Tales From the Salt City

Syracuse, it appeared to me, is actually two towns under one name. There's the former Erie Canal and industrial town that's now fallen on leaner times and then there's the town near the University. The two overlap somewhat and the former is helped a great deal by the presence of the latter, but the two are distinct. As it happened, our hotel was poised between the two halves of Syracuse on the border formed by I-81.

TVFMHRW - Syracuse

As Spamalot prepared to leave Toronto, a lot of folks started talking about a quiet week or a hibernation week in Syracuse. They were sure that there wouldn't be much to do or see. Being somewhat of a contrarian, I took up Syracuse's cause. I read about the place on Wikipedia (there's a neighborhood called "Skunk City"!) and then on their convention and visitors web page. I became a bit of a cheerleader for "Dear Old Syracuse" (to borrow a phrase from Rodgers and Hart).

When I arrived on Monday, I took an afternoon walk and was disappointed in what I found. Downtown Syracuse is not a hip, happenin' place. The signs of its former glory are there - there's some old architecture in downtown Syracuse - but it was pretty quiet on a sunny Monday afternoon. There was some action near the main downtown bus transfer, but it wasn't of an encouraging kind and Armory Square (the entertainment district) was mostly shuttered. I was reminded of how the other two once-great industrial giants of Upstate New York I visited on the tour, Buffalo and Rochester, could depress me.

The view from Clinton Square in downtown Syracuse

Things turned around a bit, though, on Monday night. As Ken and I had driven to Syracuse, I kept our rental car for the evening. I scanned my on-line foodie resources and came up with few promising establishments that required a car to get to and invited Chris Gurr to select one from the list. (Central New York had a whole range of restaurants that specialize in preparing the locally-grown and raised foods from their fertile surroundings. They also have all kinds of ethnic restaurants preparing the native foods of the many groups of immigrants that have passed through and settled in the the area. There were many tasty sounding options.) We settled on a long-time local favorite, Scotch 'n Sirloin, and invited along Suzanne and DVZ. The folks at "the Scotch" have been serving up steaks since 1967 and it was easy to see why the place is a local institution. The room was warm and inviting. The waiters looked like men and women who knew their cuts of beef - they were appropriately dressed in black bow ties and long white coats. Perhaps best of all, it was 1/2 price wine night on Monday! We enjoyed ourselves immensely and returned to the hotel full of beef and good company.

VFMHRW - Sunset Monday evening

Spamalot's home for the week was the Crouse Hinds Theatre. The theatre is part of the Oncenter Complex: a three building convention and entertainment complex. The building housing the Crouse Hinds Theatre is the John H. Mulroy Civic Center. Named for the former County Executive who built the convention center, the Civic Center is also an Onondaga County Government office building. In addition to seeing a show in one of the building's three theatres, one might pay the water bill or get a marriage licence there! It's a weird mash-up. As a municipal building, the theatre has a no-frills feeling. The dressing rooms and support spaces are all concrete block and sort of spartan. The auditorium is in need of repairs and sprucing up. The local presenter, Murray Burnthal, is somewhat of a road-show legend. He's a tiny, aging man who has been presenting shows in Syracuse for more than 50 years. Several people on our show had played Syracuse before and looked forward to seeing Murray totter out on stage to give his pre-show talk each night.

The Civic Center Theaters at Oncenter

Ken and two of the tiny, old lady dressers from IATSE Local #9

Syracuse was the city of birthdays for the Spamily with three company members celebrating. Cuz, our Sound Man, went first with a birthday on Tuesday. After our opening night performance, we all gathered at Dinosaur Bar-b-que to wish him well and dig in. I know I've detailed the history of this operation before on the blog, so I'll spare you the back story and just praise the food once again! Next up, Jen Rias celebrated on Friday - she celebrated post-show at Al's Wine and Whiskey in Armory Square. Our King, Jonathan Hadary, also had a birthday in Syracuse. A drink night in his honor was hosted at the hotel's bar. Also on the social calendar in Syracuse was a farewell party for our retiring Assistant Music Director, Adam Souza. Adam's leaving Spamalot to become the Music Director for the upcoming new tour of Wicked. (Adam actually left at the conclusion of the week in West Point, but our Maestro didn't want his party to be lost in the craziness of re-teching and commuting in West Point.)

Cuz's birthday bash at Dinosaur


Jen considers her intermission cake


Jonathan smiles as we all serenade him

As I mentioned before, Syracuse had a surprising number of tasty sounding eateries. I made a second visit to Dinosaur Bar-b-cue later in the week (and a more reasonable hour for stuffing myself with pork) with Katie. (Katie covered the light board while Mark vacationed. Syracuse was her last stop and I'll miss her.) Gurr and I treked over to the west side of Syracuse for Slovakian food at the Welcome Inn - AMAZING! The little old woman in the back produced a feast for us: borscht, home-cured kielbasa, 2 kinds of pyrogies, sauerkraut and a cabbage roll. I also found Syracuse's Little Italy and lunched on antipasto and manicotti. Next door to the hotel was the Strong Hearts Cafe which produced all manner of tasty things from the vegan kitchen. Our load-in lunch was held in a converted church (and former stop on the underground railroad) that is now home to Mexican food! I didn't go hungry in Syracuse.

Gurr considers our feast at the Welcome Inn

After the hearty Slovak feast on Wednesday, I needed a walk and some distraction to keep me from a nap. I stopped in at the Erie Canal Museum. Syracuse initially came into being after the Revolutionary War when salt was discovered in the swamps near Onondage Lake. (The city's name derives from a similarly salty city in Italy.) When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, Syracuse began to boom. In 1850, Syracuse's 5,000 residents (up from 250 only 3o years before) made it the 12th largest city in the Union. As the salt industry declined, manufacturing took its place. Around the time of WWII, Syracuse was a major manufacturing community. Carrier was headquartered there, General Electric had it main television plant in Syracuse, GM and Chrysler built cars and Crouse Hinds centered their electric products manufacturing in Syracuse. (Crouse Hinds is the only one of these operations still active in Syracuse. They make electrical conduit along with switches and signals - including traffic lights.)

I hadn't devoted a great deal of thought to the Erie Canal before visiting the museum. I remember from history class that it was a pretty big deal at the time. I knew, generally, how its locks and towed barges worked. I didn't appreciate, however, what an engineering marvel it was. The canal was constructed in 8 years (between 1817 and 1825) and stretched 360 miles from Albany to Buffalo - connecting New York to the Great Lakes. The canal rises a total of 600 feet as it makes its way across New York (of course, it rises and falls with the topography for a net gain on 600'). The canal cut the cost of transporting goods from NYC to Buffalo by 95% and reduced the travel time from a number of weeks to 6 days. The Erie Canal made westward expansion practical.

The Erie Canal Museum is housed in the last remaining weighlock building. The canal was initial supported by tolls; these were determined by the weight of the cargo a boat carried. This weight was checked by weighing the canal boats at a couple of points along the journey. The weigh lock in Syracuse settled the boat on a scale and drained away the water before refilling the lock and sending the boat on its way. When it was in operation, the weigh lock in Syracuse could process 4 boats an hour, 24 hours a day. The portion of the canal that passed through Syracuse was filled in in 1925 (the canal was re-routed through Onondaga Lake as part of its enlargement) and became Erie Boulevard. Many of the the grand building in Syracuse used to sit right beside the canal!

The Erie Canal Museum

Erie Blvd is in the foreground and the former weigh lock was housed in the extending portion of the building.

The high-light of my week in Syracuse came on Friday: Marijean drove over from Utica to hang out with me! We had a tasty lunch of sushi and Korean while we caught up on each other's lives. Then MJ took me for a drive in the beautiful autumnal country-side to visit Chittenango Falls. Chittenango Creek tumbles 167 feet over the falls as the result of the last glaciation. The falls are beautiful and the beauty was only amplified by the spectacular fall colors. The area is also the only known home of the endangered Chittenango Ovate Amber Snail. Though we didn't see any of the tiny creatures (the area near the base of the falls is off-limits as the snails live under rocks and were being crushed by folks walking on the rocks), it's amazing to me that an animal can exist who only makes their home at a single waterfall in Upstate New York!

The Chittenango Falls

MJ on the bridge near the base of Chittenango Falls

After our visit to the country-side, Marijean and I visited the campus of Syracuse University. Founded in 1870 by the Methodist Episcopal Church, Syracuse has grown to include 13 schools and colleges with nearly 20,000 students. (The University identified itself as non-sectarian in 1920, though it remains a private institution.) The campus sits on University Hill overlooking downtown Syracuse. It's an appropriate mix of collegiate ivy covered halls and new buildings (most notably the space-ship of the Carrier Dome, home to both the Orange's football and basketball teams). At the edges of campus is the second of the two Syracuses: the University Town. It features pita places, bagel places, drugstores and a number of student bars. I suppose it's comparable to the down towns to Lansing and East Lansing, but in this case: they're both Syracuse.

Crouse College Building - home to SU's College Visual and Performing Arts

MJ brought a couple of her drama students to see the show in Syracuse on Friday night. After the show, I brought them backstage and showed them around a bit. One of her students is pursuing a career in hair and make-up, so I introduced him to the good people in our hair and make-up department. Suzanne and Jason were both kind enough to take a minute from their post-show work to speak to him. Then, MJ took us all out for a drink so we could talk a bit.

The weekend flew by, as it always does. I did find time to sneak over and visit the Niagara Mohawk building. I first saw the building at night on the walk to Cuz's birthday celebration when it was lit from the inside in green and orange and later caught sight of its gleaming chrome accents on the walk to lunch with Gurr. Turns out is a textbook example of the Art Deco style built by the Niagara Mohawk Power Company as their headquarters in 1932, the building is as much a definition of the style as the Chrysler Building. The building's 7 storeys are clad in grey brick, stone, stainless steel, aluminum and black glass. Above the main entrance is a 28' high male figure with outstretched arms named "Spirit of Light". Silver rays of light emanate outward across the facade from him. It's a striking building.

The Niagara Mohawk Building as seen from across the street

The Spirit of Light

Syracuse Fun Fact: Basketball's 24 second shot clock was invented in Syracuse! The owner of the Syracuse Nationals was looking for a way to move the game along and spur more fan interest when he heard of Coach Howard Hobson's innovation. Hobson was coaching at the University of Oregon and devised the shot clock to end the stalling practices common in basketball at the time. The team that was leading would kill clock and force the trailing team to commit fouls to get the ball back. This resulted in low-scoring games with lots of fouls. The Nationals first used the 24 second clock in scrimmages, found it made the game more exciting and the NBA adopted the clock for the 1954-55 season. The Nationals went on to win the league title in 1955! The clock worked: in the 53-54 season the average score was 79 points per team - in 54-55 it was 93. The Shot Clock Monument stands in Armory Square!

The Shot Clock Monument dedicated to Danny Biasone the owner of the Syracuse Nationals

Despite my initial misgivings on Monday in Syracuse, I ended up having quite a nice week there. I may not have come around to Rodgers and Hart's point of view that:

"You can keep your Athens,

You can keep your Rome,

I'm a hometown fellow

And I pine for home,

I wanna go back, go back

To dear old Syracuse."

I did, however, enjoy many wonderful meals and some beautiful autumn afternoons wandering around and exploring. (The Boys from Syracuse, of course, is not about men from Syracuse, NY but Syracuse, Italy - it's a musical retelling of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors. ) Syracuse marked the last week of Spamalot as I've known it for the last year and a half - we spent the following week in West Point retooling the show into what I've come to think of as Spamalot v2.0!

JV