In-your-face old school Catholicism. The Mormons went to Buffalo to take lessons from the very devout Catholics that still make up the bulk of Buffalo’s believers. Anti-abortion protests are a part of day-to-day life, television and radio stations broadcast services where the Hail Mary is repeated endlessly, all private colleges and most private elementary and high schools are Catholic, and “apartment for rent” ads often give not the neighborhood name, but rather the parish.
Greek restaurants. My God … (Buffalo, I forgot) … uhhh, I mean my blessed little baby Virgin Mary, Greek restaurants are everywhere. There’s not a large Greek-American community, but it seems like every neighborhood has three or four Greek-owned “family restaurants,” most open 24 hours, most serving okay diner fare.
Ubersupermarkets. For such a poor area, Buffalo has some of the most frighteningly comprehensive and upscale supermarkets of any city I’ve lived in – including wealthy Denver. King Soopers? HA! There’s a 150,000 square foot Tops or Wegman’s within a five minute drive of everyone in the Buffalo metro area. There are no “hypermarkets,” but the supermarkets do stock deep, and there tends to be a large emphasis on ethnic foods. On the other hand, chains like Whole Foods won’t touch Buffalo with a 10 foot organic pole, so no Uruguayan free range basalmic vinegar for you!
No national builders. Buying a new house? None of the names will be familiar – there’s no Pulte, Lennar, U.S. Home, Engle, Centex, or other large homebuilders knocking up new residences in the Buffalo area. It’s mostly small mom and pops. In Amherst, there’s a disproportionately large number of Italian-American owned homebuilders; in Cheektowaga, it’s Polish-Americans who dominate.
Racial attitudes out of the 1950s. “I just hat one a’ dose culerts move in der down da block der. I tink I’m gonna’ sell my house before it look like da Brudvayfillmore section der. Dey ruinet dat der Trooway mall der.” Enough said. The African-American middle class is very small, and the amount of overt racism seems to be on the rise – blacks getting chased out of traditionally white ethnic neighborhoods, racial profiling still in force in the eastern suburbs, etc.
We broke 'em though. Now they serve it. Boy do they ever.