Front De Troglodistes

Come Home to Syracuse -- Although this site is a bit chamber of commerce-y, in the right hands, a project like this could be really interesting.

Instead of: "Look at all that our depressed, rust-belt town has to offer you! Come! Drink the Kool-Aid!" How about a little more honesty, like acknowledging that those who left had damn good reasons to leave. I love my hometown and I have a tenacious sense of loyalty to it even though I no longer live there. I love Syracuse for what it is: a weird rust-belt city that has been stuck in a permanent economic depression for the last 25 years and also happens to sit smack in the middle of some of the most beautiful countryside in the entire world. Like just about anyplace, Syracuse is populated by mostly jackasses, but these particular jackasses happen to be my jackasses. Furthermore, while growing up in that sea of jackasses, I found some of the most crazy, interesting, weird, wonderful, and decent people I've ever met in my life.

Unlike the boosters at Come Home to Syracuse, when I think back to when I was growing up in Syracuse, I don't get nostalgic about going to any damn Orangeman games, or the times I spent in that absurd boondoggle called Carousel Mall. However, I do think about going swimming, as a kid, at Schiller Park, or how my brother and I used to spend all night drinking coffee at the Little Gem Diner when we were too young to drink alcohol. I think about getting drunk at the, ironically named if you're a film buff, Lost Horizon nightclub and seeing everything from local hair metal bands to Fishbone. I can think of a million memories of growing up there, both good and bad, and not one of them have a damn thing to do with shopping (except for those memories of buying illegal fireworks on the Onondaga Nation Territory every summer).

How about asking people what they could do for Syracuse? How about leveling with people and telling them: "OK, you know why you left and we're not going to act like you didn't have a good reason, but if you're visiting a site called Come Home to Syracuse and you're not doing it to give your friends a good laugh, then let's talk. We can't make any promises that you'll be a spectacular sucess here, but we want you back and we're hoping that you and your hometown can be a success together. We want you to come back, but come back with the understanding that this is a reciprocal relationship."

The project is, in essence, a good and potentially grassroots solution to revitalizing a depressed community, unfortunately it's being implemented by people who apparently think that a giant shopping mall is going to make people come running back home.

See also:
Syracuse Then and Now
The Wallmen -- the greatest band you've never heard of.
The Jerry Rescue
Syracuse and the Underground Railroad (see also here and here)
The Erie Canal Museum
Routes 5 and 20