Progressive Wednesday

This Wednesday: Reviving Niagara

Problem:

The first years of my memory are of Niagara Falls. We lived on Orchard Parkway in a tiny second-floor house apartment. And as I grew up in the surrounding area, I learned to think of my hometown as the honeymoon and suicide capital of the world.

I grew up with daredevils risking life, limb, and the lives and limbs of their rescuers, by plummeting in various contraptions over the Horseshoe Falls. I saw news reports of poor fools who fell and drown to their deaths on kayaks and jet-skis as they tried to conquer the cataracts. I watched national television coverage of the lawsuits connected to Love Canal, a neighborhood that was the site of one of the worst toxic-waste-dumping scandals in American history.

My first job, as a bakery assistant, was in Niagara Falls at the headquarters of Di Camillo Bakery, a family business still thriving in this city. And I watched as department stores and jewelry stores and restaurants evaporated from Main Street, turning the road into an assortment of seedy bars, adult novelty stores, and boarded up buildings, each empty as the pockets of the homeless wandering the city. And I watched as the factories closed their doors, and added good, hard-working souls to the unemployment lines– ¦.

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Make Progress:

But I also grew up next to a place where people teem to see one the natural wonders of the world. And I grew up in an area where my relatives worked the bluest-collar of jobs, but managed to put lasagna on the table (we're good Italian-Americans, after all). And I grew up where my grandfather landed after traveling the Atlantic to move to America, the same city where my father was raised and remained, the same city where my sister got married. And I grew up next to one of the marvels of electrical science, the Niagara Power Project.

And so I believe in this place. And I love this place. And it's time we all helped this treasure of not just New York, but of America, and not just of America, but of the world. We're ready, if you are, to make progress in Niagara Falls.

• Buy
• Sign
• Give
• E-mail
• Eat

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Editor’s Note: Below you’ll find photos of some of our favorite locations in the city of Niagara Falls.

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The Little Italy neighborhood and business district.

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The genius that is the Niagara Power Project. To learn more about it, click here.

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Di Camillo Bakery, where they make the best Italian bread you’ll ever eat.

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The Niagara River in autumn (if it wasn’t obvious from, you know, the leaves).