Upstate NY's cities really just feel like a retrospective of everything I've known and loved about America, all at once.

Desolate ruins, rough old streets, Cumbia playing as heavy snowfall blankets the city. Giant Catholic Churches, corrupt officials, Italian meats, Irish pubs, nutty eccentrics, failed "revitalization" projects, speeding freight trains, the Mohawk River, sprawling post-industrial wetlands, the Erie Canal under yellow sodium streetlamps.

It's just the best of America all at once. Every good thing I found and loved about the desert, the Northwoods, New Orleans, the Midwest, NE cities, the US-Mexico border -- it's all here, and it's all dirt-cheap.

You just can't beat this place. It's got it all.