How to Be Lucky: A 7-Step Guide

The art and the science. Just add water.

Photo by Nitin Karolla on Unsplash

I’m just a kid from Niagara Falls, New York. Meet me in an airport lounge; it won’t be long—twenty, maybe thirty minutes — before I tell you. It’s my lingua franca for when people ask me, “Where the heck is Buffalo?” 168,000 cubic meters of water plunging 176 feet to its death every minute will do that. Niagara Falls is the Google of cataracts — globally famous for doing what it does par excellence. Perhaps you’ve gone there yourself and seen the awesome power and splendor; I’ve seen it dozens, hundreds of times. That’s not a flex — just a fact.

I think about the Falls every day. I can feel the mist. I can hear the roar. The rapids — rushing water moving around and between rocks and the riverbed — are among the most powerful in the world, and pure terror. You could jump into the river a half-mile from the Falls and still fail to swim to shore before tumbling over. (Don’t test this theory.) It’s not that special — just water flowing where it goes. Happens all the time; water gonna water. But, damn, what a feast for the senses.

The rest of the city is … well, an urban planning cataclysm: Smokestacks, concrete, urban blight, an unrelenting waft of hot plastic and old garbage. Roads hug the river and lead nowhere. Run-down houses and storefronts sit vacant. Crime runs…