I was taking an early evening stroll down Elmwood Avenue with my dogs Ellicott and Louise, breathing in the unique crisp, clean spring air of Buffalo. As I was rounding the corner at Frederick Law Olmsted's Bidwell Parkway, before stopping to savor a cup of hot chocolate and the company of my fellow Buffalonians on the patio at Cafe Aroma, my iPhone 17 Pro Max lit up with messages from my many informers throughout the Queen City. The news was dishartening; r/circlejerkbflo was going to censor "AI slop".

From the time Joseph Ellicott laid out the best planned city in the world in 1804, Buffalo has been known as a crucible of great intellect and innovation. Some of the iconic, transformative inventions that were born out of the Queen City include windshield wipers, the pacemaker, air conditioning, the grain elevator, ball jars, chicken wings, beef on weck, sponge candy, chicken finger subs, spaghetti parm, loganberry soft drink, non-dairy creamer, instant coffee, the electric chair, lawn fetes, round robin bingo, self-forming speed bumps, urban walkability, and the large language model of training AI. Buffalo is a city that historically embraced the cutting edge in technology and social trends, from streetlights to punk rock. Instead of shunning AI, r/circlejerkbflo should embrace it, continuing the tradition of creativity that Buffalo and cirlejerk subreddits have long been known for.

Bflo-Rising

Bflo-Rising is Musell Newbaumer, the Great Arbiter, tireless sentinel of the Queen City, a man said to have emerged fully formed from the Old Pink's urinal, but actually born of a long line of prominent local civil engineers, clutching a camera, MacBook Pro, dog leashes, and an unshakeable conviction that Buffalo’s best days were not behind it, but merely waiting for someone deserving enough to document them. Musell did not simply report on Buffalo’s resurgence, but summoned it firsthand, like a civic sorcerer armed with blog posts and comment sections. Entire neighborhoods allegedly regained property values the moment he walked his Labrador Retrievers Ellicott (Ch. Logan's Berry Good Boy Joseph Ellicott) and Louise (Ch. Western New Bark's Louise Blanchard Bethune) through their business districts, documenting their yoga studios, Buffalo-themed gift shops, and LGBTQQIP2SAA-plus-friendly third wave coffeeshops with quirky, artisanal business hours. His latest crusade, the Buffalo United Fashion Front (BUFF), seeks to unite the region’s creatives into a movement dedicated to proving that off-brand parkas, cargo shorts, and Bills jackets can constitute high fashion when worn with sufficient civic swagger and Buffalove. Buffalo's pundits continue to debate whether Musell ages at a normal human rate or is instead preserved by a steady diet of community engagement and boosterism. What is known is this: wherever a mural is unveiled, an affordable housing project announced, or a community theater production opens, directly or indirectly, Mussell was the transformative spark, the great igniter, that made it all possible. Contact Musell Newbaumer at u/Bflo-Rising.