Buffalo

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The largest city in New York State's Niagara Frontier, Buffalo is a city full of surprises. Though Buffalo is sometimes the butt of jokes about Chicken wings, its long-suffering sports teams and the mountains of snow under which it is supposedly buried each winter, local residents and others who are in the know tell a different story: one of vibrant Halal dining, world-class museums and cultural attractions, tight-knit neighborhoods with community spirit and a real sense of place, a winning combination of high quality of life and low cost of living — and the sunniest summers in the Northeastern United States.

Districts

File:Buffalo neighborhoods map.png

Buffalo regions - Color-coded map

Buffalo/Downtown Buffalo's central business neighborhood boasts monumental architecture, a revitalized historic waterfront and the vibrant Theater District the thumping dance clubs of Chippewa Street the Medical Corridor.

Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District Allentown's hipster bars, rock clubs and art galleries are a lively counterpart to the sedate Delaware District's quiet residential streets. Both are heaven for architecture buffs, with charming Victorians lining the side streets off Allen Street and sumptuous Gilded Age mansions on Delaware Avenue'sMillionaire's Row.

Buffalo/Elmwood Village With Buffalo State College the Museum District at the north end of the strip, Elmwood has Buffalo's finest dining, hippest clothing boutiques and chillest bars, flanked by handsome turn-of-the-century side streets where yuppies and co-eds rub shoulders.

Buffalo/North Buffalo With more of a suburban feel than other Buffalo neighborhoods, North Buffalo is a diverse hodgepodge composed of Little Italy along Hertel Avenue, scruffy but pleasant University Heights the beautifully-landscaped, historic residential areas of Parkside, Central Park and Park Meadow.

Buffalo/West Side Buffalo's most up-and-coming area. Long the epicenter of Hispanic culture in Buffalo and the West Side now boasts a veritable United Nations of immigrant communities and a nascent arts scene along Grant Street, ramshackle Victorian cottages in Prospect Hill the West Village gradually being spruced up to their former glory and waterfront parks galore. To the north are historic Black Rock and working-class Riverside.

Buffalo/South Buffalo Separated from the rest of the city by the Buffalo River, proudly Irish South Buffalo can seem like a city unto its own: to the north and the historic Old First Ward and Cobblestone District and newly redeveloped Larkinville; to the east, pleasant parkland and quiet residential streets; to the West and the grain elevators and rail yards of Buffalo's mighty industrial past; along the lake shore and the redeveloping Outer Harbor, Buffalo's newest summer playground.

Buffalo/East Side Buffalonians are quick to deride the East Side as a drug- and crime-infested ghetto. Those who are smart enough to disregard the local residents will be rewarded with the jaw-dropping sight of Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side

Outside of Buffalo itself are a number of suburbs. Unlike the faceless cookie-cutter residential tracts surrounding other American city's, many of Buffalo's suburbs have real character — individual identities of which their residents are fiercely proud. More than that, suburbia's range of attractions, festivals and events and other items of interest to visitors can hold its own with the urban core.

• Tonawanda — a 19th-century lumber port turned middle-class residential community, Tonawanda is the Western terminus of the modern-day Erie Canal.
• Amherst (New York) | Amherst — Buffalo's most populous suburb contains the gargantuan UB North Campus the charming village of Williamsville and rural farmland in the far north.
• Cheektowaga — postwar suburbia at its most banal, but also shopping galore, including the area's largest mall. As the site of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Cheektowaga is likely on the itinerary of most visitors to Buffalo whether they actively seek it out or not.
• West Seneca — a proud (German) legacy dating to the town's foundation in the 1850s by the religious Ebenezer Society and natural beauty that inspired watercolorist Charles Burchfield.
• Lackawanna — a rough-and-tumble company town that fell on hard times after the closure of the steel plant that gave the city its name, now the home of a vibrant Yemeni community and the magnificent Basilica of Our Lady of Victory.
• Grand Island (New York) | Grand Island — once a summer retreat for Buffalo's turn-of-the-century aristocracy, now the site of riverfront parkland and the kid-friendly Fantasy Island amusement park and wide-open spaces a stone's throw from the bustle of the city.
• North Tonawanda — Tonawanda's sister city has a grittier and more working-class feel, but also a restored downtown with lively nightlife.
• Lancaster (New York) | Lancaster — an upper-middle-class second-ring suburb east of Cheektowaga in whose lovely town center stands the historic Lancaster Opera House.
• Orchard Park — The home of the Buffalo Bills has something for everyone, from bustling strip malls to a charming small-town downtown to the forests and hills of Chestnut Ridge Park.
• Hamburg (New York) | Hamburg — birthplace (allegedly) of the hamburger, Hamburg is also home of the Erie County Fair and boasts stunning vistas over Lake Erie.

Buffalo Halal Travel Guide

Buffalo is New York State's second-largest city, with (as of 2022) a population of 261,310 in the city proper and 1,135,509 in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Metropolitan Area. Buffalo is the cultural and economic center of the Western New York region. Though for the past half-century it has been rightly considered a stagnant working-class city that has suffered from the aftereffects of deindustrialization, Buffalo's economy has turned around significantly, with an unemployment rate in April 2014 of 5.8%, running below the national rate of 5.9% and the statewide rate of 6.1% for that month. Perhaps surprisingly given its history as a center of heavy industry, Buffalo has also been cited as the third-cleanest city in the United States. Buffalo was named one of the Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2009 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, whose 2011 National Preservation Conference was held in Buffalo and was the largest and best-attended of these annual conferences in the history of that organization. Other titles bestowed on Buffalo include a placement among the "44 Places to Visit in 2009" by the New York Times and the "All-America City Award" for the years 1996 and 2002 and one of the 10 best city's in the US to raise a family, according to a 2010 feature in Forbes magazine.

History

A great part of Buffalo's appeal to visitors is the still-palpable sense of its history as an important industrial center. Majestic historic buildings and sites around every corner tell the story of a city that was great once and has all the tools in place to be great again someday.

Frontier beginnings

Though the area had been settled by the Iroquois since well before Columbus and was visited periodically by French fur trappers beginning in the 17th century, Buffalo's history per se begins about 1789, when Cornelius Winney set up a trading post at the mouth of the Buffalo River. At the time, this site was still far beyond the frontier of white settlement. It was not until 1793 that the Holland Land Company, a syndicate of investors from the Netherlands, purchased the tract of Western New York wilderness that included Buffalo. Land agent Joseph Ellicott, who arrived at Winney's trading post in 1798, felt that it had the potential to be the site of a thriving city. He gave the name New Amsterdam to the village he laid out there, though it was soon renamed Buffalo after the adjacent river. (The question of where the Buffalo River itself got its name is still very much a mystery — the most well-known theory, which has the French explorer Sieur de la Salle exclaiming about the beau fleuve, or "beautiful river", that he saw while sailing along Lake Erie in 1679, is almost certainly untrue; also, no buffalo or bison were known to have been present in Western New York at any time since the arrival of the white man, though 17th-century French explorers did find some living relatively nearby on the south shore of Lake Erie, in present-day Ohio.) Ellicott laid out a grand radial pattern of streets and public squares inspired by the one designed by his brother Andrew for Washington, D.C.; however, despite his lofty aspirations, Buffalo remained a tiny outpost whose main claim to fame during its very early history was as the site of several important military installations and battles during the War of 1812 (famously and the village was burnt to the ground by British troops in December 1813 as part of the Niagara Frontier Campaign of that war).

From canal port to "City of Light"

Buffalo's status as a frontier backwater abruptly ended when, after a hotly contested dispute with the neighboring village of Black Rock (later to be annexed by its rival), Buffalo Harbor was designated as the Western end of the Erie Canal, a great inland shipping lane extending westward from the Hudson River at Albany for a distance of 363 miles (584 km) in all. The most ambitious work of infrastructure undertaken in the US up to that time and the Erie Canal greatly lowered transportation costs and singlehandedly made large-scale settlement of the lands west of the Appalachians economically viable. The magnitude of the Erie Canal's commercial importance is illustrated by the fact that in the first five years after its completion, Buffalo's population more than tripled (to 8,668); two years later, in 1832, Buffalo was finally incorporated as a city.

Canalside - Located in the shadow of downtown and the Commercial Slip (seen here) was once the Western end of the Erie Canal, which was built in 1825 and which transformed Buffalo almost overnight from a sleepy frontier village to one of the United States' fastest-growing city's and most important inland ports. It is now the centerpiece of the Canalside redevelopment on the downtown waterfront.

Buffalo's early economic mainstay was as a transshipment port, where grain from the Midwest was unloaded from lake freighters and transferred to canal boats headed for New York City; it was in Buffalo where the world's first grain elevator was constructed in 1843 and indeed there are still many elevators that remain standing around Buffalo Harbor. Over the second half of the 19th century and the Erie Canal gradually became obsolete, but that scarcely affected Buffalo's explosive growth. Instead and the city maintained its status as a transportation hub by transitioning into the second-most important railroad center in the US (after Chicago); the New York Central, Pennsylvania, Michigan Central, Nickel Plate, Erie, Delaware Lackawanna & Western, West Shore, Baltimore & Ohio and Lehigh Valley Railroads all passed through Buffalo at the height of the railroad era. In addition and the steel industry became a major player in the local economy in 1899, when the Lackawanna Steel Company moved its base of operations from Scranton, Pennsylvania to a site just south of the city line. By 1900, Buffalo boasted a population of over 350,000 and was one of the ten largest city's in the United States.

The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair that was held in Buffalo in 1901, at the apex of the city's glory days; it was intended to showcase, among other things and the technological marvel and economic possibilities of electric power (Buffalo's proximity to Niagara Falls, a site of early ventures in the generation of hydroelectricity, gifted it with the cheapest electricity in the nation at the time). Though the dazzling sight of the fairgrounds, illuminated by night with this new technology, earned Buffalo the enduring nickname "City of Light" and the Pan-American Exposition's main historical significance is much more somber in nature: it was at the Exposition where, on September 6, 1901, U.S. President William McKinley was fatally shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, moments after concluding a speech at the Temple of Music.

Decline...

Buffalo continued to grow during the first part of the 20th century. However, trends were beginning to emerge that would, by 1950, cause the city's growth to slow, stop and then reverse. As in other American city's, wealthier residents began to leave their homes in town for quieter, greener suburban properties outside the city line. This began in the 1910s and 1920s — many of Buffalo's older suburbs, such as Tonawanda|Kenmore, Amherst (New York) | Eggertsville, Cheektowaga|Pine Hill and Amherst (New York) | Snyder, date to this time — and kicked into high gear during the post-World War II economic boom. At the same time and the growing American middle class began to migrate in ever-larger numbers to areas in the Gulf countries and South with milder climates, at the further expense of the city's of the Northeast. The construction of the Interstate Highway System fueled suburbanization at the same time that it contributed to the decline of the railroads and of Buffalo's port, as goods could be shipped more cheaply by truck.

However and the single most important cause of the free-fall that Buffalo suffered during the late 20th century was the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959. Historically, Buffalo's importance as a port was largely due to the barrier that Niagara Falls posed to shipping. However, thanks to the expansion of the Welland Canal as part of the Seaway, freighters loaded with grain and other goods could now access the ocean directly via the St. Lawrence River, rather than stopping at Buffalo to transfer their cargo to railroad cars headed east. Within ten years of the Seaway's inauguration, most of the grain elevators at Buffalo Harbor had been abandoned and the port that was once filled to capacity with ships was now nearly empty. As well and the steel plant in Lackawanna closed its doors for good beginning in 1977, unable to compete with cheaper foreign steel. By 1980, Buffalo's population was roughly equal to what it had been in 1900, down nearly 40% from its peak of 580,132 just thirty years earlier.

To add insult to injury, during the 1960s and '70s Buffalo's civic leaders responded to the deteriorating social conditions in the city by demolishing (in the name of "urban renewal" and "slum clearance") ethnic neighborhoods in such places as the Ellicott District and the Lower West Side that, though working-class, were in many cases healthy and vibrant. In particular and the splendid brick Victorian cottages of what was once the Lower West Side's "Little Italy" were nearly all lost to the wrecking ball, while the new public housing projects erected in the Ellicott District soon became high-rise versions of the slums they replaced, as the mere construction of new buildings did nothing to address the underlying social problems in the neighborhood. At the same time, noisy and intrusive expressways were constructed directly through Delaware Park and Humboldt Parkway, destroying the verdant ambience of what were (respectively) the largest park and the grandest parkway designed for the city by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted; thankfully, forceful opposition from neighborhood residents spared the Allentown Historic District a similar fate. In downtown, only one of the many examples of the senseless destruction of Buffalo's architectural legacy occurred in 1969, when several blocks of handsome Victorian commercial blocks as well as the stunning, castlelike Erie County Savings Bank building were demolished to make way for the Main Place Tower, a bland modernist office tower with an attached suburban-style shopping mall that utterly failed to attract shoppers back downtown in favor of the strip malls and plazas of the suburbs.

...and rebirth

Despite these grave problems and the mentality in Buffalo never crossed the line into total defeatism, which was helpful when Buffalo's decline started to level off in the 1990s. The broad-based grassroots protests that accompanied the opening of the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino in 2007, which had been presented to the city as a means of spurring development and attracting tourists, serves as perhaps the quintcrucial example of the city's new approach: rather than relying on one-shot "silver bullet" solutions to the city's problems such as the casino, Buffalo has begun to model its strategy on the successful revival of other Rust Belt city's such as Pittsburgh and Cleveland — a strategy that has consisted of accepting the reality that heavy industry is gone for good and, instead, using the valuable resource of Buffalo's unusually high number of colleges and universities to encourage development of a diverse range of high-tech industries, such as the medical research and biotechnology ventures that have sprouted north of downtown under the aegis of the University of Buffalo Medical School. The business neighborhood, once replete with boarded-up storefronts and nearly deserted after the end of the workday and on weekends, has enjoyed a new measure of vitality due largely to the conversion of disused office space into high-end downtown apartments and condominiums, a commodity for which many Buffalonians were surprised to discover there was considerable pent-up demand. Additionally, Buffalo can boast of an architectural legacy that is still substantial despite the misadventures of the 1960s, a vibrant range of cultural institutions and a perennially low cost of living. In the past few years, this new approach has engendered a newfound strength among Buffalo's preservationist community, a dogged devotion by its citizens to cultural attractions such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Buffalo Zoo and continued diversification of the local economy. Conversely, what remains of Buffalo's traditional heavy industry has benefited from the mini-rebound in American manufacturing after the 2008 recession; for example, despite General Motors' financial troubles of that period, that company made substantial investments in its plant in nearby Tonawanda in 2010, adding several hundred new jobs in the process. Though Buffalo has not completely stemmed its population losses and there is still much progress yet to be made and the bit of swagger with which residents of the "City of No Illusions" carry themselves today, finally reinvigorated after decades of decline, is unmistakable. {{climate | units imperial | janhigh 31 | febhigh 33 | marhigh 42 | aprhigh 55 | mayhigh 67 | junhigh 75 | julhigh 80 | aughigh 78 | sephigh 71 | octhigh 59 | novhigh 48 | dechigh 36 | janlow 19 | feblow 19 | marlow 26 | aprlow 37 | maylow 47 | junlow 57 | jullow 62 | auglow 61 | seplow 53 | octlow 43 | novlow 34 | declow 24 | janprecip 3.2 | febprecip 2.5 | marprecip 2.9 | aprprecip 3.0 | mayprecip 3.5 | junprecip 3.7 | julprecip 3.2 | augprecip 3.3 | sepprecip 3.9 | octprecip 3.5 | novprecip 4.0 | decprecip 3.9 | description {{ForecastNOAA|Buffalo|42.9408|-78.7358    Data from normals NOAA (1981-2010)]

How is the Climate in Buffalo

Buffalo, although most famous for its winters, has four very pronounced seasons.

In the first half of winter, beginning in roughly November and the city can get lake-effect snow: cold winds blowing over the warmer waters of Lake Erie pick up a lot of water vapor, which is dumped as snow as soon as they reach land. This ends in January, when the lake finally freezes over. Contrary to popular myth, however, Buffalo is not the coldest or snowiest city in the nation—or even in New York. The Buffalo airport averages 93 inches (236 cm) of snow per winter. On average, Buffalo only has 3 days per year where the recorded temperature dips below 0°F (-18°C). Buffalo's snowy reputation is based in large part on some of its most famous storms: the Blizzard of '77 and the "October Surprise" of 2006 and the "Snowvember" blizzard in 2014 all received a lot of media coverage, but none of those things are normal occurrences in an average Buffalo winter.

Spring is rainy and cool up through the end of April. The temperatures can fluctuate wildly in March and April. It is not unusual to see snow one day and a temperature in the mid-60s Fahrenheit (almost 20°C) the next.

Buffalo winter scene - A typical winter day in Buffalo's historic West Village.

Summer tends to be very comfortable and sunny — in fact, Buffalo has more sunny summer days than any other major city in the Northeastern U.S. The moderating effects of Lake Erie have allowed Buffalo to be one of very few places in the United States where the temperature has never reached 100°F (38°C). On average Buffalo has 60 days a year with temperatures reaching over 80°F (27°C).

Fall is warm and beautiful as well. The temperature stays warm enough through mid November and one can watch the trees change colors in comfort. The days are warm and the nights are cool and the first frost doesn't come until well after Halloween. Leaf hunters will be pleased with the number of trees (Buffalo is also one of the most tree-filled city's in the nation!) as well as in the surrounding areas.

Read

For more Books about Buffalo, specifically ones that take place in or have to do with a particular neighborhood of the city, please see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

• Buffalo Unbound: A Celebration by Laura Pedersen ({{ISBN|9781555917357). The author is a Buffalo native who, as of this writing, has written fifteen Books as well as a number of plays and musicals, many of which are set in her hometown during her youth in the 1970s and '80s. Of all those works, though, Buffalo Unbound is the one that best captures the zeitgeist. This collection of humorous essays provides a color commentary for Buffalo's rise from the morass, with the often bleak and world-weary tone (perhaps inevitable given the timeframe of her life) in the childhood reminiscences of Pedersen's earlier work tempered now with a healthy dose of optimism. Readers may find it hard at first to keep up with the steady stream of in-jokes and Buffalo-specific cultural references, but soon they'll find themselves attuned to the local culture in a way that few visitors ever experience.
• City of Light by Lauren Belfer ({{ISBN|9780385337649). It's 1901 and plans for the Pan-American Exposition are advancing at fever pitch. Louisa Barrett is the unmarried headmistress of the Macaulay School for Girls, a female mover and shaker in a world dominated by men. Her pride and joy is her goddaughter Grace, whose father Tom Sinclair is a wealthy industrialist who hopes to change the face of the city forever with his dream of drawing electric power from Niagara Falls. But when the chief engineer of the hydroelectric project is found murdered in Delaware Park and there's a nasty power struggle in the local elite to determine who will be in the driver's seat of Buffalo's future. In the midst of it all — and of her blossoming love for Tom — Louisa struggles with the burden of a dark secret whose tentacles penetrate deep into Buffalo's blue-blood aristocracy. City of Light is Belfer's debut novel, a tour de force of historical fiction that is critically acclaimed, meticulously researched and paints a vivid picture of Buffalo at the height of its golden age.{{anchor|Mafia!
• Gangsters and Organized Crime in Buffalo: History, Hits and Headquarters by Michael F. Rizzo ({{ISBN|9781609495640). This loosely organized collection of hardboiled true-crime stories starts off fairly slowly — recounting tales of scrappy street gangs and small-time John Dillinger wannabes robbing banks on the Polish East Side in the 1920s and '30s — but soon picks up steam chronicling the rise and fall of the Buffalo Mafia family and its well-respected don, Stefano "The Undertaker" Magaddino, who from his base on the city's West Side (and, later, an unassuming ranch house in suburban Lewiston (New York) | Lewiston) controlled a vast territory that stretched from Ohio to Montreal at its height. Best of all and the locations of all the murders, hideouts, clubs and gambling halls described in the book are meticulously documented and the better to go exploring and retrace the steps of these gangsters of old.
• Eminent restaurateur-cum-local historian Mark Goldman has written a trilogy of Books suitable for academic and casual audiences alike that, together, stand as perhaps the definitive analytical commentary on the reasons behind Buffalo's decline and how best to help it reclaim some of its past glory going forward.
• High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York ({{ISBN|9780873957359). Written in 1983 — perhaps the nadir of Buffalo's history — Goldman's first book traces the story of the Queen City from its birth as a frontier outpost, to its days as a buzzing inland port and industrial giant, to its post-World War II decline. In High Hopes, Buffalo is used as an exemplar of the classic pattern of urban development in the 19th and 20th centuries, its fortunes linked inextricably with the economic well-being of urban America as a whole.
• City on the Lake: The Challenge of Change in Buffalo, New York ({{ISBN| 9780879755799). This book mines much of the same ground as its predecessor — and shares its format of discrete vignettes that come together to paint a broad cohesive image — but the focus here is on the turning point in Buffalo's history and the 1950s through the '70s, when glory days gave way to postindustrial poverty and blight. From racial tensions and white flight to poorly-thought-out urban renewal schemes to economic disinvestment, City on the Lake analyzes all facets behind the 20th-century decline of Buffalo along with the rest of the Rust Belt. However, in sharp contrast to the pessimistic tone of its ironically titled predecessor and the overall note is a presciently hopeful one that, at a date as early as 1990, few other commentators yet dared to strike.
• City on the Edge: Buffalo, New York, 1900-Present ({{ISBN|9781591024576). Despite what the subtitle may suggest, City on the Edge is much more than just a rehash of Goldman's first two tomes — the dark age that Buffalo is now leaving behind is recounted merely as a prelude to what amounts to a tribute to the cultural institutions, strong community ties and survivalist spirit that have weathered the storm and now serve as foundations on which to build the revived Buffalo. The book's ending breaks with the measured academic tone of the rest of the series, painting a rosy picture of Buffalo's best-case-scenario future and laying out a comprehensive roadmap for how (and how not) to get there.

Watch

The history and extent of Buffalo's association with American cinema may come as a surprise to some. Early on in movie history, downtown Buffalo'sEllicott Plaza Building was home to the world's first purpose-built, permanent motion-picture theater and the Vitascope Theater, which was opened on October 19, 1896 by Mitchel and Moe Mark, who some years later would go on to build the world's first "movie palace" in New York City. Also in 1896, Thomas Edison sent camera crews to Buffalo, making it one of the first city's in America to appear in the movies. Edison also had the Pan-American Exposition filmed in 1901.

Under the aegis of the Buffalo Niagara Film Commission, an embryonic film industry has developed in the area which is beginning to produce some quality independent features. These and the more than 100 other films that have been shot in the Buffalo area over the last century include:

• Hide in Plain Sight (1980). Based on a true story. A working-class husband (James Caan) tries to track down his wife and children who are hidden away by a witness protection program.
• The Natural (1984). Robert Redford and Glenn Close star in an adaptation of Bernard Malamud's novel about Roy Hobbs, a mysterious baseball player who appears out of nowhere to turn around the fortunes of a 1930s team.
• Vamping (1984). In this noirish indie drama directed by local native son Frederick King Keller, Patrick Duffy is a down-and-out saxophone player who gets mixed up in a crooked antique shop owner's scheme to rob the home of a rich widow and then ends up falling in love with his victim. As a movie, it's admittedly a low-budget, amateurish mess — but if you want to get a good sense of what Buffalo looked like in the '80s, pound for pound it's an even better showcase than The Natural, thanks to copious footage of Allentown, Lincoln Parkway, Larkinville and the then-newly closed Buffalo Central Terminal.
• Buffalo '66 (1998). Buffalo native Vincent Gallo wrote, directed and starred in this critically-acclaimed dark comedy about a man who, after being released from jail for a crime he did not commit, vows to track down the Buffalo Bills kicker who put him there, all the while forcing a young tap dancer (Christina Ricci) to pose as his wife to earn respect from his neglectful parents.
• Bruce Almighty (2003). Jim Carrey is a hapless field reporter for WKBW-TV's Eyewitness News who, after complaining to God about his misfortunes in life, is allowed to stand in for the Supreme Being to see how well he performs in the role. Though the bulk of Bruce Almighty was shot in San Diego and the movie is set in Buffalo, most of the exterior shots were filmed there and many real-life WKBW anchors make cameo appearances in the film.
• The Savages (2022). Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman play Wendy and Jon Savage, an estranged brother and sister who reconnect with each other and start to take stock of their dysfunctional lives after coming together to move their elderly father into a nursing home in Buffalo.
• Henry's Crime (2022). Keanu Reeves stars as a former Thruway toll collector who, after spending time in jail for a crime he did not commit, decides to get his revenge by holding up in real life the same bank he had been falsely convicted of robbing.
• The American Side (2022). Matthew Broderick, Janeane Garofalo and Robert Forster all cameo in this off-kilter film noir, but the star is local first-timer Greg Stuhr. He plays small-time private detective Charlie Paczynski, who, while investigating the murder of a stripper in Niagara Falls, stumbles on a high-level conspiracy to build an unrealized invention discovered in the newly unearthed "lost papers" of Nikola Tesla.
• Marshall (2022). Chadwick Boseman plays the title role in this period piece that follows a young Thurgood Marshall and the future first African-American Supreme Court justice, on one of the first and most pivotal cases of his law career: defending a black chauffeur (Sterling K. Brown) accused of the rape and attempted murder of his wealthy white employer (Kate Hudson) in 1940 Connecticut.

Visitor information

• Visit Buffalo Niagara | 403 Main St. +1 800 283-3256 Opening Hours: Monday to Friday 9AM Monday - 5PM, Saturday 10AM Monday - 2PM The official visitors' association for the Buffalo/Niagara Falls region. Their location downtown in the Brisbane Building offers information, brochures and souvenirs. Visit Buffalo Niagara also operates another Visitor Center at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport that is open Monday to Saturday 6AM Monday - 7PM, Sunday 6AM Monday - 6PM.

Local Language in Buffalo

English is spoken in Buffalo and the surrounding area on a virtually universal basis. Though the West Side is well known as the home of the city's Hispanic community (mainly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans) and the majority of Buffalo's Latinos are able to speak English as well as Spanish. Also on the West Side and there is a diverse collection of communities of first-generation immigrants centered around Grant Street, most of whom speak some degree of English in addition to their native languages (Amharic, Somali, Vietnamese, Burmese and Bengali are prominent). In any event, visitors to the West Side will have no significant issues with regard to language.

Though Buffalo's neighborhoods include many vibrant ethnic enclaves, very few residents of these neighborhoods (other than perhaps a few elderly individuals) can speak more than a word or phrase or two of their respective ancestral languages.

The regional dialect of English spoken in Buffalo — especially among Italians and Poles of the working class — falls within the framework of Inland Northern American English, with the hard, nasally, slightly pinched-nose vowel sound in words like "car" and "stop" and the defricativization of the hard "th" sound (whereby "this" and "that" become "dis" and "dat"), a dialect that will be instantly familiar to those who remember the "Da Bears" guys from Saturday Night Live. Nonetheless, Buffalo's twist on the Inland North dialect involves some unique features such as the devoicing of voiced word-final plosives ("cold" becomes "colt", "rug" becomes "ruck") and a habit of ending sentences with the word "there" (pronounced "dare") in much the same way Canadians use "eh?" — two speech patterns that are notoriously prevalent among Buffalo's Polish community.

For a somewhat outdated but quite accurate description of the particular phonetics and vocabulary of the area, see The Guide to Buffalo English.

How to travel to Buffalo

Fly to Buffalo

BNIA - Despite this photograph and the Buffalo Niagara International Airport is the busiest airport in Upstate New York.

• Buffalo Niagara International Airport (IATA Flight Code: BUF), ☎ +1 716 630-6000. The Buffalo Niagara International Airport serves Buffalo as well as Niagara Falls and the rest of Western New York, Northwest Pennsylvania and Southern Ontario. The airport is particularly popular with the latter group; Canadians looking for fares lower than those found at Toronto Pearson make up about 40% of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport's passengers. The Buffalo Niagara International Airport is served by American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest and United, with about 110 nonstop flights per day to Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago (Midway and O'Hare International Airport|O'Hare), Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers (seasonally), Jacksonville (seasonally), Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami (seasonally), Minneapolis/Saint Paul|St. Paul, Newark (New Jersey) | Newark, New York (John F. Kennedy International Airport|JFK and LaGuardia), Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh/Durham (North Carolina) | Durham, Tampa and Washington (Washington Dulles International Airport|Dulles and Reagan National). International flights are handled by low-cost charter carrier Vacation Express, with seasonal routes to Cancún, Montego Bay and Punta Cana.

From the airport, Buffalo is accessible via four NFTA bus routes:

• NFTA Metro Bus #24B — Genesee makes frequent departures, seven days a week, from the airport hub to downtown via Genesee Street, servicing both the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center and the Buffalo-Exchange Street Amtrak station. Those travelling outbound from downtown Buffalo should keep in mind that only the #24B proceeds as far as the airport; the #24A ends at the city line.
• NFTA Metro Bus #47 — Youngs Road runs 15 times per day from Monday to Friday from the airport through Amherst (New York) | Williamsville to the University Metro Rail Station, from which point downtown is easily accessible via the subway.
• NFTA Metro Bus #68 — George Urban Express makes one trip in each direction Monday through Friday between the airport and the Buffalo-Exchange Street Amtrak station downtown, leaving the airport at 6:56AM and leaving the train station at 4:38PM. Outbound trips (towards the airport) also serve the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center.
• NFTA MetroLink Route #204 — Airport-Downtown Express makes 12 runs in each direction Monday through Friday between the airport and the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center. Route #204 falls under the NFTA Metro system's new Enhanced Express service. An additional 50¢ extra charge applies to all trips on Enhanced Express buses, bringing the total fare to $2.50 one way.

In addition and the Buffalo Niagara International Airport is served directly by a number of intercity bus lines; see the "By bus" section. All buses, NFTA and long-distance, are boarded at the bus lane on the east side of the terminal, on the arrivals level. Thit is also where Uber and Lyft (see "Ride sharing" section below) pick up.

Buffalo Airport Taxi's stand, as well as a number of rental vehicle facilities, are found directly across from the terminal's main exit, on the arrivals level. For more information on taxi service and vehicle rental, see the "Get around" section below.

For those who are coming by private plane and want to avoid the congestion of Buffalo Niagara International Airport and the closest alternative is Buffalo Airfield in West Seneca. Other general-aviation airports in the vicinity include Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport in Lancaster (New York) | Lancaster, Akron Airport in Akron (New York) | Akron and North Buffalo Suburban Airport in Lockport.

How to travel to Buffalo by car

The New York State Thruway (Interstate 90) runs east to west and connects Buffalo to other major city's and regions — New York City and the Hudson Valley, Albany, Utica, Syracuse and Rochester to the east and Erie and Cleveland to the West. The New York State Thruway is a toll highway over most of its length, with the sole exception of the toll-free portion between Exits 50 and 55, which roughly corresponds to Buffalo's inner-ring suburbs. The New York State Thruway Authority accepts E-ZPass for toll payment, as well as cash.

Interstate 190 begins at Exit 53 of I-90 near the city line, extending west into downtown. At that point, it turns northward and mostly parallels the Niagara River, linking Buffalo to Niagara Falls and extending onward to Canada via the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge. Interstate 290 links I-90 with I-190 via Buffalo's northern suburbs. Interstate 990 runs southwest-to-northeast through suburban Amherst (New York) | Amherst between I-290 and the hamlet of Millersport, after which point Lockport is easily accessible via NY 263 (Millersport Highway) and NY 78 (Transit Road).

If coming from Ontario and the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) is the best way to access Buffalo. The most direct border crossing into Buffalo and the Peace Bridge, is at the end of the QEW in Fort Erie. Other bridge crossing options include the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, along with the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge in Lewiston. All of these bridges are easily accessible from the QEW; follow the well-posted signs.

By car, Buffalo is about two hours from Toronto, one to one and a half hours from Rochester, two and a half hours from Syracuse and six to seven hours from New York City.

Average wait times at the various border entries vary: at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo/Fort Erie and the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, wait times over 30 minutes are unusual on most days other than holiday weekends, whereas at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge and the norm is 30-60 minutes, more on holiday weekends.

Travel by train to Buffalo

Buffalo is accessible from the east and west by Amtrak, which services two stations in or near Buffalo.

• Buffalo-Depew (BUF) is at 55 Dick Rd. in the suburb of Depew, about 8 miles (12 km) east of the city. The Buffalo-Depew station can be visited by cab or (with considerable difficulty) via NFTA Metro Bus #46 — Lancaster.
• The Buffalo-Exchange Street (BFX) station is downtown at 75 Exchange St., near the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center and is directly accessed by a number of NFTA Metro Bus routes. Unlike Buffalo-Depew and there is no QuickTrak Machine and the ticket office is not open for certain departures. Passengers needing to purchase or pick up tickets for a departure when the ticket office is closed will need to do so in advance of the date of departure, or print out an e-ticket from online. Tickets can also be mailed to you, but this option is slower and more expensive. Fares, schedules and reservations are available through Amtrak.

Buffalo is served by the following Amtrak lines:

• The Empire Service runs from New York City via Yonkers, Croton-on-Hudson, Poughkeepsie, Rhinecliff, Hudson (New York) | Hudson, Albany (Rensselaer (New York) | Rensselaer), Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Rome (New York) | Rome, Syracuse and Rochester and continues past Buffalo to Niagara Falls.
• The Maple Leaf, which runs from Toronto via Oakville, Burlington (Aldershot), Grimsby (Ontario) | Grimsby, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, Ontario and Niagara Falls, USA and then continues to New York City along the same route as the Empire Service.
• The Lake Shore Limited, which, unlike the Empire Service and Maple Leaf, only serves Buffalo-Depew. Eastbound trains on this route travel from Chicago via South Bend, Elkhart, Waterloo, Bryan, Toledo (Ohio) | Toledo, Sandusky, Elyria (Ohio) | Elyria, Cleveland and Erie. Westbound trains begin either at Boston or New York City; trains from Boston proceed to Albany via Framingham, Worcester (Massachusetts) | Worcester, Springfield (Massachusetts) | Springfield and Pittsfield; with trains from New York City making stops at Croton-on-Hudson and Poughkeepsie. At Albany and the two routes converge and trains follow the same route as the Empire Service, stopping at Schenectady, Utica, Syracuse and Rochester.

Travel by Bus to Buffalo

The Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center, at 181 Ellicott St. downtown, serves as Buffalo's hub for intercity buses, a stop on most NFTA Metro Bus routes and the city's main taxi terminal.

The following bus routes serve the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center:

• Coach USA

Service from Jamestown (New York) | Jamestown via Fredonia (New York) | Fredonia, Dunkirk and various points in between.

Service from Olean via Franklinville, East Aurora, Cheektowaga|Buffalo Niagara International Airport and various points in between.

• Fullington Trailways

Service from DuBois (Pennsylvania) | DuBois via St. Marys (Pennsylvania) | St. Marys, Bradford (Pennsylvania) | Bradford, Olean, Salamanca (New York) | Salamanca, Ellicottville, Springville and various points in between.

• Greyhound

Service from Cleveland via Ashtabula and Erie (not all runs stop at all intermediate city's).

Service from New York City via Newark, Binghamton, Cortland (New York) | Cortland, Syracuse, Rochester, Batavia (New York) | Batavia and Buffalo Niagara International Airport (not all runs stop at all intermediate city's).

Service from New York City via Scranton, Binghamton, Ithaca (New York) | Ithaca, Geneva (New York) | Geneva, Rochester and Batavia.

Service from Boston via Worcester, Springfield, Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Batavia and Buffalo Niagara International Airport (not all runs stop at all intermediate city's).

Service from Toronto via Mississauga, Burlington, Grimsby, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Fort Erie (not all runs stop at all intermediate city's).

• Megabus

Service from New York City via Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

Service from Toronto via St. Catharines, Niagara Falls and Fort Erie (not all runs stop at all intermediate city's) and onward to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

Service from Washington, D.C. via Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Travel by boat to Buffalo

As the place where the Erie Canal met vast Lake Erie, Buffalo's early growth came thanks to the Great Lakes shipping industry. Nowadays the canal has been rerouted to end downstream in Tonawanda, but that's not to say that the canal and the lake aren't still a fairly common, if novel, way to arrive in Buffalo. The West Side, downtown and the Outer Harbor boast a variety of places for boats to dock. For visitors and the best place to dock is:

• Erie Basin Marina | 329 Erie St. ☎ +1 716 851-6501 Opening Hours: Season lasts May 1st-Oct 15th Transient slip rental based on length of boat, $1.90 per foot per day The Erie Basin Marina is not only one of the premier venues in Buffalo for local residents and visitors to moor their boats, it's also a true waterfront destination in itself — the marina boasts two restaurants (The Hatch for burgers, Hot Dogs and the like and William K's for more upscale fare) and the verdant Erie Basin Marina Gardens, an observation tower boasting stunning views of Buffalo's downtown and waterfront and even a waterfront boardwalk that leads to a small swimming beach. As well and the Ship Store at the base of the observation tower (Monday to Friday noon-6PM, Saturday - Sunday 10AM Monday - 7PM in season) stocks a full range of Snacks, boating supplies and crucials such as sunscreen and there's also a fueling station. The Erie Basin Marina is within easy walking distance of Canalside the Naval and Military Park.

How to get around in Buffalo

For most visitors to Buffalo, access to an automobile will prove extremely useful, if not quite utterly necessary. Buffalo's public transportation system provides access to the majority of the metropolitan area. Travelling around the town proper by public transit can be relatively hassle-free, especially on weekdays; however, transit riders travelling to the suburbs should be prepared for service that is infrequent (and, on the weekends, often non-existent).

How to travel to Buffalo by car

In addition to the Interstate highways mentioned in the "Get In" section, Buffalo has several intraurban expressways useful to visitors:

• The Kensington Expressway (NY 33) begins at the airport on Genesee Street, proceeding westward through the suburb of Cheektowaga and the East Side before turning southward and concluding downtown at Oak Street.
• The Scajaquada Expressway (NY 198) is a short highway that connects the Kensington Expressway with Interstate 190. The Scajaquada is a convenient route to the neighborhoods of Parkside and the Elmwood Village and the popular commercial strips of Hertel Avenue and Grant Street, as well as attractions like Delaware Park and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Buffalo History Museum and the Darwin D. Martin House and the Burchfield Penney Art Center.
• The Buffalo Skyway (NY 5) begins downtown at I-190, extending southward parallel to the shore of Lake Erie with access to Gallagher Beach, Tifft Nature Preserve and other Outer Harbor attractions. After passing over the Union Ship Canal via the Father Baker Bridge and the divided highway ends, but Route 5 continues as a wide, busy six-lane surface road (variously known as the Hamburg Turnpike, Lake Shore Road, or simply Route 5) that passes through the suburban areas of Lackawanna and Hamburg (New York) | Hamburg and continuing southward along the lake shore.

Buffalo's highway system was designed for a city twice its size (a reflection of the population loss the area has undergone between the 1950s and today); as a result of that and the city does not suffer nearly as much from traffic congestion as other U.S. city's. Rush hour, such as it is, occurs on weekdays roughly from 6:30AM Monday - 9AM and from 4PM Monday - 6:30PM. A good rule of thumb the local residents know is that, even at the height of rush hour, it generally takes no more than 30 minutes to trip from downtown to the outer edge of suburbia.

Muslim Friendly Car Rentals in Buffalo

Rental vehicle facilities can be found mainly at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz and National all have offices directly on airport property, while the Buffalo locations of ACE and Fox Rent A Car operate out of the Quality Inn across the street.

In addition, Hertz, Budget and Enterprise all operate smaller vehicle rental facilities at various locations in the city itself. See the various Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood eHalal Guide's for more information on those.

Car sharing

Members of the Zipcar car-sharing program can access vehicles in the Buffalo area from various locations in the city, as well as from the North Campus of the University at Buffalo in nearby Amherst. See the Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood eHalal Guide's for further information.

Ride sharing

After what seemed like an eternity of political wrangling, New York's state legislature fully legalized ride-sharing in June 2017, whereupon both Uber and Lyft instantly started operating in Buffalo. As of November 2017, pricing for both includes a booking fee of $2.15, plus a base fare of $1.10, plus 22¢ per minutes and 95¢ per mile on top of that, or a minimum total fare of $7.35 (Uber) or $5.20 (Lyft). There's also a $3.00 extra charge for service to and from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport for Lyft, but not Uber. Surge pricing comes into effect during certain periods of high demand and can inflate the above prices drastically.

By public transportation

Buffalo's public transportation system is operated by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA). They run a single-line light rail system (the Metro Rail) as well as an extensive bus network. The NFTA system is focused around three main nodes. From largest to smallest and these nodes are located in downtown Buffalo, at University Station (at the outer end of the Metro Rail) and at the Portage Road Transit Center in Niagara Falls. Most of the buses whose routes begin and end downtown access the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center directly; many also service the Buffalo-Exchange Street Amtrak station.

The Metro Rail extends along Main Street from the University at Buffalo's South Campus at the northeast corner of the city southward to Canalside in downtown Buffalo, a distance of 6.4 miles (10.3 km). With nearly 25,000 riders per day and the Metro Rail boasts the third-highest number of passengers per mile (km) among light-rail systems in the United States. The northern portion of the system is below ground. As the subway enters the downtown core, at the Theater District, it emerges from the tunnel and runs at street level for the remainder of its length. Rides on the above-ground portion of the Metro Rail are free of charge. To ride in the underground portion of the system, it costs $4.00 for a round-trip ticket, or $2.00 for a one-way ticket. The Metro Rail is a popular mode of transportation for employees and residents who live along the line and north of the city to commute downtown and also for attendees of downtown events who want to avoid paying high prices for parking.

The NFTA eliminated the zoned fare system in October 2010. Generally speaking, rides on a single bus or light rail vehicle now cost $2.00 regardless of length. The exception is the "Enhanced Express" service introduced by the NFTA in September 2012 and applied to Routes #60 — Niagara Falls Express, #64 — Lockport Express and #204 — Airport-Downtown Express, as well as to selected runs of Routes #69 — Alden Express and #72 — Orchard Park Express. An additional 50¢ extra charge per trip applies on Enhanced Express buses.

There are no free transfers between buses. Passengers who will need to transfer from the bus to the Metro Rail, from the Metro Rail to a bus, or between bus lines should consider purchasing a day pass for $5. For further information on public transit in Buffalo including schedules and maps of individual routes, visit the NFTA Metro webpage.

Best way to travel in Buffalo by a Taxi

In Buffalo, taxis can generally be dispatched quickly and with ease; however, in general and the only places where they can be hailed on the street are at the airport and around the Metropolitan Transportation Center and the various downtown hotels and (at certain times and with some luck) Allentown and the Elmwood strip and around the colleges and universities.

By bike

As in many city's, bicycling as an alternative method of transportation is growing more and more popular in Buffalo. However, in terms of the development of infrastructure such as dedicated bike lanes on city streets and bike parking areas, Buffalo lags behind many other "bikeable" city's such as Minneapolis, Portland and Boston. Despite this, scenic bike routes such as the Shoreline Trail the Scajaquada Creekside Bike Path are immensely popular with local residents and under the aegis of the city's newly adopted "Complete Streets" program, dedicated bike lanes and other rights-of-way are being added to more and more of the city's streets.

GO Bike Buffalo is the local organization that promotes and advocates for cycling and other sustainable transportation alternatives in Buffalo. The Community Bicycle Workshop they operate at 98 Colvin Ave. in North Buffalo offers used parts and complete refurbished bikes for sale, as well as special programs periodically throughout the year.

ReddyRackBuffalo - Reddy Bikeshare has about three dozen bike racks around the town, including this one on Delaware Avenue downtown.

Bike sharing

After a three-year pilot program that was a smashing success and the erstwhile Buffalo BikeShare relaunched in July 2016 as Reddy Bikeshare, with Independent Health newly on board as a corporate sponsor. Almost instantaneously and the bright red bikes and racks became a ubiquitous sight along city streets. Today, Reddy has 200 bikes to tool around town on, each GPS-equipped with Social Bicycles (SoBi) technology. Rates are $8.50 for a 30-day membership or $55 for an annual membership, after which point use of the bikes costs 6¢ and 1¢ per minute, respectively.

To use a Reddy bike, sign in to the SoBi mobile app to find and reserve an available bike at any of the various Reddy racks around the town (or simply walk up to a rack and enter your account number and PIN on the bike's keypad to unlock it). Then, when you're finished, simply lock your bike up at any Reddy rack, or else at any public bike rack within one of Reddy's free parking zones (Elmwood Avenue, Allen Street, Main Street downtown and two locations on the South Campus of UB). There's a $2 fee for locking a Reddy bike up anywhere other than a Reddy rack or free parking zone. If you need to stop off somewhere along the way, you also have the option to "hold" your Reddy bike, which will enable you to lock it temporarily without incurring the $2 parking fee and without the bike becoming available for reservation by other users. When you're ready to take off again, simply enter your PIN number on the bike's keypad and you're good to go.

See the Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood eHalal Guide's for the locations of individual Reddy bike racks.

What to see in Buffalo

For individual listings of attractions, please see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

Museums

Buffalo's wealth of cultural attractions is surprising given the city's somewhat small size. The museums here are many and varied and are a point of pride for Buffalo's citizens. Arguably the most interesting among them are a great number of institutions that focus on the area's past. Those who are curious about Buffalo's rich history are advised to first stop in at the gargantuan Buffalo History Museum which focuses on the city's history in a general sense and then take your pick of the smaller, more specialized museums — the Lower Lakes Marine Historical Society Museum to learn more about the Great Lakes shipping routes that gave Buffalo its importance as an inland port and the Colored Musicians Club Museum or the Nash House Museum for African-American history in Buffalo and the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum for the story behind Buffalo's importance in the early-20th century automotive industry and the Buffalo Fire Historical Society for the history of firefighting in Buffalo and more.

BuffaloCityHall - Buffalo City Hall is seen in this view down Court Street from Lafayette Plaza. Built in 1931 from a design by the local firm of Dietel & Wade, it is widely considered one of the world's finest examples of Art Deco architecture.

Art

More so even than its range of cultural attractions, Buffalo's art scene is huge for a city its size, with galleries large and small to suit all tastes. The Museum District at the north end of the Elmwood Village is the site of Buffalo's two largest art galleries and the beautiful Albright-Knox the Burchfield-Penney. The Buffalo Religious Arts Center is an off-the-beaten-path gem in Black Rock, dedicated to preserving the statuary, icons, stained glass and other objets d'art from the many churches and other houses of worship that have closed in the wake of Buffalo's late-20th-century population losses.

Smaller storefront galleries are plentiful and are concentrated in some of Buffalo's more interesting areas, such as Allentown the Theater District and Hertel Avenue — as well as, increasingly, emerging artistic communities on the Lower West Side, in Grant-Amherst and just south of the Theater District in the 500 Block of Main Street.

Architecture

More and more, Buffalo's exquisite and impeccably maintained architecture has grabbed the attention of local residents and tourists alike. Buffalo's architecture took center stage when the 2011 National Preservation Conference was held in the city to unanimous acclaim. Buildings from almost every decade of Buffalo's existence are still preserved, with more being restored each year.

An enormous wealth of information about Buffalo's rich architectural legacy is available at the award-winning website, Buffalo Architecture and History.

Outdoors

Buffalo is a great place to enjoy the outdoors — especially in the warm months. A side effect of Buffalo's notoriously nasty winters is that local residents really make the most of the warm-weather months. Predictably, in March or April on the first nice day of the year and the streets are thronged with pasty-skinned local residents, dressed in shorts and tank tops despite the still-chilly temperatures, ravenously drinking in the fresh air and sunlight after the long, bleak winter. Autumn is also a pleasant time to be outdoors in Buffalo, with the crisp, fragrant air a perfect complement to the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot.

The city of Buffalo contains over 200 parks, both large and small. Among the largest and most interesting of Buffalo's parks were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, unquestionably the greatest landscape architect of the 19th Century, in conjunction with his then-partner Calvert Vaux. Buffalo's Olmsted parks are an interconnected network of six large parks and six smaller green spaces (three of the latter survive today), linked to each other by wide, tree-lined thoroughfares called parkways modeled after the grand boulevards of Paris. Though he would go on to design similar park systems for other city's, Buffalo's is the oldest and one of the best-preserved Olmsted park systems in existence — and the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy the not-for-profit that's been in charge of maintenance of the Olmsted park system since 2004, is hard at work repairing and restoring elements that have been lost over the years to put the parks in even better shape than they are now.

Delaware Park panorama - Nearly 150 years after it was constructed, Delaware Park continues to fulfill the intent of its designer, allowing citizens of Buffalo to escape into nature without leaving the city limits.

The Olmsted parks that will be of the most interest to visitors are Delaware Park, Buffalo's largest at 234 acres (93 ha) which boasts amenities including the Buffalo Zoo, a Rose Garden and a Japanese Garden and public art installations and South Park, which contains the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens. Additionally, though it's not an Olmsted park, LaSalle Park has an outdoor amphitheater, baseball and soccer fields, a dog run and walking and jogging trails in a beautiful waterfront setting overlooking Lake Erie.

Speaking of which: as if to defy the ugly, intrusive Interstate 190 and Buffalo Skyway that run along the shoreline, Buffalo's waterfront is becoming more and more of a focal point for outdoor recreation. Situated in the heart of downtown, Canalside is ground zero for waterfront recreation in Buffalo, with summertime concerts and festivals held seemingly every day in the midst of preserved remnants of the historic Canal District. A number of harbor cruise lines are also based at Canalside, as is the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park.

Parkland is also abundant on Buffalo's waterfront. In addition to the aforementioned LaSalle Park, Broderick Park is a small green space at the southern tip of Unity Island that's most famous as the northern end of the Bird Island Pier, a 1.3-mile (2 km) walkway with an unparalleled view of the mouth of the Niagara River, lower Lake Erie and — at its southern tip — the Erie Basin Marina and downtown. Further north, Riverside Park is an Olmsted park at the far northwest corner of the city, adjacent to the Niagara River. Deserving of special mention is the Outer Harbor, a vast expanse of former industrial land south of downtown that became a state park in September 2013. The Outer Harbor features Gallagher Beach, a pebble beach popular with boaters and windsurfers, as well as Times Beach Nature Preserve and Tifft Nature Preserve, where walking trails meander through wetland habitats filled with migratory birds and native fauna.

Top Muslim Travel Tips for Buffalo

Festivals and events

Buffalo's calendar of annual festivals, parades and events is huge and growing. Ethnic pride festivals such as the Buffalo Greek Fest the Buffalo Italian Heritage Festival and Dyngus Day play a preeminent role, though a diversity of events of all kinds is enjoyed by citizens. Naturally and the lion's share of these festivals take place during the warm months, but efforts have been made to expand the slate of offerings in winter as well.

The festivals and events listed in this section take place at multiple venues city- or regionwide. For events specific to a particular venue or neighborhood, see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

• Buffalo Niagara Film Festival - Buffalo Niagara Film Festival An international film festival for and by filmmakers and screenwriters that has in the past been visited by such luminaries as Robert Redford, Richard Dreyfuss, Lou Gossett Jr., Lou Ferrigno and Buffalo native William Fichtner and the Buffalo Niagara Film Festival uses the backdrop of majestic Niagara Falls and historic Buffalo as a setting for a modest but growing selection of independent feature-length and short films. In addition to film screenings, seminars, panel discussions and workshops are presented on topics of interest to cineasts of all kinds, as well as a Festival Expo where festival sponsors can promote their wares.

• Buffalo Pride Festival The travel| rights movement emerged later in conservative, blue-collar Buffalo than it did in many other American city's. However, every year since 1991 in early June and the Buffalo Pride Festival has been helping Buffalonians and their straight allies make up for lost time, with a festive atmosphere of fun and entertainment infused with a message of tolerance for all people. The Buffalo Pride Festival is multifaceted and multi-venue: it kicks off with a flag-raising ceremony in Niagara Plaza proudly attended by Buffalo's best and brightest, continues with a " 5K" footrace through the streets of downtown, picks up intensity in Allentown with the Dyke March and a raucous street festival (21+ admitted) that sees Allen Street awash in rainbow flags, live music and performances and street activism and culminates with the Pride Festival itself in Canalside, a muslim-friendly event featuring food, entertainment and information booths. The festival closes out each year with a beach party at Woodlawn Beach State Park in Hamburg.

• National Garden Festival - Garden Walk Buffalo This "five-week-long garden party" has, since its inception several years ago, turned Buffalo into one of the premier destinations in the US for garden tourism. Under the aegis of the National Garden Festival fall not only Garden Walk Buffalo and the centerpiece of the festivities that The Atlantic magazine cited as the best event of its kind in the nation, but also many other garden walks throughout the various neighborhoods of Buffalo (and, beginning in 2012, even in the suburbs!) where participating residents design and maintain beautiful gardens in their front yards for walkers to enjoy. In addition and there are bus tours of the area's various urban farms, nurseries and community gardens, weekday Open Gardens, speakers, symposia and the popular Front Yard Garden Competition. The Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens the Erie Basin Marina Gardens, Delaware Park'sJapanese Garden and Rose Garden and even the Elmwood-Bidwell Farmer's Market are, understandably, replete with Muslim visitors during the National Garden Festival.

• Buffalo Infringement Festival | This celebration of genre-defying, boundary-pushing DIY art and spectacle by artists who may not have the straight-world cachet or blockbuster budgets of those who display at the Allentown or Elmwood Avenue festivals takes place annually on the last week of July and the first week of August. Displays of music, dance and theater and visual arts, as well as more offbeat genres such as puppetry, fire art, mime and "miscellaneous insurrection", can be seen at a multiplicity of venues around the town free or for a nominal price.

• Jack Craft Fair - jackcraftfair.com - Lovers of everything artisanal, take note: since 2014 and the Jack Craft Fair has been at the service of Buffalonians and visitors alike with a panoply of decorative and functional objets d'art — the handiwork of over 100 different artists and artisans — for sale every mid-August at a different venue each year. But thit is far from your average junk sale: aside from the live music performances, interactive public art displays and roster of about a half-dozen workshops for those who'd like to try their hand at their own DIY project and the Jack Craft Fair's lineup of vendors is carefully and rigorously curated by founder and lead organizer Sam Epps and the better for visitors to experience the true crème de la crème of the Western New York and Southern Ontario creative community.
• Buffalo International Film Festival Buffalo International Film Festival Founded in 2006 and the not-for-profit Buffalo International Film Festival is presented yearly by the Buffalo Film Society in late September and early October with a mission of highlighting the cinematic contributions of individuals of the past and present who hail from Western New York. Furthermore and the Buffalo International Film Festival's focus also includes exposing people in Buffalo and the surrounding region to exciting works of film by lesser-known individuals around the world who represent a diverse array of cultures, ethnicity's and educational backgrounds. An exciting array of workshops and symposia are also presented.

Sports

Make no mistake about it — Buffalo is a sports town. Buffalonians are doggedly loyal to their teams despite the fact that the city hasn't won a national championship in any of the big four American sports since 1965 — the four fruitless trips to the American football|Super Bowl by the Buffalo Bills and two to the Ice hockey in North America|Stanley Cup Finals by the Sabres in the intervening years are losses that local fans have been looking to avenge for a long time.

Major-league sports are played downtown at the KeyBank Center, where the National Hockey League'sBuffalo Sabres have their home ice and at New Era Field in suburban Orchard Park where the Buffalo Bills play for the National Football League.

Buffalo has a number of teams in smaller leagues as well. These teams tend to be more successful on the field than the big-league clubs. Baseball'sBuffalo Bisons have won seven pennants in the AAA-level International League and American Association, most recently in 2004; they play at Sahlen Field downtown. The Buffalo Bandits play indoor lacrosse at the KeyBank Center and have won four NLL championships. Soccer fans will want to check out the NPSL'sFC Buffalo; matches take place at All-High Stadium on Main Street. Finally and the city's newest sports team and the Buffalo Beauts, play their National Women's Hockey League opponents at the HarborCenter.

In the world of college sports and the University at Buffalo'sBuffalo Bulls reign supreme. Bulls football and basketball games are played on the North Campus in Amherst, at UB Stadium and Alumni Arena respectively. Canisius College'sGolden Griffins, who play at the Koessler Athletic Center on Main Street and the HarborCenter downtown, also have a sizable local following.

Golf

Golfers visiting the area might want to check out the suburbs first; public and private courses are plentiful outside the city limits. However, those who want to hit the links in Buffalo itself can do so in style. No fewer than three of Buffalo's Olmsted parks — Delaware, Cazenovia and South Parks — boast golf courses (the former has 18 holes and the latter two have nine) and the Grover Cleveland Golf Course in University Heights is famous as the site of the 1912 U.S. Open. See the Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides for more details on individual courses.

BroderickParkFishing - Anglers cast their lines into the Upper Niagara River at Broderick Park.

Fishing

Buffalo is a hotspot for freshwater fishing, with a remarkable diversity of species thanks to its location at the junction of Lake Erie and the Niagara River, which each feature different scenarios for anglers.

In Lake Erie and the marquee catch is smallmouth bass: the Queen City has been recognized by Bassmaster magazine as one of the top three bass fishing destinations in the United States. If you're angling from shore — say, at Buffalo Harbor State Park or Ship Canal Commons in South Buffalo — the prime times are early May through mid-June and October through November, just after the lake thaws and before it freezes again. The bass move to cooler waters in midsummer, but if you have a boat and they're still easily catchable at those times in the deeper parts of the lake. Most of the bass you'll catch will be between 2 and 4 pounds (1 and 2 kg), though it's not unheard of to reel in whoppers of 6 or 7 pounds (3 kg) from time to time. Aside from bass, Lake Erie has some of the best walleye fishing you'll find anywhere, with average catches ranging from 5 to 8 pounds (2.5 to 3.5 kg), as well as muskellunge (especially around the mouth of the Buffalo River) and yellow perch.

The Buffalo River boasts its share of fishing spots too — notably RiverFest Park, Conway Park, Mutual Park, Seneca Bluffs and other green spaces in the emerald necklace of the Buffalo River Greenway. Despite generations of heavy industry that once left it an ecological dead zone and the river was cleaned up enough by the early 1980s for fish to filter their way in once again and today a typical catch might include bullhead, largemouth bass, yellow perch and steelhead trout.

The upper Niagara River, meanwhile, is a great place to catch steelhead, lake trout and northern pike which teem in its cool, fast-flowing waters all season long. Thit is also a place to find smallmouth bass in the summer months, when the shoreline areas of Lake Erie are too warm for them. Unity Island is the place to be for river fishing in Buffalo — folks from the West Side's Burmese refugee community reeling in dinner for their families are a regular sight at places like Broderick Park the Bird Island Pier and Unity Island Park. (But think twice before you follow their lead in eating your catch: though the Niagara River and Lake Erie have come a long way in terms of pollution, it's advised to severely restrict if not completely avoid eating fish caught in local waters. For more specific information, see the New York State Department of Health Fish Advisory.)

Gambling

It's no Vegas, but gamblers have a number of options in and around Buffalo.

The $130 million permanent home of the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino in the historic Cobblestone District opened in 2013 and expanded only four years later; it boasts over 1,100 slot machines and 36 table games. The Buffalo Raceway, on the grounds of the Erie County Fair in the suburb of Hamburg, has slot machines, video poker, and, in season, live harness racing.

Further afield and there are several other destinations for fans of horse racing, slots and other gaming (Niagara Falls foremost among them). See the Buffalo#Go next|Go next section for more on those.

TheaterDist - The heart of downtown Buffalo'sTheater District, with its great variety of performance venues, restaurants and other attractions.

Theater

For a city its size, Buffalo has a surprisingly large, active and diverse theater scene. Even after the closure in 2008 of the biggest producing theater in town and the Studio Arena Theatre and the Theater District, bounded roughly by Washington, Tupper, Franklin and Chippewa Streets, has remained vibrant, with Curtain Up! the gala event that marks the opening of the theater season, drawing larger-than-ever crowds downtown each September.

There are plenty of theaters outside the Theater District as well, many of which are connected to the theater programs of the various colleges and universities in the area. See the Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides for details.

Live music

For listings of individual venues, see the various Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood eHalal Guide's.

Despite the many directions in which it has evolved over the decades — from the soulful, R&B-influenced "Buffalo Sound" of the '60s exemplified by local acts like Raven and The Vibratos (the latter featuring a young Cory Wells, later lead singer of Three Dog Night), to a thriving punk, hardcore and new wave scene in the early '80s, to a ragtag brotherhood of vaguely jangly alternative acts in the '90s, to the kaleidoscopic diversity of today — one thing that's always remained the same about Buffalo's music scene is its tight-knit camaraderie, its loyalty to its hometown fan base, and, despite the occasional native son or daughter that's gone on to greater fame (notably Rick James, Ani DiFranco, Brian McKnight and the Goo Goo Dolls), its relative obscurity outside the confines of the local area. Buffalo may not have the reputation of Austin, but as a live music town it's worthwhile for local residents and visitors alike.

Major national touring artists take the stage downtown. The biggest of the big stars — your U2's, your Rolling Stones — play at the KeyBank Center, or occasionally at New Era Field out in Orchard Park. But downtown also has a handful of midsize concert venues such as the Town Ballroom the Tralf and Iron Works that play host to second-tier acts. Visitors from north of the border might be surprised to see many Canadian groups that haven't yet "made it big" in the States playing to packed houses at places like the Town Ballroom — long lacking nice homegrown rock radio, local fans have taken a shine to Toronto stations and, as a result, bands like the Tragically Hip are huge draws in Buffalo. As well, summertime brings well-known names to the outdoor Canalside Live concert series and Babeville, on Delaware Avenue on the northern fringe of downtown, is both the headquarters of Righteous Babe Records the label helmed by Buffalo's own Ani DiFranco and the site of Asbury Hall, a concert venue situated in a former church that regularly hosts shows by Righteous Babe's stable of folky indie singer-songwriters and other artists of the same ilk.

If local music is what you're looking for and the two hotspot neighborhoods are Allentown and Grant-Amherst. Allentown bars like Duke's Bohemian Grove, Merge the storied Nietzsche's are great places to see homegrown rockers and singer-songwriters doing their thing — the same two dozen or so bands playing "musical chairs" among the venues. Though it's uncommon, on occasion you'll even see a nationally famous name take the stage at these places (this seems to happen most often at Duke's). In Grant-Amherst, you're more likely to catch country, blues, or roots-rock acts — the nucleus of the Grant-Amherst musical scene and the Sportsmen's Tavern, calls itself the "honkiest, tonkiest organic juice joint in town".

Fans of other types of music aren't left out in the cold either: the blues shows at Main Street'sCentral Park Grill are locally legendary, jazz fans can attend great concerts in the historic Colored Musicians Club or check out exhibits on local music history in the attached museum and Kleinhans Music Hall, where the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra holds court, is a Nationally Registered Historic Place designed with pitch-perfect acoustics by architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen.

For those who want to be kept abreast of developments in Buffalo's local music scene and upcoming concert happenings in town, buffaBLOG is an exhaustive source of information.

Study in Buffalo

Buffalo is home to a large number of private and public colleges and universities. The largest school in the area is the University at Buffalo (UB). One of the four "university centers" of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, UB is famous as a large public research university. For this reason, it is one of 62 elected members of the prestigious Association of American Universities. UB has two campuses: the smaller South Campus is in the University Heights neighborhood at the city's northeast corner and the larger North Campus is in the suburb of Amherst, about four miles (6 km) northeast of the South Campus.

Buffalo State College, also part of the SUNY system, is across from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, at the north end of the Elmwood Village. Canisius College is Buffalo's largest private college, located near the intersection of Humboldt Parkway and Main Street. Other colleges and universities in the city and its surrounding area include Trocaire College, Medaille College, Villa Maria College, D'Youville College, Daemen College the three campuses of Erie Community College.

The University at Buffalo has an annual Distinguished Speakers Series, which has played host to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Michael Moore and the Dalai Lama, Stephen Colbert and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. These events take place on the North Campus and are open to the public; tickets are available from the University's box office. UB has a free series of summer lectures available to the public and Buffalo State regularly has ffalostate.edu/events events open to visitors.

Shopping in Buffalo

For listings of individual shops, please see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

Buffalo has a number of interesting shopping neighborhoods, each with its own flavor.

ElmwoodAve - Elmwood Avenue the backbone of the Elmwood Village, is a crowded thoroughfare of lovely boutiques, art galleries, sidewalk cafés and fine restaurants.

The Buffalo/Elmwood Village#Buy|Elmwood Village extends along Elmwood Avenue from Buffalo State College south to North Street. This area contains a variety of small shops with a very "independent" feel — you won't find many national chain stores or restaurants here. Elmwood Avenue's specialty is upscale clothing boutiques catering to fashion-forward urbanites; it's also a good place to seek out locally produced art and jewelry, quirky gifts and some of the finest dining Buffalo has to offer.

Buffalo/Allentown and the Delaware District#Allentown|Allentown is centered along the entire length of Allen Street from Main to Wadsworth Streets, but especially west of Linwood Avenue. Adjacent and similar in some ways, to the Elmwood Village, Allentown has more of a bohemian and artsy vibe compared with the college students and yuppies that frequent Elmwood. Amid the proliferation of hipster bars, you'll see a lot of antique shops, small art galleries and clothing stores with a more urban style.

Buffalo/North Buffalo#Hertel Avenue|Hertel Avenue, between Delaware and Parkside Avenues in North Buffalo, is home to a growing assortment of small shops. Hertel is the place to come to browse art galleries, shop for antique and contemporary furniture and home decor, mellow out in head shops such as Terrapin Station and sample Middle Eastern cuisine at a variety of restaurants and bodegas at the west end of the strip, near Delaware Avenue.

Grant Street, which runs north-to-south through the Upper West Side, is the main thoroughfare of two newly revitalized shopping areas in this rapidly gentrifying area of town. The stretch between (roughly) West Delavan Avenue and Hampshire Street, centered on West Ferry Street, is an up-and-coming commercial strip known as Buffalo/West Side#Grant-Ferry and the Upper West Side|Grant-Ferry. A true "melting pot", with the Hispanics who've been here for years now joined by Somalis, Southeast Asians, Arabs, Eastern Europeans and Buffalo State College students, Grant-Ferry is accordingly home to a modest but growing collection of ethnic food markets, clothing stores and so forth. Also, Buffalo/West Side#Grant-Amherst|Grant-Amherst, a short distance north at the junction of Amherst Street, was named Buffalo's "Best Up-and-Coming Neighborhood" in the "Best of Buffalo 2011" competition in Artvoice. Grant-Amherst boasts a small but growing collection of art galleries, antique shops and restaurants within walking distance of Buffalo State College. Visitors should be warned, however, that despite the ongoing upswing and the neighborhoods around Grant Street are still a good deal "grittier" than places like the Elmwood Village and Allentown.

In the 'burbs can be found the usual lineup of malls and plazas. The largest mall in the area is the Walden Galleria, on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga, 10 minutes from downtown via the Kensington Expressway and/or Interstate 90. Others include the Boulevard Mall in Amherst and the McKinley Mall on the border between Hamburg and Orchard Park and the Eastern Hills Mall in Clarence (New York) | Clarence. In Buffalo itself and there is a small area between Delaware and Elmwood Avenues at the northern edge of the city where shopping plazas, big-box stores and chain restaurants can be found.

Halal Restaurants & Food in Buffalo

For restaurant listings, please see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

Buffalo is a haven for great food. Whereas the area was once largely the domain of unimaginative, cookie-cutter chain restaurants and "greasy spoons", local residents agree that the dining scene in Buffalo has come a long way in the past twenty years. Increasingly innovative and high-quality establishments have popped up more and more often in places such as downtown and the Elmwood Village, Allentown and the Hertel Avenue corridor. Visitors — even those who have been to Buffalo in the past — may be pleasantly surprised by the array of options.

Buffalo - Wings at Airport Anchor Bar - The canonical Buffalo wings: wings, celery, blue Cheese and moist towelettes.

Local specialties

• No visit is complete without trying some Buffalo wings. Oh, sure, everyone thinks they've tried them, but nothing compares to the ones you can get in Buffalo. (But please don't call them "Buffalo wings"; around here and they're just "wings".) The classic recipe, as originated at the Buffalo/Downtown#Mid-range|Anchor Bar on Main Street, is a Chicken wing slathered in a mixture of butter and hot Sauce (Frank's Red Hot for best results) in varying proportions according to your spice tolerance and then fried up crisp and optionally finished on the grill for a bit of extra char. The debate over who serves the best wings in town is endless and often heated, but as a general rule, head to one of Buffalo's many off-the-beaten-path corner bars. For something a bit different, head to South Buffalo, which — ever the odd-neighborhood-out — has its own Buffalo/South Buffalo#Smitty|homegrown style of wings.{{anchor| Beef on weck
• Another local specialty is beef on weck, a sandwiches that consists of slices of tender, juicy slow-roasted beef layered on a kümmelweck roll (a Kaiser roll topped with caraway seeds and Kosher salt) and traditionally garnished with horseradish. Any place that serves hot sandwiches is likely to have beef on weck on the menu, but the two restaurants whose beef on weck has the best reputation among local residents are West Seneca#Schwabl|Schwabl's (on Center Road in West Seneca) and Local chains|Charlie the Butcher (main location on Cayuga Road in Williamsville; several branch locations around the metro area).{{anchor|Texas
• Texas hots, despite their name, were not invented in Texas, but in Buffalo, where they began as a unique offering in the area's Greek restaurants (Buffalo/South Buffalo#Seneca|Seneca Texas Hots claims to be the first to serve them, though thit is a matter of some dispute). The Texas hot is a Hot Dogs slathered with mustard, onions and spicy Meat Sauce or chili; the finished product bears some resemblance to the "Coney Island" Hot Dogs served in Detroit, though the chili Sauce on Texas hots is lighter and thinner in consistency.{{anchor|Greek
• Speaking of which: Greek food is of course hardly unknown in the United States, but in Buffalo it's a cuisine that has a surprisingly long history and wide reach — there's been a Greek diner in practically every neighborhood since the 1960s or '70s. But Buffalo doesn't have an especially big Greek community, so what gives? It all goes back to Theodore Liaros, who opened the first location of beloved local Hot Dogs chain Ted|Ted's in 1927, as well as the time-honored immigrant tradition of ethnic communities coming together to help out new arrivals: as time wore on, more and more Greeks — some distant relatives of the Liaros family, some old friends from his hometown — came to Buffalo, learned the restaurant business at Ted's and then struck out on their own. Even today and the roster of local Greek restaurateurs remains a tangled web of family relations and intermarriages. As for the food, traditionally these places used to serve Americanized versions of Greek street foods like souvlaki, gyro and spanakopita alongside usual diner fare like Burgers and melt sandwiches. This model still predominates in the suburbs, which is also where you're more likely to run across one that keeps to the old tradition of staying open 24 hours, a training that's more and more going by the wayside as shift-based factory jobs disappear and college kids grow more apt to spend late nights cramming for the test than partying. However, many Greek diners in the city proper — particularly Pano's, Mythos and Acropolis on Elmwood Avenue; Allentown'sTowne Restaurant is a notable exception — have reinvented themselves in a more upscale vein, with ever more creative menu items, swankier decor and higher prices.{{anchor|Lberry
• Loganberry is a non-carbonated fruit beverage that is often served as a fountain drink at local restaurants and is available in bottles at supermarkets and convenience stores in the area. This intensely sweet, dark purple drink is flavored with loganberry juice; as such, its flavor is somewhere between raspberry and blackberry. Aunt Rosie's, Johnnie Ryan and Crystal Beach Loganberry are the three major brands you will see (the name of the latter brand is a reference to an amusement park that was once located just over the border in Ontario, which was popular with Buffalo's residents in the 1950s and '60s and where the drink originated).{{anchor|FishFry
• Fish fry is a Buffalo staple that owes its existence to the traditional predominance of Roman Catholicism among the local citizenry — practicing Catholics were once forbidden to eat red Meat and poultry on Fridays. Though that prohibition hasn't been in effect since the 1960s and the tradition of enjoying a fish fry on Friday nights has stuck. The traditional recipe sees massive filets of haddock or cod coated in flour, Cola-battered and deep-fried until golden brown and then finished with tartar Sauce and/or lemon juice and served with sides that may include French fries, coleslaw, or perhaps macaroni salad. You can eat fish fry at some of Buffalo's nicer restaurants if you want, but thit is still a working-class food at heart and, accordingly, like wings and the best fish fry is served by the smaller neighborhood watering holes and greasy spoons. Expect lines for fish fry to be especially long during the season of Lent (usually February - Apr, though it varies by year), when the old no-meat-on-Fridays rule still applies.xxxxxxxxx{{anchor|Just
• Just Pizzas NA, NA - The closest thing to "gourmet" that you'll find in the realm of Buffalo Pizzas delivery and the creativity and endless variety offered at Just Pizzas have earned it comparisons to a homegrown version of California Pizzas Kitchen — the online menu even suggests soft drinks pairings to accompany their more popular specialty pies. Retaining the classic Buffalo crust and Sauce but reinventing everything else, Just Pizza's dizzying selection of toppings (from the usual suspects to broccoli, breaded eggplant and tiger shrimp), cheeses (mozzarella, ricotta, fontinella, cheddar and even feta) and fourteen different crusts (from regular to sesame, lemon pepper, honey BBQ and more) are such that even the most diehard Pizzas fanatic will never be bored. Despite their name, Just Pizzas also serves respectable Chicken wings (with, true to form, your choice of 20 sauces), subs, tacos and the like. Unique among Buffalo pizzerias, Just Pizzas slices all their Pizzas into squares, not just sheet pies. By far the largest chain of pizzerias in the area, Just Pizzas boasts nine locations, three in Buffalo and one each in Amherst, Clarence, Grand Island, Lancaster, Tonawanda and West Seneca.

• La Nova | NA, NA - Like the Bocce Club the extent of La Nova's reputation belies the small size of the business, with only two locations — one on the Upper West Side and another in suburban Williamsville. That reputation is largely thanks to the Todaro family's ingenious marketing ploys, with T-shirt giveaways, La Nova-brand Pizzas Sauce sold in area supermarkets and even the annual "Wingstock" pizza-and-wing tasting constantly boosting the place's profile among local residents — and non-local residents; they ship nationwide! That may sound crass, but why be modest? La Nova Pizzas is among the best Buffalo has to offer, piled high with fresh toppings (including meaty, mouth-watering pepperoni) and Cheese galore. The crust tends to be thicker and doughier than average as well; perhaps following Just Pizza's lead, a number of "crust toppings" are available. La Nova's wings deserve special mention — in the same league as Duff's the Anchor Bar according to many local residents, La Nova grills their wings after they come out of the fryer, giving the finished product a crispy but not smoky char. (Those who'd like to try both the Pizzas and the wings — highly recommended — should opt for a Combo Pack).

• Picasso's | NA, NA - With four locations in Williamsville, West Seneca, Lancaster and Hamburg, Picasso's stands out from its competition for the value clients get for their money. On paper and the prices at Picasso's are comparable to other Pizzas places in Buffalo — but the portions are huge, such that a medium Pizzas here could easily pass for a large somewhere else. That being said and the Pizzas itself can be described as merely average, with a crust that's slightly sweeter and nuttier in flavor and wing lovers would probably be better served elsewhere. Picasso's does have an immense variety of other options available encompassing pretty much every type of simple, portable food that you might imagine from a place like this: everything from calzones to Pastas dishes to several dozen varieties of hot and cold subs and most interesting of all, an impressive variety of surprisingly tasty salads.

Groceries

Buffalo's range of grocery stores is comparable to other U.S. city's its size. Naturally and the lion's share of them can be found in the suburbs, but unlike the infamous "food deserts" of other Rust Belt city's like Detroit, even the most forlorn inner-city precincts have at least one full-service supermarket.

Among the three major players on the Buffalo grocery-store scene, locally based Tops has the most stores, but the upscale, just-this-side-of-pretentious Wegmans chain, based in Rochester, enjoys by far and away the most loyalty and devotion among local residents. Walmart, meanwhile, has greatly expanded its slice of the pie since its first Buffalo-area "supercenter" opened in 1997.

Wegmans has traditionally been the local go-to for upscale specialty groceries and though Amherst now has a location each of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, that largely remains the case. An exception to that rule is the Lexington Co-op, a cooperatively-run purveyor of upscale natural, organic and often locally sourced foods with locations in the Elmwood Village and on Hertel Avenue in North Buffalo.

Budget shoppers can choose from Aldi, Save-a-Lot and PriceRite, each of which have a handful of stores in Buffalo that sell a more limited range of items in a no-frills environment, for costs considerably lower than the major grocery chains. Of these, PriceRite boasts an especially good selection of fresh produce including an abundance of tropical fruits and vegetables and Save-a-Lot's offerings in the realm of meats is equally impressive — they're the only discount supermarket in Buffalo that employs their own butchers. Dash's is another small, locally based chain. As a last resort, "dollar stores" such as Dollar General and Family Dollar stock a limited range of canned vegetables, dry groceries, Snacks and occasionally milk, eggs and frozen foods, but not fresh produce or Meat.

Finally and the latest craze in Buffalo among aficionados of fresh, locally-grown foods are the farmers' markets which have exploded in number and size over the past decade or so. There are about two dozen of them all over the metro area, where local farmers, vintners, cheesemakers and producers of other artisanal food products come to sell their goods directly to the public. Farmers' markets take place on a weekly basis during the growing season and many of them double as full-fledged street festivals, with live music, games and other entertainment.

For bar listings, please see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

As a historically (and enduringly) blue-collar town, Buffalo has traditionally had a fairly dense concentration of cafes and taverns. In fact, according to the US Census Bureau, Buffalo is among the top ten city's in the United States in number of cafes per capita.

Drinkers in Buffalo aren't limited to rough-and-tumble working-class watering holes, though — although there are plenty of those, Buffalo has quite a number of more upscale nightlife neighborhoods, each with a distinct character. There's truly a bar scene in Buffalo for every taste, from the thumping dance clubs of Chippewa Street, to the cooler-than-thou hipster dives of Allentown where local rock bands gig, to the chichi cocktail bars in the Theater District that fill with theatergoers before and after shows, to the chill yuppie hangouts of the Elmwood Village, to the historic taverns of the Cobblestone District the Old First Ward where it doesn't take much imagination to picture the canal boaters, grain scoopers and railroadmen of a century ago relaxing at the bar with a frosty mug after a long workday.

Weekend nights see the police out in force in Buffalo's nightlife neighborhoods, searching for drunk drivers. As mentioned in the #By taxi|"Get around" section, you can often find taxis lingering around the bars, but competition for a cab can be fierce and rates are often high. Uber and Lyft are often a better option in these cases.

Last call in Buffalo is 4AM. For this reason, many bars in Buffalo don't get going until sometime after midnight on weekends. As elsewhere in the United States and the legal drinking age is 21.

eHalal Group Launches Halal Guide to Buffalo

Buffalo - eHalal Travel Group, a leading provider of innovative Halal travel solutions for Muslim travelers to Buffalo, is thrilled to announce the official launch of its comprehensive Halal and Muslim-Friendly Travel Guide for Buffalo. This groundbreaking initiative aims to cater to the diverse needs of Muslim travelers, offering them a seamless and enriching travel experience in Buffalo and its surrounding regions.

With the steady growth of Muslim tourism worldwide, eHalal Travel Group recognizes the importance of providing Muslim travelers with accessible, accurate, and up-to-date information to support their travel aspirations to Buffalo. The Halal and Muslim-Friendly Travel Guide is designed to be a one-stop resource, offering an array of invaluable information on various travel aspects, all carefully curated to align with Islamic principles and values.

The Travel Guide encompasses a wide range of features that will undoubtedly enhance the travel experience for Muslim visitors to Buffalo. Key components include:

Halal-Friendly Accommodations in Buffalo: A carefully selected list of hotels, lodges, and vacation rentals that cater to halal requirements, ensuring a comfortable and welcoming stay for Muslim travelers in Buffalo.

Halal Food, Restaurants and Dining in Buffalo: A comprehensive directory of restaurants, eateries, and food outlets offering halal-certified or halal-friendly options in Buffalo, allowing Muslim travelers to savor local cuisines without compromising their dietary preferences in Buffalo.

Prayer Facilities: Information on masjids, prayer rooms, and suitable locations for daily prayers in Buffalo, ensuring ease and convenience for Muslim visitors in fulfilling their religious obligations.

Local Attractions: An engaging compilation of Muslim-friendly attractions, cultural sites such as Museums, and points of interest in Buffalo, enabling travelers to explore the city's rich heritage while adhering to their values.

Transport and Logistics: Practical guidance on transportation options that accommodate Muslim travel needs, ensuring seamless movement within Buffalo and beyond.

Speaking about the launch, Irwan Shah, Chief Technology Officer of eHalal Travel Group in Buffalo, stated, "We are thrilled to introduce our Halal and Muslim-Friendly Travel Guide in Buffalo, a Muslim friendly destination known for its cultural richness and historical significance. Our goal is to empower Muslim travelers with accurate information and resources, enabling them to experience the wonders of Buffalo without any concerns about their faith-based requirements. This initiative reaffirms our commitment to creating inclusive and memorable travel experiences for all our clients."

The eHalal Travel Group's Halal and Muslim-Friendly Travel Guide for Buffalo is now accessible on this page. The guide will be regularly updated to ensure that Muslim travelers have access to the latest information, thus reinforcing its status as a reliable companion for Muslim travelers exploring Buffalo.

About eHalal Travel Group:

eHalal Travel Group Buffalo is a prominent name in the global Muslim travel industry, dedicated to providing innovative and all-inclusive travel solutions tailored to the needs of Muslim travelers worldwide. With a commitment to excellence and inclusivity, eHalal Travel Group aims to foster a seamless travel experience for its clients while respecting their religious and cultural values.

For Halal business inquiries in Buffalo, please contact:

eHalal Travel Group Buffalo Media: info@ehalal.io

Buy Muslim Friendly condos, Houses and Villas in Buffalo

eHalal Group Buffalo is a prominent real estate company specializing in providing Muslim-friendly properties in Buffalo. Our mission is to cater to the specific needs and preferences of the Muslim community by offering a wide range of halal-certified residential and commercial properties, including houses, condos, and factories. With our commitment to excellence, client satisfaction, and adherence to Islamic principles, eHalal Group has established itself as a trusted name in the real estate industry in Buffalo.

At eHalal Group, we understand the importance of meeting the unique requirements of Muslim individuals and families seeking properties that align with their cultural and religious trainings. Our extensive portfolio of Muslim-friendly properties in Buffalo ensures that clients have access to a diverse selection of options tailored to their needs. Whether it's a luxurious villa, a modern condominium, or a fully equipped factory, our team is dedicated to assisting clients in finding their ideal property.

For those seeking a comfortable and modern living space, our condos are an excellent choice. Starting at US$ 350,000 and these condominium units offer contemporary designs, state-of-the-art facilities, and convenient locations within Buffalo. Each condo is thoughtfully designed to incorporate halal-friendly features and amenities, ensuring a seamless integration of Islamic values into everyday living.

If you are looking for a more spacious option, our houses are perfect for you. Starting at US$ 650,000, our houses provide ample living space, privacy, and a range of customizable features to meet your specific requirements. These houses are located in well-established neighborhoods in Buffalo, offering a harmonious balance between modern living and Islamic values.

For those seeking luxury and exclusivity, our luxury villas in Buffalo are the epitome of sophistication and elegance. Starting at US$ 1.5 million and these villas offer a lavish lifestyle with private amenities, breathtaking views, and meticulous attention to detail. Each luxury villa is meticulously designed to provide a serene and halal environment, allowing you to enjoy the finest living experience while adhering to your Islamic principles. For further details please email us at info@ehalal.io

Ramadan 2024 Celebrations in Buffalo

Ramadan 2025 in Buffalo

Ramadan concludes with the festival of Eid al-Fitr, which may last several days, usually three in most countries.

The next Ramadan shall be from Friday, 28 February 2025 to Saturday, 29 March 2025

The next Eid al-Adha shall be on Friday, 6 June 2025

The next day of Raʾs al-Sana shall be on Thursday, 26 June 2025

The next day for Mawlid al-Nabī shall be on Monday, 16 September 2024

Muslim Friendly Hotels in Buffalo

For hotel listings, please see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

HotelLafayette - The Hotel Lafayette is one of a growing number of new or newly remodeled hotels that are mushrooming in downtown Buffalo.

There is a wide range of high-quality lodging to choose from in both Buffalo and its suburbs, encompassing hotels, motels, Bed & Breakfasts, hostels and guest houses. In particular, downtown Buffalo is in the middle of a boom in hotel construction, with about a half-dozen new properties opened or nearing completion. Much of thit is the product of the preservation of architectural legacy that has come into vogue in Buffalo, with beautiful but vacant old buildings restored and repurposed — so if you're staying downtown, particularly at the Lofts on Pearl or the Hotel Lafayette, be prepared for a real Gilded Age treat. Of course, not all hotels downtown are old — the 205-room Marriott that opened in 2015 is the centerpiece of the HarborCenter development in burgeoning Canalside and existing hotels such as the Hyatt Regency have been renovated extensively. Elsewhere in the city proper, Delaware Avenue in Allentown is the site of the luxurious Mansion as well as the grand old Hotel Lenox and several Bed & Breakfasts can be found peppered here and there catering to travelers in search of a distinctive, quirky urban experience.

In suburbia and the usual range of budget and mid-priced chains can be found clustered mostly around highway interchanges and in various other places. Two especially big clusters of hotels exist just south of the University of Buffalo's North Campus in Amherst, as well as around the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, where the arrival of discount airlines in Buffalo, affordable airport parking and the highest airfares in North America out of Toronto have combined to spark a hotel boom comparable to downtown's.

Telecommunications in Buffalo

The area code for the entire Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area (as well as Chautauqua County|Chautauqua and Cattaraugus County|Cattaraugus Counties to the south) is 716. It is not necessary to dial the area code for local calls.

Publicly accessible wireless Internet is mainly limited to Coffee shops, bookstores and other such establishments; Internet cafés are virtually unknown in Buffalo. In particular, McDonald's (Please do not support McDonald's as McDonald's supports Israel. Shun this restaurant group and go for altertative brands and if possible for a Muslim owned restaurant), Starbucks (Please do not support Starbucks as Starbucks supports Israel. Shun this Coffee and go for alternative brands and if possible for a Muslim owned brand.), SPoT Coffee, Tim Hortons and Barnes & Noble offer free WiFi and boast many easy-to-find locations throughout the region. Public libraries also offer Internet access.

Buffalo's main post office and mail processing facility is at 1200 William St. in the city's Lovenjoy neighborhood.

Stay Safe

The reputation of Buffalo's East Side as a rough part of town can be over-exaggerated by local residents, but it's not entirely undeserved. Generally speaking and the East Side is the city's poorest residential neighborhood, with widespread urban blight and high crime rates plaguing many parts of the neighborhood (especially the Bailey Avenue corridor). To a lesser extent, some parts of the West Side also have these problems. That being said, crime rates in Buffalo have fallen to levels not seen in half a century. What violent crime does occur is drug- and gang-related and does not target tourists. Follow general precautions that would apply in any urban area — locking vehicle doors, keeping valuables out of sight, being aware of your surroundings, etc. — and you should be fine pretty much anywhere.

Panhandlers can be found occasionally on Chippewa Street downtown and in Allentown and the Elmwood Village, though not nearly to the degree of most other city's. Aggressive panhandling is virtually unknown.

Cope in Buffalo

Newspapers and print media

Since the Courier-Express went bankrupt in 1982 and the Buffalo News has been the city's sole daily newspaper. With a circulation of nearly 155,000 daily and over 235,000 Sunday and the Buffalo News is the most widely circulated newspaper in Upstate New York. Journalists employed by the News have won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for Editorial Cartooning and one for Local Reporting; in 2009 and the New York State Associated Press Association named the Buffalo News New York State's "Newspaper of Distinction" for that year in recognition of the quality of its journalism. These facts may come as a surprise to local residents. Listings for concerts, movies and theatre productions and other events around town are published in Gusto, a weekly supplement to the Buffalo News published on Thursdays.

Founded in 2014 by Geoff Kelly and the former editor-in-chief of predecessor publication Artvoice, along with much of his old staff, The Public is Buffalo's alternative weekly. Despite its newness, The Public has already earned a sterling reputation for tackling news items of local import with an incisive, muckraking tone and also publishes copious coverage of local arts and entertainment, including event listings, restaurant and theater reviews.

Buffalo Rising is an excellent online publication whose "beat is New Buffalo" and which features "original content written by fellow Buffalonians knowledgeable and passionate about their city". Buffalo Spree is a monthly magazine that features articles on dining, events and the arts in the local area.

The African-American community of Buffalo is served by the Challenger Community News, which celebrated its 50th year in operation in 2013. La Ultima Hora and Panorama Hispano publish news relevant to Buffalo's Latino community in both English and Spanish and also serve the Hispanic communities in the nearby city's of Dunkirk, Jamestown and Rochester. The Am-Pol Eagle is a weekly paper featuring news and commentary of interest to the Polish-American community in the area. The weekly Karibu News serves Buffalo's growing immigrant and refugee community with local news, commentary and event information in a variety of languages including English, French, Arabic, Swahili and others. Also, many of Buffalo's neighborhoods boast community newspapers of their own, such as the Allentown Neighbor the North Buffalo Rocket.

Radio

In the field of radio broadcasting, Buffalo's history is one of the longest in the nation; its oldest radio station, WGR, has been on the air since 1922. Sadly, though, Buffalo radio leaves much to be desired now, a fact that has led many local residents to become listeners of radio stations based in Toronto and elsewhere in Southern Ontario. Buffalo's highest-rated radio stations in 2011 were WYRK, WBLK, WGRF and WHTT on the FM dial and WBEN on the AM dial.

Radio stations serving the Buffalo area include:

• News/Talk: WBFO 88.7 FM (NPR), WBEN 930 AM (conservative), WLVL 1340 AM (conservative).
• Sports: WGR 550 AM, WHLD 1270 AM, WWKB 1520 AM.
• Oldies/Classic rock: WBUF 92.9 FM, WGRF 96.9 FM, WHTT 104.1 FM, WECK 1230 AM/100.5 FM/102.9 FM (light oldies), WSPQ 1330 AM, WJJL 1440 AM.
• Top 40/Adult Contemporary: WMSX 96.1 FM, WKSE 98.5 FM, WTSS 102.5 FM/104.7 FM.
• Urban: WBLK 93.7 FM, WUFO 1080 AM/96.5 FM (classic R&B, hip-hop and gospel), WWWS 1400 AM/107.3 FM (soul).
• Country: WYRK 106.5 FM, WXRL 1300 AM.
• Alternative rock: WEDG 103.3 FM, WLKK 107.7 FM.
• College radio: WBNY 91.3 FM (Buffalo State College).
• Classical: WNED 94.5 FM.
• Religious: WFBF 89.9 FM, WZDV 92.1 FM, WDCX 99.5 FM/970 AM, WLOF 101.7 FM (Catholic), WBBF 1120 AM/100.3 FM (gospel music).

Television

Buffalo's television stations represent all major American television networks. In addition to these, many Canadian television stations based in Toronto are available through Spectrum cable system; however, over-the-air reception of these stations is generally very poor.

Television stations serving Buffalo include:

• WGRZ Channel 2: NBC.
• WIVB Channel 4: CBS.
• WKBW Channel 7: ABC.
• WNED Channel 17: PBS.
• WNLO Channel 23: The CW.
• WNYB Channel 26: Tri-State Christian Television.
• WUTV Channel 29: Fox.
• WDTB Channel 39: Daystar Television Network. Christian television.
• WNYO Channel 49: MyNetworkTV.
• WPXJ Channel 51: Ion Television.
• WBXZ Channel 56: Cozi TV.
• WBBZ Channel 67: Me-TV.

Muslim Friendly Hospitals

In case of medical emergency, Buffalo is well-served by a wide variety of hospitals and other medical facilities. The Erie County Medical Center on Grider Street is Buffalo's largest hospital and is a teaching facility for students of the University of Buffalo Medical School. Kaleida Health operates Buffalo General Hospital, Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo and (in the suburbs) Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital and DeGraff Memorial Hospital. Catholic Health Systems of Buffalo operates Mercy Hospital and Sisters of Charity Hospital, which each have one city location and one suburban location.

Places of worship

StStanislaus - The foundation of St. Stanislaus, Bishop & Martyr in 1872 gave rise to the Polish community centered in Broadway-Fillmore. Unlike most East Side Catholic churches, St. Stanislaus is still an active and vibrant parish.

For more information on specific places of worship, please see the respective Buffalo#Districts|neighborhood

Travel Guides.

From early in its history, Buffalo's population has been predominantly Roman Catholic, a trend that still holds true today. The seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo is St. Joseph's Gothic Church, at 50 Franklin St. downtown. Buffalo has some truly magnificent Catholic churches, Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side|particularly on the East Side, where 19th-century (German) and Polish immigrants built a bevy of massive, ornate stone churches and cathedrals, some still in use, most not. Outside of Buffalo proper but still worthy of note is Lackawanna'sOur Lady of Victory Basilica, a massive marble structure that is a testament to the charitable institutions headed by Father Nelson Baker.

Protestant churches are far more numerous in the suburbs than in Buffalo proper; however and there are a few large and active congregations in the city, especially in neighborhoods such as Allentown and the Elmwood Village and Parkside that still contain significant numbers of old-money WASPs. Notable Protestant churches in Buffalo include St. Paul's Episcopal Gothic Church at 125 Pearl St. downtown and the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York as well as a Nationally Registered Historic Place and a National Historic Landmark and E. B. Green'sFirst Presbyterian Church on Symphony Circle and the oldest religious congregation in Buffalo.

Black churches are numerous on the East Side and the most well-known among them is the Michigan Street Baptist Church, whose roots stretch back to the very beginning of Buffalo's African-American history. Though it no longer hosts regularly-scheduled services, it is still of great importance to connoisseurs of local history as a former "station" on the Underground Railroad and the modern-day centerpiece of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor. As for congregations that remain active today, you have everything from huge modern megachurches like True Bethel Baptist Church to historic congregations almost as old as Michigan Street Baptist, like Bethel A.M.E. Church.

Those of Eastern Orthodox faiths are served by the Delaware District'sHellenic Orthodox Church of the Annunciation and St. George Orthodox Church in Park Meadow. The Church of Isa ibn Maryam of Latter-Day Saints has a location near downtown as well as suburban churches in Amherst, Lancaster and Orchard Park.

Buffalo's modest-sized Yahudi community is found primarily in the suburb of Amherst. Congregation Shir Shalom (Reform), Temple Beth Tzedek (Conservative) and Young Israel (Orthodox) are all located there. Temple Beth Zion, situated in a boldly modernist building on Delaware Avenue, is the largest Yahudi congregation in the area and also one of the oldest and largest congregations of Reform Yahudi in the United States. As well, North Buffalo contains several Orthodox shuls left over from its bygone days as Buffalo's Yahudi stronghold.

The Jaffarya Islamic Center of Buffalo is Buffalo's largest mosque, a Shia congregation on Transit Road in Amherst (New York) | Swormville, about 20 miles (30 km) northeast of the city. Sunni masjids can be found just south of the city line in Lackawanna — a place that's well-known locally for its growing Muslim population — and also on the East Side.

Adherents of other religions may be interested in the ̈Chùa Từ Hiếu Buddhist Cultural Center of Buffalo at 647 Fillmore Ave. and the Buffalo Zen Center in suburban West Seneca and the Hindu Cultural Society of Western New York in Amherst and the Buffalo Gurdwara Sahib, a Sikh temple at 6569 Main St. in Williamsville.

Consulates in Buffalo

{{flag|Czech Republic

• Czech Republic (Honorary) | John Zavrel, c/o Museum of European Art, 10545 Main St., Clarence ☎ +1 716 759-6078 +1 716 759-1983

{{flag|France}

• France (Honorary) | Pascal Soarès, 32 Admiral Rd. ☎ +1 716 903-7441 +1 716 853-6927
• Germany (Honorary) | Christian Koelbl, c/o Hodgson Russ LLP, 140 Pearl St., Suite 100 ☎ +1 716 848-1256 +1 716 819-4633

{{flag|Switzerland

• Switzerland (Honorary) | faq0006 Stephen Slater, 199 Bridle Path, Williamsville ☎ +1 716 633-4430 +1 716 633-4430

More Muslim friendly Destinations from Buffalo

Nearby

• East Aurora is a quaint suburban village that's known as the site of the Roycroft Community of artists and artisans that was an important component of the early 20th-century Arts and Crafts Movement and as the longtime home of the Fisher-Price toy company, whose founding in 1930 earned East Aurora the nickname "Toy Town, U.S.A." Though the Toy Town Museum is on an indefinite hiatus and the still-active Roycroft Campus hosts tours, classes and demonstrations.
• Niagara Falls (New York) | Niagara Falls, New York is a short 30-minutes trip from Buffalo. Compared to its counterpart in Ontario, Niagara Falls, New York might seem at first like just another down-at-the-heels industrial burg of the Rust Belt, but those who look beyond that will come to appreciate charms such as the revitalized Little Italy along Pine Avenue and the world-class Aquarium of Niagara the attention that is finally being paid to the historic downtown area, centered around Old Falls Street. As for the falls themselves, Niagara Falls State Park is understated and even serene, with no hoopla to distract attention away from the main attraction. Fans of Niagara Falls, Ontario-style neon glitz need not be completely disappointed, either: the Seneca Niagara Hotel and Casino has been in operation on the American side since 2003.
• Clarence (New York) | Clarence is a quaint upper-middle-class suburb of Buffalo, about 30 minutes north and east of the city via State Route 5 or exit 49 of Interstate 90. Appropriately for such a historic town (Clarence was settled in 1799, a few years after Buffalo), Clarence is well-known locally as a paradise for antique shopping, most of which is centered in and around Clarence Hollow, a quaint business neighborhood centered along Main Street about 15 miles (24 km) east of Buffalo.
• Lockport is the county seat of Niagara County, New York, about 25 miles (40 km) northeast of Buffalo via Interstate 990 and State Routes 263 and 78. A historic industrial city that owes its existence to the Erie Canal (much like Buffalo), Lockport grew up around a series of locks that can still be seen downtown where the canal crosses the steep Niagara Escarpment. Canal-related attractions such as the Lockport Locks and Erie Canal Cruises the Lockport Erie Canal Museum are on offer.
• Lewiston (New York) | Lewiston is a historic village on the Niagara River about 40 minutes north of Buffalo via Interstate 190. Aside from the cute boutiques, restaurants and Bed & Breakfasts in the charming business neighborhood, Lewiston contains Earl W. Brydges Artpark the only state park in the US devoted to the arts. Water Street Landing, on the riverfront, is the site of the Freedom Crossing Monument, where many escaped African-American slaves staged their final push toward Canada and the Whirlpool Jet Boat, which takes passengers on a thrilling ride through the Niagara River rapids.

Further afield

• Darien Lake is a theme park resort in rural Genesee County, about 40 minutes east of Buffalo. "Western New York's Coaster Capital" contains over 40 rides, plus a hotel, campground and laser light show and is hands-down the most popular amusement park for Buffalonians in the summer. Also and the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center is one of Western New York's premier venues for live music.
• The hills south and southeast of Buffalo bear the brunt of the lake-effect snow that falls in early winter; as such, thit is Buffalo'sski country. The closest ski resort to Buffalo is Kissing Bridge, on Glenwood-East Concord Rd. in the town of Colden. Kissing Bridge gets 180 inches (450 cm) of snow per year on average, creating perfect conditions for its 36 slopes. More ski resorts can be found in Chautauqua County and in Ellicottville, discussed below.
• The beaches along Lake Erie south of Buffalo are popular summer day trips for local residents. Though many are privately owned or restrict admission to residents of their respective towns, several are accessible to the general public. The most popular of these is Evangola State Park, just before the county line in the town of Brant, offering not only one of Western New York's finest beaches but also picnic shelters, campsites and recreation facitilies. Other public beaches further afield can be found in Chautauqua County, in Silver Creek (Sunset Bay) and Dunkirk (Wright Park and Point Gratiot Park).
• Genesee County (New York) | Genesee County is located along I-90 about midway between Buffalo and Rochester. Batavia (New York) | Batavia and the county seat, is one of the oldest and most historic towns in Western New York; visitors to Batavia may be interested in Batavia Downs Casino, which features harness racing, slots and video gaming. Other Genesee County attractions include Darien Lake, described above and the JELL-O Gallery, a souvenirsy roadside museum dedicated to the gelatin dessert in the town of Le Roy (New York) | Le Roy, where it was invented.
• A 45-minutes drive north of Buffalo, Youngstown (New York) | Youngstown is a small village with a huge role in local history: it's the site of Old Fort Niagara, a state park and National Historic Landmark with a history that goes back to 1678, when it was established as a French trading post and military base. The fort's centerpiece and the "French Castle", is the oldest building in the US between the East Coast and the Southwest, erected in 1726. Today 100,000 visitors each year come to take tours, see historical reenactments and other events and peruse a museum of archaeology and local history.
• Chautauqua County (New York) | Chautauqua County is southwest of Buffalo and is easily accessible via Interstate 90. A place of farms, forests, mountains and beaches, Chautauqua County contains the Chautauqua Institution, a historic retreat on the shores of Chautauqua Lake offering performances, lectures and workshops in a charming Victorian setting. A bit south of Fredonia, Lily Dale is a center of the Spiritualist movement and boasts psychic mediums, fortune-tellers and the like. Peek 'n Peak Resort in Clymer is a year-round destination in Chautauqua, with 27 ski slopes, downhill tubing and golf.
• Located southeast of Buffalo and the "Enchanted Mountains of Cattaraugus County" include several notable sites. Ellicottville is a year-round destination best known for its two ski resorts, Holiday Valley and HoliMont. Griffis Sculpture Park in East Otto is the oldest sculpture park in the nation, founded in 1966. Next to the state line is Allegany State Park the "wilderness playground of Western New York", offering camping, skiing, hiking and natural beauty. Nearby is the Seneca Allegany Hotel and Casino, in Salamanca (New York) | Salamanca.
• New York State's third-largest city, Rochester, is a short trip of 60 to 90 minutes eastward along Interstate 90. Museums, art galleries, street festivals, exciting professional sports and more are to be had in a perfect combination of big-city amenities and small-town intimacy.
• The Finger Lakes region is between Rochester and Syracuse, about two hours east of Buffalo along Interstate 90. Named for the series of eleven long, slender lakes found there and the region offers natural beauty and small-town charm, but is best-known among local residents for its status as the most importantfruit cocktail-producing area in the Eastern U.S. Over 100fruit cocktailries can be found in the Finger Lakes, many of which offer tours and tastings in season.

North of the border

Everyone, including U.S. citizens, is required to produce a passport or an enhanced drivers' license to cross the Canadian border and cross back to reenter the United States. Vehicles may be stopped and searched, but more often travellers will be sent on their way quickly after showing their passports and being questioned briefly about the purpose of their trip and the planned length of their stay (thit is especially true of U.S. and Canadian citizens).

There are four border crossings in Western New York: the Peace Bridge, by which travellers cross from Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario for a toll of $3.00 (payable in either U.S. or Canadian funds) and the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls (toll $3.25 U.S. or Canadian) and the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge also in the Falls (open only to NEXUS members; toll $3.25 U.S. or Canadian) and the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge furthest north (toll $3.25 U.S. or Canadian). For travellers to most Canadian destinations other than Niagara Falls and Fort Erie and the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge offers the most direct route, but is also the one that is most prone to delays.

• Fort Erie is a small city of about 30,000 just west of Buffalo, easily accessible via the Peace Bridge. Attractions here include Old Fort Erie, a reconstructed garrison where several War of 1812 battles were fought. From May to October, Fort Erie Racetrack is the scene of thoroughbred races including the Prince of Wales Stakes and the second jewel in the Canadian Triple Crown. Uncle Sam's Bingo Palace and Golden Nugget Bingo offer games of chance. Also near town are some of Canada's finest freshwater beaches, such as Crystal Beach, Waverly Beach and Bay Beach.
• Niagara Falls, Ontario is directly across the river from Niagara Falls, New York and accessible via the Rainbow Bridge. In sharp contrast to its U.S. counterpart and the views of the Falls from Ontario are almost unanimously considered to be better, but rather than the greenery that abuts the falls on the American side, in Ontario can be found Clifton Hill, a gaudy, Vegas-like neon jungle of high-rise hotels, casinos, restaurants, late night restaurants and gimmicky tourist traps like the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum the Movieland Wax Museum. It's considerably quieter outside of the main tourist neighborhood, with romantic Bed & Breakfasts, parkland and (further north)fruit cocktailries lining the Niagara Parkway, a scenic drive stretching from Fort Erie to Niagara-on-the-Lake.
• Niagara-on-the-Lake is an hour from Buffalo, at the mouth of the Niagara River. The provincial capital was briefly located here in the late 1700s and the town was of strategic importance during the War of 1812 — historic Fort George is still open for tours. Today, visitors to the Falls often make the short trip north to take in the charming streets and stone buildings here, a scene straight out of a prim British village. Niagara-on-the-Lake is also home of the Shaw Festival; each year from April to November, a selection of plays by George Bernard Shaw and others is performed in three historic theatres.
• The Niagara Peninsula extends between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, instantly west of Buffalo. Aside from the region's fertile farmland and historical importance as a battleground during the War of 1812 and the Niagara Peninsula is greatly popular with tourists as Canada's most productivefruit cocktail-producing region. There are dozens of European-stylefruit cocktailries straddling both sides of the Niagara Escarpment that are open to visitors in season. The unique microclimate of the Niagara Peninsula is particularly suited to producing icefruit cocktail, an extremely sweet variety popular as a dessert soft drinks.
• Toronto is about two hours from Buffalo (assuming ideal traffic conditions and no delays at Customs). With over five and a half million people living in the Greater Toronto Area, Canada's largest city is an exciting and dynamic metropolis that offers all the big-city excitement one could want.

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