose main claim to fame during its very early history was as the site of several important military installations and battles during the War of 1812 (famously, the village was burnt to the ground by British troops in December 1813 as part of the Niagara Frontier Campaign of that war).

Growth
Buffalo's status as a frontier backwater abruptly ended when, after a hotly contested dispute with the neighboring village of Black Rock (later annexed by Buffalo), Buffalo Harbor was designated as the western end of the Erie Canal, a great inland shipping lane extending westward 363 mi from the Hudson River at Albany. The most ambitious work of infrastructure undertaken in the U.S. up to that time, the Erie Canal greatly lowered transportation costs and singlehandedly made large-scale settlement of the lands west of the Appalachians economically viable. The magnitude of the Erie Canal's commercial importance is illustrated by the fact that in the first five years after its completion, Buffalo's population more than tripled (to 8,668); two years later, in 1832, Buffalo was incorporated as a city.



Buffalo's early economic mainstay was as a transshipment port, where grain from the Midwest was unloaded from lake freighters and transferred to canal boats headed for New York City; it was in Buffalo where the world's first grain elevator was constructed in 1843, and indeed there are still many elevators that remain standing around Buffalo Harbor. Over the second half of the 19th century, the Erie Canal gradually became obsolete, but that scarcely affected Buffalo's explosive growth. Instead, the city maintained its status as a transportation hub by transitioning into the second-most important railroad center in the U.S. (after Chicago). In addition, the steel industry became a major player in the local economy in 1899, when the Lackawanna Steel Company moved its base of operations from Scranton, Pennsylvania to a site just south of the city line. By 1900, Buffalo boasted a population of over 350,000 and was one of the ten largest cities in the United States.

The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair that was held in Buffalo in 1901, at the apex of the city's glory days; it was intended to showcase, among other things, the technological marvel and economic possibilities of electric power (Buffalo's proximity to Niagara Falls, a site of early ventures in the generation of hydroelectricity, gifted it with the cheapest electricity in the nation at the time). Though the dazzling sight of the fairgrounds, illuminated by night with this new technology, earned Buffalo the enduring nickname "City of Light", the Pan-American Exposition's main historical significance is much more somber in nature: it was at the Exposition where, on September 6, 1901, U.S. President William McKinley was fatally shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, moments after concluding a speech at the Temple of Music.

Decline
Although Buffalo continued to grow during the first half of the 20th century, trends emerged that would, by 1950, throw the city into decline. As in other American cities, wealthier residents began to leave their homes in town for quieter, greener suburban properties outside the city line. At the same time, the Americans began to migrate in ever-larger numbers to cities in the West and South with milder climates. The construction of the Interstate Highway System contributed to the decline of the railroads and of Buffalo's port, as goods could be shipped more cheaply by truck. Perhaps the single most important cause was the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, which allowed ships to bypass Buffalo and its railroads and to access the ocean directly via the St. Lawrence River. The steel plant in Lackawanna closed its doors for good beginning in 1977, unable to compete with cheaper foreign steel. By 1980, Buffalo's population was roughly equal to what it had been in 1900, down nearly 40% from its peak of 580,000 just thirty years earlier.

During the 1960s and '70s Buffalo's civic leaders began demolishing ethnic neighborhoods in the name of "urban renewal" and "slum clearance". Though working-class, these neighborhoods were in many cases healthy and vibrant. In particular, the splendid brick Victorian cottages of what was once the Lower West Side's "Little Italy" were nearly all lost to the wrecking ball, while the new public housing projects soon became high-rise versions of the slums they replaced. Meanwhile, noisy and intrusive expressways were constructed through peaceful neighborhoods and park areas, and downtown Buffalo suffered as architecturally-stunning buildings were demolished and replaced by bland modernist developments.

Rebirth
Buffalo's decline started to level off in the 1990s, as the city began to model its economic strategy on the successful revival of other Rust Belt cities such as Pittsburgh and Cleveland. This strategy accepted that heavy industry is gone for good and, instead, used the city's high number of colleges and universities to encourage the development of high-tech industry. Downtown, once replete with boarded-up storefronts, has enjoyed a new measure of vitality due largely to the conversion of disused office space into high-end apartments and condominiums. Buffalo even managed to stem its population losses per the 2020 census, in which it was reported that a remarkable 22,000 people had moved into the city between 2019 and 2020 alone. Though there is still much progress to be made, the bit of swagger with which residents of the "City of No Illusions" carry themselves today, reinvigorated after decades of decline, is unmistakable.

Climate
Buffalo, although most famous for its winters, has four very pronounced seasons.

In the first half of winter, beginning in approximately November, the city can get lake-effect snow: cold winds blowing over the warmer waters of Lake Erie pick up a lot of water vapor, which is dumped as snow as soon as they reach land. This usually ends in January, when the lake finally freezes over. Contrary to popular myth, however, Buffalo is not the coldest or snowiest city in the country&mdash;or even in New York. The Buffalo airport averages 93 inches (236 cm) of snow per winter. On average, Buffalo only has 3 days per year where the recorded temperature dips below 0°F (-18°C). Buffalo's snowy reputation is based in large part on some of its most famous storms: the Blizzard of '77, the "October Surprise" of 2006, and the "Snowvember" blizzard in 2014 all received a lot of media coverage, but none of those things are normal occurrences in an average Buffalo winter.

Spring is rainy and cool up through the end of April. The temperatures can fluctuate wildly in March and April. It is not unusual to see snow one day, and a temperature in the mid-60s Fahrenheit (almost 20°C) the next.



Summer tends to be very comfortable and sunny — in fact, Buffalo has more sunny summer days than any other major city in the Northeastern U.S. The moderating effects of Lake Erie have allowed Buffalo to be one of few places in the United States where the temperature has never reached 100°F (38°C). On average Buffalo has 60 days a year with temperatures reaching over 80°F (27°C).

Fall is warm and beautiful as well. The temperature usually stays warm enough through October or so, and one can watch the trees change colors in comfort. The days are warm, the nights are cool, and the first frost doesn't usually come until well after Halloween. Leaf hunters will be pleased with the number of trees in the city as well as in the surrounding areas.

Read
For more books about Buffalo, specifically ones that take place in or have to do with a particular neighborhood of the city, please see the respective district articles.


 * Buffalo Unbound: A Celebration by Laura Pedersen (ISBN 9781555917357). A collection of humorous essays providing a color commentary for Buffalo's rise from economic ruin, with an often bleak and world-weary tone tempered with a healthy dose of optimism.
 * City of Light by Lauren Belfer (ISBN 9780385337649). Belfer's debut novel, a tour de force of historical fiction that is critically acclaimed, meticulously researched, and paints a vivid picture of Buffalo at the height of its golden age.
 * Gangsters and Organized Crime in Buffalo: History, Hits and Headquarters by Michael F. Rizzo (ISBN 9781609495640). A collection of true-crime stories recounting tales from scrappy street gangs to the rise and fall of the Buffalo Mafia.
 * Mark Goldman has written a trilogy of books that stand as perhaps the definitive analytical commentary on the reasons behind Buffalo's decline and how it can reclaim some of its past glory going forward:
 * High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York (ISBN 9780873957359). Written in 1983 — perhaps the nadir of Buffalo's history — Goldman's first book traces the story of the Queen City from its birth as a frontier outpost, to its days as a buzzing inland port and industrial giant, to its post-World War II decline.
 * City on the Lake: The Challenge of Change in Buffalo, New York (ISBN 9780879755799). The focus here is on the turning point in Buffalo's history, the 1950s through the '70s, when glory days gave way to postindustrial poverty and blight.
 * City on the Edge: Buffalo, New York, 1900-Present (ISBN 9781591024576). The book amounts to a love letter to the cultural institutions, strong community ties, and survivalist spirit that have weathered the storm and now serve as foundations on which to build the revived Buffalo.

Watch
Under the aegis of the Buffalo Niagara Film Commission, an embryonic film industry has developed in the area which produces some quality independent features. These and other films that have been shot in the Buffalo area over the last century include:


 * Hide in Plain Sight (1980). Based on a true story. A working-class husband (James Caan) tries to track down his wife and children who are hidden away by a witness protection program.
 * The Natural (1984). Robert Redford and Glenn Close star in an adaptation of Bernard Malamud's novel about Roy Hobbs, a mysterious baseball player who appears out of nowhere to turn around the fortunes of a 1930s team.
 * Vamping (1984). Patrick Duffy plays a down-and-out saxophone player who gets mixed up in a crooked antique shop owner's scheme to rob the home of a rich widow, then ends up falling in love with his victim. As a movie, it's a low-budget, amateurish mess, but it's great if you want to get a sense of what Buffalo looked like in the 1980s.
 * Buffalo '66 (1998). A critically-acclaimed dark comedy about a man who, after his release from prison for a crime he did not commit, vows to track down the Buffalo Bills placekicker who put him there, all the while forcing a young tap dancer (Christina Ricci) to pose as his wife to earn respect from his neglectful parents.
 * Manna from Heaven (2002). A is nun on a mission to convince her eccentric childhood neighbors to repay a "loan" from God, which had come in the form of a mysterious shower of dollar bills onto her Buffalo neighborhood 20 years prior.
 * The Savages (2007). An estranged brother and sister reconnect with each other and start to take stock of their dysfunctional lives after coming together to move their elderly father into a nursing home in Buffalo.
 * Henry's Crime (2011). Keanu Reeves stars as a former Thruway toll collector who, after spending time in jail for a crime he did not commit, decides to get his revenge by holding up in real life the same bank he had been falsely convicted of robbing.
 * The American Side (2016). While investigating the murder of a stripper in Niagara Falls, a small-time private detective stumbles on a high-level conspiracy to build an unrealized invention discovered in the newly unearthed "lost papers" of Nikola Tesla.
 * Marshall (2017). This period piece follows a young Thurgood Marshall, the future first African-American Supreme Court justice, on one of the first and most pivotal cases of his law career: defending a black chauffeur accused of the rape and attempted murder of his wealthy white employer in 1940 Connecticut.

By plane




From the airport, Buffalo is accessible via NFTA bus routes:


 * NFTA Metro Bus #24 — Genesee runs four different routes, three of which serve the airport. Bus #24B and Bus #24L run between the airport and Canalside via Genesee Street, also serving the Municipal Transportation Center. The latter of the two is advertised as a more convenient service with a limited number of intermediate stops, but in reality the difference in travel time between the L and the B is insignificant (42-43 minutes vs. 47-48 minutes), so it doesn't really matter which one you take. Express service is offered Monday through Friday by Bus #24X, with four inbound trips in the morning (leaving the airport at 6:03AM, 7:03AM, 7:33AM, and 8:03AM) and four outbound ones in the afternoon (leaving Canalside at 3:50PM, 4:20PM, 4:45PM, and 5:20PM). Travel time to and from the airport is about half an hour. Finally, if you plan to take the bus back to the airport at the end of your visit, make sure not to board Bus #24A, whose route ends at the city line in a not-very-nice neighborhood.

In addition, the Buffalo Niagara International Airport is served directly by a number of intercity bus lines; see the "By bus" section. All buses, NFTA and long-distance, are boarded at the bus lane on the east side of the terminal, on the arrivals level. This is also where Uber and Lyft (see "Ride sharing" section below) pick up.

Buffalo Airport Taxi ' s stand, as well as a number of rental car facilities, are found directly across from the terminal's main exit, on the arrivals level. For more information on taxi service and car rental, see the "Get around" section below.

For those who are coming by private plane and want to avoid the congestion of Buffalo Niagara International Airport, the closest alternative is Buffalo Airfield in West Seneca. Other general-aviation airports in the vicinity include Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport in Lancaster, Akron Airport in Akron, and North Buffalo Suburban Airport in Lockport.

By car
The New York State Thruway (Interstate 90) runs east to west and connects Buffalo to other major cities and regions — New York City, the Hudson Valley, Albany, Utica, Syracuse, and Rochester to the east, and Erie and Cleveland to the west. The New York State Thruway is a toll highway over most of its length, with the sole exception of the toll-free portion between Exits 50 and 55, which roughly corresponds to Buffalo's inner-ring suburbs. The New York State Thruway Authority accepts E-ZPass for toll payment, or will otherwise send a toll bill to the address where your car is registered. Cash payments are no longer possible.

Interstate 190 begins at Exit 53 of I-90 near the city line, extending west into downtown. At that point, it turns northward and mostly parallels the Niagara River, linking Buffalo to Niagara Falls and extending onward to Canada via the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge. Interstate 290 links I-90 with I-190 via Buffalo's northern suburbs. Interstate 990 runs southwest-to-northeast through suburban Amherst between I-290 and the hamlet of Millersport, after which point Lockport is easily accessible via NY 263 (Millersport Highway) and NY 78 (Transit Road).

If coming from Ontario, the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) is the best way to access Buffalo. The most direct border crossing into Buffalo, the Peace Bridge, is at the end of the QEW in Fort Erie. Other bridge crossing options include the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, along with the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge in Lewiston. All of these bridges are easily accessible from the QEW; follow the well-posted signs.

By car, Buffalo is about two hours from Toronto, one to one and a half hours from Rochester, two and a half hours from Syracuse, and six to seven hours from New York City.

Average wait times at the various border entries vary: at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo/Fort Erie and the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, wait times over 30 minutes are unusual on most days other than holiday weekends, whereas at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, the norm is 30-60 minutes, more on holiday weekends.

By train
. Amtrak operates services from the east and the west, at two stations in or near Buffalo.


 * The Buffalo-Depew station can be reached by cab or (with considerable difficulty) via NFTA Metro Bus #46 — Lancaster.
 * It is directly accessed by a number of NFTA Metro Bus routes. Unlike Buffalo-Depew, there is no QuickTrak Machine and the ticket office is not open for certain departures. Passengers needing to purchase or pick up tickets for a departure when the ticket office is closed will need to do so in advance of the date of departure, or print out an e-ticket from online. Tickets can also be mailed to you, but this option is slower and more expensive. Fares, schedules, and reservations are available through Amtrak. The Lake Shore Limited route does not stop at this station.

Buffalo is served by the following Amtrak lines:


 * Empire Service operating twice daily between Niagara Falls (New York) and New York City including stops in Buffalo (Exchange Street), Buffalo (Depew), Rochester, Syracuse, Rome, Utica, Schenectady, Albany (Rensselaer), Hudson, Rhinecliff, Poughkeepsie, Croton-on-Hudson, and Yonkers
 * Maple Leaf train operating daily between Toronto and New York City, in partnership with VIA Rail Canada. Stops between Toronto and Niagara Falls (New York) include in Oakville, Burlington, Grimsby, St. Catharines, and Niagara Falls (Ontario). Stops between Niagara Falls (New York) and New York City are the same as those made by the Empire Service. Border crossing processing takes place in Niagara Falls, where passengers must detrain with their baggage. Train crew members are staffed by VIA Rail within Canada, and by Amtrak within the United States.
 * Lake Shore Limited, operating daily between Chicago and Boston or New York City.  It makes stops at most stations along the route, though it does not stop at some of the smallest stations. Trains travels between Chicago and Albany (Rensselaer), before the route splits with service between Albany (Rensselaer) and both Boston and New York City.  Stops between Chicago and Albany (Rensselaer) include South Bend, Elkhart, Waterloo, Bryan, Toledo, Sandusky, Elyria, Cleveland, Erie, Buffalo (Depew), Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and Schenectady.  Stops between Albany (Rensselaer) and Boston include Pittsfield, Springfield, Worcester, Framingham. Stops between Albany (Rensselaer) and New York City include Rhinecliff, Poughkeepsie, and Croton-on-Hudson.

By bus
The, at 181 Ellicott St. downtown, serves as Buffalo's hub for intercity buses, a stop on most NFTA Metro Bus routes, and the city's main taxi terminal.

The following bus routes serve the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center:


 * Coach USA
 * Service from Jamestown via Fredonia, Dunkirk, and various points in between.
 * Service from Olean via Franklinville, East Aurora, Buffalo Niagara International Airport, and various points in between.


 * Fullington Trailways
 * Service from DuBois via St. Marys, Bradford, Olean, Salamanca, Ellicottville, Springville, and various points in between.


 * Greyhound
 * Service from Cleveland via Ashtabula and Erie (not all runs stop at all intermediate cities).
 * Service from New York City via Newark, Binghamton, Cortland, Syracuse, Rochester, Batavia, and Buffalo Niagara International Airport (not all runs stop at all intermediate cities).
 * Service from New York City via Scranton, Binghamton, Ithaca, Geneva, Rochester, and Batavia.
 * Service from Boston via Worcester, Springfield, Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Batavia, and Buffalo Niagara International Airport (not all runs stop at all intermediate cities).
 * Service from Toronto (2.75-3 hours).


 * Megabus
 * Service from New York City via Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo Niagara International Airport.
 * Service from Washington, D.C. via Baltimore and Philadelphia.


 * OurBus In partnership with Equinox Bus, service to Buffalo Niagara International Airport from Toronto and Niagara Falls, Ontario.

By boat
As the place where the Erie Canal met vast Lake Erie, Buffalo's early growth came thanks to the Great Lakes shipping industry. Nowadays the canal has been rerouted to end downstream in Tonawanda, but that's not to say that the canal and the lake aren't still a fairly common, if novel, way to arrive in Buffalo. The West Side, downtown, and the Outer Harbor boast a variety of places for boats to dock. For visitors, the best place to dock is:



Get around
For most visitors to Buffalo, access to an automobile will prove extremely useful, although Buffalo's public transportation system provides access to the majority of the metropolitan area. Travelling around the city proper by public transit can be relatively hassle-free, especially on weekdays; however, transit riders travelling to the suburbs should be prepared for service that is infrequent (and, on the weekends, often non-existent).

By car
In addition to the Interstate highways mentioned in the "Get In" section, Buffalo has several intraurban expressways useful to visitors:


 * The Kensington Expressway (NY 33) begins at the airport on Genesee Street, proceeding westward through the suburb of Cheektowaga and the East Side before turning southward and concluding downtown at Oak Street.
 * The Scajaquada Expressway (NY 198) is a short highway that connects the Kensington Expressway with Interstate 190. The Scajaquada is a convenient route to the neighborhoods of Parkside and the Elmwood Village, the popular commercial strips of Hertel Avenue and Grant Street, as well as attractions like Delaware Park, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Buffalo History Museum, the Darwin D. Martin House, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
 * The Buffalo Skyway (NY 5) begins downtown at I-190, extending southward parallel to the shore of Lake Erie with access to Gallagher Beach, Tifft Nature Preserve, and other Outer Harbor attractions. After passing over the Union Ship Canal via the Father Baker Bridge, the divided highway ends, but Route 5 continues as a wide, busy six-lane surface road (variously known as the Hamburg Turnpike, Lake Shore Road, or simply Route 5) that passes through the suburban areas of Lackawanna and Hamburg and continuing southward along the lake shore.

Buffalo's highway system was designed for a city twice its size (a reflection of the population loss the area has undergone between the 1950s and today). As a result, the city does not suffer nearly as much from traffic congestion as other U.S. cities. Rush hour, such as it is, occurs on weekdays roughly from 6:30AM-9AM and from 4PM-6:30PM. A good rule of thumb the locals know is that, even at the height of rush hour, it generally takes no more than 30 minutes to drive from downtown to the outer edge of suburbia.

Rental cars
Rental car facilities can be found mainly at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, and National all have offices directly on airport property, while the Buffalo locations of ACE and Fox Rent A Car operate out of the Quality Inn across the street.

In addition, Hertz, Budget, and Enterprise all operate smaller car rental facilities at various locations in the city itself.

Car sharing
Members of the Zipcar car-sharing program can access vehicles in the Buffalo area from various locations in the city, as well as from the North Campus of the University at Buffalo in nearby Amherst.

Ride sharing
Uber and Lyft operate in Buffalo. There's a $3.00 surcharge for service to and from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport for Lyft, but not Uber.

By public transportation
Buffalo's public transportation system is operated by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA). They run a single-line light rail system (the Metro Rail) as well as an extensive bus network. The NFTA system is focused around three main nodes. From largest to smallest, these nodes are located in downtown Buffalo, at University Station (at the outer end of the Metro Rail), and at the Portage Road Transit Center in Niagara Falls. Most of the buses whose routes begin and end downtown access the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center directly; many also service the Buffalo-Exchange Street Amtrak station.

The Metro Rail extends along Main Street from the University at Buffalo's South Campus at the northeast corner of the city southward to Canalside in downtown Buffalo, a distance of 6.4 miles (10.3 km). The northern portion of the system is below ground. As the subway enters the downtown core, at the Theater District, it emerges from the tunnel and runs at street level for the remainder of its length. Rides on the above-ground portion of the Metro Rail are free of charge. To ride in the underground portion of the system, it costs $4 for a round-trip ticket, or $2 for a one-way ticket.

Rides on a single bus or light rail vehicle cost $2.00 regardless of length. The exception is the "Enhanced Express" service: Routes #60 — Niagara Falls Express, #64 — Lockport Express, and #204 — Airport-Downtown Express, and some runs of Routes #69 — Alden Express and #72 — Orchard Park Express. An additional 50¢ surcharge per trip applies on Enhanced Express buses.

There are no free transfers between buses. Passengers who will need to transfer from the bus to the Metro Rail, from the Metro Rail to a bus, or between bus lines should consider purchasing a day pass for $5. For further information on public transit in Buffalo including schedules and maps of individual routes, visit the NFTA Metro webpage.

By taxi
In Buffalo, taxis can generally be dispatched quickly and with ease; however, in general, the only places where they can be hailed on the street are at the airport and around the Metropolitan Transportation Center, the various downtown hotels, and (at certain times, and with some luck) Allentown, the Elmwood strip, and around the colleges and universities.

By bike
In terms of the development of infrastructure such as dedicated bike lanes on city streets and bike parking areas, Buffalo lags behind other "bikeable" cities such as Minneapolis, Portland, and Boston. Nevertheless, scenic bike routes such as the Shoreline Trail and the Scajaquada Creekside Bike Path are popular, and dedicated bike lanes and other rights-of-way have been added to some of the city's streets.



Bike sharing
Reddy Bikeshare has bikes to tool around town on, each GPS-equipped with Social Bicycles (SoBi) technology. To use a Reddy bike, sign in to the SoBi mobile app to find and reserve an available bike at any of the various Reddy racks around the city (or simply walk up to a rack and enter your account number and PIN on the bike's keypad to unlock it). Then, when you're finished, simply lock your bike up at any Reddy rack, or else at any public bike rack within one of Reddy's free parking zones (Elmwood Avenue, Allen Street, Main Street downtown, and two locations on the South Campus of UB). There's a fee for locking a Reddy bike up anywhere other than a Reddy rack or free parking zone. If you need to stop off somewhere along the way, you also have the option to "hold" your Reddy bike, which will enable you to lock it temporarily without incurring the parking fee and without the bike becoming available for reservation by other users. When you're ready to take off again, simply enter your PIN number on the bike's keypad and you're good to go.

See
For detailed listings of attractions, please see the respective district articles.

Museums
Buffalo's wealth of cultural attractions is surprising given the city's somewhat small size. The museums here are many and varied, and are a point of pride for Buffalo's citizens. Arguably the most interesting among them are a great number of institutions that focus on the area's past.



Art
More so even than its range of cultural attractions, Buffalo's art scene is huge for a city its size, with galleries large and small to suit all tastes. The Museum District at the north end of the Elmwood Village is the site of Buffalo's two largest art galleries, the beautiful Albright-Knox and the Burchfield-Penney. Smaller storefront galleries are plentiful, and are concentrated in some of Buffalo's more interesting areas, such as Allentown, the Theater District, and Hertel Avenue — as well as emerging artistic communities on the Lower West Side, in Grant-Amherst, and just south of the Theater District in the 500 Block of Main Street.



Architecture
Buffalo is renown for its exquisite and well-preserved architecture. As of 2020, there are 23 historic neighborhoods in Buffalo that have been recognized by either the National Register of Historic Places or the Buffalo Preservation Board, at least partly for reasons of architectural importance. Buffalo's architecture took center stage when the 2011 National Preservation Conference was held in the city. Buildings from almost every decade of Buffalo's existence are preserved. An enormous wealth of information about Buffalo's rich architectural heritage is available at the award-winning website, Buffalo Architecture and History.



Outdoors
Buffalo is a great place to enjoy the outdoors — especially in the warm months. A side effect of Buffalo's notoriously nasty winters is that locals really make the most of the warm-weather months. In March or April, on the first nice day of the year, the streets are thronged with pasty-skinned locals, dressed in shorts and tank tops despite the still-chilly temperatures, eagerly soaking up the fresh air and sunlight after the long, bleak winter. Autumn is also a pleasant time to be outdoors, with the crisp, fragrant air complementing the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot.

The city of Buffalo contains over 200 parks, both large and small. The largest and most interesting parks were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the greatest landscape architects of the 19th century, in conjunction with his then-partner Calvert Vaux. Buffalo's Olmsted parks are an interconnected network of six large parks and six smaller green spaces (three of the latter survive today), linked to each other by wide, tree-lined thoroughfares called parkways modeled after the grand boulevards of Paris. Though he would go on to design similar park systems for other cities, Buffalo's is the oldest and one of the best-preserved Olmsted park systems in existence.





Deserving of special mention is the Outer Harbor, a vast expanse of former industrial land south of downtown that became a state park in 2013:

Festivals and events
''The festivals and events listed in this section take place at multiple venues city- or regionwide. For events specific to a particular venue or neighborhood, see the respective district articles.''

The lion's share of festivals and events in Buffalo take place during the warm months, naturally, but efforts have been made to expand the slate of offerings in winter as well.

Sports
Make no mistake about it — Buffalo is a sports town. Buffalonians are doggedly loyal to their teams despite the fact that the city hasn't won a national championship in any of the big four American sports since 1965 — the four fruitless trips to the Super Bowl by the Buffalo Bills and two to the Stanley Cup Finals by the Sabres in the intervening years are losses that local fans have been looking to avenge for a long time.

Major-league sports are played downtown at the KeyBank Center, where the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres have their home ice, and at Highmark Stadium in suburban Orchard Park where the Buffalo Bills play for the National Football League. Bills fans are some of the most gregarious and welcoming fans in the NFL, and it is not uncommon for them to celebrate and party with opposing fans, creating a real party atmosphere.

Buffalo has a number of teams in smaller leagues as well. These teams tend to be more successful on the field than the big-league clubs. Baseball's Buffalo Bisons have won seven pennants in the AAA-level International League and American Association; they play at Sahlen Field downtown. The Buffalo Bandits play indoor lacrosse at the KeyBank Center and have won four NLL championships. Soccer fans will want to check out the NPSL's FC Buffalo; matches take place at Williamsville South Athletic Field. Finally, the city's newest sports team, the Buffalo Beauts, play their National Women's Hockey League opponents at the Northtown Center.

In the world of college sports, the University at Buffalo's Buffalo Bulls reign supreme. Bulls football and basketball games are played on the North Campus in Amherst, at UB Stadium and Alumni Arena respectively. Canisius College's Golden Griffins, who play at the Koessler Athletic Center and the Demske Sports Complex, also have a sizable local following.

Golf
See the district articles for more details on individual courses.

Golfers visiting the area might want to check out the suburbs first; public and private courses are plentiful outside the city limits. However, those who want to hit the links in Buffalo itself can do so in style. No fewer than three of Buffalo's Olmsted parks — Delaware, Cazenovia, and South Parks — boast golf courses (the former has 18 holes, the latter two have nine), and the Grover Cleveland Golf Course in University Heights is famous as the site of the 1912 U.S. Open.

Fishing
Buffalo is a hotspot for freshwater fishing, with a remarkable diversity of species thanks to its location at the junction of Lake Erie and the Niagara River. Though the Niagara River and Lake Erie have come a long way in terms of pollution, it's advised to severely restrict if not completely avoid eating fish caught in local waters.

In Lake Erie, the marquee catch is smallmouth bass: Buffalo has been recognized by Bassmaster magazine as one of the top three bass fishing destinations in the United States. If you're angling from shore — say, at Buffalo Harbor State Park or Ship Canal Commons in South Buffalo — the prime times are early May through mid-June and October through November, just after the lake thaws and before it freezes again. The bass move to cooler waters midsummer, but if you have a boat, they're still easily catchable. Most of the bass you'll catch will be between 2 and 4 pounds (1 and 2 kg), though it's not unheard of to reel in whoppers of 6 or 7 pounds (3 kg). Aside from bass, Lake Erie has some of the best walleye fishing you'll find anywhere, with average catches ranging from 5 to 8 pounds (2.5 to 3.5 kg), as well as muskellunge (especially around the mouth of the Buffalo River) and yellow perch.

The Buffalo River boasts its share of fishing spots too — notably RiverFest Park, Conway Park, Mutual Park, Seneca Bluffs, and other green spaces of the Buffalo River Greenway. Despite generations of heavy industry that once left it an ecological dead zone, the river was cleaned up enough by the early 1980s for fish to filter their way in once again, and today a typical catch might include bullhead, largemouth bass, yellow perch and steelhead trout.

The upper Niagara River, meanwhile, is a great place to catch steelhead, lake trout and northern pike, which teem in its cool, fast-flowing waters all season long. You can also find smallmouth bass in the summer months. Unity Island is the place to be for river fishing in Buffalo. Folks from the West Side's Burmese refugee community reeling in their catches are a regular sight at places like Broderick Park, the Bird Island Pier, and Unity Island Park.

Gambling
It's no Vegas, but gamblers do have options in and around Buffalo.

Theater
For a city its size, Buffalo has an active and diverse theater scene. The Theater District, bounded roughly by Washington, Tupper, Franklin and Chippewa Streets, hosts Curtain Up!, a gala event that marks the opening of the theater season each September.

Live music
For more detailed listings of individual venues, see the various district articles.

If local music is what you're looking for, the two hotspot neighborhoods are Allentown and Grant-Amherst.

Fans of other types of music aren't left out in the cold:

Learn
Buffalo is home to a large number of private and public colleges and universities. The largest school in the area is the University at Buffalo (UB). One of the four "university centers" of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, UB is renowned as a large public research university. For this reason, it is one of the elected members of the prestigious Association of American Universities. UB has two campuses: the smaller South Campus is in the University Heights neighborhood at the city's northeast corner, and the larger North Campus is in the suburb of Amherst, about four miles (6 km) northeast of the South Campus.

Buffalo State College, also part of the SUNY system, is across from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, at the north end of the Elmwood Village. Canisius College is Buffalo's largest private college, located near the intersection of Humboldt Parkway and Main Street. Other colleges and universities in the city and its surrounding area include Trocaire College, Medaille College, Villa Maria College, D'Youville College, Daemen College, and the three campuses of Erie Community College.

The University at Buffalo has an annual Distinguished Speakers Series, which has played host to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Michael Moore, the Dalai Lama, Stephen Colbert, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. These events take place on the North Campus and are open to the public; tickets are available from the University's box office. UB has a free series of summer lectures available to the public, and Buffalo State regularly has events open to visitors.

Buy
For listings of individual shops, please see the respective district articles.

Buffalo has a number of interesting shopping districts, each with its own flavor.



The Elmwood Village extends along Elmwood Avenue from Buffalo State College south to North Street. This area contains a variety of small shops with an "independent" feel — you won't find many national chain stores or restaurants here. Elmwood Avenue's specialty is upscale clothing boutiques catering to fashion-forward urbanites; it's also a good place to seek out locally produced art and jewelry, quirky gifts, and some of the finest dining Buffalo has to offer.

Allentown is centered along the entire length of Allen Street from Main to Wadsworth Streets, but especially west of Linwood Avenue. Adjacent, and similar in some ways, to the Elmwood Village, Allentown has more of a bohemian and artsy vibe compared with the college students and yuppies that frequent Elmwood. Amid the proliferation of hipster bars, you'll see a lot of antique shops, small art galleries, and clothing stores with a more urban style.

Hertel Avenue, between Delaware and Parkside Avenues in North Buffalo, is home to a growing assortment of small shops. Hertel is the place to come to browse art galleries, shop for antique and contemporary furniture and home decor, mellow out in head shops such as Terrapin Station, and sample Middle Eastern cuisine at a variety of restaurants and bodegas at the west end of the strip, near Delaware Avenue.

Grant Street, which runs north-to-south through the Upper West Side, is the main thoroughfare of two revitalized shopping areas. The stretch between (approximately) West Delavan Avenue and Hampshire Street, centered on West Ferry Street, is a commercial strip known as Grant-Ferry. A "melting pot" of Hispanics, Somalis, Southeast Asians, Arabs, Eastern Europeans and Buffalo State College students, Grant-Ferry is home to a collection of ethnic food markets, clothing stores, and so forth. Grant-Amherst, a short distance north at the corner of Amherst Street, boasts a collection of art galleries, antique shops and restaurants within walking distance of Buffalo State College. Visitors should be warned, however, that the neighborhoods around Grant Street are still a good deal "grittier" than places like the Elmwood Village and Allentown.

In the suburbs can be found the usual lineup of malls and plazas. The largest mall in the area is the Walden Galleria, on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga, 10 minutes from downtown via the Kensington Expressway and/or Interstate 90. Others include the Boulevard Mall in Amherst, the McKinley Mall on the border between Hamburg and Orchard Park, and the Eastern Hills Mall in Clarence. In Buffalo itself, there is a small area between Delaware and Elmwood Avenues at the northern edge of the city where shopping plazas, big-box stores, and chain restaurants can be found.

Local specialties

 * No visit is complete without trying some Buffalo wings. Oh, sure, everyone thinks they've tried them, but nothing compares to the ones you can get in Buffalo. (But please don't call them "Buffalo wings"; around here, they're just "wings".) The classic recipe, as originated in 1964 at the Anchor Bar on Main Street, is a chicken wing fried up crisp, then tossed in a mixture of butter and hot sauce (Frank's Red Hot for best results) in varying proportions according to your spice tolerance, then optionally finished on the grill for a bit of extra char. The debate over who serves the best wings in town is endless, but as a general rule, head to one of Buffalo's many off-the-beaten-path corner bars.
 * If you're not a fan of Buffalo sauce, virtually anywhere with wings on the menu will offer barbecue sauce as an alternative. Other varieties you'll come across frequently include garlic parmesan, lemon pepper (especially popular among Buffalo's African-American community), honey mustard, and "Italian style" (i.e. breaded and smothered in marinara sauce). Or for something truly unique, head to South Buffalo, which has its own homegrown style of wings.


 * In much the same vein: if you enjoy chicken fingers, there's scarcely a better place for you to visit than Buffalo. Like any other city, you can find them served as a meal in themselves, but here they also come chopped up and used as pizza toppings, in tacos, on salads, and — above all — in the form of chicken finger subs: whole chicken fingers slathered in Buffalo wing sauce and used as the filling in a submarine sandwich. A variant is the stinger sub, basically a steak hoagie plus chicken fingers. Any sub shop or pizzeria in town should be able to make you a chicken finger sub, but for the stinger, the odds-on favorite is local chain Jim's Steakout, where it was invented.
 * Outside the realm of deep-fried chicken, another local specialty is beef on weck, a sandwich that consists of slices of slow-roasted beef layered on a kümmelweck roll (a Kaiser roll topped with caraway seeds and Kosher salt) and traditionally garnished with horseradish. Any place that serves hot sandwiches is likely to have beef on weck on the menu, but the two restaurants whose beef on weck has the best reputation are Schwabl's (on Center Road in West Seneca) and Charlie the Butcher.
 * Texas hots, despite their name, were not invented in Texas, but in Buffalo, where they began as a unique offering in the area's Greek restaurants (Seneca Texas Hots claims to be the first to serve them, though this is a matter of some dispute). The Texas hot is a hot dog slathered with mustard, onions, and spicy meat sauce or chili; the finished product bears some resemblance to the "Coney Island" hot dogs served in Detroit, though the chili sauce on Texas hots is lighter and thinner in consistency.


 * Americanized versions of Greek street foods like souvlaki, gyro and spanakopita, alongside usual diner fare like burgers and melt sandwiches, are served in many Greek diners, particularly in the suburbs. However, some diners — for example, Mythos on Elmwood Avenue — have reinvented themselves in a more upscale vein, with ever more creative menu items, swankier decor, and higher prices.
 * Chiavetta chicken (usually shortened to just "Chiavetta") sits in a garlic- and cider vinegar-based marinade (imbued with a secret blend of herbs and spices) for about four hours before being broiled on a charcoal grill, resulting in tender meat that is incredibly juicy, with just a hint of crispy char on the skin. Chiavetta's natural habitats are church lawn fetes, fire department fundraiser cookouts, and other such informal events, or if you happen to be in town during the Erie County Fair, head to the Chiavetta Catering Company's own booth to get it straight from the source. You'll have a much harder time finding it in restaurants: if you can't make it out to Lockport to visit Chiavetta's BBQ Take-Out, you'll at least find the marinade on the shelf of most local supermarkets.
 * Loganberry is a non-carbonated, dark purple soft drink with a flavor that could be described as intensely sweet and generically fruity. It is not native to the local area but only in Buffalo did it have staying power. Aunt Rosie's is the best-known brand, exclusively distributed by the local Pepsi-Cola bottling company (not PepsiCo itself, which goes a long way in explaining its lack of availability outside Buffalo). Aunt Rosie's is available only at local soda fountains, though, so if you want a bottle to take home from the supermarket as a souvenir, look for Johnnie Ryan brand instead, bottled in Niagara Falls.
 * Fish fry is a Buffalo staple that owes its existence to the traditional predominance of Roman Catholicism among the local citizenry — practicing Catholics were once forbidden to eat red meat and poultry on Fridays. Though that prohibition hasn't been in effect since the 1960s, the tradition of enjoying a fish fry on Friday nights has stuck. The traditional recipe sees massive filets of haddock or cod coated in flour, beer-battered and deep-fried until golden brown, then finished with tartar sauce and/or lemon juice and served with sides that may include French fries, coleslaw, or perhaps macaroni salad. You can eat fish fry at some of Buffalo's nicer restaurants if you want, but this is still a working-class food at heart and, accordingly, the best fish fry is served by the smaller neighborhood watering holes and greasy spoons. Expect lines for fish fry to be especially long during the season of Lent (usually Feb-Apr, though it varies by year), when the old no-meat-on-Fridays rule still applies.
 * Buffalo also has its own slate of candies, pastry, and sweets of local provenance:
 * Sponge candy, though it's (contrary to local belief) not unique to the Buffalo area, is the best-known of these, and you'll find it at any local candy shop worth its salt. Brown sugar, corn syrup, and baking soda are mixed together into a thick syrup and then baked, releasing bubbles of carbon dioxide gas from the latter which get trapped in the mixture as it hardens and sets into a toffee, creating a crunchy, latticed interior. The whole thing is then covered in chocolate. The Fowler's chain of chocolate shops supposedly sells the best, though its competitors Watson's and Parkside Candy would beg to differ.
 * Ice cream lovers visiting Buffalo should not bother asking about the origins of the Mexican sundae, which are shrouded in obscurity, but should take the opportunity to dig into this salty-sweet favorite of vanilla ice cream topped with hot fudge, whipped cream, and — this is the key ingredient — skin-on Spanish peanuts. In the summertime, any of the locally-owned walk-up ice cream stands you'll find around town have it on the menu; if you're visiting in the cooler months, your best bet is to head to Nick Charlap's Sweets on the Hill in West Seneca.
 * The Charlie Chaplin, wherein shredded coconut and chopped cashews are added to melted chocolate and then poured over lumps of fluffy marshmallow and sprinkled with coarse salt, was allegedly created during the eponymous movie star's 1917 visit to Buffalo for the premiere of his film The Adventurer. Strawberry Island, in the Broadway Market on the East Side, is a good place to find them; they serve theirs on a stick, as opposed to in logs or nuggets as elsewhere.
 * Finally, pastry hearts, also known as angel wings, are flat, heart-shaped pieces of puff pastry coated in a thick shell of white sugar icing that's ideally hard and dry on the outside and soft, gooey, and cloyingly sweet on the inside. They're a specialty of the local Polish community; Mazurek's Bakery in the Old First Ward and White Eagle Bakery in the aforementioned Broadway Market are good choices for where to get some.

Restaurants
For restaurant listings, please see the respective district articles.

Every neighborhood in Buffalo has its own specialty when it comes to restaurants. Generally speaking, head downtown for fine dining, to the Elmwood Village for Greek diners and dudebro sports bars, to Allentown to sober up after a night of bar-hopping over a plate of "drunk food", to Hertel for homestyle Italian cuisine, and to the East Side for barbecue and soul food. If you're a fan of Asian cuisine, get your fix either on the West Side or out in suburbia, in the quasi-Chinatown that's coalesced in Amherst between the two UB campuses.

Speaking of which: Burmese cuisine is hard to find elsewhere in the country, but thanks to a vibrant community of immigrants and refugees that's coalesced on the West Side since the turn of the millennium, it's quite popular in Buffalo. The two most famous purveyors are the West Side Bazaar on Grant Street and the local chainlet Sun; however, the authenticity of their dishes varies. Culinary purists should head to Riverside, where they'll find a number of off-the-beaten-path alternatives.

Local chains
Buffalo boasts several local chains that are beloved of Western New Yorkers and that serve as staples of the local cuisine.







Food trucks
There are several dozen food trucks operating in Buffalo, serving everything from the standard hot dogs and tacos to more unusual selections like elegant scratch-made desserts, gourmet fusion cuisine and carnival fare. The list below includes some of Buffalo's more popular food trucks (excluding those that are spinoffs from brick-and-mortar restaurants, but including those which started as food trucks and opened restaurants later). Food trucks can most commonly be found downtown or in Allentown, the Elmwood Village, North Buffalo, and Larkinville; if you're in the suburbs, office complex parking lots are another frequent venue. Many food trucks maintain Facebook fan pages and/or Twitter feeds that update fans on where they'll be setting up shop.



Pizza
The pizza scene in Buffalo is dominated by neighborhood mom-and-pop pizza places and locally based chains, each of whose individual variation on the classic recipe inspires fierce loyalty — and rivalry. Buffalo pizza features a crust that's thicker than New York-style but not nearly as much so as Chicago deep dish, with a slightly nutty flavor and an airy sponginess that struggles to support the heaping mass of toppings that generally get piled on. Cheese comes in a thick, gooey layer that spreads out almost to the edge of the crust, the sauce has a noticeably sweet tinge, and pepperoni is invariably of the "cup and char" variety: smaller and more thickly sliced than elsewhere, they curl up into a bowl shape as they cook, blackened on the edges and with a pool of hot grease in the middle. Below are some of Buffalo's better-known pizza chains:



Groceries
The lion's share of Buffalo's grocery stores can be found in the suburbs, but unlike the infamous "food deserts" of other Rust Belt cities, even the most forlorn inner-city precincts usually have at least one full-service supermarket.

Fresh, locally-grown foods are available at farmers' markets. There are about two dozen of them all over the metro area, where local farmers, vintners, cheesemakers, and producers of other artisanal food products come to sell their goods directly to the public. Farmers' markets usually take place on a weekly basis during the growing season, and many of them double as full-fledged street festivals, with live music, games and other entertainment.

Drink
For bar listings, please see the respective district articles.

As an enduringly blue-collar town, Buffalo has a fairly dense concentration of bars and taverns. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Buffalo is among the top ten cities in the United States in number of bars per capita. Drinkers in Buffalo aren't limited to rough-and-tumble working-class watering holes, though — although there are plenty of those. Buffalo has a number of more upscale nightlife districts, each with a distinct character, from the dance clubs of Chippewa Street, to the hipster dives of Allentown, to the cocktail bars in the Theater District, to the yuppie hangouts of the Elmwood Village, to the historic taverns of the Cobblestone District and the Old First Ward.

Last call in Buffalo is 4AM. For this reason, many bars in Buffalo don't get going until sometime after midnight on weekends.

Weekend nights usually see the police out in force in Buffalo's nightlife districts, searching for drunk drivers. You can often find taxis lingering around the bars, but competition for a cab can be fierce and rates are often high. Uber and Lyft are often a better option in these cases.

Coffee shops
Coffee culture is alive and well in Buffalo. Though Starbucks outlets are a dime a dozen here as elsewhere in the country, locally owned mom-and-pop cafés have always been where it's at for Buffalo's trendy set, and there are three principal neighborhoods where you'll find them. Downtown — particularly the Theater District and the 500 block of Main Street — sports a handful of grab-and-go places for office workers in need of a quick caffeine fix, Allentown's coffee shops are great places to lounge in an ambience that's trendy yet not stiflingly pretentious, and at the far end of the spectrum, the off-the-beaten-path coffeeshop scene on the West Side cranks the hipster factor up to 11, with an atmosphere and clientele such that you might wonder whether you're in Buffalo or Brooklyn.

There are a couple local coffeeshop chains of note:



Sleep
For more detailed hotel listings, please see the respective district articles.

There is a wide range of high-quality lodging to choose from in both Buffalo and its suburbs, encompassing hotels, motels, B&Bs, hostels, and guest houses. Many beautiful but vacant old buildings have restored and repurposed as hotels — so if you're staying downtown, be prepared for a real Gilded Age treat. In suburbia, budget and mid-priced chains can be found primarily around highway interchanges. Two especially big clusters of hotels exist just south of the University of Buffalo's North Campus in Amherst and around the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

Connect
The telephone area codes for Buffalo are 716 and 624. It is necessary to dial the area code for local calls.

Publicly accessible wireless Internet is mainly limited to coffee shops, bookstores, and other such establishments. In particular, McDonald's, Starbucks, SPoT Coffee, Tim Hortons, and Barnes & Noble offer free WiFi and boast many easy-to-find locations throughout the region. Public libraries also usually offer Internet access.

Buffalo's and mail processing facility is at 1200 William St. in the city's Lovejoy neighborhood.

Stay safe
The reputation of Buffalo's East Side as a rough part of town can be exaggerated by locals, but it's not entirely undeserved. Generally speaking, the East Side is the city's poorest residential district, with widespread urban blight and high crime rates plaguing many parts of the district (especially the Bailey Avenue corridor). To a lesser extent, some parts of the West Side also have these problems. That being said, crime rates in Buffalo have fallen to levels not seen in half a century. What violent crime does occur is usually drug- and gang-related and does not target tourists. Follow general precautions that would apply in any urban area — lock car doors, keep valuables out of sight, be aware of your surroundings, etc. — and you should be fine pretty much anywhere.

Panhandlers can be found occasionally on Chippewa Street downtown and in Allentown and the Elmwood Village, though not nearly to the degree of most other cities. Aggressive panhandling is virtually unknown.

Newspapers and print media
The Buffalo News is the city's sole daily newspaper and is the most widely circulated newspaper in Upstate New York. Listings for concerts, movies, theater productions and other events are published under the title Gusto. Buffalo Rising is an excellent online publication whose "beat is New Buffalo" and which features "original content written by fellow Buffalonians knowledgeable and passionate about their city". Buffalo Spree is a monthly magazine that features articles on dining, events, and the arts in the local area. The African-American community of Buffalo is served by the Challenger Community News. Panorama Hispano publishes news relevant to Buffalo's Latino community in both English and Spanish. The Am-Pol Eagle is a weekly paper featuring news and commentary of interest to the Polish-American community in the area. Also, many of Buffalo's neighborhoods boast community newspapers of their own, such as the Allentown Neighbor and the North Buffalo Rocket.

Radio
In the field of radio broadcasting, Buffalo's history is one of the longest in the nation; its oldest radio station, WGR, has been on the air since 1922. Sadly, though, Buffalo radio leaves much to be desired now, a fact that has led many locals to become listeners of radio stations based in Toronto and elsewhere in Southern Ontario. As of autumn 2018, Buffalo's highest-rated radio stations are WBLK, WYRK, and WHTT on the FM dial, and WBEN and WGR on the AM dial.

Radio stations serving the Buffalo area include:


 *  News/Talk : WBFO 88.7 FM (NPR), WBEN 930 AM (conservative), WLVL 1340 AM (conservative), WHLD 1270 AM (conservative)
 *  Sports : WGR 550 AM, WWKB 1520 AM
 *  Oldies/Classic rock : WBUF 92.9 FM, WGRF 96.9 FM, WHTT 1120 AM/104.1 FM, WECK 1230 AM/100.5 FM/102.9 FM (light oldies), WEBR 1440 AM (nostalgia and big band)
 *  Top 40/Adult Contemporary : WMSX 96.1 FM, WKSE 98.5 FM, WTSS 102.5 FM/104.7 FM
 *  Urban : WBLK 93.7 FM, WUFO 1080 AM/96.5 FM (classic R&B, hip-hop and gospel), WWWS 1400 AM/107.3 FM (soul)
 *  Country : WYRK 106.5 FM, WXRL 1300 AM, WLKK 107.7 FM
 *  Alternative rock : WEDG 103.3 FM
 *  College radio : WBNY 91.3 FM (Buffalo State College)
 *  Classical : WNED 94.5 FM
 *  Religious : WBKV 89.9 FM (Christian rock and pop), WZDV 92.1 FM, WDCX 99.5 FM/970 AM, WLOF 101.7 FM (Catholic)

Television
Buffalo's television stations represent all major American television networks. In addition to these, many Canadian television stations based in Toronto are available through Spectrum cable system; however, over-the-air reception of these stations is generally very poor.

Television stations serving Buffalo include:


 * WGRZ Channel 2: NBC
 * WIVB Channel 4: CBS
 * WKBW Channel 7: ABC
 * WNED Channel 17: PBS
 * WNLO Channel 23: The CW
 * WNYB Channel 26: Tri-State Christian Television
 * WUTV Channel 29: Fox
 * WNYO Channel 49: MyNetworkTV
 * WPXJ Channel 51: Ion Television
 * WBXZ Channel 56: NewsNet
 * WBBZ Channel 67: Me-TV

Hospitals
In case of medical emergency, Buffalo is well-served by a wide variety of hospitals and other medical facilities.

Places of worship
For more information on specific places of worship, please see the respective district articles.

Catholic
From early in its history, Buffalo's population has been predominantly Roman Catholic, and this holds true today. Buffalo has some magnificent Catholic churches, particularly on the East Side, where 19th-century German and Polish immigrants built a bevy of massive, ornate stone churches and cathedrals, some still in use, most not. Outside of Buffalo proper but still worthy of note is Lackawanna's Our Lady of Victory Basilica, a massive marble structure that is a testament to the charitable institutions headed by Father Nelson Baker.

Protestant
Protestant churches are far more numerous in the suburbs than in Buffalo proper; however, there are a few large and active congregations in the city, especially in neighborhoods such as Allentown, the Elmwood Village, and Parkside that still contain significant numbers of old-money WASPs.

Black churches
Black churches are numerous on the East Side.

Suburbs and exurbs
Unlike the faceless cookie-cutter residential tracts surrounding other American cities, many of Buffalo's suburbs have real character. More than that, suburbia's range of attractions, festivals and events, and other items of interest to visitors can hold its own with the urban core.
 * Tonawanda — a 19th-century lumber port turned middle-class residential community, Tonawanda is the western terminus of the modern-day Erie Canal.
 * Amherst — Buffalo's most populous suburb contains the gargantuan UB North Campus, the charming village of Williamsville, and rural farmland in the far north.
 * Cheektowaga — postwar suburbia at its most banal, but also shopping galore, including the area's largest mall. As the site of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Cheektowaga is likely on the itinerary of most visitors to Buffalo whether they actively seek it out or not.
 * West Seneca — a proud German heritage dating to the town's foundation in the 1850s by the religious Ebenezer Society, and natural beauty that inspired watercolorist Charles Burchfield.
 * Lackawanna — a rough-and-tumble company town that fell on hard times after the closure of the steel plant that gave the city its name, now the home of a vibrant Yemeni community and the magnificent Basilica of Our Lady of Victory.
 * Grand Island — once a summer retreat for Buffalo's turn-of-the-century aristocracy, now the site of riverfront parkland and wide-open spaces a stone's throw from the bustle of the city.
 * North Tonawanda — Tonawanda's sister city has a grittier and more working-class feel, but also a restored downtown with lively nightlife.
 * Lancaster — an upper-middle-class second-ring suburb east of Cheektowaga in whose lovely town center stands the historic Lancaster Opera House.
 * Orchard Park — the home of the Buffalo Bills has something for everyone, from bustling strip malls to a charming small-town downtown to the forests and hills of Chestnut Ridge Park.
 * Hamburg — birthplace (allegedly) of the hamburger, Hamburg is also home of the Erie County Fair and boasts beautiful views over Lake Erie.
 * East Aurora — the almost too-cutesy-for-its-own-good village that's home to the Roycroft Community of artists and artisans, an important exponent of the early 20th-century Arts and Crafts Movement.
 * Clarence — tony exurb about a half-hour's drive from downtown Buffalo. Hit up the antique shops in Clarence Hollow if that's your thing, or tool around the exclusive Spaulding Lake neighborhood to gawk at the lifestyles of the Niagara Frontier's rich and famous.
 * Lockport — Niagara County's seat makes the most of its history as an important Erie Canal port, with attractions such as the Lockport Locks and Erie Canal Cruises and the Lockport Erie Canal Museum on offer.

And of course, no trip to the Niagara Frontier would be complete without checking out...


 * Niagara Falls, which lies a short 30-minute drive from Buffalo. Check out Little Italy along Pine Avenue, the world-class Aquarium of Niagara, and the historic downtown area centered around Old Falls Street. As for the falls themselves, Niagara Falls State Park is understated and even serene.

Further afield

 * Lewiston is a historic village on the Niagara River about 40 minutes north of Buffalo via Interstate 190.
 * Darien Lake is a theme park resort in rural Genesee County, about 40 minutes east of Buffalo.
 * The hills south and southeast of Buffalo bear the brunt of the lake-effect snow that falls in early winter; as such, this is Buffalo's ski country. The closest ski resort to Buffalo is Kissing Bridge, on Glenwood-East Concord Rd. in the town of Colden. More ski resorts can be found in Chautauqua County and in Ellicottville.
 * The beaches along Lake Erie south of Buffalo are popular summer day trips. The most popular is Evangola State Park. Other public beaches further afield can be found in Chautauqua County, in Silver Creek (Sunset Bay) and Dunkirk (Wright Park and Point Gratiot Park).
 * Genesee County is located along I-90 about midway between Buffalo and Rochester. Batavia, the county seat, is one of the oldest and most historic towns in Western New York.
 * A 45-minute drive north of Buffalo, Youngstown is a small village with a huge role in local history: it's the site of Old Fort Niagara, a state park and National Historic Landmark with a history that goes back to 1678.
 * Chautauqua County is southwest of Buffalo and is easily accessible via Interstate 90. A place of farms, forests, mountains, and beaches, Chautauqua County contains the Chautauqua Institution, a historic retreat on the shores of Chautauqua Lake. A bit south of Fredonia, Lily Dale is a center of the Spiritualist movement and boasts psychic mediums, fortune-tellers, and the like. Peek 'n Peak Resort in Clymer is a year-round destination in Chautauqua, with 27 ski slopes, downhill tubing, and golf.
 * Located southeast of Buffalo, the "Enchanted Mountains of Cattaraugus County" include several notable sites. Ellicottville is a year-round destination best known for its two ski resorts, Holiday Valley and HoliMont. Griffis Sculpture Park in East Otto is the oldest sculpture park in the country, founded in 1966. Next to the state line is Allegany State Park, the "wilderness playground of Western New York", offering camping, skiing, hiking, and natural beauty. Nearby is the Seneca Allegany Hotel and Casino, in Salamanca.
 * New York State's third-largest city, Rochester, is a short drive of 60 to 90 minutes eastward along Interstate 90, and is home to museums, art galleries, street festivals and professional sports.
 * The Finger Lakes region is between Rochester and Syracuse, about two hours east of Buffalo along Interstate 90. Named for the series of eleven long, slender lakes found there, the region offers natural beauty and small-town charm, but is best-known for its status as the most important wine-producing area in the Eastern U.S. Over 100 wineries can be found in the Finger Lakes, many of which offer tours and tastings in season.

North of the border
There are four border crossings in Western New York: the Peace Bridge, by which travellers cross from Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario for a toll of US$8.00 or CAD$10.75, the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls (toll US$5.00 or CAD$6.50), the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge also in the Falls (open only to NEXUS members; toll US$5.00 or CAD$6.50), and the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge furthest north (toll US$5.00 or CAD$6.50). For travellers to most Canadian destinations other than Niagara Falls and Fort Erie, the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge offers the most direct route, but is also the one that is most prone to delays.
 * Fort Erie is a small city, easily accessible via the Peace Bridge. Attractions here include Old Fort Erie, Fort Erie Racetrack, Uncle Sam's Bingo Palace and Golden Nugget Bingo. Also near town are some of Canada's finest freshwater beaches.
 * Niagara Falls, Ontario is accessible via the Rainbow Bridge. In sharp contrast to its U.S. counterpart, the views of the Falls from Ontario are almost unanimously considered to be better, but rather than the greenery that abuts the falls on the American side, the Canadian side is a gaudy, Vegas-like neon jungle of high-rise hotels, casinos, restaurants, nightclubs, and gimmicky tourist traps.
 * Niagara-on-the-Lake is an hour from Buffalo, at the mouth of the Niagara River. Visitors to the Falls often make the short drive north to take in the charming streets and stone buildings.
 * The Niagara Peninsula extends between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, immediately west of Buffalo. Aside from the region's fertile farmland and historical importance as a battleground during the War of 1812, the Niagara Peninsula is greatly popular with tourists as Canada's most productive wine-producing region.
 * Toronto, Canada's largest city, is about two hours from Buffalo (assuming ideal traffic conditions and no delays at Customs).