[15] No worries, I more of less said it was meh.

my brother & best friend went to college there (great school) and i know a ton of other folks that went there, too. i spent a lot of time as a kid in binghamton and surrounding towns like endicott/johnson city and vestal.

i haven’t been up that way in nearly 20 years though. and, yeah, we always called it “upstate”. still do!

My aunt lived in Vestal for several years and liked it. Unfortunately my downtown B. experiences brought me to some of the desolate-feeling parts. Apologies re the “meh”!

Binghamtion University is why I grew up there. Both parents were academics and we lived a few hundered yards on the Binghamtion side of the Binghamton/Vestal line. My family has since moved down south and I haven’t been back in at least a few years but like I said, I thought it was a great place to grow up. I just can’t imagine still living there like a lot of my friends from High School.

I have brought Spiedies everywhere I have lived though, and they have been a hit everywhere. I guess I still support the community in that I order a few gallons of Salamida’s Spiedie Sauce each year.

That’s what they mean by the definition of “upstate”getting narrower the further north you go; what is upstate to anyone in Albany, Rochester or Watertown? The Adirondacks(!) Glen Falls, Saratoga Springs and Ft. Ticonderoga? Lake George and Lake Placid??

Anything in the Southern tier was considered “Further Out West” and Buffalo, Rochester or Canada is “All The Way Up There”. Oh, and the MId-Hudson is “The Middle of Nowhere” and the Finger Lakes are “Just There”… The furthest out west I’ve ever been in New York is that circle where New York meets New Jersey and Pennsylvania. North would be Schenectady, but only by accident and Upstate West would be Howe Caves (near Albany).

I also found out that to a Texan, anywhere within NYS is only an hour or two away at the most. But I bet we think the same thing about LA and San Francisco, though we do know Houston and Dallas are not neighbors… strange.

Binghamton…eh. Good place to grow up and good place to move out of. A good community though and I have mostly good things to say about it.

Think we need a Tasters Cherce on some Spiedies though. Dig it.

And yes, we have carousels.

Bronx Boy, you can get Dino BBQ in Harlem now. Times they are a changin.

Also a local delicacy called spiedies. Lamb, beef, pork, or chicken cubes marinated in a certain way, and grilled on a skewer. It must be served with soft white sliced italian bread that you use to pull off the meat and topped off with a sprinkle of red wine vinegar. Really good, and different than a normal “meat on stick”.

And also Binghamton, meh. Hold out a little longer, munch a granola bar or something, and for lunch order the Tres Hombres plate at the Dinosaur BBQ in Syracuse.

. . . Tho I’ve never considered Binghamton to be part of upstate, says the dude born and raised in Central NY; ’tis part of the Southern Tier. Wikipedia tells me that the Southern Tier is traditionally considered part of upstate, and that the further north you get from the City, the more narrow the definition of upstate becomes. Now I’m just confused.

In any case, Binghamton is a perfectly cromulent place, but I don’t think you’ve missed out by never having been, Alex. A fine place to stop for lunch on your way from the City to better places, like the Finger Lakes.