“Is the City of Niagara Falls hopeless?”
That’s the question travel writer David Seminara asked during his second video tour of the city this past September.
Seminara, a journalist and author who posts travel videos on YouTube under the name “The Mad Traveler,” first toured parts of the city in the spring while asking the question: “Why is Niagara Falls (NY) so poor?”
The unvarnished look at conditions downtown and elsewhere drew plenty of attention on social media, with viewers offering their thoughts — both negative and positive — about the Falls, its current condition and chances of making a comeback.
Seminara came to the city on his first trip to see neighborhoods where his grandfather lived and where his father grew up. He found many empty lots, boarded-up buildings, dilapidated houses and other signs of economic depression.
“I came sort of on an odyssey to see where my father was born and where my grandfather lived and those neighborhoods were an absolute friggin’ nightmare,” Seminara said. “My video got a lot of attention.”
Seminara returned to the Falls in the summer with “a fresh set of eyes” after some viewers suggested he was too harsh the first time around.
“I think many people agreed with me in my conclusions, but a small minority said, ‘Dave, you’re frickin’ way too pessimistic. No wonder why your channel’s called The Mad Traveler. Look on the bright side. Be glass full. Don’t be glass half empty,’” he said.
On his second visit, Seminara captured more video from downtown and from Niagara Falls State Park, including a spectacular image of the Falls with a rainbow over it, a scene he aptly describes as “just perfect.”
“It ain’t all slums in Niagara Falls,” he said.
“It’s hard not to be impressed by that. It’s a hell of a lot easier to be optimistic about the Falls when you come here on a day like this when the weather is just perfect,” he adds.
Seminara gets another near-perfect view from above the city when he gets an employee escort inside “the very cool” Giacomo Hotel to the 19th-floor sky view lounge where he observes downtown and the neighboring Native American Center for the Living Arts, commonly known as “The Turtle” building below.
“It’s a hell of a view up here,” Seminara notes.
Another positive experience: The Polish food and the prices at Gadawski’s on Falls Street.
Part of Seminara’s latest video shows off the bar and restaurant’s unique Notre Dame Fighting Irish motif and features him saying how much he loves the prices, taking note of the $1.50 pierogis and $6 hamburgers. Seminara enjoyed his personal favorite — a Beef on Weck — which he described as “pure perfection.”
His total bill for lunch: $9.71.
“You gotta love it,” he says of his Gadawski’s meal. “I’m already feeling more positive.”
Outside Gadawski’s, however, Seminara finds more empty lots where homes once stood and boarded-up structures, many of them owned for years by the private firm, Niagara Falls Redevelopment.
In his video, Seminara admires one neighborhood standout — historic Holy Trinity Church, which is one block over from Gadawski’s on Falls Street.
“I’m parked here outside of Gadawskis and look already with the vacant boarded-up buildings,” he says in his video. “I mean, I guess I don’t know, if you live here you get used to all this, of there being so many demolished houses and knocked down houses, but as an outsider just coming in and seeing this place, it’s depressing as hell. I mean, wow.”
In an attempt to find more of the positive, Seminara takes a drive down a couple of “quiet, tree-lined streets” off Main Street where he finds some well-maintained and attractive homes.
Along Main Street, he also finds more boarded-up, empty commercial buildings before visiting the city’s $43 million Amtrak station where he encounters one other visitor, a man who tells him he was there to use the bathroom, not to take a train.
“What is the city going to do with Main Street?” Seminara says in his video. “Supposedly revitalize it. I don’t know. I’ll believe any of that when I see it.”
Part of Seminara’s video journey includes a stop at one of his favorite places — DiCamillo’s on Linwood Avenue off Main Street. There, he shares a slice of Trusello’s-style pizza with his 89-year-old mother. While they eat, he asks his mom if she thinks the Falls is hopeless.
“There’s always hope, of course,” she said.
Seminara took a side trip to the city’s Love Canal neighborhood as part of a supplemental video titled: ”Why are people still living near America’s most notorious toxic disaster site?”
The video shows the overgrown properties on the streets closest to the hazardous waste site and Seminara takes note of how much it has remained unchanged in the decades since the environmental disaster gained national attention in the late 1970s.
“As you can see, it’s like, you know, the way Chernobyl is now,” he says in the video. “Nature has taken its course here, but there are still a few people who decided to stay obviously.”
While in the Love Canal area, he interviews a few locals and asks them whether they think the area is safe and whether they would live there.
“It depends on who you ask,” one woman tells him.
In an interview with the Niagara Gazette earlier this month, Seminara — who has visited 80 countries around the world — said he considers Niagara Falls, New York to be “one of the most confusing” places he’s ever been.
On the one hand, he noted, it is home to one of the most beautiful natural draws in all the world in Niagara Falls.
On the other hand, he said it’s hard to ignore the condition of much of the surrounding city, including neighborhoods not far from the state park that leave a lot to be desired.
“Usually when you go to a tourism area that people love and cherish, it’s very rare for it to be next to a depressed, crime-ridden city,” he said.
On the plus side, he said, visitors he spoke with were generally pleased with their experience at the Falls itself.
“They felt positive about their experience,” he said. “I didn’t hear any negativity from any of the tourists I spoke to.”
As for the potential for resurrecting the city, Seminara said his wife, who comes from Illinois, is struck by something they both consider a real strength of the region, a true sense of community pride as embodied by the huge number of people wearing Buffalo Bills gear just about everywhere you go.
“There is a tremendous sense of civic pride in Western New York,” he said. “That means there’s enough people who care about the place.”
You can find The Mad Traveler’s videos on Youtube at: https://www.youtube.com/@MadTraveler.
This post was originally published on here
