Mike Hudson, the founder of the weekly tabloid Niagara Falls Reporter, freely refers to his town as “a godforsaken place,” and it was hard to argue with the assessment in the neighborhood surrounding the bar. The area is the worst the city has to offer, a place of drugs and crime and boarded-up brick houses. Hudson knocked back a shot of Sambuca and rummaged around for his cigarettes, shouting epithets and contributing jokes to a running discussion on local politics. “It’s been all downhill in this town since 1969,” said one of the other patrons, a ruddy-faced man who had his first name, Fred, sewn onto his windbreaker. “Ever since they knocked down the whole goddamn downtown,” muttered the bartender, Frankie G.
The Fall of Niagara Falls
The Fall of Niagara Falls
Andrew Rice | Bloomberg Businessweek | December 3, 2010 | 4,181 words
Decades of decay, corruption, and failed get-rich-quick schemes have made the city one of the most intractable disasters in the U.S. “Among the many proposals for a replacement revenue generator, put forward by various fly-by-night impresarios or Niagara Falls Redevelopment itself, are a dinosaur park, a boxing Hall of Fame, a Chinese-themed attraction called Dragon City, and an underground aquarium featuring 5,000 creatures of the deep. ‘I have a file full of the craziest ideas,’ Bergamo said, ‘but no one comes here with any money.’”
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