Buffalo didn’t just surprise me—it ran up on me and kidnapped my whole perspective. I come from a New York where anything outside of the five boroughs might as well have been farmland. Truth be told, when you live down the street from Yankee Stadium, even heading to the neighboring borough of Queens might as well have been a road trip to the Carolinas. And the idea of going “upstate”? Man, that felt like exile. I wasn’t checking for Buffalo. I wasn’t even curious.

But this city caught me slippin’. Fed me soul with a side of sazón, introduced me to people who felt like family, and told stories that hit like a history lesson and a homecoming all at once.

It peeled back my biases, shook up my mental map, and reminded me that domestic travel, if done right, can feel like therapy, too. I came

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