Maceo Skinner, a Bills fan since the founding of the team in 1960, was sitting on Tuesday at a bar near the Buffalo Center. Outside, the temperature moved in one -digit numerals and snow in the lake effect whistled around the window.
Inside the patrons warmed solid heating, lots of drinks and the main theme in the city. As everyone in the bar, Alley Cat, they knew-as everyone in Western New York knew-Bill was still alive in the playoffs of the National Football League, and even the weather could not cool down the hope that their time was finally. .
“We stayed a lot,” said Mr. Skinner. “Buffalo needs it.”
There are many sports teams with long -term frustrated supporters: Lions fans, Pirates fans, Vikings fans, and all who support Mets, Jets or Cleveland Guardians. They all claim a certain level of poverty.
But it is different in Buffalo.
Mr. Skinner was born in the city in 1945, at the age of 60 he sold beer in ancient Rockpile (the first home of Bill) and remains a faithful fan despite all suffering. To illustrate it, he carefully pulled the relics out of his wallet. It was a Super Bowlu XXVII ticket, a little crumpled and slightly frayed at the edges.
He appreciated for 32 years: a memento of a game in which Bills destroyed Dallas Cowboys, 52-17. For Buffalo it was the third loss in Super Bowl in a row. This is the past that Bills fans hold.
Like most buffaloes, Mr. Skinner hopes that one day, maybe very early, Bill will return there. On Sunday they play with Chiefs in Kansas City, and if they win, they will finally return to Super Bowl and look for the elusive first title NFL and a definitive return after decades of disappointment.
“For Buffalo, it would mean more than almost anywhere else,” said Lisa Corrin, a therapist who grew up in Buffalo and moved to Boston, where she watches almost every match on television.
Bill and their community generally share a unique bond. Buffalo, underestimated city often covered with snow, spews friendly and tough citizens who have lasted half a century of industrial abandonment and snobbery from the rest of the country while shielding their shoulders. a very real possibility of frostbite Watch your favorite team to play live.
But as the city tries to enforce again, some residents see a parallel in the laws who have dusty two decades of bad results and have become a candidate in the last few years. Now people have accepted the slogan “Billieve”.
Perhaps banal, but Peter Dow, a teacher who was born in Buffalo in 1932, believes he is the basic truth. Where Bill was once synonymous with Buffalo’s decline, today they reflect the hope of the city.
“The bills are an example of Buffalo’s desire to rebuild and build a proud future,” said Mr. Dow. “We’re not there yet, but we’re working very hard, just like Bills.”
As a sign of revival, he pointed to a stabilizing population, comparable living costs, a prosperous art scene with a prominent philharmonic – and of course accounts.
Even in bad times, Bills anchored a community that clings to their position of the first league city, at least in football and hockey.
Roger Ross, Ovid sugar salesman, NY, about 130 miles east of Buffalo, was commercially in the city on Tuesday. He took the opportunity before Sunday’s match and bought another Merch Bills.
“Bills are more than just a football team,” he said. “Accounts are everything here.” Are the sap of life in this area. ”
For most of their existence, this blood was anemia. They won two AFL championships, in 1964 and 1965, before merging with the NFL. They never won Super Bowl, despite four torturing trips there between 1991 and 1994. From 2000 to 2018 they had only three winning seasons.
Enter Josh Allen.
Bills drafted Allen in 2018, and in each of the last six seasons the team led to the playoffs and became a permanent candidate for the most useful league player.
Allen is more than good, but is perceived as lively and Pokorný, who liked Western New York by hugging this region. Grew up on California agricultural land and played a college football In the snowy Wyoming, which made it practically related to the inhabitants of this area.
“Usually, when people think of Buffalo, they think of what is happening, snow and winter,” Allen told journalists after Wednesday’s training. “You must be hard enough to be in such a place.”
Allen underlines his almost Messianic arrival seven years ago and plays in a city with a modern neighborhood named Alilentown, full of restaurants, bars and art galleries. Many people now call it “Josh Alilentown”, which could serve as wider rebranding for Western New York.
In the courtyards and playgrounds, children play touch football in Allen No. 17 jerseys and grandmothers wear them at parties with a watch. When snow accumulates high, fans in blue and red shake hands – and shovel – dig a stadium for $ 20 per hourPlus food and warm drinks.
On some suburban streets, the flags of the American flag exceeds the flags of the flag and in the daily conversation of “Go bills” serves as “Aloha” Greater Buffalo.
“You hear it in the morning, at noon and evening,” said Kate Roach, a lawyer from Buffalo, whose family had passes Bills since the first match 65 years ago. “’Go Bills’ is used for ‘Hello’, ‘Goodbye’ and ‘Have a nice day.’ I have conference calls with other lawyers and nine times out of 10 calls end with ‘go bills’. “
During a snowstorm on Tuesday, Brandon Richardson and his colleagues in Ready Barbershop talked about it, well, you guessed.
“Accounts are a great balaver,” said Mr. Richardson, who grew up in LockPort, NY, about 55 miles east at Erie Canal. “Sometimes it seems so divided there.” But we come here all areas of life and people come and talk only about accounts. They will combine it all. “
Like many American cities, Buffalo is struggling with racial segregation. But Larry Stitts, the owner of the Golden Cup café at Jefferson Avenue, agreed that most people had accounts in common. Said the city is still treated with it racist murders 10 blacks white shooter in supermarket Just down the street from the Golden Cup in 2022 and that Bills players helped in this process.
“They were all over this neighborhood,” he said. “One thing I can say about the organization of Bills when the community needs them, they are there.”
Mr. Stitts, who had been Bills pass for 20 years, also proudly noted that the team was the only NFL franchise that really plays football in New York. Jets and the Giants play in New Jersey.
But even the modest Jets have what the bills don’t have: they won Super Bowl, once, in 1969. It seems almost recent to me compared to never.
“It’s been a long time,” Mr. Stitts said. “No one deserves it more than we do. And Josh gets us there. “