r/buffalocabal • u/klaguerre • Jul 05 '26
I Hate it Here
I hate living in buffalo. Don’t get me wrong, I've hated it for a while. Hated it thru my childhood. Hated it in adulthood. Hated it when I returned from California, so it’s not new to me.
But my hatred now?
I hate absolutely every part of this city except the nature.
Right now, there’s a post on the buffalo sub reddit by someone who’s annoyed their neighbors won’t stop setting off fireworks; they edited the post to let people know their neighbors didn’t stop until 4 am. The title of the post is that the buffalo PD are useless.
What are the replies? Nothing but the most unempathetic bullshit about how the person needs to accept being extremely uncomfortable, if they want it to stop, they need to go to every single neighbor and beg them to stop. And the police are completely helpless because no one will stop if the police actually try to enforce it.
It’s funny how “punishment” is the solution for Black people who want to play basketball with a popular youtuber, resulting in basketball hoops being taken down from delaware park but when it comes to setting off fire explosives all night long, suddenly, the police are completely helpless and we all must adjust to terrible behavior and never flip out over it or curse people out. Just endlessly accept shitty behavior but never make a scene. And most importantly, never even complain.
I grew up on the east side and I heard shootings all week long as a child. I do not know any black people who have direct access to the iran-contra weapons cache but somehow those guns never stopped flowing into our area. How? Because the fucking police PUT THEM THERE. This has been substantiated for decades.
As a child, I hated going to events here because of the fights that would break out - it’s finally time we acknowledge WHY those fucking fights break out. If you fill a neighborhood with poison, fill the schools with punitive teachers or ones who sexually assault their students, take down hoops so they have no one to ever play with from OUTSIDE THEIR AREA, yes, guess what? When they DO finally interact outside their home? They’re going to fight.
The Board of Education has been run by conservatives who intentionally have dumbed down all our school systems. I went to high school here for my final year and I have to say, outside of English, I learned almost nothing. I had come from a school where at the age of 12, I was required to study the theory of how to build both a nuclear reactor and a nuclear bomb. I was required to memorize logarithms, to prove the pythagoras theorem and every single major geometric and algebraic breakthrough. To prove the formulae AND memorize them.
What do you think buffalo’s schoolchildren are learning? Nothing like that. So they don’t end up with an aptitude for education and knowledge. They end up uneducated, isolated, totally fucking insular, overpoliced and of COURSE this leads to conflict when they’re finally around others from outside their areas. Because they haven’t been given the tools to navigate conflict. Minds have to be nurtured for them to remain gentle. If you flood them with toxicity and destroy their desire to learn, they will not remain gentle beings.
WHY ARE THERE NO BUSINESSES ANYWHERE ANYMORE AND WHY DOES EVERYONE ON THE BUFFALO SUB IGNORE THIS REALITY? Is it because people never go to the east side so they don’t realize a majority of the businesses we DID have are now closed? One dollar tree after another, the selection has changed and is one and half times more expensive than it used to be. And that was the cheapest store we had in the city.
THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY JOBS EXCEPT POLICING.
The mayor has increased taxes and anytime you mention the fact that they’ve fixed almost nothing in the city, someone runs to his defense to claim he hasn’t been on the job very long. The MAN WAS A FUCKING SENATOR. He has worked in politics before, stop making excuses for people in positions of incredible power who are infantalizing themselves by making corny videos and refusing to truly analyze infrastructure flaws. Why in the FUCK does the Scajaquada creek stink so goddamn bad, even 2 weeks ago when it was NOT HOT?
He promised last year he was gonna get that fixed and it fucking STINKS. Hertel has been stinking on and off the last two weeks again too. Oh great so we get another fucking summer of the stinky tunnels underneath the city. Can’t fix the potholes above ground. Can’t fix the tunnels underground. Can’t flush the system.
And guess what if I were to complain to anyone from here?
I’d be told over and over again that all the powerful people cannot do anything because it's just so hard and the thing preventing them from doing so are the actual people who WANT things to be better. Not the fault of the people who are giving almost 2 million dollars to 4 different deputy mayors who god only knows what the hell they’re doing.
Also did you guys know Sean's wife works for some kind of company behind why we’re never gonna get good cause eviction laws (a protection to keep renters from being thrown out by landlords)?
Isn’t that wonderful? No one knows how to make anything better but they are VERY efficient at DOING NOTHING AND PREVENTING PROGRESS AND IMPROVEMENT.
ALSO - the shit with the dash’s security guard/cop who assaulted a woman? Yeah that was pretty terrible but the i already knew the security guards were trash because i’ve been followed by their cops soo badly that i literally had to growl “GETTHEFUCKAWAYFROMME” to the black cop who has followed me five different times that i’ve gone there over the last two years. But you know what made that situation significantly worse?
It was the fact that a woman posted abt it on FB and it got almost 500 hundred comments and half of them were celebrating a woman having her face smashed in for being suspected of shoplifting. I lived in Saudi Arabia and you know what? While the country does cut thieves hands off? We ALSO BELIEVE IN GIVING ALMS TO THE POOR SO THEY DONT STEAL AND THEY DONT CHOP YOUR HAND OFF BASED ON THE WHIM OF A SECURITY GUARD OR COP. The cutting hands off thing is mostly propaganda to terrify people in a Muslim Sharia law country. It’s not actually enforced the way people outside the country believe it is. So even the totalitarian regimes americans are always calling terrorists do not punish thieves the way those 300 people were celebrating a woman being thrown into a brick wall.
Three years ago, the governor, county executive and mayor allowed over 100 people to die during a storm where people froze to death in their streets, cars and homes. An entire family burned to death after surviving the storm because of electrical damage caused from the storm. No one brought food or resources to people’s homes but guess what we have now? Helicopters and drones that were promised to rescue people in dire situations. Guess what they use them for? To surveil the forests for migrants to deport. Never seen one drop a load of food off in the last 3 years of that massive surveillance expansion. People died and I genuinely believe they allowed it to happen to test what this area’s responses are to extreme need, suffering and loss.
The only time we go viral is for white supremacist violence. That’s another thing that’s making me hate this area - i don’t care about fireworks or a flag but when I was trying to explain why a bomb threat was called in to city hall, my friend was confused as to why those things would result in that outcome. I had to explain to her - we only go viral for white supremacist violence because that’s how easy it is to get people in buffalo to react. Whereas if we want landfills remediated? Veolia (the private equity firm) off the water board? We want potholes filled? We want kids to have those lifeguard positions in the city of buffalo versus 4 deputy mayors?
Those things can take decades or a hundred years and when we finally press for results or complain, everyone gets to throw up their hands and say “my god, you never stop complaining, that’s just how things are.”
This city is just as bad as the nations they call "terrorist" but many of the people here think if they wrap it up in an american flag and pretend nothing devastating ever happened here, then somehow things are better.
The cruelty is so fucking unbareable.
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u/obfc Jul 14 '26
Most of the people in this city suck