Sidemouth - Waterfall Land

When I was a teenager my mother lived in Niagara Falls in a trailer park off this motel strip that got seedier the further away from the falls you went. Motels turned to strip clubs and massage parlors, and she was across the street from the Sundowner, a famous strip club that consistently makes gross top-ten lists around the world. On summer break I would sunbathe outside and watch the girls come in and out in their silk robes, smoking and flashing cars that honked at them. It was the best.

Because of this kind of collective audio-visual hallucination, when one thinks about Niagara Falls, the first thing that comes to mind is not “cultural mecca.” Over the last 200 years or so there have, in fact, apparently been great efforts launched to create the largest cultural void that is humanly possible.

Man vs. nature. Is there something we want to say here? It is no secret that humans—mans—feel the need to prove themselves over the unbridled force of Mother Gaia. That is why we invented dynamite, GMOs, and the CN Tower. And Niagara Falls is no different, except in this case we have not tried to tame the actual beast, we’ve just broken its spirit.

On a recent trip there my boyfriend and I were hanging out in our hotel room with the window open. We could hear the roaring water, see the gentle mist rising up from all the majesty. It was a serene high, almost possible to forget we were lying atop North America’s largest water park. Why isn’t this alone enough? we mused. The Atiquandaronk people thought it was enough. They used to hang out at this awesome waterfall and do NOTHING except for maybe feel its sublime excellence. The fact that when most people go to Niagara Falls in 2012 and don’t even really see it, let alone bask in its glory, might not feel so offensive to me if it was done well, but even the task of being tacky has failed grotesquely. Thanks to an overzealous tourist industry and bad planning, Niagara Falls has lost its fun Cracker Jack kind of spirit and moved towards the Hard Rock/Planet Hollywood kind of sadness. Except here, you can’t even smoke in the casino, and the cocktail waitresses are all wearing the same slacks and polo shirts with embossed Fallsview Casino logo. The hairdos are gelled-out ringlets, the faces dry, counting down minutes to smoke breaks and shuttle buses that will take them back to parking lots in Thorold. There is nothing sexy or fun about this.

This depression is a two-way street running from here on the strip down to the city of Niagara Falls proper. When the multi-billion-dollar mega-complex that is Fallsview Casino decided to squat itself down, it made promises. Through desperation and ignorance the people of Niagara Falls (the city and the region) bought it. It didn’t take long for it to become clear that all this talk of financial prosperity and affluence promised by the people behind Fallsview was total crap. Currently there is more poverty, substance abuse, depression, and divorce than before they came with their tall tales of redemption. This is a sad story, but not a rare one. The demise of the Small Town is an epidemic.

I think we have really missed the Maid of the Mist on this one, guys. Realistically, it seems impossible at this point that the Falls could just be a place to stare at (even though that is what I would vote for, really) but next-best case scenario? Look at it like this: if we were in Europe this would be our Normady. In terms of what is going on with food and wine, the Niagara region is one of the richest resources in Canada, and clearly this is not being expressed. There are only two restaurants in Niagara Falls that focus on procuring their ingredients locally. Everything else is basically gross, soulless chain crap from America. In places like France the terroir—which, loosely translated, works out to mean "of this place”; the embodiment of characteristic qualities relating to the local environment, soil, and even the way the land is worked—is a source of pride. To go to these specific regions and taste their cheese, wine, and vegetables is a beautiful thing. These places become destinations where people bring their money to shower upon. In Niagara, this is an untapped market. It might be time for a new plan.

Hey, I’ve got one!

Well, me and the Mayor, Mr. Jim Diodati, kind of have one. Over the last five years or so he’s begun to redevelop the downtown core with an emphasis on arts, cultural activities, and showing off the amazing gastronomic bounty the Niagara region has to offer, hoping to lead the way to rebuilding some of the city’s vitality. AKA, drawing attention away from the tourist strip and bringing in capital directly to the city, and in turn the surrounding Niagara region.

Only around ten percent of the hundreds of thousands of visitors that come to see Niagara Falls go anywhere else outside the strip. As it is, downtown Niagara Falls, the area near the train station, is a ghost town. The streets are like thin arms and each structure seems to sit upon its own pit or elbow like a tickle waiting to happen. A majority of the large historic storefronts and houses are abandoned, some containing original content left behind decades ago. The result is eerie beauty; I salivate when I go there. Hunters of the weird, this is your spot. Like when you find that amazing apartment with all the character and a landlord that hasn’t left the house in 15 years so your rent is like $500: GOLD. The potential is incredible and the rent is cheap. Yes! So let’s give Niagara Falls to artists, creative thinkers, inspired gastronomes. Stick our freak flag in and let it fly! We don’t need another cutesy, quaint, Niagara-on-the-lake type of thing. Toronto doesn’t need its own Hamptons.

There are business startup and arts funding grants to apply for, bursaries, and historic building preservation perks. Here, we could make our own little utopic glory hole! I think we should call it Waterfall Land. I’ll take over Hotel Europa and have a little cafe. I will serve beautiful wine from the Somewhereness Wineries (a group of vintners dedicated to producing pure, natural wines in small batches that reflect the terroir of where they are situated) and serve local cheeses like the rich, yellowy, triple cream from Upper Canada Cheese Company. Good restaurants serving good food could act as conduits to the whole region, bringing intrigue, awareness, and capital. You, over there, can start a really good gallery with a great curator and great programming. Others can start a nice grocery store with all kinds of regional delights, a bar, another restaurant. That gorgeous building over there with the wide wooden floors that used to be a department store in the 70s can be like the new home for the MOCCA or something, and we can spruce up the train station too because it’s just right there and people from the other cities will come. We will have really great events and food festivals and concerts and fucking ragers that will draw people from out of town as well. And all the weird diners and Polish delis can STAY, please do!

Letting artists and food people run amok is not going to cause that epileptic midway to fall into the Niagara River, or moss and daisies to instantly grow over it, or an eagle screeching through the mist and sunset to appear, or all to be well. The idea of invigorating the city—or any city, really—through arts, localized business funding, awareness of the region’s gastronomic possibility is just a gateway. It is inspired, creative thinking in a situation that is at this point dire. It is giving the waterfall back its spirit a little. Amen, I’m going to go stick my head under a waterfall now. Waterfall Land!

Previously - Love, War, Soulfulnes, and Big Balls