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Last Saturday, I attended an event at the Whitworth Ferguson Planetarium. It was to recognize the one-year-until the total solar eclipse day in Buffalo. Let's call it the "anteversary." There were interesting table presentations, a good movie, and a talk about what an eclipse is, and what sort of myths people have told about them. The President of Buffalo State proclaimed this year "The Year of the Eclipse."
The director of the planetarium said that Western New York could get one million tourists just to see the total solar eclipse. That's bigger than any projections I have heard before. In case I have not said it here before, Erie County only has lodging for 11,000, and that number includes both AirBnB's and hotel rooms. One million people could fill up Highmark Stadium fourteen times.
The sight of the eclipse will be ethereal. We should be responsibly concerned about what happens afterward. From 4:30 PM on, it could be either a good day or a bad day for Buffalo.
If our guests stay the night the evening of that April 8th, they could enjoy some good food at one of our fine restaurants (seriously, we have good food around here). Our guests could catch a Bison's game, or go to some other sporting event. My favorite idea is that our guests could go to a theater and catch some Western New York talent. I love and fiercely admire the theater of this area, and I am urging them to stay open that night. In short, our eclipse-interested guests could have a great time here. Maybe a small percentage would eventually move here. Maybe the weekend of the eclipse parents will bring their young adult children to recruiting events at the several colleges we have in the area, and we will end up getting more college students here, and they will stay indefinitely. That would be a good day.
On the other hand, if our guests can't find a place to spend the night, they could get caught in the traffic jam of the millennium on the way out. They will have to leave at 4:30 PM, rush hour, right when the eclipse ends. Vehicles could run out of fuel on the highway. Our guests might not be able to find enough food or bottled water. (Really, when I went to Colombia SC with my family, the restaurant we went to ran out of food, there were so many people.) That would be a bad day.
Whether or not our guests have a good experience or a bad experience depends on whether they can find lodging for the night. And a good experience could mean Buffalo grows. A bad experience could make people even more disenchanted than they already are. We really should find a way to create hostels for our eclipse-interested guests, and show the world Western New York Hospitality. Please share the anthem and the petition with others, and think about what we might do. I am relying on the might of many minds mustered to magnify our municipality.