Can't Cut It In Brooklyn? Try Buffalo.
Want a three-bedroom apartment on the park with front and back porches, an office and stained glass windows for $795? Try Buffalo. New York Magazine has the tale of a Brooklyn couple who decided to forsake their $1,300-a-month Sunset Park pad for bigger and better digs on New York State’s western frontier. Several ex-New Yorkers…
Want a three-bedroom apartment on the park with front and back porches, an office and stained glass windows for $795? Try Buffalo. New York Magazine has the tale of a Brooklyn couple who decided to forsake their $1,300-a-month Sunset Park pad for bigger and better digs on New York State’s western frontier. Several ex-New Yorkers wax philosophical about their post-NYC lives, too. I don’t miss my old life in New York,” one says. “I only miss the life in New York I know I never would have had.
Where the Urban Dream Life Is Going Cheap [NY Mag]
Buffalo Neighborhood. Photo by jeffk42.
Having said that, I know TONS of people who have moved away…to Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, Washington, DC.
I’d say 75% of those returned to NYC. Maybe a little more.
There is something about the energy here that is very, very difficult to find in other cities. It’s what makes it special.
Hey Suburbandude — are you affiliated in some way? Not accusing, just really curious to hear more.
“Who knows what the medical care situation might be” Is Buffalo the third world now? Does the U.N. drop medications and vaccines from planes there?
The issue of “good food” (whether blue cheese, indian, pizza or otherwise) is a very interesting thing. In smaller cities, the food has to be at least decent to get enough business to survive. Yes, there are probably fewer, in absolute terms, really really good or great restaurants or specialty markets etc…. but there are also far fewer, in both absolute and relative terms, plain terrible places.
New York City, including all of its boroughs, has so many people that even the most mediocre survives… simply because it convenient and actually either hard or too time consuming to go elsewhere.
Think of pizza shops… there are SOOOO MANY truly terrible pizza shops in this city, compared to the maybe dozens of really good ones… and the thousands of bodegas and nasty little “supermarkets” that sell absolute crap quality everything except for beer and cigarettes compared to the dozens of decent grocers and so on.
A smaller city, like Buffalo, is not homogenized like a pathetic bedroom community on Long Island where your choices are Stop&Shop and Applebees. It’s just smaller. So, yeah… no market for 50 kinds of blue cheese. Most (I said most) blue cheeses are terrible anyway, give me a good handcrafted cheddar or gouda any day! 🙂
I think alternatives for those who have lived in NYC have become accustomed to certain finer things in life would be more apt to look at places like Portland, Maine or Oregon, Austin, Texas, Providence, Rhode Island, Savannah, Georgia or Santa Cruz.
A couple people moving to Buffalo does not an article make.
I am a firm believer in “you get what you pay for” and the high cost of living here is worth it to me. I would not sacrifice more space or cheaper this or that to be isolated up in the middle of nowhere NY.
We have one life. Enjoy it while you can is my philosophy. NYC is a great place to enjoy a lot of the great things life offers.
If you’d prefer 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 baths and a Chiles, then there are other places more suitable for what you want out of life.
people move away from nyc all the time, why this article about buffalo of all places? people move to florida, texas, virginia. this is just an ad for buffalo.
that said, i’d like to hear stories about people who move away from here to places they didn’t grow up and don’t already know people. because for me, i grew up in westchester and live in brooklyn, but i think about moving to another state all the time (not buffalo), but what would i have there? not family. not highschool friends. and apparently not my boyfriend, since he refuses to move away.
I don’t really get why people get so borderline jingoistic about their preferred city. Everyone has different priorities, why piss all over people who find a little joy in Buffalo? Sheesh.
The median price in Buffalo is $108,200 (my $120,000 was off a bit). NY Mag’s $60,000 was way off. Don’t believe everything you read in that rag.
http://www.bizjournals.com/buffalo/stories/2008/08/11/daily56.html?jst=b_ln_hl
There are several neighborhoods in Buffalo that are very similar to Prospect Park South and Ditmas Park. But instead of paying $1,250,000, you pay $250,000. Yes, that is $1,000,000 less. Two teachers in Buffalo can own a fabulous house.
Cobblehiller – you can get Indian food there, you do not have to own a car, and the medical care is fine. Maybe only ten kinds of blue cheese.
Again, Buffalorising.com is a very interesting site.
They are long 11214, but if you like outdoor winter sports (and own the appropriate outerwear) not so terribly depressing. At least, I found it to be OK.
Is Asshat Hill adjacent to Lodi, DOWhat? 51 Days DOWhat…