26 at 26: N for New York
Buffalo, Rochester, and the Definition of Home
Late last year, I turned 26. So, in the tradition of the great panel show QI, for the first half of 2014 I will be running through an alphabetical view on 26 things in my world so far.
I was born in Pennsylvania, but I grew up in New York.
Not New York City, which is what everyone in Portland assumes if I merely say “New York”. I come from Western New York, land of heavy snow and unhealthy foods. (I like to call I-90 the “heart attack highway”; going from Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse to Nick Tahou’s garbage plates in Rochester to Anchor Bar wings in Buffalo.)
I have been to NYC once, with my family. We did the whole touristy Times Square thing, eating at overpriced restaurants and visiting a bunch of megastores. This was a few years after 9/11, so of course, we visited the memorial as well. We also took in an off-Broadway production of Rent, which my parents worried might have subject matter too risqué and Bohemian for little ol’ me.
Oh, the irony. I was the one who spotted a purple-haired granny passing by our hotel and immediately felt more at home than in the quiet, suburban neighborhood we’d be returning to. This was a town of activity and character. A town of varied and strange people; some desperate, some distinguished, but all different. It had a potent appeal.
It also had massive living expenses. It was an improvement, sure, but at the end of the day I’m a pragmatic girl.
That was part of why I chose RIT for college. The whole getting-a-good-education part was factored in the consideration, of course, but part of what sealed it for me was walking through the Honors Hall and seeing, among other things, a scraggly boy with green nails playing his guitar. A sort of queer hipster look, before that would really be a thing. And I loved that he could be so clearly comfortable there. It made me more comfortable.
I think it was during the first summer I spent in on-campus housing — the “Racquet Club” about 3 miles off the actual campus — that my little apartment there actually felt like home. It felt like home in a way that the actual family house never quite did. I could make it my own, lay out the furniture how I wanted, use my laptop anywhere, whatever. I was in control. I wasn’t being judged, I didn’t have to adjust anything for anyone else. I don’t know if the whole bachelorette lifestyle automatically results in a feeling of home, but it did for me.
Until I moved to Buffalo, that is.
The move to Buffalo was more induced than desired. I was looking for a job, and there I found a job. And as Morrissey sang, heaven knows I was miserable now. My apartment hunt was centered around commute times and how sketchy the neighborhood was. (Or I should say, how sketchy it was according to my parents.) The whole process had little if anything to do with whether or not I actually wanted to live there.
I wound up in a suburban development, with an apartment a good 100 square feet larger than my college one that somehow felt smaller and a neighborhood that had more surrounding it yet felt more isolated. It was a good deal overall, but I was never happy with it. Even though they were hours away, it was really my parents’ apartment in spirit. That sort of quiet, homogenous isolation was their home, and that’s all well and good for them, but I had realized that my home was different. My home was elsewhere.
And that seemed to extend to the town itself. I’ll always remember the suburbs around Buffalo (I found little reason to go into the city itself) as a wide grid of strip malls, where if you drove long enough on the same road you could pass two identical plazas. Same Kohl’s, same Target, same Wegman’s, everything. I wanted that New York City feel; that urban excitement, that strangeness, that character. When I was living in Rochester, I would look forward to the Park Ave. Fest each year; it was one thing that really showed the town had some character and personality, however subtle it may be. Buffalo had a similar event on Elmwood Ave., but it never felt as engaging to me. It felt underwhelming, minor.
I never considered myself part of the whole Buffalo community. I didn’t go to the same schools as my coworkers, so that didn’t help things, but I wasn’t making much of an effort anyway. I drove an hour and a half each way, week after week, to go “home” and play with my Rochester-based band. I kept better track of Rochester events than anything happening even 5 miles from my apartment. I had boxes that, even after living there for two years, I still hadn’t bothered to even unpack.
Somehow I knew, from the start, that Buffalo just wasn’t going to be my home.
Talking Heads is one of my top-five bands of all time. And they’ve got this song, This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody). Each verse starts off with:
Home… is where I want to be
I like how one line can go a few different ways. It can be a sort of plea — “Where do I want to be? Home.” — or it can be a definition — “What do I consider home? Wherever I want to be.”
I prefer the latter. I lived in Buffalo for years, but it never managed to be my home. Home is where I want to be; I never wanted to be in Buffalo. My heart was still back in Rochester, until it became frustrated and saddened by the distance and decided it wanted to be somewhere entirely new. It needed to wander, and apparently, it decided to wander to Portland.
Of course, I don’t explain it like that. Too poetic and metaphysical. I just point out that there are jobs here.
And now, a moment of zen:
“Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.”
