Cottages & Oddities

The little Airbnb I’m staying in straddles something called the West Side and the Cottage District.

The West Side is the place where the poor people (for which read “Black people”) lived and are now being driven out by soaring real estate prices. The Cottage District, too, one assumes in the 1990s. But gentrification began there earlier than it began on the West Side.

The Cottage District is quite adorable:



Interesting to me that these little abodes with their steeply slanting roofs—hello! Average snowfall 70 inches a year!—were built in the early 1800s when Federalist architecture was all the rage in more southerly areas of upstate New York.

I did end up walking around the downtown neighborhoods yesterday.

If it weren’t for the fact that for eight months of the year, Buffalo is buried beneath the aforementioned 70 inches of snow, I might let myself fantasize about moving here.

Like I say—I have a soft spot for deeply blighted one-time industrial meccas that are struggling to reinvent themselves.

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The Expo of Oddities and Curiosities was pretty cool!

(Don’t have much time to write about it this morning since shortly I must take off for deepest, darkest Canadia, but I’m sure I’ll write more when I get home.)

It’s a niche, of course.

Vendors, customers, and wares pretty much fit a mold:



(Expo management advertised something along the lines of: No animals were hurt in the making of these artifacts! Meaning: Everything is roadkill! But I didn’t believe that for a single second.)

Wares varied from the “odd” because “old,” to the “curious” because "strangely beautiful," to the out-and-out "repulsive"—to me but possibly no one else, I should emphasize: Remember! I’m old.

(I have tons of pix but no time to Photoshop them just at the moment because imminent adventure in Canadia!)

I will say this person was the best artist:



But not for the black-and-white kitsch that clearly she was the most invested in.

She did these… dolls.

And the dolls were amazing. Disturbing. But amazing:





Of course, the classics still speak to us, too:



And now...

Have I mentioned I'm going to Canadia?

I'm going to Canadia!

Niagara Falls

And here I am enjoying the ne plus ultra in tourist kitsch: a REVOLVING RESTAURANT high over the Canadian portion of Niagara Falls!!!

Does tourist kitsch get any better than this?

Honestly, it doesn’t!

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I will say the hotel chains, revolving restaurants, casinos, and Tim Horton shoppes make it difficult to catch a glimpse of the Canadian portion of the Falls when they’re not being rotated around.

The hotel chains etc., all build barricades around the view. Literal barricades! Twenty feet high. They won’t let you see the Falls unless you pay them to let you see the Falls.

There is a park (named after Queen Victoria) traversing the Niagara River Gorge. If you can make it to this park, you’ll enjoy some lovely views:



But the Canadians running Niagara Falls apparently have not heard about that trend of barring automobile traffic around natural wonders. Or maybe after 150 years, the commercialism surrounding the Falls is just too intense to buck.

There is crazy traffic getting down to Queen Victoria Park.

Plus it was like 90°, so walking down the ridge to the park—and then back up the ridge to the car? Not pleasant.

I wanted to be filled with awe! Under the right circumstances, I’m sure I would have been filled with awe.

But these were not the right circumstances, and if you strip a miracle of its true context, you’re gonna be left with kitsch.

Look at that, I thought, staring at the Horseshoe Falls. Lotta water.